An afternoon of concentration, watching both the Scottish and English FA Cup Finals simultaneously. Both games were very exciting, end-to-end affairs, and the parallels were many – Red versus White; an under-dog versus a giant; extra-time; and finally, Goliath beating David on penalties.
Last year’s English final also went to extra time and penalties. Then, it was a necessary end to a frustrating final. This year, however, both shoot-outs were testimony to exciting games. Had the stakes been lower, we might have seen the under-dogs fight with less vigour, the favourites more relaxed, and a result determined in 90 minutes. The penalty shoot-outs are a symptom of both teams trying that extra bit harder.
Tag: Diary (Page 26 of 30)
I caught a mouse on the street this evening. I spotted him hopping over the cobbles outside my local pub. Initially, I gave chase merely for the excercise, never expecting to catch something so nimble as a wee mouse. However, the streets are well maintained in certain parts of Edinburgh, and there were no nooks or crannies for him to escape down. He moved left and right along the curb, but over a long distance could not match my stride, and I always overtook him. Eventually, I was able to wrap my claws around the mouse, and engulf him in the prison of my palm.
It is strange to feel another creature’s heart beating so fast. He bit me a couple of times on the finger, but my grip only tightened. He soon learnt to keep still and take deep breaths.
Back in my flat, I deposited the mouse into a tupperware box and covered the top with pierced tin-foil. I added a small piece of bread to the box, and then sat back, in silence, to watch my new guest.
I have to say, it was rather awkward. He clearly felt uneasy in his new surroundings and did not care for the food I had provided. He just sat there panting, occassionally breaking the monotony by jumping up to the roof of his accomodation in a frantic bid for freedom.
Thinking ahead, it soon became apparent that going to bed would be difficult, knowing that a small rodent was in distress in my hallway. Lacking a hamster wheel or one of those plastic rolling balls, it became obvious to me that the entertainment from my new pet would be limited, and I soon resolved to release him into my back garden.
I took the plastic box down the stairs, and peeled back the foil. The mouse hopped out in an instant, and made for the door that led outside. The lighting in the tenament stairwell is pretty poor, and I did not actually see him slip out… but he was gone, and I was relieved that I was no longer responsible for the creature.
I was left with an empty tupperware box and the scrap of bread. Having no use for the leftovers, I pulled open the back door, and threw the bread out onto the steps that lead out into the yard. As the bread landed, I noticed a flash of black and white in the darkness: The cat from next door, out for a stroll.
Update 7th May: I was chatting to a couple of friends about this last night. They pointed out that my actions were “Really. Weird.” I’m beginning to agree with them. Why chase a mouse? Why, on God’s earth, take it home? I honestly cannot account for my actions. Interestingly, all the comments below seem to be totally credulous…
I’ve inaugurated a new category, a place to put letters to administrations around the world, on behalf of Amnesty International.
Since I’ll be writing about five or six letters at a time, I don’t want all the posts to show up on the front page, bumping everything else off. Instead, I shall write a digest/round-up post which can act as a sign-post to the most recent letters.
I’ve used a plug-in category_visibility by Keith McDuffee, to achieve this technical trickery.
The next step is to redesign the category template to include a reference to Amnesty’s highly effective candle logo.
I’m ashamed that it took me so long to upgrade to WordPress version 2. I’m not as much of an ‘early adopter’ as I would like.
I am pleased to say that my templates ported across properly, and the site looks exactly the same as it always did. No ambitious spring clean here.
I don’t think that either of my readers will need to update their RSS feeds.
Sigiriya: More ancient ruins. This time, a castle high on rock, built by a paranoid king who had killed his father and lived in fear of his exiled brother.
Down at the foot of the mountain, an old man approaches. He carries a single item for sale, what appears to be a wooden book. The other pedlars have not shown me anything like it, so I am a willing audience when the man offers a demonstration. It turns out to be a box with secret compartments, and one must pull back secret panels to open them.
