No Going Back

September 20, 2015September 20, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Saying goodbye is never an easy thing to do. I’m certainly not particularly good at it. In fact, there are quite a few goodbyes I’d like the chance to go over again, given the opportunity. You know the kind: the ones where it was all too fleeting, or maybe you didn’t quite say everything you wanted to say, or maybe the real goodbye never came around and you were left with a last meeting that wasn’t really a send-off at all. Most likely you’ve encountered that oh-so-very British awkward goodbye at least once in your lifetime: the one where you say goodbye to somebody, only to bump into them a few minutes later. Don’t you find that situation crops up a lot? It certainly does in Durham, anyway…

For a chatty gossip like me (you’ll just have to imagine the deep sarcasm there), I don’t suppose there’s much point in an elaborate farewell. It’s only really an issue if you’re going to be out of contact for an extended period of time, like stepping off the plane into the abyss and severing all connections with the outside world. Which is essentially what I do every time I step off the train at Three Bridges. I have a phone, true, but I rarely use it. I think I sent a grand total of three texts over the last three months, and all three of them last Sunday. Radio silence on my part doesn’t necessarily mean I’m traveling – I’m probably a lot more talkative when I’m on the road – but it doesn’t mean I’m inactive, either. I simply enjoy going for long periods of radio silence. Anything that needs saying can surely be said best face-to-face, and anything that’s worth saying is always worth waiting for. That makes me quite a distant person, I guess – and not the easiest to track down. For somebody who spent almost all of two years on teenage texting tenterhooks, it’s a policy I’ve guarded jealously for some time now. So in that sense, setting off on another long adventure isn’t really all that different from any other end of term break, as far as contact is concerned.

I’m going off topic. I suppose I’d better come out with it. I’m heading off to Spain in two days’ time – less – to spend nine months working in a secondary school… and I’m not coming back in between.

The idea first came to me when I had a look at the Spanish school calendar for the coming year. That projected end of term date on the twenty-second of December shocked me at first, despite having been schooled in Spain at Christmastime before. It’s all about the reyes magos out there, and that’s not until January. I must have got it into my head early on, but it wasn’t until saying farewell (successfully, mind!) to Andrew at Gatwick Airport that it hit me: I want to be out there for the long haul. Taking a year abroad isn’t just about honing your language skills to fluency, it’s about growing up – and Lord knows I’ve still so much more of that to do. What better way than to strike out on your own for an entire year? Because that’s what it’s set to be, with my second Arabic stint in Morocco striking up almost as soon as I’m done in Extremadura at the end of May, meaning I won’t see the green hills of England again until August 2016, at the very earliest. That doesn’t trouble me as much as it should.

I’m going to miss autumn in England. No, I’m really, really, really going to miss it

The last few days have been wonderful for a last taste of England. I consider myself extremely lucky to live in one of the most charming spots in West Sussex, overlooking a dream-sequence of rolling hills as far as the eye can see, right up to the point when they tumble into the sea to the south. Autumn’s in the air, the forest is full of mushrooms and the buzzards that nest deep in the woods are cartwheeling noisily through the skies as usual. Morpurgo described them ‘mewing’ in one of his books and I can’t think of a better way of putting it. This is England, and I’m going to miss it. But there’s something in the air, telling me it’s time I should be moving on. Maybe that’s autumn. The signs are everywhere. The leaves on the oak trees are going a gorgeous golden colour. Out on the school rugby pitches the odd wheatear sits taking a breather, whilst flycatchers and warblers hurry on through the hedgerows snatching a quick meal on their way home. But most telling of all are the great flocks of swallows and the martins streaming on southwards overhead, and in a couple of days I’ll be following them. Maybe I’ll even see some of the same individuals swooping by from Villafranca. Who knows?

Ten points if you can see the buzzard in this one

The hardest thing for me to leave behind – besides the monstrous tapestry, which is never going to be finished anytime soon – will be the growing mountain of books in my bedroom.

