Dublin

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You’ll never believe it but I’ve got a hangover. Drank a few too many Guinness and red wines. The Guinness in this country really is smooth it’s undeniable and despite the hangover I’m actually looking forward to some more. I went with a couple of my cousins on a little racing bike around Dublin today which probably helped me sweat out some of the alcohol. Dublin is not necessarily bike friendly but it’s not too difficult and dangerous to get around in the centre of town. I know how useless I am on racing bikes, especially in crocs which don’t fit well into those little peddle holder things but I survived. Also spent most of the time thinking it was a one gear bike, which is wasn’t, but meant I got a real workout on the cobbled streets. It is a beautiful city though, some lovely old building and a hell of a lot of interesting looking pubs.

There is probably a little too much of a worring trend in what some call progress as they build flats everywhere though. It’s strange how people who run the city seem to think the place needs an infinite amount of hotels and flats, and that they can repossess these old buildings with history and character, and not lose the very character that makes the place desirable in the first place. We passed an old market which is the most beautiful building and which is now going to be turned into some commercial shopping centre. Or the oldest horse market in Ireland, which I remember going to as a child, being closed down because the owners of all the big hotels and office buildings recently built around it started putting in complaints. How will these things benefit the city, it’s people and those who want to visit interesting culturally renowned places. We know who it benefits and it’s depressing. People consciously make decisions which will be to the detriment of their hometowns just to line their own pockets. I guess it comes down to priorities and perspectives, I know mine.

With that in mind I’m going to do what people do best on Christmas Eve, when they’re not happy with something but not going to do anything about it. I’m going to have a drink, chill out and get on with the daily grind of a life full of everything.

Movement

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I will attempt to write this without sounding like some arse who just wants to boast about all the wonderful adventures I have. It is simply an attempt to give a little background to the person whose words you are hopefully enjoying reading. The reason for this is that today I have arrived in Dublin for a Christmas with relatives over here and I realised I am back abroad again despite the fact I thought I was done with it for this year. Over the last ten or so years I have traveled pretty intensely, convincing myself I’m stopping but ultimately just taking a break. This year I started in Scotland before following this route – Spain – Gibraltar – Spain – Italy – Scotland – Ireland – Scotland – Ireland – Spain – Ireland – Scotland – Sweden – Estonia – Finland – Sweden – Scotland – Australia – Scotland – Spain – England – Ireland – Scotland? Each stay was for a variety of lengths and mostly they were for living, sailing, stag partying and family holidays. It has been quite the year, my carbon footprint must be massive despite the fact I sailed between many of them. Australia alone is the equivalent carbon that I can be allotted for my entire years consumption were we to successfully avoid a two degree rise and ultimate human doom. I don’t regret any of these trips even though it means I am certainly part of the problem. I once spent two years not flying, my high point was the overnight train from Paris to Madrid but I’ve made no attempt to repeat that period of ideological superiority and I don’t mind.

The point is I travel a lot, and after the last trip to Spain I thought I was finished for the year. The question is, will I ever finish. I’ve had many conversations with people who tell me that I am so lucky to be living such a great and free life, and I wince and suffer, I try to explain I’m tired, want some normality and can’t stop despite wanting and being desperate to. And then I’m off again, and so happy in the adventure and discovery once more. For this is a life worth loving but one I can’t bring myself to love anymore until I’m doing it again, or fantasising about such things. People experiencing normality want adventure, and people with constant adventure seem to want normality. What a ridiculous species of monkey we are.

And then I went and got distracted, and drunk…and now I’m drunk. I should leave it there I’ll finish it properly tomorrow.

‘Tis the Season

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It’s that time of year again that everyone gets excited, drinks too much, loves family, drinks a bit more and hates family. The reason I talk about Christmas, I’m sure you’ve already guessed, is that I have been wrapping presents. It is easily my least favourite part of the whole experience as I find it so very tedious. I have obvious reservations about Christmas, the commercialisation has spread like rabies and it can create the same rabid affect on people, but it is also the same people who wince when they see shop decorations in September. People still seem to have retained a semblance of decency in this regard despite the best efforts of those trying to sell joy.

What is it then that makes people enjoy Christmas so much, it can’t just be the buying and selling of presents, despite best efforts our happiness isn’t programmed into the strength of the economy and has nothing to do with GDP. And despite all my reservations I must confess that after the horrors of realising I have to buy presents and think, I actually quite enjoy it, there’s something satisfying realising you’ve had a good idea. Perhaps then it comes back to the initial idea in the very first sentence. The obvious statement to make is that Christmas brings people together, and while that is cheesy and not entirely accurate with it’s disgustingly positive connotations, there is still some truth in it. It may be that in bringing people together and creating an environment in which people can eat, drink and be merry, it allows them to forget the drudgery of their existence for a few days. The highs and lows of life and all the drama that that entails, loving and then hating family, is always something us sensation hooked humans thrive on, evidenced surely by the spike in domestic violence over the period.

Yet we keep on coming back. Year after year we get excited for Christmas, or at least in my little middle class bubble everyone I know does. I suspect it is also an incredibly stressful period for millions of people out there as they take on the new debt that’ll take them until the following Christmas to pay off or spend it without a loved one for the first time. Does that make me enjoy my Christmas any less, and would it make me a bad person if I didn’t let it. It would certainly take a selfish martyr to tell me so. In which case we embrace the bubble we live in. Eat, drink, fuck and fight just as we did last year, and just as we’ll do for a thousand to come.

An Undignified Tip

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I had an interesting revelation last night in the pub. It involved tipping. Now different countries have different rules towards tips or cultural approaches shall we say. The American version probably more well known than most. The Yankee gods of capitalism have created a system in which you are guilted into paying half the waiters wage on top of the meal or drink you’ve just ordered as you know they’ll be paid nothing otherwise. In parts of Asia tips are not part of the culture, I’ll never forget the two Canadian guys throwing tips around in Burma despite it being culturally not a done thing and then wondering why they were being over charged for other things. Mediterranean cultures vary but usually you leave a few coins as you feel. In Spain during the Civil War the anarchist trade union the CNT banned the use of tips and I never fully grasped the significance behind that until last night.

The barman in this little village pub was probably in his fifties, went about his job without any fuss and certainly without flair in line arguably with the pub itself. Happy hour had finished fifteen minutes earlier but he decided anyway to give me the happy prices for the two pints, which he didn’t need to but went out of his way to do anyway. From the coins I gave him I was due fifty pence back in change but I found this issue of whether I should let him keep it as thanks for the prices a difficult one. He was a man and I was a man, but it was more that we were two blokes, by tipping him it would demean him, and there seemed to just be something unspoken that this would be an affront to his dignity. Certainly the village pub atmosphere played a part, but I may have given a woman or younger man the change in that situation. It is also possible that it was purely this guy in particular and the energy that he gave off but it allowed for an experience and understanding that was original and unique for me.

There is something about the word undignified that makes me uneasy, it seems somehow snobbish and pretencious, but there is something about being tip hungry that seems fitting for such a word. Of course anyone, including myself, who has worked in hospitality will have at some point sniffed out a tip. As I said though I don’t care much for dignity, I’ve never lacked the version that without would dehumanise and subjugate, and have never allowed pride to prevent me acting as I feel, unless I’m too proud to admit it now of course. In Republican Barcelona people were achieving self-determination breaking the bonds of a previous life without dignity. To accept tips would have been to accept your position as a second class citizens in a hierarchical society again. The village pub in northumberland is not anarchist antifascist civil war Spain and this isn’t about proud dignity either. Times have moved on from then but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn a little from the past and see how it can relate to the present; man to man et al.

Tin Tin the Racist

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Contemporary morality is an interesting beast. I was just discussing Tin Tin and looking at the chronological order of his stories, and while I enjoyed them as I child I have forgotten most now. In the process of this I discovered that his first story was about him traveling to the Soviet Union to take on some corrupt Soviets officials. Hergé it turns out wrote his Tin Tin stories for the children’s section of a conservative newspaper called Le Vingtième Siècle which at the time was attempting to gently align itself with the Nationalist cause, something far more shady and unsavoury than current versions despite all the protestations – although time will tell. Hergé himself was traditionally right wing and after the war was accused of being a collaborator for his participation in a nationalist newspaper in Belgium while under Nazi occupation. His first story was directly and intentionally anti-Communist, with his second even more controversial as he sends Tin Tin to The Congo.

There have been many calls to limit the production of this second story with it’s racist caricatures and stereotypes, not to mention the Belgian history of imperialism and genocide in the Congo only decades earlier. Looking at other stories of his it is likely his interactions with Native Americans would be politically incorrect, and most likely racist by modern standards and don’t even get me started on the horrors committed towards the Scots when Tin Tin goes north. The problem though is whether we should ban these stories. Were his trip to the Congo to be produced now there is no doubt it would be written with racist intentions and should be viewed and dealt with accordingly. Banned, I don’t know, because you enter a minefield of grey areas of hate speech and freedom of speech, but definitely a productive reaction would be necessary. Now it would be the same story with the same images, and it was written by someone with nationalistic and racially surperior ideals but the idea of banning it horrifies me. Perhaps I’m being an apologist for the times, as anti-fascism is not a new thing, but intentional or unintentional racism was arguably more commonplace now than then. The truth is we have no idea how people in the future will judge us for what appears normal and acceptable now as abhorrent in one hundred years. Winston Churchill is admired by many but he was a racist imperialist. The reality is many people were, and that isn’t an excuse because racism in any form is disgusting but Tin Tin was a man of his time. In many ways it is a fascinating historical document. Our morality is debatable, contemporary morality is evolving at ever faster rates, Tin Tin may have been a racist but he had a cool dog and a mate named after a fish, I’ll resist the temptation to throw him in the fireplace of time just yet.

The Bonded Free

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It has taken me over half an hour to get this far as first my computer gave me problems and then I couldn’t load up the website. Throw in the fact my eyes were getting very heavy and really this was a tempting push in the direction of sacking it off and not doing anything today. But I will persevere, for that is the trip I have chosen. What it also means though is that this will be the first of two pieces tomorrow – today as you read it – and none for today – yesterday as you read it. My god I’m ready for my bed.

I was listening to a podcast today and the guest was some porn mogul who’s name I never bothered attempting to remember. He seemed like quite an interesting person and he was discussing freedom. As a Scotsman this is a topic we’re weaned on from a young age but I’ll not go into the antics of Mel Gibson and instead what freedom means for us. This porn mogul believed freedom was about being able to choose what you want to do or don’t want to, as well as being able to act upon this or not. When I was traveling around Australia about seven or eight years ago, I was in search of complete freedom and for me that meant shutting off the constant stream of guilt that I should or shouldn’t be doing something, or producing something creative, or whatever it is I think I thought now eight years later. I felt totally free, although I forgot I was looking for that, and for better or worse just kind of was. I forgot this at the time and realised a few years later when I wasn’t free mentally and really made an effort to be totally free again. This time though, the ironic thing was that this intense desire and search for freedom was in itself incredibly restrictive, there was nothing liberating about it and understandably was just an escape from the justifiable tap in my head. 

What then is to be free? This porn mogul has it because he’s got nobody telling him what to do, although lets be honest we always answer to somebody, and I had it when I forgot I was looking for it. And then Mel Gibson the Scottish freedom fighting Australian; who desired his people to be free from their bondage to a foreign crown as bondage to their own would be much more palatable. Can freedom then be defined on a universal basis or is it just another subjective construct? Can we objectively be free, perhaps the very act of pure objectivity is in itself the most liberating act of all. As I discovered a few years back, it’s probably best not to spend too much time desiring answers to these questions. The more you think the further from it you get and the more the tap opens…drip, drip, drip…the inescapable bondage of the mind. 

