Nepal - hostels, hotels and tea houses.

Kathmandu - Thamel

So we arrived in Kathmandu in the afternoon and after getting a suspiciously cheap taxi from the station (100rupees, and scarily, as we were following the driver, we saw other taxi drivers making the cut throat sign at us) we arrived in Thamel (the tourist quarter) and started looking for accommodation.

Found this hostel for 400rupees (£4). We were awoken twice in the night - 11pm (we'd gone to bed at 7) by some kids and then 5am by the birds. No hot water. Slightly smelly.



Gorkha

How much?
600rupees.
500rupees for two nights.
550?
No, 500 is all we're paying.
Ok.

Hot water. A shower which leaked into the room. Smelly beds. A fan.


Bandipur

300rupees (at £3 we didn't even try to negotiate for fear of insulting the nice lady). Separate bathroom (which was fine). Frequent power cuts (we made good use of our head torches). Damp beds (the smell was bearable) A broken mosquito net (they provided a plug in - though this obviously was unusable when the power cuts hit at night).

Pokhara - Lakeside

300rupees a night. Though they made a killing out of us through our trekking and rafting fees. 'Greedy men' as Sitaram (our trekking guide) put it. Fan. Clean enough beds. A powerful shower. A toilet which you had to leap away from when you flushed it as water (clean) came gushing out the sides. A dog which barked through the night. A nice girl who washed our smelly trekking gear.


Poon Hill trek - Night 1

300rupees for room with separate shower. As we were the only ones in the hotel, this seemed like a pretty good deal. Hot water once we'd lit the gas to heat it (ignoring the sent of gas lingering in the air). Cosy.


Poon Hill trek - Night 2

300 rupees again. Busy place - we made a Chinese friend and amused ourselves as a French foursome arrived with porters carrying tons of stuff. They then ate around three courses with one of them sitting completely separately from the others staring strangely at the curtains. We were supposed to see views of the Himalayas from here but it was foggy.

The Bees.

I don’t really remember when I first saw them. I think they had been lurking in the corner of my eye, retreating into the shadows as soon as I looked their way. The buzzing came first. It had been very faint in the beginning, barely audible, but this one day it became so noticeable that I had to stop my friend Susie in the middle of a conversation and ask her if she could hear it too. She couldn’t. It started to get worse. It seemed every time I talked or thought about it, the buzzing became louder and louder until I was certain that there must be something hanging right beside me – but every time I looked toward the direction of the sound, I couldn’t see anything there. I could sense something though, edging back into the darkness, watching me with malevolent eyes, delighting in my agitation and never showing enough of themselves to satisfy my eerie curiosity. I soon noticed the pattern; they always came at night, usually around 6pm as I left work, pursuing me as I walked home. If I stayed late, I could hear them tapping faintly against the office window, just letting me know they were there. They stayed with me through the night, torturing me as I lay in bed, restlessly trying to find a way to block out the noise and fall asleep. But even if sleep came, I had no respite. My dreams were plagued by the buzzing, my subconscious embodying the noise in these vast winged beasts; eyes glittering with malice and rough skin oozing with moisture. Their sickening forms lorded over my chained, naked body; utterly exposed to their stroking claws and wet, rank breath. And as I cowered from them in the gloomy light, curling my body into a protective cocoon, they slunk up behind me, the buzzing from the back of their dark, miserable throats, vibrating across the skin of my back and my neck to my ears. I often awoke in fear, drenched in sweat with my sheets twisted at my ankles, trapping me to my bed. This happened several times each night until I eventually drifted into a restless half-sleep, not quite prepared to slip fully back into the nightmare, but too exhausted to stay awake. And when I awoke the next morning they were gone.

Houses of my friends.

London, July 2010

Nepal

But it stuck with me, this wish to do something wild and spontaneous. And then, as if someone had been listening to my despairing thoughts and decided to give me a nudge in the right direction, my sister told me that Sara and Don, who had booked a month-long trip to Nepal in the summer, were no longer going on their trip as Don couldn’t take time away from his studies. Sara didn’t think she was going to go either, not wanting to go alone. I didn’t say anything to my sister, but it occurred to me that there was absolutely no reason that I couldn’t take Don’s place. She needed a companion, I needed an adventure. So a few weeks later, when Sara emailed to say she couldn’t come to a BBQ I was having, I floated the option of me going instead, and after she told me the details and asked me to consider it, it took all of five minutes for me to know that I was definitely going to go. I had to work out the practicalities – as spontaneous as I was feeling, I wouldn’t want to get into debt or throw myself completely in the deep end without having a way of getting out of the water afterwards. But I realised I had enough money to cover the trip and rent for the next two months, as well as spending money for Berlin when I returned in September, I had time to get my necessary vaccinations, the flights could be transferred in my name (which we later found couldn’t actually be done, though Don bought a new ticket and got a refund for the original one) and I’d be back with plenty of time to spare before my OU course started in October. I asked work whether they’d let me take a break, but even before this, I knew I was going whatever the outcome. They said no, and whilst the thought of coming back to unemployment was quite a shock and a rush of panic shot through me as I heard the words, a few seconds later, this incredible feeling of freedom ran over my body and I felt a thrill that this part of my life was over. It felt like a sign – all these different factors had come together to this moment where I had the opportunity to completely change my life.

