The provider of pancakes over the years has always been the important women in my life. I don’t think this is on purpose. Never the men. I remember my dad once bought microwave premade pancakes. For actual pancake day no less. Never again. When I was growing up I use to eat pancakes at my Mum’s house on one weekend, and then I’d be eating them at the Grandparents’ house the next. Grandma made them very differently to my mum. The flavours were objectively worse in an actual food eating sense, but where the former met the latter in the middle was in my tiny little heart.

I was a single digit age. Maybe encroached into the early double digits. At my grandparents I’d be eating pancakes cooked in oil, not butter, so they would end up greasy without the dangerous but delicious saltiness. The toppings would be a Jif Lemon (even though I had a choice of a real one, a strange choice I look shamefully upon) with sugar. This option I have eaten as an adult and doesn’t taste bad. However, the more frequent and classic option, which I don’t think I could stomach now, was tablespoons of golden syrup. I can so vividly remember sitting there bored at the table in the kitchen. Waiting on pancakes to arrive on my plate. To keep myself entertained I’d dunk a spoon into the tin pot of Golden Syrup, then just hold it above to watch it all slowly slide off back into the container. The movement of the thick liquid goo was satisfying to watch. I’d take time to stare into the bottom of the lid to see my own reflection. Sometimes I ate two pancakes, never less than, but quite often more. Depending on what was offered up to me. If I was spending a Saturday morning at the Grandparents’ house because my big brother and Dad were playing football; I’d get the opportunity to eat more than my fair share. That’s half a slice of the little area in my heart. Nostalgic, sweet, and consistent comfort.

The other half would be the pancakes my Mum would cook for all three boys. As adults they’re never here to share in the love anymore. Now just the two of us, when I come to visit I get to eat them with Mum. Though there is the pooch that gets fed a bite or two to share in the happiness. When we were kids you’d line up in the kitchen. Plates in hand ready to run off with a freshly cooked one. Then a second, and I rarely remember a third but I am sure there were times when that happened. How she manages to get them browned in butter. The texture so soft, and velvety. There aren’t any uncooked lumps of flour. Perfectly cooked on all sides. The shape is a round circle of the frying pan. Not some disfigured pathetic thing. Served up with maple syrup. Back then I can’t even remember the toppings. All I can recall is that Mum makes the best pancakes, and I can never replicate them.

On this thirteenth morning, the batter looks sad because I am on my own with nobody else here to make them. So they’ve turned out wrong, but I still cooked and ate them. The same as yesterday morning. When I had only these poor sighted eyes for the measurements. I have never been able to replicate Mum’s pancakes, but I proposed to someone who almost succeeds. I’m not being a harsh critic. You can’t compare decades to half a decade in terms of experience. You can’t replicate nostalgia that can make the worst food taste good. I know people that like a spam sandwich, I think purely because it is nostalgic. Thirteen days ago I asked my fiancée to make me pancakes as I wanted the comfort, and then she cooked them most days before leaving me on Tuesday. Now its Thursday, and I’ve got to stomach another Friday, and Saturday morning before the woman I now depend on the most returns. I’m not sure if I can get to fourteen days of eating pancakes anyway. Even though I have all these important women volunteering to cook them. The last thirteen days haven’t been normal. I wouldn’t usually be this blessed, as quite frankly its ridiculous to eat so many pancakes.

Nearly three weeks ago I got a phone call telling me that Grandma only had a few days left. I spent twenty four hours travelling from Santiago, Chile, all the way to Kent. I managed to get there not knowing that those few days would turn into nine before she died. I sat next to a small bed in the front room of her home on two occasions. She was a small woman so that part wasn’t strange. However, I had only just seen her at Christmas months before. Existing normally; for her now to be robbed of a voice, the ability to walk, or understand fully what was happening around her. The coldness of her hands. That felt so abnormal, and uncomfortable. When I was sat with her you couldn’t help but observe the four walls of that room which was surrounded by her life. Captured by photos hung on walls. Hearing the noises of all the other little humans that were there because of her, sat just over there in the garden a few rooms away. All those nostalgic things I often talked about existed in the same space. They felt frozen in a way.

