The Joy of Maize

Lou's been off in the countryside for the last week, getting educated by the community project Hijos Del Maiz (Children Of Maize) Language School, provider of homestays and Spanish lessons in the tiny settlement of Lagartillo away from the luxuries of hot water (and running water for that matter), electricity, internet, mobile phones and all that jazz. Below is the main drag in all its glory.

I went to see how she was doing at the weekend and was surprised at what I found.The village is a community in a true sense, with people wandering in and out of each others houses, something the language students are encouraged to do as often as possible. Everyone is jolly friendly and will natter on at you about anything if you give them half a chance.

Two things that really struck me were how a direct relationship with their surroundings through food growing and production can help them maintain an impressive physical state and how much waste is produced.

When you're living off the land, you know exactly what you're putting into your body; after all, you're the one growing and harvesting crops and preparing the food from them. Food in Lagartillo is very simple (re: tortilla, rice and beans for every meal), but you can taste the simple purity of what you are eating; the effects of its quality are also well represented by the people within the community who have been eating the diet for years.

Erminia (above) is Lou's homestay mother; she's 70 years old and works solidly from 6 in the morning until 8 at night, doing everything from domestic chores to herding cows around a field. Bowling along with a spring in her step, she reduces piles of maize like the recent delivery below (more, we were told, would shortly be arriving) to sacks of corn, putting the medication supported geriatric population of the uk to shame.

Nothing gets wasted in the countryside; the myriad of packaging that has to get stripped off supermarket goods before they can be consumed just doesn't exist on food that was pulled out of the ground, or on the meat of the animal that was grunting or clucking around the house the day before. All paper (toilet and otherwise) and corn husks are burnt in the house's stone oven (below) and the ashes dropped in with the contents lurking in the base of the compost toilet out at the back of the property. Food leftovers go to the animals, and rainwater is used sparingly in place of running water. It is all so straightforward that you can barely believe that the huge quantities of junk that get turned out on to the street from the average UK house every week can't be avoided.

It certainly gives you pause for thought when you see somewhere like Lagartillo, and unavoidably begs the question; at what point did we isolate ourselves within dense populations (when was the last time you hung out with your neighbours?), checking the nutritional information on the side of food packaging to make sure we weren't poisoning our bodies before tossing it into a bottomless bin destined eventually for a landfill site out of sight and mind, before chewing down suppliments to keep ourselves "healthy" and make up for the shortcomings of the aforementioned food? What's missing from this picture?

Esteli, Nicaragua

18th October 2009

Moving Backward to Go Forwards

Swept up in the scholarly environment perpetuated by the multitude of language schools in Xela, I decided to enrol for a week to decide for myself if the one to one tuition method of Spanish classes was preferable to the group lessons that I had been recieving in Mexico. Slightly overwhelmed by the quantity of schools available I opted for Kie Balam, at which my directionally challenged taxi driver had stopped at to request advice following my arrival in town, and thanks to who I had subsequently found the elusive Yoga House.

After a written exam that determined that I was, for the most part,completely ignorant about prepositions I was introduced to a tiny and very giggly (characteristics that seemed to be consistant with most of the staff) teacher who proceeded to shephard me through the fairly tattered remains of my Spanish. It was certainly a more active process one to one, under the obvious circumstances that I had to be either listening or speaking at one point or another unlike the group lessons which had allowed me ample opportunity to switch off while my classmates took a more active role in the proceedings. However, I could see how it would become all too easy to get comfortable speaking only in situations with a private tutor and not carry conversational confidence into other scenarios, an acknowledged possiblity that accounted for the prevolence of homestays and structured activities by the majority of schools to provide a diversity of opportunities for students outside tuition contact time.

We waded through unfamiliar topics before a fresh assault on the other "modes" of speaking that I had begun to learn in Mexico. As briefly as possible; in Spanish there are different methods or conveying orders (the "imperative") and also for "unreal" things, such as opinions, desires, hypothetical situations and doubts (the subjunctive). These are things that a beginner speaker is oblivious to, happily using the "indicative" mode (for "real" things, such as events, descriptions etc.) for everything. The equally infuriating thing is that if you only use one mode to speak you will be understood by the vast majority of people perfectly well, and most Latinos that I have met have difficulty in diffentiating between modes anyway, due to them being drummed into them from an early age without any formal tuition. So, with this in mind, why bother with the other modes of speaking? Good question...