It is clearly hand-made, from solid wood, and I recognise the guard-stone patterns carved into the sides. It is a quirky item that I may not find again, so I make up my mind to have it, there and then. But at what price?
Now don’t worry, I have done plenty of bargaining in my time. I once spent a full forty minutes arguing over a stone rhinoceros with a woman by the roadside outside another UNESCO site, the Great Zimbabwe monument. I eventually bought it for eighty Zimbabwe dollars, and broke the horn a day after purchase when I threw my bag into the back of a truck. In recent years however, the idea of haggling fills me with a certain unease. To make a fuss over what amounts to only a few pounds is surely petty. It is, after all, the kind of money that, in the average British pub, I can send through both my digestive and renal system and piss away in under thirty minutes. It is, after all, above the average daily wage for many of the people I encounter. Surely the benefit of the bargain must fall on their side, and not mine?
And so, as we begin to discuss the price, my heart is not in the game. He suggests over four thousand rupees, cheap if I had found the same item in a shop in the UK. All I have to do is hesitate for a short while, and this drops to three thousand. Passive, rather than pro-active bartering has won me a discount.
I consider that I can afford this amount, and that my group have already begun to climb the steps to the ruined castle, so I hand over a few of the many green notes in my wallet and make off with the book. The wood is thick and varnished. The carving has a tactile quality. It will look good on my shelf, and I begin to imagine the times I shall point it out to friends who visit, and tell anecdotes about Sri Lanka. It is a worthy artefact, and I shall treasure it forever…
Around the next boulder, I am accosted by another vendor, holding another secret book. It is exactly the same as the one I have just slipped into my satchel.
“Sir! Sir! Look, a seecrit book! Come see, only two thousand rupees!”
My heart sinks. My own purchase, once destined to take prime position as a genuine piece of take-home Sri Lankan culture, is devalued in an instant. I have paid over the odds. By the time I have descended the mountain, I have been offered other examples for for fifteen hundred. My scowling and reluctance to purchase is once again taken for passive bartering, and the price has dropped to a thousand. By the end of the day, I will have overheard an offer to one of my friends for five hundred.
The fact that some other pale tourist has bought the same thing for a cheaper price bothers me, haunts me into the evening. We haggle because of this pride. Never mind the money in our wallet. Never mind paying over the odds to a ragged old peddlar. Even if he is laughing at my naivety (and surely, by the Lord Buddha, he is laughing), I can write off the difference as a charity. The real dent to my ego is that I have lost out relative to the other tourists. And – make no mistake about this – they will remind me about this for the rest of the day, and probably tomorrow too.
I guess the crippling need for value for money, down to the last rupee, is a universal trait. Too many holiday conversations revolve around how much he paid for this, or how much she paid for that. Are we getting a good deal at our hotel? How much did the flights cost? Hearing that we are paying less for our hotel room fills us with secret glee. The news that someone managed to get a flight for fifty pounds less will threaten the entire trip. We need to confirm that we are having as good a time as everyone else. We search for a constant endorsement of our every action. Instead of enjoying the holiday – souvenirs, hotel rooms, flights – on their own merit, we judge them relative to what other people have done.
“These shoes were on discount … How much did you pay for your house? … We haggled down the price of our taxi … We found a delightful guest house that no-one else has been to … Our seats were upgrade … pray do tell me, how was your steak? It looks rather over done from this side of the table … “
Every day in Sri Lanka (as in Edinburgh), tourists take photographs of land-marks, duplicating a million photographs of the same scene, carbon-copies of which exist within a hundred thousand photo albums world wide. Of course, we want to remember the scene, its history and its beauty… but we could do that by purchasing a post-card or a professional print. But the problem with paid-for pictures is that they do not endorse the holiday in a way that personal, amateur snaps do. Our own pictures (with our gormless, pasty mugs in the foreground) are proof that we went there, and thus proof that we had a great time, had our value for money.
As, indeed, are wooden souvenir boxes with exotic carvings. Just don’t tell anyone how much you paid for them.