Nanging It

So soiled crew.

Well not so much a crew, as one old guy who walks up and down green lanes with the same pair of soiled trousers on every day. Well I say it is every day, but the statement wouldn't hold up to any real scrutiny.

He's got checked brown and white trousers and they have a very visible large patch of brown splodges covering the back. He is also very, very old. He uses a walking stick and he dithers along. He doesn't really seem to be enjoying himself. He certainly isn't shopping, because he never has anything with him and doesn't really look capable of it. He has a fixed look of determination, but that may be him holding in a further bout of soilation.

I've got some questions. Does he know that he has soiled his trousers? The stains look old, but it could be that he washes them diligently every time he returns home from his outing and soils them during the next ready to repeat the (washing) cycle. Secondly, if he can walk up and down the road and get his trousers off at night when he gets home, then couldn't he put them in the washing machine?

It makes me sad just thinking of him. Is he someone's grandad, or husband, or is he alone, wondering the streets in soiled trousers with no-one to help him?. God, it's fucking depressing.

Yeah, Barcelona is raved about by many that visit, but does it cut the mustard, or rather can it, given the many indescribably pugent odours that permeate all places within the city?

Walks down the back streets in the Barri Gotic show you a city full of chique, well decorated places and peeps who actually look cool, arty and interesting- unlike around Hoxton. Barce seems pull this off without ending up looking pretentious and know-it-cool. So this is a major plus. That and the fact that you can get a beer for less than £1.50 served by trendy looking waiters and waitresses who don't give you the supercillious impression that they are actually just doing the job to get by and are in fact in the middle of writing a novel, producing art or directing a film, the likes of which you could only aspire to. You know what I'm talking about- it's annoying even when in the rare case it may be true.

However, for all this chique boutique street feel, there is the ever present aroma produced by those who couldn't be arsed to find a bar or public toilet (ha ha ha, there aren't any fucking public toilets) and had to relieve themselves in these dark alley ways. This would be ok if it was done in the same get-your-willy-out-at-the-back-of-a-kebab-shop-and-piss-serrupticiously-with-no-one-being-the-wiser way that we do it over here, but in Barce there are no such alleys. The alleys are the roads. This means that you are pretty likely to find some bloke with his knob out pissing in the street.

Okay, still not sounding that bad. Imagine, your feeling rough, you're hung over having gone to a REAL SEXY PARTY and you are trying to navigate the streets on a hot day, but you are blinded by a literal haze of yellow vapour streaming up everywhere round you like pugent serpents of the devil willing you to wretch your bacon sarni all over the place. Not pretty.

In conclusion: Barce is wicked, but beware the piss and pack one of those surgical masks.

Have you had an experience slightly tainted by the 'natural aromas' present in an area, if you have, I would like to hear from you.

Cruely

Sanity is an intersting concept, to me, but not one which is easy to define.

Usually, we talk about sanity being the opposite to madness, just as black is to white. However, it seems unusual that one of the attributes that is so critical to human existence within society is so poorly defined, and that its explanation relies almost exclusively on the absence of other diametrically opposed characteristics.

We could all readily identify someone who was mad- we all know the signs: Talks in riddles, makes no sense, screams, eyes role, is aggitated, has no logic or reasoning, believes things are not what they appear, repeats the same things again and again, is obsessed with engaging in particular activities.

But what does a sane person look like? Have you ever seen one? If you saw someone and they lacked all the above characteristics, would that mean that they were sane, could you be sure? And if you were mad, how would you know when you had safely returned to the suggested bliss of sanity?.

To me sanity, as I think most people would think of it, is the ability to deal with the endless stresses of adjusting to a world which can be unfulfilling, unfair, unpredictable and undecihperable (a very un world) without the manifestation of certain reactions to it.

On a near daily basis the sane person is expected to shift seamlessly between identities, behaviour and reaction, without ever rolling their eyes, screaming out in despair in crowded places or frothing at the mouth. Is this fair? Fuck no. It seems to me to be insane that we should be expected to put up with everything and not display, at least occassionally, a certain madness.

God knows that I have had extended periods when I have questioned whether I might be losing it. Now that I think about it, these periods were probably the periods that prove my sanity, not bring it into question.

Am I mad??