Slavery 2010

I exploded, fragments fly.

I need to be different.

A human being is no better

 Than any other, your money

Lets you eat better

When my friend is just as

entitled to a full stomach.

Since when did satisfaction

Cost money? – safety for your health

Is only afforded by the rich.

My blade struck the table

For no reason,

Anger took me.

I am silent, I am sam,

A quiet man, I speak little

In volume,

But scream

Inside my head.

Conversations get rehearsed in my mind

and can last for hours,

for I am amusing,

a utility to others,

of course I am.

Whether I can stand to stay this way

Is entirely different.

Run with me, lets jump

Then fly and

Rocket into the unknown,

Lets hide outside of my mind-

Real freedom, alone

In the world-

                                                                     Inexplicably alone.


I had to get this down one day at work, Its an introduction to the world I work in. The hierarchy of the business seem to think they are celebrities or something but in reality have they done so much as to be credited with such devotion by staff. 
Our top bosses come to the hotel clicking their fingers for the best of the best. They don't want to eat off the menu, they have to have something different. This one man came in November to have dinner with his wife and two kids; the manager came to us and says that we have to cook something special for him. So we dropped everything to run around like headless chickens to try and think of starter, main and dessert. 
Another occasion came when I think it was the same man came to the hotel with friends this time, he had the best rooms, he had some fancy canopies served to him that evening in the bar before he went out for the evening.The following morning he was to have a mini breakfast buffet, all freshly prepared by the second chef. Hours were wasted in preparing this, food was ordered that we never normally used, money spent that came from the hotel pocket not from his. The next morning he came late and the buffet returned practically untouched for they were all too hung over from the night before to face eating anything. 


This is a man who seems to think that he created a world. Now I am the first to admit that my opinion is based on observation rather than fact as I have never met him, but  he doesn't associate himself with the workers; even when he came to dinner that one night. So who are these people? They are so obsessed over and  idolised by those below them that they are somehow projected to a godly status or do they actually think that much of themselves? It's one thing to be in a position to pay for luxury and service but isn't it quite another to expect it for being a boss of a company. It's sort of cheating when you come to your work to get pampered, people know you, maybe even fear you, so to be treated with this level of service is something I doubt is ever afforded in any other establishment. Treat people how you expect to be treated, never expect anyone to do something that you would never do yourself. Respect is earned not given.
Now this level of vanity does seep down to the lower levels within the hotel. but not to the same extremities.
A manager comes to work leisurely on a saturday afternoon having spent the morning shopping. He boosted of a shopping trip where he spent £240 of some designer shirts. Fucking materialism, he can't be earning that much money?! and if he is then I am going to be so angry that someone who blows smoke up peoples arses could be that successful. I work on my own merit and not by kissing butt. But he joked how he told his wife that he only spent £120. How can people spend so much money, My shirts are full of holes but in reality I know there are far more important things to spend money on, if not save it! I'm not even jealous, shocked would be better.
My chef is not so bad, he is a nice guy in many respects, kind and is always willing to talk but he is also very fond to talk about himself. It's off putting to engage in any conversation because it will ultimately end up being a very long monologue about him.Even when he was giving me a letter stating that I had received a pay rise and he apologised that its wasn't much but its better than nothing and I thanked him all the same; but he had to just add in at the end how it was more than he got because he had nothing. Thanks chef for making me feel bad for something I worked for and for you getting nothing, is it really my concern? Can I not have a moment of my own? He is the head chef and it leads to another question about the working life we lead. Should we work to live or live to work. To me living to work is a terrible concept purely based on personal attitudes. I have grown to dislike my career very much, but then when I watch how my head chef lives I sink deeper into despair. He most definitely lives to work despite the occasional protests. He is usually the first there and more often than not the last to go home, when its busy. But on the occasions when its not so busy and he apparently  doesn't have much to do he just hangs around. 'why don't you go home chef, get an early night?' we all say, a desperate bid to get rid of him. But he doesn't, afraid that the wife will still be awake and he'll have to spend time with her. I don't get it, he speaks fondly enough of her but is reluctant to go home to her. I often get the impression that he will on days off go out on his own fishing and hunting. I can understand he has his hobbies but when you spend so long working and moaning about how you never see your wife or daughter, how unhappy they are, surely you'd stay at home a bit more. oh well, not my business.

