Monday 7 December 2009

Mad dogs and English people

Sadly it has happened again. Another innocent kid has got attacked by a family 'pet' and while social services and the police argue about whose fault it is - a child life has been needlessly lost because someone felt it was cool to breed a dangerous dog alongside a little toddler at the same time.

Im a bit ambivalent about dogs and cats so who am I to judge - its just that maybe sometimes it might be good if some people could just quantify and weigh up what they value more on the great scale of things - baby or dog.

Sometimes you just cant have everything.

A couple of times I have been faced with young men and sometimes girls trying to look 'hard' and 'cool' being dragged off by a dog who is more in control of the situation than they are. Maybe the dog is the accessory to looking cool ..or maybe its the baby ...or maybe I just dont know. In South London use what ever you like - just look the part. So that the world will see you and know not to 'mess' with you.

In Nigeria people have fixed ideas about babies and dogs. Babies stay inside and Dogs stay outside and while that might not always be acceptable here - there is a lot to be said for their sense of value of human beings. Someone told me that she trusts her dog more than she does human beings. Dogs cant betray you, cant hurt you and cant mess you around. They also cant talk outside cartoons, and since they dont possess our level of intellect (really I know its hard to believe sometimes the way we carry on) that argument doesnt really hold a lot of water.

Some people let their dog sleep on their beds and eat out of their plates. I can imagine what my dear Aunt of blessed memory would say about that but its already been said before. Remember that poem about Mad dogs and Englishmen. Jolly marvellous in the summer in a leafy English garden but a little tricky in a little flat in inner city London.

Selah.

I have a dream

Im back again after an absence of over a year. Its been a busy year - what with going back to Uni, working on some writing projects and writing a dissertation - but its been fun.

There have been a lot of good changes - and I am truly thankful to God.

I graduated last week and it was a good feeling sitting there with my fellow graduands, watching them smile and laugh.

As a writer I did ponder about what the future holds for us. How many of us will get the jobs of our dreams ....how many of us will get jobs ...period. Meanwhile I work but I plan ahead for I really dream doing which is writing.

I dream all the time - day dream I mean and its really beneficial for a writer. I can sit and type away at work and plan a chapter in my head - characterisation, plot, voice etc.

I can be on the tube sandwhiched between someones armpit and another resting his bony hands on my head and think about a little cottage in the countryside with a roaring fire and a PC and myself tappping away outside. Occasionally I let myself imagine a tall hunk outside with playing children .... but enough of that for now.

I had a dream when I was a kid - that I would write and its taken many years of deviating into different things, of working at a selection of different jobs with differing amounts of job satisfaction before I finally got a foot on the first rung of the writers ladder to success. I have won a couple of competitions, people want me to write for them and do readings and I can finally see that dream taking shape.

I see a cloud like a mans hand like Gehazi, I see men like trees ..... and in order to write very well I need to tap into my five senses and write what I see but dont see, hear but dont hear, smell but dont smell and out of my own world - project the dream I see so that others can dream along with me.

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Ciao.