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

The World’s Most Beautiful Women

September 5, 2015September 6, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Why am I doing this?

No, seriously. Why am I doing this? This isn’t Amman. This isn’t even vaguely Arabic. We’re halfway to Kiev on a bus that isn’t the Skybus that Google and Tripadvisor recommended. Come to think of it, I didn’t even ask the driver where we’re going. It might not even be Kiev. I’m going by the size of the city and the great big river we crossed earlier and assuming it is. Other than that, I really don’t know. I can’t read the alphabet. Any and all Russian I learned in those four after-school sessions has jumped clean out of my mind, except that the letter P becomes R and K, T and A stay the same. Ten points for effort for this worn-out linguist! I mean, there’s no escaping it this time: this is sheer lunacy, even by my standards.

‘We could be going anywhere right now,’ says Andrew. ‘We could literally be going anywhere.’

Well, this really isn’t Arabia anymore…

We really could. It all looks bleak and Soviet; pine forests, grey skies and grim skyscrapers with peeling walls. Even the hooded crows look seedy. But I do have £33 worth of Ukrainian hryvna in my wallet (or at least, I think I do) and I plan for us to be back at the airport for six o’clock at the latest. So there is some semblance of a plan beneath the anarchy. Blimey, but what I wouldn’t do to have fellow linguists and Russian speakers Shahnaz and Rosie here with me now, if just to have a vague idea of what’s going on.

Nope, I don’t understand any of this

If that whim decision to go for the twelve-hour layover bothered me slightly at four o’clock this morning, it was practically crucifying me by nine, when we’d touched down in Borispol Airport and navigated customs. Andrew managed a good couple of hours’ sleep on the journey from Amman; I did not, and it’s really beginning to kick in now, as I’m no longer constantly on the move. But fatigue is the smallest of barriers to the determined adventurer!

…once again I find myself picking up the mantle some two hours later. Two sentences later I woke up with the iPad slipping off my legs onto the floor of the bus. So I take that back. Apparently fatigue has other ideas.

I digress. After a minor financial confusion over the exchange rate of the Ukranian hryvna, Andrew and I made it to Kiev (it really was Kiev in the end) with six hours to kill. Cue at least half an hour of ‘wow’, ‘I can’t believe we’re doing this’ and ‘this is absolutely bonkers’ as Andrew patiently bears my childish enthusiasm. We took a wander into the old part in search of the Bessarabsky Market to grab a bite to eat. Every single stall inside, without exception, was manned by what can only be described as the stereotypical babuschka. And no, try as they might, Andrew and I didn’t understand a word of what they were saying. But an idea struck me at one of the aisles and I procured a tin of caviar from one of the stallholders who was anxious for us to try a spoonful of all of her wares, from sweet to tongue-zappingly salty, from lumpfish to Beluga sturgeon. And if you think I’m exaggerating, I point you towards the sequin-scaled monstrosity lying headless on a mound of ice near the market door, barbels removed. It hardly needs saying, but this is a world away from Amman. Period.

Concrete block for make unification of great Russian Power and Ukraine

The miracle of Kiev is that there is so much to see in so small an area. Like I said, a world away from Amman. In just under four hours we had covered almost everything there is to see. Beginning with St. Volodymyr’s Cathedral, an elaborate Orthodox affair in gold leaf and black-robed majesty, we set off an a tour of the old city. There’s something really special about Orthodox churches. At first glance it all looks a bit showy: giant crosses, bold block colours, gold used just about wherever there’s breathing space, not to mention all the icons. But it’s a great deal more complicated than that. It was Andrew who pointed it out to me. The congregation, outnumbering the sightseers by about nine to one, were mostly women, in varying states of dress, but the one thing they all had in common was the wearing of a headscarf. A kind of step-down for us from Jordan, perhaps.

‘Surely it doesn’t work like that,’ says Andrew, as a scarfed young woman in high heels leaves the cathedral after making the sign of the cross twice across her chest and bowing out, a lurid pink thong showing above the cut of her miniskirt. Apparently, it does. You know what they say about book covers…

Overloading on the blue, much…

One of the subjects that came up in conversation with Fahed and Massoud yesterday was the subject of Ukrainian women, whom Fahed believed, as ‘proved by science’, to be the most beautiful women in the world. I set out to test that theory today, both to conduct some kind of fair test in light of such a sweeping statement (especially when any suggestions of Spain and Colombia had been overruled just minutes before), and more so to justify this ridiculous little side-quest into Kiev at the end of our labours.

