Monoposte

I giggle like an idiot everytime I see this advert. It's an advert advertising advertising space on large billboards on top of single posts.

Mono, coming from greek meaning "alone" is used in a similar way in Spanish as in English: As a prefix meaning singular, alone, single etc.

As in Monorail, monolithic, monopoly.

Mono also means monkey in Spanish(amongst other things)

Poste comes from similar origins as the English word for a piece of wood or metal put upright in the ground “post”

I know all that, and now so do you. Why is it then I still have the image of a small monkey in a cap carrying a satchel full of letters in a sorting depot stuck in my head?

Cat & Mouse

A place I stayed in last summer overlooked the sea and old fisherman’s house. It had begun to fall in on itself, as is the way of all things that get the opportunity to age. Its front garden was a concrete semicircle that may never have been flat, but now looked like the cooled peel of a lava flow frozen in the throws of chaotic brownian motion. It was upon this landscape of paused bubble and cracks, ravine and crevice that I watched a cat dance about effortlessly as it chased the quicksilver movement of a mouse. With the ease of a heavy water drop winding down a pane of glass the mouse slid trying to make good its escape. That cat dove upon and bounced the mouse, hitting it with the pads of its paws. Scooping throwing it in the air. Sometimes the mouse stayed still, its tiny chest clutching at slippery air. If it was stunned, exhausted, or just resigned I couldn't say. Every turn the mouse made the cat anticipated, blocking its routes to freedom.

The cat rested on it, pressing heavily on the mouse like a heavy, dark mist. I stopped watching when the cat began pinning it to the tombstone-grey concrete, its claws ripping at the flesh, not by the cat itself, but as the mouse struggled to free itself.

I forget sometimes that I am living like this mouse stalked by a predator, that I’m living in the good times, presumably bookended by the bad. With a wrong decision here or not enough sleep for a few weeks there, I could be pressed against the rock by depression. After a long day, or a hard day I can feel it stalking me, watching me, ready to consume me. Intense sadness one day is a claw in the flesh, it’s attempt to pin you down, the more you struggle, the more it hurts, tears at you but you must free yourself. Because you have to stay in the good time

Technorati Tags:
ElGuiri, sadness

My name is

Writing can be addictive, and I know the more frequently I write here the more often I feel inclined to write, but sometimes writing an annotated account of my life and my thoughts upon it has to be pushed aside while I go about living it. Quite a boast for someone who with only a few hours of energy to spend each day.

But addictive it is, spending time on creating sentences that I consider good enough to put out there, and to then know they’re being read, or even enjoyed, helps keep my ego fed and the ticking of my internal clock quiet enough to be ignored.

It’s similar to cooking for others, the act of spending time concentrating on something, carefully guiding it into this world only to share and enjoy it with friends, even, as in the case of writing on the internet, they are friends you never see in person. They both create an intimacy, the act of creating for others is a brave one too, not wholly altruistic, but brave nonetheless. It leaves you vulnerable to criticism, No it’s more than that, it’s pushing yourself into the limelight, singling out yourself to criticism.

So it was a couple weeks ago when I tried to cook a British christmas dinner for friends here in Spain. It took hours of cooking and days of preparation by my girlfriend, but we did it. Cooking a turkey with all the trimmings, buying key ingredients in Britain and bring them back to Spain with me and buying everything else from British food shops.

My girlfriend said an interesting thing as the turkey, its legs akimbo and showing the world an impressive gape, cooked in the oven. She said “It smells like England in here[the flat]”...

I was once asked a strange question by a Spaniard about ‘England’, I use quotes because I don’t think the answer I gave just covers that South-east corner of Britain that’s known as England, and neither did the questioner, not if he really understood what “Ingleterra” really meant. “Why, does English food smell different to Spanish food?”

After a moments hesitation an answer made its way to the front of the queue in my mind: “Fat”.

The biggest difference between a Mediterranean diet and a British one is which fats are used in cooking; animal fats are used far more in Anglo-Saxon cultures than the so common you sweat it, olive oil, in Mediterranean cooking. He didn’t seem happy with the answer, but at the time I wasn’t happy with it either

..So when my girlfriend said that the flat smelt of England she meant animal fat.

My name is Neil Wykes and I smell of animal fats and I’m a writing addict.

Technorati Tags:
ElGuiri, Spain, British food

in lieu of the written word

Within the last 6 months I’ve had my last birthday of my twenties, the tenth anniversary of a stroke that probably changed the direction of my life completely and definitely changed the direction the fingers my my left hand! It’s a cliché I know, but anniversaries and birthdays can make you reflect and ponder the past, where you’ve come from and how far you’ve come. If I come to any conclusions I’ll let you know

crawled from under a rock

Hey! How are you? No time no speak!
I've been busy doing nothing, but I haven't forgotten you, I just misplaced my mojo, my "joie de vivre", sense of wonder, curiosity, noseyness, "raison d'etre", my ... Je Ne sais pas comment écrire."

Thankfully I didn't loose my French dictionary. Here's a photo of snow on palm trees to remind myself more than you, that life can still surprise: