Shouldering in the sun

This week I've been learning a lot about people.

The world is always divided into two: people who like tea and people who like coffee; dog lovers and cat lovers; people for war, people for peace; drivers and cyclists; red and blue.

And there are those that take responsibility and those that don't.

It struck me that those people, who, for whatever reason, hide in the shadows, their fingers coming into the sunlight to point at others when the question of blame arises are only doing themselves a terrible disservice. Why?

Because if you never shoulder responsibility, you can never make a decision. If you can never make a decision, you don't live your own life. If you don't live your own life, you are frustrated with all you do have. Maybe you're red, but you secretly want to be blue. You can't scream that from the shadows. If you're frustrated, you become negative. When you're negative, you blame others for it all, and that's when you suddenly come to life: IT'S NOT MY FAULT!

Avoid these people. Make mistakes. Shrug. Keep your fingers in your pocket. Because you are already standing in the sunshine.

The Perfect Panic

A couple of weeks ago, I went to Switzerland for a long weekend. To escape London for three whole days was fabulous: fresh air, mountains, Swiss cheese, Argentine wine (were staying with one of Martín's friends), fondues, chocolate, thermal pools and a whole lot of fun.

I had passed through Switzerland before in a sleepy daze having arrived at some obscene hour to be transported from a Swiss airport to a French ski resort. I remember stopping at a very beautiful lake (I have no idea which one), getting off the bus into a gale force wind, getting straight back on again and marvelling at the mountainous backdrop before the eyelids sunk once again.

So, this was my first real Swiss experience. For Swiss fans, we were staying in Basel, right on the border with France and Germany (the airport, in Switzerland, is French. Following all three European flags is quite confusing on landing). It was also excellent to have a Swiss girl as one of our hosts - the other being Argentine, which obviously doesn't count. That way, we could understand a bit about the Swiss folks' psyche, their culture. For example, nobody really talks about politics as there are representatives in the government from all parties, it's all so charmingly democratic; owning all types of fondue devices is a prerequisite for being Swiss and the German Swiss language is only spoken, even they don't know how to write the words they use.

The three days were well spent, driving around in our hosts' motor home, through green fields and sloping hills to crystal lakes surrounded by snow-capped peaks. Magical. We took the train to a spa near Basel. Heaven. The roads were clearly signposted, everything ran smoothly. The speed limit was adhered to. The trains left on the dot and arrived on the dot (the Swiss think those damn Germans are always so late) People could all speak at least three languages. Everything was in its place (apart from those two Argies)

Cuckoo. Cuckoo. Tick tock. Tick tock.

It struck me as a wonderful thing at first. Peace, tranquility, no need for chaos or disruption. Would the Swiss ever protest or march on parliament? There was a puzzled frown in reponse. Of course not. Are there traffic jams? Do people rage about the economy? Is the gonverment full of idiots? A shake of the head. Of course not. Has your Granny had to wait ten months for a new hip? Is the cheese bill sky-high? Need a loan to fill up your car? An ironic laugh. Of course not. Switzerland is quietly perfect, neutrally still, modestly unobtrusive.

But then, I thought, what if something does go wrong? The bus is late. The bike was moved. The rubbish collection failed to pick up the plastics bag. The train breaks down. A delivery of cheese doesn't get through customs. The chocolate workers want more money. There is no de-icer.

The smallest diversions from perfection and chaos can ensue. I don't mean that the country grinds to a halt because someone left the car light on and there is no battery in the morning, but rather the psychological consequences play out. Panic, tension, stress. All those things that people the world over, in less than perfect places, are used to. Our hosts admitted that when there is a break from the norm, it is unsettling for the Swiss. It also has one of the highest suicide rates in Europe; they don't even see it as a necessarily bad thing, the suicide reports on the radio. It's part of the normal ebb and flow.

This in itself is enough to make me want to get on a plane and head back into the regular beauty of Buenos Aires chaos. Can you imagine Basel transported to India? It would have 30 million people living there in a week, looking for some peace and quiet from madness of Mumbai. Who then wouldn't get the point.

