Freedom

I’ve had one hell of a week.

The details are for another blog somewhere down the line where I can wrap my head around the enormity of it. I want to talk, instead, about something very small which, today, has weighed equally upon my mind. Something small, invariably plastic, brightly coloured and… free.

Today is my first day off in a couple of weeks. I say day off, I still have marking to do today and teaching to do tonight but in terms of staying in the house for a bit, I can. I have no food in the house. I’ve been dieting. But what I really really wanted to start my day off was… a bowl of cereal. I haven’t had a bowl of cereal in about four years. I’m not counting Fruit ‘N’ Fibre. I’ve had that a few times. When I say cereal, I mean the sweet, crunchy flakes, lattices or puffs of stuff that claim to be good for you but are just receptacles for sugar storage and transport. Your Frosties, Crunchy Nuts, Coco Pops, Shreddies and any number of other wheat-based goods that sound like slang for distressing medical conditions.

Until 4 years ago, I had a lifelong love affair with cereal. I could have – and frequently did – eat it for every meal. It was the perfect foodstuff. Tasty, crunchy-then-soggy, and it came in exciting packaging. I had no favourite – different moods dictated different cereals. A Saturday off warranted a box of Cinnamon Grahams (why did they change the name from Cinnamon Toast Crunch? I loved imagining each one was a little bit of toast!), a winter morning started well on 2 weetabix with warm milk. A team-time bowl of cornflakes with milk and sugar was a treat, a late night bowl of Sugar Puffs was light and tasty and made your wee smell of them as an early morning reminder to have another bowl.

I was a little obsessed. I bought a book about cereal. That lead me to Flake magazine – a 90’s cereal fanzine by a guy called Scott Bruce – a worldwide authority on the stuff. I started to collect items that combined my love of cereal and my first love – film. To this day, amongst my proudest possessions are original vintage boxes of Gremlins cereal, ET cereal and, my personal favourite, C3PO’s. Thankfully the cereal itself is long gone, but the empty boxes are ebay gold. I’m still searching for the elusive Mr T and Ghostbusters boxes. I’m not doing myself any favours here, I’m aware of that.

Anyway, I loved cereal. About four years and a few months ago, I was living with a now-ex and discovered cereal dispensers. These big plastic things that can hold a whole boxload quantity of cereal in a clear plastic bulb and then you place your bowl beneath it, twist the handle, and it dispenses an appropriate amount. This blew my tiny mind and I dreamed – aloud – of a row of these on the kitchen counter, with every variety of cereal given it’s own. Essentially cereal optics. Like a bar! But with cereal! A breakfast bar! She told me in no uncertain terms that that was not going to happen and it was pathetically nerdy. I could see my obsession had gone too far. The day she moved out, she left me a gift – nicely giftwrapped in a big box. She told me not to open it until she was gone.

It was a cereal dispenser. We’ve barely spoken since she left and, to this day, I’m unsure whether it was a ‘I know this is what you always wanted, you should have one’ gift or a ‘Well, I’m not going to be around anymore so you might as well descend into the nerdy hell you seem so destined for’ one. I assume the former but acted upon the latter. I was single and thirty, I would not have a coco pop dispenser. Dammit, I would not even have coco pops! That’ll show her! So, since that day, no cereal has passed my lips. I use the dispenser for cat food (the dry stuff, I’m not a total idiot.. and, yes, I have a cat) and generally skip breakfast now.

Until today. I wanted cereal. So I went to the supermarket, picked up some milk – I never ever buy milk now – and headed to the cereal aisle. Now, I should say that I consider myself a reformed cerealholic, so generally avoid walking down the cereal aisle. But not today. I wanted cereal.

And, you know what dictates what cereal I want? FREE GIFTS! Little plastic figurines, stickers, devices, holograms, accessories… anything small and crappy and somehow linked to a film that’s currently in the cinemas. So, you know which cereal I bought?

None. I bought no cereal. You know why not? No free gifts. IN ANY OF THEM. What happened to the free gifts? I came home and tried to google it – I found only a few people limply asking the same question but no official response. So, does anyone know?

My childhood was sweetened with free gifts! The E.T. and Jaws 3-D transfer sheets in Shreddies – oh and their He-Man stickers and Ghostbusters water-slide transfers! The Corn Flakes Black Cauldron and Willow figures (the willow figures were made of polystyrene and were crap but I collected them all). Weetabix did Flash Gordon cards, Superman cards, really graphically scary stickers (I got my letter published in the Daily Mail defending them at 9 years old) and loads of different things themed around their bizarre and intimidating gang of skinhead Weetabix characters. I have so many good memories associated with the breakfast box-ripping, sticking your hand in and pulling out some piece of plastic ritual.

