Tag: middle class

Life’s Twists & Turns

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

I was going to talk about something important, as always, but I’m currently wallowing in the post breakfast euphoria of this…

Focaccia eggy bread, with blue cheese, wild smoked salmon and a ‘garnish’ of rocket

I’m so painfully middle class I’m not even fighting it anymore. I also managed to remember that I was going to talk about different and uncontrollable paths in life. I realised last night that had this virus not become a thing I would have just been departing an Easyjet flight from Edinburgh to Athens, ready to say hello to some old faces and getting excited about a summer sailing around Greek islands drinking beer and wine, and eating too much of the world’s best cuisine. Yes I just made that statement. But that was what could have been.

I’m currently making pizzas as previously mentioned. This won’t go on forever and the lifting of lockdown will have an affect upon it but at most it’ll be a summer gig until the schools go back and the tourists disappear. This was never meant to be the plan as I said but it’s just what I’m doing now. Maybe in July I’ll have had enough of it and realise I’m wasting my time but that is something for future me to deal with. The point is that we clearly can’t control life’s ever evolving patterns. We can influence certain elements of it but let’s be honest in most things we’re pretty powerless. If you can’t sail, you just do something else. You meet other people, make other bonds. And you go with that and see what happens.

The truth is that while undeniably I’m longing for a holiday sitting on a beach somewhere in the sun and waking up whenever it pleases me, I’m perfectly content with this version of existence and how it’s unfolding. Maybe something will ruin that contentment, maybe something won’t. The point is not to tell you I’m living some kind of perfect life because I’m not, there’s no such thing, but there’s a good chance the whole world is doing something completely different in this Covid-19 version of existence and I just enjoyed the fact that last night I was sitting there and had a fairly good idea of exactly what I would have been doing. That I think is a rare pleasure, and a pleasure because I’m not longing for either. If we make the most of whatever we do end up doing we’re less likely to long for anything else.

And that goes for my breakfast too. It is Sunday today and while I love to think I would be in the Koukaki district of Athens looking for some little hipster brunch place, most likely I would be grabbing a spanakopita from the first bakery I could find from the few that open on a Sunday in Greece before driving to Preveza and fixing up a boat. Yes I desire that, but I’m pretty happy with whats sitting in my belly currently too.

As I read over that I felt at one point I wanted to vomit on myself. Don’t get me wrong the sentiment about uncontrollable existence and riding it’s wave still stands. It’s just I’m painfully aware that the two possible versions of existence I know of are pretty decent and there are plenty out there who don’t even have one decent version. “If you can’t sail, you just do something else“, I mean come on, what a wanker. But I don’t feel guilty, I don’t feel bad and I don’t feel I want to give up my blue cheese, what would that achieve. I’m just aware I’m incredibly lucky. Maybe I should find a way to share my blue cheese instead.

How To Be Human In The Zombie Apocalypse

Hamar WilliamsLeave a comment

Coronavirus panic seems to have ramped up to zombie apocalypse levels. I have not been able to resist keeping an eye on the latest news updates online and we seem to just be seeing photo’s of empty shelves and pandemonium everywhere. Apparently everyone is being selfish and one Tweet from some politician told of some guy buying the last of the pasta and refusing to share even one with some old lady. This would seem to prove the existence of widespread selfish behaviour, or at least prove examples of it exist and therefore the selfish narrative if you’re attempting to push one. I of course wasn’t there and haven’t been to a big supermarket in about ten days when I went to buy some goats milk butter, I’m so middle class, because they don’t have it in my local shop. Unsurprisingly there had not been a rush on it although I can confirm there wasn’t a great deal of toilet paper left, it does appear people think they can eat it. Seriously though of all the things to rush to buy, the one thing people think they can’t survive without is loo roll? In times of emergency I reckon you’ll get used to Indian style pretty quickly.

But back to this arsehole hoarding the pasta. If true I would love to know the bigger picture. Did he finally give her some? Did someone step in and persuade him to share? Or even force him to share? There are videos online of people fighting over toilet roll, imagine how it’ll be when it’s over the last tin of baked beans. I wonder what I would do in that situation, would I be a coward or would I stand up for the old lady, and would I give up or persevere. I doubt people really know beyond the fantasy of their imagination but I’m sure we all hope we would one way or another have managed to get the old lady her pasta.

