Bedtime Notifications are the Work of Authoritarians
Recommended listening: 'It's the End of the World as We Know It (and I feel fine)' - R.E.M
Today's whitterings are a bit scattergun in nature as I battle a lack of sleep brought about by two symbols of personal conflict. Mrs. Carrumba's phone notifications and my youngest flying 5.8K miles away to Johannesburg, itself a timely reminder of how insecure our planet is right now. To be clear, I am not saying Mrs Carrumba is dictator, but sometimes I wonder. Let's have an unreasonable discussion...
Firstly, I must acknowledge that my current lack of sleep and oscillating mood is very much in the #FirstWorldProblems category of things to be writing about. "Oh poor Carrumba! He's not sleeping too well in his super king-sized bed as one of the fruit of his loins flies to South Africa on a school trip when we GenX'ers were flabbergasted to have a week's holiday in a Youth Hostel in the Scottish borders. Boo-fucking-hoo!" Accepted - and now we have established that I am fully cognizant of the order of magnitude of my discomfort compared to the sufferings of others, please indulge me as I take you through the anxieties and observations the little-un's journey has sparked in my own little world.
Let's skip over the 'BBC Family Sticom'-esque wakings at 3am in the run-up to departure date, mind racing about just how we would go about making the emergency trip to the passport office in Glasgow to replace the vital (disgustingly bloo document) little one has patently not lost, and is in no danger of losing. The fear of 'mean girls' and how my little-un, with their social awkwardness but absolute burning desire to be a loyal and reliable friend will fair for two weeks, whilst having their father's general confusion when it comes to dealing with other humans; the forced cohabitation with a gaggle of people vying for membership of some fictional 'in crowd' is bringing me out in palpitations on their behalf. I'm not overly concerned about them burning to a crisp in temperatures no blue skinned, blonde resident of Scotland would ever be exposed to in February as they have more sun cream than you can shake a stick at. Nor am I too worried about mozzies as they are armed with DEET spray and enough roaming data to keep them indoors. I don't harbour any Daily Hate Mail concerns about them bussing it through Johannesburg to Cape Town via Douglas - they're in safe hands with the school. No, my middle-class angst has been well and truly triggered by the flights there.
And no, they weren't on a Boeing with roulette detachable windows - Airbus all the way. I checked.
I have been living with a low-level fear of the collapse of the Atlantic Conveyor Belt since I watched 'An Inconvenient Truth' somewhere between 2006 and 2010. The film, at that time, convinced me that the future held increased political instability as states ring-fenced precious resources and grabbed for new ones; protectionist ideologies would find fertile ground to grow as the food production and energy required to feed and power the world population creaked under conflict and rising sea levels. I am guilty of fixating on worse-case scenarios, but it seemed to me that these were issues that my young children would be facing, and possibly me if I was unfortunate enough to be in my 90's, being fed soup by a minimum wage smartphone addict home-help. Whenever I mentioned the destiny of the UK being ice-bound, it would be met with a quizzical response not far removed from sympathetic 'poor nutter', so the timing of the latest report on the predicted collapse of the Atlantic Conveyor Belt chimed beautifully with my 'global heat death' guilt as I witnessed the sheer volume of flights pumping fumes into the atmosphere as I tracked minime2's flight from Edinburgh to Doha and onto Johannesburg. Global climate change is a fact, and far from being a cause to unite humanity, the globally heated well is being poisoned by populist autocrats turning states into their personal empires everywhere you look.
Which brings me neatly onto the next reason for my interrupted sleep - watching minime2's journey across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. While their flight over the Netherlands, Germany, Poland and Slovakia brought faint murmurings of narco states and European disharmony bubbling up, it wasn't till they were 41,000 feet above Hungary and skirting the Ukrainian border that my mind started to go into overdrive. "Wave to Ukraine out the left window" I quipped over WhatsApp as I maintained a straining connection to them speeding away from me at 520 knots (why do planes measure airspeed in knots? I thought that was a ship thing with knots in rope? Seems an odd way to measure airspeed though incidentally Google tells me that is about 598 mph). What I really wanted to say is, "You're just passing Ukraine, where people are being murdered by a despotic and evil bastard in Moscow in the name of empire building. Shed a tear, clutch at your heart and imagine a future for them without war!!" But I think you'll agree, that's a bit much for general discourse with your seventeen-year-old kid and best internalised.