So, perfection and clockwork isn't all it is cracked up to be. Your mobile running out of battery on the way to work; the pile of dog crap you step into on the way to the wedding; the long queues at the supermarket; the insane hours on the phone to any call centre; time being a flexible friend which weaves through the ifs, buts and nearlys of life. It's crazy to think that these, which are now facts of life, would drive us mad. I'll take random and I'll take mistakes and their frustrations, because the perfect alternative is just a little cuckoo...

Cuckoo.

We'll always have Paris

Place or people? People or place?

I am going to disgust some of you today by revealing that it was only two days ago, in my life of thirty years, that I saw Casablanca. And before you scream at me, yes, I loved it. I loved the fact that I could already quote half the movie; that at those lines, I put my hands spread over my heart and gave a little yelp much to the amusement of Martín; that even something as vile as smoking seems quite beautiful if you're Humphrey Bogart; and that there is always a reason to move on.

It got me thinking about the choices in the movie, and the ones which were finally made. Rick chooses the perfect past, in the perfect place, rather than a non perfect future with the love of his life. Brave or stupid? Admirable or foolish? Stupidly admirable, perhaps.

I thought about the places in the world which meant something special because of the person I was with there. Did the love and passion grow because of the place, the person, or both? Would one have survived without the other?

I spent New Year 2005 in a small, lakeside town, overlooked by a beautiful volcano, in Chile. I had stayed on instead of continuing to travel because I had met a man on Christmas Day. While my fellow travellers moved on and explored Patagonia, I stayed in his house enjoying a carefree life of lake swimming, moon parties, dog walks along the beach, strawberries in bed and the buzz of instant attraction. My companions got further and further away and my heart got further and further involved. Nearly two weeks later, it was a wretch to leave, but I did.

And life/fate/curious circumstance took me back there almost a year later. Twice. The first trip back was a disaster: the water under the bridge in his life meant my return was not an extension of our romance from before. What, I had to ask myself, had I expected? I had to leave again anyway, and tried not to think about it. The second time, things had changed again, and we went straight back to the fun, passion and yearning we had found in each other some seventeen moths before.

At 5am he stood on the porch of a house in the middle of a field. It was pouring with rain. Huge puddles sat between me and the beeping taxi, its headlights reaching our feet, standing so close together as we said our goodbyes. His kiss said stay. Mine tried to reply I want to, but I can't.

And, sadly, I drove away, waving, blowing kisses at that man as he stood blowing kisses back in the first light of morning, alone in his boxer shorts. I packed up my un-slept-in tent in the rain and spent the day in a trance of What if?

Right person, right place, wrong moment? In the I miss you emails that followed, I would have liked to have thought so. But, no. Some months later there was another person, another place and another magic. And I had to leave again.

But now, in this moment, if my heart thinks back to those 'perfect' times: the sunshine, the love, the picturesque place, the trust, and I try to take any part of it away from there, I can't. That man belongs in that place at that time. I can't put him at my side in a supermarket in London, nor can I see him in a restaurant with me in Buenos Aires. He doesn't belong on a chairlift with me in France, nor on the beach in Hunstanton.

He is where he is for a reason. If we had taken it somewhere else it would not have been the same. And we would never, with wonderful feeling, be able to say right now, "We'll always have our Paris".

Reading the rush hour

I've lived in London for six months now. For four months I have been one of the millions of people getting on the tube every morning and again in the evening after a day's graft. The first part of my journey, I squash on the train and spend four minutes shoulder to shoulder, bum to crotch, armpit to face with whoever's space I am forced to share. For the next part, I can usually get a seat after a stop or two and it slowly filters out as we while our way to Hammersmith. Legs out, paper spread.

This is if I pick up the paper in the morning. I'm not going to pick up my usual broadsheet read (the lunchtime online read is for this) but perhaps I'll pick up the Metro. I always feel positive when picking up this paper, perhaps because it's free, but then I start reading it, and I wonder what suicidal thoughts I must have had when I stooped down to get it. It's simply one of those papers where you can read the headlines and that is enough. Five words from each story and you've delved as far as you need to, trust me.

