What is it about travel and food?

What is it about travel? I eat continually as if walking epic journeys in need of nutrition to sustain me. The fact that I am bused, flown, carried from pillar to post is incidental. My system may be assisted by all this technology but runs on a much more primitive animalistic operating system. In such close quarters with unknown numbers of my fellow species does their presence trigger a grazing hunger. Eat quickly what is available before others tuck in and leave me bereft?

Or is the hunger stress-related? Far from my home, sofa, fridge and familiar surroundings do I overeat to distract me from all this strangeness.  The comfort of a full belly brings a satisfied sleepiness that almost neutralizes the foreignness. Like a baby, I swig the bottle and stuff down biscuits to shut out the otherness that threatens!

I see the stress on others too. Even queueing is an irritant. Why did he push in? Surely, we should be moving now, where is my boarding ticket and do have I still have my passport!

We hug our familiar belongings, sure that everyone wants what we own. Pulling bags closer still, wrapping handbag straps around shoulders and checking locks on suitcases. The fear-inducing statement, “Have you packed your own case?” is asked. Followed by,"Do you carry inflammable explosive objects?" Of course, you don’t! But the idiots in front and behind you may have not have packed their own cases! They probably don’t even realize the danger of Lithium-ion batteries occasionally bursting into flames on planes.

Suddenly, one feels travelling should only be for those intelligent enough to obey the rules. There should be special scanners to pick out those too stupid to be allowed to fly. The airline staff seem unduly inexperienced and uniformly distracted. One wonders if the pilots and crew on planes are busy on their iPhones checking Facebook instead of watching dials. Answering emails and text messages instead of monitoring storm warnings.

In addition to all this everyone who works in the cockpit or as stewards are all of reproductive age and so are by nature perpetually distracted. Either recovering from devastating breakups or enduring stormy/heated relationships or perennially on the hunt for new potential partners.  All these emotions leave little room for professional performances.  You feel a strong desire to scream “focus, focus please!”

The vista of cotton wool clouds stretching outside my window seat reminds me of some celestial last vision. The intercom announces all the goodies for sale from aftershave to portable speakers, perfume etc and reminds one of the materialistic nature of this whole enterprise. The speaker’s inability to converse coherently in basic English has me doubting his organizational skills and technical know-how. These people have to do cross-checks and safety things after all. I see how slowly they struggle to serve drinks and food as they meander down the cabin. “Come on people get a move on!” You’ve only done this thousands of times. How can you be so crap at it? Running the full length of the cabin to retrieve more lids, Pringles, water, ice. The fact that you are so cack-handed at these simple tasks makes me doubt your ability to deplane this aircraft. Yes, that’s what they call it. Is that phrase itself an evidence of stupidity?

Bring me more food! I am noticing too much. How annoying is my neighbour with his stinky socks. Why can’t he keep his shoes on! The red-haired air steward keeps picking his nose between serving drinks. I know it’s Ryanair, and their uniforms and training scream budget airlines, but surely, they could’ve been given a special training session on the inappropriateness of nose picking when serving drinks and food.

The two women in front have talked incessantly for the entire four-hour flight about their families, their partners, their homes, their holidays, their jobs in those elevated excited tones that strangers use. As if whispering and talking in your normal voice would indicate an intimacy that is not justified by this casual encounter. Instead, the proper volume is high, animated by loud forced laughter. Couples desperately ask others to switch seats so they can sit with their partners. Having achieved the sought-after goal they say not one word to their partner the rest of the flight. The longing is not to be with their loved one at all but to be free of the bloody stranger! That way they can comfortably sulk and moan as normal. It makes this flying tube a little more like home to have that familiar face frowning over Suduko beside them.

Mind you, I shouldn’t complain, we landed safely and we all survived.  However, since I am in complaining mode I’d like to mention the seats on Ryanair.  They are so uncomfortable. I am not claustrophobic but the distance between the seat in front and my face is worryingly small.  Mind you, the prices keep me coming back for more.  Worrying to hear of their plans to have us all standing in the future (surely its a joke?). 

-->

But perhaps this group's song captures the whole cheap airline experience best.

-->

Am I insane or is this?

There are times I read articles in newspapers and truly wonder am I insane? 