And so here I am, two weeks later, vaccinated to the brim, preparing to officially give my 1 week’s notice, and looking out into a world of uncertainty.

I can’t wait for it all to start.

Meltdown

Returning to normal life was hard. Someone called it post-holiday blues, but it was so much more than that. Two days after my return, on a Sunday at about 10pm, I found myself on the Expedia checkout page, about to book flights the following morning to Germany for a week. I was on the edge of despair. I’d come back from a beautiful place and way of life - where they grew their own fruit and vegetables, where they took advantage of all nature had to offer, natural remedies, food and fuel, where there was no need for constant entertainment and where every bit of work you did was not for money, but to feed and support yourself – to a city, where the streets were dirty, the people unfriendly, where I worked for money in a job I hated that was going nowhere, to people who only thought of themselves, to a completely unrewarding way of life. Why couldn’t I just ship off to Germany at the drop of a hat? Why couldn’t I be spontaneous and reckless with the money I’d saved? Why was I restricting myself to this dull and insignificant way of life? We’re born, we grow up, we get jobs and a career, we retire, and then we die. Where’s the living? Where is the point to our urban existence?

My mind was running in overdrive at this point – I was verging on insanity; my eyes were wide with it and I could feel laughter rising in my throat. I thought ‘I’m going to do it. I’m literally going to go to Germany tomorrow, leave all these people and all these worries behind me, and just go. No need to tell people – I’d just do a Stephen Fry, emerge from wherever I ended up when my money runs out. Why the fuck not?’ I had no plans, absolutely no commitments until Berlin with my sister in September. I wanted to learn German – perhaps I could get work out there and learn German. ARCADE FIRE. Wait, I was seeing Arcade Fire with Harry on Tuesday. A gig I had been anticipating for three years. A one-off, special gig that Harry had booked for me whilst I was in France. Arcade Fire. I came crashing down. The delirious happiness gone. There was no way I was missing this gig, it wasn’t even an option. Spontaneity would have to wait, changing my life would have to wait. Freedom would have to wait.

I couldn’t go to work the next day. After having what I can only call a minor breakdown, I could not face the thing that had almost pushed me over the edge. I spent the day kicking myself into action – sorting out things, applying for new jobs and agencies. And the next day, almost as if nothing had happened, normal life had to resume.

Je m'appelle Nicole. Non? Moi Nicole. Nicole. Et toi?

Just under a month ago, I jetted off to Southern France for a week’s holiday with friends. We flew to Rodez (a small airport in the Pyrenees) from where we drove for an hour to a small commune called St. Cirgues. The drive from the airport took us deep into the countryside, with undulating, glorious green fields either side of the road, and picturesque farm houses dotted along the way. It was hot, and the van we were in was baking, though the heat reaffirmed the fact we were actually on holiday and so only made our smiles broader. We were staying with my friend Nic’s Grandparents – Australian Kevin who liked to tell a story, and fierce, French Marcele, who we were warned would shout at us all at some point in the week. On arrival, we were directed to our bedrooms; mine was on the ground floor, in what Nic called ‘the old pig sty’. If it was once a pig sty, it bore no resemblance, and now contained a sink, a table, a washing machine and a fridge. And my bed.



It was a mismatched room, and I could sense there were spiders lurking in every corner, but it felt 100 times more comfortable than my room in London, and the view from my window over the fields, the flowers and the trees was incredibly beautiful.



And so began what has to have been one of the most beautiful and calming experiences of my life. It wasn’t like a holiday in the usual sense – of course, we had a lot of down time to relax, play and explore, but we also spent some of our time helping out with chores around the farm. Several times, we went down into Marcele’s forest (which stretched out way across the valley) to pick wild mushrooms. Following a lesson on safe mushrooms from Nic, we cast our eyes into the shadowy regions of the forest, looking for Cep and Girol mushrooms. You can not imagine the childish thrill we beginners felt as we spotted a mushroom - like panning for gold - we wandered around with our woven baskets, screaming and stamping on any poisonous mushrooms we spotted, and smugly showing off our good finds. After we’d gathered what we felt was a fairly impressive haul, we went exploring through the forest, finding our own routes down steep, slippery verges (cue near-fatal knife incident), jumping across streams and taking numerous photos of our beautiful surroundings.



