Thought Picnic: We will not be deprived of our memories

I beg to differ

Under the guise of misremembering with the advantage of being caught unawares in the heat of the moment or a discussion, you hear things that on reflection you know for a fact were never the situation when what is being referenced is recalled differently.

Oh, that we had the presence of mind to call out those things before they become the new narrative presented as the truth it never was. You do wonder if you are being taken for a fool or if the recollection is working in the assumption that you must have forgotten the reality that you experienced in full living colour.

How it really happened

The capacity of my memory sometimes amazes me, books and records of the senses in motion left apparently gathering dust in the shelves of the mind, at moments of deep thought and reflection get dusted off and leafed through to pages of an instant relived unmistakably as it is real.

It is against that vivid recollection that some seek a revision of the fact to suit a new narrative and press a point of view that is entirely invalid. If one were to look at this charitably, how we are being lied to and taken for dullards is expressed in their talking out of both sides of their mouths.

Our silence buys peace

The lasting effect of that sometimes-inadvertent deception is distrust and anger, for once again, you are discounted in the equation of things as inconsequential and irrelevant. Your restraint or occasion to the unfortunate absence of mind is taken as agreement and acquiescence. It ultimately comes to my writing to redress the false impression, it matters little whether it is read or not.

What we have been witnesses to, remains an aspect of our participation, that no one thought to ask how we were affected by it lends itself to certain cultural norms that appear to infer that time resolves things and children forget things. Nothing could be further from the truth. We compartmentalise and put things away to save ourselves from trauma, it is a self-preservation mechanism more than anything else.

We saw it all even if we did not offer an opinion then. When they think they have pulled the wool over our eyes, we see through it all, that the perfect is as imperfect as it is given to wilful corruption. What we excuse is for the sake of peace and de-escalation of the confrontational, the day we decide to challenge the presumptions, no one can be prepared for the shock of our clear perceptions.

Thanks for the day

A day attached to things

The 20^th of September when it comes to dates is one that just happens to have offered itself up for association, whether it was 40 years ago when it fell on a Saturday with a housewarming ceremony and birth of a cousin or 18 years ago; a Friday, when that dreary morning I was visited with a medical result that changed my life.

The 20^th of September becomes a placeholder, something to set focus on in the midst of many distractions, like every other day, yet, one that by arrangement heralded a new beginning, by expectation ushered in a new life and by accident revealed a new prospect.

In all, what is means is one new opportunity to give thanks for the house still stands, the lady does thrive, and we are still here as a new year begins the count to the next.

 

In precis

A capture

Quite an eventful week it was as a visit to the bureaucracy where the fortnightly visit is not set for a weekly return in the month of December.

Then helping out in returning a malfunctioning phone posing as a better speaker of English for a relation who needed to exchange the phone lest the shop became uncooperative.

We were successful to getting the exchange and a better deal that everyone was regaled with tales of my supposed performance.

Then for the next three days, I had interviews scheduled, the first that was difficult with the last two that went really well but one now has to wait for a response, hopefully not for too long and a favourable one too.

Not much of a blog but a journal for the record.

Great British Railway Journeys - Series 3

The exciting things

I always want to be fascinated, amused, amazed and sometimes surprised by things I see, hear, read or experience, I am, I hope a sponge for knowledge and insight about things, whatever they might be.

History resonates with me, the way one can glean knowledge from all sorts of things like this afternoon, I found myself watching Michael Portillo’s presentation of the Great British Railway Journeys now on repeat on BBC 2, is just good tonic for the brain.

He was travelling from Great Yarmouth down the eastern seaboard of Anglia through Essex to London and in the process showing the linkages between his experiences and historical events using George Bradshaw’s Railway Companion published in the Victorian times as his travel guide.

History, geography and politics

In the third series filmed in 2012, the episodes 1 to 4 now available in BBC iPlayer, the history of the founding of the railways linked up with grave robbing [On YouTube] in Great Yarmouth along with a law - The Anatomy Act 1832 - that passed to allow the corpses of paupers to be used for anatomical research, then to the lost city of Dunwich which was at one time as large as London and the capital of the East Angles but all lost to sea - dubbed our own Atlantis.

He comes face-to-face with the skull of Simon de Sudbury – Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor who introduced the Poll Tax in the 14^th Century and was beheaded for it by the Peasants' Revolt, a lesson of history that Margaret Thatcher did not seem to have learnt when she got Micheal Portillo to introduce the Poll Tax in the 1990s almost bringing down the government because of the Poll Tax Riots that followed the implementation.

History will repeat itself if we fail to learn the lessons it teaches studiously, thoroughly and with proper attention to situation and circumstance.

Places and events

Really fascinating stuff like visiting Waltham Cross which apparently derives its name from being one of the 12 night-time resting places of the body of Eleanor of Castile, the wife of Edward I when she was borne from Lincoln to London at Charing Cross – the king erected lavish stone crosses in all these towns in memory of her.

This all culminated in Hackney where we are told of the first railway murder – a city banker, Thomas Briggs was killed by Franz Muller, a German tailor – that did fill people with fear about travelling on trains.

Great and beautiful Britain and Northern Ireland

This was compelling stuff, I cannot wait to see the other episodes as they come online and I have seen many other episodes over the years that just give you the idea that England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are such beautiful and wonderful places to visit as you tease out snippets of history, legends and yarns from city, town and village alike, of people, industry, events and change – I love this stuff.

The official website for the Great British Railway Journeys can be found here – If you can playback BBC iPlayer content, then if you are as curious as I am, that would have been time well spent.

Nigeria: Our way about things

Reviewing old events

I found myself in a phone call yesterday evening that developed into a post-mortem of an event I attended the weekend before.

One had castigated the arrangements and organisation of the event but this was now a time to offer excuses for failings in the hope that the focus would be taken off those that were clearly responsible for the atrocious circumstances we found ourselves in.

Time and again, we find ourselves short-changed by our leadership, the people selected to represent us and the others they choose to surround themselves with.

Business as usual

Patronage, nepotism and familiarity offers a sense of comfort in lieu of efficiency and competence, the result of which the parties end up in a situation where they cannot challenge each other to do better and achieve any level of excellence.

Good money can be paid to get professionals to do a job but the scent of money amongst a cabal of sycophants in the sight of power leaves charlatans pretending to ability and after the debacle they are never in fear of being made accountable having pocketed a tidy sum for doing the barest minimum.

When mothers speak

But like every educated middle-class Nigerian mother might have once said to their kids, their approval of other company usually ranges from – “Too good for my liking.” to “Show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are.”

In both cases, those statements were never ones of approval but they rarely get to the point where they proscribe the relationships but the point is clearly made.

It is with regret also that our official representative having excelled academically still has the village and marketplace atmosphere re-enacted with stomach-churning nostalgia in the northern European climes of The Netherlands.

Maintaining the poor impressions

There is no clamber to improve rather the selfsame narrative is reaffirmed leaving many disappointed but then in the mood of a party the subjective jollity might just distract from objective scrutiny.

Culpability of the dastardly organisation lies with those at the top and to think a religious leader was involved in the arrangements but made a complete hash of the event – you can only begin to imagine the chaos that accompanies the matins and the congregants in fervent supplication.

We deserve better

Did the conversation end with the put-down that should not be repeated? Something along the lines of by translation – A village girl who just happens to have a PhD – good breeding and the penchant for understanding the consequence of wrong delegation and assignment of duties does not come with the accumulation of letters.

When it comes to these people, “of whom little is expected much less is desired.” Nigeria deserves a lot better than this, she surely does.