October 2012
Oh my, it's the 30th of October! Birthdays, anniversaries, babies, divorces and hurricanes have all whizzed past this year. How odd that my last post reflected on the sort of year it was going to be.
So this year I really got INTO my job. I travelled to South America and learned about landless farmers, Kazakhstan and learned about (somewhat desperate) development banks, then Armenia to rescue an impossible situation involving a gold mine, some cowherds, £350k and many egos, and finally to Liberia, to visit a very modern people, but whom time has passed by. In some ways it feels like I woke up slowly this Spring and here I am at the end of a long long day.
At home there have been wars and peace, debates and declamations, shifting priorities - house, babies, travel, romance, cleanliness, house.... an unpleasant interlude with some rats... and it is home. I have come home to myself this year. I remember telling a pseudo shrink once that I have no home, because my past was in India, my family in Botswana and the people in my present were just about everywhere, and some were imaginary. This has definitely changed. Home is where the heart is, and the heart is held fast in the hands of an annoying young man who eats very crumbily, sitting on the green sofa in front of the TV in the poky flat on Fulham Palace Road. That is home.
Yet, there are other homes - one in Amsterdam, with vast windows looking across the north western docklands of the city. Others in every hotel room in every city, town and village (once it was a tent and once a container)that I retire to after long hard days of doing work that is probably important and definitely interesting. A new work-home has appeared, on Chancery lane. All white walls and red brick views - reminiscent of other times nearby.
But now there is some limited buying power. Kate Kanzier boots have been bought on my 3rd day working near Leather Lane.
London is unseasonably cold in October, which is OK I guess, because I am going to miss most of Winter - India trip. It feels as though meeting room mince pies are about to appear on the horizon, and all is well.
So this year I really got INTO my job. I travelled to South America and learned about landless farmers, Kazakhstan and learned about (somewhat desperate) development banks, then Armenia to rescue an impossible situation involving a gold mine, some cowherds, £350k and many egos, and finally to Liberia, to visit a very modern people, but whom time has passed by. In some ways it feels like I woke up slowly this Spring and here I am at the end of a long long day.
At home there have been wars and peace, debates and declamations, shifting priorities - house, babies, travel, romance, cleanliness, house.... an unpleasant interlude with some rats... and it is home. I have come home to myself this year. I remember telling a pseudo shrink once that I have no home, because my past was in India, my family in Botswana and the people in my present were just about everywhere, and some were imaginary. This has definitely changed. Home is where the heart is, and the heart is held fast in the hands of an annoying young man who eats very crumbily, sitting on the green sofa in front of the TV in the poky flat on Fulham Palace Road. That is home.
Yet, there are other homes - one in Amsterdam, with vast windows looking across the north western docklands of the city. Others in every hotel room in every city, town and village (once it was a tent and once a container)that I retire to after long hard days of doing work that is probably important and definitely interesting. A new work-home has appeared, on Chancery lane. All white walls and red brick views - reminiscent of other times nearby.
But now there is some limited buying power. Kate Kanzier boots have been bought on my 3rd day working near Leather Lane.
London is unseasonably cold in October, which is OK I guess, because I am going to miss most of Winter - India trip. It feels as though meeting room mince pies are about to appear on the horizon, and all is well.
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