I suppose it was done to discourage kids from eating unfeasibly sugary crap at the beginning of the day. It’ll never work. I made a point of not buying any. That’ll learn them.

Barcamp Transparency in 2010

So, I’ve been a little bit quiet over the whole Barcamp transparency thing in recent months for one reason or another – but not because nothing has been happening!

As the UK enters into an election year, and with legislation such as the infamous Digital Economy Bill being rushed through parliament, and all parties promising to clean up politics, 2010 looks to be an exciting year for transparency related issues.

I am therefore delighted to confirm that Barcamp Transparency will be happening again later this year, with more speakers, more interesting conversations and more beer afterwards!

Transparency isn’t just a hot topic in the UK of course, so we are currently actively putting together plans for holding similar events elsewhere in the world.  If you would be interested in helping out, please get in touch!

Finally, it has come to light from the conversations that we have been having that there is a need for an online community space to help organise these events and let people from around the world discuss and collaborate on transparency related issues.

Therefore, I am delighted to say that we are currently putting this together and that Ben Werdmuller (of Elgg fame) has agreed to become our Community Manager!

Get in touch and let us know what you want to see in the future!

A good sleep

Last night, the first time since Friday, I slept.

Sophie came home yesterday afternoon. There was talking and tears and frankness and questions and answers.

And we went to bed and cuddled and I slept because my mate was back.

We know the crisis isn’t over, but at least we have a way forward.

Thanks.

It seems so pathetic, that one word, but this weekend has been difficult and your words, my friends, have been wonderful.

Thanks.

Snapshot of Naivasha: Evening

At Crater Lake, we sit around the remnants of a camp fire, staring out at the vile soda water lake, the line of dusky-pink flamingoes, whilst we drink Tusker and discuss the problem of corruption in Africa. Then we drive back and have dinner and sit under candle and star light.

Phoenix

I’m glad I saw it now, because in a way, this country is dying. It’s what people say and it’s what you can see in their eyes. There’s something shifting, and even if you’ve never been here before you can feel it. There’s an emptiness. People aren’t staying in the lodges and hotels anymore; everywhere feels as if it’s bleeding, or been bled already. “The US Department of State warns U.S. citizens of the risks of travel to Kenya”. Unpredictability turns men wild-eyed, and now, with wild eyes, we witness the demise of a place.

Or not a place. Not exactly; for the soil remains, the infrastructure (or some of it), the cities and roads. It’s the demise of an era, a certain Kenyan state of mind. The reign of the white Kenyan is over, of course–it has been for some time but now it is surely on its very last, trembling legs. It’s strange to be here now, to hear the Europeans say with such certainty that their place is gone. Even the buffalo know it; they’re slowly encroaching, staking their claim, chasing the humans into smaller and smaller spaces, emboldened, made fiercer by their successes.

It’s a poignant place in time, for an outsider who had a dream of the place, rooted in antiquated ideals, and who has been lucky enough to catch just the tail end of how it was. Everybody talks about how different it was even five years ago; never mind the Happy Valley nostalgia, which is like a drug–this final stage of sickness has been so sudden, so powerful, that parts of Nairobi are unrecognizable to even old residents. Here on the edge of Lake Naivasha, there are the flower farms, which sprang out of nowhere; the thousands of employees, the projections of thousands more to come, the light from the city at night, which gives off a dusty glow of change.

Earlier I had this thought about the nostalgic places. Oxford is one; here is another. There must be others still. I would like to write about this. I think there is something in it. Every place has its own nostalgia but some seem to thrive on it, build themselves around it, up out of it, become what they are because of it. So here I am in another of the nostalgic places on Earth hearing people saying “This is Africa. It’s different. This is Africa.” And yet the nostalgia transcends even that; and even that cannot save it now, and even that cannot let us see what it will become, and though whatever it is now is something mired in corruption and memory and shock, and so whatever it will become will be rooted in that, you do get the sense that the buffalo maybe are right, and it’s about the land. It’s always been about the land, in a way; it’s always been about how, in a place that seems to go on forever, in a place where land looks like an infinite resource, space is actually limited. Property has been claimed and reclaimed a thousand times by a thousand people. As if something in the soil infects everyone who comes here; it’s never enough just to be here, but you must also own it, as it owns you. And now what will happen, now that the memory of it owns so many, while the reality of it breaks their hearts?

Seeing this place, you know: it’s dying. And simultaneously being reborn. In the end you can’t possibly know what form the rebirth will take. But here it is anyway. A phoenix, just before it bursts into flames, turns to ash.