He has many traits that I dispise, he is all too fond of dipping his fingers into food as a means of tasting food, gross! The thing being is that its not just the once, it's time and time again. I will not eat his food, It troubles me to think how many head chefs that I have had the same feelings about, they seem to have common traits of being disgusting.It says a lot when these people are in charge of kitchens yet I will not eat there, I have no interest of even coming for a meal on a night out or encouraging friends to visit the establishment, I just can't.
We work in an open kitchen, that is, the customers can see us cooking. I am always very aware of this, that at any given moment there is someone watching me, I know that I would be. Alas I am always on my best behaviour, I handle food as little as possible, ( although if we are not supposed to use our hands, why are they so perfect for the jobs we do. And don't you use your own?) Well I can understand the feeling of seeing someone handling their food and try to counteract it with constant handwashing, its something I do anyway but I make extra effort to show that its the case.
I don't eat in the kitchen, even to taste things I am discreet. But he shambles his way in and then over to me to talk some nonsense whilst at the same time eyeing up a piece of bread or a few chips and stands there munching away like a locus, but its not even that he thinks that its right its because he is so caught up in his own world that he forgets what world we live in. It seems simple to me that If I go out I want a peaceful atmosphere and the last thing you really want is to hear is shouting from the kitchen. Sometimes if I think  they're are busy then you can forgive the shouting for its hard to communicate in a civilised manner when you're up against it. But now when you work in an open 'theatre kitchen' its a whole other set of rules. Every tap of a spoon, clattering of a pan, slam of the oven door, echoes the restaurant floor like a fog horn on a blind coastline, where the customer eyes and ears are guided to the shore of the kitchen when they hear the noises. So in my opinion the quieter we are the less of a distraction we are when they are trying to enjoy themselves, I could say thats its not entirely my fault when the front of house team should be managing the music that plays but even that goes wrong, ( thats a whole other blog).
With all this in mind the very least you can do is keep your voice down, yet whenever we have the delight of chef in the kitchen he pulls the checks from the printer, breaths in and then at the top of his voice presents each courses so that perhaps even if we were out the back having a smoke we'd surely hear it, but whats the necessity of it? In reality its only a tiny room, we all manage to communicate to each other yet now we are forced to reply, 'yes chef!' or in my case, 'yea'. ( My enthusiam made a bid for freedom long ago and won.)
Its embarassing.
He is one of these people who are all too keen to preach yet will never practise. The best example of which is the wearing of hats in the kitchen. Time and time again he tells people to wear one, but he will not. He has a full head of black, slicked back curly hair that has a unfortunate resemblance to pubic hair. And whether its an act of vanity, he refuses to be the one who wears a hat, perhaps he feels it covers his significance, his power within the relm he rules. The problem with ruling is keeping the laws upheld; the chefs may go a day or two wearing a hat but soon enough manage to lose them or simply just stop, it goes unnoticed and is never commented upon. Now there came a few weeks when the head chef went on holiday and the second in command held the ropes. He told everyone that in ten days when the head chef returns everyone will be enforced to wear their hats, its was a new rule of the kitchen. needless to say it did not happen and actually the second chef seemed to stop wearing his of late. I have no idea if this was to be like the head chef, to not wear one was to signify his command of the kitchen or is he making a silent protest against the powers that be, when in Rome and all that.
I myself have been an avid wearer for all my chefing career, not that I ever have much hair as I always have it cut short, now I just don't have much hair as age squeezes me and stress and worry suffocates my follicles.
Even as I write this I see the ideas of a new book open like a flower in spring yet the contents of this blog seem me tenuously linked in my desperate attempt to vent the frustration of losing so many hours of my life a day that I know I will never get back. Its like Groundhog day but with out the rodent, yet oddly enough I can find resemblence in my head chef.
Work really seems to a nagging pain, I am void of inspiration, robbed of time, starved and thirst ridden to the point of illness sometimes. I escape in the plumes of tobacco smoke that fills my soul with every drag yet its a life line to sanity however much poison it holds; its better the devil you know.

Not exactly a soup question.