By the end of the week my head was bulging with concious thought process about how I should be correctly saying things, which chipped away steadily at my speaking fluidity and confidence. They say that the best approach is to launch yourself into conversation without too much active thought, but I struggle to see how I can improve in areas which are not fundamentally essential for language "survival" without taking a hit on my capacity to communicate in the short, or even medium, term. With this in mind I'm back to earlier days of careful communication and consequently tripping over things that previously came to me easily, hoping that a mindful approach will eventually plaster the differences in modes to the correct bits of my brain, thus earning me the heady title of "upper intermediate"; a worthy goal indeed.

Xela
8th August 2009

The Joy of Xela

Akin to the island of the Lotus Eaters in Homer's Oddessy, Xela is a place that all too easily allows a person to pass time without realizing it. Through the connection of my friend, I found my way to Yoga House, a communal rental spot whose subtle front door sandwiched between buildings gave no indication of its labarinthine interior. Standing on the doorstep with my various belongings hanging from me, the door was flung open by someone of whom I had absolutely no recollection. "Hablas ingles?", I ventured, as I watched her face crack into a wide smile. "Big Jon!", she exclaimed, and ushered me inside. It turned out after short discussion that we had met on my previous trip to Lago Atitlan (in conjunction with my university friend, Little Jon), and proved to be an excellent welcoming step to what was to be a welcome respite from the pressures of relentless movement and uncertainty.

Xela sits in a bowl formed by mountainous terrain, a quirk of it's location being that it is some 2500 metres above sea level, thus providing a welcome break from the blistering heat of Belize. Unlike its neighbour, Antigua, it seems to have retained some of its spirit outside of the ultimate purpose of being a tourist serving town, despite the prevolence of language schools that have given it something of an international reputation as one of the best places to learn Spanish.

Aside from the aimiability of the people and the general atmosphere of the place, I was also really taken with Yoga House; the connections to people that it offered and the abundence of excercise and physical activity that became instantly accessible, making me realise both how much I had missed it and the company and influence of people for whom it was an important part of life. Within a few hours of arriving I was wheezing around a frisbee pitch, feeling so glad that for the first time in weeks, I felt absolutely awful.
With 3 yoga classes a day and 3 boxing classes a week included in the criminally cheap cost of taking a room in the house, I would have quite happily run myself into the ground if it wasn't for the fact that, shortly after some of the boys took me for a run up a very large hill outside town (shown above on the right) I succumbed to a killer cold and my head filled up with mucus, preventing normal breathing and hence further exhertion. I can only assume that weeks on the go coupled with various traumas finally caught up with me, but at least had the decency to do their worst in a place where I could quite happily extend my stay from a couple of days to a week and a half without a second thought.

Xela, Guatemala
2nd August 2009

Shameless Self Promotion

After a great deal of cursing the general state of Spanish grammar, Acer laptops, the speed and availability of internet connections, Google Documents, Google Translator, Microsoft Word, Blogger and my own lack of patience, I have finally completed the opus that is my Curriculam Vitae, in English and Spanish.

You can now view the English or the Spanish versions hosted by my friends at Google Documents. In addition, I've posted a couple of links on the left hand side of the blog under "Odds and Ends" thus allowing easy access for the multitudes of Fairtrade companies who are aimlessly browsing random blogs looking for potential employees.

Gissa job.

Chiapa de Corzo

13th Mayo 2009

A Well Read Gentleman

Hurrah! I've just finished my first book in Spanish! All ninety-something pages of "El Principito" (or "the Little Prince") are now conquered and I prepare to take on my next challenge, the abridged version of Alice in Wonderland; I can feel my reading age slowly increasing to the giddy heights of almost a six years old...

Chicahua
17th April 2009

Challenge Clarke pt 2: Shoes of Doom

Refreshing once again, if I may, the iron clad gauntlet laid down to me by my good friend back in the UK, Ms. Polly Williams;

1) Ride something not of the equine world (i.e. no horses allowed)
2) Find out about Mexicans before the Mexicans, as it were
3) Purchase, and enjoy parading in, some handmade footwear

One of these now lies defeated, as those who have seen my childlike screaming captured on video will no doubt testify. Owing to reasons of impending need to pertain more appropriate footwear or risk social exclusion and utter bone idleness to research the anthropoligical history of Mexico, I´ve prioritised the third part of the quest.

