London Fields
December 19, 2009
A conversation with a talkative ticket inspector on a train in India. After the usual preliminaries he asked
“There are no paddy fields in London?”.
“No. None at all”, I said.
“So. Only wheat then”.
“Er. Yes”.
“You eat beef in London?”
“Yes”
“And camel?”
“Not very often”
“You know, many Indian people are looters”
Hindu Haiku
December 19, 2009
Spotted while I was in India – a t-shirt whose message seemed to me to sum up all the ancient wisdom of the orient. It said
Love is fast
Life a vest
It has a certain euphony. It could almost be a poetic form where the second line is phonaesthetically formed from a partial anagram of the first, leaving a mysterious hint of some wisdom sensed but not fully grasped, there but out of reach – the memory of last night’s dream.
Or it could be just bollocks.
So much for bonobos
December 19, 2009
A few months ago I booked a day off work and bought myself a cheap train ticket to go and see the bonobos at Twycross Zoo – my favourite animals, which I’ve never seen in real life. This is the only place in Britain where they can be seen, and has the largest collection of non-human primates in the world. So I was up bright and early and onto the train looking forward to a pleasant trip in the spring sunshine, and a nice day out with some photos to show for it.
But as the train reached top speed just beyond Northampton someone stepped onto the track and killed themself. I could hear and feel the bumps as the the body hit the underside of the carriage.
The train came to a halt, of course, and there was silence until the driver asked the guard to come to the cab. There was then a wait of over 2 hours while a relief driver was brought, the emergency services cleared up the mess, and the train was driven back to Northampton to be taken out of service.
By then it was too late for me to continue – I would not have had enough time to see the bonobos properly, and my mind was on other things, so I returned to London where I had a very late lunch in Gordon Square Gardens in Bloomsbury, which cheered me up somewhat. Here are some pictures of primates enjoying the sun in a deciduous woodland habitat:
