Patience and the Idiot Behind the Wheel

A Scene in Bucolic Cheshire

Accidents are exactly that, and some are caused by avoidable human error. In bucolic Cheshire, where the roads are pleasant and everyone drives with the abandon of suburban, carefree distraction, I happened upon a scene.

A fire engine stood with lights flashing, and as the details began to make sense, I saw two cars involved in a collision, with a tow-away truck arriving to cart one of them away. The police had cordoned off the road; in fact, there was no thoroughfare. Cars were being diverted further up the road, except for residents of the area.

Surveying the Wreckage

I did not tarry. As another tow-away truck navigated the roadblock, I noted the cars were a wreck, and could surmise from my observation who might have been at fault. One car had been accessing a busy road, and the driver's judgement must have deserted him; he was not fast enough to cross the oncoming lane to turn into the road as another car approached from the right.

There would not have been enough time for the other car to react with a sudden stop or a swerve. The result: a crash, fenders ruined, airbags deployed, and one foolish act becoming the inconvenience of many.

Reflections on Patience and Policing

I have always opined that the speed and manoeuvrability of a car present many opportunities for patience; but you only need an idiot behind the wheel for a vehicle to become a weapon of catastrophic consequences.

Yet, for all the unfortunate interactions I have had with the police before, I was persuaded that their helpfulness on this occasion was commendable.

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Tubing Down the Gullet

The Weight of Anticipation

Anxiety is a weight. It sits on your chest and bears down regardless of whether you are lying down, sitting, or standing. Anxiety also signals that the issues of life, though measurable in the brain, are situated in the chest cavity where your heart and lungs reside.

For instance, when you feel confident, you are likely to beat your chest rather than slap your head. Slapping your head, it turns out, is an act of self-deprecation in recognition of one's silliness or foolishness. Anticipation can create anxiety, and nothing quite causes that feeling of foreboding like the hours just before a long-scheduled medical procedure.

Lessons from a Previous Encounter

With hindsight, two years ago, after a multiparametric MRI scan, the consultant sprang a biopsy of my prostate gland on me without first reviewing the results or explaining the reasons. Even so, I was quite well prepared for the encounter.

I asked questions, demanded answers, and only acquiesced to the procedure once I was convinced of the need. The importance of reading up on your medical situation is paramount.

A Portmanteau of Procedures

Tomorrow, I am going for an Oesophagogastroduodenoscopy. I could have sworn that is not a word, but welcome to the world of medical terms that suggest a portmanteau of activities. The word reminds me of German, where portmanteau words are joined up with the letter "S". I would suppose, with medical terms, it is the letter "O", much like when I had that inguinoscrotal abscess last month.

In summary: I am having an endoscopy that will reach down through my oesophagus, past the gastrointestinal junction, to the first and shortest section of my small intestine. I have not deigned to measure that in miles, but it feels like a long way down to places never before visited, rather like the first landing on the moon.

Why This Procedure Is Necessary

This is pursuant to an investigation that presaged my visit to A&E after a choking incident which impacted my ability to swallow anything, including fluids, for hours. I was eventually discharged about five hours into my hospital attendance, after managing a sandwich and a drink. Taken alongside a history of choking events going back decades, and three such incidents since that discharge, this procedure is necessary.

Herewith, the cause of my anxiety: without a chaperone, I can only elect for the most basic palliative, which would be a numbing spray to the back of the throat, rather than a sedative.

Finding Peace

I believe I shall be fine. I suppose it is just part of human nature to be slightly concerned at that kind of invasive activity, and it is not helped by a mind full of others recounting their own endoscopic odyssey.

Shalom! Peace to my mind, peace to my soul, peace to my thoughts, peace through it all.

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When Change Borrows the Lexicon of Grief

A Week of Lethargy

I would hate to admit to being lethargic, but there could be no other word to explain it. Last week, when returning from London, I bought a piece of rump steak and a salad, with the view to having it for supper.

That never happened. Each day as I returned home thinking I might cook, I was simply too tired to be bothered, so in most cases, I went to bed on an empty stomach and only got up quite late to take my pills.

When it comes to food, I enjoy cooking, and there are times when I do crave something different, but I never immediately act to fulfil that craving. It sits on my mind for a while until it is either dismissed as exhausting or I am compelled to act.

