A while ago I was trying to reconstruct certain things about my own life. Unable to remember, I started reading back through my emails from 2011 in an attempt to get things in the right order. It’s strange to realise you were - and are - a person living though history. It never really feels like that at the time. All of the below is taken from emails sent and received that year, including things that were quoted or linked to (although some of the links are now dead, as are some of the people to whom I was writing).
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I might go and see Eric Hobsbawm talk on Friday night if there are any tickets left.
I saw Chavez's cable car to the barrios on Saturday.
The landlady emailed. She wanted to put the rent up to £900.
Some sad news you might not have heard is that Trish Keenan the singer from Broadcast died on Friday of pneumonia. She was only 42.
Reading Group is moving to the brand new occupied free school in Bloomsbury!
That looks fun (apart from vomiting in a toilet full of cigarette butts)
People shared Coca-Cola bottles, moistening their faces with soda to avoid the effects of tear gas. Shopkeepers handed out bottles of mineral water to the protesters, and civilians distributed food periodically. Women and children leaned from windows and balconies, chanting with the dissidents. I will never forget the sight of an aristocratic woman driving through the narrow side streets in her luxurious car, urging the protesters to keep up their spirits, telling them that they would soon be joined by tens of thousands of other citizens arriving from different parts of the city.
If you’re wondering what high-ranking Pentagon officials were doing at an investment conference, well…. Their main message, to put it bluntly, is that even in an era of tighter budgets, the Pentagon is going to make sure the military industry remains profitable.
"your boy is a commodity" kool AD
saw this last week as mubarak fell
Given the miserable political situation that we are experiencing, isn't it obvious that it is us who have everything to learn from the current popular uprisings?… A spark can set a field on fire.
The Really Free School is moving tonight.
I spoke to Martin who drives a cab in Malaga. He lived in Leningrad in the late 1970s. They called him Trotsky at the pub he worked at in Croydon and he once got called in for a 'non-coercive' sandwich with MI6. Before that I spoke to Sergey the sound guy who is actually deaf. He's the one who was in the Nord-Ost siege in 2002 - he was working on that production. He carries a lion keyring everywhere.
Please donate 20p to use a spoon of Nescafe.
The ‘speculative realist movement’ exists only in the imaginations of a group of bloggers promoting an agenda for which I have no sympathy whatsoever
Airstrikes begin on Libya targets. French warplanes attack tanks and US launches cruise missiles, as international military intervention begins.
They're just kicking out one of the last Friedrichshain squats and the mayor says he's glad the rents are going up. Hope you had a brilliant day at the TUC demo.
Increasing numbers of women admit to being hooked on internet porn. Why is this happening?
These photos are from Guevara square in Bogota where there are demonstrations, as far as i can tell, every day.
Get us two cartons of Camel Blue at the Beirut Duty free
This is one hub of a growing and impressively organized network of activists using social media to break the bonds of Syria’s police state and publish news and images of the unprecedented protest movement against the regime.
The workers are on strike
Glass lies strewn on the street, each glittering shard a symbol of a potential future.
There is a strange haze everywhere and a thin film of sand on all the cars. Still lots of tourists in the hotels in Aleppo.
Poly Styrene died, did you hear? I know our Dad got you into X-Ray Spex when you were small.
He said Mayday was a bit union, old guard, beardy. tony benn was there with his pipe. Lots of bahraini flags.
Crossed border on a bus and watched the TV news about Osama Bin Laden while pop music played. Saw someone feeding the ducklings Doritos.
Nick Clegg backs decision to not open Britain's borders to Libyan refugees
I just joined Twitter - can you be my first follower?
My first tweet said: “I think the cat ate my sim card”
This hipster landlord from New Zealand has a house in Tarlabaşı and posted it on Craigslist. Got caught in clouds of tear gas walking down from İstiklal.
In Gaza hundreds of disoriented stray cats were left wandering to die of hunger and thirst
The eastern sky ablaze with chewing gum, the northern with toothbrushes and underwear, the western with whiskey, and the southern with petticoats.
Back in Tbilisi artist Irena sits chewing Vogues watching a badly dubbed soap in which Elena stroked a horse and had an emotional flashback about a baby that turned out to be a doll. Found some spent bullets on the ground identified as issuing from an AK-47. We met a priest on a building site who told us an oligarch is paying to build a monastery right by the Russian border. Peace corps everywhere eating Skippy, the smooth kind, wearing kitten slippers and reading The Times Digest which says the US is developing an entirely benevolent shadow internet to help activists.
It's raining. They're building new Marriott Hotels. There's also a Stalin statue.
Read an article about women who long for the USSR. For sugar that cost a few kopeks and Navy parades and free vacations and salt baths. This one woman spent her state pension on a Soviet flag even though she couldn't afford to pay for her heating.
On the famous Odessa steps there are groups of men with owls who charge you to have a photo taken with an owl on your head.
A protester who writes history with his own blood, body, and nerves will be a challenge for future historians, but the revolution in Syria has also put the media to a difficult test.
Did you see that JG Ballard's old house is up for sale? Can you paraphrase the ‘death of the author’?
I think this whole Murdoch phone hacking business made matters worse today. I watched it for hours on the live stream thing.
My teacher began by complaining about dog salons where dogs receive pedicures. They also get married.
went to see ariel pink saturday night at the shacklewell arms. Later was gonna go to this book bloc London thing at auto italia.
Prime Minister David Cameron broke off his holiday. These strangely resemble those of the riots of 2005 in France or of 2008 in Athens when a teenager was killed by police in the district of Exarchia. There are calls for plastic bullets, water cannons, section 60 orders, the army on the streets and further cracking down on civil liberties
The flowers and plants in Crimea are so beautiful. In Yalta the waves came right up to the promenade. Fell off my bike on the way to the palace in Bakhchysarai.
Last week’s CT scan has shown small lesions
are you going to the social centre today?
It seems like the washing machine is kaput. It runs, but the drum now isn't turning either during a cycle or spin. We got it on gumtree so not sure what to do.
Read this from Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss:
Don’t be deceived / When they tell you / Things are better now
Earlier sent someone this by Richard Stites:
In these brutal times it seems natural to scorn utopian ideals of perfection, widespread social justice, community harmony and peace, world-wide cooperation and a planetary campaign to clean, modernize, preserve and protect the earth from social, military, technical and natural devastation. [but] What is more lamented than our loss of youth, romance, openness to change, thirst for adventure…? The warming springtime of human hope does not give in to the wintry smiles of the cynic and the realist; it blossoms and it perishes in the sad autumnal winds. And then it is born again - for ever and ever.
