Title: Fantastic Voyage (
Nigeria)
Status: Active
URL:
http://simonthomson.blogspot.com/
All Posts Cached via RSS
Surprised by rage - 16/Feb/2012 09:33 - 4676 days ago
It’s a very strange thing, to sit in a meeting about something I did in the recent past. And a lot of that strangeness r...
Drinking behind the veil - 04/Jul/2011 15:51 - 4903 days ago
I’m sitting in a bar in Kafanchan called Lady G’s.It’s named after the owner: a young, dynamic, determined and beautiful I...
Is this fun? - 04/Jul/2011 12:50 - 4903 days ago
I wonder how much I enjoy doing this.I don’t mean being in Nigeria.I love that: always have, maybe always will.It’s a joyous...
All the pretty things - 01/Jul/2011 06:08 - 4906 days ago
I've occasionally attempted to add pictures to this blog. This largely fails spectacularly, because I can't format them properl...
A Nigerian Pharisee? - 27/Jun/2011 18:53 - 4910 days ago
I’m sure all can agree, whatever our internal faiths and external politics, that Jesus(as constructed in the gospel texts) was...
Felix felicis - 21/Jun/2011 16:35 - 4916 days ago
You know that feeling, when anything’s possible?Like when Harry knocks back thefelix felicispotion in the Half Blood Prince?Or...
Cor-tiddely-at - 15/Jun/2011 14:17 - 4922 days ago
One of my most vivid childhood memories is of sitting in a theatre during a play that was probably a vaguely musical version of ...
Darkling - 15/Jun/2011 14:16 - 4922 days ago
Probably my favourite moment in Milton comes at the opening to Book 3 of Paradise Lost, where the poet witters on about his blin...
The End of the Ants and the Start of Something New - 15/Jun/2011 14:13 - 4922 days ago
It’s not as if there were no portents.He was able to dismiss the so-called Noise: an old wives tale that sprung up a couple of...
sose iska sanyi - 21/Jan/2011 08:53 - 5067 days ago
My new role description out here means, excitingly, lots of travelling to schools and local governments to discuss the school su...
barka da sabon shakara - 12/Jan/2011 15:47 - 5076 days ago
There’s a brilliant little Hardy poem – like most of his poetry, its genius lies in its simplicity and quietness: it asks yo...
Zuma - 13/Dec/2010 21:34 - 5106 days ago
Just as you leave Abuja for the North, a large white building stands, silent and empty, to the right of the road. It was a...
dabba - 13/Dec/2010 21:34 - 5106 days ago
When I lived in London– what a lifetime ago – and walked through that din of crowded streets, I played a really brilliant ga...
duk - 13/Dec/2010 21:33 - 5106 days ago
When Howard Barker– for whom I have a deep respect tempered with just a little mistrust of his possibly excessive pretension â...
kudi. sose, sose kudi. - 13/Dec/2010 21:32 - 5106 days ago
Caution: this is a lengthy, highly prejudiced, and ill-informed rant. Here’s abetter, though longer, article.Before we came to...
mai sanyi - 08/Dec/2010 15:09 - 5111 days ago
Evidently, I'm not capable of sorting out the configuration of text and image in the post below. I think this should be viewed ...
UK, fah? - 08/Dec/2010 14:37 - 5111 days ago
Right, well, I haven’t written any blog entries for a long time. This is due to a combination of a general lack of NEPA and i...
kayanan jamaka kyau - 24/Nov/2010 12:11 - 5125 days ago
It’s not like I’m remotely reconciled to remaining here, but there is something rather fine when you can come to work in wha...
yi barci - 18/Nov/2010 14:22 - 5131 days ago
There’s lots about living in Nigeria which makes me think about life in early medieval England. Partly, that’s probably beca...
tsoro - 18/Nov/2010 11:35 - 5131 days ago
Well, I certainly didn’t expect to be writing this today. Having had a fairly lengthy period of placement time which bro...
birra - 06/Nov/2010 19:10 - 5143 days ago
I’ve got quite a few favourite places in the world: places I’d happily be at any moment of any day and stay forever. Thestag...
olodo* - 26/Oct/2010 11:51 - 5154 days ago
The first time I flew anywhere, I was 17 and went to Rome.I was almost unspeakably excited, and it was indeed brilliant.I quite ...
gaskiya - 16/Oct/2010 15:57 - 5164 days ago
When we eventually returned home after the workshop which made me furiously angry, and which I blogged about some time ago, ever...
kware - 06/Oct/2010 11:32 - 5174 days ago
So, I've just written a long and boring bit about Nigeria being 50. It seems only fair to write something more interesting, par...
Allah bada lada - 06/Oct/2010 10:53 - 5174 days ago
So, Nigeria's made its faltering, confused, occasional brutal way to 50 years of independence. It sounds as if this is an excit...
zan dau'u - 05/Oct/2010 13:00 - 5175 days ago
It’s not that I used to have a vile journey to work.In many ways, crossing the Thames, seeing Parliament reflected in its glit...
ahoota gagea - 21/Sep/2010 06:14 - 5189 days ago
There are lots and lots of annoying things about waking up in the middle of the night and finding yourself incapable of getting ...
bejeka - 20/Sep/2010 13:28 - 5190 days ago
I think all conversations are like dancing.There’s usually a leader, and there’s a rhythm, and there are probably some set s...
me kai ke chewa - 20/Sep/2010 12:14 - 5190 days ago
I’m a bit of a fan of Walter Pater, and he says (among other things, most of which are flagrant invention to suit his splendid...
rago nama - 15/Sep/2010 14:42 - 5195 days ago
I have a quite appalling long term memory. I think I read somewhere once that cleverer people remember events from earlier in t...
yaya rua - 09/Sep/2010 16:57 - 5201 days ago
Just around the corner– nowhere near an old Trebor factory – is a little road, connecting our hillock ridden, semi-aquatic t...
