Falling in Love Again.

At one time I thought I was in love with Mistress Erhu. And then I met Madam Guzheng and the stars shifted position. After that I had a brief flirtation with little Pipa.

All of that is now but a fond history, for recently I encountered the Lady Yangqin. Our eyes met across the vastness of cyberspace and I knew it was the real thing. Bliss is now in evidence and the moon is rising over an open field.

Autumn Coloured Blue.

When I stand outside on a sunny day in late October I notice the weakness of the sunlight and the low angle it makes with the ground. I observe the long shadows creeping ever outwards like a slowly falling monument. And then I stop seeing the change and start to feel it somewhere deep inside that great repository of abstract perception we call consciousness.

It chills me mentally. It makes me a little more tense, a little more anxious, a little more depressed. I’m gripped with a sense of disease, decline and decay. This is the descent into the Hades of fable.

Macbeth has a line: I ’gin to be a-weary of the sun…

… likewise, only on this occasion the sun is also ’ginning to be a-weary of its diurnal duty. It’s growing old and weak, fit only to prostrate itself before the inevitable while we little life bearers blink in the darkness and shiver in the cold.

And this, ladies and gentleman, is not the rambling of a negative mindset. I know all about the beauty and the fruitfulness of autumn; I’m not lost to the principle of rest and replenishment. Rather it is one of the endlessly inventive symptoms of hyper awareness. It’s an HSP thing.

An Oddity.

Something odd is happening. For the past few nights, always after midnight, something or someone has knocked on my office window. They never knocked on the door, just the window. One of these nights I’ll summon up the energy to go and see who or what it is.

Being Made of Layers.

I’ve mentioned here before that since I started this blog in 2010 I’ve written enough words to fill eight or nine sizeable novels. I’ve also asked the question: why didn’t I just write eight or nine novels?

The answer is simple enough: there are about five different people writing my blog posts, and how consistent would a novel be if five different people were engaged to write it? It isn’t as though I can control them so they have one novel each to write. They come and go in their own time. My Dr Jekyll doesn’t have just one Mr Hyde adding layers to his persona, he has about four. (Which immediately invites the query: could anybody trust me with their affection? The answer is far from clear cut, but the complication is one of the reasons why I no longer go out of my way to seek anybody’s affection.)

And why doesn’t Trump push the big red button which he so loves threatening to do, and then I would have something different to write about for a change, something other than me. My life is far too full of me at the moment. All of them.

*  *  *

So how was today in the Shire? Calm, mostly sunny, a little chilly in the shade, and largely devoid of people apart from the group of ramblers who reminded me of why I never engage in group activities. I spent three hours of it dealing with a badly overgrown hedge armed only with a hedge trimmer, loppers, and a chain saw. It felt almost like being human (as far as I know.) Had the clocks not reverted to GMT today, I would only have spent two.

Yesterday I met a husky/border collie cross. He was very energetic, very friendly, and possessed of a soft and luxuriously thick coat which might once have belonged to a piebald polar bear. Such encounters force me to admit that this theatre of the absurd which masquerades as life to us HSPs can sometimes provide the odd fleeting moment of worth.

And did I ever mention that I used to have an interesting effect on street lights? They sometimes used to go off temporarily when I walked underneath them.

What I know I didn’t mention is that somebody told me recently that I am ‘chosen.’ Isn’t that exciting? (It wasn’t the llama, it wasn’t God, it wasn’t a disembodied voice emanating from the ether, and it wasn’t a little bee buzzing around inside my head. Seems I might be sane after all. Oh, and it wasn’t a gypsy palm reader or spiritualist medium either.) Can’t wait to find out what I'm chosen for. My best guess is still that one day I might be chased to the burning mill by rustic types brandishing pitchforks, but we'll see.

Being the Reluctant Seer.

I could write a modestly chilling post tonight about darkness, precognition, and the sense that something which doesn’t belong here is getting closer. The wind is its herald, and the wind is loud tonight. Or so it seems to me.

I won’t, of course. I’m not about to start walking the streets of our local market towns wearing a board which says The End of the World is Nigh. I still retain sufficient of a rational faculty to feel reasonably confident that the whole thing is merely the inner rambling of a mildly disordered mind brought about by… what? The lack of a focus? The lack of the lady? The lack of connection with my species? The lack of a particular quest which has driven me since the age of twelve and which is no longer in my power to pursue?