A year and a half, five metres in and still slaving away

A year and a half and still slaving away…

It’s pretty daft, but for an aspiring writer, I’m late into the fold as regards actually reading. I got it into my head once that if I never read any books that contained ideas similar to my own, I couldn’t get done for plagiarism, because I’d never have noticed the similarity. How very typically overcomplicated of me. The end result is that I haven’t read a decent book – besides Pavilions – in nigh on ten years. At least, one that hasn’t been prescribed by my course. Now I’m motoring through them at lightning speed, assisted by all the iBooks freebies, an immense library at home (courtesy of my equally bookish mother) that I never truly appreciated, and an all-too brief visit to a real bookshop over the weekend.

So many books, so little time…

I say real to distinguish it from your average WHSmith or Waterstones. Seriously, this place had everything. All the historical fiction you could shake a stick at. The entire Hornblower saga. Flashman in abundance. Sharpe, Iggulden and even the master of the art herself, M.M. Kaye. All beautifully spined, deliciously musty and lovingly second-hand. A new gadget may be a good thing, but there’s nothing better than an old book. Mum found a particularly beautiful pair of illustrated Arabic dictionaries – formerly the property of a military attaché, as stamped. Oh, I could have died and gone to heaven. I was in kid-at-Christmas mode. If I’d had this newfound book obsession just two years earlier, I might have given languages the boot and applied for an English degree. The only thing holding me back at the time was a general reading apathy…

Today’s been the downer of the month for no other reason than that every so often I have a lonely spell where it takes a lot to lift me up. Fortunately I’m in the best place for it: start of term or not, the grounds of Worth Abbey are no less than the finest place I’ve ever encountered for soul-healing. Alright, so the stone-pine copse along the Raya Real with its attendant black kites just comes up trumps, but that’s not on my doorstep every morning. Not yet, anyway. Besides, when the loneliness birds come flying in, the open world is always there. Nature’s an unpredictable lady at the best of times, but she’s never let me down. I’ve said that before, and I’ll say it as often as it takes to drive this funk of mine away. Everything will look better in the light of a new morning. It always does.

Waldeinsamkeit – the feeling of being alone in the woods!

These are curious things to dwell on when home will be so very far away for the next eleven months. But home is where the heart is, and mine has been in Spain for as long as I can remember, and that’s got to count for something. Maybe she’s out there, and maybe she’s not. That’s not for me to decide. If fate decides to cut me a break and give me a good turn, I’m ready to run with it. But one thing’s certain: I will leave Spain fluent. If I can leave the country at the end of the year as bilingual as the grandfather I never knew, I’ll have accomplished a dream two generations in the making. Being a quarter Spanish will mean so much more.

I will be fluent. And that’s a promise. BB x

A Distinct Lack of Bluebirds

June 24, 2015June 24, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Two days until touchdown in Jordan. Officially speaking, that means my Year Abroad starts in earnest on Friday. Two words for that: country fudge. That sure came around fast. Two months in the Middle East yawning before me. A grey yawn rather than a black one, in that I don’t really know what to expect. I’ve done a bit of long-distance travel in Uganda and seen my fair share of Arab cities in Morocco – loved Fes, found Marrakesh over-hyped and absolutely loathed Casablanca – so I’m in the dark as regards Amman.

I’ve had loads of helpful suggestions from friends, friends of friends and their sixth-cousin-once-removed on what to see and do in the city, but if I’m honest, I’ve only skim-read most of them. Just once, I’d like to go somewhere without knowing the place inside out and back to front. That, of course, is more often than not down to copious procrastination, which requires you to have a lot of time on your hands; something which, for once, I don’t really have. Diving blindfolded, basically. It’s not the safest way to do it, but since when was the Middle East ever truly safe? (…nope, I’m not expecting you to follow that logic. I struggle with it sometimes) Of course, it’d feel a lot safer with all this outstanding admin tied up, over and done with, but I’m still wading through that. With a little luck, I’ll have most of it resolved by tomorrow evening. Fingers, as ever, well and truly crossed.

Fields of Gold

It’s good to be back in West Sussex again. I needed that two-day soujourn at home to see Dad and the bro – and the cats, one less than last time – but two days is barely long enough to settle in. It was more seeing like a snapshot of life back home: Dad out for work before eight, bro up and about on his bike a couple of hours later. I guess what I needed most of all was that long walk home along the cliffs. I’d forgotten just how long a walk it is: finding your way from Dover Priory station almost all the way to Walmer is a two hour effort at least. It’d be a lot faster if you could just walk along the road, of course, but the last time I tried that a police car ended up taking me the rest of the distance, with no shortage of suspicious glances. Never again. Besides, when the weather’s as fine as it was, the clifftops is the place to be on a summer’s afternoon.