Steak, Finally

After more than a week, I took the steak out of the fridge, marinated it, and rather than tossing it in oil in a frying pan, I left the cooking to the air fryer. Soon it was done, wrapped in foil for five minutes, before I put it on a plate and served it with the salad.

I probably did not recover the sense of satisfaction that had greeted my initial intention and purchase, but I am glad it did not end up in the bin through disuse and spoilage.

Shifting Ground

Then, as I navigated the issues that needlessly occupy the mind in uncomfortable ways, I attended an all-hands meeting that dwelt on the future of work. It was the kind of situation where you feel the ground shifting under you as if you were experiencing an earthquake.

I was able to link this to another experience where, as a sitting tenant, my apartment was sold to a provincial carpetbagger who probably should not have been speculating in my city. Considering not much had changed in my apartment for a decade, I was receiving demands to meet rates relative to the area without any corresponding changes to the commodity.

Loving where I live and my neighbours, I have made adjustments and accommodations, but there are limits to acquiescing before it becomes untenable. A recent posting in my village would suggest I am paying over the odds.

A Contract in Flux

The shifting sands metaphor also applies to work. The services contract between my employer and the client is changing such that the functions I perform will transfer to another service provider, whilst my employer assumes an overarching responsibility between the client and all the engaged service providers.

I think my employer is somewhat conflicted, because they would lose personnel engagement but acquire a broader first line support profile, along with that control and interface between the service providers and the client. The question is whether I am transferred to a new service provider or retained to function with other clients.

Grief Is Not a Career Change

For me, that meeting was rather depressing, and it was not helped by someone in a top managerial role trying to be a psychologist, addressing issues of fundamental change to career trajectories.

For someone who has studied and traversed the Five Stages of Grief with respect to two life-threatening episodes of cancer, the last thing I expected was to recognise those words adapted into a philosophy of change at work.

The intent was commendable, but I do not think due consideration was given to the effect such associations would have on the attendees. Changing jobs or having employment contracts change whilst retaining the same role can never equate to any stage of grief of the kind I had experienced.

It was almost as if she were having a laugh whilst trying to be empathetic and serious.

In the end, I was unimpressed and totally nonchalant, even as the burden of other concerns, including health challenges, became a lexicon of daily struggles seeking ascendancy over better stories and good living.

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The Family We Inherit, the Family We Choose

The Family We Inherit

When I was a child, family was a map already drawn. There were parents at the centre, solid and unquestioned. Grandparents orbited with stories and memory; I even had a great-grandmother into my twenties. Siblings came later, not quite close enough to grow up alongside, as it was to fight with and lean on in the same afternoon.

As I grew, the map widened to include aunts, uncles, cousins, and distant relations whose names carried branches of a tree I had not planted, but to which I undeniably belonged. Nowadays, a name from that stock carries some resonance but no clear recognition.

Family, in those years, was inheritance. You were someone’s son, someone’s brother, someone’s nephew, someone’s grandson. You did not choose your place; you occupied it.

An Unspoken Expectation

The expectation, though rarely spoken aloud, was that one day you would recreate the pattern. The heteronormative construct was laid out as tradition, without any consideration that you might be differently inclined. You did not create yourself; you became yourself, but you were still required to represent them as part of that genealogical framework.

You would find a wife. You would have children. You would extend the line. The structure felt inevitable, almost architectural: generation building upon generation, each layer confirming the last. The scaffolding stood there as a template, but what sort of building would emerge once it was removed?

The Expected Script

In adulthood, society tends to follow a predictable rhythm of questions:

“Are you married?”
“What does your wife do?”
“Do you have children?”

Closer to the traditions with which I have some affinity, the question is inevitably:

“How are your wife and kids?”

These questions are not malicious; they are rituals. They affirm that you are participating in the established arc, that you have stepped into the role once held by your parents.

Marriage, in that script, is not just about love. It is about continuation, about replication, about becoming what raised you. In fact, the word used is “responsible”, and you are apparently not responsible if your image of adulthood is not framed as husband and wife, home and children, the next branch growing from the familiar tree.

My Reality

My name is Akin, and the centre of my adult life is Brian. Brian is not my wife. He is my husband.