I have met the anti-me. 3 months ago a new guy started at work and he seemed cool, enthusiastic, talked the talk, then we realised he just liked to talk, that was the extent of his talent. A London boy that has been and done everything, if you have a story he has one better. If you have done something once, he's done it twice. If you want something, he has it already.In fact the way he carried himself and physical appearance lead me to believe that he was at least my age, my contemporary, maybe older. last week he came up to me, talking again; he's a 'space invader', he can't stand to talk to you, he has to be right up close and talk at you. I am always desperately looking for something to do so that I can move away, I get very uncomfortable when my personal space has been breached, but alas he is a 'follower', no sooner do you move so does he, he's like a shadow.
The problem is that theres a certain amount I can tolerate but space invaders freak me out. Back to the age scenario; he had come to me, probably talked some nonsense, retold me a joke from days ago and then he asks me, 'so how long have you been cooking?'
'about ten years' I said.
 'so how old are you?' he asks 'my age, 26?'
' I'm 29.' I said.
'No way! you old b*****d.' he was surprised, but I was too since I am taking shit from this guy who is younger, I don't discriminate against anything except people who want to make themselves look better they they actually are. I am very observant, if you're good, I will notice, you don't need to tell me; you just make me notice every bad thing that you do.
Perhaps I should emphasis the problems we have with him:
-This guy nearly cut his finger off with a knife while wrapping a tub in clingfilm. Really?!
-He was asked to cure some salmon, so he did, chef asked 'what salmon did you use? there was two sides here and they're still here.'
'oh I got it from that tray, must have been three there.'
'oh, ok.' said the chef, not entirely convinced.
on returning to the subject the chef asked to see what had in fact been done, having been confused about the whole situation. The boy hadn't taken any salmon from that tray despite his insistence, but had actually opened a packet of smoked salmon instead and had cover it in salt and sugar causing it to start  disintegrating.
The chef is left shaking his head, exasperated with this whole event and left washing the salmon to try and save what is left.
-He had to peel and dice some tomato, he asks me, ' you peel it by poaching it?' In my head I thought that he couldn't literally mean poach but to just blanch it,( dip in boiling water ) but sure enough my assumptions of him make even me an idiot. He got a pan with hot ( not boiling ) water and put the tomatoes in, then he put the pan on the stove and left it. Now anyone with an ounce of sense would realise that a soft tomato will surely go softer if you boil it. So he boiled it for about five minutes, took them from the hot water and put them into iced water, he then tried to peel off the skin but all he had was a soggy mass of vegetable in his hand, ' thats not going to work is it?' was his only comment. I couldn't believe my eyes, a chef that can't peel a tomato, I raised my eyebrows so high that they ended up on the back of my head.'So how do you do it then?' he asked. So i told him but not with much enthusiam.
'why do you have to be so arsey all the time?' he asks me.
I respond with, I just can't believe that you don't know how to peel a tomato.'
'I know!' he says,' but I always use a blowtorch to burn the skin off.' I fell even deeper into shock, where did you park your horse john wayne? 'I like to learn new things, you're never too old to learn new things.' he says.
Honestly, that was his comeback.
Its just been non stop irritation, this is after only a few months working there, I haven't finished either.
-One day I was cooking some lamb shanks, very popular dish, he asks if he could have one because he was so hungry. I said no, since they take hours to cook and I do so many that I want to keep them just for restaurant, not for staff lunch! the next day I find that one is missing from the tray. I ask him if he enjoyed it, he told me with a straight face that he hadn't touched it and I couldn't prove it either way.
The next week, same scenario, I cook, next day, one gone, but this time he's not there to interrogate.
I have to forget it, ( but I don't forget ).
The next week yet again I cook, next day, all still there, wow! So I continue to wrap them individual by using vacuum pack machine, whilst at machine vac'ing the first 5, I return to find that only 4 remain, I started with 10! But I can't prove anything. So I carry on, questioning myself if infact there was 10 when I started, maybe someone had already served one for a customer. Frustrated, I return to my kitchen and continue my prep for the evening. I open the microwave on this boys section and low and behold there is plate in there, upon that plate is the residual gravy stain of a lamb shank, undoubtedly, but still how do I prove its his? Then, I touch the plate and find that its still warm, result! ( its like CSI: ktichen). My plan of action was simple, leave the plate on his table and see his reaction.
He walks in, I'm at my section working. Straight away he picks up the plate and goes to walk out again, I have stopped working and am just standing staring at him. He could probably feel my stare burning a hole in the back of head. Just before he walks through the door he looks at me, ( guilty, checking that I hadn't noticed.), but he see me looking at him. My blood is boiling at this point.
'what?' he says to me.
'what was on that plate?' I ask.
'I don't know.'
'I know.'
Laughing, 'What was on it?' he asks
'lamb'
he says nothing. so I continue, 'If I ever find that you've been taking my prep we are going to fall out'
Then his admission to the crime comes out, ' Yea, it was me, but its only a lamb shank.'
'and the other ones?' I ask,' I specifically told you no.'
'Oh, I ain't never taken any other one, this one I did I admit.'
'I don't come here to waste my time cooking so that you stuff your face.' I'm angry.
'oh, chill out, you really going to get angry about this?'
Suddenly, like a child, he start to turn this on me, telling me to relax, that I'm grumpy and starting to making a joke about it. 'You need to relax, the worlds not on your shoulders, chill out.'
Thats strike one. I told him that I would not mention it again although he continued to call me grumpy.

As yet, he had only worked on functions and not in the restaurant, but the first time came, I had the night off.
'I don't know what you moan about, its easy out there.'
But I knew that they only had 4 customers and told him,
'yea, it was quiet but I cleaned everything, went through your fridge, made sure it was all labelled, washed it.'
But I had already looked at my prep and had seen that the writing on the labels didn't belong to him.
'so you labelled everything?' I asked
'yep, and washed the fridge.'
'You actually wrote the labels?' but by the look of my face he knows that he's been caught out.
'oh, no that was lloyd, but I cleaned it.'
I just shook my head at him, and said nothing.
'You're so ungrateful,' he said. ' done all that for you, not even a thank you.'
'did what?!' I said ' 4 customers!' and walked off.
Later on the head chef was there, and was adding jobs to this boys list, much to his annoyance, I stood nearby laughing.
'Chef, he is so ungrateful, I cleaned all his section, made it nice for him today and he doesn't even care.'
he continued, half joking but basically complaining to my head chef how grumpy I am, but using far worse language, colourful words, kitchen talk.
He'd crossed me again, trying to make me look bad, but I bit my tongue and went back to my kitchen to work. Later he comes in and after a while strolls over to me with his 'swagger'.
'See, look how tidy it all is.'
I had already inspected the fridge, it had not been done, ( all said and done, don't think it was filthy, or that our hygiene is in question, it wasn't 'dirty'- just not sparkling.)
'Come here.' I said to him, beckoning him with my finger, I pulled open a draw of the fridge and lifted a tub, some herb had fallen to the bottom, 'Is this clean?' I said. I pulled open another, lifted another tub, there was some clingfilm stuck to the base. 'And this, did you clean this?' he stood there, not saying anything. and after a few more draws I finished. 'You've been telling me all afternoon how much you did, did you do this?'
'oh no lloyd did all this section, I did over here.' An area that was nothing to do with me. and off he went like it meant nothing to lie to me, to make me feel guilty that I had made assumptions about him, judging him perhaps too quickly. That he made me look bad to my boss. Strike two.
I have said nothing to anyone important about all this as I am biding my time, for strike three. Thats not to say that there haven't been other minor incidents. Constant moaning about how miserable I am.
' How's service, everything o.k?' he asks, having done very little.
'yea, Its fine.' I mumbled, not wanting to engage converstaion with him.
'nothing ever bothers you does it?' he said
'should it?' I reply
It just looks at me confused, I hadn't been rude or sarcastic yet he didn't understand my answer, like it was coded in some way, a hidden meaning. 'what do you mean?' he asks.
'you have an order on.' I change the subject, pointing to his printer and walked off. Its enormously enjoyable to confuse him and then leave it hanging; perhaps if I'm lucky tormenting him, plagueing his mind, he brought it on himself.
But he consatntly finds occasions to try preaching to me how grumpy and stressed I am; my response,
'Just because you work with me for a few hours each day doesn't give you the right to make assumptions about me.'
'what, I wasn't assuming anything.'
'You said that I'm grumpy and miserable all the time, thats a pretty big assumption to me.'
'Oh so your all happy when you're out of work are you?'
'Yes!' I replied, of course I am, why can't he hear himself talking this rubbish?
One time I was minding my own business, I was in my kitchen and as yet we had no customers, I had my note book and was jotting something down. The door opens and in he strolls, coming to have a nose around. I subtly so as to not make it obvious that I was writing and drawing attention to myself, closed the book as he approached and started to fiddle and tidy about the place as if I hadn't even noticed him enter.
'What you doing, writing your memoirs?'
All I can think is, he's making fun of me for writing, I love to write, he may not even know it, but he's still insulting me. And why couldn't I be writing my memoirs, I've had a life, I have stories. Just because he admits to not even reading books why is it a stretch of the imagination that I do and write. philistine.
Or another time I was having a converstaion with someone in the restaurant about movies.
'Oh I saw this great movie again the other night, No country for old men.' I said.
Then in the background where he had been working in silence for once, not even part of the conversation he pipes up. 'Thats not good, it's shit!'
Excuse me, who are you? My conversation, and you interupt with that tit bit of information that matters to no one, no one's interested and you have just ruined our discussion about something else that is dear to me, films.
It's not only me who he winds up, infact I barely acknowledge his existance, yet my one superior at work, will not hesitate to tell him or shout at him when he's upset by something. but not without reason he is not one to shout like you see on the t.v. Indeed he's quite the opposite, one of the most honest and moral men I know. He wants nothing more than to do his job and do it well. He doesn't like to take bonuses for his work he just wants respect for it.
He confronted him whilst the boy was frying some chicken. He saw him drop a piece from the pan to the floor, but rather than pick it up and put it in the bin the boy kicked it under the table. My superior was standing beside him and was furious, he saw it happen but the boy denied it. 'just stop lying, admit what you did and move on.' said my superior, 'I saw you, do you want me to get it to show you?'
It never went any further, but its infuriating to have the constant denial of the obvious.
Two days ago the boy asks me if I have any of this mayonaise dip we use, he is preparing a function and is too lazy to make fresh himself. I am not overly helpful and simply respond with, 'yea, a bit.'
He doesn't force the issue, afraid what might happen. but then minutes later he shows up with a tub with a little already in and asks if he can simply top it up, yes fine I said and off he went. My superior comes to me and starts complaining how the boy has taken something off his section, taken it, used it and not replaced it. A caridnal sin in the kitchen, never touch another mans prep! They argue, the boy says that he didn't use it, he said he'd thrown it away because it was out of date, but I looked and nothing was in the bin, and why in the middle of service did he feel the need to throw away something, the one thing he wanted and when he could of done it the night before when he was himself working that section. What he had done was to take it, mix it with some of mine, put it in clean container so that the evidence of the old one couldn't be found and hopefully go unnoticed. The two of them shout, I was involved to varify the story but once again mainly stood there shaking my head in disbelief. How someone can think he is that clever, that smarter than everyone else that he does all these things and then everytime  when he gets caught, he just turns it onto something or someone else, reversing the blame. But it never works. The last incident came after a weekend when he had failed to show up to work, no call in the morning to say he was sick. He had been told off the night before for telling the second chef infront of the manager that he blows smoke up this managers arse. This was a bit too personal for the chef and he was angry. The no show the next day confirmed his suspicion that that was the end of the boy and that he would never return. He told everyone so, the boy had done us all a favour by digging his own hole, getting deeper and deeper till there was no way of getting out. He had solved the problem that everyone else seemed to be tiptoeing around. the head chef and second chef up to this point had ignored all our complaints and frustration probably for the sake of not wanting to lose the extra pair of hands during the busy season. Which frustrates us more when they know there's a problem, acknowledge the problem but won't sort the problem. Leaving us to work with it.
The problem however hadn't gone, the boy had suffered a tragedy in the family, his father apparently commited suicide. It was a shock and everyone felt for him, even me. One of the greatest fears I have is to lose my father yet he had hurt me too many times for me to console him, yet I tolerated him in the meantime. But despite how quiet he was now, he could soon forget his troubles and get back to his routine and causing us our stress. Following up with the 'stealing prep' incident. The head chef tells us, to be easy on him, that his father died. But if his work is as inconsistant as the times before and the mistakes keep coming, can we resolve them to be for this reason? I don't want to disrespect him for any loss he suffered but does my charity extend to my dispair? I haven't targeted him, I have kept quiet to this day about all the things he's done just to me, but with just me supporting my superior two days ago, the boy spent all of yesterday ignoring me, not talking me or even acknowledging me to be in the room. Am I upset, no. It's peaceful, Do I think its fair that I am the one in his eyes that has wronged him? No. yet once again I am the victim to people who think they own this world.