Blue Skies over the White Cliffs of Dover

No place to be alone, though. In two hours and ten minutes of walking I never saw another lonely soul on the cliffs. But then, that’s nothing new. No shortage of families and lovestruck couples, however. And why not? It’s a stunning backdrop, once you get away from the noisy port down below. It was a little too hazy to see France clearly, but you could just about make out the shoreline on the horizon. Some of my companions – the ones who (wisely) stuck to their guns and studied French – are already working over there. I’ll be heading that way, too; only, a few thousand kilometres further. If only that flight could stretch just a little further and land me in Yemen. Bah, cut the middle man, just drop me somewhere in the Ethiopian Highlands. Gap Yah alert, but I’m having major Africa withdrawal symptoms right now. If I didn’t have this morbid disdain for cities, I might well have made a beeline for SOAS over Durham. Perhaps.

No regrets, though! There’ll be another time, I’m sure. In the meantime I’d better get packing, form-filling and brushing up on the Arabic; al-Kitaab’s gone neglected for over a month now. And then, and only then, will I try to decide between Ethiopia, South Africa and Cameroon as the next grand adventure… BB x

Permit Number A38

June 21, 2015June 21, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

All this admin will be the death of me. It’s by far the most difficult task of the entire Year Abroad and I’ve hardly even started. Throw into the mix that I’ll be out of the country in five days’ time and it just gets even more needlessly complicated. Erasmus, ICPC and Placement Agreement forms… They’re all well and good, but it’s the little complications they entail that screw over the whole business. Scanned copies of hand-signed signatures, for one. Only one file allowed per application, for another. Try a passport-sized photograph that must be signed by a relevant public official from a list of possible professions, excluding teachers, lecturers or just about any other convenient notary. My parents are both music teachers. Whilst our family scope is (in this case alone) fortunately minimal, the rest of the social circle I’ve grown up in is filled almost entirely with musicians, artists and other ‘vagrants’ of that nature; those not deemed in a ‘reliable’ position for affirming my identity. That, and they must have known you for at least two years in order to confirm you are who you say you are.

Then you need a chequebook to pay for the whole shebang which, unfortunately, I have not had in my possession for almost five years now. Another unnecessary complication. Admin just makes me go to pieces. As I said, it’s not the idea of it, but the little tasks that make the whole thing nearly impossible. And because there’s that shred of possibility, it makes it all the more exhausting. Oh, and did I mention a deadline? I didn’t need to. It was obvious. Never mind the fact that my application gave details and addresses of two previous teaching positions, the government still needs proof that I’m safe around children. Which is fair enough, I suppose, but it doesn’t half drive me up the wall in frustration. Oh, I’m going to look back on all of this in a few years’ time and laugh, I guess, but right now I’m screaming.

There’s worse: this is only the beginning. At the end of the day, all this is British administration. Spanish administration is notoriously impossible to navigate. It’s almost as bad as the French passion for paperwork, and of course, it’ll all be in Spanish. And I’ve all of this to look forward to! Asterix and Obelix, I feel your pain… BB x

Packhorse on the Underground

June 19, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I have too much stuff. Simply put. If that wasn’t obvious once I’d crammed it all into two suitcases, a shoulder bag and a satchel, it was made all the more so when I had to lug it from Durham to Crawley, across the Underground with everything on my back. I weighed it on the bathroom scales when I got back and it seems that between the four loads I was carrying nigh on 65 kilos of clothes, books and other bits and pieces. That explains why my shoulders were on fire this morning, as if I needed an explanation. The insides of my fingers are still burning from the strain. By the time I got to London Victoria I was actually dragging the lot across the floor, bent double, in order to keep moving; my fingers felt like they were on the verge of falling off. If it weren’t for an angel sent to help me at King’s Cross – a kindly Bolivian mother of three who shouldered half of my luggage for me when I collapsed in the Underground terminus – I sincerely doubt I’d have made it to Three Bridges in one piece. Typical, that of all the people in the Underground, it would be a Spanish speaker who came to my assistance. London can be so very faceless and yet there are beacons of hope shining in the darkness. I hope that doesn’t sound too disparaging. I was dead on my feet yesterday and even less sympathetic towards the metropolis than usual. The Underground is bad enough when you’ve only got one load to worry about, let alone four; one strapped to your back, one over your shoulder, one in one hand and one in the other. But all’s well that ends well – I made it home!

