weather

The Weatherman Cometh

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It starts with an ominous grey sky to the west. The patchwork of fluffy summer clouds that have been insulating the leftover heat from three scorching days suddenly drops into a void the colour of slate, matching the roof of Bayeux’s cathedral almost exactly. A man in a beret watches the skies; a French family whose children seem to tan faster down the years savour their two-scoop ice creams; a boy and his mother walk their five beagles.

The first raindrop falls on the back of my neck like a kiss. Cool, swift, sweet. I’m sitting on a bollard, sketching. I wait for another. It lands on my arm. Almost instantly a third lands on my sketchbook, narrowly missing the moustachioed gentleman I’ve been sketching. I snap the book shut and watch the tourists scattering as the rain comes down: the French dignified beneath their umbrellas, the Dutch unflinching behind their cameras, the Americans in a mad dash. I think about taking a slow walk back to the hostel to savour the blessed rain after so many days of sun. I’m no further than a few feet around the corner of the cathedral when the heavens open.

I concede defeat to the tempest and join a small but growing crowd seeking shelter in the ancient stone doorway of Odo’s cathedral. The beagle-fanciers are here, along with a cross-section of Bayeux’s tourists. The rain comes down in sheets, hammering the cobblestones like a snare drum, and then a sudden flash and a rolling crash from the bass drum up in the sky. “On est bien dessous, hein?” remarks a Frenchwoman with short-cropped hair and round glasses. A boy with long eyelashes runs in and out of the rain in his yellow anorak, singing the chorus of the Wellerman shanty over and over.

A solitary American standing nearby stares at his phone in disbelief and growls. It sounds like he’s frustrated at a video game, but as he starts to verbalise his frustration it’s obvious he’s checking a weather app. “You’re kidding me, I’ve got to wait half an hour? God, you’ve got to be kidding me. Come on!”. He growls again. And again, louder this time. Some of the other tourists back away. “Hrrrrrnnnn!” The grunts and growls sound uncannily like a bull, giving fair warning before a charge. “END! NOW!!!” A couple of startled jumps from the crowd. By the looks on their faces, they’re weighing up whether to tell him it’s futile to attempt to command the skies, or whether it’s more futile still to reason with a man so blatantly trying to do just that. As a result, nobody intervenes, and Yankee Canute continues to defy the elements, bellowing at the clouds with increasing fury. “Hmmmmmhnnn, CAHM AAAAHN. When’s it gonna EHYAAND? GAAHD, I don’t have TAAM for this SHIIYET”.

The growling and grumbling is briefly cancelled out by another clash of thunder. “Hurry up, END, NOW! Cahm aaahhn, pleeez, end now! Why does it have to do this during the day, it should do this at night!” – (a fair point here, it was unbearably hot last night) – “Gahd, I don’t have time for this shit!”.

I slip inside the cathedral to escape the verbal artillery for just a moment. Bayeux’s cathedral survived intact the last time it came under fire from an American battery, so I figure it’s a safe bet. The muted thunder beyond the stone walls sounds strangely beautiful, and the grey skies filter through the stained glass in hopeful technicolour. The aisles are packed with a colourful array of tourists waiting out the storm; a phoney faithful glued to their phones, waiting to proceed on their pilgrimage to the crêperies outside – a combination of American flags and English spoken here signs were drawing in the crowds earlier. Staring down at the sightseers, a gargoyle pulls his mouth into a sneer, tongue out, deriding a thousand years of peasants, pilgrims and pensioners.

Outside, the rest of the gargoyles are doing their job, spewing rainwater from their mouths onto the streets below. For the first time they look complete, as though the gaping mouths were merely voids waiting to be turned into channels. A father points them out to his daughter, one hand gesturing, the other on her ear as our frustrated Yankee Canute swears blue murder at the sky.

The streets of Bayeux shine under the whitening sky. Umbrellas and ponchos have been magicked out of the air (and some straight out of souvenir shops). The Wednesday market is being dismantled. The fishmonger reclaims the last two skate wings and a Norman bookseller voices a quiet complaint to the heavens as he stacks his pulped collection of second-hand books: “aujourd’hui, précisement?”.