Other updates in the ensuing apocalypse are that a raft of rather disagreeable world leaders seem to be getting tested. It’s a tricky one and I wonder how our public sentiments on these issues vary from our inner thoughts. Scumbags like Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton have tested positive, do we respond joyfully, neutrally or compassionately for him as a human being (supposedly). The Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro tested negative, do we admit to a little disappointment? And then there’s the big one, The Donald has taken his test and will find out in a day or two. We are only human, are we at sainthood levels when we can react equally to everyone in the public eye getting tested? At what point do we just admit our response to hearing Tom Hanks and his wife tested positive was not the same as when we heard Donald Trump is being tested. Does that make us bad? They are still humans, they are still someones mother or father despite how disconnected from any concept of an emotional bond we imagine they have. But we’re also human so we’re fallible. That also means if we want to be excused for our own fallibility we may just have to try understand and excuse theirs. Or just continue being fallible, and proving how human we are.

Saying all of this, it won’t matter anyway soon. We’re all going to be deep in a zombie apocalypse as people prove the fragility of society. Proving they have no sense at all of the so called community they think they’re fighting for with guns or the ballot box. It’s depressing when you realise just how shit people not are but can be. I really hope that old lady got her pasta and whoever reported the moment didn’t just stand there and take a video of it on their phone. To miss the point of ones very own judgemental reporting. Ah to be human.

The Idler

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A weight becomes ether, the mind is free,
The Idler will no longer come to me.

I would have liked to have written more lines but I couldn’t think of a third. I cancelled my subscription to a bi-monthly magazine called The Idler. As previously hinted this was a weight on my mind; to cancel or not. I enjoyed the magazine, it had some very interesting articles, I have read a great book on beekeeping that they recommended, listened to some new music they reviewed. While I don’t have the most hectic of lives it reminded me sometimes to put my feet up and enjoy the liberty of such a moment. The editor and co-creator is a man called Tom Hodgkinson who wrote a book called How To Be Idle, my reading of which led to a darkly amusing moment while at university. I lay on the sofa prior to a drinking session in the last year of a course I made the minimal effort in, reading this book as my housemate came in from one of her two jobs before going in to university to study. Let’s say the moment wasn’t lost on her although the relevance and my understanding of a true idler life seemingly was on me. It saddens me then to not continue my subscription but I am doing so for two reasons. Firstly I’m not around enough to actually read it and I suspect may spend a chunk of this coming year abroad again, and secondly it is a question of whether I relate to the perceived target audience. There is something middle-aged, successful in their field and southern English about the magazine and while I have nothing against any of those things, there is something about them I don’t feel I can connect with and relate to.

I accept I’m not middle-aged but that doesn’t mean I haven’t read and enjoyed things aimed at that market. The southern English thing relates to the type of southern English; comfortable, village life, gardens, good weather, kids in grammar school type of thing. That sounds horribly middle-class, but it isn’t entirely that type of magazine. Tom Hodgkinson is a self-declared anarchist with many of the articles supporting his ideals, although in a lovely soft type of way over the stereotype typically portrayed. I’m almost scared to admit it but this type of life is desirable in many ways and I’m sure a lovely time is had by all. Saying that though it isn’t me now and I’m not actively chasing it even though I don’t doubt I would enjoy it. Finally the successful part is a strange one because it isn’t aimed at super wealthy successful business men but Tom Hodgkinson is in his early fifties now and his magazine gives off the air of someone that age who is happy and has achieved what they set out to achieve. While I’m not unhappy in life now, I am not necessarily happy with my current lot either, and having stopped wanting to simply achieve endless travel, am yet to find success in many of my new desires. It is not uncommon to read things by, to copy or fill our lives with things by those we want to emulate. Are we being true to our own story if we merely try to replicate another’s, or am I misunderstanding what it is to be inspired.

The point of all this is just that it was interesting that a magazine I enjoyed could represent all these things that clearly I am rejecting. Perhaps it was aimed at a niche I secretly want to be a part of and my current existence makes it too hard to endure. It is interesting really because we fantasise so much about what we want, where we want to live, the work we want to do, the types of people we want to hang out with but it’s all such an illusion. We have no idea what the reality of anyone else’s life is, people suffer in private. When we fantasise enviously about being another person, which is what it is, we forget to be ourselves and enjoy whatever cool things are going on in our own lives.

Thank you Idler. I really enjoyed you, got a lot from you, hope to revisit you again one day; but right now, you’re just not me and I’m too busy being me to be you.