Alive.

Smile and the whole world smiles with you.

That much, at least, is true on a sunny day. Even the resident chavs and emos in the park cracked a grin my way when I inanely flashed them my widest grin and then carried on humming to myself. On second thoughts, they probably just thought I was crackers.

As the earth warms up, it seems everyone's moods do too - even if it's just for a little while. Snow is forecast to make its unwelcome return next week, so it's as if everything is living twice as hard while they have the sun on their backs.

The birds are singing twice as loud. (As I write this I can barely hear myself think. Ducks vs. Sparrows, I have a feeling. The ultimate standoff. The ducks are winning on the noise levels, the sparrows on the quality and variety of tone.)

The old men playing chess are bellowing insults at the children with twice as much gusto.



The boys playing football are using twice as many swearwords.

The gossiping Italian women are throwing their arms twice as wide in exclamation. (Oh my God the sun is shiiiiiiiningggg!)

There are twice as many couples bickering lovingly on the streets, and I've spotted twice as many stolen kisses at the back of classrooms.



Everything has been swept up in this sudden tide of warmth, and for the first time in a long time, the world is trembling with life.

#1

I know that in life one encounters, and always will encounter, people that piss one off.
That is a life fact, and a fact we all need to come to terms with, one way or another. My little brain, tonight, is the sad testimony to the fact that I, as of yet, have not come to terms with this fact, and let things rile me beyond all realms of belief.

I will bore you with only #1 on my list of 4000 things that make me want to poke my own eyes out.

Travel bloggers. Yes, you read correctly, travel bloggers. (Oh, no - actually blogging in general makes me want to cry; it's hedonistic self centered grammatically incorrect narrow minded poorly structured rather pointless blabbering on, actually seems to serve no other real purpose other than to massage the ego of its author. Yes, I fully count myself into this vile category.)

The worst kind of annoyance is when you know you are being hypocritical by disliking what someone else is doing, because you are indeed committing an identical crime against mankind.

But, in my humble opinion, travel bloggers are the worst; I simply do not care about that wonderful little beach shack off the west coast of Thailand that NO-ONE has been to before, because you are such an intrepid traveller and really 'threw yourself' into local life. Why would I, a rather self obsessed fellow travel writer wrapped up in my own fabulous life, give a toss about what you did 6 years ago but won't stop banging on about?

Browsing through countless mind-numbing tales of adventurous excellence, I realise that it is all just one big case of dick-comparison; who's amorous escape into the unknown is more daring, took the less travelled path, or led the new-age wannabe Indiana Jones to the highest spiritual enlightenment. It is self advertising at its worst; all it serves to highlight is how pretentious you really are, and how many times you can use a thesaurus in one sentence.

In its nature, this dick-comparison is rather contradictory. Why, when you seem to have found an idyllic hidden spot on a corner of this increasingly un-secret globe, would you post your secret on the World Wide Web for all the minions to see? Why brag about how secret and untouched and virginal it is, when all you are doing is publicly deflowering it in the process? Why can't your secrets stay just that, a secret?

bajdbvndbajskjn blergh. I'm tired and annoyed and think this is all rather pointless.
Goodnight.