I’ve just read the sad news that someone I knew has recently died. My emotions were mixed and somewhat complex as I tried to absorb the text on the screen. I was naturally sad because they had died; frustrated because we had lost contact over the last two years – yet the overriding emotion was happy. I was happy because my mind can still capture her in a time and place, where we were having the sort of fun only “real” friends can have together. I put real in inverted commas because ours was an online friendship that lasted for what seems like, too brief a moment now. Even in this age of technology, some might still see it as strange that such strong bonds
Monthly Archive:: December 2010
“Would you like salad with that?” is a phrase uttered to me most lunchtimes. Irrespective of my sandwich filling of choice, the ever smiling staff behind the till, always check to see if I would like a percentage of my five-a-day added – at some extra cost – to my daily feed. I usually say yes, even though my head and heart both say no. For salad is not what they mean; green liquid is all they have to offer. Water; water everywhere – on my meat, in my dressing and drowning whatever bread they have offered up today. For salad read iceberg lettuce – the scourge of any good sandwich. Occasionally the lettuce will be joined by nerve jangling bullets of cucumber or the
At what point did my life become nothing more than a collection of labels or tags by which I am instantly recognised by? I don’t mean the simple police style IC1 Male. More the often, somewhat lazy and disparaging label that identifies me not as an individual, but as part of a wider network of people I barely have anything in common with? I understand being classified by my job title. It’s what I do for eight hours a day, five days a week. I also understand being referred to by my relationship choices – that of husband, married man or father of one – for I am all three. What I don’t understand, is when I am classified not by my actions, but more