What a mess.

I’m finding it hard to watch the images on the screen. Even harder listening to the empty shell of a man trying to fathom why someone has set fire to his family business.

What makes it hard is that the images are not from some far off battlefield, or political hotspot – but London; my London.

OK – so it’s some six years and more since I last lived in London, but then – unless you really want to – I don’t think you ever truly erase the identity of where you were born. My accent betrays me the instant I start to speak – the words I use, not necessarily slang in form, can be traced back to my youth. Even the odd mannerism – the Italians talk with their hands, were as Londoners talk with their eyes – a glare, a wink – a sparkle.

So to see the utter carnage left behind by the looters, rioters and ne’er-do-wells is sometimes too much to take. Too much to think “I’ve been on that street,” “I know that burning building;” “I’ve drunk in that smashed up pub.”

I always joke with friends who have settled in London from all over the globe that much like a London cabbie – I don’t go south, mate. But it is impossible to detach my love of London from the scenes of vandalism, even if they are beamed to my screen from Croydon or Clapham. It’s one big fantastic city – that really doesn’t deserve this.

My manor, as Guy Ritchie might pen, has been unaffected so far. There’s not much to loot in a leafy suburb where every other shop is a take away emporium; or the biggest building for miles is a hospital. No joy to be had from the industrial estates around near where I used to live, which specialised in gas tanks and light bulbs. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t simmer with the same outrage as those not far from the scenes of the crime. Not with fear, or distress at the loss of house and home – but in the lesser, absolute desire to see these people removed from “our” streets.

Desire though, appears to affect the decision making process of people in a variety of ways. Some fear their outrage has peaked so much, that they are now singing from the same hymn sheet as those positioned on the right – as though their texts and tweets have been lifted straight from the comments section of the Daily Fail.

But then this is a natural cycle of hatred, disappointment and despair. Wanting the police to charge a man throwing a brick does not necessarily mean you are polling station away from joining the ranks of an extremist political party, but it does indicate that we can’t always keep a check of our emotions, when confronted with scenes our brains simply cannot compute.

I thought I saw the last of this kind of unrest when Wembley’s, Chalkhill Estate was converted in to an Asda supermarket in the ‘90s. Unrest in Chalkhill and Stonebridge Park – nothing more than a thrown half brick or Molotov cocktail from the leafy avenues – was fairly common place when I was a kid. It was always a sketchy situation when drawn to play a side that used a football pitch which backed on to one of those estates. But when trouble did erupt, they did actually mess their own doorstep battling police – rather than finding a quick route in and out of the high street. Wembley was a dump, but when times were hard in Thatcher’s Britain and the housing estates felt disenfranchised from the populace, no one rose up and took out their anger on Our Price or Woolworths – they took it out on the soulless; lacking any kind of hope or future, grey landscape they had to inhabit.

They at first tarted up, and then knocked down most of Chalkhill – due in part to the climate of fear and unrest around the area. What can they do now, when the unrest is not localised – where the inhabitants may well live in the sort of postcodes that Estate Agents are desperately trying to promote as up-and-coming?

There’s been chatter of people wanting water cannons, rubber bullets and the army on the street – effectively the same kind of policing people saw in Belfast. Is martial law really the answer?

I hope not. I hope that tonight when I turn on the TV, that the police have been given firmer instructions as to what they can do – go about their jobs, under guidance both from bosses and in law – and reclaim the streets for the millions of innocent people whose lives have been affected by these retched opportunists – for that is all they are. This isn’t an uprising born out of a cause – this is just greed – greed to take from others in the simplest, easiest, most damaging way possible.

Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner – that even from Leeds I can’t but help get ever so slightly emotional about what my city has become over this past weekend. I always say I’d move back in a heartbeat – possibly that of an endurance cyclist now. Still, even if I never do as I am happy to call Leeds my home – it’s on my birth certificate, it’s in my accent, my taste in music, clothes, football team and even beer.

My vision of London sits in a bubble – where I take Lauren to the National History Museum, before walking through one of its many, magnificent parks – up through the galleries and theatre land before catching Christmas lights, food, drink and a home win for Spurs along the way. When I look at people smashing windows, burning cars or goading the police – I start to wonder whether that bubble is all I have left of my London.

