suggzy

A short series of smaller reflections on the minutiae of travel

Hello, once again, for the first time in a while.

Some of life’s recent events, and longer-term recollections that have sprung back to mind, mean I am that tempted to write an extended piece about the search for work, and the experience of interviews I have had across the years. It’ll bowl you over, trust me. However there is just that lingering fear in me that I’ll be about to get a job, and someone in a dark office somewhere will perform a search of some sort on me, which would exhibit such satirical musings to their search engine, and that would be the end of that. A teensy bit difficult to anonymise all subjects for finger-pointing, and therefore a bit too risky for the present times.

However, at some stage soon, please return to read what I am tentatively titling: ‘The Jug Of Water And The Daily Mail Question’. If I ever get the hang of or do any proper work on the presentational side of this Blog, I might even revisit this piece and make that title above a link. I bet it can be done, if I take a couple of hours off to work on it…

Anyway, for now, and before safe publication of my expose gets the internal green light, we’ll carry on with some travel-related stuff, for there remains more in the tank of memories, most certainly. I’ll probably split this into a few bits by the time I have written it up (not sure how many, I just wanted to write again), and finish up with a few shorter bursts over the coming weeks. Busy weekend this weekend, as, like one does, I am playing Jimmy White at pool, in West Norfolk, with both of my wives to date cheering me on. Remind me to let you know how I got on with that, when I return for the next bit.

A few shorter bits and bobs, now. Trials, tribulations, amusing moments, revelatory moments. All sorts. Odds and sods. An index of stuff that occurred to me, that doesn’t really fit anywhere else obvious. Something for everyone, one hopes.

The perils of the modern age

Technology is, of course, a wonderful thing. The operability of the world around us and the communications made possible in an instant by the rise of the silicon chip and the digital doo-dah has changed things utterly, even during the short walk of 43 years of life I have had so far. Even in my third year as an undergraduate, only half that span ago, I was writing what I called ‘essays’ by hand, and sticking in cut-outs of photocopies of pages of textbook diagrams to illustrate my ‘point’. Now I could cut and paste the lot out of Wikipedia, move it around a bit, chuck in some new words and Bob’s etc.

I suppose it’s a passing negative to note that it allows permanently malcontent middle-agers like me who fancy themselves a ‘bit of a writer’ to write our way across the skies and continents, but it probably just about staves off the heart attack brought on by endless frustration with our existence, and there’s always somewhere else to click, eh?

Of course, all of this high-end stuff like ‘phones that do everything, cameras that make you look a lot better at the old-fashioned art of photography than you actually could be said to be, and, in our case, electronic cigarettes; it all comes at a charge. That charge? Charge. Electricity – the dangerous and invisible ‘juice’ that runs the whole gig. Travel around a bit, and you’ll start to gain a bit of an instinctive view on the likelihood of the hotel room you have just entered having what you deem to be ‘sufficiency’ by way of power-points to plug into. Particularly if, like me, you are irretrievably obsessed about having all items charged-up to the point at which they are screamingly hot and about to launch some sort of AI-led assault on humanity. SWK can seemingly skip gracefully through her life on a permanent blood-red 3%, without an outward care in the world. And I utterly envy that state of being, dear reader.

My ‘phone is sat here in the office (yes, I’m hard at it this Friday afternoon) on a sturdy 72%, which will get me comfortably through the day. But already I am sweating it a bit. I plugged my e-cig into the laptop this morning for the two-minute duration of my post-coffee motion, just to ensure the light on the end went back to green, indicating enough charge for me to impersonate Ivor The Engine until the sun dawned on us once again. Why? Why on earth do I do this? Why can’t I just let my battery die, and feel free for a little while? Take joy in being incommunicado for that brief interval, and just write it off as a tiny element of life’s rich pageant? By the way, I once lived with a young man who thought Incommunicado was a place in Brazil; he was a bit of a dreamer, too, looking back, so there’s an argument that perhaps people like me should think it all through a bit and do some worrying for the rest of humanity.

But I cannot rest. Find yourself sharing lodgings in a fresh corner of the earth with me, and within moments of our bags hitting the bunks, you’ll find me circling the joint, on hands and knees if necessary, auditing the power supply. Wrenching substantial pieces of furniture out of the way, hoping to reveal ‘a double’ to relax me into my stay. I’ll always seek them out in the end, and will willingly unplug just about anything else (save air-conditioning, but that’s w whole other blog) to gorge myself on that sweet nectar of connectivity. And to my shame, I will find myself announcing to my dear wife that “there are a good supply of power points”; because I am an incurable romantic, like that. Poor woman.