He lives in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. I live in Manchester, England. And regularly, as often as we can, we both travel to Cape Town, South Africa. We met in South Africa and meet there because it was the first country to recognise and legalise same-sex unions.

Cape Town is not just a city for us. It is a promise, a rehearsal for the life we are building. It is where time feels concentrated, intentional, and fiercely protected.

Measuring Life in Countdowns

Everything we do is designed to maximise the hours we have together. Flights are booked with military precision. Calendars are negotiated. Work is arranged around reunions. We measure life in countdowns: how many days until Cape Town.

We have been together for over seven years. Seven years of distance. Seven years of choosing each other. Seven years of making geography bend as much as it possibly can to commitment.

The Conversations of a Marriage

When people speak casually about spouses, they often describe the ordinary:

Morning coffee conversations.
“Darling, what shall we have for dinner?”
“Love, how was your meeting?”
“Babes, did you sleep well?”
“I mean, how are you in yourself?” [I smile at this question.]

Brian and I have those conversations.

I speak to him first thing in the morning and last thing at night. That is not symbolic; it is simply how life works. He is the first voice in my day and the final presence before sleep.

The Fabric of Our Bond

We talk about finances, health, frustrations, politics, and our families. We argue occasionally. We reassure constantly. We plan relentlessly. We discuss where furniture will go in the Cape Town home, we have not yet secured. We imagine neighbourhoods. We calculate costs. We picture morning light in rooms that exist for us only in hope.

These are the conversations of spouses. They are not lesser because they occur across time zones. They are not diluted because they travel through screens. They are not temporary because they are stretched by distance. They are the fabric of a marriage, the centre of what tugs at our hearts.

Recognition and Silence

Yet the world does something subtle.

A man mentions his wife and is met with easy follow-up: “What does she do?” “How did you meet?” “Do you have kids?” The questions flow naturally, as though the script has already been agreed.

But when I speak about Brian, there is sometimes a pause, a recalibration. Not hostility, not necessarily rejection, just a slight disruption of expectation. And often, no further questions come.

While I appreciate that some people need time to get used to that construct, in other cases it is those who give no consideration to that reality who make this conversation necessary.

This relationship will not fade into insignificance or irrelevance; the indifference of the original setting I was born into will not obviate the consequential position of Brian to me and in my life.

The Unfitting Template

It is as though the conversation does not quite know where to place us. We do not fit into the inherited template of husband-wife-children-grandchildren. There is no automatic branch extending from us into the next generation.

We have no children. Our relationship does not replicate the structure we were born into. But it is no less central, no less serious, no less real.

We as individuals might have deigned to conform, satisfying the cultural expectations of tradition whilst complicating the lives of those who, in my view, would have fallen victim to a lavender marriage, one in which our intimate desires were met elsewhere, where a wife could not compete.

We chose instead to be who we are, without scandalising others through the revelations that might have emerged from the liaisons we had proclivities for.

The Myth of Continuation

Much of how society recognises marriage is tied to reproduction. Parenthood acts as proof of adulthood, of stability, of contribution to the future. Children become the visible extension of a couple's bond. Yet even people within those constructs may not have children, for all sorts of reasons.

Without children, a relationship can seem, to some, self-contained. But what if continuation is not only biological?

Brian and I are building continuity of another kind: continuity of devotion, continuity of shared planning, continuity of showing up, again and again, despite visas and airfare and the blunt inconvenience of geography. Our lineage may not be genetic, but our commitment stretches forward just the same.

Cape Town: The Dream

Cape Town is the convergence point. I fly from Manchester. He flies from Bulawayo. Two separate lives narrowing toward the same coastline.

We walk the same streets each time as though tracing the outline of a future. We talk about where we will finally set up home, not as a fantasy, but as an inevitability we are patiently engineering.

The Sacred Mundane

That is our dream: to close the distance permanently. To wake up in the same space without calculating time zones. To make breakfast without screens. To argue about which cupboard the mugs belong in, or the clocks on the oven, for which I have been accused of having OCD.

Domesticity is not mundane to us. It is sacred.

The Centre, Not the Periphery

Whether others like it or not, Brian matters. He is not an aside in my story. He is not an interesting footnote. He is not an exception to a rule.

He is my husband, my partner, my integral and significant companion. The person I consult first. The person whose opinion steadies me. The person who knows the texture of my thoughts before I fully articulate them.