I remember a short story of a pickpocket describing himself as a ‘fingersmith’ and giving an account of his craft. Akin to silversmiths, blacksmiths etc he proposed his particular craft required no less hard practice or skill.  He needed to develop physical and mental abilities and even social skills to blend into crowds effectively. Skills such as being able to pinpoint a suitable victim were described with avid enthusiasm. You're almost convinced by his arguments and his total reframing of stealing as an art form of sorts. It almost takes a moral slap to remind yourself that he is talking about targeting the vulnerable, to deprive them of what is rightly theirs. Traumatising the innocent to earn his living and leaving scars that last long after the original crime has been forgotten by both the perpetrator and the courts (if they were ever convicted). The victims can feel isolated and foolish, robbed of their savings and pensions. Many look at the world around them with different eyes. Suspicious of all, trusting no one, even doubting their own capacity to cope in this new world of villainy.

Today's fingersmiths are multitalented and are everywhere. They run investor scams, telephone fraud, internet deception, abuse people etc and they have found their way into companies, governments, councils etc It seems perverse that our systems of justice seem laboriously expensive and are notoriously ineffectual. In the movies, the villain is tracked down by eager expert forensic investigators and Poirot-like detectives who remorselessly bring justice to bear. The truth is far from that reality. Murder cases take years and often go unsolved, assaults and rapes are often not pursued because witness statements/investigations are not actioned or recorded in a timely fashion. Even how things play out in the press can bear little or no relation to actual facts.  But that no longer seems to matter.

The 38-year-old suspect who stabbed a woman and poured acid on her face, we are informed, was not even questioned and instead of being arrested by the police he was taken to hospital for psychiatric examination.  The police found him in a disturbed state.  I can actually remember reading about the same character in the same newspaper attempting to murder the same woman in 2012. He hit the woman and stabbed his victim resulting in her losing an eye. On that occasion, he went on the run and spent five hours on a flagpole threatening to jump off. At the time he was actually still on bail pending proceedings for an earlier attack on a previous partner.

I remember the words of sympathy towards this particular individual as he perched on the flag. With increasingly important individuals in the community anxiously endeavouring to talk him down. Offering understanding and empathy to this poor misguided soul. To find that he has, six years later, stabbed the same woman and poured acid on her face is an insult to reason! Exactly how much abuse of women is to be perpetrated and accepted by the police, law and press.  Today's article depicts a dramatic picture of the poor fellow’s 2012 suicide attempt, clinging to the flagpole under the misleading heading ‘ acid attack suspect not fit to stand trial’. The article states that the victim is ‘ recovering well from stabs, burns’, oh well that’s okay then isn’t it? The article again places its sympathy squarely on the perpetrator and not on the victim. Are we to feel sorry for this man?  His victim had already lost an eye from his previous attack now she lies stabbed in hospital, her face douched in acid and yet somehow the perpetrator is carefully protected from even questioning, never mind arrest!

Am I mad or is this world becoming an art form in 'slight of hand’ and deception? With a choice of font size and the correct photo, they have turned the stabbed and acid burnt woman into a side character to the main story. The injustice of allowing the perpetrator to continue his rampage on the basis that, in the words of the police, he seemed disturbed.  Given that excuse won him sympathy and freedom before from the justice system the entirely sympathetic account in today's press does not bode well for this attack being treated any differently from the former.

Obviously, a man climbing a flagpole and threatening to jump off six years ago trumps a woman being stabbed, punched and having acid thrown in her face today.  Am I insane or is this?

Senility and Sensibility

This year, at its end, I turn 60. The big 60, so I thought it timely to think of all the good things and bad about being this old.

1. Hair grows unexpectedly in noses, ears and on top of toes! I am grateful for the cosiness and warmth this generates.
2. I need to lean on walls to put on underpants but I'm grateful my knees still bend without pain.
3. I forget the names of people, places, dates and things but I'm so glad I'm clearing my brain of such unnecessary clutter.
4. I require glasses for close-up and far away. It's great! It's much easier to meditate while walking as I see no details without glasses and enter a less distracted zone.
5. I sometimes fear that others might spot my frequent mistakes. Such as forgetting why I entered the room, what I'm supposed to be doing or even what I've just done. I'm thankful that no one really gives a damn.
6. My face and body look like a deflated balloon. I'm so grateful that I've grown accustomed to this undulating landscape which grows increasingly textured.
7.  I no longer hear what some people say. I'm happy that most of the time I'm not missing much.
8.  I have developed an aversion to those suffering from middle-aged angst, especially men in their forties who suddenly grow their hair long, buy a motorbike and get an earring. But feel a strange kinship with adolescence and a deep abiding love for all small children and babies.
9. I'm no good at filling in forms or standing on buses but thankfully I've reached that sweet age when people are kind enough to help with forms and offer me their seat on buses.
10. At night, when I can't sleep, I convince myself I'm dying from some dreadful disease. As the hours go past I reach that delicious sense of detachment. I no longer give a damn. I'm too tired to care about dying.
11. I'm a little rough with people but then I was ever so!
12.  I get my sons names mixed up. But since I now also call my grandchildren by my son’s names they have stopped correcting me. I'm obviously no longer in correction phase but have moved into a stage worthy of pity.
13.  I hate a cluttered home and want everything in its place. The tidiness is inversely proportional to my completely chaotic mental state.
14.  I can pick arguments at the drop of a hat but good friends love me anyway.
15.  My mum is 85 so often forgets things. Fortunately, she remembers more than I! So that cheers her up considerably.
16.  I have surprisingly little and have grown accustomed to the lightness of that load.
17.  No one befriends me because I'm rich and that's a wonderful filter to find the real gems out there.
18.  I am an odd creature, even I notice that, but thankfully have begun to call it unique instead.
19.  My father used to say he had more real friends in the next world than in this one. I reckon mine is 50-50 but I've definitely lost some of the best.
20.  Small things can upset me disproportionately. Cause pacing and stomach churning. Thankfully, I have usually forgotten them by the next day.
21.  When I read newspapers I can no longer find news, just nonsense. When did reality and what they tell us diverge so completely?

