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#MyRoadtoSochi

#Sochi.  A city of over 300,000 residents. #Sochi one of the very few places in Russia with a subtropical climate.  #Sochi the home of the Winter Olympics in 2014.  Which of these three statements is the most surreal?  Which of these three statements seems the most unbelievable?  Which of these statements are true?

My #Sochi is not any of those.  My #Sochi is a moment.  A moment of realisation.  An epiphany if you will.  It is the sudden realisation that if you don’t fucking like something, do something, anything.  Because at the end of the day the only thing which truly matters in life is exactly how you feel about yourself.

My #Sochi moment happened in a supermarket.  I was standing in the crisp aisle looking for something to accompany the crate of beer which lives on my balcony.  My eyes fell upon a packet of barbecue Pringles.  As I reached onto the shelf to take the packet my arm refused to obey me.  My brain found a picture in the dusty recesses of my mind.  It was a picture of #Sochi sponsors.  I stood prostrate by choice, suddenly feeling guilt that I was considering buying a packet of Pringles.  As I stood there my mind started to race, and I found myself asking what difference a few euros would make to a brand as powerful as Pringles.  I knew the answer instantly, none.  And yet I remained glued to the floor.  Suddenly it dawned on me that it wasn’t the gesture that was empty.    It was my perspective which was faulty.  The moment wasn’t momentous because it represented a politicization of me.  It was momentous because it was the moment I truly learned the power of social media, that sharing can penetrate people’s consciousness.  And most of all I realised that it is a battle which can be fought.  The emptiness of the gesture suddenly dissipated like a puff of smoke.  I picked up a bag of Croky, stuck my fingers up at the Italian looking Pringles face, span on my heels and left with a giggle.

The trouble with perceptions is that they are often wrong.  In my case Mr Pringles is innocent.  He is not a sponsor of the Sochi  Olympiad.  My mistake was that I had taken a picture that I believed to be true, and created my own set of assumptions based upon the image.  In much the same way that people are instinctively believing the numerous images posted by American journalists on social media, showing various building calamities in Sochi are all true, I had fucked up; I had put faith in an image.  When you think about it you know they can’t be.  If the President of Russia, members of his government, and the members of the Olympic Committee say that #Sochi is ready, who are we to think otherwise?

The curious thing is that it reminded me of a novel I wrote back in 2010, which incidentally remains unpublished.  It tells the story of a dictator in a fictional African country that changes reality in his country.  The dictator rules his country under the assumption that he is the country.  There are more than a few similarities to a large country somewhere to the east of me, as well as a number of others.   The saddest thing of all is that even today it is possible for a statesman to change the reality of his people by proxy.  If a statesman wants to build a winter sports facility in a subtropical climate, why shouldn’t he?  If a statesman wants to host an international event just a few hundred miles from a number of terrorist hotbeds and declare it safe, why shouldn’t he?  If a statesman wants to outlaw educating people to prevent them turning into homosexuals, why shouldn’t he?  After all if he has the faith of his people, surely we should not question him.  Should we?

The most depressing fact of all is that these issues have corroded my own reality.  I have become the type of hypocrite I resent.  I decided weeks ago that I will not watch these Winter Olympics.  And yet there is a hunger inside of me.  I have spent hours reading countless articles about the games.  I have reveled in a thousand Buzzfeeds showing how the Sochi Olympics are proving to be an unmitigated disaster.  I am denying my own reality.  I am not abstaining from the 2014 Winter Olympiad at all.   Instead, I am a voyeur, peering through a window even though the curtains are closed.

If I have learned anything at all about #MyRoadtoSochi it is this: We are entering the last battle in the age of indifference, the battle for reality.  It will require a little effort from each of us.  It will require learning.  And it will require speaking out against those people hellbent on bending it into unrecognizable shapes.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;

None but ourselves can free our minds.

Bob Marley

The Age of Indifference

Hardly a day goes by without something horrifying happening somewhere.  It is impossible to turn on the television, or surf the internet without catching a glimpse that something god awful has happened somewhere.  The image driven way in which we live means that we have been utterly desensitized to what we are seeing.  It has no resonance.  It creates no fear.  As by and large it is so far away that we need not give it a second thought.

Restitution, penance or whatever the hell you want to call it is a queer old bird.  In the heyday of global awareness people used to do all manner of strange things to raise money for causes close to their hearts, nowadays, when the entire universe is a single click away, the most most people ever do is like or share a status on Facebook.  They sleep easy feeling that they have pinned their colours to the mast, that they have done their bit, that they have changed or affected something.  And it makes me sick.

We are now living in the age of indifference, protected by the castle battlements which are the screens we use to communicate with each other, even when we are sitting next to each other on the bus, or at the dining table.  It is an age in which people have truly lost the sense of their very selves, as these tiny screens provide people with a sense of safety which real life could never offer.  The fact is that we now spend so much time staring at screens the vast majority of us are entirely unable to separate fact from fiction.  It’s as if our indifference has made us imbeciles.