So, more often, I take my book. Not only does it whoosh the minutes past, but it gives me forty odd minutes a day to read it, if I can't find time at any other moment of the day. I enjoy reading immensely and get slightly worried and depressed if my bedside table has a book on it which needs to be wiped for its dust.

Of course, I am not alone in this endeavour. Millions of others bring their paperbacks, kindles and ipads on board. At first, I would be interested to see what and how people were reading. I put people into categories: The Reader Who Wants You To See What He's Reading (the book will be held high in someone else's airspace and has just got into the top three of the New York Times Bestseller List); The Try Anything Once Reader (usually struggling through something like Mein Kampf); The Social Reader (there is a picture of Richard and Judy on the cover somewhere); The Truly Dedicated To The Cause Reader (these are the ones who lug along huge hardbacks and proceed in the same way);The Immersed Reader (they miss their stops); The Trendy Reader (on their leather bound kindle).

Then, recently, I started taking this a bit further. I had forgotten my book, remembered to not pick up a paper and so was squashed up with no reading material. However, I soon realised I was surrounded by the stuff. Packed like sardines, I could still read the lines of those around me. So, I got a page of a thriller novel, a terrible write-up of a boxing match, and a paragraph on how negative thoughts can give us cancer. I stepped off that train enlightened, confused and happy.

Reading snippets from other people's books and papers is an interesting way to spend the commute. It also lets you read things you wouldn't normally 'be seen' to read, and come away with your reading reputation in tact. Snippets also let your imagination steer into other worlds. Not only do you wonder what has happened and what will happen after your two pages worth, but it also gets the mind pondering the reader. What are they thinking reading the same lines with their hindsight? Why did they choose it? It's a whole minefield of words and wonderings.

So, next time you're on the tube on a dreary winter's morning without your own reading material, despair not: simply while the journey away with whatever your fellow commuters have to hand. Your reactions and opinions to words you wouldn't normally have read will make you arrive refreshed and ready to start the day in a way you couldn't have otherwise imagined.

Let's friend!

I have travelled and moved around the world some, and it always strikes me the value of the friends you can make on the road, or when you are both flung together far, far away from the homeland.

At first, these friendships might seem like the gadgets you buy for those trips: necessary, useful and used in the right place at the right time. And some of them truly are like that. And rather like the stuff, and friends, you don't take with you and leave behind: some sit there waiting for you to pick up where you left off. Others go and find new owners.

Others are more than that.

Last night I spent 5 hours during the middle of the night on a video call to one those friends. Oceans, languages, time zones and (seriously) climate apart mattered not and the instant reconnection of sitting in her living room, and her sitting in mine, while we drank our respective bottles of wine was comforting, fun, trusting and, well, just like it always was and always will be.

Friendship is balance, reflection and discussion. A good friend lets you walk as close to the edge of the cliff as his humanly possible and will then drag you back the moment you topple the wrong way. A good friend never hides the bad stuff. A good friend looks up in embarrassing moments, not down. A good friend feels as happy as you do when the successes of life are reached.

Talking, laughing, joking, crying, watching, hugging, writing: all those things we do with our friends are verbs. Friend should be a verb: it's the action of some of the most precious moments of our lives. Today, they friended at her wedding. Last night we friended the whole night. Where are you going? To friend with Bob.

So for all the friends in the world, not just mine, thanks for friending. You can tell the people that don't have anyone friending them: the news is solely theirs, there is little to share.

So let's extend our friending nature to those who aren't our friends. It may not be the golden friendship we have found with others, but when those others are far away, it might just bring us some of those moments we miss.

Rome is missing its greens

I spent five days over the new year in Rome. Rome: that foundation of civilisation with its wondrous churches, beautiful squares, ornate fountains, spectacular architecture, jaw-dropping ruins and enough white carbs to make Mr. Atkins, of the diet phenomenon, turn in his grave.