It was all too good to be true. That evening, the holiday took a turn for the worst. Marcele served up mushroom omelette. A cold wave of dread slid over me. Ciaran hated egg, I despised mushroom, yet somehow the dinner had been constructed in such a way that it was impossible to separate the two. I gulped some down, each bite followed by a glass of water. I have truly tried to like mushrooms, and I gave it my all that evening, to show I appreciated Marcele cooking for us all and because I felt it was only right that I tried to do justice to the mushrooms we’d picked earlier that day. But to no avail. It still tasted like I was eating some sort of slimy, earthy animal. That weird soft firmness playing havoc with my taste buds and my mind. And then as I screwed up my face and quickly swallowed the last mouthful, just when I thought the worst was over, Marcele left the room calling back to us ominously, ‘we’ll have the Ceps tomorrow’.

Aside from the mushroom incident, the rest of the holiday was a dream. We picked cherries from her trees, which Marcele made into a jam.



We took a 9km walk to the nearest town to buy some supplies (booze) – a hot day, but an enjoyable walk through the countryside, at the end of which we slumped into the nearest café we could find for a refreshing lemonade and some pizzas. Another day, Marcele arranged for a local lady to drive us to the lake one afternoon – this hippyish woman with a huge love for Bob Marley – where we ate, drank beers, swam and read our books in the sun. We went out onto a football pitch one night to tell ghost stories. We played cards and danced to George Michael. The boys played football. I taught Alex how to do killer sudoku.

Having being warned of Marcele’s sharp tongue – we were told on our drive to the farm that she had called a 6 year old child an ‘imbecile’ a few weeks earlier – I found that she was an incredibly lovely lady, who just liked polite and helpful people. I think she liked me too, and it culminated in her asking me to dye her hair for her. I was petrified – sure, I’d done my own before, but to dye a notoriously fierce lady’s hair, a lady I’d just met four days previously was absolutely terrifying. But I stepped up. And aside from a tiny bit of hair which I accidentally didn’t dye, it looked lovely.

And so the holiday ended. We spent our last evening playing charades in the kitchen, trying to drink the last of out 5l box of red wine and this horrendous rum we’d bought. And the next day, we were driven back to the airport, and in a flash we were back in London, getting a train back into a grimy city which felt like a world away from beautiful St Cirgues.

Abuse the Aged!

A friend is currently on a placement in a care home as part of her nursing training. A few weeks ago, she described the things she’d seen on her few weeks there and why she couldn’t wait to move on to the next placement. She nursed 14 patients, on a floor which held 21. She began looking in on the other 7. These patients generally could not do anything for themselves, most not able to talk and many not able to move. This being said, they had a selection of care assistants assigned to them to take care of their needs.

Toilets: Patients each had a bed pan and toilet, which the care assistants should help them to and from. However, the bed pan washer had broken, and rather than get it fixed and help the patients use the toilets in the meantime, the care assistants had taken to putting all patients in incontinence pants (nappies) and letting the patients go whilst lying in their beds. This was because they were ‘too busy’ to lift the patients out of bed when they needed to go. As a sidenote, patients are only changed at three scheduled times a day, meaning these often incontinent patients are regularly left sitting in their sh*t for many hours each day. Throughout my friend’s time there, she regularly observes the care assistants spending several hours each day chatting and watching tv in the communal area, as well as ‘nipping out’ to do some shopping or errands, as well a taking full lunch breaks. Clearly not busy enough.

Social interaction: Interestingly, the communal area where the assistants tend to spend their time is never used by the patients, as whilst care home guidance says they should spend a few hours with other patients in this area each day, it’s ‘too much effort’ to take the patients out of their beds, and so they NEVER do it. So basically, aside from when they are washed, these patients spend 24hours a day, alone in their rooms and unmoving in their beds. Neglected.

Hygiene: Aside from patients sitting in their excrement most of the day, there is also an issue with washing. To preserve a patient’s dignity, when washing they should be unclothed section by section so they are never completely naked. However, this is also apparently too time consuming, and so patients are stripped naked, showered/hosed down, then returned to their beds. My friend observes that some animals are treated with more respect than these people.

Feeding: My friend walked in on a care assistant forcefully pushing porridge down the throat of an old man, who had not been propped up in his bed and was lying almost flat on his back (a position which makes it extremely difficult to digest food). Due to his inability to eat the food at the speed with which the care assistant was ‘feeding’ it, it was dripping all over his chin, neck and even down his top. The assistant made no effort to clean this up or move the patient into a more comfortable position. In response to my friend’s ‘what the hell do you think you’re doing?’ the assistant replied ‘Don’t tell me what to do, I’ve been doing this for ten years’.

And finally – pain management. The key responsibility of the care assistant is to manage the pain of the patients in their last stages of life. My friend says this is not a priority in the care home she works at all. Patients are never reviewed and infrequently checked on.