A Strange Kingdom

On our way back from Naivasha, we stop by Elementaita, once an impressive outlet for pottery and woven goods. Their looms and stock burned in a fire a few years ago and their recovery has been slow and unsure–maybe they will never regain their former glory, and maybe, to hear the whites talking, in half-despondent, half-satisfied tones, it won’t matter anyway. Things here are dying; things like this,becoming unnecessary and extinct. We buy some blue-painted doorknobs and a finely-shaped coffee mug. The men are kind, but I imagine a kind of sadness into their bright eyes; we’re the only people in the shop, maybe the only people to stop by all day, and if you think about it, even if the rugs are overpriced, our custom is paltry, useless, like shaking the hand of a beggar but leaving it empty. Outside a few drops of rain fall and thunder claps in the distance, and suddenly, briefly, on our way to the car, we are deluged.

We drive to Sanctuary Farm, to meet old Francis Erskine. The farm is not like anything I have ever seen before. It is sprawling, green, full of trees and pastures and horses and game. Driving down dusty tracks, we see wildebeest. zebra, impala, dikdik. There’s a racetrack, a rusty starting gate, stables, a polo field complete with an elegant, incongruous red pavilion.

Erskine himself lives in what appears to be a crumbling palace (one corner even has a concrete turret). We meet him on his terrace; the deckchairs are covered in a film of dust, the paint is peeling, the floorboards are cracked. He’s a small man with tufts of white hair and sideburns. He resembles a mad old king reigning over an abandoned and beautiful kingdom and in a way I suppose he is. He asks me if I ride, and seems pleased when I say I do. He offers us tea but we’re in a hurry to get back before dark, so he shouts inside to his staff to call the whole production off, and it’s just as well, he says, as he hasn’t any cake to offer us.

He shows us his study instead, which is infinitely better than any cake I could possibly imagine. It is decorated with historical photographs of his family. On one wall a huge painting of a pink-faced young man in uniform hangs; a great-uncle, killed in the Boer war as he went to place a white flag in the earth. “I’ve never liked the Boers,” Erskine says, turning away from the painting, showing us another, this one of a racehorse he rode to victory once, an elegant bay beast portrayed in all its spindly-legged thoroughbred glory, a fragile, highly-strung animal whose owners gave Erskine the painting as a gift in thanks for his success as a jokey. His desk is huge and covered with carefully arranged piles of things; it looks both chaotic and highly organized, and looking at him, I’ve no doubt he knows exactly what’s there, even if no one else does.

Then the mad old king bids us adieu from his dilapidated terrace. He is at once intensely vulnerable and fiercely, wildly independent; he’s so small, so fragile, so fearsome and storied. He says I should come back and see his horses, but we are going to Nairobi soon, and then back to England, and then this kingdom will seem more than just remote, it will seem as it is: impossible, anachronistic, poignant.

I imagine, as we drive away, that I can literally see the whole scene fading before my eyes, that, like a stage set, it’s being dismantled, dismantled by the years and the rain and the heat and that by the time old Erskine dies it will have sunk more or less right back into the earth from which it came, and then all that will be left will be a herd of zebra grazing on a polo field next to a red pavilion.

Alone

Sophie has gone to her parents. Maybe for the weekend, maybe for longer.

Her words, that she needed to spend time alone to sort out her ‘fucked head’, really didn’t sound ironic when she said them, yesterday evening.

And yet no sooner was she heading towards the family who dote on her and love her and will treat her as if everything is all right and who won’t once ask her to consider what she’s doing to me, because she is the centre of their universe, not me, only when she was on her way did it dawn on me that I’m the one who is alone now.

But I’m not the one who needs to sort out his head.

I thought we’d pulled things together; there is no doubt that over the last year we have worked on our marriage and have drawn ourselves even closer to each other than we were before we hit troubled waters.

I thought we were good, that we were strong, that we were comfortable and comforting and, well, that we were a couple.

But yesterday evening, when she came home from work in tears and out of the blue she hit me with those words, my world tilted upside-down for the second time in a year.

So I’m in the house, alone, while she nestles in the bosom of her loving family.

Sleepless in Oxfordshire, for sleep, like a calm head, successfully evaded me all night long.

This hiatus might be for the weekend but I don’t know.

I don’t know what’s in her head.

I don’t know how, within the space of hours, we can go from a platform of love and laughter, conversation, companionship and easy comfort, to her walking out.

And wiping her feet on me, on the way.

Yes, I do feel like a doormat; I feel used and abused.

None of this is of my making.

But I’ve tried – oh God I’ve tried so hard – to deal with this and repair this, I’ve given so much to this relationship, and tried to restore the old qualities that were so brutally torn away.

But now.

Now I’m not sure how much more I can take.

The only thing that’s keeping me going is the horses, but I feel as if the heart has been ripped out of me.

‘Devastated’ doesn’t come close to describe the feeling of abandonment that surrounds me.

Honda Announces Safety Recall

A Honda JazzzzzzZZZZzzzzZZZZzzzzZZZ:

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UK No1 John Terry shows his medal-winning 'O'-face.