The storm has passed and the sun has returned with a milder temperament, his midsummer fury sated at last. I think I’ll take the rest of the day off. Find a park, do some reading, and clue up on the bus times for tomorrow’s expedition to the coast. A bientot! BB x

Abide with Me

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Today’s the last day of the February half term. Storm Eunice is on her way out, but she’s dragging her talons behind her. I’m cooped up with a blanket and a mug of Ovaltine in my study, looking out at the grey world beyond. Cars parked at angles. Wet tarmac mirroring the featureless sky. Winds of over fifty miles per hour howl across the grounds. One of the windows in my flat is permanently ajar due to some fault with its ancient locking mechanism, and the banshee wails moaning through the corridor sound like the Ice Cavern from Ocarina of Time (nostalgia trip here). Between the raging wind and the rattling tattoo of the flagpole two floors up, I might as well be at sea.

I came home from visiting my parents last night to find the whole site in darkness. From what I’ve seen and heard, Eunice had been busy while I was away, tearing her way along the coast like a hurricane and leaving great swathes of the south without power. It took me at least a minute or two scrolling through the UK Power Network website to find my postcode amidst the many hundreds reporting a power outage. After the fair number of power cuts we had last year, you would have thought I would have been prepared, but for the life of me I couldn’t find any of the candles I’d stockpiled over the years. I think my previous housemate used them all up for beer bottle decoration. Fortunately, some foresight – or hindsight – on my part led me to a hidden cache of hand-torches in a chest of drawers. The bulb had gone in the smaller one, but the other, though flickering as a match-flame, gave just about enough light to read by.

I half expected to come home to find the silhouette of the great Atlas cedar missing from the skyline, its mighty body bent and broken upon the drive like a fallen giant. Fortunately its roots go deep, like the mountains upon which its kin grow far away to the south, and there is strength in the old man still.

The same cannot be said of many of the free-standing trees that line the road into town. I promised myself I’d get a taxi home for the sake of my new trainers, but as usual, I went back on that promise, only this time it was not out of stinginess but a genuine curiosity to see the wreckage of the storm that I had only glimpsed from the train. Crawley wasn’t given a lashing quite like Brighton and Hove, but it had its fair share of casualties, scattered and trimmed across roads and gardens. The damage was less obvious deeper into the woods beyond. There is safety in numbers, it seems, even for trees: much of the forest was untouched by the storm. It was seriously muddy underfoot, though, and I spent a good ten minutes cleaning my trainers by torchlight once I’d made it home.

It seems unoriginal – not to mention extremely British – to go on so about the weather, but I feel as a writer there is nothing more important than taking the time to talk about the world around you every so often. It’s our duty to tell stories of the world as we see it, so that others who come after us can learn from us somehow. One of the books I actually read cover-to-cover last year, Nature’s Mutiny, pieces together the world of the Little Ice Age through diaries, sermons, letters, hymns and poems penned by those who saw it with their own eyes. Back then there was still a great fear of God tangled up in the awesome power of the weather, and a hundred years of savage winters had led a lot of Europeans to the natural conclusion that sin was to blame. Some resorted to witchcraft; some resorted to witch-burning. Others, of a more temperate nature, put their thoughts into verse:

In constant rancour we abide / and war is ruling far and wide

Envy and hatred everywhere / in all estates discord and fear

That too, is why the elements / reach out against us with their hands

Fear coming from the depth and sea / fear from the very air on high

In morning is the source of joy / the sun no longer sends bright rays

The clouds are raining like a fount / the tears too plentiful to count.

Paul Gerhard
Translated by Philipp Blom
(Nature’s Mutiny, 2019)

I wonder how many modern lyricists sing about the weather? Back in 2007, when the UK was plunged into its wettest summer since records began, Rihanna’s perfectly-timed Umbrella became a best-seller. There were even joking accusations on the internet that the singer was responsible for the unseasonal weather across the pond…

Now that it’s raining more than ever

Know that we’ll still have each other

You can stand under my umbrella

You can stand under my umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh

Rihanna (“Umbrella“)

Of course, Rihanna wasn’t thinking about the British summer yet to come when she wrote those lines, but four hundred years ago they might have burned her for a witch for such impeccably bad timing. Come to think of it, though, I do distinctly remember her name being on the list handed to me by the Prefect Witchfinder General at a school I worked at in Uganda, some five years later. Apparently the school’s witch-hunting guild had found a website listing known witches in the Western world? If they’d stumbled upon one of the various forums discussing the timing of Umbrella, perhaps it’s not an unprecedented conclusion. If I remember correctly, Wayne Rooney’s name was also on that list. The internet is a strange place.