If this was how a child was treated, social services would step in and call it child abuse. Yet because these people are elderly and are perhaps thought no longer able contribute to society, they’re neglected and treated with greater disrespect than any other area of society. Because most cannot talk, they cannot tell their family (if they have any) about their poor treatment and if an official does come round to check on the home, it is so easy for the assistants to suddenly abide by the book and make it seem like it is common practice for them. Imagine if it was your own grandparents or parents. It’d sicken you.

A closer look at the world.

So here are some statistics for you.

World GDP, 2007 = $65.61trn (as far as I can tell, a trn is 12 zeros)

World Population, 2007 = 6.6bn (9 zeros)

I’ll do the maths for you. This means that if everyone in the world was earning an equal amount, we’d all be on a yearly salary of $994.10.

Houses of my friends.

London, April 2010.

An iron bar.

She turned toward him in her seat, crossing her legs beneath her. ‘You know, there was this piece of installation art in some gallery in Germany, which was basically an iron beam suspended across the corner of a room, with a piece of metal vaguely in the shape of a sail hanging from it. I’m not sure what it was supposed to represent but I think something to do with mankind manipulating metal into these useful things, yet being stuck on the ground while these objects hang out of reach and blow away from them in the wind, or something like that. Anyway, one day this guy comes in and he’s looking up at this piece of art, standing right below it, when suddenly the fixings come loose and this huge metal beam falls right on his head, killing him instantly. It’s this peaceful art gallery, on an average day and out of the blue this guy is killed by a piece of art. And there’s this photography student right next to him when it happens, and he looks at this guy’s splayed, lifeless body in complete shock, this iron beam crushing his head into the floor, and he’s overwhelmed with the realisation that it so nearly could have been him. And the only reason it isn’t is because he’d stopped to tie his shoelace a few moments earlier and had fallen a few seconds behind this guy and so is standing three metres away when the beam falls. And it occurs to him that if his new dog hadn’t ruined his old shoes, forcing him to buy these new shoes with these slippery laces that kept coming undone, or if he’d even chosen a pair of laceless shoes that morning then it could have been his body laying facedown, his head smashed in on the floor in front of him. And so after twenty something years of living, this guy finally experiences the beauty of coincidence. He looks at this poor man, his blood slowly creeping across the pale wooden floor of the gallery, and he realises that it’s beautiful. Life is beautiful! So he takes a photo, to capture this beauty and to capture this moment of revelation and to just give this guy’s life some meaning after it’s been so cruelly destroyed by this freak accident. And six months later, this photo is hung on display in the exact same room that the installation art had hung in and that this guy had died in. And it was art, and everyone thought it was beautiful’. Eleanor’s eyes sparkled as she finished the story.

‘Is that true?’ he asked.

She grinned playfully at him. ‘Does it matter?’

Daniel considered her for a moment as he thought. ‘I suppose not’ he said finally, and then he laughed, at her playful expression and because it didn’t matter. She had spoken it out loud and it existed between them, and at that moment in time, that was enough.

Last words.

“La Tristessa Durera toujours”
“The sadness will last forever”.

Reportedly Van Gogh’s last words.

Houses of my friends.

Liz's House, Brighton, March 2010

The Speedo?