In which the story pauses a little - 09/Sep/2010 12:12 - 5201 days ago
So, blogging is a weird experience. I don't have quite the aloof control of Renaissance authors who can cast their work off fro...
chimazoni - 01/Sep/2010 06:52 - 5209 days ago
Whatever I came here for, it wasn’t to experience being rich. Sure, given my background – the very reason I can come here a...
ka yi sauki yanzu ne? - 27/Aug/2010 14:04 - 5214 days ago
Now, I don’t tend to get scared that easily. All the things that really should be alarming here I’ve so far been generally ...
Ina sonshe - 24/Aug/2010 09:16 - 5217 days ago
In the Goblet of Fire (the book, not the roughly carved wooden cup. Or the film), Moody (to Ron’s dismay) enlarges a hai...
iyali - 22/Aug/2010 20:11 - 5219 days ago
The usual pattern is that we either have power (or water– the same is true for both) or we don’t. That’s a stupid wa...
taburma - 16/Aug/2010 21:40 - 5225 days ago
A really splendid element of Nigerian culture– and one somewhat foreign from my own – is a pretty much total focus on saying...
kankana - 14/Aug/2010 19:20 - 5227 days ago
There’s a gorgeous sense of powerlessness and desolation when Anglo-Saxons write about the elements. In‘Andreas’, wh...
mai koyarwa - 13/Aug/2010 09:04 - 5228 days ago
So, we just waded through about 20 metres of river to get to the merely muddy puddles which comprise the majority of our road.&#...
yo zatur dau’u - 10/Aug/2010 21:45 - 5231 days ago
I have been angrier than this following a professional experience, but probably only about three or four times in my life– and...
mutapi tare - 09/Aug/2010 22:20 - 5232 days ago
Keats once told his chum Benjamin Bailey (whose name is as satisfying as‘royal rumpus’) that ‘the setting sun shall always...
mutapi tare - 09/Aug/2010 22:12 - 5232 days ago
Keats once told his chum Benjamin Bailey (whose name is as satisfying as‘royal rumpus’) that ‘the setting sun shall always...
naje soki - 03/Aug/2010 19:27 - 5238 days ago
Now, I was anticipating the two worst things about volunteering in Nigeria (as me, this is, not as an abstract concept. It...
kayan aiki - 03/Aug/2010 13:18 - 5238 days ago
It’s odd, really, that corruption is such a massive and overwhelming issue in this country. Despite its completely insan...
Ya kasance dalibai su: - 29/Jul/2010 09:11 - 5243 days ago
In my previous job (in the UK), about once a week I would read an utterly brilliant little Old English poem called‘Deor’....
weleabu - 28/Jul/2010 12:43 - 5244 days ago
There’s always something to love about the way other people speak, particularly when it’s English, Jim, but not as we know i...
hanyan jir’gin kasa (no idea how it’s really spelt) - 27/Jul/2010 13:01 - 5245 days ago
Health warning: This is just all about schools and the education system here. Skip past it if you want to know about the c...
meisa? - 22/Jul/2010 09:12 - 5250 days ago
Here are some ways in which I am like a pale, shadowy imitation of Byron.- he had malaria (several times), and may have died fro...
ba yara - 21/Jul/2010 10:57 - 5251 days ago
Night time here is, of course, full of noises– sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. The insects and fro...
muce! - 20/Jul/2010 15:10 - 5252 days ago
The things I’m missing most from the UK are:1) tabloids. Ridiculous, I know, but I was so sad to have to watch England p...
Ya ya hanya - 14/Jul/2010 14:31 - 5258 days ago
Well, I think it’s fair to say that when I woke up this morning I wasn’t planning to spend the night in a hotel which has no...
tsaya– teffi – tafa – yi tsale - 14/Jul/2010 14:22 - 5258 days ago
We’ve only gone and done a Mark Thatcher. I suppose, at some point, it was inevitable that we’d become embroiled in th...
ya ya aiki? - 07/Jul/2010 16:04 - 5265 days ago
Well, that was certainly the stupidest thing we’ve done here so far – and probably the most unpleasant, too.The weather here...
ba kudi fa - 02/Jul/2010 15:57 - 5270 days ago
So, there’s obviously always something pretty darn cool about children. They basically rock. But this one was awes...
akwai abinci? - 02/Jul/2010 14:51 - 5270 days ago
It’s really infuriating when you have very, very limited internet time and bandwidth, and the computer decides that it needs t...
Sunanu Simon - 02/Jul/2010 12:21 - 5270 days ago
It’s early on Thursday morning and I’m sitting up in bed in a hotel room in Zaria, one of the ancient cities of Kaduna State...
aboki na - 02/Jul/2010 12:20 - 5270 days ago
In my whole life, I’ve probably used dental floss about four times. That may be an over estimate. Of all the produ...
Wetin an wetin - 23/Jun/2010 22:55 - 5279 days ago
So, I jabbered on about the travelling last time but didn’t actually mention anything about our three day stay in Akwanga, whi...
Photos - 21/Jun/2010 21:19 - 5281 days ago
Incidentally, I can't really face waiting for photos to upload here (I had a speed of 10mb/s just earlier...). I think the admi...
lafiya lau - 21/Jun/2010 20:58 - 5281 days ago
So, do you remember in HP1 when Harry rides a broomstick for the first time?It’s been talked about for ages, and he’s quite ...
Dorti dorti - 14/Jun/2010 21:25 - 5288 days ago
Who knew the worst things about Nigeria would be coffee and Chris de Burgh? Who also knew that, thus far, they’d be the only ...
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