Saturday 18 February 2017

Trivial Matters.

I spent some time yesterday ruminating on the difference between a focus and a passion. As is often the case, the blog post got postponed when I realised that the line between them is blurred and complex. It was going to finish with a bleat that I have neither these days, but was finally scrapped when China peeked over the eastern horizon and the priestess waved to me.

Instead I thought I’d mention the fact that I found a live newt on my kitchen floor last night. It offered no resistance at all when I picked it up and took it outside to be placed on some damp soil. I wondered whether it minded being forcibly relocated, but decided that newts probably like being cool and damp rather more than I do.

And then tonight I imagined the scene some time in the future when my ex and my daughter are likely to be clearing the contents of my house after I’m gone. It seemed particularly poignant to wonder which of them will take the half used jar of instant hot chocolate.

Meanwhile, the politicians have been proving their mettle again today. Tony Blair used the unlikely fact of his continued liberty to argue that Britain should reconsider its Brexit decision. Little Nigel Farage, a vociferous supporter of the Leave campaign, responded by saying that Blair is ‘yesterday’s man’. These are fine words coming from somebody who has not yet even attained the status of today’s man, and is most unlikely ever so to do.

And the man who replaced him as leader of UKIP was called to account for having perpetrated a rather distasteful untruth on his website. He admitted the fact and apologised, but then claimed that those who had revealed his unsavoury deception were guilty of ‘orchestrating an evil smear campaign’ against him. Such are the noises that come oozing from the halls of greatness.

(In fact, the concept of evil belongs entirely in the spiritual realm. Maybe his mind got the letters confused and he meant to say ‘vile.’ That’s a word much favoured by the tabloids and those given to irrational histrionics.)

And now I cannot but muse further on the fact that the two anagrams of ‘live’ are ‘vile’ and ‘evil.’ But then the only anagram of ‘Santa’ is ‘Satan’, and the only anagram of ‘God’ is ‘dog.’ Such meaningless patterns the universe does weave for our endless entertainment.

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