Owing to the helpful comments of fellow teacher Martin that, in cirumstances of purchase of any one of the multitude of beautiful pairs of leather sandals adorning the tourist shops around the central plaza, my shoes would, in a short space of time "Smell like ass", I decided to consider other options. My feet have always exhibited a propensity for excessive perspiration, and I needed a more rigourous solution.

Combing the back streets away from the tourist strip, I happened upon a hole in the wall enterprise, similar to the countless alternatives dotted around the town and propiented by two small boys. This one, however, contained a pair of sandals that I deemed fit for purpose and after a laborious and drawn out exchange with the two "assistants" I managed to walk away with my toes singing songs of freedom to the open air. All was well until I noticed that that one of the straps was torn almost to point of breaking; the two miniature entrepreneurs had just sold me a dud.

Flip flopping back to the same hole feeling somewhat aggreived, I confronted the salesmen with my sandals and asked in my abysmal spanish for a replacement pair. This request was gleefully denied and it was at this point that my language aptitude left me high and dry; I could request a replacement, but had no hope for understanding the reasons for a rebuttal. An old lady sauntered onto the scene as the intensity of the discourse between the boys and I increased, but unfortunately she proved to be no better at communicating a solution; my admission of lack of comprehension was only met with a different slice of rapid fire language, and with the cackling and shouting at me by the pint sized fiends I had the feeling that my incomprehension was greatly at my expense. Despite trying everything from trying different routes of explanation to issuing threats to rubbish their reputation about town, the best that I could do was explain that I would return with a translator within 5 minutes to develop a more productive discourse. Returning shortly afterwards with Padre Javier I was almost unsurprised to find the shutter pulled down over the lot and not a sign of life to be found.

Anecdotes about fighting children for shoes aside, this serves to illustrate one of the greatest challenges that I struggle with every day, that I never comprehended before I arrived and still struggle to articulate now. I´m surrounded by people and circumstances that operate on a completely different language and this, to a huge extent, strips me of the familiarities, securities and comfort that I took for granted in a place where I was in command of communication, and able to articule and play with the spoken medium. For the first time abroad, Im not cocooned with the comfort of an english speaking populus in tourist routes and locations, or the knowledge that I´ll be moving on from somewhere within days as part of a trip. I´m here to learn the language, so I have to force myself to confront my inability to communicate every day, and at a teeth grindingly slow pace start, little by little, to circumnavigate those barriers.

Not understanding a language that I live amongst is, without doubt, one of the hardest things I have experienced. Some days, every laugh or joke seems to be at my expense, every comment made seems impatient or condescending. On those days my Spanish lessons seem to achieve nothing when I try and instigate a simple conversation with anyone, or understand a kindly comment put my way. Other days, I can feel the fragments of understand align for just long enough to give me a glimmer of hope that somehow, in the coming months, all this chaos and incomprehension will being to make sense to me. There have been times where I´ve managed to raise a smile or a laugh from somebody with a joke that I´ve tried to make; the connection between us, however brief, forges a link that buries itself deep into my conciousness. For that moment, I can understand that despite all the stuggle, confusion, embarrassment and frustration, it´s going to be worth it.



For the benefit of Ms. Williams, I can confirm that I did manage to claw back a replacement from that shop, but even with Javier´s explanation I was still no clearer as to any justification beyond bloody minded stubborness as to the original refusal. For the benefit of all those due to meet up with me at some point during the future tenure of my sandals, I can also comfirm that they do not (as of yet) smell like ass.

Chiapa de Corzo
28th February 2009

Teacher Jon, Figure of Authority Amongst Seven Year Olds

Many thanks for your patience, chaps. I seem to have broken the back (at least for the moment) of my new workload. I am now at liberty to discourse, once again.

Contrary to what many of my imaginary loyal subscribers may believe, I have not spent the vast proportion of my time thus far in Mexico sodden by booze and languishing in the depths of an eternal party; I´ve actually been training to teach English as a Foreign Language. For those of you who do not know what this entails (I certainly didn´t when I reluctantly parted with the cash for the course), the purpose of the training is to allow a qualified individual to impart aptitude in spoken English onto a local population that doesn´t understand a word of the language. It´s all a bit colonial, like back in the ruddy good old days when we refused to acknowledge that the natives were probably an awful lot smarter than us, and things could be done much better if we paid some attention to the way that they lived in their natural surroundings. Nevertheless my experiences have been well worth the investment, and I´ve been instilled with a great deal of respect for the teaching method.