Brief respite was granted (once the Black Sea was safely flown over) by crossing Turkey, though Recep Erdoğan paints a curious picture of a frustrated dictator, wishing he could rule by decree (he has reduced the power of the central bank and, stripped the military of power that led to a failed coup) but is instead caught trying to straddle two worlds. Like Viktor Orbán of Hungary, he dances between Putin-esque authoritarian rule and membership of the democratic cash-cow that is the EU, with its pesky requirements around fairness, democratic process and not being an outlet for Russian exports. Having grown up in Istanbul (not Constantinople...it's Istanbul not.. etc.) where Europe meets Asia, it's perhaps unsurprising that his background, along with the geopolitical nature of Turkey, makes his rule and this part of the world inherently wild and unpredictable.
Their flight then continued the tour of post World War One imperial failure with a flight over Iraq (Baghdad and Basra after the humour of passing Bin on the way to Batman) and then over the Persian Gulf between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Watching their flight make its way to Qatar you could almost imagine it trying to sneak through, hoping nobody got them caught up in some new ripple of the Israeli flattening of the Gaza Strip, avoiding any new wayward flexing of Western supplied ordinance in the never-ending fuck-wittery of humans thinking that having better ways to kill your neighbours than them somehow promotes peace. It absolutely, categorically does not lead to people being needlessly killed in the name of the latest new-fangled ideology that is definitely not a rehash of anyhting else tried in the previous millennia. Remember, as the National Poets of Newport once stated, 'Guns don't kill people rappers do / Ask any politician and they'll tell you it's true/ It's a fact music makes you violent / Like Michael Jackson telling little Timmy to be silent..' Not the best way to highlight the assertion that it's not guns that are the problem, but I couldn't pass up the chance to get Goldie Lookin' Chain into this article and introduce a bit of levity.
Minime2 and I didn't discuss Qatar before the trip seeing as all they would see of the country is the airport, but it's a curious transit point for 30 odd Scottish teenagers who I imagine are mostly liberal thinking and embracing of the 'love is love' mindset. Mine certainly is. Amnesty International paint a depressing picture of the consequences of trying to live a life outside of state doctrine, especially if you are born as a woman. Their push to rival Emirates as a provider of luxury air travel (as evidenced by being the cheapest provider of travel for this trip using, I suspect, loss-leading pricing) shows the gulf state's priorities with very little commitment to climate change policies. Another fine product of British imperial meddling (#sarcasm) and the undermining of the Persian Empire in 1868, it's a young state ruled by a hereditary Monarchy where sarcasm on social media could land you in jail - especially if you criticise the Emir, or any laws they may have had a hand in. Nice.
Finally, the plane arrived safely in Johannesburg and the eight-hour coach trip to Douglas is underway at the time of writing. I am a great believer in travel to expand horizons, to remind you that the world of your day-to-day is just a narrow sliver of the human experience on this rotating rock as we hurtle through the universe. The coach is safely out of Johannesburg without witnessing any armed raids on cash vans, which is nice, and we are back to the low-level, bubbling anxiety about mean girls. And lions (as if there is obviously one lurking behind every Spa shop - do I need to hashtag sarcasm there?). Despite the lack of sleep as all these thoughts churned through my head, partly thanks to Mrs Carrumba insisting on their phone trilling every time minime2 sent an update, bored in a tin can with wings, it is reassuring to know that there is still room for people to be able to reach out to others and exchange culture. In spite of world leaders trying to ensure horizons are strictly controlled within questionable ideology, people can prevail, and I'm giving myself a small pat on the back for reaching this conclusion and choosing not to slip into worry and a doom-mongering cycle.
Instead, I'm going to go to my local museum and art gallery to get politely furious at the relegation of the arts in importance to UK culture before going home and being less productive than I should. Yeah... take that, authoritarians of the world! Fuck your ideologies and the diesel powered tanks they rolled in on. I then need to construct a plan to approach Mrs. Carrumba's unilateral introduction of her noise making phone to the bedtime routine. I'm not saying the UN might need to get involved but it should be noted the usual peacekeeper is 5,800 miles away - let's hope it doesn't get all 'War of the Roses' in their absence.
Sweet dreams, ghosties!
