We are social beings

Companionship always matters

I was watching a nature programme some years ago where a silverback gorilla had been fought and defeated that he had to leave his troop of gorillas. Within weeks the condition and state of the silverback had deteriorated, he was emaciated not because he was not eating, but because the loss of company, companionship, interaction, grooming and society had a radically detrimental effect on him, he was depressed and could most likely die soon after.

Then, I remember an event where some members of my family piled on me for not keeping in communication, all with the inkling that I was getting on with my life with no concern for them. Nothing could be further from the truth, I was alone and lonely whilst being expected to shoulder issues that should and could be resolved between people who see each other daily at home, but the mistaken belief that from abroad I could manage things was to absent themselves from the power of power and importance of human proximity.

The hard distant circumstances

Much as we can be social beings, we can also be hermits by choice or through circumstances beyond our control. We all need intimacy of a sort that is not available to all, but we cope with the situation we are in until opportunities come. I find that it strange that people still make no effective use of human interaction where the proximity exists. Invariably, we find scope for ignoring that benefit which for others is a luxury.

We treat those near with contempt because we feel those who are distant can fill in for that sense of community forgetting that many of those far away do not have that resource. We may not deteriorate like the silverback gorilla, but the need for companionship and intimacy cannot be insignificant.

Use proximity better

If only some of us did not have to be alone and find some social setting to feel just simply human, for we are not boundless in strength and capacity even if we appear to be so. We are vulnerable and sometimes envious of the community that others fail to appreciate.

It goes without saying that those who have friends and family around to see, to touch, to interact with and to find that social animal expression should exploit it better, if they can. If with proximity you cannot find your best humanity, how really can you do much more at a distance? In the same vein, have in mind that many do not have that situation, do not stress them with demands they can hardly meet.

Thought Picnic: Laying bricks of course

As the hours count

The day ebbs and flows with the feeling that I am watching the waves by the seashore. Every moment is a state of meditative contemplation of how each passing minute that mounts into hours might have been usefully lived.

Then there are times when the quiet, the idle and the void of nothingness feels cavernous enough to swallow you in dispirited awakening, you ask whether a better day is possible, even as you arrest yourself from despair.

Slowly getting there

Methodically and sometimes painfully so, I direct my concentration to things I need knowledge of. Things of which practice is needed to gain expertise and dexterity with good recall towards informed comment and I am surprised that slow but steady progress made.

Between reading, striving through curiosity and discovery, and watching courses played back on my television, the building blocks of knowledge with insight are being laid. Just something said and many other things begin to make sense. Handwritten notes and typed out comments on OneNote become the compendium the art and science of my profession.

I guess the most important thing on my mind is not work, it is life, love, and Brian.

To Brian, my special one

For a man so special

If I ever had a wish, it would not be to just write something but to be right there with Brian celebrating him on his special day. It is the third birthday since we met, as I have the sheer luck of being a yuletide baby, he gathers all the numbers in the mid-winter of his hemisphere, it is another July of us being apart.

Yet, as we plan and desire, things would come good eventually, that each special day would be spent in each other’s company, for he is a companion like no other to me. I fell in love with him when I thought there was no more love to experience in life but to trundle along.

The fact is our lives have been intertwined from long before our encounter, in the person of a mutual friend that had passed on years before. A glow came over me and a calmness enveloped my being, I found love in the strangest place and the person that embodies love is the most extraordinary personality.

Words would never suffice, I just know that I have been blessed with beauty, kindness, caring, love, hope, and a brilliant future with Brian. I wish him a most wonderful birthday, all the very best in life, boundless joy and happiness, and every good thing.

Brian, you mean everything to me, to have you as my partner is better than wildest fairy tale ever told. Happy Birthday! My love.

The UK: Protect yourselves against Boris' recklessness

It is out of control

The level of recklessness and incompetence that has greeted the government of Boris Johnson in the handling of the pandemic in England has been beyond the pale.

Having another look at the ignominious Coronavirus league tables, the United Kingdom comes in at third globally behind India and Indonesia in the number of new cases, and still ahead of its European neighbours in total deaths and at 7^th globally. [Worldmeters.info: Coronavirus]

The fact that the United Kingdom is ahead of its European neighbours in the vaccinations stakes has been squandered on allowing the Delta variant to run rampant in the country that we now have the highest infection rate of any industrialised country in the world. Nothing but incompetence and ineptitude could have allowed this to happen.