I’ve only attended a single funeral before, and that was for her mother, my great grandmother. For me this felt like my first death, despite remembering how it felt in 2010 seeing that coffin so vividly in the church. Here we are sixteen years later, and as I looked at her all I could think of was how upset Grandma was back then. I didn’t see her cry often, but I remember it then very clearly. The death of your mother will do that to you. So recalling that memory, and knowing now it was Grandma who only had a few days left. The feeling that I was witnessing her last days. Weighed heavy on my heart in that moment.

I couldn’t help but notice thick books on the bottom shelf. When we were little one of those cookbooks, which at this point looked untouched for quite a while, contained the pancake recipe that she used every time without failure. I was never privileged to have an Indian grandmother to pass down a generational butter chicken recipe. I had boomer baby English grandparents, so I got passed down recipes for English pancakes instead. Her generation, and specifically my Grandma’s forté would be in cakes and baking. Her Victoria Sponge cake was always a treat. My favourite was the banana bread, which in the hindsight of adulthood was always very dry; however, that didn’t matter to me. A few years ago, I was greeted by her, and offered a slice of freshly baked banana bread. As I accepted, she gave me a precursor that she didn’t think it was any good, but she really enjoyed baking this one. That is what mattered to me, her enjoyment in the little things. To put it simply, what more is life about? This makes me happy, to know that she was happy, and I got to eat banana bread for the hundredth time. What made her happy, and myself, and kept me fed, were her pancakes she cooked upon request. Something that stuck with me was visiting them years later when I was legally defined as an adult. I noticed she had the pancake recipe from the cookbook stuck to the side of the fridge. This wasn’t a page from a book, but a small piece of scrap paper, scrawled with bad dyspraxic handwriting. Many years ago, finding the recipe in this thick, and chunky book was always a pain. So a clever solution was to copy out the instructions to make life easier. I was asked to write this out, and there it was all those years later. I hadn’t eaten those pancakes for years, so to see that came as a shock to me.

Whilst her breathing was laboured on this bed the week before last, I looked into her eyes, and told her everything that mattered. How she made me feel loved, and safe. Looked after by her kindness, and to summarise a lot of poorly worded mess, very simply that I loved her lots. I made my peace this Wednesday, and I got to see her once more on the Friday. By the following Tuesday she had died.

I have been eating pancakes for thirteen days. I thought I knew why. I partly understood. The truth is that I find it comforting. The delicious breakfast choice, which has some rooting in nostalgic lenses, providing a rare sort of seasoning to the dish. I started the daily ritual when I found out the news, and ate them the morning after seeing her. Then this morning I realised I forgot to talk to her about her pancakes. How I actually felt valued to see my pancake recipe copy still pinned to the fridge all those years ago. Sounds silly to write this, or to tell someone aloud, but the truth is seeing that made me feel valued in a harsh cruel world. The type of world where not nice people try to constantly discredit your worth. I feel a strange new feeling, which I haven’t experienced. Someone I was so close with gone forever, and I have a small pained regret that I didn’t tell them everything. A small human error that feels permanent. To grieve someone isn’t unique, but nobody lost my Grandma. What she meant to me. That loss is mine to hold. You may have your own grandma, you may share the same one with me, but your relationship with her, and the accompanying loss is different. So here I am in a world that feels a little bit more lonely. Unable to process or deal with these feelings. How are you meant too? So what I do is eat pancakes. What else are you meant to do? I haven’t woken up feeling rested since I got home. Going to sleep feels wrong and misplaced. How can I sleep in a world so unjust that I am given a grandparent, and have them taken from me.

Some of these days I have been eating two breakfasts. Starting with pancakes, and then supplemented by a savoury alternative. There is this feeling I can’t shake or hold comfortably. I worked hard to starve and walk distances to go down a jean size, and a half. After months of work its been reversed in thirteen days. The taste buds are craving the simplicity of some eggs on toast. Yet I don’t know what to do if I don’t wake up and eat those pancakes. So I do; and then sometimes I make the breakfast I was meant to have. I should take comfort in her death. When she married my Grandpa all she wanted was children, which she had, three to be exact. The other request was grandchildren, which is myself, and the five others. Her last nine days were spent being visited by them all. When I saw her she was peaceful, without pain, and looked comfortable. With a radio on to help her sleep. Strange enough she looked healthy, as I expected anyone who was meant to die in the next few days to look worse. As much as you can say this is the best death, to be surrounded by family, and to go out peacefully. The twisted pain in my stomach won’t go away, but that is for me to deal with in the best way that I can.