To thine self be true.

I’ve thought long and hard about what it is that bothers me. The world to me is scary. Every time I think I understand something, something else shocks me. But my biggest worry is how desperate and vain the world is. Everybody wants everything, the world has lost its patience and has begun to spiral out of control, no one lives by their means anymore, and everything has to come down to a competition, a comparison of thy neighbour. The couple who max their credit cards at Christmas to buy everything that is expected by their children, to be good parents who have good jobs and good incomes but lost their way through the year, now as the joy is over they realise the mess and struggle ahead of them, the gifts get forgotten, lost with the message of giving that was supposed to passed on with them; now the torment of paying it all back is a reality.  If I have to stay here, then I want to do so alone, like an ostrich has its head in the sand, I have my home and my family and I will hide myself. Each morning I fear even the sunlight, something so sacred, the warmth that all winter I crave for, the driving force of life, inspiring me, warming my blood as it shows me new life in spring. But that’s been taken from me, I cringe to pull the curtains and let even a beam of light enter my life, I resent even the natural world. Preferring the dark shadows of night, the beacon that is the glowing moon, so bright but so cold, the epitome of loneliness as it sits night after night staring down on us wondering why so many hide from its company as soon as its sibling settles in the west.

I’m not sure if I ever really had a problem with loneliness yet we are all programmed to experience a life with company. It is sort of droned into us from an early age before we ever have the chance to learn anything different. With age come decisions and the end of the learning curve. You start to consider consequences before making the leap of faith, taking into account past experiences and conclusions. Despite the fact that I had experienced a relationship and fathered a child, it hadn’t worked out for the best, I was alone again and for the longest time in my life, I enjoyed it and hated it but I suppose most of all I understood it a little better, but I was still young. I still allowed things to affect me because after all I still didn’t know or understand fully what it was to live your life. I had my opinions and tastes and nothing was going to alter that and damn it, I had learnt that from these choices I now cared little of other peoples opinions of me. But as for spending time, that is, my life with someone, I still thought this to be something worth while, I guess I still believed in love and happiness, and I still do. But it is the affliction of every young individual to not be patient but to live with your heart on your sleeve. To dive head first into everything that spurs an interest. That is when we get hurt and caught in the wreckage. We meet someone, we open up to them, we talk endlessly for hours with them and then when the time comes that they don’t want to reciprocate, bang, it’s the end of the world, ‘why?’ We ask ourselves. There is nothing or no one to tell you the reasons or the answers definitively. It’s just another piece of the puzzle in working out what it’s all really about.

But for me I suppose it stems from a lifetime of being ignored, or rather people just not listening, always having the larger voice. It’s fine though, I grew up faster, understand the world a little better, and know who I am. I'm not a recluse but at the same time it’s easy to seclude yourself a little to avoid peer pressure. But I think to question yourself gives you a stronger moral backbone. But it also stems into other emotions, I question the lifestyle I lead in respect of my job in which I dislike and feel trapped. Everyone says I can change, do something different like it’s that easy, I have responsibilities. I am a muzzled dog wanting to bite that bad mans leg; it seems I am constantly restricted and always in the moments of clarity, when the words and ideas flow; like fish in a strong current, they twitch their tails and are gone no sooner than they are disturbed. Leaving such bait to be returned to the owner, only to be discarded and forever lost- wasted in the mind field of original thought and theory.

A fetal pose to hold my own,

My youthful source declining,

A primal curse of mine alone,

Mental torment thriving.

Don’t stay with me or get too close,

Your very sight offends me,

I’ll fight you all to protect my own,

My troubled mind compels me.

I regret lots of choices that were perhaps put on me early on life when as kids we don't have the maturity to understand. How are we supposed to know what we want to do as a career unless we are pushed in someway, only now do I know. I regret choices and decisions I made in my personal life that have left people hurt, or gone forever and they'll never know how I felt because I couldn't express myself, which leads full circle to being ignored, my opinions being quashed; it became easiest to be quiet. Life’s hard, I'm not unhappy, I'm married and have a son, but I'm mindful of the past, the future and the world around me. I know who I am and will not have it any other way.
 But what is the meaning of life? This is it;

To be yourself, evolve as a person and procreate. Make something of your life by using your mind. It’s not always about the bigger picture, I think for the sake of sounding shallow, you have to focus on yourself, you may or not affect the world we live in but so long as you are the best you can be then you've succeeded.

If you take away these metal walls,

A dark cloud lingers.

Twisted as the sycamore falls,

A reverie of former glory.

Cultures bombard a hazy sky,

A hunt to find the sunlight.

Flashes of genius, incandescent

As a flash light on a weathered cliff,

No way to warn those that follow.

Frustration reeks of failure but 

Blooms like the snowdrops of winter.

Materialism and what it does to me.