And that’s it for Year Two. Kaputt. After all the stress and strain I’m home again, and I assure you, I’m not taking anywhere near as much stuff with me to Jordan, let alone when fourth year comes to call. Yesterday did turn out some great news though: I’ve been selected to represent Durham as an official ‘Study Abroad Blogger’. Everything I could have wanted and more. I’ll post a link when it’s all been smoothed out to the main page so you can keep up with my colleagues’ exploits when they set off for their various destinations in September. As for me, well, in a week’s time I’ll be on a plane bound for Jordan, via a brief layover in Kiev. Two hours isn’t enough to get out of the terminal and stretch the legs, so to speak, but no matter – Andrew and I will have time to explore on the way home with that generous twelve hour layover. That, at the end of a week to travel around Jordan to take in some of the sights. Candlelit Petra, anyone? Something to look forward to. Get excited: it won’t be long before I’m no longer clawing thoughts out of the air but serving you anecdotes fresh from the Middle East. How’s that for a breath of fresh air? BB x

Nobody expects the Northern Lights

June 15, 2015June 15, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

We were called in to hype up the revolutionary atmosphere of the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta this morning. How we managed to learn a whole new mash-up in less than twenty-four hours is beyond me, but we did it, and they loved it so much they called us back for a second, not-so-surprising run followed by two of our most popular hits, the Dollar mash-up and Dancing in the Moonlight, our first single. You can get your hands on a copy via Bandcamp by following this link:

http://durhamuniversitynorthernlights.bandcamp.com/releases

Just like the last gig, the surprise was on us instead – what was supposed to be a minor gig turned into a real showcase. I’ve said it a thousand times already, but I’m really going to miss this crowd. Even if I have had time for literally nothing else this year. Well, my curfew’s ending; it’s back to the housework with me. See you on the other side! BB x

@DUNorthLights Thank you for getting involved with our #MagnaCartaDurham celebrations! You were brilliant! pic.twitter.com/MkimSEmtj7

— Durham Uni Library (@dulib) June 15, 2015

Thrice and Once

June 14, 2015June 14, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I’ll be home in four days’ time. Staring blankly around my still alarmingly cluttered room as the sun sets outside, however, you’d never guess it. Two days’ clothes and my formal wear are lain out on the table in the corner, and I’ve crammed everything else – including all those goddamn shirts – into two suitcases. The wardrobe still looks a mess, however, largely due to the jumbled mess of coathangers, a onesie I’ve yet to wear (I don’t honestly know how I came to possess it, I can’t stand the things) and that ridiculous Soviet coat I thought would be a good fancy dress purchase, staring back at me as a poignant metaphor for the folly of flights of fancy. The only things noticeably absent from my room are all the books, packed away into three boxes. Since I’m already having to carry two suitcases, a satchel and a tog-bag on the train, I’ll have to split the three between friends who live nearby. Much as I hate asking for favours, I’ve gotten into trouble for not doing so before, and now’s just another example. Thank goodness for golden hearts. There really is such a thing as having too much stuff. Remind me never to take this much with me again. I’ll be living out of a rucksack in Jordan.

It’s that critical time of the year when, just like at the end of every term, there’s a moment’s lull before everything comes along in a gigantic rush; this time in the form of a flashmob, Erasmus applications, a major financial crisis vis-a-vis Jordan, Castle’s June Ball, module application, Student Finance, exam results, working out how I’m going to get everything home and lastly, and perhaps most importantly, leaving dear old Percy Square in a respectable condition. Definitely not in the condition we found it – which was lamentable, even for a troglodyte like me – but perhaps in the state after our first week, when we’d blitzed it to within an inch of its life. It’s the swan song of my second-year juggling career, and in all honesty I’ll be glad when it’s all over. Tensions are high on all sides and it’s no environment to live in. But perhaps that’s best. It makes leaving this place a little easier. I mentioned in my last post that Durham is sometimes too much for me, but it’s still Durham, and it’s as much in my heart as Canterbury. I will miss it. Truly.

