The not-so-lonely Planet

I am extraordinarly chuffed to announced that, as of this morning, I am officially entitled to refer to myself as 'Lonely Planet Author'.

The good folk at LP have today posted Edinburgh in Festival Time - For Free. Swing on by for a quick run-down of what to do in this fair city during August on a non-existent budget.

Stay tuned for further Edinburgh Festival news over the coming month....

It's a jungle out there

This is Limpo the Elephant. See that nasty kink in his rear left leg? When Limpo was an unnamed baby elephant otherwise undifferentiated from the other little bundles of elephant joy, he was assaulted by an angry rhino, who had taken exception to him for a reason that probably only the elephants remember. Maybe he waved his trunk in an insulting fashion at the waterhole, or something.

The rhino in question went completely balllistic and though Limpo managed to escape with his life, his leg was severely damaged. They feared that the damage might be fatal, but he healed up alright and was able to move about and feed himself. Crisis over. Years went by, Limpo limped and ate and ate and limped and grew and grew and behaved in a generally elephantine fashion, as befitting a strong young elephant in his prime.

Then one day, Limpo went out and found the nearest rhino and beat it to death.

Well, the park people thought, its a jungle out there. Or a veldt, anyway. Shit happens. Disputes occur, hormones rage, tempers flare. Occasional tragedies ensue. A little while later, though, he did it again. Another rhino bites the dust. As months stretched into years, the park people realised that this was not a simple, straightforward crime of passion. As the death toll mounted, they realised they had a serial killer on their hands. Limpo was waging a one-elephant war on the rhino race. It was rhino-cide on a grand scale.

By the time the fifteenth rhino had died a violent and bloody death, capital punishment must have been looking like a pretty good option. Can't have your tourists coming across murder scenes when they are out to take their pretty pictures of the Big Five. Instead, though, they brought in a heavy hitter, in the form of in another elephant. A chilled old elephant from further North. An elephant with gravitas and wisdom. An elephant carrying the weight of a great many years and thus, seniority. Most important of all, The Grand Old Elephant Of The North got along extraordinarily well with rhinos.

In what must be one of the world's all-time greatest triumphs of criminal rehabilitation, after the two elephants had spent some time together, the slaughter ended. The old elephant eventually went back home, and Limpo, as far as anyone knows, hasn't harmed a hair on the rhino's head since.

I love a happy ending.

P.S. apologies to the people I sent photos to referring to 'hippo-cide': it was a slip of the brain.

Vale

I have just been to a fireman's funeral. I stood in the rain and watched it pass by, anyway.

I'm not sure why I went, really. I didn't know him, but he was from the station round the corner, and died while fighting a fire in a pub not far from here. That seemed reason enough.

I actually had to call them yesterday when an alarm went off in the block of flats. Turned out to be a false alarm, but they were hear in minute and and they met my apology with a completely unperterbed 'Nae bother'. I wanted to say something to them then, but I figured they could do without getting reminded they were about to bury a collegue every time they tried to do their job.

We could hear the piper before we caught a glimpse of the parade through the teeming rain. It rained in a truly Scottish fashion, from start to finish: heavy, persistent and drenching rain. By the time I got home my waterproof shoes were full simply from the awater running into them down my legs.

Other fireman lined the route, standing in the teeming rain, and from what I can see there was more than a few burly fire-fighting types quite glad to have rain to mask the water on their faces.

The Art of Waiting

On the plane to Africa, I read the following in Ryszard Kapuscinski's The Shadow of the Sun (Penguin (Australia) 2008):

"Therefore the African who boards a bus sits down in a vacant seat, and immediately falls into a state in which he spends a great portion of his life: a benumbed waiting."

Well, I thought, I can dig it. Sounds exactly waiting for the train at Richmond station, back in the day, when I had an office to go to.

Kapuscinski goes on:

"What does this dull waiting consist of? People know what to expect; therefore, they try to settle themselves in as comfortably as possible, in the best possible place. Sometimes they lie down, sometimes they sit on the ground, or on a stone, or squat. They stop talking. A waiting group is mute. It emits no sound. The body goes limp, droops, shrinks. The muscles relax. The neck stiffens, the head ceases to move. The person does not look around, does not observe anything, is not curious. Sometimes his eyes are closed - but not always. More frequently, they are open but appear unseeing, with no spark or like in them. I have observed for hours on end crowds of people in this state of inanimate waiting, a kind of profound physiological sleep:..."

I quote it at length because this is clearly not a passing aside or a throwaway line. (Though to be fair he does note elsewhere that any statement about 'Africa' is always going to be crap because there is no such homogenous place).

It didn't make me feel any better about my trip, though. The guy lived and worked as a journalist in Africa for years, so I figured he probably knows what he is talking about. Fuck me, I thought, I am gonna be BORED.

A week later, I am in a bare and unadorned hall, with a good forty minutes to go before the Conference's closing ceremony. Delegates have been listening to learned people all week, and they are about to hear just one more. There is plastic chairs and concrete, and very little else.

There is nothing to do but wait, but like everyone else I am getting there early, because I saw how the crowd waited before the Opening ceremony, and I am hoping to see a bit more waiting. I am hoping they will wait, spontaneously, in any spare patch of floor, in sync, starting with some simple melodies back and forth across the cavernous room, gradually adding harmonies, layer upon layer, three, four, five...

The film found at the link below is my experience of an African crowd waiting. Possibly it is no more typical than Mr R's, but I defy you to listen without smiling (the vision is crap, but listen to the sound!). Better still, give it a go next time the 5.34 from Flinders Street is late.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPIh038Z3Sc