This life is so materialistic, everybody has to have all the mod cons, they have to have everything nice and shiny and complicated otherwise somehow we are missing out on something that everyone else is experiencing. But then consequently it is the end of the world when something goes wrong. The light switch in the bathroom suddenly in the last ten minutes doesn’t work. But its not even the bulb that’s blown because that would be too easy, the connection is the problem, the light flashes if you jiggle the switch and the fan comes on but the light doesn’t stay on, then it stops altogether and so its now a problem that means removing the switch from the wall which then becomes an electrical problem which involves turning off the electricity which in turn  will no doubt  reset everything in the house, this all comes to the point when I just want to leave and go to one of these places where problems such as these do not exist, like Tibet to be a monk or India where they can’t afford luxuries, they scrounge through rubbish to make a living and defaecate on the street but yet their lives are rich with culture and family and I get lost when I have pee in the dark. Or when I open the bedroom door, I can’t because the door has swelled and then when I’ve fixed that the hinge gets a squeak. Once that’s sorted the doors starts jamming again and then to top it off I can’t open it at all because I tried hanging up too many clothes on the hook on the inside, now a shirt has fallen off when I closed the door behind me and as a result it’s wedged beneath the door when you try to open it. I give up. I go to the kitchen and with it being too early for dinner I wash up a little, but I only succeed in splashing myself with water before giving up because I know I will shortly loose my temper. I decide that the wall I have to paint could be started again and as I make space by tidying away the new toasted sandwich maker I discover the handle is cracked, but it’s new! Why or how can this be? Why can’t things just survive for 20 years and then break, you feel it more deserving of replacing it, but I just can’t bare all this torment. Voices in my head start shouting again, filling me with guilt for all these things less fortunate people are missing out on, I get frustrated with. Having too much is in many ways worst than not having anything and I suppose by the time I got to be 28 I was no longer fascinated or in deed threatened by these wants and needs of society. I always looked at myself as being the old man that we would all end up being in another 30 or 40 years perhaps but I’m actually quite comfortable to be that now. I had spent my life being ignored or rejected and I came to this point of view that from now on I just want an easy life, a quiet life. I didn’t feel the need to socialise although one must make an effort at rare times to put yourself forward and be social able or else you will be totally cut off. Sometime it’s strategically viable to make associates, ( notice I didn’t say friends) for in life it is often not what you know, but for whom you know, perhaps slightly selfish but self preservation is one of the strongest human traits that we have, yet perhaps less talked about.

P.S. I fixed the light switch, but then after a few days it stopped working again, in my confusion of how this little piece of plastic is playing me for the fool I started to hit it with the base of my fist. Perhaps, just maybe, something is lose and can be adjusted with a little gentle persuasion. well, when my fist went through wall even I couldn't hold back a giggle of exasperation, my wife however was not impressed, not that she said so, I could just see it in her eyes. Like when a cat peeps through sly eyelids when its disturbed, thinking, 'Touch my tail, go on, just one more time cos I swear I'm ready,I'm gonna get you, I only washed this fur ten minutes ago and now your sweaty man hands have stunk me out again.' 

Luckily my wife doesn't like to have long nails but she sure has a lobsters grip when she pinches you. 

The plagued mind.

The world just seems to go by so fast. Believe me I try to keep up but that's not a preconception that I ( or we) belong to the world, we are simply a part of it. So there is no rat race, you're on your own, run it alone trying to find out what it is that makes you you. For 29 years I have been trying to figure out it is that I am supposed to be doing, but for the life of me I'm not sure that I will ever know. This is in no way referring to my wife who I love unconditionally or the life I have at home, for they are without doubt perfect but the nightmare begins when I have to leave the house and venture out into the world; somewhere long ago I feel like I took a wrong turn somewhere, I was lead down another path when I should of been allowed to make my own decisions without the fear that the conclusion would directly affect anyone else but myself. we have one choice in life and we are all asked so young, ' what do you want to be when you grow up?' - but how can we know for certain. There are those that perhaps were pushed into some activity that the parents deemed important and by some stroke of luck you fell in love with it, that's fine so long as you are left to make the decision to carry it on. 
Today I got up, I made myself some tea and made some bread dough, part of an economy drive, it saves money, tastes great and its preservative and additive free. With this minuscule labour out of the way I sit myself down in front of the computer, The global threat that is the Internet has once again managed to sink its claws a little bit deeper into me, latched on it squeezes me, I am a slave to it and so this blog was born. Alas that is now, for this morning my new found love of writing wasn't there, it has been sent on holiday for a while, the social networks however seem to be the real monsters. Having fallen in line with a new site I am now fighting an addiction to it, but to contradict my profile title I can highlight one bonus to these supplements of the human soul, I felt the reasoning that if I had a blog I would at least be writing and venting some creative frustration while in the meantime also satisfying the compulsive verbal confession of our everyday lifes. Having found that I have little to say this morning I soon became a lost soul of the cyber world, when you start to wander aimlessly from site to site hoping that something might of bitten, its like fishing, your words are bait, you hook them on, cast them into the digital river where the current flows so fast and wait to see if you get a nibble. 
With that said I also try to leave some kind of informative tit bit in the form of a quotation or passage from a book or poem, I like poetry best in the morning. So my morning exercise so to speak is to rummage the literary world, foraging for edible bites of knowledge. Today by a writer whom I'd never heard of let alone read any of her books, her name is Angela Carter and I quoted her with this.