Speaking of the internet, I decided to bite the bullet and give the online dating scene a whirl. Living and working in a boarding school doesn’t exactly facilitate an open line of communication with the outside world, so rather than sitting on the fence I thought I’d chase some stories for a change. After a brief browse it looks as though Bumble is the kindest of the Golden Triangle (with Hinge and Tinder), not least of all because it’s the most self-aware of the damage the online dating scene can do to the mental health of its users. It’s good to see that in an undeniably superficial meat market, some of the folks up top are aware of the dangers and offer support.

It’s almost certainly a silly idea, living as far from the city as I do, but, who’s to know? Shy bairns get nowt once again. If I had a penny for every variation of that phrase I’ve heard throughout my life, I might just have a pound. BB x

Stormchasing

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It only rained for three minutes this evening – four, at a push – but it was enough. The muggy, sweat-laundering heat that swallowed me body and soul from the moment I stepped out of the plane this morning is over, and with a night breeze blowing and the temperature pleasantly cool, the last three hours of the day are for writing. I’ve not had the time or mental energy to put pen to paper for several months, and I doubt I will at all next year. So tonight, and maybe for the next few nights, the sun is shining and a haymaker am I.

Sweet Caroline is playing on a loudspeaker in the hotel bar down the road. The only other sounds, besides the ever more distant rumblings of thunder, are the chirring of crickets, the metallic ring of a flagpole in the wind and snatches of conversation from the holidaymakers in the surrounding block. I thought tonight might be a night for geckos, but I can’t see or hear any tonight. Not on my balcony, anyway. The rain might have driven them off.

Beach holidays have been late in coming to me. As with so much in my life, I suppose I have been contrary: what appealed to everybody else must therefore be uninspired and dull. I’d love to say I’m still game to throw myself gung-ho into another madcap adventure, but after a year in a boarding school, I’m quite spent, and for once the idea of spending more than a couple of days on the beach isn’t quite as dreary as it once sounded.

Ok, scratch that. The storm that rolled in over the cliffs today lit a fire in my soul and I was up and out the door in a heartbeat.

Standing alone atop the wind-scarred wastes of the Cap des Redoble, I looked out to the west and watched the thunderstorm come rolling in. I have seen displays of grater majesty and covered my ears before more deafening drumrolls, but it felt truly sensational to stand alone, high atop a cliff, as thunderbolts great and small rained down all around me.

Some forked across the sky, skirting beneath the clouds like bubbles under ice, whilst others weaved in and out of the haze as though there were a holes in the clouds. Others still hurtled straight into the sea offshore, some thin and wispy, others monstrous and so bright they lit up the sea in their wake and pulsed in stasis upon the grey canvas of the sky behind before disappearing into the ether – invariably just before I’d pressed down the shutter on my camera.

I love a good thunderstorm. Who doesn’t? It is truly one of nature’s most awesome performances, and who can blame the ancients for believing gods great and wicked were behind such electric devilry. Only weeks ago I wandered out into the grounds at night to watch a silent storm from the hilltop, and stood in equally silent awe for almost half an hour as lightning danced across the sky in flashes of silver and violet, twelve strikes to a minute. And six years before that, in the garden of the bishop’s residence in Boroboro, I watched a similar storm paint the sky shades of purple I had never seen before.

I had planned this first post to be about swimming with tetras and breams and mullets and wrasse, but the thunderstorm that followed somewhat stole its… well. You get the idea.

Nature has always been my elixir. A reliable restorative that works every time, if only I allow myself the time to go out in search of it. That’s part of the draw of working in a rural boarding school, I guess – that at any given moment, if I have an hour or two to spare, I can strap on my walking shoes and be in the heart of an English forest within minutes. My fears are gone, the world is put to rights and my soul is singing. Amman simply couldn’t offer that and I suffered.

