Pictures

The sense is part foreboding, part nonchalance - if both feelings can coexist - and sitting in the departure lounge at Aberdeen airport, waiting - seemingly interminably - for the announcement of my flight to Manchester does little to ease those feelings. Back in January when I decided the API 571 exam was going to be one of my key personal development deliverables for the year, April seemed a lifetime away. Now, on the eve of the exam, the harsh reality hits home squarely not helped by the bad weather which has led to the delay of the inbound flight. The mood around the waiting room is one of tired resignation. It is chock full, fuller than I have ever seen it, perhaps a result of all the flights bunched up. Added to that for me is hunger, having skipped breakfast and hopped down to Boots at work for a meal deal lunch; hardly the sort of fare my inner Nigerian subsists on on a normal day. ...

My father, very much like me, is not a great talker- the sum of our conversation over the course of the year is little more than fifteen minutes. In the main these - 3 minutes here, 2 there, and 5 there have mainly come about as intermissions, snuck in between typically lengthy conversations with my mother - if her constant probing and interrogating can count as conversations. When I wake up to find a couple of missed calls from him on my phone , a whatsapp message from my kid sister, and a BBM message from my brother - all relating to the fact that my father has been trying to get hold of me- it sets the alarm bells in my head off. After arriving from my weekend trip to the middle of nowhere (link) I ordered the largest, most decadent pizza I could from PapaJohns - with a barbecue chicken side- devoured it and promptly fell into my bed for sleep, which was how I ended up oblivious to the clamour for my attention. ...

Wide awake, with not even a lingering hint of sleep to becloud my eyes, I pause to ponder the day that lies ahead of me. Difficult as it may be to wrap my head around them, the facts are what they are. It is very nearly six months since I last made the journey that lies ahead of me. Back then, LK was the developing conundrum, one that those days spent in the middle of nowhere ended up resolving, ultimately to my pain - not that I knew that at the time. My alarm snaps me out of my little reverie - I have a 6.00am check-in at the other end of town to contend with, and a 15 minute walk to catch the bus that will haul me across town - small margins for error given it is already 4.05am. ...

Down South, the overwhelming narrative is one of a spring in full flow, cue a flood of selfies on Instagram and Facebook, complete with the obligatory sunglasses, sleeveless tops and sandals. Up here, in my North Eastern corner of Ruralshire, the best that we have had is six degree weather and intermittent sunshine - not quite spring, but very nearly as good as it gets up here, being thankful that we are not having snow in March like we did last year. ...

Between Albert Camus’The Outsider and Ahdaf Soueif’s The Map of Love, my 2014 reading has gotten off to a solid, if unspectacular start, both these books seeming to occupy opposite extremes of the emotional engagement continuum. In The Outsider, two excellent summaries of which can be found here and here, Albert Camus’ protagonist, Meursault, is defined by his (lack of) emotional reaction to the death of his mother; My mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know - he says, and the subsequent problems that causes for him when he ends up getting sucked into a conflict that was never his to begin with, but which ends in murder. ...

Aperitivo, on Bon-Accord Street, is where this year’s Christmas silly season kicks off for me, and coming so soon after my return from Nigeria - with all the food I was force fed - part of me cringes at the thought of yet more food. In the end my desire to avoid giving yet more ammunition to the AJ-is-a-snob brigade makes me decide to attend. I just about make it to the party, keeping G waiting on the corner of Union and Bon-Accord for almost fifteen minutes. It is a terrible time to be out and about; it is piddling, there is a strong wind and Union Street is chock full of the rush hour traffic at just before six pm. In going home first, rather than directly from work, my gamble has failed spectacularly; missing the bus from across the road at home meaning I have to walk briskly to cover the twenty minute walk in fifteen. G - never the type to let an opportunity to lay in to someone - does give me a right going as we walk the short distance from the junction towards our final destination for the night after I arrive. It matters little that we are the first ones in by ten minutes past six, or that the table has been booked for a seven pm start. ...

--- I get my sister’s old room back. I have been way for so long that I have to go back two house moves to the time I still had a room here, one that I shared with the kid brother in the house on 3rd Street. I spend the bulk of the five days I spend in total in a haze of sorts - thanks to the ASUU strike, there’s precious little going on about town. NEPA does it’s very best to limit how much access to my devices I get, battery life being a significant issue of sorts. ...

--- By 7.20am, I am in a cab, speeding towards the Yaba Motor Park. The plan is to grab a seat on an early bus to Benin, and then on to Ekpoma. Overnight my Mum has tried to call me several times. My gamble - forwarding my UK mobile to a Skype Out number- has failed spectacularly; no thanks to the dodgy internet I’ve got. The forwarded calls come in but I can’t answer them with any decent quality. :( That early on a Sunday morning, Lagos is already agog – blaring loud speakers, shrill cries of hawkers and bus conductors alike and a steady stream of pedestrians. ...

--- I wake up to singing - slightly muffled but loud enough to filter through to that neither here nor there place between sleep and waking up, where ambient sounds meld into dreams, or whatever it is conscious people do with their brains. When I make my way downstairs, it turns out it is the hotel staff having morning prayers. I am low on cash, I half start to prepare to go out before I am minded to ask my friend V, who confirms an ATM is my best bet. I end up walking a few kilometres to the nearest bank, a Zenith Bank, and empty my cash passport in the process; 20,000 naira should cover an extra day’s hotel costs and the transport fare by road from Lagos to Benin which is next on the agenda. ...