Life

Source: Wallpaper.com I come upon them suddenly as I emerge from the arch on Peacock’s Close onto the parking lot. I have my headphones in as always, humming under my breath as I drag myself home, the combination of the low light , my tiredness and that they have their backs to the road being the reasons why we startle each other. What becomes obvious when I eventually take in the scene is that they — a woman and a girl I can only assume are mother and child — have been taking turns at blowing bubbles and squealing in delight as the light wind drives them away towards the road. ...

The promised snowcaplyse never quite materialised. At its worst in my corner of the world, it deposited a layer of snow all around, the result of the intermittent dribbles of snow and gale force winds. The effect of that, and the small rise in temperatures followed by a freeze which thawed the snow for a bit, was to leave slippery layers of black ice on the pavements; treacherous for us runners and brisk walkers. A friend did fare slightly worse, the small matter of a fortuitous gap between her car and the one in front of her being the difference between safety and a minor crash when she skidded on a patch of black ice. ...

Beach Boulevard, Aberdeen, 2016 One of the things I’m looking to achieve this year is to run a 10k race, which is why three to four times a week I grab my gear and hit the road. I use the MapMyRun app which paces me during the week from a leisurely 2k easy run on a Tuesday to a longer (now 5k+) run on the following Sunday. As my run times improve and the distances lengthen, what I realise is that my natural predilection for just hitting go and running works fine for speed but works against my distance, as I am often far too winded to post a useful time once that initial burst of energy has fizzled out. ...

For the bank on the corner of King’s and Union which I pass everyday, only stopping to use its ATM on the odd occasion I need cash which has been closed for over a month. A closure I only noticed today because I needed cash. Unseen.

The final days of the holidays- I am back at work on Friday — seem like a good time to put a dent in my reading plans for the year, which is how I finally get round to reading Ghana Must Go, an airport impulse buy whilst waiting to board a flight last summer. A few pages in, I find myself wondering what the fuss about the book many years ago was about, steeling myself for a long, hard slog. By the time I am midway, I find myself pleasantly surprised by the pace and the sense of recognition its themes engender in me — grief, loss, growing up in an African home and the immigrant experience, being the chief ones. ...

The following are what I consider my main focus areas and objectives for 2017, derived from the Life Plan. A number of these are long running things I have failed to resolve over the years. Here’s hoping 2017 is a much better year. The Life Goals Restated for visibility: 1. Be the best husband, father, brother, son and friend that I can be 2. Excel in the Corrosion, Materials and Asset Integrity Engineering Discipline 3. Live in, and contribute to life in, a great church and a great city ...

I am big on putting together grand plans, ones which go to a great level of details to spell out the things I want to do and achieve. Where things have fallen down over the past few years has been in the application; the hard, long slog that is the doing needed to bring the plans to fruition. It would appear that in this regard I am like most people, particularly as this relates to New Year’s resolutions. This gap - this disconnect between what I want to do and what actually happens - is most obvious in the area of my spiritual practice. As an example, getting to a place where a daily time of prayer and bible study is embedded in my daily routine is one of the key things I have wished for over the course of the last few years. This has tended to be more a source of frustration than inspiration in my case, especially as these failings drive a sense of cognitive dissonance. ...

A first taxi ride since July, occasioned by an urgent need to head out into the wider ‘Shire for work, is how I end up in slowly moving traffic on Guild Street one Tuesday morning. As we inch along towards the first set of traffic lights, the announcer on the radio points out what is bleeding obvious to us - that there are long tail backs on our favoured route. The taxi driver, fingers tapping on the steering wheel in that understatedly impatient way the young and restless have, gives things a few minutes before he fires up his TomTom device to assess what our routing options are. It turns out the longer route is the better one on this occasion - his device predicting that it is the quicker one by ten minutes. Being stuck with him, I shrug when he asks if I mind his taking the route. I don’t suppose I have a lot of choice, besides hopping out of his taxi and legging it, or calling off my trip entirely. Once we are out of the snarling traffic and heading out towrds my destination, the incessant tapping stops, all his nervous energy perhaps being dissipated by the manoveuring he has had to do to get us out of our spot of bother. ...

One of the lingering effects of H’s passing is that four times a year, I go through a phase where I especially struggle for words to share with my father. Although triggered by four specific days – her birthday (the 8th of July), their wedding anniversary (the 11th of November), the day she passed (the 19th of July) and the day she was buried (the 8th of August) – these tend to be long drawn out affairs affecting the days leading up to and the days after these days. The struggle takes various forms primarily centred on whether to call my father or not, and on the days when I manage to call him, what to talk about - to keep things as normal as possible or broach the difficult subject of H. He and I have never been the best of conversationalists - we’re much too similar for that – but these days make that tenuous relationship an even more difficult one, so much so that on most of these days, I have opted for not calling him in the end. ...

For the Wordpress Discover Challenge Prompt: Song - - 1995 was an interesting time to be young and Christian. DC Talk, The Newsboys and Audio Adrenaline were at various stages in their evolution from being the niche interest of church youth groups to becoming recognisable by mainstream music lovers. Seemingly out of the blue, Christian Contemporary Music was on its way to acquiring a sort of coolness that the work of the likes of Larry Norman and Rich Mullins had deserved but somehow never achieved. In my corner of the world, Hosanna Music’s body of work was the rave, a slew of live worship albums including a couple recorded in post apartheid South Africa (Tom Inglis’We Are One and Lionel Petersen’s Rejoice Africa) building on a collection that included several offerings from the likes of of Ron Kenoly, Don Moen, Bob Fitts and Randy Rothwell. ...