And as if to remind me what I’m leaving behind, after a sage talking-to from one of my housemates, she pointed out of my window and told me she thought she’d seen a hedgehog. I went out into the garden to have a look and found two skulking behind the pond. It didn’t take long – they’re noisy little critters. Neither of them seemed at all bothered by my being there; one must have noticed eventually, but instead of freezing or scurrying into the bushes, it sped across the lawn and stopped right at my feet to investigate. That’s the third magical mammal encounter in as many weeks. I’m over the moon. Just goes to show there always is a silver lining, especially in the most unexpected places. Here’s to one last juggling spree. BB x

Curious George

Summer Blues, City Blues

June 13, 2015June 14, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

There’s no better birthday present in the world than an invoice for nearly two thousand dollars. What a way to start the day. Even off the back of a very generous exchange rate, that’s still a cartload of cash. Of course, what with Student Finance working tirelessly behind the scenes, I suppose it’s easy to forget that I’m putting myself further and further in debt with those £9000 a year tuition fees hovering silently overhead, unseen until they pounce, leech-like, on my first pay cheque. That’s just a bugbear my generation have to face, I guess – not with apathy per se, but with a grudging acceptance that it’s the way things are. So yeah, in short, it was a good start to a twenty-first birthday.

In search of peace of mind, I took a wander out of town for somewhere quiet to sit and think. I initially made for my usual spot beside the river in the Broompark Woods, but as the sun was shining so gloriously and as I hadn’t actually done it before, I set my sights on the hill high over New Brancepeth and made for the top. It took a little while to climb down into the valley and up the other side, and it was quickly apparent that I’d left the Durham bubble far behind me. Everywhere I went I got strange looks from the people I passed; I guess not many students make it this far out of the bubble. Which is a crying shame, because it’s simply b-e-a-utiful. As soon as you’ve put a mile and a half between yourself and the city itself, you’re back in the real north again: fields lined with dry stone walls, rolling, sheep-strewn hills and open sky. Romantic, much. But you already know I’m a sucker for that kind of thing. From the top off the hill overlooking New Brancepeth, about an hour’s walk from Durham itself, you can see for miles in all directions. The cathedral tower, poking out from the valley in which it sits, dwarfs the city even from so far away. But what gets you is the silence. I’ve spent this year living on the fringes of the city, but you can still hear the hum of the A167. Get yourself out onto the hills and it’s another world. Just a couple of pipits, the odd yellowhammer and a single skylark singing their hearts out, with the far-off bleat of a lamb skipping after its mother. Rural idyll. Never mind its status, this is the real reason I applied here. If only I had the time to see more of it. I’d hoped to spend this end of term striking out around the north, but once again the year’s come and gone and I’ve not yet made the move. Fourth year will almost definitely see me finally striking out for Lindisfarne, the Lake District and the Farne Islands.

Durham City in the valley below New Brancepeth

I don’t know how I’m going to survive for the next two months. The Arab political situation and the basic laws of the land have left me no choice: if I am to continue to study Arabic, I must go to live in the city. Durham is by far the largest city I’ve ever lived in, which isn’t saying much, because it’s the only city I’ve ever lived in. And its size freaks me out sometimes. In less than two weeks’ time I’ll have to face down my fears and try to adapt to life in Amman, a sprawling metropolis compared to anything I’ve ever known. If I didn’t have a couple of good friends going with me, I know it would break me in days. I hope I can find somewhere to get away from it all, inside the city or outside. If only Amman weren’t so immense… The icing on the cake is the cost of it all. Two months’ study and accommodation in Amman is not exactly cheap. My twisted logic tells me that it’s just insulting to pay so much to have to live in a city, which is bad enough a situation as it is, but that’s obviously not the right way of looking at it. I’m just too much of a country boy for my own good. The sooner I can get out to some tiny, out-of-the-way pueblo in the Extremaduran heartlands, the better. My heart could do with the silence. BB x

Looking north from New Brancepeth

On the Brink

June 10, 2015June 10, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Twenty-one in a few hours. Blimey, did that come around quick! Rolling out the monster-drawing on the table in front of me, it feels like I only started it yesterday. In actual fact, I first put pen to paper just over a year ago – a year which has, what with a summer job, rehearsals almost every night and the trip of a lifetime to Morocco and back, come and gone before you can say Tinariwen. It’s set to be a boiler, too – a whopping twenty degrees, even high up here in the frozen north. Pity it isn’t predicted to go that one degree higher, to tally up with the twenty-one guests at my birthday party and the twenty-one hours I intend to be awake. Almost twenty-one and I’m still ridiculous about fateful minutiae like that. Something to work on over the next few years.