Red Wine CCTV

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I’m drinking red wine it’s really nice. I had a small thought at one point today and it was about whether we have trained a generation of human security cameras. It was based on a short five minute video of an older comedian talking about taking his granddaughter to the park. It was a slightly obvious joke in that it was critical of the modern day child being wrapped up in cotton wool and not playing with live open wires like the good old days. He was being critical of slides in playgrounds and how they’re designed to be shit and not really give any decent fun propulsion. While he wanted to give her a helping hand he could see all the other kids and adults watching him “Go on granddad I dare you” as they all take out their iPhone’s. But the reality is it’s true.

There have been seemingly endless revolutions over the last lets say five to ten years, all of which appear to have failed miserably. What has become evident and I first noticed this in the Arab Spring of X amount of years ago, was that the humble camera phone became an integral part of reporting. While I rejoiced at policeman being caught out beating up non-violent protesters and wondering how the media would be able to ignore such conclusive evidence, very easily it turned out, I praised these phones and thought they had changed the game in regards coverage of protests and such things. They changed everything of course, and were dutifully ignored by the apparatus of power, but is it possible it could go the other way? What happens if people become so used to filming and publishing any video online they collectively start recording every little incident of social existence. There are so many situations in daily life that people act outside of the law, that is the reality, but they’re harmless, nobody gets hurt and in reality nobody has a problem with them. But it’s on camera now. Or what about an innocent situation like Grandpa above, somebody films him being a little over exuberant but harmless, and he becomes vilified, shamed and doesn’t feel comfortable playing freely with his granddaughter anymore.

We’re such judgmental pricks that both these situations are plausible. The latter has become part of daily existence but is the evolution of this that we inadvertently become walking CCTV’s. It seems far fetched, and in some ways it is because it’ll never end up exactly like that, but there already are versions of this kind of behaviour. The power people have to catch each other and feel good about themselves. It’s enough to make humour vanish. Maybe I should stop drinking red wine.

Change

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Its amazing how everything changes once you know people are reading what you’re writing. In a dream world I could say I am still writing this for myself but in this flawed one I know for sure I’m not. I can only imagine there are countless psychological studies out their explaining how and why we respond as we do when people like a post or like the blog. For the last month I have been unsure of what to write on more than a handful of occasions but now I know others might read it, I all of a sudden have an added awareness of whether what I write will be enjoyed by and create return readers. Gone are the free and wild days of my youth, my formative thirty-one days of reckless experimenting. For now I am a responsible, thoughtful and mature adult of a writer who will wow you with his intellect and insight as he goes in search of those endorphin releasing likes.

Been smashing stuff today. Yeah get some!! An internal wooden structure of four rooms taking up about a third of a warehouse. Spent the last few days carefully removing panels and now we got to the good bit when we try and collapse the whole thing. Turns out trying to knock out the supporting beams from the inside really is not the way forward. Is this a learning curve or just something we should instinctively know? Surely their must be some kind of animalistic survival instinct which makes us take stock and not do what we know to be a bad idea but then you hear about so many people who have just done stupid things it really makes you wonder. Perhaps it’s a way of nature weaning out the idiots, or simply one of the reasons humans have managed to successfully evolve over the years, our ability to observe and learn.

Anyway isn’t it typical that the very first piece in this new era of self-conscious writing comes after I’ve been whacking things hard for the last eight hours and am feeling both mentally and physically fatigued. What I am really excited about witnessing in myself though is how much my approach to this has changed with the prospect of an actual audience. Life isn’t black or white so it isn’t either a good or bad thing but I’m just a little surprised about how aware of others I now am, and in that case how it may affect my writing going forward. I’m actually quite excited to see. But I’ll leave it at that for now and please please please press the like button, I seem unable to see any value in existence anymore if you don’t.

Day 32

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Fuck!! Today is the big day, the first piece I publish properly. I don’t know if I’m ready for this mentally, I’m a bit nervous actually as it has been purely writing for myself until this point. It’s also probably worth mentioning that today is Day 32 and if anyone is inclined for any reason to read all the way back to Day One, I was supposed to publish for the first time on Day 31. Yes I missed my own opening party by a day.