Trawling back through my journal reveals an interesting progression over the course of the month´s training. It´s probably worth noting that the school at which I trained (The Dunham Institute; a wonderful and highly commendable enterprise) has a specific way of doing things, both in the execution of their teaching and their TEFL staff training, and my experiences were most likely somewhat different to other ways and means of obtaining qualifications. The essence of the course, from the outline in the front page of our nice blue folders, was to put trainees through as much classroom contact time as possible, with a wide a variety of teachers and their students as was feasible, maximising practise, observation and teaching contact time. This was, naturally, a methodology that we all heartily agreed with.

Starting out fresh faced at the beginning of January, my course mates and I were cheerfully informed that we would be teaching an hour long class within 3 days, and leading classroom exercises by the following day. This naturally caused some minor concerns within the trainee encampment, and unfortunately for us this proved to be agenda by which the graduates of the Dunham Institute were persecuted with, generation after generation; either get thrown into circumstances over one´s head and survive or, alternatively, leave. The comparative quantity of teaching time in my current undertakings put my early shaky steps into rather stark perspective, but initially, leading an 15 minute exercise with ten little confused faces staring up at me as I tried to convince them to sort paper slips of nouns into two highly obvious columns on the floor was a teeth-grindingly hard challenge that I hadn´t faced before.

The key thing in the classroom that became apparent very quickly was the lack of comprehension of the things in language that we take for granted as native speakers that are simply not present in a learner. The language and mannerisms of the teachers I observed and eventually took over from were conducive to simplicity, and represented everything absent in the trainees; clear logical progression and linking between ideas, rigorously re enforced learning motifs, processes and patterns (repetition was a huge part of dealing with the earliest beginners) and slow, steady speech complimented by just about every medium of communication available to a human being; mime, dance, sounds, pictures, movement, body language and countless other routes by which the students could be brainwashed into understanding the significance of English vocabulary and grammar without the benefit of their mother tongue. It was these things that we all, without exception, managed to get thoroughly knotted in the early days, leaving the poor students with furrowed brows and slack jaws.

I became aware over the course of my training of the pains of lesson planning. As an exercise, planning a lesson is much like anything else; define your objectives and specific goals, and then break down preparation, actions and review process with these in mind. What caused the first few lesson plans, artfully conceived over long stressful hours to levels of intricacy equalled only by the choreography of a West End musical, was the black cloud of panic that descended upon us as we attempted to predict how a room of children, accursed agents of chaos, would react to our schemes. It was this, regrettably, that also caused our beautifully constructed 50 minute opuses to fall, for the most part, to dust. In trying to sculpt every aspect of the lesson, we became restricted by our rigidity.

Aah, English grammar. I was all too aware of my ignorance before I started the course, and I´m not in the least bit ashamed to say that my awareness was set on foundations of granite. Learning alongside trainees who had studied language in college, I found myself screaming up a near vertical learning curve, wrapping the loose strings of my brain around infinitives, tenses, prepositions, conjugations, participial adjectives, reported speech and all the other wonderfully cryptic terms used by linguists that I still, on most occasions, am completely confounded by. The scope of my grammar orientation was prescribed to the nature and progression of the TEFL process and I was led through the concepts as they would be introduced to students from a state of complete beginner to advanced. It was, by and large, incredibly interesting to see how my native language was constructed, and certainly a great help in catalysing my appreciation of Spanish language construction for the lessons that were due to start on completion of the course.

A couple of the more interesting things to crop up in my befuddled circumnavigation of English were;

1) Nouns (object words) are countable and uncountable i.e. they can or cannot be assigned a numeric quantity. For example, you cannot specify a quantity for the following; milk, traffic, sunshine, honey or chocolate. You can, however, assign quantity to loosely affiliated objects or measurements for these items; 2 bottles (of milk), 5 miles (of traffic), 3000 Joules per kg/greys (of sunlight) and so on, thus creating a world of confusion.

2) Statements can be classified as "passive" or "active" depending on the orientation of the "subject" and "object" of the statement. For example, "Steven (subject) read the book (object) to the class" is an active sentence, where the focus is on the subject. In the passive sentence, "The book was read to the class by Steven", the focus is the book, and not the reader. It´s mildly amusing to note that a particular use for passive constructions is in the formulation of excuses, when someone wishes to distance themselves from an event e.g. "The vase broke when I was in the room". It makes one wonder what other tendencies for language construction are wired into our skulls, ready for the knowledgeable amongst us to interpret...

