clinging to the wreckage

One moment you are living in Madrid, writing your Master’s Thesis, lead vocalist for a punk rock band, highly responsible IT manager at a large tech company, hard partying socialite, meeting new and exciting people every day, and the next moment you are going to lie on your bed with a book at 7:30pm on a Friday night. It’s not always about becoming old and boring, it is also about the things that you love to do. These things change over time. I miss the creative aspect of being in a band, but I don’t miss the hard work of rehearsals, concerts, tours, etc. We had to carry all of our equipment around, we had to rehearse in dingy, tiny rooms, and my vocal cords were often strained to the extreme. In terms of the social side, aside from the band, we’d formed a community that gathered every Thursday night and also hosted huge parties every couple of months. Thursday nights themselves were so extreme that Friday at work was a complete write off. And this meant that Monday to Thursday was eve...

  The winter wind howls outside. It explores the windows, looking for gaps and fragilities. The temperature drops and I find myself thinking of the stray cat who has become my friend. Where does he hide? Why will he not come inside? What has he been through? We spend a few moments together each day and I feed him. Then it is time for some human interaction… but, you see, most of them are not listening. Most of them don’t care at all. It’s seven weeks since my mother passed away, I miss her each and every day. For others, it seems to be forgotten history. And, I suppose, it is not reasonable for me to expect more than that. I remember the day that my grandmother, my mother’s mother, died. We made it just in time to her bedside. We’d driven from the south of England, where I lived, up to the north, to the town I was born in (the town all of my family had been born in). I walked into the ward first and saw a lady lying in a bed with nurses nearby. I asked the nurses where Winnie was a...

  When my family emigrated from England to South Africa, I struggled for a while with the climate… and the cultural change. Everything was dry and hot… and we moved in January, it had been snowing and freezing in Greater Manchester… in South Africa it was dusty, dry, and sickeningly hot. For the first few years, the days I loved the most were the rainy days. Another thing that struck me as different was the overwhelming presence of religion and religious belief within the majority of people. Religion was used like an iron fist at school to keep students in line through fear of eternal damnation in the fiery depths of hell. It was natural for me to rebel against anything that was being forced upon me… especially if it was in the form of a threat. There was nothing I despised more than the words ‘you are going to be in so much trouble if you do that.’ I remember fellow students revelling in the idea that you would be punished for forgetting to bring a book or a form or something insi...