But what the hell am I talking about I hear you say. I should explain as I doubt anyone is going to read all the way back to the first piece, and even if they did, I haven’t exactly stuck to my own rules. This is an experiment, I’m experimenting with myself, although not in a teenage boy kind of way. The idea is to learn the discipline needed, and create the required habit, of writing a piece on this blog every day for an entire year, three hundred and sixty-five days to be precise. That has already been broken, but I have published everyday so far, which was a rule change I decided upon at one point. I wrote two pieces one day, saved it in reserve and subsequently used it one day. That piece was Amor Fati and I make no excuses as events made writing that day impossible. The other rule I seem to be breaking more or less daily is that each piece was supposed to be only ten words more or less than four hundred, and there was a reason for that although I won’t go into it again. I seemingly love the sound of my own thoughts though as I am averaging about five hundred words per day.

So far then it has been an interesting experiment. I have proved I can write daily, although were I to go adventuring and my environment changed that may prove a new challenge to sustain. There have been days I haven’t been able to think of much and have just dribbled something inane onto the page, but then that is all part of it. It was interesting to realise I found it quite challenging to write and at first what came out seemed quite immature. Not really writing for the last ten years has not allowed my writing style to develop. It’s just practise. There are more observations I could share with you but I can’t remember them off the top of my head right now so they can’t be important. Ultimately though I’ve actually quite enjoyed it. Whether habit has been formed yet I’m unsure, they do say something about a month of repetition being an important milestone though. This is just a simple blog on my observations, misunderstanding and everything in between, it may be self-indulgent but then I’m kind of doing it for myself more than anyone else. Saying that, I do hope you enjoy it, and I must thank you for at least taking the time to read this far.

A Union of Secession

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I’m going to attempt to recreate the main points of a conversation I’ve just had with my Dad. For context he is both pro-Brexit and pro-Union. These ideas discussed have come up in the past but seemingly have taken a step further with recent events.

The Tory party in the UK won a stonking majority of some forty seats and in Scotland the SNP won an equally stonking forty-eight out of a possible fifty-nine seats. Both of these result can be and have been spun in numerous ways but arguably what it does do is give a mandate for Brexit and a mandate for a second referendum in Scotland on independence. It is hard to argue against either of those things when Brexit and Scottish independence were the main priority of both parts respectively. However as with everything in politics this is not as straightforward as it seems. We in the UK have a voting system called First Past The Post, which allows for people to win seats once they get a certain number of votes but which for numerous reasons too many to get into here, creates a voting system which arguably favours the larger parties, creates a two party system like we have in the the UK and in the US too and which often allows for a larger percentage of seats that percentage of the vote.

The point is that while this may have been a Brexit election the Remain supporting parties actually received more votes in total than the Brexit supporting parties yet received vastly fewer seats. The same can be said for Scotland which has so many tight marginal seats that can be won by less than one hundred votes, the SNP received a far fewer percentage of the vote than percentage of the seats, which also equated to fewer pro-independence votes than pro-union. The argument made by my Dad was that the SNP don’t actually have a mandate because were there to be another referendum they would lose it because of this share of the votes but it is also an argument which can be made back in regard Brexit.

Put simply; the unionists want to maintain one union while breaking up another while the separatists want to break up one union while also maintaining another. The unionists believe they have the mandate to break from the EU because they hold a resounding majority in the UK parliament but not break up the UK because the majority of those voting in Scotland voted for parties not pushing for independence, whereas the separatists want to break from the UK because they hold a majority of Scottish seats in parliament but maintain the connection with the EU because the majority of Scottish voters voted to remain. Confused? You should be.

Ultimately that is the more ridiculous nature of politics and power. We pick and choose what we want to see and believe depending on what fits our narrative. We have a belief, we see facts, numbers, ideas which support this belief and fervently repeat them even in the face of contradictory points we choose not to see. I don’t doubt I do this too and hope one day to develop the self-awareness to stop. It’s just both amusing and depressing to see both sides using the same argument against each other and being oblivious to the fact its exactly the same argument. And whats worse, this road of obliviousness appears to stretch from one horizon to the other. This madness has always been, the question is then, will it always be?