Summary

Have I learnt anything from life so far? 

We have a tendency to worry about what we shouldn't 

and to ignore what we need to be doing. 

So worry less and do more!

Bus arguments, Boredom and Bunkum

At school I was bored. I can remember praying for earthquakes, floods or storms anything to dull the persistent mind-numbing of the classroom routine. Lightning storms at primary school where a source of great fear for almost all my classmates and they huddled under their desks with our young teacher, Miss Spencer's voice quivering that there was nothing to be afraid of. I meanwhile had my nose pressed to the window overjoyed that my prayers had been answered at last!

Later as an adult in Greece, I experienced earthquakes and found them much more disturbing than storms. The firm Earth beneath you should just not move and shake. Your mind is flummoxed by the sudden lack of a stationary frame of reference. I drove my children in the middle of the night to the ancient stadium for safety. It had stood for well over 2000 years through a multitude of earthquakes great and small. It seemed the wisest choice. I parked in the open far away from structures that could fall and waited for the aftershocks to stop. The first tremor is confusing and startling. You're not sure what is happening. The longer it goes on the more the fear swells. The after-shocks are almost scarier than the original shake as you are already jittery with foreboding.

Floods are a part of life in the Mediterranean. It's perverse really. I'm from Ireland where rain is like a permanent state of the weather. Not having rain is more unusual there. It is if a tap has been left flowing above. Usually, it is what we call a soft rain. A never-ending drizzle. Sometimes it can lash mercilessly in wind-driven whips. But in the Mediterranean floods follow the rain. Here rain feels like an open-ended bucket on your head. No gradual Irish soaking over hours of gentle drizzle. Instead, a torrent falls upon you as if a bath is emptied from above. Instantly soaked to the skin the excess of even more rain seems an overkill. But it continues unabated. Then suddenly the roads turn into rivers. Hard flowing rivers that are deepest near the pavements. There are common videos on the news of cars floating down roads like boats and pedestrians up to their thighs wading across junctions. It seems as if southern European infrastructures are designed only for sunny days. The sudden heavy storm is always bewilderingly unexpected despite its usual yearly appearance.

I still watch floods and storms nose pressed to the window. The sound of a good thunderstorm is I wondrous thing. Surely as soothing as the pitter patter of rain on an overhead canvas. You are delighted at being sheltered on such days and hug yourself in glee at such good fortune.  (I only realised today that people go sleep listening to such soundtracks)

Here on Malta I usually walk everywhere. Carless after a lifetime of driving I loathe waiting for buses. It takes me back to school longing for the final bell to end my misery. But when it rains the bus becomes a necessity. Yesterday, standing reluctantly at the bus stop, a young man in his 20s approaches me. He asks if a certain bus has already gone.  I lift my shoulder in a shrug and say "I'm not sure, I've just arrived”.He consults the timetable on the bus sign and is reassured. After being on Malta for six years I have no such confidence in the bus timetable. Sometimes they come early, occasionally late and often they are completely full so they drive past without stopping at all. Being impatient I have grown accustomed but not resigned to this. I am smouldering in resentment at having to wait. The young man introduces himself. He is wearing a suit and works for a real estate company and is from Eastern Europe.

The conversation develops and introduces his positive attitude theory. "You must see 'The Secret’ “ He tells me,”it explains everything about life!” He gives proof of this theory.  Apparently, he left his wallet on the bus by accident the previous week, with all his cards and money but did not cancel them. Instead, he used positive thoughts to will his wallet’s return. Sure enough, a week later it was returned by post to his address with all his cards including his bus card, ID and money. Positive thinking brings good things to his life and he says it is negative thinking that brings bad stuff to everyone else.