I don’t dream. Not really. At night maybe, but not with what you might call hope.

Not in that genuinely enthusiastic way people with aspirations do. People who tell the world what their dream job might be, or where they hope to be living in 5, 10, 15 years time.

I talk long of my love for Italy, and how I’d one day like to live out there. That of course could be viewed as a dream. But ask me what I might do whilst I’m out there and the mind kind of draws a blank. I want the location; I just have no idea how to get past the language, the skills and the determination.

Dreaming just isn’t in my nature.

The problem you see is that I am too much of a realist. I provide my inner most thoughts with too many realistic answers to bat down any potential dreams that may start to form. I’ve always known that I was never going to be a professional footballer, so there would be no point in dreaming about scoring the winning goal in the FA Cup.

I also enter a lot of bowls competitions hoping I might one day get down to the national finals at Worthing, but would never dare dream that it may come off – I haven’t in 20 years, so why should this summer be any different?

It’s not that I am a defeatist. I enter everything with a desire to win, I just know from experience that I always fall somewhere along the line. Someone will beat me, another season will draw to a close and the plans to qualify for Worthing move onwards by another year.

It’s the same at work. I enjoy my job. A lot of what I do perfectly matches my personality profile – I’m great at the start of projects then get bored very quickly – which I guess is where the lack of dreaming comes in to play. If an idea sparks in my head, it’s great to play around with it – but the thought of actually trying to put it in to progress is confronted by the reality that, at some point, those green shoots of hope will turn in to a rather boring flower. One that only looks good for a very short period of time, and even then it looks much like every other flower around it.

My mum assures me that I only ever wanted to be a PE teacher as a child. I tried to put that in to practice by doing Sport Studies at A’ Level and starting a sports based degree programme, but even then there is a point that you can trace back to – me leaving/advised to leave school – where had I stayed, Sport Studies would not have been an option. I would not have started on that path – I would have studied something else. Hardly a lifelong dream.

So what could I be? What dreams should I cultivate until they blossom – forming a delicate, divine flower head to cup; to embrace?

I am being honest when I say I simply don’t know. Whenever asked by friends what I would like to do if I am caught moaning about work, or lack of progression/motivation – I sit there looking at them blankly; desperate for an idea, no matter how farfetched to caress my imagination and explode forth with a stream of plans, goals – near impossible targets. It never happens.

I’m not sure it ever will.

But I do want to dream. I want to be able to sit down across the table from them, with glass of wine in hand and hold court – outlining the very way in which I will make my dreams come to fruition. How I will extract a mere idea, and turn it in to a joyous experience. I just can’t get beyond reality.

Take journalism for an example. I’ve done a fair bit of writing for national publications and websites – a lot of it well received – but then thoughts turn to the boring repetition of some of that work; or the distinct lack of qualifications in a field dominated by graduates – even the number of hits I get on this blog, and I’ve ruled that out long ago.

What about cooking? I like cooking. Ah, but I don’t like fish, or tomatoes really – in their solid, waiting to annoy me with their juice and seeds form, or a lot of vegetable textures for that matter – so that kind of rules out being a chef as a profession.

I can’t even use the excuse of a young family crushing my dreams, as I know Amy would be fully supportive of anything I came up with (within reason – re money, distance apart). It is even that grateful support that got me thinking that I really should do something creative, something utterly wonderful with my (read our) life – I just keep going to the well of inspiration and coming up with only rope – no bucket attached.

Write a book Amy says. Being indecisive as to the subject is about as far as I ever get.

So instead I drift. A blank canvas hoping others will include me in their dreams. Leading me; teasing out my creativity – making me feel alive to the possibilities of the ideas in my head – at least until such a time when I get bored and look to others to take me in a different direction.

But maybe it’s time I went in my own direction, under my own steam – living my own dream. But then how do you stop a realist coming up with all the reasons why they never will? How can you turn a blank canvas in to a work of art? How can you make someone with no dreams, finally see the light – become someone they’ve always wanted to be (well, since 1.30 this afternoon)?

