sashinka | observation orientated, with a twist of lime | a blog

Well, it's been a weird old day. Sitting here in my soho (small office-home office), talking on the phone, doing stuff online, getting my Radio 5 slot cancelled for the security alert. Thanking the abishter that I'm not going into town today. I mean, I went into town for meetings yesterday, and there was a gas leak at Baker Street, and the whole of the west end kinda ground to a standstill.

So I was happy to be home today. I stopped consuming news for a few hours this morning, because I needed to be able to work.

But now, I might even be a little scared. So the plot to blow up ten aircraft was thwarted. Great. But you feel - I imagine everyone feels - vulnerable. Notwithstanding the fact that I'm so green now I'm not sure I can do air travel (although I still want to get my haircut in New York and maybe be in Israel again soon - oh, the eco-angst), I could. I, and you, and any random person we know or don't know could easily be sitting in an airport, having checked in their mobile phone in their hand luggage, sitting, waiting, steaming, worrying. With their wallet in a see-through plastic carrier bag. It kinda sounds a bit like the British Library.

I know we live in a different world than the one I grew up. It's just that sometimes, it's scary.

And then, I think. So I could get run over crossing the road. Or be attacked by some random knife-weilding nutter when I go to buy petrol (which, obviously, I hardly need to do, nowadays). You don't know what's going to happen, and you can't really expend that much energy worrying about it. I enjoy pretty much everything about my life now, in the present, at this exact moment. I have a lovely family and wonderful friends, great neighbours (apart from the DJ), warm community, a degree of personal style, the ability to communicate, and quite a lot of Crown Ducal dripware. If - and obviously one should never tempt fate, pu-pu-pu, umbeshrine, shlog kaporras - but if something happened to me tomorrow, I don't think I'd have any regrets. Except, maybe, that I haven't quite finished my novel, but then it's on a friend's PC (never understimate the need for offsite backups), and it could be published posthumously (although fragmentarily), possibly to great acclaim. Although, obviously, I wouldn't know.