A Nice Little First.

Today I received a 2013 calendar in the post. I hadn’t ordered it; it was sent to me because they’d used one of my pictures on the cover.

During my time as a photographer I had pictures used in all sorts of publications, including calendar pages, and for lots of other purposes as well. But, do you know, I never had a picture used on the cover of a calendar. So now I have, and I even got paid a modest fee for it.

On Lemonade and Connections.

When I was a kid, my parents used to like driving to a country pub some evenings for a drink. Being a kid, I had to go with them, and British pubs weren’t child friendly in those days so I had to stay in the car. My stepfather always brought me a packet of crisps and a small bottle of lemonade with a straw. I didn’t like lemonade, and occasionally asked for something else. I got lemonade. I didn’t like straws either; I wanted a glass. I got a straw. Being grateful for small mercies was the lesson, I think.

It doesn’t take long to drink a small bottle of lemonade – even when you dislike the stuff – and eat a small packet of crisps, so the following three hours were a bit tedious. I had no portable games, and what books I possessed had been read to death. There isn’t much for a child to explore on a pub car park, so I filled the empty hours with my thoughts. I don’t remember feeling rejected as such – a little sidelined maybe, a little resentful of the lemonade, but mainly just bored. I suspect I was feeling the first stirrings of the need to be independent of my parents and everybody else.

But maybe there was something else going on in that kid’s little brain, because he haunts me occasionally. He’s haunting me today for some reason. I keep remembering the time we were on holiday in Devon. My parents knew a couple who lived down there, and pub visits were frequent. That year, though, the woman’s elderly mother was staying with them – a wizened old Welsh lady with a stiff gait caused by bowed, ageing legs. She was kind and stayed with me in the car, telling me stories from her life, and especially the time she'd spent in the Australian outback living among the aboriginals. She told me they’d taught her things about the mysteries of life, and said she would pass them onto me when she thought I was old enough to understand. I think I was twelve at the time. When we went back to Devon the following year, she was dead.

All of which is probably good preparation for a life spent observing without connecting. And maybe even being grateful for small mercies.

The Trial of New Things.

I find it happens with nearly every new device I have to learn how to use. Today it was the new remote control that came with the new TV.

Stage 1: The familiarisation phase. I have my reading glasses on and look at each button carefully because I’m not used to where they are yet, so I get it right.

Stage 2: The complacent phase. Now I think I’m used to it, but I’m not. So that’s when I turn the TV off instead of muting it. Or bring up some weird screen, the purpose of which escapes me and which I don’t know how to get rid of. Or maybe I’ve changed something, or unwittingly set something like a timer – which I did with my last set and wondered who the hell was turning the TV on while I was upstairs taking a shower at midnight!

Stage 3: Weeks later. Now I’m used to the damn thing and I can relax.

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And on the subject of TVs, did you know that when they first became popular, the instructions included something to the effect of ‘Always switch the set off before attempting to move it.’ This led to the widespread belief among the first generation of TV owners that sets weighed more when they were switched on. True, apparently.

Two More Notes on Ageing.

Do you think Paul Simon is still looking for fun, feeling groovy and talking to lamp posts? Well, there you are then.

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I just read that when people reach the age of around eighty, they start smelling like babies again. Can’t wait.

Finding the Right Name.

It’s interesting how much a person’s name is an integral part of who they are, and so how much it informs our perception of them.

Helen, my ex and the person I’m probably closest to in this life (well actually, the priestess has confused the matter, but let’s leave her out of it for now) has decided that her name ‘just doesn’t fit any more,’ and so she’s changing it to Melanie Grace. As a result, the very foundation of my perception of her is being shaken. I don’t think it will fall down, but it’s being shaken. And here’s the interesting bit:

Helen is very much a ‘light’ person. She wants nothing in her life that isn’t light; she consciously declines to have anything to do with the dark side. Dark is anathema to the person formerly known as Helen, so here’s the question:

Should I tell her that the name ‘Melanie’ derives from the Greek for black or dark?

Advertising for the Connoisseur

I’ve finally found a series of internet ads I like:

Mature dating sites.

They’re very funny and most informative. All the ones I’ve seen so far have shown pictures of women aiming to please the mature gentleman (!) and the basic rules seem to be:

1) Make sure there’s no room for doubt that your hair has been dyed that colour.

2) Wear revealing clothes that... well... reveal those physical aspects that you wouldn’t expect most mature people to want to reveal (especially when they look like that.)

3) Cultivate the look that says ‘One day, big boy, this – let’s call it a ‘body’ – can be all yours, and then you’ll know what happiness really is.’

4) Have the picture taken in an exotic location, ‘exotic’ being defined as ‘a bar in some part of Spain where the tequila is particularly cheap and the pot plants are properly plastic.’

I think I might join.

Being Peculiar.

Anger management is, relatively speaking, a piece of cake. I do reasonably well with that one. What isn’t so easy is peculiarity management. It requires the constant application of stratagems and tactics, and nobody gives lessons in it.

Are We Not Amused?

It’s the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations this weekend, and there are union flags littering the place everywhere (let’s face it, it isn’t the prettiest of flags – hopelessly over-complex, for one thing.)

Ashbourne has done it slightly differently. They’ve got strings of bunting all over the town, but they haven’t used union flags. They’ve used alternating pennants of red, white and blue, the effect of which is to look more Gallic than British.

Which is amusingly ironic, don’t you think?

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And while I'm on the subject of Jubilee celebrations, I have to decide whether to show my face at the village do on Saturday. It carries great personal risk for me, you know, and I'm not about to divulge the nature of that risk, so you'll have to be content with the plain fact.

A Rise in Consciousness?

Over the last year I’ve noticed a proliferation of news reports covering examples of corruption. There are lots of arrests and sackings being made in fields such as government, the police, the media, sport and big business. Cameron’s ex-press secretary, for example, was arrested today, and another man successfully sued Olympus for wrongful dismissal after he’d blown the whistle on them. Those are two examples among many.

I’m tempted to suggest that these cases are just the tip of the iceberg, but I can’t know that for certain so I can’t claim it. I do wonder why it’s happening, though. I wonder whether it has anything to do with it being 2012.

The Dining Car.

Remember the dead rabbit I wrote about last week – the road kill outside my gate? It had gone by the following morning and I assumed a fox or something had carried it off for supper.

When I went to get my car out this morning, I noticed something furry lying in front of the nearside back wheel. It turned out to be a rabbit skin; just the skin, no flesh. I could be sure it was a rabbit on account of there being one ear still attached, and the white bit of the tail was lying a few inches away.

All of which suggests that something had picked up the mangled body and taken it under my car to eat it. Should that please me, I wonder. Well, I suppose it’s one way of getting close to nature.