The absence of children does not shrink that reality. The absence of a wife does not make it incomplete. He is my full responsibility, before all others.

The Family I Choose

As a child, I belonged to a family I inherited. As a man, I have formed a family I chose.

It may not look like the one that raised me. It may not produce grandchildren. It may not trigger the standard conversational questions. But it is no less a family.

Brian and I are building something deliberate, intentional, and resilient. Every mile travelled, every reunion planned, every late-night call is a brick in that foundation.

Family is not only about bloodline. It is also about allegiance, about persistence, about saying, across continents and years: “You are my person.”

And that, however quietly the world acknowledges it, is marriage. That is just the way things are.

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I Am Not Your Gayologist

The Courage to Deviate

I cannot say how it works for everyone, but eventually, some people must find the courage of their convictions to deviate from what is considered the norm and set their own conventions instead.

To them, their norm, whilst being different, is their existence, their expression, and their life. To choose to live that life fully as themselves, without having to apologise for it, is probably what many others might have wished they dared to do.

In my own case, I did not set out to be unconventional. In the beginning, though I knew my inclinations were different, I did not understand why, nor whether there were others so inclined and ready to explore the possibilities that such difference offered.

A Diverse Humanity

The societies in which I have grown and lived have met this situation with varying levels of acceptance or revulsion. I suppose that is the story of our humanity: we are offered such a range of diversity that keeping track of divergence can be overwhelming. Yet, we can all belong to one celebrated and richly diverse humanity.

Behind all this are stories, very personal and intimate stories of struggle, fear, anxiety, confusion, guilt, grief, or rejection, all borne without a means of sharing one's deepest feelings.

We may never get to narrate those stories if the circumstances do not present the opportunity, but when such a moment does come, even the things you thought you might never share come out in ways you could not have anticipated.

Telling Your Story

How anyone reacts to that story, once told, is left to them. They can listen to the telling or read the message, then respond in whatever way they have been affected, having been given a different perspective on the person they had heretofore thought they knew.

Understandably, we hold high expectations and too frequently are met with indifference or ignorance. Yet a few respond with understanding and empathy; they see you, and that might just be enough to know that everything which became your story is not meaningless.

A Uniquely Owned Experience

Even that premise can be challenged. Why should someone else's viewpoint change your own narrative, even when they have attempted to walk a hard, long mile in your shoes? Nobody can live the life you have lived. They can understand, comprehend, appreciate, embrace, or even endorse it, but your experience will always be uniquely yours.

I started this blog hoping to say that it is not my responsibility to explain my sexuality to anyone. I am who I am, as you are who you are. You not understanding or acknowledging it does not make it insignificant or irrelevant.

Neither is it my problem if you cannot accept me and the choices I have made, without regret or second-guessing myself, in trying to live up to the requirements or standards of others.

Not Your Gayologist

The title of that blog would have been, "I Am Not Your Gayologist." Forgive the neologism; there might well be a blog with that title when the words are fully formed for that range of expression. I guess this is it.

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Of Bus Screens and Wandering Thoughts

A Lazy Saturday's Prelude

Through Saturday, I vegetated at home as I began to binge-watch the second series of Bull, a television programme about trial science which I find quite fascinating, whilst also putting me at risk of learning things that might make me more forthright and less personable.

At the back of my mind, I agonised about getting some shopping done. This involved catching a bus to the ethnic grocer's first, then walking up to the affordable supermarket, before returning home.

As the ethnic grocer closed at 9:00 PM and the supermarket an hour later, I could spare a few more hours of lazing about until I really had to get out; otherwise, the shopping would have to wait for another day, an idea that held no appeal.

Setting Off at Last

When I did eventually leave home with barely 90 minutes to go before the first shop closed, the nearest bus stop, just half a kilometre up the street, was closed, so I had to walk further down to the next one. On another day, with enough strength and the leeway of sufficient time, I would have walked the whole way and clocked up a few thousand steps in the process.

The Bee Network buses on the Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) enterprise are part of a modern integrated service under the mayoralty of Greater Manchester. There is an app to check routes and timetables, along with the current status of buses at specific stops.