The Speedo. Item of international mockery*1 and the nemesis of small penised men. Worn by well-endowed aging celebs a plenty (Peter Stringfellow, Paul Daniels, Mikhail Gorbachev), but what’s the story behind the mysteriously appealing strip of nylon? During a 170,357kb email thread, we found out. First to the origin of the Speedo; invented by a Scot named Alexander MacRae, who in an (assumed) unrelated incident, married his wife at the unusual location of a train station. I’ll give you a moment to overcome your surprise that the internationally renowned one-piece was presumably first tested in an icy loch by a man whose nation (one would imagine) has an Olympic swimming trophy cupboard emptier than the Bible is of scientifically plausible content*2. Ah, but perhaps swimming glory is the motivation! We took a closer look at the Speedo to see if this was true. On first glance, one immediately acknowledges the pleasing aesthetics of the swimming garment, but after further discussion, the aerodynamic advantages of the item also come to light; advantages which have undeniably helped the Scots and the rest of the world break historical swimming records. But back to the beginning, and the almost unimaginable pre-Speedo era of naked swimming and we look to see what Mr MacRae thought the Speedo could bring to the world; to quote our Scotch genius, ‘Aye, bonny speed’*3. But have you ever stopped and asked yourself– how much drag can a willy really have? This is a subject sadly neglected by the scientific research community, but our reporter supposed that it was ‘crucial tenths of a second to professionals’. Guess work doesn’t fly unless there’s no other option here at (enter publication name), but we pondered this idea and questioned why Scots in particular suffered this drag. Perhaps Scottish men had massive wotsits and prior to the Speedo invention, swimming at internationally recognised speed was a problem for them? Having no Scots among us, no national stereotypes to go on and no Scottish friends close enough to ask about the size of their hoo-haas, we abandoned this line of enquiry. Whilst we fear this question may never be answered, Speedo themselves supplied us with at least some science to explain the benefits of their new, critically-acclaimed LZR (pronounced laser*4) Speedo series, which has a mouth-watering 5% less drag than the company’s 2007 release. Put in layman’s terms, this can reduce racing times by 1.9-2.2% and is officially endorsed by Olympic administrators FINA, with 94% of swimming medals in 2008 won by competitors wearing the suit. But back to our entrepreneurial Scot and a twist to this already inspiring story; it seems he emigrated (sans wife) to Australia in 1912, two years before he even invented the Speedo! Ah, so now we see the light at end of the investigative tunnel. One must assume that on reaching those golden beaches and azure waters, our dear friend Alexander came to feel inadequate in the water alongside the swimming-pool Trojans that Australians are known to be*5. Taunted by Bruce’s easy acceleration in the pool, humiliated by Sheila’s giggles as he was lapped yet again by the natives, a light bulb came on in the mind of our modern day Braveheart. And so like democracy and gunpowder before it, a new life-changing genius entered the world. As slogan ‘Speed on in your Speedos’ and brand name tell us, for speed, yes. But perhaps we can also assume, as his nickname would suggest, old Alexander ‘big one’ MacRae also had a large whaddyamacallit and the tight style of the Speedo, which was considered inappropriate by the prudish, was a way of reclaiming his dignity on the beach whilst standing amongst the possibly length-challenged Australian swimmers. Today, almost 100 years since it was invented, Des O’Connor and the rest of the world continue to embrace what is now regarded as the epitome of sports equipment perfection. With phenomenal sales each day, hundreds of ranges available on the shelves of all good retailers and the Speedo recognised as the only brand worth wearing in the Olympics, Mr MacRae can rest happily in his grave*6, knowing that in his lifetime, he changed the world for the better.

*1 Ridiculed by Spaniard Nicolás Obregón and African Nicole Pearson (as all humans originated in Africa), Alexandra Johnston (nationality confidential under Interpol and CIA command), Middle Eastern Anglo-Caucasian Joe Harvey (as Europeans all came from the Middle East) and Sexist Adam Larter (well, of self-assigned nation of ‘Sexy’, sexist seemed the most usable informal term) alike.
*2 On further research you will see that Scottish men have actually won 8 medals in swimming in the past 50 years, the last being in 1996. We’re still looking for plausible content in the Bible.
*3 A completely fabricated quote, loosely utilising the vocabulary of Scottish character ‘Jim McLaren’ in 1970s TV series Porridge.
*4 Lazer to our American friends.
*5 Australian men have won 26 medals in swimming in the last three Olympic games alone.
*6 We assume burial, though he may have been cremated and scattered, or cremated and turned into a pair of Speedos; research continues.

Oh, what a beautiful thing!

I never feel more at ease than I do sitting in a coffee shop, drinking coffee and watching the world go by. The coffee shop itself is not important, nor the location, so long as it has a comforting quietness and is only mildly occupied. Nothing is worse than a bustling and noisy environment where my senses are constantly being diverted and gnawed on by conversations around me and intrusive sounds. I loathe people knocking into me or speaking loudly next to me. It makes me feel so helpless, the way they can inflict themselves on me and enter themselves into my life without my say so. Why should I be aware of a person I did not choose to be aware of! I try to vary my coffee houses in order to maintain that feeling of calm mixed with that excitement I feel as my eyes devour new scenery and new people. Once I’d seen things, the excitement was gone, and only by moving on to a new place or seeing a new wave of people could I continue enjoying the experience, and indeed life itself. The coffee is important. I could never sit in a coffee house and drink tea or juice. There’s a sophistication in coffee for me, in the seductive scent, and as I drink it and absorb the flavour I feel so in touch with a different world of people: like-minded people, philosophers, my literary heroes, the thinkers and the observers who in my imagination once spent time themselves sitting in a coffee shop, alone, conjuring ideas to capture on paper at a later time. I sip my coffee and my mind shoots from my body, up into the sky with a whoosh. The air streams past me; cool against the back of my neck, overwhleming my body and I experience that sickening but exhilarating rollercoaster stomach drop. Far up into the atmosphere I go until I have a view of the entire world. It’s bright and it’s sunny and it’s glorious, and I’m suspended for a moment, arms outstretched and eyes closed, given time to appreciate the beautiful glow of the earth, the sparkling lights reflecting off of the clouds and the tingle of the air against my skin. Then with a whoosh my mind is pulled back down to earth, to another place, another country and another person who is at that exact moment doing the same thing I am. There they are; sipping coffee, gazing out onto the street, looking at the immaterial mortals passing by on the street and the coffee drinkers at the surrounding tables. A particular person catches their eye, through their voice, their movements or their expressions; the room retreats and they hone their attention fully on this person. Their mind balloons, a cavernous amount of space grows behind their eyes and with a flash all that empty space becomes saturated with images and words of the character and memories of the person in front of them. More and more elaborate the story becomes, memories created and layered on top of one another; their youth, their love life, their hopes and dreams all established within seconds. They never speak to this person; that would ruin everything. The experience and joy in this moment relies entirely on the fact that for those few seconds, they are in absolute control of their subject, knowing everything about them and absorbing all of their experiences into their own. Even if this person decides to get up and leave, in their mind they quickly establish their reason for leaving and the control is maintained. Sometimes another person captures their attention, interrupting this explosion of imagination and story-building, and with a flash of neurones they’re off! Tumbling down a new alleyway they grasp at passing thoughts and invoke an entirely new character. Oh, isn’t the imagination infinite!