Rome has that special something; this is undeniable. The neighbourhood of Trastervere with its quiet flapping of washing between colourful window shutters; the Palentino museum with its vast design of luxurious houses, baths and gardens; the mighty Roman forum which reeks of power and history; the spine-tingling Colosseum with its stories still visualised from centuries ago; the impressive pantheon, the Vatican and the awe-inspiring Sistine Chapel... I could go on. All these sites serve the visitor visually, culturally, historically, socially and religiously. Rome opens your eyes to the past. Just mind the modern buses and trams as they zoom by while you stop and stare, imaging what it must have been like.

Then, to rest, you enter trattorias and old cafes: jugs of Chianti, chilled Peroni beer, greying waiters with an impressive array of moustaches and Einstein hair styles shouting at who-knows-who. You feel you've stepped into an old family get-together/riot, which hasn't changed course for centuries. It's not any old city: it's Rome.

But Rome isn't the perfect city. It isn't the most beautiful. If it was, no one would go to Venice (so I've heard). Let me tell you why I think why. It's missing its greens. The boulevards of Paris are lined with trees; the avenidas of Buenos Aires are lined with trees. London is full of green parks, made even brighter for all the rain it gets. Rome is bricks; old, beautiful bricks perhaps, but bricks nonetheless.

And back in the eateries, there is a serious lack of greenery as well. Pasta, pizza, gelato: after five days you are screaming for something vegetable which is not related to the tomato. The first night back after our trip, I cooked a stir fry of chard, green beans, green peppers, broccoli - I needed to see green on my plate, taste it in my mouth. My body loved it.

I am not saying there are no trees whatsoever in Rome, or you can't find a salad on the menu. On the last day, we did visit a park, which had trees of course, but lacked grass. Those Romans found any open space as an excuse for a fight/gathering/market and didn't need grass under their well-made shoes. And if I am sitting in 'the best pizza place in the neighbourhood' should I order a Cesar salad just because he died just down the road? After all, when in Rome...

So, if Rome had more trees and more chard on the menu, would it then be the perfect city?

I'll tell you after my trip to Venice.

It's time

It always fascinates me how people judge time so differently.

There's a man who lives in one of the buildings just round the corner from us. He is sometimes there as I go past on a run; or as I scurry along to the shop; as we walk to the pub; or on the way back from yoga. He sits on the bench on the pavement outside his building and simply sits and looks around.

I don't think he's clinically crazy or murderously deranged and these are the only times his fierce mother lets him out of the house (he must be in his fifties): quite the opposite. I think he's perfectly sane and wondrously in charge of his world.

Sometimes he's having a cigarette. Can you imagine the thought that must accompany this? I think I'll have a cigarette or Time for another cigarette I think, before I go in. I am not in favor of smoking, but what a way to charge your time. Instead, here are some thoughts which occurred to me today:

If I get my wallet out now I won't be more than the 3.6 seconds required to go through the tube station.

I'll get home from the committee meeting and start on those emails instead of tomorrow. It will mean leaving Martín to cook by himself, but we can have a conversation another day.

The sun has come out, but I'll eat at my desk because that way I might not miss something that pops up. I'm not here on Wednesday so I can't waste my time.

WHY WHY WHY!!??

Time is a fragile, extinct bird that only flies out at you in moments of exhilaration or despair (You want it to never end! You think it will never end!) Seconds are bricks you build around yourself each day. As the wall gets higher, your job is only to knock it down and start again. The process starts slowly, building up its intensity to that final, manic, time-induced panic which is getting the train/meeting the deadline/firing back a reply before they thought you were dead. For something that is extinct, it sure doesn't want to be forgotten. Time is as needy and greedy as the worst of boyfriends and bosses, flying you to places you don't want to go, never waiting. Time is brilliant at moving, though, ironically, never waiting.

Unless you're the man round the corner. He's not even afraid of the cold. Winter time? He doesn't get it. He just like to sit on that bench and watch the world go by, being dragged in all kinds of directions. I bet he loves mulling over where people might be going, what they might be doing. Or perhaps not. The fact they have passed is important, not where to or why. His time is truly his time, charged by himself.

So, it's time to take charge of my time. Walk at the pace I want to walk. Or just go out and walk if I want to. Hold a blink to help me think. It's my time, after all. There's a long way to go in 2011.

And enough time take it.