The Power of Less

A short catalogue of non-starters:

Aged 23 I wrote a proposal for a book called ‘how to be a real intellectual’ with writer Lloyd Evans. We got to see, and interest, a top agent but for some reason failed to write any more of the book.

Aged 25 I wrote a book about walking the Pyrenees- the friend who read it left off half way through I could tell by the absence of pencil marks from there on. No publisher was sought.

Aged 26 I wrote a kid’s book called Marcus Mayhem and his magic trainers. I had one conversation with a publisher but it was never submitted.

Aged 30 I co-wrote a language book that was commissioned for no upfront money called ‘Sexpertise in Japanese in 7 days’. The publisher read the manuscript and cannned the project.

And finally a starter:

Aged 31 I wrote Angry White Pyjamas about a year doing martial arts: it went on to win two major awards including William Hill sports book of the year, was turned into a movie script by Miramax, and sold over 80,000 copies.

What happened? Less happened.

With all the projects in my 20s I was doing too much too much of the time. I was so distracted by earning my rent, living a great social life, embarking on side projects and business ventures of all kinds, saying yes to everything.

Finally I said no to a few things. I went for less not more.

I learnt to do one thing at a time. I learnt to accept doing less means making sacrifices. You have to kill your little sidelines and diversions. That might be painful. You have to accept that pain to avoid the greater pain of not doing what you want to do.

I moved back to live with my parents while I wrote my book. I told myself if it took ten years and 100 rewrites this book would get published. I wouldn’t drop it after a single toe in the water. And I didn’t do anything else until it did get published (which took about a year of fishing around for a publisher). I did less and got a lot more.

Of course I’d learned a fair bit about writing along the way. But by doing less I opened up a whole new experience of a power that I never knew existed. By doing less I felt I was twisting some focus grip and concentrating my existing skills a 100 fold. The other day I was showing my kids how to use a magnifying glass to light a fire. I’d forgotten how you have to learn how to twist the lens in several planes and back and forth to get that diamond bright spot of pure heat and light. It’s quite a fiddle. By analogy, by doing less gave me the space to get control over that lens, I finally was able to bring that spot into focus, make it diamond bright.

I learnt about doing less by making expeditions. I was always amazed at how comparatively easy it was to succeed at what I set out to do when I went on a long hike carrying all my gear. In everyday life in my 20s my projects failed but my expeditions succeeded. There were so few distractions- get up. walk. make camp. sleep. But without distractions you achieved your goal of making the miles. I was a slow learner but finally I made the connection. Do less. When I approached doing martial arts I applied the same method- cut everything else out, do it full time, during the day, and worry about getting money in my downtime. That way I earned a black belt in a year. 

You might think being a polymath, someone who aims to master many different skills and types of knowledge, requires more not less. Not at all- just do one thing at a time- then change and do another thing. You acquire polymathy sequentially- because that way you can really focus- which you can't by attempting to do it all at once.

I was in a friend’s house today and went into one room which was empty like a hotel room. I felt the power of less immediately- which you forget so easily, surrounded by all your things- I remembered it from all those empty hotel rooms I have stayed in where you feel completely free and how a new beginning can start right there, right out of that small suitcase. With less you feel anything can happen.

More clogs the mind. As soon as you start focussing on less, on cutting away all you do not need, you start to build momentum. As soon as you decide to keep it completely simple, the simplest form it can take, you begin to move forward. It’s as if all the weight of more was stopping you moving.

Two years ago I moved all my ‘important papers’ into another room. I haven’t looked at them since. I have my notebooks of years back. I used to look at them but I don’t anymore. I have shirts I never wear. Indeed, when I go on an ultralight hike I carry no spare clothes at all, only a warm set that can be removed as the weather heats up. This could get ridiculous you might think, and of course it might. But I’m willing to go there. Or at least get a lot closer.

Less is the power of the hermit, the monk, the desert nomad. Amongst Bedouin the one who is most respected is not, as in the settled world, the one with the most tools, the largest kit bag, rather it is the one with the least, who can make do and mend with almost nothing. A third world polymath.

Travelling light is not only easier and more fun, it frees the mind. With less to hang on to you have more to look forward to.

That we need to get used to less is becoming all too apparent. Anything unsustainable will seem, to our children, not only foolish but morally reprehensible. Those silly old buffers who prate about their absolute need for clean water to crap in and endless cheap power and food generated by a system that wastes almost as much as it produces- they will be seen in the same light as the last rulers of ancient Rome.

That the ‘problems of the developed world’ can be solved by doing more of what has already not worked will have to change. We’re running out of money for more, less will be the only option.

But it is in the personal realm that the power of less can really be felt, can really be used right now. It completely inverts the happiness game that most of us get caught up in a lot of the time. “If only I had X I THINK I would be happier.” Instead, with less, you say: “What can I get rid of? Because I KNOW that will make me happier.” Just keep looking for ways to strip your life down. Reduce your wardrobe. Have fewer toys. Less tools. If you don’t use it everyday think of getting rid of it.

By using less, by giving yourself less choice of distraction, you’ll find it easier to see what you should do. That empty room again. If you can, spend time in an empty room, no pencil and notebook even. Spend several hours in your ‘cell’. You’ll be amazed at your productivity, how your thoughts will be sorted and made clear.

Or take a walk. Not walking somewhere, not stopping to drink coffee, but a circular walk of about an hour, thoughts move at walking pace- you’ll do more than three hours of pacing your crowded office stopping every half hour to check your emails.

The email thing. Unless you have an ongoing project check them twice a week- Tuesday and Thursday. Send them from a phone so that you can be excused their necessary brevity.

Facebook. Ditch it.

Carrying a phone- why?

Anyone who has been backpacking knows the power of less. When I started ultralight backpacking I was shocked at how, for so many years, I had carried so much weight I didn’t need. Extra clothes, heavy cooker, pots, double skinned tent- all gone.

I carried so much I didn’t need and exhausted myself. Now I can hardly believe at how much more fun it is to carry a light pack and go further.

The Time thing. Surely ALL of us need more time? What we need is to do one thing at a time, do less, have far fewer distractions, have far more time ‘doing nothing’ (really nothing and not TV and Internet nothing) and then, strangely, what you have to do will take less time. In WW2 they extended factory hours to make more bombs- but they found people made less in 11 hours than in 8- because when you work 11 hours you have to get all your other demands met during work- social mainly- and you work with far less intensity. We need to also accept that if we live a life that revolves around a car, then we will always have too little time.

Less means accepting sacrifice. Might even be a little painful.

I recently read about a multi-millionaire giving away his wealth. Most of it. But he could probably have given away all of it and it wouldn’t matter that much. The contacts, the reputation, the skills he had already developed would probably keep him from needing his millions. In fact it would probably hold him back in the sense of learning new things, since nothing insulates you from experience better than wealth.

The money thing. My old aim was, like so many people, to make as much money as I could as fast as I could. Of course it always takes a little bit longer than you anticipate. And pretty soon half your life has gone by. Then you start thinking about how much you’ll need for a comfy retirement and…stop right there. Less. You need very little. Friends, adventure, challenge- none of this costs that much money. All you need is normal money, not silly money. Success is a process not an end result. Identify processes that you want to continue, be a part of, are meaningful, give something to others- that is success. Not the bestseller, the sold company- I mean these are nice things, lucky things, and maybe the result of identifying a ‘success process’. But they are not success. Ever achieved your wildest dream? I have- to win major literary awards with my first published book. What did it feel like- kind of flat. I dreamt of walking the full length of the Pyrenees mountains- what did it feel like when I did and plunged into the sea at the end- not that great. What does it feel like when you are in the middle of a great process- be it writing, walking the high hills, making something happen, creating something, helping folk- it feels great.

You don’t need the success others crave, you need less. You need to identify a success process that’s all.

The world is what it is because people thought they needed more. It’s time for less.

energy is liberated when something happens

I was down, musing on the downside of life in Egypt when my wife and kids came back from a basketball game my daughter had been playing in, a game they had slunk off silently at an early a.m. leaving me musing over a mug of tea…but now they were back and instantly I was  brimming with energy, fun upbeat energy all derived form this game they had watched and played in. Something had happened that they had been a part of. I thought if they had all stayed home, and watched TV or whatever, none of this energy would have happened. It would have never existed. So humans Not Doing Stuff deprives the world of energy. Watching TV and playing computer games drains the world, deprives it of life.

Think about machines allowing one man to do the job of several. Again very little energy is generated compared to a group effort. The pinnacle of this idea is the Amish way of barn raising- do it in one day with the whole town participating and then have a party. I used to have an allotment but trudging down there alone to dig a few silent trenches on a cold morning was a drag. I now know I should have had a dig for victory party where everyone brings a spade and digs for half an hour or so all together. There are few things more fun than reasonably easy manual labour going on for not long with a bunch of people you really like. I keep being amazed it’s that simple.

multi-dimensional living

Why live in one dimension when you can flip between many, choosing the right dimension at any particular time for what you want to do? 

I don't mean a spatial dimension, I mean something like a sci-fi 'other dimension'. Something experiential, where, because of altering your sense of time or priority, all your experiences are altered. With multi-dimensional living you actively seek to alter the way you experience things.

Multi-dimensional living is a new way to think about things you have probably intuited right at the edge of existence, in the shadows so to speak. It’s time to bring them out into the full glare of the spotlight.

Multidimensional living starts by attacking the prevailing accepted myth that we live in one dimension, that time passes at an even rate, that human energy, coincidence, alignment are all pretty irrelevant. When in fact they are key.

In a subjective sense time passes slowly when we are bored and quickly when we are interested. But it’s more complicated than that. When we are LEARNING time slows down-when we are consuming pleasurable experiences we may not really notice time passing- but probably sense it as going past rather quickly. The first two days of a holiday seem to last forever. The last two rush by. Everything is new on the first two and we are keen to enjoy ourselves to the full. We’re in another dimension.

One dimension is the ‘flow state’ you are in when doing something you enjoy, well. Cooking, climbing, playing bridge- you are carried along and ‘outside time’.

Another dimension is when you are learning something demanding. It takes all your attention- and though it is satisfying it is ‘like fun only different’. Time can pass very slowly in this dimension.

A third dimension is when you lying in bed and letting everything fall away. You are content just to lie there almost thinking nothing. Maybe you are observing yourself, the contents of your mind.

Is a dimension just another name for a mental state?

No. I think a life dimension is a combination of doing something, some activity, and the mental state that is generated by that activity or required by it.

Is there a ‘worry dimension’? A shallow dimension? What about talking about the past, remembering good times? That’s a kind of dimension.

Then there is making plans- the future dimension. Can be a blast.

Then there is the creative dimension. Making something new, maybe with others. A surge of energy as you set free the creative spirit.

The play dimension, when it just isn’t serious, when you can say anything, nothing is stiff, nothing cannot be bent to accommodate a different shape.

People at work inhabit the ‘professional dimension’. Is there are ‘friends dimension’? One for old friends?

We shift between dimensions accidentally. Some of us, of course, contrive to stay in one dimension all the time. The alcoholic uses booze to maintain the play dimension long after he should have quit trying so hard. The workaholic seeks to extend the sense of flow into every crevice of his life. Or hers of course.

When we are exhausted our bodies flip dimension without warning. You get depressed which is another dimension.

People in one dimension may not even notice those in another. Students out enjoying themselves may not even SEE another person quietly walking along the street observing them with a cautious or even envious eye.

Multi-dimensional living, which remains a project, a fantasy of sorts, nevertheless has its roots in the achievable- which is- the ability to identify other dimensions and like Captain Kirk and Spock- zap right into them. Flip into a new dimension to GET THE MOST out of life AT THAT MOMENT.

No, that isn't quite right. What I really mean is: being able to inhabit a new dimension where the unexpected can occur. It's not about repetition of tried and tested experiences. It's not about setting up a consumption experience, its about creating a sense of travel in the very moment of living. 

I mean that feeling when you arrive at a party, maybe there are some strangers there and perhaps a few friends- probably the party is in a strange place maybe abroad and suddenly all kinds of things are happening and being said which DON’T USUALLY HAPPEN. Rimbaud wrote that he sought ‘the systematic disorganisation of the senses’ in order to write fresh poetry. Surely he was trying to broach another dimension.

It’s about the vibe you give out. Because we mostly live in the same dimension we feel we give out 'no vibe' when in fact we are giving out the 'same vibe all the time'. Sometimes we realise this in seemingly trivial ways. I came back from a week long trip around Europe and sat in a coffee shop and people just started talking to me. This never usually happens- in England at least. I had a different vibe. Multi-dimensional living is about being able to alter the vibe you give out in order to experience a different reality.

Multi-dimensional living hides from us because it's evidence seems to lie in the flippant and 'unimportant'. I have found that wearing a loud crazy shirt to a party ensures that people are happier talking to me and more laid back than when I wear a black shirt…and yet giving a public speech in a black shirt works better than wearing a loud shirt. Clothes are a significant way to change dimension. Hence the attraction of fancy dress and cross-dressing parties. Who could be more important to the sanity of the court than the jester?

The biggest obstacle is when we are in a rush. Then we focus on our objective and send out a vibe that signals ‘don’t try and make contact with me’.

A party can create another dimension- not just through drink- through the shared experience of being there, perhaps in a strange place.

I have recently been reading about people who go ‘skipping’- finding stuff at night in supermarket skips. The writer compared the excitement and fun of it with the tedium of forking over cash at the till for the same goods (often they are in the skip because of being a day past the sell by date or the packaging is damaged). I remember the thrill of ‘getting a book for free’ from a publisher- by offering to review it- compared to the boring ease of buying the same book.

Could it be that making something that is usually easy, into something hard, is a way of slipping into a different dimension? The thrill of making fire with a bow drill compared to using a match is extraordinary. But sometimes you’re in a rush…rushing again.

When we are in a different dimension we have the kind of experiences that only usually happen to ‘other people’. Often we have amazing luck- good and bad. Naturally we prefer the dimensions that seem to supply good luck.

To be a master of multi-dimensional living one must primarily NOT be in a hurry. This is increasingly hard in our high-speed world. I suspect that many of the best dimensions exist in the realm of ‘unexpected downtime’- finding yourself in a situation which is unusual, where no one has to rush off. I find that literary festivals- especially those far away, can be like that.

Going on a trip helps- a friend of mine, I discover, is going to make a week long dogsled journey- now that will be entering a new dimension for sure.

Aren’t I just saying travel is a way to get into new dimension? well, maybe. But when you travel and know someone in the place you are visiting it seems easier to enter the new dimension then if you know nobody and you are in that old familiar me-alone dimension.

Multi-dimensional living is about being able to leave the old luggage behind. It is about sending out a new vibe- maybe having the ability to shift any occasion into something NOT BORING.

Drugs are the obvious way to enter a new dimension- but I don't want to be beholden to drugs. For it to be real you have to be able to do it without power assistance, so to speak.

I think the first task is to simply start observing yourself as you move through your daily life: ask yourself- what dimension am I in right now?

what form should school take?

When I think about the times in school when I ‘learned something’ I have to compare it to the other learning experiences since school- for example an intensive Arabic course I did and a year long intensive aikido course. I can safely argue that you really do learn during an intensive course. Whatever your age. And school is not intense. You whiffle along, a bit here and a bit there. No wonder I learnt more French in my first two years with a demonic French teacher than the subsequent three years with someone more relaxed. Making classes ‘relevant’ and interesting rather than intense just waters it down further. The model for learning a sport is simple- do it a hell of lot, do it with people who are better than you, watch videos of people better than you, read their biographies, emulate them. Why then is this simple model not applied to school or university?

The obvious answer is that school is not about learning it is about fitting in with a way of life which has evolved over centuries in our country, in most of the world. But at the heart of this answer is a lie. If school is not about learning why can’t we give it another name? Too many people are involved, implicated, paid for- it won’t happen.

So real learning happens elsewhere- on intensive courses, between self-appointed students and the mentors they seek out, at home using internet forums and resources supplemented by lots of individual effort.

The question is: when do you throw in the towel with the school and seek out real learning opportunities? Especially as school and of course university are, or can be, such fun things to do- even if, as I did, you use them for meeting people and not really ‘learning’.

Except you do learn- by being with so many people you learn something about being with so many people. It does all seem a drag and a waste of time though. I think its like this: being in prison will teach you many things, it may be a valuable experience, you may learn how to ‘get on’ with many different types – but it would be odd to argue that it was a good experience for all. Prison leaves you tarred with the brush of failure. The broad brush of being on the loser end of things. Not that an old crim can’t talk it up a storm, but most of them find, après prison, that they tend to get the shitty end of the stick.

School and university might be closer to a prison experience than we imagine. Unlike being offered crime opportunities when you leave, old classmates can at least help us get a decent job. So is school just an imperfect elevator into the over rated world of work?

It’s true, university serves a useful, though heavily criticised, role in sorting people. You went to Oxford- good- you can join our firm. Though, as an old Oxfordian will attest, the old boy network isn’t half as effective as its detractors imagine.

You go to a school and a university and you have a badge saying “I belong, I am normal”. Now do what you want to do?

Intensive well designed courses are the way forward for real learning- of anything- especially if supplemented with less intense encounters with mentor figures. If you have met several real life authors, writing a book seems a normal thing to do, even an easy thing. When Hoagy Carmichael, then an amateur pianist, saw Irving Berlin fumble while playing a song he was surprised that he could do just as well- and so he was inspired to become a professional.

I’ve been on several intensive well designed courses that taught me singing, battlefield first aid, language improvement. I’ve never regretted for a minute the time spent on such things. Memories of school ‘learning’ are far more mixed, my attitude to it ambivalent at best.

defeating perfection

Mostly we don’t do stuff because at the moment of ‘almost doing’, it seems to overwhelm us. Why? Because we fast-forward ahead and imagine the final product and we suspect strongly that it won’t be as good as what we had earlier imagined when we set out to do that thing. Imagine the insanity of this- comparing two imaginary things and then giving up something real as a result?

Yet I do it all the time. Not just with creative things. Also with routine matters such as invoices. I can’t face the task because it appears more work than it should. In my perfect world invoices should be sent telepathically. In fact they take very little time, just as cleaning up takes very little time when you do it straight after making the mess. As all parents know. But it isn’t perfect, so it doesn’t always get done.

Perfection, again, screwing things up.

We live in a world over attentive to presentation. Instead of looking for the grain of sustenance we ‘judge’ how ‘finished’ something is. That is, how well it is presented.

But our idea of ‘finished’ is just a bit of cultural baggage. Editing can go on forever. I sometimes think time is the only editor you really need to consider.

I’ve found the iterative approach of the internet, posting up improved versions, as I go on, as one way out of the perfection trap.

I wanted, in my perfect world, to make this longer but I’d rather post it now.

more from Cairo revolution

I'm living in Maadi, a Cairo suburb, watching events unfold.

It is amazing how you hold onto an idea, draw strength and resolve from it. Yesterday the word ‘civil war’ began to hover on the edges of conversation. My friend Paul was beginning to sound doubtful about staying then today I talked to Denys, who still has shrapnel in his body from a bomb thrown in Cairo in 1948. He was very calm and said, “The people are unarmed.” In other words, unlike Iraq, Afghanistan and former Yugoslavia there can be no effective division into armed conflict. The army has overwhelming firepower. Immediately everything feels better- even though nothing has changed except the contents of my head.

It goes in stages. You start laughing at the people with weapons. Then you pile up the sticks and the knives. I even found an old headhunting dao from naga land- a real one my grandfather told me, and he got it there in the war. So I have my headhunters machete by the door. Then you start carrying a weapon- a stick or a knife- to protect who you are with. And the door- first double locked, then you advise others to put the fridge against it, then the other day – after a lot of shots and sounds of running outside, my mother in law and I move the sofa, two armchairs, a suitcase and old sixteen mil camera case, some plywood boards from an old wardrobe to thoroughly barricadde ourselves in. It was weird because I didn’t want to offend my mother in law by saying she was putting the chairs in the wrong place just as we are supposed to be fighting for our lives except it feels like moving the furniture about. Plus it isn’t science- who cares how the furniture goes- it just needs to be a massive pile of it. My son creeps in and calls it his den then he says for the first time he is scared. No you’re not I say. He looks down shamefaced. Then later I go into his room and he has barricaded his bed with all his toys. All of them. It is quite impressive but weird and a bit unsettling too. There are kids of seven and eight running in the street with bits of pipe and sticks. I saw one guy today with a pipe still with a tap at one end. It still didn’t look as funny as you’d think.