The real heart-stopper when it comes to this trial of modern life concerns the instance when the portal itself does not immediately hold one’s adaptor in place. I’ll cry out, heralding disaster, if the whole Gordian Knot of wires and USBs falls free from the wall. My mind casts forward to a moment in time (about 20 minutes hence) where all devices cease to function, and one will be left wandering the streets in a state of powerful nicotine withdrawal, searching in utter desperation for an internet café to find some way of telling the entire Godforsaken world what a Nice Time one is having.

Except that never happens. What does sometime happen, and in some ways gives me a sad fanfare of triumph, is you have to insert your equipment at a rather unorthodox angle (when it Rome, etc.) to get stuff to light up and that satisfying thrum to begin again. One might have to balance the whole production against an idling kettle or paperback so as to preserve the angle of connectivity. On the face if it that sort of thing, or sockets pried free of the wall, revealing live wires, ripe to forward me beyond the hell of living, – that’s all dreadful and one should complain. But for me? No. Perverse little me feels his electricity was hard won, and as such a commodity to be valued.

There’s an argument, and a strong one, for taking my passport, if not my entire liberty, away.

Two ring cookery

However, with the rough comes the smooth. With the weeds, the flowers. Even for me.

I absolutely love cooking on holiday. And no, not because it allows me to suckle at the teat of the Alternating and Direct Currents. My holidaymaking culinary efforts on even the most Spartan of facilities is my living testament to the great works of my parents in the 1980s, when they would churn out homemade ‘Spanish fishcakes’ from the proceeds of but a few Pesetas, on a regular basis. Crisp on the edges, and a symphony of soft Smash, pepper and canned tuna on the inside.

It oughtn’t to go without remarking on that, just occasionally, they’d fall foul of the local lingo, and finish up providing something a little unwise, for Lil’ Sis and I, when at table. Like the time they congratulated themselves on the purchase of some very frugal fruit juice for my sibling and I to start the day. Which transpired to be a half litre share each in some Sangria; the carton had been drained by the time they started to twig why their 13-year-old Son and 11-year-old Daughter were quite so carefree and giddy with the morning.

Hotels? Fine. Stayed in hundreds, and in that number, some grand ones. Fine, if someone else is paying. Don’t care. Comfortable and presentable will do for me. Unlike some folks I know, I don’t really get much of a kick out of a whirlpool bath or the latest trouser press. I never, ever, wear the free dressing gown, and use the minibar to cool my own drinks.

But if the opportunity is there to have a ‘kitchenette’? I am to be found hovering over the ‘book’ button. A grill, if you’re lucky, but two rusting rings and a handful of pots and pans, two mismatching plates, an odd number of (blunted) knives and forks, and a slotted spoon and a spatula, and I am a Grump Transformed. I’ll start to dream of covered markets, attractively-perspiring tomatoes the size of rugby balls, and complicated-looking local fish. Open a cupboard to reveal a leftover half packet of pepper and some indeterminate oil, and I am in raptures.

Once again, I am not sure where this comes from. Alright, yes, the familial, parental example of fending for yourself. A love of cookery for the last 25 years, too. Mostly, I just think it’s the thought of living slightly outside of the expected. The factor that is plastering on the sun-cream, sliding on the flip-flops, and striking out for whatever supermarket is to be found. And little or no idea what you’ll finish up with, or quite what it will be turned into, or how.

In warmer climates, Ratatouille (always to be said in a cod-Welsh accent) is a must. Whatever’s on the go, goes in, and it will partner most pieces of meat. Sarah the First will tell you any time you like about my Belarusian mustard-smothered chicken breast, wrapped in local cured Mystery Meat, accompanied by a lusty slick of tomato-ey overdone gloop. All purchased from the supermarket a few doors down where we didn’t know the word for or recognise anything. It wasn’t even that clear what the water was. Must. Bone. Up. On. Cyrillic.

I’ve mentioned travelling with my Father before. Like me, he’ll got to a restaurant and have a thoroughly decent time, and pay the bill happily at the end. But you can see the glint in his eye when a Baby Belling is nearby. Our finest hour was probably the production of filtered coffee in our tiny room in Bratislava. A saucepan, a packet of coffee, a frying pan, a colander and a packet of kitchen towel. That, and a vague grasp of some principles of heating and filtration, a bit of cleaning the floor, a fag break and a bit of swearing and then, then, it was as if one was sipping from bone china in St. Mark’s Square. Sort of. These are small things, but I think I am coming to understand with age that it is smaller things that make me happy, and bigger things that make me cross.

Back next week, for the Cigarette Village, and Driving over there.