I beg to differ. I cite examples of Bangladesh where the plains that routinely flood are filled with the poor who are driven to occupy that place because they simply have no choice. It's the only place they can afford to live. These treacherous lands killed tens of thousands each year and no amount of positive thinking by any one of them will alter either the monsoon, the rains, the floods and the death that occur. 

He thinks the Chinese the Russians and the Americans are altering our weather with an instrument called HAARP. This can even influence creatures 80 km below the ground he tells me. Perplexed, I tell him I have never heard of this.  He shows me an internet description of HAARP on his iPhone. He has googled HAARP and it seems radio waves are the culprits and the article goes on at length about this powerful weather changing diabolical machine.

I am not convinced.I discuss the electromagnetic spectrum with him and speak of radio waves ultraviolet, visible light, infrared, UV,  gamma rays, x-rays, microwaves etc and point out that even the highest frequency waves (which are gamma waves) can be stopped by a couple of metres of concrete so how unearth can radio waves which are the lowest frequency manage 80 km penetration? Even the ionosphere can manage to reflect radio waves! My new friend is not convinced by my arguments. 

I point out that recent research has highlighted that people will routinely cling to false facts out of emotional attachment despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary.  

A lack of education is understandable, all of us only know our own little mine of information but I am amazed that erroneous, crackpot theories spread faster and more effectively than facts.  When did the contagion of nonsense become the drug of common usage, shared widely with indiscriminate glee and mind-numbing enthusiasm?

I cite the example of vaccination deniers. He, however, is one of them! He is of the opinion that the big pharmaceutical industry has made up the usefulness of vaccines in order to weaken everyone's immune systems. As a result, he claims,  we are all more dependent on medicine but not cured. He gives the example of his dandruff. His doctor prescribed a medicated shampoo for the condition which stops the problem. "For this I pay money. Note, he does not heal me, he gives me the medicine to stop the problem but when I stop buying the shampoo the dandruff comes back. It's just a way for him to make money! It doesn't pay for him to cure me!”

I try to empathise with him. I say, ”Look, I have no sympathy with big pharmaceuticals. They spend millions on medicine for diabetes but refuse to fund Third World medicine needs because there's more money to be made from the affluent developed world. But smallpox was a killer, we're talking millions of dead over the millennium and with vaccines, we have wiped it off the face of the Earth. People have forgotten how many routinely died before vaccines. Those who choose not to have them survive because of the herd protection of the rest of us. They survive only on the altruism of others and if more for us followed their selfish example more of humanity will start dying again. Is that a wise choice?”

Our discussion has become more heated. I'm in really praying he does not bring up chemtrails or I shall lose the will to live! When did we have to start spending energy dismissing crackpot theories instead of tackling the really urgent problems facing humanity? I have to leave the bus and say my goodbyes. He's a nice young man.  I have three sons his age and feel benevolent towards him. He asks for my email when I get up to go. I hope he gets in touch. I may come across as a bit argumentative and in your face but I do mean well. My intent is not to offend but I do get a bit heated under the collar at times. If you happened to be on the bus yesterday as I pontificated my deepest apologies. I have a low boredom threshold and a lack of tolerance for pseudoscience.

PS Having blasted into my fellow bus traveller about radio waves incapacity to penetrate solid ground and waxed lyrical about Xray crystallography (wavelengths of X-rays are of the same order of layers of atoms within solids making them useful for determining the molecular shapes of crystals) elaborating that microwaves are used for mobile phones and Wi-Fi etc I get home eventually and look up HAARP.  Imagine my embarrassment to find that electromagnetic signals can be used to induce current flow in conductors within tunnels and these generate secondary EM fields which in turn can be used to determine some underground structures.  So my enraged response was perhaps incorrect?   In fact, the technique has been successfully used to detect tunnels in the Demilitarised Zone in Korea and tunnels crossing into the US from Mexico.  However, the notion that HAARP is some sort of military weapon to control the weather is like the chemtrails sheer rubbish.  That is the problem with science it is a tricky subject to get right and it much easier to misunderstand and go off on a tangent to the truth instead.  The perverse thing is the crazier the notion the more traction in the social media it is likely to get. 

For an account of HAARP and tall tales

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/08/16/weather-conspiracy-theories-scientifically-unjustifiable/?utm_term=.a1c5b7e069e1

For using HAARP to determine underground tunnels

Mackie, R. L. (1999). Imaging of Underground Structure Using HAARP (No. GSY-99/001). GSY-USA INC SAN FRANCISCO CA.

