Funfare for the Common Man

A short story of near-misses, butterfly effects, and romantic/career what-ifs: a mini career and awful romance autobiography of sorts. And how a run of fortuitous events almost changed the course of [my] history. ‘It is a fact that when we make decisions in our life, we don’t necessarily know that we are making them correctly; we only think that we are doing the best we can – and that is what we should do.’  Richard Feynman We start our story in late September 2002: my arrival in Edinburgh for a Master’s in International Relations. A nearly 5-year relationship had ended just a couple months before. Late autumn/early winter: a new relationship. Just after we had met, my girlfriend was offered a job teaching at a university in Mongolia. She wanted me to go with her and a decision had to be made quickly. We barely knew each other. Mongolia? ‘What the hell would I do in Mongolia?’ I asked. ‘Teach English?’ she answered, unsure herself. Teach English?! Are you kidding me? I went to Edin...

Waiting patiently Interlude 7: One year later 13 February 2023: our darling little girl’s 5th birthday. 13 February 2022: our little girl’s 4th birthday party, a surreal experience overshadowed by the decision we – I? – had just made the day before to leave the next day, my daughter and I. (note to students: this is not a terribly good sentence; please don’t write like this) If you’re a parent, you’ll know the cliché very well: Where has the time gone? They grow up so fast. We left Kyiv on Valentine’s Day, with a return ticket for mid-March. We were leaving as a precaution, though precaution hardly captures how agonising a decision it was. An accidental career Late March 2022, Vienna: I sit here on a glorious sunshiny spring morning in Stadtpark, one of Central Europe’s most picturesque parks, with birds chirping, fountains in full flow, couples promenading hand-in-hand, the distant strains of a busker adding a jazz soundtrack to the setting. Ah, the life of an English teacher abroad! ...

When it comes to longing and nostalgia, few writers capture it better than Milan Kundera.   ‘The Greek word for ‘return’ is nostos. Algos means ‘suffering’. So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.’ ( Ignorance ) ‘In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.’ ( The Unbearable Lightness of Being ) ‘We must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory.’ ( The Book of Laughter and Forgetting ) ‘But we know that memory is anything but reliable. It selects at random what it wishes to store, discards what is not to its liking, underscores the emotional, sublimates and distorts.’ ( The Snows of Yesteryear , Gregor von Rezzori) Rewind to this time 10 years ago and I was finishing up my first stint as a teacher, at a summer school just outside of London. After 6+ weeks of teaching, it was time to say goodbye. It wasn’t easy. I’m a sentimental old fool. Growing...