Autobiography

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The trouble with autobiography is that it goes like this. “I got up this morning and turned on my computer to start writing my autobiography. The first sentence I wrote was ‘I got up this morning and turned on my computer to start writing my autobiography’. The second sentence I wrote was ‘The first sentence I wrote was ‘I got up this morning and turned on my computer to start writing my autobiography’.’. I believe the Marquis of Bath has attempted such a chronicle. I can’t imagine it is too dreadfully interesting. I further believe that Bertie Russel might have proved why autobiography is fake. I need a Boswell. It’s hard to be your own Boswell.

China is a bit like that. It flows constantly. It is like standing in front of a two foot sewer pipe during a stomach flu epidemic. A ceaseless flow of random, and more or less unwelcome, events jets over you. When you step away from the sewer, you are immediately located by a team of firefighters who begin to hose you down. As you stumble away from the high pressure hose, you fall into a cesspit and when you struggle from the cesspit the heavens open. There is no rest or respite.

Be careful crossing the road, I was told. Thanks for that. I ignore such patronizing an insulting claptrap. Look both ways, I was told. Thanks. Useless, pointless advice. The advice that I needed was ‘be sure to look at least five ways before crossing the road’. I wasn’t aware, until I stepped into the road today that there were five ways traffic could go on a single stretch of straight road. (Two way traffic in both lanes plus at least one vehicle traversing the road in an attempt at a u-turn, actually.) Now I have witnessed it, I can see potential for traffic coming from up to eight directions. I’m not being entirely fair to other road users either. I am only counting cars. There are bicycles and mopeds which hardly matter, going both ways (at least) on the pavement too, and vehicles which don’t have English names pottering randomly around..

Twenty years ago, nobody in China went anywhere, except by bike. Everything was to hand, or non-existent. If you wanted to buy a live eel, a baseball cap (I lov Golff), red posters with gold writing or a tin of spam, you could do it in your own street. Everything was everywhere. Not so any more. Now everything is at the end of the road, the new road that wasn’t there last week and has no signs.

http://PLANET-OF-DEATH.com

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