A great example of the stupidity of people appeared on social media this weekend.  On first impression it appears that this is an advert.  It looks as if Hugh Laurie is promoting Polish vodka, which is quite a reasonable supposition. hughlaurieAfter all it is stamped with a Polish vodka label.  A media agency took the quote directly from Hugh Laurie’s twitter feed, stuck it onto the picture with the label and suddenly one simple tweet had become a marketing campaign.  Many patriotic Poles proudly shared this picture without giving it a second thought.  Why would they?  After all, if it is on twitter it must be real, right?

What if you took a peek on Twitter and merely looked at Hugh Laurie’s previous tweet?

Would it change a thing?

And what if you really went wild, and err took the time to look at the tweet before that?

Suddenly the entire context of that single image has taken on an entirely different meaning.  It was not a tweet promoting Polish vodka.  It is not from an advertising campaign.  It was a complaint, a reaction to Russia’s draconian persecution of gay people.  It was a point worth applauding, worth celebrating which unfortunately was manipulated for an entirely different purpose.

It is a sad example of what we have become.  It should have been a rallying cry for people to stop and think about Sochi.  To think about the persecution of gay people which is taking in place in Russia today.  Now today.  It could have been used to encourage people to boycott Russian products.  To boycott Sochi sponsors products.  To not turn on their televisions to watch the Winter Olympics.  Instead it became a Facebook viral hit.  Welcome to 2014. Please leave your brains at the door and prepare for take off.

Cultural Learnings Of A British Burger

I have arrived.  Not quite in the sense I would like it to mean.  I find myself in an apartment on the 9th floor of Amsterdam with remnants of my life including my fiancée, my dog and a solar-powered buddha.  On Friday morning I was a human being.  This very morning I became a British Burger.

My first impressions of Amsterdam are positive.  So far we haven’t ventured into the city, instead we have tried to acclimatize to our home.  Our apartment is in a quieter district with no hookers, drugs or windmills in sight.  So far it has been nothing like I imagined.  My passport has been bureaucratically violated and now carries a mark declaring me as an officially ‘undutchable’.  I have a burger number even though the only burgers happen to be British and American.  All around me I keep hearing people making noises like cats struggling to dislodge hairballs from their windpipes, each of them capable of speaking better English than me whilst the vast majority of them are so tall that they can replace the blades on windmills without using a ladder.

The key discoveries so far is that gravy has been invented, nobody actually wears clogs and a single vowel sound in the word ‘hallo’ marks me out as a foreigner.  Eye contact is good, smiling is better and not all Amsterdammer’s arses are welded to bicycle seats.  The supermarkets are super, lamb exists, salt and vinegar has arrived and the quality of meat is such that my dog would struggle not to make something awesome from the contents of my refrigerator. Interestingly banks don’t need to be open to get an appointment in and official bureaucracy comes with smiles, free bags and newsletters.  So far the only place I have failed to get an appointment is the supermarket.

Despite my best efforts I have failed to humiliate myself in typical fashion.  The closest I have come so far was by buying non-alcoholic beer and then complaining that it tasted flat.  The transition to life here so far has gone as smoothly as a vindaloo’s transition from the human stomach to a sanitary waste receptacle.  I only hope it continues. For now goodbye, or as they say in Windmill Land ‘Dag‘

Goodbye Poland I’m Offski

In around two weeks time I will be packing my life into something transportable and bidding farewell to Poland and its people. After nine long years it feels somewhat unbelievable that I am really leaving. I know what I should be feeling is excitement. I should be looking to the future, spewing clichés about new chapters, rebirths and other such Buddhist nonsense. However I am not, I will be leaving Poland with a heavy heart as Poland has somehow become my home.

I am not for one minute suggesting that Poland is paradise. Far from it in fact. It is a nation so woven with contradictions that I have never openly witnessed such pliable truths. It is a land of harsh winters, cabbage obsession, catholic repression and open xenophobia. It is a land of proud people who aren’t quite proud enough to go the extra mile. It is a land of Christians who  proudly rejoice in their neighbors misfortunes. And it is a land where some of the most repulsive disgusting voices get elevated to public office.

That’s not to say it is all bad either. It is a stunning country gifted with an abundance of geographical treasures. The people are largely hospitable and kind (if there is vodka somewhere nearby). It is a country with an incredible history if you can somehow navigate the minefield of nationalist propaganda which surrounds it. And most of all it is a nation of hopeless optimists and incurable romantics.

Throughout all my years here,there has been one pervasive theme. Frustration. Progress has been incredibly slow , in part caused by the corruptible hand of bureaucracy and most often by sheer incompetence. Very little has actually changed, and those things that have, have been farcical in their execution. Sadly this trend is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

As I wave farewell to you my dear Polska I have three wishes for you my dear. The first is that your people start taking pride in the beauty you possess and stop desecrating your body because they are too lazy to find a bin. The second wish is that your people recover from their phobias, as in all honesty, nowadays they have nothing to be afraid of. And thirdly that your government takes the vote from the over sixty-fives and closes your churches. Perhaps then, and only then you will be ready to take a great leap forwards.