Castles and the land of the Pigs

My parents often argued over heritage. Not in a nasty vindictive fashion more in a jokey jesting way. For example, my mother came from a region in rural Northern Ireland called Ballymacaramery (which loosely translated means the land of the pigs). My mother’s family were all farmers with a few acres, some cows, pigs, a vegetable garden, chickens and a greenhouse of fragrant tomatoes whose familiar smell is a potent part of my childhood memories. They lived along a muddy country lane and the further you went down it the poorer the people you seemed to find.

The last tenant, Bessie, on the lane lived in a ramshackle caravan and had five children whose noses always ran and who often took to riding the backs of pigs. I was terrified of my grandfather’s pigs. They were huge dinosaur-like monsters who routinely killed their own offspring by squashing them.  Sometimes they would get free of the field and chase me down the lane. A trauma I have only excised after a 40-year period. Betty's children were fearless of the beasts and used to use them like miniature headstrong horses. Whenever Bessie stole vegetables or eggs or (more commonly) tomatoes from my grandparent’s farm she would hide them behind her back. I remember long conversations with my grandmother catching Bessie in the greenhouse, her hands full of tomatoes carefully concealed behind her. My grandmother would have long polite conversations about Bessie's well-being, her children, the weather. All the while, the thief stood answering reluctantly, head nodding guiltily while she spoke. My grandmother never called Bessie out on the goods she stole. I suspect anyone desperate enough to steal from poor crop farmers were more in need of sympathy than judgement.

Looking back, I can understand that, but in the colour blindness of childhood, I saw only black-and-white. I wanted to point out the stolen goods held hidden in the sweaty hands of the wrongdoer. In those days, children took direction from the adults around them and did not speak out of turn. I knew better than to point out the tomatoes and shame Bessie. I resented it but I followed my grandmother's lead. If she choose to deliberately overlook the theft, I was duty-bound to do the same despite my own misgivings.

Now, I can understand that, in those days of no Social Security, poverty was a life-and-death affair. If you had nothing the benevolence of a neighbour could keep the wolves from your door. All Betty's five sons grew up healthy, tall competent men. I'd like to think my grandparent’s tomatoes, vegetables and eggs played a small role.

So, when my father teased my mother he’d say, "You come from the land of the pigs, what more needs to be said!" To this day, when people tell me about their ancestry/landed/wealthy I retort by saying I come from a long line of poor pig farmers. It has come to be my totem and one to which I cling in the face of the elite.

I remember an ancestor of mine being horsewhipped for allowing a stag to get past him during a hunt. The landed gentry on their horses with hounds yelping excitedly had cornered a huge stag in a small lake. Locals were called in to guard one side of the lake while the hunters and hounds waited restlessly on the other. Three times the stag swam to and fro, from one side to another, terrified to leave the lake but unable to escape. My great-grandfather could feel the animal’s despair and exhaustion as it floundered briefly under the surface of the water. He ran from his post allowing the magnificent animal to escape the trap. One of the hunting party lashed him from the back of his horse with his whip for allowing the quarry to escape. I remember being outraged by the injustice when told the story, but my grandfather pointed out, “Many a one takes a whipping for what they feel is right!” So, when I think of my mum's family all these memories flood back. Of suffering and struggles mixed in with nobility and conviction.

This then was “The land of the pigs!”  My father would then grandly explain “My people came from a castle!" To which my mother would snort in amusement. Years later, my brother did some research and he found the aforementioned castle! He even travelled down and explored the ruins of this edifice.

By this stage, he had completed an extensive family tree and discovered the family connections leading back to Magheramena castle in Fermanagh.  These relatives dated from Walter Roe Johnstone (1679) (High Sheriff of County Fermanagh) to the more recent Captain James Johnston (born in 1880). This last owner of the castle, Captain James Johnston was killed in Gallipoli on the 9th of August in 1915 on the battlefields of World War I. It's strange to discover your family history the good, the bad, the poor and the rich.

It seems a universal truth that all of these material things pass into dust eventually. What remains are the deeds of heroism big and small that tell of all those who have passed before. If there is anything to learn from our past, it is that destiny lies in our own hands. We must grab the opportunity to do some good in this world before we too are effaced.

“Thou art even as a finely tempered sword concealed in the darkness of its sheath and its value hidden from the artificer’s knowledge. Wherefore come forth from the sheath of self and desire that thy worth may be made resplendent and manifest unto all the world.”

Bahá’u’lláh