Or you could just cut out the middle man…

I’m going to surprise myself, but Fahed’s got a point. Ukrainian women are pretty stunning. They must be, or we wouldn’t have run into not one, not two, but a total of seven weddings in the course of our wanderings. There’s also a heck of a lot of them; more than the men, anyway, at least from my observations. A bit like Elvet Riverside, come to think of it. But seriously, those weddings we walked in on (there was hardly any avoiding them, they were all over the place…) Flowing white dresses everywhere on a backdrop of marble steps, spiralling turrets and Orthodox spires. My heart was on a serious flutter. Perhaps it’s the healthy skin tones, the raven hair, or the eyes that shelter a mixture of light and dark? Or even the fabulous dress sense? No, surely it’s the curled smiles most of them are wearing… (I wish Nizzar Qabbani could help me out here, I’m teetering on the edge of the villainy of objectivity)

Somebody stop me before I make a rash move!

Before I go too far, I’ll throw you the anecdote that tipped me over the scale of utter disbelief of Fahed’s claim to conceding a little ground to the guy. In the grounds of the St. Sophia Cathedral, Kiev’s jaw-droppingly beautiful UNESCO cathedral complex, Andrew and I stumbled upon an outdoor recital by a young Ukrainian student playing quite possibly the largest lute I have ever seen. I believe, if memory serves, that it is called a bandura? We still had a good three hours to kill so we stopped to listen, and am I glad we did! No sooner had she put her fingers to the strings than the girl began to sing, and in all my years as the son of two music teachers I have rarely heard a voice so magical. Like a siren, but sadder and more graceful. I was totally drawn in – so much so that it took me some time to realise that the bandurist and I had been staring at each other unflinchingly for almost a minute before I snapped awake, and she’d been singing all the way through.

‘You should have got her number or something,’ said Andrew, as we moved on to the Great Gates of Kiev twenty minutes later. ‘You haven’t got forever. Get them before they’re all gone, that’s what my godmother told me.’

I’m not running out of time yet – at least, I hope I’m not. Maybe I should have done or said something. As ever, I was lost in the music, I guess. Too lost to appreciate that we kept looking back at each other after her set was over. My obliviousness reigns supreme. At the very least I have a good three minutes of her set on video, so I can listen to that siren song again if ever the mood requires. And by that I mean, of course, sleep. Andrew fell asleep during her recital. If I hadn’t been so entranced, I guess I might have done so too.

It’s ok, as long as I have cats I’ll be just fine

Water under the bridge, hey? But what an adventure, and what a way to end my time in Jordan! It’s been a pleasure to live and work alongside you, Andrew, and I wish you all the best in France (knowing that you’ll be back in the comfort of your own home by the time you read this, and that Babette won’t have to check on how you’re getting on in this long-winded fashion anymore!) As for the rest of you, dear readers, I shall probably take a few days’ hiatus to catch up on sleep, as I’m dangerously behind, and to clear my head. Just a few minutes in one of Kiev’s parks was enough to recharge my batteries right the way up – green, green, GREEN, oh my God, the trees, the leaves, the grass and all of the GREEN – but I intend to set up stores for the winter, as it were. Villafranca’s not lacking in countryside, but I’ve learnt my lesson, and I’m not setting off into the open world without a well-supplied heart next time.

There’s still another hour to go until boarding begins for the flight back to London. Farewell, До свидания and I’ll catch you all later. Yours truly needs a well-deserved break from all this madness. Until the next time! BB x

Jekyll and Hyde

August 22, 2015August 22, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

One week from today, I’ll be sitting on the beach at Aqaba with term over and my labours temporarily at an end. Two weeks from today, I’ll be waking up in the comfort of my own bed once again, looking out over the Sussex Downs. Three weeks from today I’ll probably be back in Kent with the family, to see my brother in especial before he leaves for University. And one month from today, I’ll be sitting in the bus station in the sunblasted Plaza de Armas in Seville, waiting for the coach that will take me northwards to what is to be my home for the next nine months.

It’s all moving thick and fast roundabout now. I’m taking some time out in Ali Baba to work on the novel for a bit. Most everyone else has gone off in different directions: some to Wadi Mujib, some to grab a falafel lunch, others to one of the nearby cafes for some quiet study. I’m here in search of my voice, which I seem to have lost whilst I’ve been out here. I spoke to Andrew for quite a bit about this last night, reading back over some of my notes that I penned last year, in various states of emotion. Andrew gave me quite a jolt when he opined that my writing was a great deal better back then. Those aren’t easy words to take for somebody who’s set himself on the path to bettering his writing… How could this be, I wonder? Is it because I’m writing every other day, so I’m drip-feeding my thoughts rather than saving them up for a grand oeuvre? Or maybe it’s because I’m not finding enough time for myself to think properly out here in the city? I think there’s a bit of truth in both of those. My writing has become rather acerbic of late. Compared to all the self-help greenie moralising I used to throw about, my later work comes across as bitter, over-excitable, and above all else more than a little opinionated. I hope it’s not a lasting trend. I took the time to read over my notes a second time after I’d discussed them with Andrew and I’m a lot happier with them, though I know I wasn’t at the time. Maybe I’ll look back on these blog posts in the same way, and maybe not. My saving grace is that there was a victory achieved last night, however small; after comparing my writing, Andrew conceded that maybe sticking it out in a city really isn’t good for me at all. Because if there’s anything that might be described as a true window into the soul, it’s the way we express ourselves, poetry, paint or prose.

