Chocolate: Nature’s way of making up for Mondays...

or just a really bad day.

I didn’t forget that yesterday was my blog day. I even wrote 400+ words of meaningless crap. But then I couldn’t find the time to edit and publish it and today, re-reading revealed a whole new degree of crappiness. So I decided to start over.

I’m not in a good mood. I’m sick and tired and if I could find the strength for it I would crawl to the Co-op across the street and buy two armloads of chocolate. Normally, the mere thought of it would give me a surge of energy just adequate to attempt the feat. The fact that it does not today is an indication of just how awful I feel.

Okay, just opened my desk drawer hoping to find some left-over dark chocolate from last week. Only bits of silver foil here of course, the words ‘chocolate’ and ‘left-over’ rarely feature in the same sentence for me.

London is in a bad mood too. Unfortunately, this can’t be fixed with a giant slab of chocolate.

I have been in a state of disbelief since yesterday morning. The riots started on Friday and I read the news online over the weekend (I don’t have a TV) but it wasn’t until yesterday morning that I watched the videos on the news websites and saw the fire, the stoning, and the looting. Streets of London – the civilized capital of a developed nation – the site of what looked like open warfare.

‘Lawless’ is a word I associate with the Wild West, and that era was a long time ago, to see the word tossed about in the news articles is frightening. This might make me sound naive, or ignorant, or like I’ve been living under a rock, but I honestly never imagined something like this could happen in this day and age.

Protests happen, so do riots, I’ve seen it on the news before. Buses set on fire, broken shop windows, and then the police descend with their protective gear and batons. Tear gas, some folks beaten up, a ton of arrests, and then it’s done. Violence is always meaningless, but usually, there is at least a reason for the madness.

There was a reason for this – an event that isn’t even clear yet to the average Londoner, an event whose details are still sketchy and varying depending on who reports them. That reason doesn’t matter anymore. Those looters on the streets with their hooded jackets? Seventy-five percent of them – probably more – don’t even know that ‘reason’ ever existed. They are simply opportunists taking full advantage of a ‘situation’ – making it worse, driving it out of control. Sad that that many disgusting opportunists exist in the city.

There is a video on the news websites: an injured boy sits on the side of the street. Another guy goes to help him up. And then a second guy goes from behind and opens the bleeding boy’s backpack. A few more join him, like vultures they pick through his stuff while he weakly tries to shrug them off. Grabbing something out of the backpack one guy walks off. The rest of them wander off too, the hurt boy is forgotten.

That incident pretty much sums up the situation. Pretend to care about a wronged man and his family, stir up trouble, and take full advantage of the ensuing chaos with no regard for the law and no thought to the innocent.

I have only lived in London for five months, but I’ve come to love the city. What’s not to love? Beautiful, vibrant, bursting with history. Loads and loads of libraries, the best shopping. Lovely people, funny people, crazy people. Right now, where I am, it is still all of those things. Hard to believe, just a little way off, a few tube stops over, where all the sirens are headed, is a London I hadn’t imagined would ever come to exist.

This post was meant to be about chocolate.  

‘B’ is for Bibliophiles and Blogs

(I’m finding this very awkward, and it’s only my second – technically third – post. I’m determined to keep it up though, for now.)

So I find there are a lot of people on this planet who like to read, and a ton of them have blogs.

Interesting...

As any self-respecting wannabe-writer, I too adore books. I love to read, I love to buy and collect books, I practically salivate in Waterstones, and a trip to the library in the highlight of my week – too bad about the 10-books-at-a-time limit they have going on though.

I once saw this mug in a gift-shop that said, ‘I’d rather be reading’ – and that sums up my state of mind, at all times. This can be a tad inconvenient when I forget all about my endless-novel, and the 1000 word deadline I set myself, and instead read all three books from a series by Nora Roberts in one weekend. By the time I finish, its 6.30 pm on Sunday and of course there’s no time to get any writing done that day so I might as well start (and possibly finish) the new Mills & Boon on my nightstand before bed.

And I can read anything. (Well, anything fiction – not that I am against non-fiction, but I tend not to pick one up at the library or a bookshop unless someone recommends it). I just finished a ridiculously brilliant short story collection by Margaret Atwood (Good Bones) and I am currently reading Anita Shreve’s Strange Fits of Passion. Next on my shelf is a lovely M & B by India Grey – one of my favourite M & B writers. 

I used to think my obsessive reading habits were abnormal, until I came to the UK.

I grew up in Tanzania. Until junior high I knew maybe five people who liked to read, in the whole school. In high school there were more, but not one of them read with any degree of obsession. In college, in India, there was one other guy that I knew of and could exchange books with. I developed this identity then, as ‘the girl who reads’. Friends teased me about it, they bought books as gifts for me for every occasion, and gently rebuked when I was lost in my novel and not paying attention to something more important.

So yes, I thought I was unusual.

In those years when I was growing up in Tanzania, books were something of a novelty. Our school library was severely limited and there was only one store in town that sold books – not a bookstore but a stationary shop that happened to stock a few novels. They had Archie comics, Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys, and the Sweet Valley Series – all of which were perfect for a while, but then I grew out of them and the options were limited to my dad’s little collection of ‘grown-up’ novels – mostly spy thrillers and Wilbur Smith.

Things looked up when some nice people in the States donated their old books to charity, which then arrived in Tanzania in ships and were sold on the pavements. Most of these were academic books – a lot of algebra and geography – but sometimes, if you scour very diligently, you could find a Sidney Sheldon or a Danielle Steele, or one seller with a dozen or so Mills & Boons. About three times in a year, my Dad drove my sister and me to that one street where they usually had the best of the fiction books. Of course there was no fixed price for them and my sister and I, being terrible at our poker faces, would get very excited when we found a certain amazing book and make its price shoot right up. Dad, conveniently, was a good haggler.

It got to a point when I was desperate for books. I used to look at all those lovely online book stores that were only available to ‘residents of the United States and Canada’, and dream of the day when I could have books delivered to my doorstep!

(All of this might sound quite medieval, but it was just about a decade ago!)

But here! In the UK!! Every other person on the tube has a book in their hand, so much so that I forget my own book whilst twisting my neck in strange ways to read their titles. And the book stores! They are everywhere! High street ones, independent ones, charity shops and the amazing Amazon!! (Forgive the multiple exclamation points – this subject tends to excite me.)

And bibliophiles are all on the World Wide Web, talking about their ailment, which is apparently quite widespread. I am a little sad about losing my exclusive claim on ‘the girl who reads’, but it is also flippin’-fantastic to read these blogs with books reviews and author interviews and all things books!

(Give me a minute while I count the number of times I used the word ‘book’ in this post.)

(Twenty-two.)

Anyway, speaking of blogs, this one has become something of a journal, hasn’t it? I suppose I have yet to find the style and rhythm for it as a blog. The 500-word thing is also shot, but that can only be a good thing. I think I will now make my minimum 750 words.

Oh, and ‘B’ is also for Bittersweet Chocochips. In case you’re wondering about the title of my blog, well, I really can’t explain it myself. Just put it down to my love for dark chocolate, baking and unsubtle metaphors.