1) There are 3 different types of conditional statement ("If..."), ranging in application from universal statements of certainty e.g. "If you heat water to 100 degrees centigrade, it boils", to those that wistfully proffer desired alternatives to events that have already happened e.g. "If you had done your job properly, we wouldn´t be in this mess right now".

As the course progressed and the colourful cross section of grave errors unfolded in my teaching practice, I stoically towed the line that anything that happened, however awful, during the classes would serve as a stronger learning experience, not repeated once my head was tucked inside the foxhole of eduction, my teaching campaign having actually begun. It was, for the most part, this simple maxim that dragged me through the training process and the seemingly impossible increasing intensity of the course requirements until, suddenly I found myself two days from the end of the course with all my task boxes ticked and my feedback sessions returning pleasingly positive responses. The heartless and despotic doctrine of the Institute had given me as much time as humanly possible practising the job that I would be doing, and poked and prodded me forceably in the right direction with rigourous peer and qualified teacher feedback for all my student contact time.

I would continue to make untold errors over the coming weeks with my class of completely fresh faced beginners, but my confidence and aptitude leading classes was a world apart from the first shoddy student activity that I´d fumbled through. Incredibly, I´d passed the course with distinction and was the unashamedly proud owner of a shiny TEFL certificate. My sense of pride was only overshadowed by the subconsicous terror of managing a workload four times of that experienced during the training within a few days of graduation, but I managed to hold this off with magnificent execution of flat denial, escaping to the seaside.


It´s been a highly liberating experience to cast myself into a completely new vocation and accepting the humility that comes with being a beginner, enjoying the white knuckle ride of a fast learning curve and appreciating the personal development that happens in such a short space of time. However, I´m glad it´s February; I´m bloody knackered.

Chiapa de Corzo
21st February 2009

Prologue

As the saying goes, the greatest journey begins with the smallest step. It transpires that for the past 6 months I have been tentatively shuffling forwards to what has turned out to be the proverbial high diving board; what I`m now facing is not the first step, but the product of the first few.

This began in earnest 6 month ago when, towards the latter end of July and disarmingly early in a Spanish holiday I made my decision as the product of a great deal of deliberation to to leave my job selling plastic suitcases to the under-five jet set and realise a slightly vague and deluded ambition to live and work somewhere that English was more likely to get you into trouble than into a job.

Decision made, I set about sealing my fate by informing just about anybody who would listen to my scheme (as a task in itself this was not too hard; my "elevator pitch" was deliverable within 30 seconds, owing to fundamental lack of one thing - detail) thus employing The Crushing Pressure of Potential Shame in the event that my optimistic plans fell into an untidy heap.

As well as bullying myself into a state of enthusiastic momentum, I endeavoured to find out exactly what it was that I would do with my abrupt change in direction. This, as far as I can remember, stemmed from the most part from one person; Louise Whitaker. Lou was (and probably still is) the elder sister of friend`s girlfriend, possesed by a drive and determination equal to that of a blind darts champion. She is a fantastic girl and I have no idea why but, in an act of incredible charity she took me under her wing, introducing me to every conceivable branch of her contact network and graciously labouring my rambling discourses as I attempted to flesh out the definition of my future. She`d been involved in the Fair Trade industry for some years and it gradually became apparent over time and conversations regarding topics ranging from microfinance to aid work and global exporting that I`d developed a very bankable set of skills during my relentless global pursuit of families aspiring to alleviate the screams of their children in transit. The second revelation to offer hope to my ill conceived ambition was that I really quite enjoyed the business of imports and exports, in which I was suitably steeped, and the possibility of a fulfilling career overseas engaged in such pursuits seemed to be almost within the confines of realism.

However, even as the froth of excitement started to accumulate on my lips, it became all too apparent from the range of meetings with Lou`s equally patient and kind contacts that despite my commercial nouse I was woefully lacking in any language aptitude, a skill apparently essential for any aspiring loon wishing to work abroad in Latin America, my shallowly considered choice of location. Despite my most sustained and determined application of optimism it became clear that to work in Fair Trade abroad I would have to achieve fluency in Spanish. Undeterred, I modified my one step plan to involve a preliminary step; my internal flow diagram of intended progress now read thus;

Become fluent in Spanish (1) - Work in Fair Trade in Latin America (2)