And yet sometimes no one seizes their attention, nothing inspires, no one intrigues. There’s no sorrow in this; their mind instead focuses on their own life; their own hopes and dreams, their own tragedies, their own experiences. And when their own life holds no attraction, sometimes their mind thinks of nothing; ah, what a beautiful thing to think of nothing! For a mind that is so constantly working, relentlessly exploring every avenue that can possibly be explored, clawing every dark thought out of the shadows, scrutinising every inch of the road in front of them, working at such a speed that it leaves the mind and body exhausted, that moment of bliss where not a single thought is held in the mind is a salvation.

I have but a moment to revel in the glory of knowing this mind, so completely compatible with my own before I’m off again, rocketing up in the air then darting back down to a different coffee shop in a different part of the world. Again and again this happens, circulating all of the globe and all its peoples before my mind whooshes back to the heavens for a final time and then back into my body with a jolt. It has taken a matter of seconds, and I feel so in tune with humanity that all despair has been expelled from my being and a smile lights up my face. I feel like laughing at the pure joy and exhilaration I feel at that moment.

Seconds pass and I think of nothing else. Gradually, I become aware of my surroundings, the hiss of the coffee machine, the chatter of customers and the clatter of china. I glance around and my mind begins to form its own characters for those around me. Those sitting on their own hold little interest. To feel in tune with a like-minded person on the other side of the world is one thing, but I cannot bear those in the same room, negating my very existence as an individual by their presence. This is my domain, and I will be the sole observer of its activity. But those sitting with friends or colleagues are the really intriguing characters; to look at an attentive listener, as they react to the words being spoken to them I find truly fascinating. Is that expression sincere? Is that laughter one of pure joy or did it contain a hollow ring? And to see the speaker, revelling in those precious moments where they are the centre of attention and possess the knowledge that at that moment they are tattooing a piece of themselves on the world, laying down words or phrases that can never be erased. How heady that must feel, knowing that despite anything that may happen from that moment forth, people once heard you and validated your presence! Whilst some concede in mid-flow to the words of their companions, those with the confidence to march on in their speech uninterrupted stir such feeling inside me. Oh, the jealousy I feel, for all the speakers with their confidence and self-belief, it twists at my body and in my gut even as my mind assures me that they can not possibly be truly happy, and if they are happy then they are surely ignorant! Ignorance is bliss, but ignorance is embarrassing. So sure in their words now, but they will at some point find they are mistaken and if fairness prevails in this world then the shame will come crashing down.

And the listeners, oh it’s all certainly an act. Surely no person can listen to another and truly feel for them in any way other than how the words affect themselves? Empathy and joy can only be given and felt if you imagine yourself with the burden or pleasure of your friends’ situations. There’s no real pity or elation, as it is always tainted by a twinge of happiness or jealousy that you yourself have not experienced those feelings. But we must pretend to feel these things, both empathy and joy. The jealousy I feel for those assured speakers is far outweighed by the anger if someone does not pretend to understand or pretend to find the speaker’s life interesting and words amusing. Always smile warmly, always nod thoughtfully and always laugh. How dare people not even make a show of pretence, when day in and day out I maintain that façade in order to keep my companions satisfied! And as the days wear on, I understand less, I find subjects less interesting and I find people less amusing, yet the pretence grows stronger! I martyr myself for the sake of peace and the self-esteem of others. What an unrecognised hero I am. Though, were I to think on it, this self-sacrifice would reveal itself to be no such selfless act, being committed purely in order to maintain my own sanity. A selfish martyrdom. And all good acts must be the same; to be good is to be selfish! But an interruption; before the despair consumes me I feel the rush of the breeze as the door opens. A group of foreign students tumble in, the volume of their laughter and conversation disrupting my thoughts. The calm of the coffee shop is destroyed, and I must be on my way. A temporary numbness overcomes my body and dissolves the despairing thoughts. I gather my things, and then I’m off, to a new adventure or an old one.