The vaccine talisman is lost

With the increasing trend of infections, the government with its penchant for running headlong into obvious disaster with far-reaching consequences is in full throttle. The Prime Minister announced today that most Covid restriction rules will be lifted on the premise that the vaccination drive is going so well. It makes one wonder how then with the vaccination we still have such a high number of new cases. [BBC News: Covid: Most rules set to end in England, says PM]

For instance, I was out at Primark for a cheap thrill on Saturday and more than 50% of the customers in the queue either did not have face masks on or the masks were worn like chin stirrups. This is in a city with literally the highest prevalence of new infections. People might be thinking having escape the scourge of COVID-19 they are invincible and untouchable, those who have had it and survived will tell a different story – you don’t want to catch this thing.

The other day, it was allowing apparently important people into the UK without restrictions or quarantining measures. The UEFA officials and their entourage have full fiat to come and leave at will. A minister even suggested important people are exempt from checks, in what might have looked like a Mosaic Passover of the Exodus times. The pall of the Coronavirus avowing, “If I see your importance and your entourage, I will pass over you.”

Masked lives matter

The question of masks has become unreasonably political, even the officials will not be categorical about the use of masks but devolving that to personal responsibility and common sense, this considering under strictures the virus gained footholds, at freewill, the thought of what might result is terrifying at best. Everyone knows, the virus is NOT under control, the new cases show it, the death roll confirms it.

This is my situation, I am in a vulnerable cohort, I cannot afford to be careless and reckless with my wellbeing. I will avoid crowds, closed places and improperly ventilated places. In public places and on transport services, I will wear my mask for my protection first because the Coronavirus must not be trifled with. Whilst masks can be uncomfortable, I wear a strap that takes the strain off my ear lobes and have a muzzle or guard over my nose and mouth to keep the mask from pressing on my face.

I would rather the discomfort of a mask that expose myself to the possible contracting of the Coronavirus. I can live with having a mask on, the idea of living with an out of control virus does not bear thinking off. For all the good intentions of reviving the battered economy after the impact of this pandemic, the more the people are in fear of the virus, the less bold they would be to dare getting infected apart from the foolhardy amongst us.

Protect yourself against the government

The mask is not a sign of the loss of freedom, it allows the freedom to do things with due consideration of the fact that there is trouble and danger unseen out there. That anyone would think personal protection is for wimps beggars belief, or they just have a masochistically breathless death wish. You never can tell.

Regardless of the number jabs you get like an opponent of Muhammed Ali, we know that vaccines are not enough and every like thing we can do to keep ourselves out of the statistics and memorials of COVID-19 would give us opportunity and hope to put this pandemic behind us. The government does not care, we are left to care enough for ourselves and that is the smart ticket around here.

The patience medication might not work

A walk of patience

Getting somewhere takes time and deciding to walk there when there are other means to travel faster or possibly safely is a test of patience, I determined to teach myself with the hope it might be beneficial.

Then, I consider the fact that I could be quite impatient, my capacity for endurance gets tested in many ways for which I should muster a lot to contain reactions I would rather not express. In the things that I have been fully persuaded of people or things, I can find a lot more to give whilst expecting little or nothing in return. My heart is in it.

Doing what I won’t

Yet, there are things that I would rather not do, things that have brought remonstration and reticence usually well-expressed but poorly received. My interest is forced, my engagement is coerced, and my patience is too easily exhausted. I rarely wait around to exercised, for my sanity, those chapters find closure long before they are fully written for others, but beyond completed for me.

With one who shares filial piety, that has been my regret. For to be who they could be seems to elude their availability. Too many have called me into situations I would rather not find involvement and when I did, I was quite disappointed. My anger I have contained, the harshest words have been in the phraseology of business-like formality, no excoriation or condemnation, just displeasure with a withdrawal somewhat recondite.

No seconds on minutes

Time is another factor for which my patience is quickly worn, whilst I do not watch my watch with addictive distraction, the use of time and the purposeful adherence to it being kept or where it might slip, communication exists, cannot be overstated. I then must understand that many are not conditioned to timeliness to the extent that one is punctilious.

When I think about it, I might have to admit that I am an in-patient taking treatment in a patient ward. The cure for elements of chronic impatience is being administered in ways no one is sure will produce the expected result. It is in progress, a work of hope and yearning.