Having pursued 2) as far as could be reasonably expected, I turned my attention to 1). Reaching out to everyone I knew that had lived of worked in Latin America, visited or travelled there or looked like they had any vaguely useful scrap of information to impart, I drew the conclusion that my likeliest route to fluency lay in getting a job that leveraged my default asset of being a native English speaker. In teaching English, or at least helping others to teach it, I would be in a position to immerse myself in a Spanish speaking community and through some mystical process emerge from the situation in a state of fluency. Sailing along on the rosy cloud of assumption and an ill-founded prejudice against teaching qualifications, I duly dispatched applications to teaching institutions in Colombia and Peru, inviting the principles of the schools to hire me on the basis of rusty private tuition and water sports instruction experience and an ability to do rather well in making things up as I went along. As it transpired, this was strategically a poor idea.

In the months of fruitless pursuit of my applications the closest to a response that I managed to illicit came from the ill tempered headmaster of Newton College in Peru, in informed me in as many words that without teaching qualifications I would be better suited to an alternative line of employment.

By now it was December 2008, and with the Crushing Pressure of Potential Shame dictating a departure in January 2009 I was feeling my optimism gazing with a worrying lust as the emergency exit door in the back of my brain. I had no flights booked, no idea of the work that I might be involved with, and absolutely no idea as to which country I might end up in. It was partly the desperation at the uncertainty and partly an adolescent knee-jerk reaction to the sour-voiced headmaster`s comments that caused me to decide to book a flight without plans of employment post-arrival, but fortunately this idea was derailed before it had any opportunity to take off.

Fate has been watching me flail around for long enough, and it finally dealt me a good hand; a bubbly and patient Spanish teacher by the name of Claire. She had witnessed my single handed battle with her language of choice, Spanish, some 6 months earlier. She had relied to one of the many emails that I had sent out in in the "carpet-bombing" approach to information gathering that I had developed over the past couple of months, informing me by recommendation of a "language exchange" program run in a small town called Chiapa de Corzo in Mexico. This, it transpired, was exactly what I had been groping around for; daily Spanish lessons in exchange for English lessons administered by me to the unwitting pupils of the Dunham Institute, purveyor of the exchange scheme. I noted with relish on close inspection of their website that all teachers were placed with local families, thereby facilitating the "cultural immersion" that I desired. There was one complication, albeit a small one compared to some of the more sizable issues placed in my path by my unique blend of bloody mindedness and blind faith, that I was required to be qualified to the Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) standard. This proved to be a problem easily circumnavigated however, as a single call to the director of the institute revealed that they ran TEFL training courses and delighted in training their own teaching staff. With the teaching semester for the exchange program running from February and the 4 week TEFL course neatly dove-tailing with this for my desired January departure, it finally seemed that things were starting to come together. For the first time in months, I was able to start telling my friends and family about concrete plans and the Crushing Pressure was sated.

The next month was a whirlwind of booking courses and flights and engaging in the organisation of the innumerable things that constitute the tying off of loose ends characterising an old life, and forming the arrangements that define a new one. As the date of my flight drew nearer and the frequency of goodbyes increased, from my work colleagues and friends from university and home, I could feel strange layers of numbness and denial slowly being stripped away as I slowly but surely came to realise that the improbable plan, hatched months ago and tinkered with as if I was a car fanatic doggedly and repeatedly resurrecting an elderly automobile, was actually going to happen and that I was going to leave behind some wonderful friends, a great job and a committed and loving family.

My parents, bless them, put on their bravest faces and drove me to the airport as I frantically stuffed what I deemed to be my most essential possessions into a rucksack in the back seat. All the way to the departure gate, I was incredibly privileged to receive a constant stream of messages on my phone wishing me luck and future happiness.

Owing to a disinclination to pay my remaining mobile phone contract, I was to dispense with my SIM card and leave my Mother the phone to use at her discretion. Having wiped the memory and removed the card, I said goodbye to them with a lump in my throat at the security desk.

As I sat in the departure lounge, turning over the SIM card in my hands I reflected on its electronic list of contacts, contained in a shell half the size of a postage stamp. Despite the knowledge that the world is a small place brought closer together by cheap flights, the Internet, VoIP phones, email and all those other incredible developments, I suddenly felt overwhelmingly alone.

As the sound of the call to boarding for my flight was heard over the tannoy, I folded my SIM card neatly in half and, walking briskly to the departure gate, dropped it in the bin.

Barcelona Airport
2nd January 2009