Then the family we know- two girls and their mum, they are so completely unfit their barricade left them all breathless, building it they had barely the strength to lift the heavy furniture. Always be fit enough to build a barricade.

The noises. Their significance- dog, scream, shout, whistle, the looters round Paola’s flat all whispering to freak out the residents they knew were hiding on their balconies in the shadows looking down.

Well Friday and Saturday, especially Saturday were hairy nights. Then Sunday night was quiet except for one burst of running and shouting and shots outside. Now all night it is completely quiet and the sky is clear. No pollution at all. For the first time I can see the Wadi Digla hills from my apartment. Clean air- an unintended benefit of civil unrest.

Now it is all waiting and watching and wondering how long it can go on for. Boredom interspersed with moments of anxiety.

egyptian revolution in cairo- my story so far

I'm living in Maadi, a Cairo suburb, watching events unfold. “If only I had a gun,” Steve said down the phone to me, pretty clear, he’d said call me on the land line- I could tell he wanted his mobile open at all times. Just in case. Just in case. It’s that “Just in case thinking” that builds the anxiety, the stuff that can harden into fear- you don’t want to go there. As my pal Roland said this morning as we sipped tea on his balcony and tried to see where the shooting was coming from and then, after a decent pause, agreed it was probably better to be inside as no one else was on a balcony anywhwre to be seen. As Roland said, “It’s the ‘what ifs’ that get you.” I said, “After this is over, if we leave then I’m putting steel bars across my door.’ “Another what if, said Roland. “No its not I said, a trifle hotly, but it was.

Back to Steve, “If only I had a shotgun I’d sit at the top of the stairs and wait for ‘em. No problem.” “You’ve been watching too many movies,” I said. And I really did, as he spoke, have this cool image of Steve, who is pretty cool, he’s a film maker who’s dodged tanks and bullets in Palestine, sitting in the half shade at the top of his stairs cradling a pump action like Clint or something. The thing is I know that people keep coming when they are shot and as Samia my wife says it all depends on how courageous they are. Back to courage. Old hamingway, I must say I had grown to think him a deplorable tosspot until this morning. All that stuff about courage- well he was onto something – except wrong in this way- talking about courage builds too easily into its dangerous illegitimate brother- bravado- rather talk instead about the absence of fear, the chasing away of fear, the ignoring of fear, or actually it's vanguard- anxiety. Knotted stomach. Thoughts in a stiff glassy rut going nowhere. People reveal themselves so very obviously. Matthew sounded desperate, “Get this you won’t believe it but the guys in my building instead of guarding the front just started opening beers and drinking and then at 11pm they all fell asleep so I had to take another stint on guard duty and when I said , come on guys they ignored me. Can you believe that? Mathew lives in Digla pretty close to Tora where they let out all the prisoners- they say- another rumour- but still just over the tracks from him Paul Gordon was rushed nine times by ‘thugs’. They call them ‘thugs’- my wife Samia does too- a direct translation. These thugs are either chancers or ex-cops or cons on the lam. No one is sure. They ride three up on motorbikes and five ina car, the dusty saloons with busted tail lights. I saw a whole load of them ten bikes, three or four to a bike roar past and they looked pretty normal. Must be other guys judging by the pictures on the TV of ten captured thugs- they really look rough. Saw one guy like that this morning as I walked to get Roland his high blood pressure pills. “Got enough for five days,” he said, a little carefully, certainly not his usual laissez faire self, the self on the balcony watching the tracer fire with his binoculars. So I miraculous find a drugstoe open and miraculously buy him the exact special pills he takes “they’re not cheap” he had warned and then when I tell him the price I can tell they were even more than usual but we find there are enough for two weeks instead of ten days so he is happy. Blood pressure. I could feel mine rising on the way to the drugstore to buy his blood pressure pills. Got to relax. The reason revolution is a young man’s game is when you are below 40 - you do not worry that you’re heart might explode however fast it is beating. You’re BP can skyrocket- who cares? But now you care. And anxiety can blow it high. And dogs. The dogs. Behind our house is a garden full of dogs. Five dogs. They used to bark a lot until the owner forced a servant to camp out in the garden with them and quiet them down. But the servant is gone and the dogs- they do bark. I could not sleep, or I was sleeping as tense as a log and then this barking seemed to mix with shouts and gun fire and I realised I was getting tense and anxious and…not fearful but you simply cannot afford to get tense and anxious- that is the key, plus avoiding the ‘what ifs’. Anyway I did this tension and release exercise without much hope of it working and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep and awoke and the light was coming in through the window and no one had invaded or tried to invade our house…

