Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives

Weird day yesterday. Played soccer, we sucked. Went out to dinner, had a semi-philosophical discussion, wondered how I related to the world, became slightly depressed. Got home, was told my grandma had had a heart attack.

Now, as my grandma basically falls into the 'extremely frail little old lady' category of grandmas, to hear that she had had a heart attack was not good, indeed my Mum looked pretty haggard when she told me, and I was thinking bad things. But as it turned out, it was one of these minor heart attacks. Apparently she took the wrong medication which was out of date or something, and it didn't work. So she pressed her alarm button thingy (and here I must be grateful that she has one from St. Johns, not Armourguard, because some incompetent neanderthal pleb in the Auckland monitoring centre would probably have taken 10 minutes to notice), the ambulance came, and they sorted her out. So she was in hospital overnight, but is already back home this afternoon. Which is nice.

An odd concept, the minor heart attack. 'Heart attack' sounds like such a bad thing, to think that you can have one and laugh it off and be back to normal the next day seems well and truly wrong. Obviously it is still bad, and no doubt extremely scary. But it must be weird to be at an age, or in a medical condition, where your chest starts hurting, and you think 'Well, here we go again. Is this it this time? Or is it just another irritating minor heart attack?'

There are so few certainties in life, and I would say no absolutes - I think there's room for doubt in anything, no matter how infinitesimally small the margin of error. Given this, you have to find a few things you are reasonably sure of and hold on to them, and make them certainties, unless you are preapred to embrace the entirely random nature of the universe, which I have quite a bit of trouble doing. I need a few things to take for granted. One of the things I like to take for granted is that tomorrow, bar something occurring that is far outside the normal realms of possibility, like a jet engine falling on my house, I will not wake up dead. How strange it seems that probably billions of people, not just old people, but sick people, and people in war zones, or famine stricken areas, or maybe people doing extremely dangerous jobs, don't even get that slight peace of mind, and wake up and think 'Well, there's a reasonable chance I might die today.' How far removed is that from my universe? Here is why we have terrorism, so that millions of Americans or Australian tourists in Bali or commuters in London that feel that they should be able to take it for certain that they will be alive tomorrow if they just go about their business, have that tiny bit of extra doubt (no matter how blown out of proportion it is, and it undoubtedly is) added to their lives. How unfair that their reality should be forced an insignificantly tiny bit closer to that of people in Israel or Palestine, or the vast majority of Africa, or what people faced for years (and continue to do so) in East Timor or Bosnia or Sri Lanka.

One of my Dad's favourite quotes by a bloke called L.P Hartley is: "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." Well, being old is a foreign country too, and I have little idea of the language they speak or the currency they use. I have no real idea what life must be like there. And I won't learn just because I know some old people. It's like attempting to gain a thorough understanding of Japanese culture by having a 10 minute conversation with a camera toting bus dwelling tourist. People say things like "Well, so-and-so is getting old" like that explains everything, which sometimes it does. But that doesn't mean that they understand what it's like over there. And they're not going to know until they emigrate.

Recently, with everybody sort of turning 25 and changing demographics and whatever, or maybe going to a concert or a party where there are a lot of 18 -20 year old bright young things flitting about, we're all tending to say 'Arrgghh, we're so old, how depressing' etc. Well, newsflash: we're not old. And we don't know what it is to be old. And we won't for a while yet, we're not even halfway for God's sake. And everything I see indicates that this is in general a really good thing. So enjoy it while it lasts, because you'll have plenty of time to feel and act old when you really are. Another quote, from George 'I came to New Zealand on a Sunday and found it closed' Bernard Shaw: 'Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.'

Unlike some other people, I will not sit in judgement of Michelle lest I incur her wrath (not that I have anything but nice things to say about such a lovely young woman, mind.) All I will say here is that she is absolutely right, Star Wars is good. Nice one Michelle. However, I must argue that not all men are scum - generally the scum are the ones that women are interested in. An unfortunate conundrum. Ah, but I get to vent about this later should this man's plan come to fruition.

I'm glad James has jumped in with some language policing of his own. Sometimes I feel my thin red under line (Microsoft Word joke) is stretched to the breaking point and I just can't cope any more. Tim's giant entry was full of so, Many typos i didnt no wear two start. Nice to have someone else on the team; I was just about to try and find the time and energy to have a go at 'ridiculous' as well. (Keep up the good work with 'weird' though everyone.)

Once again I have failed to write some thesis. This is a continuing theme. Perhaps I should regard it as another certainty I can add to my collection. Maybe if I do so the universe will end up doing what it does to most of my others, and turn it on it's head. Aha, taste my reverse psychology, universe.

Anyway, end spoon.