The Trouble with the Screens

On the buses themselves, the contactless payment method is a convenience, but it is the screens showing the route and next stops that I find most useful for keeping my bearings. Unfortunately, on the bus I boarded, the screen was stuck on stopping information from well before I got on, and that was annoying.

I thought it was a case of broken windows syndrome, with such a minor detail of keeping passengers apprised of the journey and the next stop not being attended to as part of a pre-flight checklist for bus transport. I was remonstrating quite vehemently in my mind, with a view to writing to TfGM about the malfunctioning information screens. I had seen this many times before.

A Curious Coincidence

I had barely put together the words and suggested tone of my missive when, four bus stops after I boarded, the screens seemed to catch up and start working. That was uncanny, as it had me wondering if I now had the means to project my thoughts, not just for registering a complaint, but for the remediation and resolution of an issue to a satisfactory standard.

By extension, this would also suggest that I ought to guard my thoughts and arrest those straying out of the bounds of reason into the outlandish.

Others might put this down to coincidence, when it seems propinquitous enough to aspire to the causative. I do not know, but I was glad the screens got fixed, and I allowed myself the wry thought of levitating my shopping bags home instead of carrying them.

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In Wine, In Play, In Anger, and In Indifference

Wisdom From the Mother Tongue

Yoruba provides a rich seam of wisdom that, even as a second language, I have mined to find gems that sparkle and light my path. “Ibi eré ni à ńmọ òótọ́ ọ̀rọ̀” is a saying that has meant so much to me; it has made friends and broken relationships. “It is at play that the truth spills out.” That would be a liberal translation, and I'll stick with it.

The Romans arrived at much the same conclusion by a different route. “In vino veritas,” they said, “in wine, there is truth.” Where the Yoruba sage observed the loosened tongue at play, the Latin observer found it at the bottom of a cup. Two cultures, two settings, one shared recognition: the heart, given any opening, will speak its mind.

What reinforces that viewpoint comes from the words of Jesus Christ in the Bible: “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil. For out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.” (Luke 6:45)

A Watch Over the Lips

The unguarded expression, spoken without thought or consideration, regardless of disposition, is one reason why we need a watch on our lips. So says the Psalmist, in a prayer asking for divine assistance in controlling one's speech, preventing hasty, sinful, or hurtful words, and acting as a guard over what is spoken. (Psalms 141:3)

It takes only a moment of lacking restraint, and everything comes crumbling down: the dismissing of issues consequential to others, simply because there is no background to their stories beyond what surfaces at the point of interaction.

Yet everyone has both the prerogative and the right to be unburdened and unbothered by external issues. In some cases, silence trumps expression, but that requires a modicum of discipline.

The Many Faces of Unguarded Speech

Wine and play are only two of the settings where the heart slips its leash. Anger is another: the row that begins over a small grievance and ends with a cruelty no apology can quite retrieve. Tiredness is a quieter cousin, where exhaustion strips away the patience that ordinarily holds the tongue in check. Grief, too, can sharpen words into instruments that wound bystanders who happened only to be nearby.

There is also the casual cruelty of group settings, where a joke at someone's expense earns laughter, and the laughter encourages the next, sharper jibe. Social media has industrialised this dynamic; the keyboard is a kind of wine in itself, lowering inhibitions whilst removing the face that might otherwise have stayed our hand.

Then there are moments of fear, jealousy, or wounded pride, when the words we reach for are not the ones we believe but the ones that will hurt fastest. And let us not forget the seemingly innocent slip during gossip, where a confidence shared in trust becomes currency in another conversation entirely.

Seven Words, One Covenant

"I don't have the energy for this." Those are seven words that broke a covenant, though one can be certain they would be used to castigate me as truculent, impossible, and recalcitrant. My relevance is transactional rather than in recognition of my own journey or story. I have my own issues, but everyone needs to see themselves in the mirror, too.

Going back to the verse I quoted earlier, an interpretation would suggest that a person's words reflect their inner character, thoughts, motivations, beliefs, and emotions. The "heart" represents the core of one's being, and what is stored inside inevitably spills out through speech.

The Fool in the Play

As a student of myself, and sometimes of others, I have learnt a lesson about the heart once again. It does not take drink alone to loosen the tongue; play, anger, fatigue, grief, indifference, or just plain spite are enough.

You had better be attentive to what is being said before you become the fool in the play where you are also the lead.

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