Fourteen days of eating pancakes.

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When you stop thinking, that is when you are ready to commit, getting off what you want for every minute that passes. Another genius idea springs to mind. The groundbreaking stuff. You need to grasp this when you’re drowning in ordinary madness. Then after a little bit of writing back and forth, you realise what you have in concocted in front of you is a disorganised mess. You need to leave that shit sometimes and come back to it when you feel ready. Nothing needs to be perfect. Grow comfortable with building the one man sandcastle, confronted with the tide coming in against it. It doesn’t matter what you produce, it will wash away into nothing. Someone else will come and build upon the graveyard of your greatest work with the same grains of sand for the better, or worse it just depends.

You will get the sickening reality check when you view the work in front of you, and know it has to be tossed immediately. It’s not even worth the kilobytes of storage. Though the worst is to open what you intended to start writing on and shying away from it entirely out of an indecision. As then you won’t feel the necessary disappointment with yourself from missing gold but getting a participation medal. The best you get from that is just the guilt and shame of not even trying. Though it doesn’t always have to go these ways, every now and then, you get whatever you call this. Satisfied.

I detest the notion that what stops this from happening though is what you call writers block. There isn’t anything being stopped from coming to my mind. Instead, what replaces the curiosities I indulge in are thoughts of inadequacies. The imaginative state of mind, for me, doesn’t ever turn off. The frequencies just get changed by the second, minute, or hour. The pipes upstairs aren’t blocked; they’re flooding the entire fucking place with the piss and shit of the inner soul that doesn’t believe in myself to be good enough to put some words on a page. I can feel the guy upstairs’ turning the dial, putting the pressure gauge up to the max. Fear. When you commit yourself in any capacity, its human to be filled with the stuff. You fear what the people you walk past think of you. You fear the person who loves you most in this world will be disappointed by you. You fear never being loved by anyone at all. Where the fear rests gently within the soul, you either fear those closest to you, or those the furthest away. You fear, you. The consequences of trying. You fear proving the wrong version of you to be correct.

When I write it’s an endless road with signage either side, with all of the thoughts that has been, and will continue indefinitely to be generated. I wish there was someone to start blocking the traffic up, forced to stop and witness the surroundings. I don’t get the luxury often, instead I suffer with the nonsense. When I picture writers block, to me it feels like a spider. Harmless to the vast majority, catching the insects that fall for the trick in its web. Whereas I’m stuck with the mosquito, universally hated, irritating to all, which also runs the risk of killing me if it tries hard enough. When you’re trying to express yourself, and you get writers’ block. You should be thankful. It’s hard enough trying to make sense out of everything but try attempting this with the self sabotaging intruder instead. The blood sucker, killing the dream. Relegating people to the ordinary. Though there cannot be excuses, something that is better said to me than you.

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Listening to beautiful music to help get you through it. The vibrations slowly crush the soul. As the day dreaming kicks in, drifting across the infinite universe, bouncing around the imagination of a happy person. Soaking in the connection to the artist. Sometimes you listen intently to understand, and then sometimes you don’t listen at all as you understand. You feel fortunate that you were born just in time to access this music, and have such a range of choice you can pick a favourite. You can listen to a million singles or albums, even better you can obsessively repeat a single song endlessly just as it consistently hits that one spot over, and over again. You’re lucky to be diving into this magnitude of choice. Something that beyond the last couple of generations, you uniquely get to have the privilege of experiencing across thousands of years of human history. You’re lucky enough to not have been sent down the coal mines as a child.

However, as I sit there I don’t feel fortunate. I feel a bit more empty than when I woke up in the morning. I struggle to not shed tears at the idea I can do something that lets me be free. Unchained from everything. Instead I hold it all up, bottled within the soul. Leaving people  confused as to why I can’t get rid of this nausea. Its harder when you let it all out sometimes, and its always harder when you’re still going to be sat there afterwards. So instead you can just stare into the abyss in front of you. Motionless. Occasionally lifting those wrists to type and click away, not really understanding why you’re here. I robbed myself of a choice, I continue to rob myself of a choice, and I hope to never rob myself again. Self-subjugation to unhappiness. You’ve spiralled, and found yourself lost in the darkness. That is until you break this moment with the realisation you’ve got homemade butternut squash and carrot soup for lunch today. Sprinkled with a bit of pepper. Served with a crunchy bread generously slathered with butter. Instead you get up and take a break from it all.

