Back In Blighty Day

Today is Back In Blighty Day, in the Grand Calendar of All Things.

Our carefully booked flight was supposed to deliver us at 10pm on Saturday, but the BA jet coming to get us broke down on the way and had to land in Venice, stranding about 50 people in Cyprus. We were stuck in 5 star accommodation in Lemesos (Limmasol) overnight and caught a flight leaving at 5am and arriving at 8.30am UK time. Turns out that had we arrived as intended, we'd have walked right into some heavy violence, at just about the time there was a stabbing and shooting on the Holloway Road. My neighbours and local shopkeeper told us all about it - most of the lower stretch of Holloway Road was blue-lined and Bobby-shut as we tried to go and re-stock with provisions upon our happy, hungry return. We went a different route. I feel strangely to be so relaxed about absolutely everything and it makes me realise what stress I am forced to accept in order to live in snobbish, status-obsessed, vain, anxious modern London.

I didn't miss internet at all while I was away, nor news, nor family, nor friends. I missed making music and playing backgammon, so I bought a cheap Chinese acoustic six-string guitar which GGF has decided is now hers and regularly uses to learn chords, and a backgammon set, which we played regularly and competitively and which we left at the villa for all to play and enjoy. We read a lot, walked, conversed, swum, ate good food, and, in our cheap, economical hire car, we explored the island with it's fabulous east-meets-west natural abundance, its arid heat and its strange schismic, subliminal violence, its generous, charming, honest, greedy, careless, philosophical, ex-colonial inhabitants.

I really appreciated the difference in thinking time that this brief interlude afforded me, time for deep thinking which just doesn't occur when the cylinders are firing keeping everyone else happy. Perspective has been achieved and I have had some realisations and revelations, including one spectacular moment high in the Troodos mountains in the centre of Cyprus. There arose a spontaneous moment of truth such as only comes when you are unprepared and mistakenly believing you are doing something else, in which all was revealed to me. And when I say all, I mean all.

Better still - due to the wonders of technology and the nature of fate, I made a video as this enlightenment actually happened. Now as you, dear reader, may or may not know, this is not the place for that kind of rich metaphysical experience - I run a personal podcast for that over at deekdeekster.com - and soon I shall post it up there, but not right now as I am still putting things in order.

Since I got back four-ish hours ago, aside from opening a stack of snail mail, I've checked over 1500 emails (not spam), filtered the same number of emails (spam / unwanted), deleted a couple of dozen spammy Twitter users who have decided to follow me in the past three and a half weeks, and now I'm uploading around 200MB of photographs to Flickr. I also received a most marvellous present in the post which I am totally enjoying - the new Unio and Petitio album, entitled Cheers fanx ta - which if you've a mind for sheer anarchic fun and audio beauty, I urge you to purchase.

Food is ready - time to eat!