My summary of Amman a week ago was misinterpreted by some as an all-out attack on Jordan. I’d like to come clean on that point and confess that it’s really not that. In many ways, I’ve loved Jordan. The dizzying views up into the Golan Heights from across the river, the crashing waterfalls of Wadi Mujib and the stars stretched out like glittering velvet over the desert. Dana in all her majesty. Jordan is beautiful. And capital city though it may be, even Amman has its bright sides. In my melancholy, I’ve been unable to see it; largely, I guess, because I didn’t want to see it. It eludes me still. Picture this: you’re at the cinema, and the guy in the row in front of you turns around and asks you to stop kicking the back of his chair. You didn’t even realise you were doing it. Of course, you then spend the next five minutes wanting the kick the chair even harder – or is that just me? There’s a window into my mind and a half.

What I’m trying to say is that I have a bad stubborn streak, and this city – or any city, for that matter – brings it out of me like never before. When somebody tells me to stop doing something, or that I’m going to like something, my first instinct is to disobey. Watch Mean Girls, they say, ‘because it’s unavoidable… it’s part of our culture’. Instinct tells me therefore I cannot, under any circumstances, be made to watch it. Wait it out in Amman, they say, and try to learn to love it ‘because city life is just something you have to get used to… and Amman is actually a really cool place once you get to know it.’ Sod’s law dictates that it cannot be. It’s the old ‘I’ve come this far, I can’t turn back now’ line.

When you set it down in writing, it’s really quite pathetic…

What’s a guy to do? I reckon the thing that I’m missing most of all, perhaps even more than escaping the metropolis, is time. Time to think, to write, and to be myself. It’s not just my writing that got bitter out here, it’s my personality. It sure is helpful having people around to point that out before it gets rotten. The year abroad is such an important part of your degree that it can feel criminal to ‘waste’ even an hour of it. As such, the last two months have been almost non-stop. Wake up, class, study, go downtown, shopping, sightseeing, studying, repeat. I rarely have more than an hour or so to get my head straight and that’s seldom in the solitary silence that I crave. Maybe I’ve made myself too dependant on ‘me time’; if there’s one common feature in all of my notes from last year, it’s a heavy emphasis on the importance of ‘me time’. I was busy then, too, rushing from class to rehearsal to gig after gig – and yet, I still managed to find time to wind down every week or so and defuse. Not so here. And it shows, right?

Oh, there’ll be one last big reflection on everything that’s gone down out here in the Middle East before I go. I hope that will be a better read, too. A blog in itself is a funny old thing, pasting your thoughts and feelings for the world to see. But that’s what writers do, paper or pixels. Some of my best writing was set down when I was in the throes of a hopeless crush, some time ago. Or maybe it’s just because we’re human, and we all love a good gossip. I don’t know. I’m going to keep looking for my voice, and I hope that I can find it again before I leave this place, if just to leave you with Jekyll’s view on Amman rather than Hyde’s. I think that would be fair. (Oh look, I’ve gone and done a JK Rowling, leaving the explanation of the title to the very last line of the chapter. Now I really do need to get reading some more!) BB x

On Homeland and Missed Opportunities

July 15, 2015July 16, 2015 / Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

I laid my hand upon his arm. “Ignosi,” I said, “tell us, when thou didst wander in Zululand, and among the white people in Natal, did not thine heart turn to the land thy mother told thee of, thy native land, where thou didst see the light, and play when thou wast little, the land where thy place was?”

“It was even so, Macumazahn.”

“In like manner, Ignosi, do our hearts turn to our land and to our own place.”

H. R. Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines (1885)

Last night I had a dream that landed me on a back lane somewhere in South Africa. Don’t ask me where, I’ve never been. I just had the feeling it was South Africa. Must be all the Haggard I’ve been reading. It’s doing no wonders for my Africa obsession. At any rate, it’s a decent distraction from the day-to-day, from all the work, and the world turning ever onwards miles and miles away.