I hope that artificial intelligence eventually steps up and takes this mundane life from me, and I hold the same wishful thinking for you too.

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Any rationale human who boards an airplane probably holds minimal concerns. Not limited to, but including the following. Is there a requirement to wrestle a cabin crew member, or member of the general public, to keep overhead luggage above my seat? How quickly can one calculate the length of flight ratio to necessity to purchase the most extortionate can of pringles known to mankind? Has it become socially acceptable to become a day drinking alcoholic? These are the average, typical questions that most people might be asking themselves, or expressing to those around them. Then for whatever reason, you find fools such as me. Those who think too much about the most rational, irrational fears when boarding an airplane.

Historically speaking I have flown many times before. In the early years of my life I was fortunate enough to underappreciate many trips to Spain, Greece or France depending on who I travelled with. I continued to travel to many European destinations in my teenage years, and later on in my early 20s. For the early years I never thought once about the concept of flying. As with pretty much all of it you bumble around making it through life. There were a few unique moments I can recall where I did care about flying. In 2014 I remember sitting next to my brother on a runway just before we flew to Budapest for a week away. I made the mistake of being honest and admitting that I am feeling a bit nervous to fly. Asking the normal question, another mistake, “don’t you get nervous at all?” I was sat by the window looking at the engine just sat above the tarmac as I did this I turned and looked at Oskar sat in the middle right next to me to find his answer. “Why would I be nervous?” He asked. That was the immediate response from him. Followed up with a rationale that on a technical level you cannot refute. Something along the lines of if you crash and burn there’s nothing you can do about this, so don’t bother yourself thinking about it. Weirdly I didn’t feel better after the conversation and thought that it possibly wasn’t the most reassuring way to make me feel safer as we took off five minutes later. I mean this was the same year that I was boarding a flight to Berlin with my dad, and I was reading a breaking news article an hour before about the depressed German pilot who decided to nosedive a plane and take everyone out with him. So, it’s possible I was growing a sort of developed consciousness in my teenage years that was blossoming into very rational irrational fears. However, I don’t recall this fear manifesting itself any more significantly beyond these few moments. I flew many times after all around Europe with friends and family without a problem. It is very possible that what my brother told me that day slowly sunk into my mind and gave me the reassurance he poorly attempted to provide me.

Then the relationship between aviation and I changed forever; around the same time everything changed for everyone around the world. After 2019/2020 I had a two year hiatus for obvious reasons from travelling, and during this I guess I changed as an individual who feared more in the world. The next time I got the chance to fly was in 2021, and everything felt different. When I boarded a flight to Spain. There was no problem. When the engines started there was no problem. When the flight attendants started going through the routine of disaster management there was no problem. The seat belt sign flicked on above, and the busyness of the environment swallowed the peace in my mind.

Then as the plane swung itself round on the runway. The engines started blasting, and I felt the pressure begin to mount around me. When I felt that the plane had left the ground, and as I felt the cabin pressure begin to crush my mind. There was this moment of what the am I doing here. I looked out of the window to see everything I know turn into a miniature version of itself. I am sat gritting my teeth, holding onto the arms of my chair as if I will manually steer this flight through pure mental anguish alone. The pressure on my head. This is the hardest to describe. I feel as if my mind is about to explode. Whereas its most likely just the change in atmosphere for my sinuses. However, at that moment of take-off if you told me that an elephant was slowly stepping on my head I wouldn’t entirely disagree with my eyes glued shut. Then comes the fight or flight instinct. The realisation that I am this high in the sky, and there are a few inches of aluminium between me and the sudden drop. The insanity that I am putting my life in the hands of someone that I don’t know. The lack of control over the whole situation, and that if something went wrong, I couldn’t do anything to help. The worst feeling of all is the fear of stupidity for me. If this plane took a nosedive for whatever reason and everyone around me was screaming. Praying to their gods. Passed out from the adrenaline. I know that I wouldn’t be doing any of those things. I would be sat there thinking I am an idiot. Why did you think getting into this situation was smart? That is what I would be sat asking myself. Any time there is a bit of turbulence or a change in noises I am stuck with my blood pressure hitting the roof for the entire length of the time stuck in the metal tube.