Coronavirus streets in Manchester - XXXVI

Students of escapism

This time last year, the cars were arriving to drop students off at their accommodations to resume at university, it was a pandemic disaster for them in so many ways. The cars have now returned to take the students back home. The holiday season is now upon us.

One student, a lady probably on a dare took was about to go for a ride with her friend. They hired the hostel bicycles and the first rode away whilst the one I observed needed a different kind of dexterity to have a riding start on a bicycle uphill. She was unsuccessful, that she wheeled the bicycle up to flatter and more level ground.

Signs of a lie

Further on, it was a deceptive fig tree moment as I saw a large shopfront sign that suggested Caribbean and West African foods and goods. Out of curiosity, I crossed the road, donned my mask and pushed at the door, it was locked. Soon, an Asian lady came to the door, it was locked because she had to go to the toilet.

Obviously, I told her why I had come to the shop, and she immediately said there was none of that fare in the shop, the sign had to come down. How I suppressed the Jesus anger in me not to curse like he did the fig tree that appeared to be quite leafy but without fruit eludes me, I did not even take umbrage at having wasted my time, I brought drinks before leaving. [Bible Gateway: Mark 11: 12-15]

That sign however should have come down a long time ago. Stepping out, I faced a Caribbean street food truck with jerk chicken and all that. I cannot say it is suited to my palate.

And I laughed like Sarah

A diversion from destination

About coincidences, I would err on the side of the uncanny, or what would I attribute an encounter I had this evening to? My walk was to take me all the way to River Mersey and Chorlton Water Park, just about 9 kilometres in all until I came to a standstill where the police and fire engines had sealed off the main road that I had to take a detour.

When I first started my walks almost a year ago, I did circuits around Alexandra Park, that it came to mind, when I returned home to pick up a notepad and pen, was interesting, but it was not my direction of travel. As it transpired, my detour led to Alexandra Park and walked into the park and took a seat on a bench.

A nod and a greeting

I made a few phone calls and played a couple of Sudoku games on my mobile phone before I got up to return home, first needing to dispose of some litter in a bin. To my left as I walked up the wide path, an older black man nodded in acknowledgement towards me before I answered back and then he suggested he might have met me somewhere. I could not say.

He asked if I was Nigerian, I responded my parents were and he volunteered he was Nigerian, from the West, from Abeokuta. I had visited Abeokuta twice as my father used to work at a brewery that had offices there. One of those visits allowed a tour of Olumo Rock.

I laughed like Sarah

Typically, he asked if I had a wife to which I answered I have not been blessed with that kind of companionship and I have learnt to be content with the situation I am in. It was at that point that he averred that to God nothing is impossible. I intoned, he made me laugh like Sarah. This referring to a biblical story where Sarah the childless wife of the patriarch Abraham was promised a child in her old age within the year. She laughed at the incredulity of it, she did eventually give birth to Isaac. [BibleHub: Genesis 18:12]

The conversation continued, on the theme of the omnipotence of God with verses from Jeremiah, the Psalms, the book of Job, and the epistle of Paul to the Ephesians. This was interspersed with testimonies of success, inspiration, and ideas for progress in his life.

He had many stories

He was a career soldier who diversified into poultry business, suffered a failed first marriage yet got introduced to his second wife by his first and through his new wife’s British citizenship, he shuttles between Nigeria and the United Kingdom, pastoring a church in both countries. His repartee was engaging whilst serious and meaningful too. A good deal of it was in Yoruba.

I am wary of being proselytised and avoid the prospect of ritual, I have done too many from childhood into adolescence, but much of what he shared would be useful for meditation and consideration. We ended with a moment of prayer before asked to show me his wife’s store on the main road and after walking together a few hundred yards, he veered off towards his home as I did mine.

To laugh like Sarah

To laugh like Sarah is not so much an expression of disbelief but one measures a current situation against a promised outcome that literally seems impossible, yet, it is put in the scheme of things as possible, if you dare to consider it. To laugh like Sarah is to prepare yourself for something good, something long longed for that you might have now given up on it. To laugh like Sarah is to begin to write a different story in anticipation of the transformation from the ordinary into the extraordinary.

To banish all my fears and realise my hopes with my wildest dreams coming into a reality I could not begin to imagine. There will be much to laugh about, the laughter of joy, the laughter of goodness, the laughter of the miraculous, the laughter of gratitude. We can all begin to laugh like Sarah when we are told what we thought can never be is just about to happen. I am laughing like Sarah.