My friend Paul had called the night before and Samia had taken his call and said he was somewhat anxious because there were thugs in his street. He lives on a wide throughfare- the direct route from Tora prison to the fat heartlands of Maadi where all the rich folk like us live. I called him and he sounded a tad excited, “We’ve got three guns on our building and they’ve rushed us nine times,” he said. I felt I had to say something less exciting. I understood instantly the whole English thing of calling a war ‘an incident,’ a riot ‘trouble’, violence ‘confrontation’. I said, ‘The Mosque PA broadcast that there were some…rowdy men in the next street.” He sort of acknowledged the deliberate downplay but realised it was not a put down but an attempt to be calming.”Thank you friend,” he said. Paul is a priest and always cracks a joke or laughs when we speak- a very necessary way of keeping things in perspective, especially with all the rumours flying around. I heard that the local library had been torched because it was opened by Suzanne Mubarak. I walked down to have a look- not only was it untouched- the flag was flying and a timid security guard was making tea in the shadows. Though most of the Americans have gone Paul feels he must stay, take each day as it comes.

“I just feel so…naked,” said Steve, “Without a gun. I got the kitchen knives that’s all.” “Tape one to a broom handle and make a spear I said. “Yeah, a spear can be fucking unwelcome if you’re not expecting it, Steve said, perking up.

Weapons. What do you do when you haven’t got a shot gun or .38 police special like my friend Mohamed?Though he said the ammo was made in 1957 or something and would probably kill him first. I got my wooden sword out, the one I did aikido with in Japan. In samurai times guys with wooden swords sometime beat guys with steel swords. It feels surprisingly light and ineffective. I find – as joke- an enormous Spanish meat cleaver we have and put in by the door. In about ten minutes it looks like a good idea- not a joke at all. The kids are looking out the window, “That guy has a baseball bat, and he’s got a cricket bat, he has some wood- that one has a golf club.” “A cricket bat?” I query ona kind of distracted time lag, “Yep.,” says both son and daughter, (9 and 11) “and a ball.” I don’t know whether to believe them or not. But it doesn’t matter. That’s the great thing about living in a revolutuion. The normal things you worry about telling your kids- do this don’t do that- it all goes out of the window- all you care about is whether they are …not scared. I’m becoming like my mother in law, who is here with us now, her building having been the home of a former minister- now long gone with his slouching bodyguads and police protection. There is no police. None. That is weird- have ever been anywhere urban in the world where there are no police? Some are hunkered down in their police stations but many stations have been burnt to the ground, as have hundreds of police wagons, lorries with little looholes they used to peer out of wearing their riot helmets- all gone. Like some JG Ballard novel.

I crept out each day to scout around my neighborhood- Maadi- which is about twenty five minutes drive from the centre when there are road bocks or traffic. The nearby Carrefour hypermarket – the biggest in Cairo was looted and torched they say- though in my street and the ones around there has been very little looting. Last night some people tried to loot the Telephone company office and the army- who are here now in force, after the hiatus of nothing but neighborhood watch committees with their sticks- shot them all from the comfort of their tank. Roland watched it from the top of his building and said it was, well, the real thing.