Overheard - 16.55ish, 5th February 2010, My office Queen Victoria Street (EC4V)

'I took the ears and the cheeks off. '

'You should dry them out.'

'Someone criticised me for not eating the nose or the lips. What part do you make pork pies with?’

‘I don’t know…’

‘I'm making faggots and pate with it. Still got the tail-‘

‘You could make a tail soup?’

‘Yeah we could. We've got the trotters, tail... My wife is Spanish and might make some Spanish dish with those.'

Overheard - 14.40ish, 30th January 2010, Whitechapel Sainsburys (E1)

Woman ahead of me in line at the cake counter, talking to partner about Asian (and possibly blind) gentleman who had presumably just pushed in front of her and had his order taken before her. Said in deliberate 'I hope he can hear me way', whilst her young toddler stood next to her.

“These lot pushing in! Think they can do what they like when they come over here. Think it’s their own fucking country!"

EAT generosity.

Monday 18th January: Walk into newly opened EAT. 'Grande, Skinny Latte to go please'. Lady next to me, noticing I was about to pay 'Do you not have a free-coffee voucher? Here use mine, I'll get another on the way out'. 'Thank you very much', I answer politely. Make some lame joke and we both smile politely. My coffee is made, and I sidle out, aware that the voucher is probably only valid for small, normal coffees, and not big lattes. FREE coffee.

Thursday 21st January: Three days later, walk into now fairly eastablished EAT. Me - 'Grande, Skinny Latte to go please'. Same lady that served me three days earlier passes on order, then sidles off to make someone's large porridge with banana and syrup. I get £2.15 out of purse to pay. Same man who made coffee for me three days earlier, makes coffee for me. I'm annoyed that lady hasn't returned to her till to take my money, and is just standing around idly (I haven't got time to be waiting around - I'm probably late for work). About to leave my money on counter when coffee-maker man says to me, 'No charge for you, lady'. I make a slightly puzzled face, but pocket money, take coffee (and three sachets of sugar to make my porridge when I get to work) and leave. FREE coffee.

Friday 22nd January: Today, walk into EAT near my office. Select Cheese baguette and diet coke. Me - 'Just these please and a chocolate muffin'. Manager calls for chocolate muffin. Pay for items on card. Walking away, realise he did not charge me for the muffin. FREE muffin.

Total result of a week.

Overheard - 11.40ish, 9th January 2010, Princelet St (E1)

Man with shaved head, wearing grubby jacket and well-worn UGG boots, angrily – ‘If it’s that Denise again, I’ll wallop her!’.

Friend, of similar attire – ‘It’s not. I’m never going near that bit*h again’.

Monday 4th January, 2am - 5am Pt. 2.

I was tied to a wooden chair in a comfortable looking lounge. There was a glass-panel door to my left which looked like it led to a kitchen. In front of me were a man and a woman; the psychopath and his hostage. They were talking like friends. I knew I’d been right about her mental state. She began talking to me, much more alert and confident than she’d previously seen. She moved a mobile phone back and forth between her hands, taunting me that I was trapped and couldn’t call for help. I looked at the phone in her hands, and thought that if I even managed to make a call it would probably be futile. The couple untied my ligatures, but forcefully held me in place on the chair. I was frozen with terror; they were going to cut my throat and I was helpless, my life entirely in their psychotic hands. And suddenly I got angry. Enraged at the thought of someone else being in control of my life and my body, being able to decide if I lived or died. How dare they inflict themselves on me? My life was my own. The psychopath went to sit on the sofa opposite me and I took my chance. I lunged from my seat and propelled my right fist into the girl’s jaw, grabbing the mobile phone with my left hand. I stumbled to the door on my left, and shut it behind me, leaning my entire weight against it to stop them from entering. There was a key and lock on the door, and I turned it, taking the key with me in case they broke the glass and could reach through and unlock the door. There was an identical door to the right of the first, and as I went to pull it shut, I noticed a figure lying in the room beyond. It was one of my colleagues, and his throat had been cut. A huge pool of blood drenched his clothes and the floor around me. Dead. I pulled the door shut, and locked it, again pocketing the key. I could see movement behind the first door and I moved out of sight, behind the counter and fridge before shakily dialling the police. I was certain that the psychopath would have somehow intercepted the line and I wouldn’t get anywhere, but to my relief a different voice answered on the other end. Whispering, though I knew the couple wouldn’t be able to hear through the door, I explained that I’d been kidnapped by two psychopaths and was being held in some house by the woods. The voice asked where the house was. I told him I didn’t know, though I remembered gaining consciousness as I was being driven along Tye Common Road, and so most likely the house was somewhere bordering Bluebell Woods. I heard the voice asking me if I knew anything more about the location when suddenly the woman appeared in front of me. Though she wasn’t a woman; her features were stretched into the shape of a dog’s and she had teeth like a wolf. She tried to rip at my face, but I managed to get my hands up, and was holding her mouth back. Being of a thin frame, she didn’t have too much strength, so I was able to grip her top right tooth and bottom left tooth with my fists. She kept at me, angry that she’d been thwarted, and it became harder and harder to hold on. I could sense the man to the left of me, moving toward the corner, casually resting himself against the worktop and looking in our direction. He didn’t interfere, just watched us with his eerie eyes. The woman lunged and her teeth came inches away from my face. Still gripping them, I used my strength to pull them away from each other, and could have ripped them from her mouth or at least yanked them out of shape and caused some blinding pain, but something held me back. I knew it would hurt her, and whilst it was the only way I could survive, I couldn’t bear to inflict pain on another being. The woman-dog kept at me, but every time I started to pull at her teeth I found my stomach turning, and I had to stop. We’d scuffled into a different position, and I could clearly see the man in the corner. He’s placed what looked like four Mahjong pieces in front of him on the counter and was repeatedly rearranging them into difference formations. As he lifted each piece, I noticed that they were all number four tiles, in some form or other. I recalled what he’d said earlier, about killing four people. My colleague in the other room…me…Maidenhead…They were going to cut my throat and then their own. The police would never get there in time. I was going to die.

