Today I didn't have an Epiphany,

I utterly refuse to consider people other than Saul on the road to Damascus as having had epiphanies.

Neither Newton nor Archimedes claimed one and both of them knew of the concept. Nor can Joan of Arc reliably be credited with one, because she was in all probability schizophrenic.

An epiphany demands clouds parting, trumpets, and heralds at the very least. Plus a loud booming voice off-stage.

So I seriously question people who say they got all this action on the top of the No.5 bus on the way to the Pizza parlour.

It may be obvious by now that I did not have an epiphany this afternoon. But, having been so vehement about repudiating the tendency people have lately of having epiphanies on a semi-regular basis and without visible effects and cloud parting; I find myself bereft of a way to say what happened to me this afternoon.

Perhaps it was a revelation? But that still sounds faintly ecclesiastical – so...no. Yet I honestly felt like the deep fog around me was being cleaved As if the clouds really were parting. I’m not sure if they snapped back again like sturdy knicker elastic, or if they left a gap. But while they were parted I think I got my first full look outside in a long while.

And what I suddenly realised was that I have been living, foetus-like, all folded into myself, in an egg made of opaque, charcoal, grey. And in another blinding flash I realised I’d been living inside that shell now for 7 years. Seven!

And the reason I realised that was because I saw clearly again the person I had been before I slipped into my grey egg. Someone whom I haven’t seen in all that time, but who was suddenly as familiar and beckoning as an old pair of Uggs.

There was a voice. And it was off-stage. But it was mine – a voice from 7 years ago. And it said, in tones of exasperation: “You twat!”.

And lo! I looked and saw it was so.

So, I might not have burst out of my chrysalis completely yet. But I’ve seen through the cracks in the shell.

And I think I got my ‘Fuck you!’ back.

Comments

How I Turned into an Acorn.

....in the beginning. I came to England directly from China where I'd been Lecturing for 7 years. A chap who contacted me while I was there & said he was doing so because he was a friend of a friend of mine at the British Council,, suggested we work together: he had the premises for a school in Eton and I would bring over a couple of teachers & contacts from China to help teach at the school. It was all lined up & I saw this as a kind of Wonder-Job: I couldn't wait to get started. (And the plate glass windowed flat high up at tree level was all blonde wood & brushed-steel kitchen appliances.) The fourth day of being in England my putative "partner" declared bankruptcy. And I also discovered that the person whom he'd cited as a mutual friend at the British Council had never heard of him.Thus the whole reason for me being where I was, at that time, suddenly disappeared. And now I had no accommodation,

re cycling

The Brighton & Hove Circular Economy Action Plan 2020 - 2035 https://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/business-and-trade/brighton-hove-circular-economy-action-plan-2020-2035#tab--promoting-circular-economy-activity-across-the-city This jargon-filled mission statement regarding recycling is published by Council. Full of momentary fashionable misuse of perfectly simple but unexplained concepts such as 'stakeholders' and 'circular economy', it is not aimed at local residents, small business and shop owners, those for whom English is a second language, or, importantly, the 'average' person . It is a mangled word-fest presumably aimed at other Councils, as was so much of Brighton & Hove Council's public communication under the previous administration. So as is usual with many of Councils "public" documents, two thirds of the population are confused - and bored stiff - by them; others are intimidated, and still oth

I finally Get why Alice's sister Fell Asleep in the Shade!

Yes, I do mean Alice as in Alice in Wonderland. She who, 150 years later, was to inspire plot-lines for Soaps and B-Grades with the (now) evergreen It Was All a Dream- ending for years to come. And the reason I am referring to Alice is because, until those hot days we had recently, I never had completely understood how, on a hot summer's day, anyone could really fall asleep under a tree? Not that I ever breathed this puzzlement to a soul: nothing I had ever read, seen or heard over an increasingly longer period of time, seemed to indicate there was a flaw in this reasoning. Everyone else obviously understood. As this has undoubtedly been the status quo for around three quarters of a rather peripatetic life, one sometimes one has to get a grip on asking too many questions. The line people draw between eagerly intelligent fact gathering, and total imbecility, is shorter than you may realise. But now, finally, like a bucket of iced-water over the head, I discovered that shade

Benefit Street, Brighton.

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