In The Power of One, one of Bryce Courtenay’s best and one of my favourite books of all time, the wise and humble Doc tells Peekay that, whatever the question, ‘the answer you shall find in nature‘. Wise words and I swear by ’em. I just wish I were wise enough to act on them more often. Next year is likely to be my greatest hurdle yet, and I will need every trick in my arsenal to pull through.

Four more days in Menorca are just what the doctor ordered. And when Menorca is but a distant memory, a thunderstorm or two like the one I saw today wouldn’t be so bad. BB x

T-12

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

The Heavens have given us a temporary respite. The spring rains that began a month ago today are still falling hard, and set to fall harder still over the next week or two, but today the clouds are colourless and clear. I no longer live in a state of quasi-permanence beside the brasero and soon I’ll be able to put my jumpers back in the wardrobe once again. Spring has definitely arrived here: my morning walk to school is a symphony of song from the park, albeit a symphony where every part seems to think they hold the solo, from the strings of the serins and the woodwind of the blackbirds to the kestrel fanfare, stork drumrolls and the uncompromising neither-here-nor-there noise of the starlings. It puts a smile on my face every morning.

I’m conscious, as I often am at this time of year, of my time running out. Where the year seemed to stretch on into the middle distance back in cold, gloomy February, March holds up a mirror as if to remind me how much the cold warps one’s perspective. As it stands, I only have twelve weeks remaining, of which nine and a half are working weeks and only four bring as-of-yet unscheduled weekends. In my desire to be busy once again I’ve burdened myself up with responsibilities that eat into my timetable like caterpillars: a private lesson in Almendralejo, choir rehearsals in Zafra and play rehearsals at 8.15am on a Thursday morning. Combined with commuting time, and those inevitable private lessons that are at the incredibly inconvenient time of six o’clock in the afternoon, my time is slipping through my fingers and the year will be over before I know it. And with a summer job and a proper job at the end of it waiting for me back in England, that’s more than a little disheartening. Something’s got to give.

Reading is keeping me afloat. I finished She the other day and I’m onto another classic, Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd. After the insightful but heavy high-Victorian ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ of Haggard’s dialogue, it’s a breath of fresh air to hear people speak in an altogether more human register some twelve years prior. Once again, I’m reminded that, if it weren’t for my all-consuming love for Iberia, I would have followed my grades at gone for a degree in English Literature. I might not have enjoyed reading as much at the time, but I’m certainly making up for lost time here and now, even if that does entail reading two Haggard books per month. Still, I don’t read Haggard for the dialogue: the old adventurer might be unable to tear himself from his medieval register, but there is wisdom scattered in his words like pearls on a stormy beach, and I love mining his books for quotes in such a fashion. I just need to modernise my reading tastes so my own writing doesn’t become quite as jaded. Hardy might be a step backwards in time, but he’s more than a step forwards in modernism. BB x

The Rain in Spain

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

Snow doesn’t like me. Every time it falls I’m in the wrong country. The last time I remember snow good enough to build a decent snowman was early in 2013, when I was on my abortive gap year and had precious little else to do. Going north to university was supposed to bring better weather; living as close to the coast as I did, pretty much every weather front we got had dissipated by the time it reached us.

Not so. In my first year at Durham we had a light dusting, and second year delivered only a little better. In my third year the powers that be decided to deliver a decent fall… but of course, I was in Spain at the time, and didn’t see any snow whatsoever. The following year I returned to Durham, where it was cold, but not enough for snow. Spain, on the other hand, got a lashing so strong it covered most of Andalusia – one of Spain’s hottest regions – in an impressive layer. And now this Beast from the East lays waste to the UK with snowfall like it hasn’t seen in decades, and here I am in the one part of Europe that was spared.

It’s obvious. Snow and me simply aren’t compatible.

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What are we getting here in Spain? Guess. I’ll give you a clue: they had a fair idea when they wrote My Fair Lady.

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You want the Beast from the East? Try the Pest from the West. It’s supposed to rain for a full fortnight.