It might take as little as winning a game of bowls tonight, or picking up that teach yourself Italian podcast again. Something so small that it sparks my imagination without me even noticing – and there, stood before you – you will find me living the dream.

Well. I can but dream.

The title of this blog is adapted from the Philip K. Dick novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” or Blade Runner to the cinema goers amongst you

Do you ever have one of those days where everything you do appears to come signposted, or at least has a symbol associated with it – a negative portent, if not an enormous neon sign advising you turn back?

I’m about to walk in to a meeting where a delegate has been replaced by a more senior member of the workforce. Historically this has meant that something has gone wrong, some bad news is coming our way; I have to find the right words to pass on to others – that can’t include panic, problem or crisis. When managers appear, bad news is never too far behind them.

I was also first in a group to get my sandwich at lunch time. The others had to wait; mine was ready in an instant. Their orders included olives, lettuce, low fat cheese – mine was just pig. There were no queues for the artery clogging pig portions – only the salads. I had a coughing fit as a bit of pig went up my nose (mid-previous cough). Maybe I should eat more salad?

The key symbol of the day though is the dead wasp that lies prone outside the men’s toilet at work. I know it’s dead as it has been there for four weeks now – three of which the head has been detached from the thorax.

I look at that wasp every day.

How many metaphors are wrapped up in that dead wasp?

How many times do I walk over it, grumbling something about how much the next level up are missing the point of a piece of work we are doing? It is as though the management level (head) is in a different zone of thinking to those of us (thorax) that do the work on a daily basis. The head has now completely disappeared –no doubt ground down or jammed in to the sole of a worker’s shoe. There is no parallel of this at work, as it is usually the heads that stay – where as the wider body is dispensable.

I wonder if I should pick the body up and give it a proper burial (thrown in a bin somewhere – though I’m not sure which of the environmentally sound recycling bins a thorax goes in?). But then isn’t there something in the sting still being active even after the wasp has died? All day at work I feel like any time I offer to help others out, I get stung with the weight of responsibility/negativity that comes with the fall out of something going wrong. Leave well alone.

Then there is the issue of trust. We trust the cleaners to provide a level of service that removes dirt/debris from the surface of our floors. If this wasp has been lying there for four weeks, that patch of carpet has clearly not been touched in that time. Contractually it is agreed they will not touch anything on our desks for fear that something may be moved – turned off, spilt, damaged – what have you. Yet if they are not cleaning that part of the carpet – what else, of the areas they can touch – are they not responding to?

I know they are stuffing the tissue holders in the toilets to the point of bursting – forcing you to tear handfuls free in your moment of need – but maybe a test could be carried out on other parts of the carpet; or am I just being petty now? If I can sit at my desk and let my mind wander, or check emails on the internet – are the cleaners not allowed to miss a dead wasp at the highest point of the building? The dilemma there is whether or not I would prefer to be a comrade or a snitch – former; always the former.

Finally and here is where I might find similarities in the passing of my friend the wasp – it did die at the highest point in the building – life stifled where there was nowhere else to fly to.

Trapped inside the building, it would have flown about looking for an escape route before succumbing to the needs of whatever it is a wasp lives on; dying – in a desolate spot – far from its fellow wasps, or life bringing properties.

I sometimes wonder if my career of the last five years is like that. I’ve spent a good period of time with my current employer – taking lateral moves, learning new skills – working on intensive projects that suit my personality (I hate the concept of a career doing the same thing) and needs; offering the benefits of easy hours/good holidays. Yet every time I’ve mooted the idea of moving up – I’ve been trapped by a ceiling of skills, knowledge, qualifications – advised to fly around a bit more in my current role. Told to wait for the right skylight to open – which will see me flit higher towards the grade I finally hope to reach. It never happens.

Instead I grow tired of flying around and dart for the next open door – moving in to another room, with a higher ceiling, yet still no obvious route out. The reason I carry on searching is that I know one of these rooms will have an open skylight – will allow me out and up in my career; I just need to show more determination than the now, dead wasp.

Of course it helps that I know where the front door is; that I can take advantage of the life giving properties at my desk – and I hope that one day, should I ever been found on the floor – someone will pick me up, will look after me and will make sure head and thorax remain intact.

At least, unlike my dead friend – I still have hope.