Gods and monsters

Thanks to a birthday being celebrated in the office, Krispy Kreme doughnuts have made a reappearance. There are two sorts of people that eat KK doughnuts. The first take one and make some remark along the lines of ‘oh, I really shouldn’t’, the second, like me, think ‘my previous best is eating four in a day, although it did make me feel odd. I wonder if I can best that record?’.

The more I think about it, the more I think that the world is made up of dictinct varieties of people. There’s the sort that never really get a chance and end up spooning Pot Noodle into their gobs watching reality telly. Then there are the sort that work hard and do well. Then there are the sort that sort of live on an elevated plane - usually perceived as gifted, these can be anything from obviously talented types to somebody who’s very very good at gardening.

Then there are gods. Churchill, Elvis, Leanardo Da Vinci. These are the people that truly have a spark of the divine about them, who achieve things so breathtaking that you genuinely wonder how the hell they manage it.

This train of thought (a train usually stuck in sidings) was shunted into life when reading the excellent ‘Anansi Boys’ by Neil Gaimen and also watching a telly programme about the NHS, where an administrator tries to sort out a hospital and has run in after run in with the consultants, who’s arrogance is only equalled by their ignorance. Makes one think of the ‘I am a god’ speech from malice.

Truth is, they were shown as not being remarkable, but rather as being so far up themselves that they are in danger of imploding. Okay, so they cut people open and are hence seen as special, but they were also shown as being a lot less special than people who do extraordinary things in an ordinary world, such as gardening really, really well.