Thought Picnic: The Little Things

Too means more

The question I seem to hear frequently pertains to how I am settling in back in London. I decided when I tweeted a few days ago about returning home to England that there was no point explaining to people why home could by ancestry be Nigeria and home by reason of birth and many factors of my upbringing and outlook could be England too.

The operative word being too to indicate a shared allegiance rather than an abandoned one, as one person engaged me during the closing ceremony of the Olympics – I had tweeted that I was proud to be British too even though I identify more as English and rarely if I could help it as Black British – my race whilst it is used for identification purposes to help others is hardly a function of my expression or projection – I rarely see it until someone points it out.

Missing the little thing

The little things in their subtlety are quite significant in their import; too implicitly meant I was not only British but I had another which my almost too smart assailant missed in his determination to denigrate my person, it presented an opportunity for giving an education but I doubt he had the competence to assimilate the fundamentals.

Leaving the Netherlands has literally closed one chapter in my life and offered me the opportunity to open a new chapter. The return offers a new beginning and prospects are coming in just as I have seemingly gotten a new lease of life.

The little effects

The little thing is a just a SIM card, a number in the UK, a temporary address in the UK and the CV looks like freshly baked bread still warm hardly minutes out of the oven; a perspective realigned is an opportunity within grasp – who knows what might come of this?

Two days ago, it was a little pin connector on my laptop AC adaptor and that was the end of its useful life an urgent replacement was sought and by happenstance a call came in and my good friend of 26 years replaced it. The replacement died within 30 minutes and there wasn’t too much little talk at the shop for it to be replaced without quibbles.

A little touch

With that came the other little bit of knowledge about the smartcard travel-cards known as the Oyster card, I have been overcharged a few times because the system assumes I have not completed my journey which is crazy else I would have been marooned within the transport network rather than getting to my many destinations – each entry and exit point is gated and I have not taken a leap of fatality bounding over any gates.

No one will for now admit that some of the algorithmic logic encoded in the system is bilking us but it is a gathering storm. I dare say when the system fails there is not automatic reset mechanism to restore the overcharge, for all the technology at play we are back to filling forms – it is so much an inconvenience, no one bothers.

Many little ends

Yet, the little things are remarkably wonderful, a little detour and you bump into a friend, a little sideways glance and you see something that has always been there but you never noticed, a little spice and you break out in sweats, a little more and the scales are tipping that you cover your eyes in horror and why is it that I can read the littlest print without my glasses and cannot make out the features of a face hardly 2 metres away?

A little spot of bother for eyeing the bigger picture.