The frustration is that this is an irrational fear. As statistically I am at danger of dying in many other far less interesting and common day-to-day activities. I have flown numerous times before and never had a single issue. I also know people that have flown with issues but had no bad outcome. There are many reasons that I shouldn’t rationally fear flying. This is an entirely self-made problem as the only empowerment to the fear is the fact that I care, and I shouldn’t. Regardless of this there is a part of my mind that knows deep down. This is a rational response to what is happening around me. I shouldn’t be here. As I look out of the window at the world I live in. This image would be something my ancestors could only have dreamt about witnessing. The idea of flying above it all permits a beautiful but terrifying view in front of me. I am so privileged to see it all, but this doesn’t stop it feeling all so wrong. The monkey brain knows whatever is happening here I should be running as far away as possible from it. As I stare out that window, I can’t help but catch the glimpse of my own reflection. With the hairs on my body looking longer and more distorted than usual. With my arms hanging lower by the sides. Defined curling hands and feet. The small specks of ginger that have left the crevasses of my beard and implanted themselves all over me. I truly understand that in this moment the millions of years of evolution mean nothing. I am still just an orangutan, but I am flying and soaring through the sky.

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As I scanned what was in front of me I realised there wasn’t much to be impressed by, or worse, nothing that would satisfy what I desired. Most of the boxes were quiet, not busy with the little lives I expected to find. There was a habitat of a few guinea pigs, all different colours, and about five or six brothers and sisters rolling around together playfully, or sleeping in the corner peacefully. Then the only other display with something happening were two glass boxes that contained about four rats in each side. On the left hand side there were only those creatures in their tiny home within the glass walls all asleep on top of each other, not stirring at the presence of someone looking at them. Then to my right there was the exact same scene in front of me, with one little exception. An all white, beady red eyed rat, was underneath an exercise wheel and was digging at the glass. Resembling almost the classic lab rat. He was incessantly digging for an escape, not stopping to catch a breath or to rest the little hands from trying to leave this glass home. You’d almost describe the behaviour as manically digging, except there was something about him and his situation that didn’t feel all that too crazy.

The sadness dawned on me immediately, as I looked as his fellow rats snuggled into each others company sleeping the day away, this little fella was clearly distressed. The want and desire to escape him was all that I could feel eradiating from the situation. Looking at him I couldn’t help but feel a bit of solidarity for his situation, not from the fact that we are similar but possibly that deep down I wanted to as brave as him in my own little world. The hopeful and aggressive desire to not be comfortable with the situation that is very clearly wrong. He is a rat. In a glass box that he didn’t make. What is natural about this. What part of his little spirit would desire this to be a chosen life. I personally don’t believe that whatever led to his existence, this was the purpose of it all. Not that there has to be a purpose of course, as we all live in a world that more likely than not will prove to just be a pointless mascaraed that ends in a tragedy. However, this isn’t something that stops us from wanting better for ourselves, and those around us. This little rat I thought just wasn’t happy, and what I felt I was witnessing was him exercising the right to do something about that, no matter how unlikely it would be that he alone could break out of that glass prison. He had a right to that hope, and even if those around him were content with the situation, and looked incredibly happy to be where they were that doesn’t take away from his own yearning to a difference in his situation. With this our little friend might be smarter than he looks as well. As someone with the power to make a change for him I felt a stronger connection and wanted to break him free. So even if he wasn’t able to physically break with his own two hands he certainly ups his odds of escaping his circumstances by trying.

I only observed our friend for a few minutes in this store. I wanted to find a trickle of joy, but I was left with a vacuum of existentialism underpinned by a feeling of sadness. The equivalent of ordering a pina colada, to be left slamming shots of tequila. I feel deep within me I have my own all white, beady red eyed rat, trying to dig its way to the surface. Driven by that desire, the hope of better circumstances. Whether that means greater happiness, fulfilled purpose, or simply to just not be where I find myself. I think what fills me with sadness at this moment in time is that I am not the rat, but the glass box that surrounds him.

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