The Evolution of Train Spotting

Many years ago Britain was the home of a most peculiar pastime.  Trainspotting.  For the Europeans among my readers I feel I must point out that Trainspotting does not in actual fact require participants to take heroin and become Scottish.  Trainspotting actually refers to a long, forgotten hobby, as archaic as druidism with even sillier costumes.  The participants of this strange pastime were almost always funny looking bespectacled men, adorned in anoraks and bobble hats.  The activity itself solely consisted of spending entire weekends sitting on train station platforms writing down the numbers of passing trains in tattered notebooks.  Believe it or not, the participants of this form of social relaxation, did it for…. fun.  I don’t know whether this futile pursuit still exists, rather  regrettably, I suspect it does.

Something strange happens to people on trains.  For some reason our chronic fears, and distrust of fellow humans tend to float to the surface for no other reason than the fact that we are on a train.  The most common rite of passage usually takes place on the underground.  For some reason people fear making eye contact and go to enormous lengths to find a spot to look at which is free of those terrible manifestations of evil: the human eyeballs. The determination and commitment shown in this endeavor often makes participants look as if they are experiencing some form of fit as their eyes twitch all around the cabin.  Strangely it is not the nauseous odor of human bodies trapped in a metal coffin which offends people.  The vast majority of us are fine with being surrounded by the potent cocktail of perfume, sweat and farts.  It’s the eyeballs which worry us.

That of course doesn’t mean that we don’t have the same problems on regular trains, it is simply that the seating arrangement reduces the chance of ever having to make eye contact with a stranger.  They still stink, there are still lunatics, it is more a question that normal trains are presumed to be more civilized.  The reason for this is simple.  We are extremely unlikely to find ourselves ‘face to crutch’ with a stranger, or ‘nostril to armpit’.  The perceived civility comes from the fact that by and large normal trains are more orderly.  Of course we still avoid eye contact, we still stiffen when someone asks ‘is that seat taken?’ and we do shuffle in out seats when a stranger sits next to us.  All of these examples of perceived incivility make the fact that a new pastime has developed on trains, which given the human discomfort which is evident on every journey has come of somewhat a surprise to me.

The fact is that trains have become a hunting ground for wankers.  Literally.  It is hard to believe given the fact that a train is hardly conducive to romantic liaisons.  Unless Virgin has started lacing their tea with aphrodisiacs.  The first time I heard about a locomotive pleasure seeker was in a news story involving a man acquitted of indecency on a train, on the grounds that he had been playing an invisible banjo underneath a newspaper on his lap.  I know given that picture, some of you may dispute his innocence but I find his argumentation incredibly persuasive.

Think about it:

Recently I read another story about a man in Florida who was accused of stimulating himself on a train.  In his defense, one I might add, that is perfectly plausible, he claimed that he was rocking backwards and forwards because he had an itchy belly.  I can imagine how such an action could easily be misjudged and honestly it’s an example of how people in general always jump to negative conclusions.  He did incidentally admit that he may have accidentally ejaculated on the train’s bathroom floor.  I for one admire his courage as honestly, who hasn’t been there?

A quick search on Google brings up a startling amount of stories from all over the world.  America, Denmark, Australia, Thailand to name but a few.  An exception to the rule is when something like that happens once, in one corner of the globe, in one isolated incident.  When repeated incidents take place across numerous continents it can then be classified as an epidemic.

The reality is that the appearance of train wankers coinciding with the disappearance of train spotters is no accident. It is a natural byproduct of evolution.    It is a living example of ‘Gradualism’.  Train wankers didn’t appear suddenly. They didn’t pull themselves out of the swamps and march towards the cities.  They are an example of a slower, gradual change which is reflected in our societies as well as our biology.  Once upon a time it was unthinkable for a man to sit in the same cabin on a train as a lady.  Even today women-only passenger cars  are still offered in Japan, Egypt, India, Iran, Taiwan, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Dubai.  Yet 100 years ago they were commonplace in most countries, which begs the question whether this is truly evolution, or really devolution.

Wherever you stand on the matter you must acknowledge the fact that one day you might be on a train and you may notice a man acting suspiciously.  Before rushing to any rash judgements you should perhaps ask him if his belly is itchy.  If he shakes his head you should then play him a note from your invisible banjo and see if he responds.  If he doesn’t then the chances are that he is stimulating himself.  Unfortunately given the fact that people like this are hard to stop mid flow there is only one thing you can do.  Don’t scream.  Don’t hurl abuse.  Shout ‘dead kittens, dead kittens, dead kittens’.  If that doesn’t kill his mood you can be sure that he is a proper wanker.