There are just over a couple of weeks to go until Semana Santa. I haven’t been blogging much, partly because of the taxing nature of private lessons with under tens, but mainly because any writing I don’t commit to my novels seems like a betrayal, especially with the workload (and the salary) set to treble next year, and by my own hand. I’ll keep you posted. BB x

Frost vs Nixon

/ Benjamin Barnabas / 1 Comment

That was, without a doubt, the smoothest flight I’ve ever taken. No more complicated than getting on and off a bus. The plane was on time, there was no security check at the other end and I was on the bus to the city centre within five minutes of leaving the plane. To top it off, my entire row was empty, so I got the window seat for free. It isn’t often that you get such a slick service with a budget airline, but after my previous experience (I haven’t forgiven you for that 20€ croque monsieur, EasyJet) I consider it my just reward.

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STOP PRESS: The automated American translation in Plaza de Armas just mangled Matalascañas beyond belief (Matter-lass-cun-arse). Help.

Toulouse was covered in a thick fog when I left this morning. Bella said it didn’t feel much like France, but it sure as heck didn’t feel like Spain. With all the yellow and brown trees, misty rivers and starling swarms overhead, it felt a lot more like England than anywhere else. The cold has set in down in Extremadura, but it’s not a true wintry chill like there is here in the lower foothills of the Pyrenees. Oddly enough, on our way through the city streets with salted caramel-drizzled Belgian waffles in hand, I found myself missing home.

That is, I wound up missing England whilst on holiday in France from working in Spain.

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In the past it was a lot easier to say where I wanted to be. Spain had purple gallinules, bee-eaters and griffon vultures, England had woodpigeons. It was an easy decision to make. Now that I’m older and avifauna is no longer priority number one, it’s not quite so clear cut (though the vultures are still a major factor). I don’t begrudge my mixed-up ancestry in the slightest – I couldn’t be more proud of it – but if I did, it would be over the confusion it’s left me with regards to where I want to be.

England is cold and England is damp, and my lungs suffer for over half the year for it. The English are, in my experience, prickly when it comes to difference, nervy when it comes to work and uncomfortable in just about any given situation, without mentioning their appalling inability to talk about their feelings. Living is expensive, work is hard and life is lived for the weekend.

It is, however, the land where I was born. And, for all their faults, the English understand a great many subtleties that pass the Spanish by: public footpaths, music for its own sake, quality satire and coffee shops, amongst others. It’s also a land of gorgeous crispy winter mornings with frosted grass, thick mist and a promise of rain, and indoor afternoons spent reading with a mug of hot chocolate on carpeted floors. In short, England does autumn and winter properly.

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Spain has everything else. Spain is hot – at least until November, when a harsh, dry cold sweeps in across the plains – and damp is a thing of the imagination, especially in drought years such as this. It doesn’t have a fantastic music scene, but it does have endless rolling hills of wild olive trees and cork oaks, overflown by kites, vultures, harriers and eagles, not to mention cranes, storks and a whole host of other impressive creatures. It has tostadas and decent olive oil. It has good food for good prices, skies so blue you couldn’t paint them properly if you tried, and a crippling addiction to ham that goes back centuries.

In addition, the Spanish are only too happy to tell you how they feel, at the expense of small-talk topics such as the weather (which most of them couldn’t give a fig about) and sport (where a lot will tell you how failed their exercise regime is/was/will be). And, for better of for worse, family is everything to them. Many Spaniards are completely hamstrung by their devotion to their families, and a good many more don’t begrudge them for it one bit.

Spain also has Spanish. The happiness machine. That’s the biggest win of them all.

Through my own strength of will (and a fair degree of my mother’s), Spain has become a far bigger part of my life than it otherwise might have been. And if I never shut up about it, it’s because Spain is not just the longest love affair of my life, it’s a family affair. It fills the enormous hole that most of my generation fill with Snapchat and social media. Just being here makes me happy.

You can’t spend your life chasing happiness, and it’s unhealthy to try. But it’s a rare kind of joy when happiness and work combine like they do out here. And when I find myself missing those autumn mornings, frost on the car bonnet and even the beautifully reassuring sound of the woodpigeons, I look around me and remind myself where I am. Azure-winged magpies bouncing out of the trees, shepherds leading their merino sheep across the fields and impressive stone castles sitting atop lonely hills. No Christmas feeling, no carols and definitely no a cappella, but no wheezing either. I can’t do everything I’d like, but at the very least I can be me. I can live with that. BB x

Back in Action

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s been a while!