This year I’ve decided not to find myself another year older in Klute in the early hours of the morning. I did that last year. To be precise, I seem to remember not only spending the early hours of the 11th in Klute, but the final hours of the day in the same establishment. Hardly the grandest of venues for a birthday party – but it is Klute, and it’s kind of a local treasure zealously guarded by the student body on a Friday night, so I didn’t exactly see it that way at the time. This year I intend to turn twenty-one in the comfort of my own room. I’ll probably be working on the picture when the clock turns and the Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban audiobook I’m listening to will be nearing its conclusion. I predict the beginning of the time-turner escapade when the clock strikes midnight. How appropriate. I’ll try to get an earlyish night, I suppose. Lord knows I could do with one, after all these recent two o’clock finishes. It’s not the portraits that take so long, it’s the sitting, thinking and planning that occurs whenever I’ve finished one detail. That’s where all the lost hours have gone, I reckon.

So, since it’ll be another busy day tomorrow, I’d better make my plans tonight. And to kick them off, how’s about twenty-one things to do over the next few years?

Learn to drive
Learn to play bass guitar
Teach yourself ki-Swahili
Teach yourself German
Visit every Spanish communidad autonoma
Go to a music festival
Finish that picture
Find a palatable alcoholic drink
Get into a new genre of music
Get a girlfriend
Decide on a new adventure
Cut chocolate from the diet
Find a new hobby
Learn a martial art
Go for a real all-nighter in Spain
Set foot in the Sahara
Give an animal-related job a try
Set foot in the Americas
Be more like my younger brother
Learn to be happy with who and what I am
Rewrite the book ONE LAST TIME and take it to a publisher’s

I think that’s a nice little set of tasks. Not exactly Herculean, but there’s a few worthy challenges in there. These last twenty-one years have been amazing, but for Pete’s sake, I’ll be spending most of the coming year in Spain. It could hardly get any better than that. Here’s to another spectacular, adventure-filled twenty-one years. I should be so lucky! BB x

Always the Bridesmaid, never the Bride

June 6, 2015June 6, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Way back at the end of the Christmas term, my Arabic teacher sat us down and told us, quite matter-of-factly, that every year one Arabist comes back from their Year Abroad married. We’d all heard the rumour before, but to hear it from the lecturer’s own mouth was quite something. It’s like coming home from secondary school to your parents filling you in on the playground gossip. It just didn’t seem right. But apparently, it is. Arabists, it seems, have a bit of a knack for getting hitched on their year abroad. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that Arab men – or at least, those I have met on my travels in Morocco – are very forward about the whole marriage proposal thing, though I would hope that nobody actually takes them seriously… it’s normally just all a part of the bartering game, right? (At least, I hope it is – for Archie’s sake…) Strangely enough, it’s not just the girls who get hitched either. The split is a clean fifty-fifty, which is odd, not because girls get more marriage proposals – Archie can vouch for the contrary – but because the dowry paid to the bride in Arab cultures can be ludicrously excessive. Putting true love into a box in the corner for the time being, it’s a lose-lose situation for the men: hitched, grounded and probably penniless as well. At least the girls can put that dowry towards that nasty student loan debt. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

We drew up sweepstakes as a class a while back, trying to decide who was most likely to get hitched. Surprise surpise, I ended up tying with fellow gappie Rosie for the spot. Ha ha. Very funny. I’ll bet my sickeningly broody reaction to the Elvet Riverside baby last term had something to do with it. The joke’s on them: I’ll be in Jordan for a maximum of four months. Five tops, factoring in moving in and travel around. Hardly enough time to get to know anybody on a friendly basis, let alone well enough to talk wedding plans. How some students came back for Year Four with a wife and child is beyond my understanding, though an idiom involving the word ‘shotgun’ comes to mind. So sorry to disappoint, but I don’t think I’ll be coming home with a glamorous Jordanian bride, folks. It ain’t happening.

Mum’s opinion was that the whole subject was childish and foolish. It’s a time to branch out and set off down new roads, for widening horizons – not laying down roots. Never mind the fact we’re supposed to be mastering the language. The stress of an Arabic wedding, hypothetical though it may be, if simply not on the cards. Not that she’d mind in the slightest if I came home with a brown-eyed, dark-haired Spanish girl on my arm (‘Think of the grandchildren!’). Not that I’d mind either. Brown eyes, curly, dark hair, and a killer accent. I’m in heaven (maybe now you too can see why they put me at the top of the list…). There’s something intensely captivating about brown eyes, don’t you think? Or maybe that’s just my angst about my ice-blue eyes talking. I’m getting better at it, but it’ll still be a while before I’m happy with having blue eyes. It’s a curse for travelling around the Mediterranean, or anywhere else for that matter. It’s as clear a sign that ‘I’m a Brit’ as a sandwich board. When my eyes finally give up on me – long may that day be in coming – I might go for brown contacts. Though in the best of all possible worlds, I’ll have gotten over my self-consciousness for good by then.

In three weeks’ time I’ll be in Amman. Humbling thought. Presumably still in a hostel, searching for accommodation. Reasons to be a girl studying Arabic include: having the luxury of a homestay organised for you. Though I can see the practical reasons for it, it leaves guys like me and Andrew in the lurch when it comes to finding a worthwhile place to stay. We’ll just have to see when we get there, I guess. Isn’t that the most exciting way? BB x

Tommy Brock’s Reconsideration

June 3, 2015June 13, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Walking back from college last night I was lucky enough to cross paths – no, to almost step on – our college mascot. No, not one of the burly B-team lads, but the real thing: a badger. Only a little one, mind – any older and it’d probably have done a runner long before I was within earshot – but the scamp was bold enough to root around for worms no more than a few feet away from me whilst I fiddled around with my camera, trying to disable the flash so as not to stun the creature. The result, of course, is that all you can make out in the picture is a grey blur in front of one of the traffic cones. You’ll have to take my word for it that it really is a badger.

Brock hunting for worms in the bushes…

The buzz I got from this little encounter took me by surprise all over again. I guess the two students who walked past got more of a shock seeing me crouching and talking to this little beastie a few feet away in the bushes, at about twenty minutes past midnight, than I did seeing it in the first place. Not that it matters. I seem to lose any and all worries around animals. I can probably say without a shadow of a doubt that it’s the one thing in the world that makes me genuinely happy. That’s genuinely happy, mind. I get a kick out of a lot of things. But nothing, nothing gives me the same kind of buzz as spending even a few minutes with a wild animal. It’s the same thrill I had as a kid watching my hero, David Attenborough, and all of his adventures at seven o’clock in the evening on Natural World, Blue Planet or the Life series. And it’s never really gone away. It turned into a list-making, box-ticking phase when I was a teenage birdwatcher. Thankfully, that anorak aspect is long gone now. But I’m still the nature fanatic I was when I was a kid, and tonight was just a stern reminder of that. It was what a wildlife magazine I used to get called an ‘RSPB Moment’; just a moment in time when nature gives you something amazing. It doesn’t have to be big. Maybe even just a conversation with a robin in the garden. Or a fleeting encounter with a Montagu’s Harrier (that one will always be stuck in my mind). Other moments that spring to mind include finding a chameleon after a five-hour search along the Mediterranean coast, seeing the whites of a vulture’s eyes as it loomed out of the mist over a cliff and watching a mountain gorilla pull the most ridiculously human postures. I can’t escape the fact that, beneath all the other layers, I’m a true-blue naturalist at heart.

I chose to study languages at University, not just because I love travel, but because I knew it would force me to confront what was then – and to some extent, still is – my greatest fear, and that is people. Not in a phobic way, but I was never as confident around people as around kids or animals. Never work with either, or so the saying goes. To hell with that. I love them both. But animals especially. And I think it’s time I acknowledged that the real reason I love travelling so much is that it almost always brings me into contact with the wild. It’s not just the landscape or the cultures I go in search of, it’s the nature. If this is a career reconsideration moment, it’s not been a dangerous one. Not yet. Just a reminder of where my heart truly lies. I think we all need that from time to time. BB x