Darkness and despair

Last night I returned home to find there was a powercut. The weather has been torrential and I had passed the EDF van down the country lane that is our road, so should have guessed all was not well. I found my Mum sitting in darkness at the kitchen table looking forlorn. When asked what was wrong, she replied ‘I just don’t know what to do. I can’t read, I can’t do any work. I’m bored.’ A first! I was hungry but without electricity couldn’t cook so ate a rather unsatisfying corned beef sandwich for dinner. Without electricity we were reduced to despair. In the end I fled to a friend's house, and she went to bed early. It got me thinking; I lived in Tanzania for over three months without electricity last year, and I didn’t miss it at all. How is it that we are unable to cope when confronted with a minor powercut in the ‘developed’ world? At my adopted family’s house in Africa, light comes in the form of paraffin lamps – suspended from ceiling hooks at dinner time, or equally in the shower when washing after dark as I often did. Cooking is done over a fire in an unlit outhouse, or on an open fire under moonlight. There are no computers so that’s the work problem solved. Life is simpler, but people are happy. Can we really say we are more developed?

for the love of mappage

My love affair with maps has been going on for quite some time now. I can’t put an exact date to our anniversary, but I know that it’s a love I will never let go. There is something very evocative and mysterious about them; from the simplest town plan to the most intricate and detailed atlas. I know I’m not alone – many of us need only to glance at a map and before long they have lost minutes, hours or sometimes even days in a reverie.

Yesterday I stumbled upon a little gem of a bookstall in Spitalfields market, near to my office in London. It was selling prints of every map you can imagine, ripped from old atlases (atli??? If it’s not it should be) and I spent half an hour rooting around looking for maps that mean something to some of the special people in my life (and share the love of mappage). I controlled myself and bought only a few maps. But it got me thinking – what’s my favourite map? Off the top of my head, here is a list of my top 5 maps:

• JRR Tolkein’s maps of Middle earth
• The beautiful blue and green world map on the wall of the flat in Chelmsford
• The London underground map – ingeniously designed to resemble a circuit board
• The close-up satellite image I had of Canterbury when I lived there
• Stephen Walter’s London map ‘The Island’
http://flowingdata.com/2010/06/02/uber-detailed-london-map-satire/

so what's your favourite map?

thought for the day

Having recently returned from an 11 month, 11 country, challenging, incredible, outlook-changing, life-affirming, humbling and at times stressful, scary, financially draining but altogether fantastic trip around the world, it is safe to say I have well and truly caught the travel bug. But for this illness there is no cure. No pills, lotions or potions will remove the yearning for distant shores that I feel every day as I battle my way through the crowded train station on the way to work. Last year I spent 6 months in Africa where I fell in love with the people, music, sunsets, animals, scenery, way of life and infectious joy that pervades every sense. I constantly dream of returning. But there’s a whole world out there to explore and it would be foolish of me to be so narrow minded as to focus on only one destination (although saying that I could spend the rest of my life in Africa and not even scratch the surface of this rich and varied continent). So the question currently occupying my thoughts is where to next. The world is my proverbial oyster…