I kept my word, it seems. It’s been about two weeks since my last post. Probably more. In that time I’ve not honestly been up to much at all, hence the dearth of posts, though that probably has more to do with a real need to take some serious time-out; last term was pretty hectic, especially towards the finishing line.

Coming home for Christmas was never part of the original plan, but I’m glad I did. England at this time of year is pretty magical, with the mist, the frost and the rain in the pine woods about the house. Doubly so this year, as it’s been all of three months since the last time I saw rain in Spain. Apparently global warming is to blame. Whoever the culprit may be, it’s impressed upon me just how much I like rain. I don’t know whether that’s ineffably English or the reverse. I don’t really mind either way. I wasn’t really complaining about the gorgeous blue skies and twenty-two degree heat right up until my last day in the country (the twenty-second of December, in fact). All I hope is that it keeps for one week longer at least, so that it doesn’t put a damper on my stay in Madrid next week… more on that later.

That said, I haven’t sung a single Christmas carol this year, and that makes me feel more than a little wierd. Not even Silent Night. That must be the first time in my life where I haven’t. Next year had better make up for that.

I haven’t made anywhere near as much progress on the grand drawing as I’d have liked. Nor have I finished my series of 2015 doodles. What I have achieved over the last two weeks, however, is a new camera. The trusty old Nikon D70 has done me wonders over the last ten years, but… ten years is a long time. Especially in the fast-moving world of digital photography. I got my comeuppance for my loyalty when I went into Extremadura’s biggest camera store and was roundly told by the head clerk that nowhere stocked the ‘gigantic’ CompactFlash memory cards that the D70 runs off anymore. Time, perhaps, to move on.

Fortunately, I’ve been working two jobs and several private lessons over the last three months, so I’ve enough set aside for such adventures.

Introducing the Nikon D3200. In all its 24 megapixel glory.

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Tech that can crack out magazine quality prints on AUTO mode is worth the investment. Sadly, most of my lenses are a little out of date too, and the autofocus doesn’t work, so it’s been an ordeal learning to use manual (finally). A necessary one, but an ordeal nonetheless. Manual and nuthatches simply don’t mix.

To put it through its paces, I took it to Deal for a final coffee with the family before I jet off back to Spain for the unforeseeable future. Even on manual mode alone, it did a fine job.

The phrase ‘a kid at Christmas’ springs to mind; but then, I am a kid at heart, and this is technically still the Christmas season, so there you have it. I’m waiting on baited breath for my kit lens and the ol’ telephoto to have a functional autofocus (I haven’t been able to check thus far as I left them in Spain), but in the meantime, I’ll just keep practising with manual.

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A gannet far out to sea (Sigma 500mm, where are you when I need you?)

Apart from getting back into some serious camera hijinks, it was worth coming home for a reunion with two very special friends, and a whole panoply of others close to my heart. That’s what Christmas time is for; being with your nearest and dearest. A phrase I heard bandied about a lot this Christmas was that people had learned to distance themselves from those they ‘simply no longer really had time for’. I guess that’s a good ethos, and a strong marker of that over-the-hill feeling that is turning twenty-two. The first winnowing of friendships that were once so strong, and at the same time the moment when you see clearly, perhaps for the first time, who the people are that you will fight to keep in touch with. Having always had it in mind to leave these rainy shores to chase my dreams in Spain, I’ve never allowed myself to grow too attached to anybody here in England, but for two shining lights I would return home anytime and oft, and you know I would. You know who you are. Thank you.

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Things you’d be hard-pressed to find in Spain: a tankard of whipped-cream-topped hot chocolate

Well, Kent is behind me now, I’m back in West Sussex – where the rain and the darkness has not ceased for several days – and counting down the hours until my plane whisks me back to Seville and home. But for the wind, the place is as silent as the grave. That hasn’t stopped the birds from letting me know that they have not appreciated my absence, so I made sure to throw out some New Years’ seed for them. They’ve got to be so tame now that I hardly need to freeze when the camera’s out.

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Such is the power of that camera that neither of those have been zoomed in or edited whatsoever. Oh, but we’re going to have some serious fun with this thing.

Well, I’ll keep you posted. My next insert will probably be from Spain, but whether that will be pre- or post-Madrid depends entirely on whether the Bar Atalaya WiFi is in operation. In any case, hasta pronto, amigos. The rain in Spain falls mainly on England x

Not All Those Who Wander Are Flossed

/ Benjamin Barnabas / Leave a comment

It’s just taken me about an hour and a half to wade through the latest Arabic text for tomorrow’s class. With a night of karaoke at the Marriott Hotel on the cards for this evening, I don’t exactly have the ‘I’ll do it later’ gambit at my disposal.

First off I want to apologise for a very rocky week or two of bipolar posting (some of you noticed, I gather…). The mid-term fury is over and things have settled back to the way they were before, helped along the way by much meditation, H.R. Haggard and Karl Jenkins. Ouch, that’s a painfully middle-class sentence. Life in Amman rumbles slowly onwards, the daily Arabic homework’s still coming in thick and fast and the Versailles branch of the British Council still haven’t told Andrew where he’s going. Business as usual. I took an entire weekend out to deal with my restless psyche and it seems to have paid off. It meant missing out on a couple of parties, but for the sake of my bleeding heart, it was worth it. So if you were feeling the strain of my sine-wave posts over the last week or so, fret not; the dust has settled. It should be a little easier on the eye from here on out.

It’s been a fairly productive couple of days, which means we haven’t had that many adventures; but that’s no bad thing. I saw our first clouds in a month or so the other day, and what a sight for sore eyes that was. You’d be surprised how uplifting it was to see a speck of grey on the horizon for once. Blue skies are lovely and all that, but when you’ve had temperatures balancing out over the high thirties for almost three weeks without cease, a cool breeze is a welcome miracle. There was supposed to be a thunderstorm, which we all got super excited about, but it never came. Instead, the sky went a very queer shade of brown and a mild sandstorm swept through the streets. No rain. One of the strangest weather phenomenons I’ve ever seen. We got the full force of the stifling storm heat, though; the temperature soared up into the mid forties. My insides felt like they were being cooked every time I stepped outside and there was a weird charge in the air. Mostly we found ourselves retreating to our various homes to sit like idol-worshippers before the air-con until the sun decided to call it a day. Even then it often carried on long into the night, that stuffy, all-pervading heat. The blankets had to go. How they’ve lasted this long is anyone’s guess. BBC Weather’s been getting an unnatural number of hits from our flat, at any rate. They say there’s a 51% chance of precipitation tomorrow. Good news takes the strangest forms…

I finally got around to sending off an email to the school I’ll be teaching at in Extremadura. I’ve had it written for the best part of a week and a half, but for some reason I never hit the send button. I guess I wanted to be dead-certain on the grammar, but in the end I just had to be happy with what I’d written, bite the bullet and hit SEND. With any luck, I’ll get a reply at some point before I arrive in September. So that’s pretty cool. In the meantime I’m keeping my teacher senses trained with this project of ours at the Iraqi church Andreas got me in on last week. The last session must have gone down well enough, because we had double the numbers this time. We’ll have to call in reinforcements at this rate. Parts of the body this week, following on from the previous lesson on going to the hospital. Getting the groups to use the vocab to compliment each other was a great idea, and also highly amusing. Apparently eyebrows are a valuable commodity. Or maybe they were just trying to get their heads around the pronunciation. I’d like to believe the former. Having to explain the difference between diarrhea and constipation in the politest possible way is definitely going down as one of the most entertaining moments of my teaching career. Something along the lines of ‘let’s say you eat a bad falafel, and it goes right through you… and for the other one, well, it doesn’t quite go right through you…’. British humour. It never gets old.

This church is just about the best thing that’s happened to me out here, though. It’s the one thing I’d return to Jordan for, given the chance. Maybe this is the beginning of a spiritual journey, maybe not. I hope so, at any rate. I’ve been waiting for my chance for so very long now, ever since I left that world behind almost six years ago… I’ll be dropping by three times a week from now on, twice for class and once for the service, so things should start to look up. And that’s a real slice of good news.

Bummer, I’m out of toothpaste. Looks like I really will have to resort to this weird Arab brand I picked up in the corner shop last week. At least it smells nice. After Morocco I’m none too keen to follow up on any of these traditional Arabian dental practices. BB x

The moment we thought Andrew’s placement might have come through…