Adverts

Not sure about these Googlified adverts, but I thought I'd at least try them out. It's not too invasive...

My son has four teeth pushing through together and my daughter has tonsils the size of golf balls. Isn't being a parent just wonderful?

The countdown

Actually, I am operating two countdowns. One of these is professionally helpful. The kids are running their PYP Exhibition in two weeks time, so there is a 10 school-day countdown on the board. It's good, as this helps me focus as well. After the Exhibition, there will be two weeks of, well, not thumb-twiddling exactly, but, shall we say, less focus...

Leaving is always hard to do well, I find. And we have booked our flights for the evening of our last day at work, so it really is as though we are running off at the earliest possible moment. Actually it's more that we're keen to get to France, to the house we bought last summer, and start working on it. Keen to see family too. Keen to leave Vietnam? No, not especially. We've had good times here - many more than bad, at any rate. It's also the only home our kids have ever known.

After 6 years, we have 4 weekends left then. That's 33 days. Including today.

Quotation time again...

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other....

~Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

Vegetarianism at its most simple...

800 million people are hungry and there’s no need.

We could easily produce enough food to feed everyone, if only we stopped feeding all the crops to the animals.

100kg of plant protein produces only 9kg of beef protein or 31kg of milk protein.

Doesn’t it make sense to just eat the plants?

Book Signing

I'm having a book signing at ISHCMC, which is kind of easy to arrange as it's the school where I work... Actually the kids are having an Action Day in support of a local charity (Wildlife at Risk) and I thought I'd piggy back the event and donate a percentage of profits to the same cause. Two birds with one stone, as it were. I get exposure and readership and WAR gets much needed funds.

There is potential to do the same with 'Benny and Binny' (which comes out in two weeks, incidentally) and an Exhibition the Grade 5 students are organising on the theme of Children's Rights and Responsibilities.

alpha to omega

Tuesday 15th August I have broken free! I feel like a character from ‘The Great Escape’; I can hear the theme tune in my head, see the steely grimace on McQueen’s face. I feel like breaking into a run, clicking my heels together, Andy Capp style. The sheer exhilaration of it! Was I so fed up with England that I feel this elated to be free of it? Apparently so. As the taxi pulled up to my new apartment Rachel shouted down to ask, in Greek, how much it was. The taxi driver promptly reduced his fare by almost half, dumped my bags brusquely on the street and took my money most ungraciously before slamming his door after him and speeding off, tyres squealing as he went. Welcome to Greece.

Five minutes later, re-united with Rachel and Richard, I was sat on a balcony in 32 degrees of Mediterranean sunshine, drinking gin and tonic with a slice of lemon, memories of a cold and damp northern England already faded. Yes! I think I’m going to like it here.

Later, in the privacy of my own room, I am assailed by the enormity of what I have done. I have always believed that a few short hours, minutes or seconds even, given the right circumstances, can change your life. Here I am, my life changed! I look out of the French windows, wondering vaguely why they are called that, and see mountains in the near distance. The cloudless sky is a brilliant blue. The heat is oppressive, but feels good nonetheless. I feel inspired. I feel alive.

What limits the ‘is’?

Fear

Take heart

Take a deep breath

Boldly step forward

Into your life.

Only you can do this

Only you can create regrets

For decisions not made

Chances not taken.

Only you can be true enough

To yourself

To allow yourself

To live.

I have this slightly uncomfortable feeling that I have come here to run away. Bollocks to it. What's wrong with running away? "He who fights and runs away…”

I throw my backpack onto the double bed. It’s the one I bargained for outside a pub in north London only two days ago from the guy who used to live here. Seventy-five quid for a double bed, matching desk and weird-looking hat stand. Not bad, I think, now that I see them. I need to sit down and breathe deeply and resist the temptation to giggle like a child. I have stepped out of my predictable life in England. I have stepped out of an impending marriage, of kids too-soon-to-be-able-to-offer-them-anything, of mortgages and debts, of the future I was following, my pre-ordained Hell. Now my future is no longer the claustrophobic place I didn't want to visit; it's wide open, full of uncertainty and possibilities I can't yet see. I like this feeling. Slightly understated, that.

I can't face unpacking just yet, so I shall wander downstairs to where I hear ice cubes clinking invitingly…

Doldrums

Not writer's block, as such, but just that annoying stage when one project hasn't quite finished, but is out of my hands and I can't do anything about it now. Waiting for licensing approval from communist authorities...