' I think it's one of the scars in our culture that we have too high an opinion of ourselves. We align ourselves with the angels instead of the higher primates.'


It relates to the fact we are so materialistic in this very shallow world. 
This kind of reminds me of an occasion the other day whilst at work. Not so much that it high lights materialism but more so how highly we think of ourselves I was minding my own business as usual, I have very little interest in anybody anyway; so whilst performing the mundane duties of a hotel chef producing a corporate menu everyday, a colleague wandered into my kitchen from her section. She found herself bored and thus found it necessary to poke her nose into my business by opening fridge draws, looking into tubs, cast her eyes of trays of already prepared food, perhaps over seasoning it with a few unwelcome comments,criticisms or questions all with a rather whiny tone. She then happened upon my note book which is primarily for my work lists and orders for the next day, a general memory aid. It does however serve another purpose, like a life line to reality I often seek. The frustration while there takes its toll and I vent with writing, sometimes composing a poem or quote etc. Sometimes I slip in a copy of  another authors poetry so that I can read it on such occasions. She found it perfectly reasonable to look inside, starting at the front she studied the mostly obscure scribbles that I had left, she exhausted her curiosity until it occurred to her that there might be something in the back so she wanted to see. I at this point intercepted, removing it from her. She protested, wanting to know what it was. I lied, trying to excuse myself by claiming it all to be personal home business. She hovered around, like a vulture knows when an animal is dying' it waits for the last breath before eventually catching its prey with almost no exertion, she waited in hope that I would forget the book, forget her hunger and simply walk away. This was not setting me in a good mood; for anyone to back me into a corner where I once expressed explicitly my wishes to be left alone is only going to stir the lion in me, I am smarter than any scrounger; and all I could think was, Is your world so shallow that you must paddle in mine?
To finish the story I tore out the pages that I felt incriminated me to a world of literature and using my mind, its terribly sad that such activities are deemed forbidden in a philistines world. 


My morning continued with some reading, I have a particular fascination with Graham Greene, he is a very true and passionate writer yet is not altogether happy, he criticises God and religion whenever he can yet in real life he had religion in his life, at one time at least. He suffered from bipolar and I think perhaps you can feel it in his work. Despite this sometimes I have to concentrate to follow so I worry whether I like him just because I want to, this however is futile since I share this passion with no one else.
I suppose he questions himself a lot which is where the religious doubts come from. I like that he doubts who he is as that's a relation I have to him, I actually think that doubting oneself is up to point a very sensible way of living so long as its controlled. The older you get the less you worry what other people think as you have a clearer vision of what you want, know and believe.
I took my wife (Erika) to the cinema this afternoon, the root of this blog is planted there, it sprouted a shoot of inspiration inside me, we went to see 'Black Swan'. It follows a girl who is so completely focused on her pursuit of perfection that her mental state comes into question, whether this is a defect from birth or something that has again 'sprouted' within her with age, its grows out of control as she stresses and worries about everything, everything being her ballet and her quest to have a primary role, her time comes in swan lake.
Although she has successfully earned the lead role, she has yet to perfect it. Rivalry grows in the form of a new ballerina who ( in her mind ) threatens her chances, she begins to associate this girl with an alter ego that sometimes also appears as herself, taunting her with all her insecurities. The mother comes into play as over bearing and controlling but is this true or does she understand the psychological problems of her daughter. The films builds to a point where she has moments of perfection followed closely by absurd doubts threatening to a point that sends her over the edge, will she find the perfection? will I ?
I revel in the fact that reading this I do like similes or metaphors that refer to the natural world, perhaps I have a longing desire to find a link to world that is ever depleted for the sake of a better one?! So much to see, too much we really don't want to.