Notes on Hermit Crabbism

Random Night in November...

Time - 00:27

Weight: 60 kilos on the dot. Must gain more.

Cigarettes: 0

Other malicious and undoubtedly evil substances: 0

Cups of tea: 2

Now, where to begin? I could start with the fact that the cable isn't working. I'm not sure that I'm allowed to say what cable company it is, but it's the one everyone has here. It's the one with four letters that half the daddies and bars abandoned that one time because they failed to secure the Premiership rights. It's the one that releases a new magic decoder every year. The decoder I'm looking at is three years old and it shows. What's supposed to be the HD movie channel is Signal not found, please check that your set top box is properly connected to the cable point. Thanks, but no thanks. 

I'm deathly afraid of wires. The last time I approached an electrical connection with wild abandon, was the prelude to a dance of death on a viridian lawn, that left me bruised, burned, and without a voice for three days. I know it sounds like the side effects of a particularly thralling BDSM romp but it wasn't. The only good thing about that experience is that it is unlikely that the parental units will ever ask me to sort out the christmas lights again. This is good.

Lagos hasn't been particularly good to me. Someone once said, "don't try to rush Lagos or Lagos will rush you." The person lied. I have never hurried Lagos, but Lagos has harried me. I think the city wants me gone. I shall oblige. I should have obliged when my tyre burst on third mainland bridge. As they say, hind sight is twenty twenty. This too is a lie. Because of the variable nature of the future hindsight is 0. There is no reward in looking back. We must race towards the future with the past firmly in mind. 

The one thing Lagos has been good for is learning. When I first arrived here all my fellow IJGBs regaled me with tales of vast nothings, and boring nights of sameness and routine. I found this both repulsive and enchanting. Doing the same thing with the same people every Friday night was as charming as St. Elmo's fire in my imaginings. Doing the same thing every Friday night in reality was nothing but one of the many proofs of life. I live, I am young, so therefore I am at one Thai/Indian inspired restaurant/club every Friday night. The idea of this soon became repulsive to me. "I am a man of varied interests, so shouldn't my exploits reflect this?" I thought. And they did for a time. I went on picnics organised because, the picnic culture in Lagos was apparently dying. The organisers of that one would say that they felt honour bound to prevent the loss of such a tradition, and I would nod fervently. I honoured their seriousness with the enthusiasm of my head, knowing full well that my nodding was sarcastic. The people at those things were always fascinating, always interesting, always enchanting, but I found myself craving the sameness of my Buddha inspired restaurant of a Nightclub. That was when I realised that it wasn't that Lagos didn't have anything to do, but that it was I that didn't want to do anything.  

I realise that I haven't told you what it is I have learned. I have learned that I am hermit crab. Everyone who isn't hermit crab gets the shell, and those who are get me.