I realise sometimes how extremely narrow my life is - I know that writing the book has made it worse, having to endlessly focus on a particular topic has made me live in a sort of fuge state some of the time, where my intellect and other bits don't seem to be engaged. My most frequent utterance in the day time is something like "Mmm" in different tones of voice "yes, quite, now go away" "I'd like to respond nicely but you're interrupting my train of thought" "Shut up" "please go!" My external life - when I go out and socialise (or stay in an socialise usually) is also a bit limited. I wonder how I would cope with someone saying something challenging or interesting... sometimes I feel like I am living in a latter day edition of Flaubert's Dictionary of Received Attitudes - safe, predictable, bourgeois...
Last night I retired early as my stomach was unbearably painful - and oh joy! there was the perfect tv programme on - a wildlife documentary about the Zambezi. It had the most brilliant photography - and I had that almost hallucinatory sense of ephiphany. Hey man, the colours! as Mark would say. I don't know when I have enjoyed anything so much. I am utterly starved of such things. There were sensational aerial shots - I especially liked one of a vast group of hippos stretched out along the stream in the last deep places available as the river dried up. A sinister shot of crocodiles gathering to feast on a dead hippo. There were some wonderful scenes of carmine bee-eaters making nests in the river banks, and a fish eagle coming among them to prey on them. Lots of shots of the Victoria falls, but most interesting was a brief shot of the VF dried up - I didn't realise they did that. Important to ensure one goes at the right time of year obviously. What I found odd was very little sign of human life - apart from a tribe who lived on the river (impressive feats of catfish spearing) - were there no towns? no farms, no cattle? It gave the impression that Zambia and Mozambique were just giant wildlife reserves, with more elephants and buffalo than humans. And of course it made we went to go there with a fierce desperation, that all thoughts of large flying insects and snakes could not shift. I should explain that as a teenager I was alarmed by a very large flying insect in South Africa.
Thinking about that trip to SA it seems hard to connect it with what happened before. I think the new experiences drove all the old misery out of my mind - and it only returned when I got back to England. Nevertheless, I slightly wonder whether I may have exaggerated some of the misery and longing I felt in the novel... I mean, I've picked out the bad bits I remember, but forgotten the most satisfactory and enjoyable parts of my life at that time.
I suppose wildlife documentaries fuel the safari tourism business - people go to see baby elephants snorkelling across rivers, not to see urban squalor and have power cuts. But I expect things are better now, there seems to be a feeling that many African countries are beginning to get their act together. I would really like to go to Africa again, just for the smell and the colours. It's not something I think of much because it is well beyond the possibility of planning, but something like that programme makes me feel I would be sorry not to go to Africa again before I die (whereas I could happily leave other places out). New entry for that I think.
Last night I retired early as my stomach was unbearably painful - and oh joy! there was the perfect tv programme on - a wildlife documentary about the Zambezi. It had the most brilliant photography - and I had that almost hallucinatory sense of ephiphany. Hey man, the colours! as Mark would say. I don't know when I have enjoyed anything so much. I am utterly starved of such things. There were sensational aerial shots - I especially liked one of a vast group of hippos stretched out along the stream in the last deep places available as the river dried up. A sinister shot of crocodiles gathering to feast on a dead hippo. There were some wonderful scenes of carmine bee-eaters making nests in the river banks, and a fish eagle coming among them to prey on them. Lots of shots of the Victoria falls, but most interesting was a brief shot of the VF dried up - I didn't realise they did that. Important to ensure one goes at the right time of year obviously. What I found odd was very little sign of human life - apart from a tribe who lived on the river (impressive feats of catfish spearing) - were there no towns? no farms, no cattle? It gave the impression that Zambia and Mozambique were just giant wildlife reserves, with more elephants and buffalo than humans. And of course it made we went to go there with a fierce desperation, that all thoughts of large flying insects and snakes could not shift. I should explain that as a teenager I was alarmed by a very large flying insect in South Africa.
Thinking about that trip to SA it seems hard to connect it with what happened before. I think the new experiences drove all the old misery out of my mind - and it only returned when I got back to England. Nevertheless, I slightly wonder whether I may have exaggerated some of the misery and longing I felt in the novel... I mean, I've picked out the bad bits I remember, but forgotten the most satisfactory and enjoyable parts of my life at that time.
I suppose wildlife documentaries fuel the safari tourism business - people go to see baby elephants snorkelling across rivers, not to see urban squalor and have power cuts. But I expect things are better now, there seems to be a feeling that many African countries are beginning to get their act together. I would really like to go to Africa again, just for the smell and the colours. It's not something I think of much because it is well beyond the possibility of planning, but something like that programme makes me feel I would be sorry not to go to Africa again before I die (whereas I could happily leave other places out). New entry for that I think.
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