Mr Small

I remember when it started. My friend, Jason, aged eight or nine, was teased about something small. I confronted the bullies, giants, perhaps aged ten. One of them did the equivalent of a chest bump, but I was too short. I was enraged. Someone was insulting my best friend!

In the tradition of violent people the world over; I swung my fist straight into his smirking mouth. Knocked out his front teeth. Baby teeth, but still, it was a fairly mean punch.

From then on, I stood up for the underdog. I’d been teased as a kid about a skin problem I’d had as a toddler which had left me scarred: Don’t worry, the doctors had said, it should fade by the time you are eighteen. So I spent my childhood being asked if I had measles or some other virulent pox. I knew what it was like to get teased.

Flash forward- a few years later- mid-eighties- I was calling myself a peace-punk- all protest badges about animal laboratory testing and with a proud membership of the CND- campaign for nuclear disarmament. I headed up my school’s chapter of the SPCA (oblivious of the woes of Apartheid whispering under the radar of the State news channels).

But I made lots of friends. The kinds of kids who knew what it was to feel the dismay at being left out of soccer teams, or mocked about their sad attempts at expressing themselves by dressing oddly,. I overdid it. It was the eighties- at my all-boys school, wearing make-up was frowned upon. Screw them, I said, and did it anyway. Got beaten up.

Anyway, another flash forward slides into the nineties- an age of acceptance which I missed out on. Until certain political unrests stirred me. Suddenly, the clubbed seals were people. People being killed or left to die, either by warring factions or a government characterized by neglect. So I marched and volunteered, joined causes. Tried to understand the plight of, say, refugees from war-torn countries trying to make a living in a hostile environment.

Shift a decade. Who knows where it came from, but Facebook appeared. I signed up to causes, groups, commented on pages and places that nobody cared about, and became an armchair activist. Not too bad. One click, and you can appear to give a shit.

And suddenly, I am middle-aged. Wearing a badge on my corduroy jacket, in the words of The Fun Boy Three is no longer a way to indicate my political affiliations. I have done what I can to get involved, but yet not enough to threaten my security.

But maybe, maybe, maybe…

Sometimes, there’s that metaphorical bully. Swaggering with his cock-pigeon chest. In my face, reeking of testosterone. And, despite myself, I feel the pin-prick of tears in the corner of my eyes, and, at that moment, do anything to change the world…

So what’s next? There will always be hierarchies and cool people. How much more power do the underdogs have? I don’t know. I don’t want to be a hero, but, yet again, I do. My version of being a hero is being willing to do what isn’t cool, tough, successful in order to change the lives of someone else. Not someone crappier than me, just someone who has at least as much potential.

And if, in the process, I get my metaphorical t-shirt pulled over my head?

Bring it on. I’m smaller than you. You won’t even see it coming.

A little introspection is a dangerous thing

Part of my job revolves around the concept of Traditional Knowledge: The way indigenous communities are the initiators and owners of ideas and lifestyles. TK could mean the way a specific type of plant is used by a small people group, or the way another group manages their lands or livestock.

It is a heavily contested field, legally, as indigenous communities fight to protect their right to be compensated for the use of their resources and knowledge.

Which makes me wonder about invention and discovery. Who was the first person to discover that milk could be transformed into cheese, and that cheese would go well with pizzas? “I’ll have a, er tomato sandwich, please” does nothing for me. What did people call a bad joke before cheese was invented? A milky joke? You can churn up milk and wrap it in muslin, add a bit of rennin and maybe a dash of lemon juice, and there you have cheese. Or you could add all sorts of other stuff, leave it on a cool shelf for a year and you have stinky cheese. Who decided that that would go nicely with water biscuits after the coq au vin?

And wine- we have indications that it has been around for thousands of years, and yet it seems an odd discovery. Fermented (rotten?) grape juice. Some insane primitive sitting on his rough-hewn stool, deciding to drink some rotten grape juice, and eat lumpy milk which has been lying around for a year? He deserves to be compensated for that act of bravery. Traditional Knowledge? Traditional Insanity.

King Henry I of England was said to have died from a surfeit of eels. Anyone who can eat so many of the hideous fish deserves to have a life-threatening experience. Who decides that eels look tasty? A surfeit of fillet steak? Sure. Eels? Nope. Leave ‘em to the taster.

I defy you to wander around your local supermarket and look at the food (Note: Push a trolley, put some stuff in, or you’ll be followed by store security). Think about the long road, the endless timeline that has brought those packaged boxes to your corner of the world. Imagine the wealth of discovery, even the ill-guided, sometimes fatal, mistakes which led to food being available to you.

Right now, I’m tasting some wine, and it seems alright. Presently, I may have some cheese-flavoured chips. Between the two foodstuffs, I am spanning the whole of Europe, possibly even the Americas and the Middle East. I feel wiser and more knowledgeable already.