I can’t remember which book it is, but I remember reading about somebody having one of those ‘if a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?’ conundrums. You know, when you’re far away from home, out of sight and out of mind, and it seems perfectly natural that since you’ve been out of the loop, time’s been standing still back home. The fact of the matter is that it’s a delusion, obviously, but it’s a very easy one to fall into, ridiculous as it sounds. If not entirely, then out of desire. There’s a bit of you that wants it to be so, that wants everything to be just the way you left it when you set off, and it’s when travelling abroad that this little demon in the back of your head starts to play his games with full abandon. Now I’m not the homesick type, not at all – it’s only the state of quiet that I miss here in Amman, and that’s manageable here too, if you can get outside the metropolis – but I understand this FOMO vibe that some of the girls out here are talking about.

FOMO; it means ‘fear of missing out’. It’s a bit of a weak clause, especially out here – how are we missing out on anything when we’re in the Middle East, hightailing around Jordan’s sights every other weekend and generally having a good time? FOMO only makes sense if you’re doing nothing. Which is why it bothers me all the more that I sometimes let it get me down. Only a few months ago, before I found my way blocked and had to book two months in Jordan, I had plans to join a few dear friends on what promised to be the backpacking adventure of a lifetime across Central America, overland from Mexico City as far as Ecuador. That fell through with the British Council ultimatum. Then there’s the Edinburgh Fringe, which my dear companions at the Northern Lights will be performing at this summer; that also had to go out the window, along with my super fun well-paid summer job with the ELO team, in order to come out here. All three options had their ups and downs, of course, but in the end I never really had a choice. My course had to take priority and, like as not, here I am. And I guess sometimes I really do fear missing out.

But there’s no use in getting gloomy about it. Just because friends and family are having fun in lands far away from reach, it doesn’t mean you’re left out forever. People do amazing things all over the world every day. If you fear missing out on the cool stuff your friends are up to, you’re only really missing out on a fraction of all the wonderful things the world has to offer. And once you start down that road, you might as well be in a permanent state of FOMO as you’re missing out on everything by that logic. It’s not like you’ll never get another chance to try everything out for yourself at some point in the future, one way or another. And won’t it be so worth the wait? Smile.

I’m writing this in a hurry as I’ve class in a few seconds, hence the verbal scrawl. Besides, this is my message to myself, as usual, but you can take from it what you will, if you so choose. I just need to remind myself sometimes that there’s no use in wanting what you can’t get, if you can’t get it right away. The world is still young and there’s plenty of time. Allez allez! BB x

Deliverance

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

My heart’s soaring. Not least of all because I’ve got my Africa playlist on full blast, but that’s not the real reason. Eights months and x days after submitting my paperwork to the Year Abroad office at Elvet Riverside, I finally have a destination. Next year has a name at last and it’s VILLAFRANCA DE LOS BARROS.

I’d love to dive right into an entire evening’s worth of trawling, if just to get a real feel for the place and its environs, but that’s easier said than done with a murderous-looking Arabic comprehension in for tomorrow. Even without that, Ali Baba shuts at six o’clock, at which point Andrew and I go necessarily radio silent until ten o’clock the following morning. (It’s a liberating existence, being completely out of contact for half a day, every day – I highly recommend it). So no aimless surfing tonight. But according to Wikipedia Vilafranca de Los Barros is known as the City of Music, which means the wizards at the British Council know what they’re doing. I owe them that much. It’s also in a very decent spot indeed, in a town large enough to have most convenient amenities, a lively atmosphere and possibly a good range of accommodation options. It might not be as small a town as I wanted, but that might not be such a bad thing. At least it’s smaller than Amman. At any rate, it’s close enough to a serious mountain range to keep me satisfied. As expected, Google Images isn’t swimming with material, even in a town of some 14,000 inhabitants, so Villafranca de Los Barros gets to keep a little mystery from me for the time being. And that’s no bad thing either.

Andrew zoned out a couple of minutes ago. He’s still waiting for the Versailles branch of the BC to get back to him with similar details. Trust Spain to jump the gun for once and beat France to it! We’ve been working flat out as usual (and working out flat to boot, every morning – my limbs are getting mutinous) so he’s taking a well-earned nap. The air con’s on and it’s going to stay that way for a little while longer. As for me, I’m going to spend the next hour or so finishing King Solomon’s Mines and then learning as many animals and birds in Arabic as possible after finding myself at a loss in this morning’s Arabic Alphabet game. Sure, osprey might not exactly be a word you use everyday, but who wouldn’t want to drop iqāb nisārī (essentially, Judgement Hawk) into a conversation? They might not have been very inventive at naming the swan, the cormorant or the manatee, but the Arabs sure knew how to put a name to a bird of prey. 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

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