Monday 4th January, 2am - 5am.

In a cold, stark country-style kitchen, in a house surrounded by woods, a psychopath held a girl hostage. We knew she was in there, and standing outside, planning our strategy, my team of specialists knew they had to rescue her; she was of no personal significance but she was of such importance to someone powerful that she needed to be saved. My mind worked over the situation, and I couldn’t shake the sense that our rescue attempt was a bad idea, that there was something wrong with the girl and maybe both she and her captor were both part of a psychotic plan. A small, distant part of my mind was screaming at my body to stop walking, but the screams were muffled and did not register as I followed the team into the house. Our strategy was to entice the psychopath into everyday activities, act as though we were a group of friends merely spending an evening together. We were unarmed; I can’t recall why, but we didn’t have time to wait around for back-up. As we entered the house, it was clear he was expecting us. Glancing through a door on the other side of the room, he beckoned us into the kitchen, showing no surprise at our presence. I smelt food cooking – some sort of pie - and I noticed a saucepan being heated on the stove. We sat on the three chairs nearest the door we had entered, with the hostage girl sitting opposite me on the other side of the dining table. There was another door on the opposite wall in the left hand corner, leading outside. There was no garden though; the path from the door led directly to a forest area. The psychopath stood close behind the girl, casually holding a large knife in his hands. His eyes were cool, and as we sat there, I noticed that he very rarely blinked. My superior initiated the conversation, aiming to quickly establish a sense of familiarity, which would hopefully encourage the psychopath to let his guard down. Whilst he was talking, I discreetly surveyed our surroundings. Across the table from me the girl was quiet, looking at her hands which were gripping each other fiercely on top of the table in front of her. She was clearly agitated, but I was unsure if it was caused by being taken hostage or something else. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. I glanced out of the kitchen window and saw a sign in the distance, angled away from me slightly. The wording was hard to make out, though I could tell that the first letter was a large M. I could sense it was important that I knew what was on that sign, and from time to time I looked back at it, hoping it would become apparent. The psychopath asked the girl to serve the food, which she did before sitting down to join us. All the while he stood with his back to the worktop, looking on as he played with the knife in his hands. My superior had lead the conversation to the futility of holding the girl hostage, when the psychopath calmly interrupted, ‘But I have to kill four people’. He then lifted himself away from the work top and walked through the door to the garden. My superior stood and watched his progress through the window. I saw him glance at the sign, and a look of horror came across his face. ‘Maidenhead’, he croaked, ‘Run! Everybody run! It’s Maidenhead!’ My heart pounded, and the once muffled screaming in my head escalated to a fearful shrieking. Grabbing the girl by the arm, we ran out of the house, through the bleak, dark woods, stumbling in our haste. We somehow got separated. I had the girl with me, but we were too slow and I could feel the psychopath close behind us. As I dodged through the endless wall of trees, I took a quick look up, wondering if we could climb and hide in one of them. I caught my foot on a half-buried branch, and fell to the floor. Hastily standing up, I felt a whoosh of air rush at my face before everything went dark.

Overheard - 21.00ish, 6th January 2010, Camel & Artichoke (SE1)

Irish man - ginger hair, fairly rotund, guinness in hand - walks up to three girls in a pub. In a drunken manner, accuses girls of being unhappy with their lives and boyfriends, and says 'I'd walk barefoot over broken glass to fuck any one of you'.

Further to this:

"I don't buy my council house because I agree social housing"