Thought Picnic: The Nourishment of Irksomeness and Hunger

Tales of the past

The small agonies of yesterday were promptly erased today as all the dread became stories retold to mirth and laughter.

My colleague arrived to pick me up at the Bed & Breakfast in the morning and returned me safely at the close of the day.

I could not help but observe this morning that despite the available parking spaces in various car parks around the office campus there were people who looked quite able-bodied that plunked their cars on the kerb talking up space on the pavements in what appeared as a lack of consideration for others.

Kippered and smacked

In my view facilities management should take a more disciplined stance towards this abuse, a radical rethink of campus requirements and provision is more than necessary, it is as essential as it is critical.

One has the good mind of picking up all those badly packed cars and hanging them up, front-down like kippers just slightly beyond the jumping reach of their respective owners until they were penitently reformed.

Testing and trying

We had our Starbucks breaks and a time of productive engagement before we had another conference to clarify a number of issues that arose from our conference last Thursday.

My patience was tested with the persnickety requirements of security to fill in some detail in the access badge forms, it was with great restraint that I wrote an email to remediate the situation; that was my third visit to reception where helpfulness was in seriously short supply.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is a system that could be so simple, but has been complicated by atrocious process and timewasting to suggest the activity is useful, needful and wonderful. I could add no more to that.

I shrink

Yet as I plan to retire tonight, I realise I am in a real Bed & Breakfast, far away from civilisation on a farm where the road is pitch black in the dark with dragons lurking in the gutters ready to grab at you if you dare wander the half mile down the road to the busy main road that begs to be crossed with the risk losing a limb.

Breakfast is good, lunch is ordinary and it is to bed with just a milk drink for supper. I am beginning to shrink and fade away – what am I saying? I just downed a can of Dunn’s River Nurishment, vanilla flavour, this time, I also like the banana flavour too.

Good night!

Cow piss makes them touchable

Touching the untouchable

Moving on from untouchable subjects one finds light relief in another situation that is supposed to make the untouchable touchable in India.

Apparently, a high-caste teacher and her accomplice performed a ritual of exorcism by spraying cow urine on low-caste students in order to purify them and help them study better.

Just like Nigeria, religion holds great sway that the ability to objectively analyse a situation with God-given brains and intellect is given up for the adherence to practices and doctrines that sometimes make the mental health of the practitioners questionable.

One sometimes wonders how prayers would work if an understanding of the situation is not properly grasped, researched and appreciated - instead, we pray vacuous words of incoherence and hope the jumble would line up properly somewhere and an answer not so obvious would materialise as a miracle.

Suddenly, the warmth of holy cow water might have a better soothing effect than calloused knees.

Meddling with another untouchable

For instance, one area in which people have required supernatural intervention is dealing with cancer; many expect a flash of light or some sudden enlightenment almost too reminiscent of a night club and disco lights.

Whereas, from a medical perspective we know that cancer requires nutrients; blood, water and minerals from the foods and nourishment we take, to thrive; certain drugs are being developed to starve cancers of nutrients thereby shrivelling the growths and making treatment even more effective.

A prayer or affirmation along the lines of denying cancers of nutrients you have taken to nourish your body might just be the key to a miracle; else another cup of cow urine might serve as tonic too.