Sitting here, pen in hand

Friday 27th January

Sitting here, pen in hand, and I am lost for words.  Words that usually swirl around and around in my brain have suddenly deserted me.  I am sitting in a Pret today, I am giving Stabucks a rest, and I must say their almond croissant is excellent – the coffee is okay, but not a Starbucks I am afraid.  What is that secret ingredient they use, that makes you just come back and back.  I am looking out over Baker Street, watching all the busy people rushing about dodging the few drops of rain as they scurry to work.  What a strange world we inhabit, so much activity that seems so important and yet we ignore the really important things far too easily.  All of this rush and bustle and striving to obtain the means of survival, or actually to do far more than feed and house ourselves.  If only we could somehow get back to those simple ideals.  This takes me back to those BBC2 late night documentaries about some undiscovered tribe deep in the Amazon, the Kreen-Akrore maybe, and how different their lives are from our over-developed and greedy ones.  They seem to have all the time in the world for each other, and for building family and tribal bonds, and the children run around in the sun without a care in the world, no schoolwork, no exams, no sats, no worrying about a career for them.  They know what they will do when they grow up, they will be just like their parents, a bit of hunting, a bit of gathering roots and berries, a lot of sitting around and talking to each other – what bliss.  But then the corollary looms into view, the threat posed by the external world, the animosity and inevitable warfare with any other tribe invading their territory, even the film crew and documentary makers bring with them the inevitable contagion of the outside world.  That is why Communism failed.  That is why Aldous Huxley wrote of his Noble Savage living on a large island cut off from the rest of humanity.  This disease called Man.  And yes, that s exactly what we are.  A Diss-Ease, upsetting the ease of life.  Maybe that is part of the human condition, to never be satisfied, the real key to our success.   The very fact that we are essentially a miserable bunch of unhappy apes means that we are always striving for something else – no matter how much we already have.  And that is how we have conquered the world.  Some conquest my dears.

Where it will all end; no-one yet knows.  In the meantime, my Pret coffee has gone cold and is a little bitter now, so time to pack up and go back home.  Bye for now.