I could go on. A lot of things are lacking now, and still the wind mocks.

I remember as a kid watching an old black and white movie called On the Beach adapted from the novel by Neville Shute. It made a big impression on me, especially the scene where the young Australian naval lieutenant is trying to persuade his wife to give the suicide pill to their baby. He explains that they must make sure the baby is dead before they take their own pill, and then the rest will be easy: a quiet cup of tea, the swallowing of a little pill, and it will all be over. His wife is reluctant and he has no option but to allow her a further period of grace since the cloud of nuclear fallout isn’t due to reach Australia for another few days. Towards the end of the film she walks into their living room and says ‘I’m ready for that cup of tea now’, when what she really means is ‘I’m ready to take the pill.’

Maybe that’s what I should do – take a pill I mean. I’m sure there must be lots and lots of little pills designed to bring blessed relief to mildly disordered minds (and make a few people blessedly rich in the process.)

But if I did, would I still be able to write a mildly distracting little opus like this to grant me a modicum of amusement in an empty hour? And can I be sure that my mind isn’t perfectly well ordered anyway?

Fearless Creatures.

Now that I’ve had a few drinks and am about to go to bed, I feel sufficiently empowered to note an observation that has long intrigued me: slugs are one of the very few wild creatures which don’t run away when you approach them.

Avoiding the Subject.

Do you want to know another reason why I don’t mention the Lady B so much these days? It’s because there’s the merest outside possibility that she still reads this blog occasionally. If she does, I fear she might suspect a fixation and that such a suspicion would make her feel uncomfortable.

I doubt very much that she ever does read it, which is why I’m taking the risk of making this post, but you never know. The thing is, you see, if I have one qualification which entitles me to the epithet ‘gentleman’, it is that I am steadfast in my resolution not to cause discomfort to Lady Bs.

(I did jot a little poem about her recently, though, which included the line like waves upon a deep green sea. Isn’t that nice? But you’re not getting any more so don’t ask.)

Advertising the Position.

I think I need to employ a part time pudding cook so that I can escape the relentless tyranny of fruit cake, chocolate cake, Chorley cakes, individual apple and blackcurrant pies, and the occasional diversionary treat into more rarefied comestibles such as the little egg custards sold by supermarkets (especially since Tesco hiked the price of a box of two such delicacies by 37½% last week, which is bloody scandalous.) I do realise that the supermarkets carry a wide range of pudding items but there's a problem: they generally taste of chemicals, come in packages either too big for a solitary liver or too small to bother with, and are outrageously expensive, so…

What I need is a woman (sorry to be sexist, but there are certain areas in which tradition counts) who is preferably aged between 35 and 55, a little on the corpulent side so as to look correct in an apron, possessed of her own teeth to obviate the possibility that she might have been handling dentures, speaks with a warm and homely West Country accent, and is prepared to call me ‘sir.’ The latter requirement is so that I can instruct her: ‘Please, Mrs Miggins, there’s no need for such formality. Please do address me as Mr JJ.’ And then she can say ‘Very well, sir, if you say so. You’re a very fine and kind gentleman, if you’ll pardon my being so bold, and it is a pleasure to be in your employ.’ And then all will be right with the world and the grandfather clock in the corner will chime its approbation with greater gusto than usual.

As for the repertoire of puddings for which her culinary skill is famed in local parts, it must include jam roly-poly (steamed, not baked, and brought to the table in a cotton sleeve so as to smell of washday only a bit different), oven-baked milk puddings with bits of yellow stuff floating on the top which is probably butter (I’m working from childhood memory here), spotted dick with lots of currants so I can make rude jokes about it when I think nobody is listening (as I did at school once when I was about 8 and got sent to the head for punishment), fruit pies with shortcrust pastry so short that you don’t have to chew it because it melts first, proper trifles with lots of fresh cream and stiff custard and just the right amount of distilled liquor added to the breadcrumbs (not sponge because sponge tends to set off my occasional gluten intolerance), cheese scones made with strong Cheddar cheese, and baked Alaska because I’ve never had it and always wanted to.

(And if she can make Australian apple pie, so much the better. One of my partners made an Australian apple pie once and I remember liking it very much. I don’t remember why I liked it very much, but I do remember that it was nicer than ordinary apple pie.) 

And I forgot to mention that she must be able to make excellent custard that is thick, creamy, and has a colour approximating to the yellow of a buttercup or maybe just a little darker. Oh, and she must be prepared to do the washing up afterwards.

That will do for now. Maybe I’d better start scouting around for a second-hand grandfather clock.

Renewing an Acquintance.

I bumped into an old friend today. Remember the llama, the one I met after my encounter with the woman with amazingly dark eyes in Tesco? I went out into the garden earlier and there he was, peering into the branches of my apple tree.

‘Hello,’ I said, ‘it’s been a while since I saw you.’

‘And how does that compare with a minute?’ he answered without turning to look at me.

‘How does what compare with a minute?’

‘A while. How long is a while?’

‘It’s just an expression. It means I haven’t seen you for a long time.’

‘Vagueness, vagueness, always vagueness. You humans are a strange breed.’

‘I’d say that’s a matter of opinion, actually. What are you looking for anyway?’

‘Would you mind if I answered the question with a question?’

‘I suppose not.’

‘What sort of tree is this?’

‘An apple tree.’

‘An apple tree. I thought as much. And since llamas are not renowned for their interest in arboreal structure, the perching mechanism of birds, or the foraging habits of tree-borne insects, would you not think it reasonable to presume that a llama looking into the branches of an apple tree should be looking for apples? Do you have any anchovies, by the way?’

'Anchovies?'

'Little fish, rather salty.'

‘You haven’t changed much, have you?’

‘Why should I change? How should I change? What benefit would I gain from changing? I’m a llama, pure and simple.’

‘A llama, right, just any old simple llama. So how did you get here? Oh, I forgot; I think I asked you that once before. You just appear anywhere you want to appear, is that right?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Well you didn’t walk up the lane, did you, chatting about the state of the weather to the local horses?’

‘I did actually – walk up the lane, that is. Only I didn’t talk to any horses because I don’t speak their language.’

‘Did anybody see you?

‘Of course not. The only person who can see me is you.’

‘Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. You’re a hallucination, right? A figment of my disordered mind?’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

‘So you’re real?’

‘Yes.’

‘How can that be?’

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Try me.’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

At that point the llama finally turned his face to look at me. He thrust his nose close to mine and said:

‘Look into my eyes and tell me what you see.’

I had no idea what I was supposed to be looking for but I looked anyway, long and hard.

‘Well, what do you see?’

‘I see the sky reflected in them.’

‘Nothing more?

‘No.’

‘That’s why you wouldn’t understand. Are you sure you have no anchovies?’

‘Quite sure. I’m vegetarian.’

And then he disappeared and I had toasted cheese and sweet pickle for lunch. I expect the fishy taste was all a matter of auto-suggestion, whatever that might be.

The Lone Boast.

I rarely give advice because it seems to me that to do so would require knowing somebody else’s mind intimately and comprehensively. I’ve never known anybody’s mind that well and I never shall, so I’m not qualified to give advice. If I’m asked for it I skirt around the request and offer thoughts on the situation. To do otherwise would seem arrogant.

And I can’t think of a single instance in my life when I’ve ever taken advice either. I’ve asked for it occasionally, but it was always a cover to get information and then I made my own mind up. I always went my own way.

Sometimes it got me somewhere and sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes it landed me on a feather bed and sometimes it threw me into a nest of scorpions. Sometimes it freed me and sometimes it trapped me. What I gained I mostly lost, and when I came unstuck I mostly managed to extricate myself.

And now I’m an insignificant person with nothing to crow about save my continued ability to breathe. I have no wealth, no power, no property, no influence, no exceptional skills. No great deeds will be celebrated in my name and there are no legacies of note for which I shall be remembered.

I am as nothing, but at least I got here in my own way.

The Writer Look and an Absence.

Somebody once said to me: ‘You look like a writer.’ She was a sales assistant in a shop somewhere, though I don’t remember where. OK, so here are three notable writers:

Which one do I resemble? The only writer I ever looked like, back in the day when I had both the hair and the matching capacity to roar in the odd angry moment, was this guy:

  

A renowned theatre director was the first to note the similarity, so I suppose it’s probably right.

*  *  *

And might I just add that I didn’t spot the Lady B’s erstwhile host in Ashbourne today. It was a collywobble-free day, which is a shame because I’ve decided that I quite like collywobbles when the Lady B’s erstwhile host is involved. They add colour to the grey fog of despond.

Unconnected Trivia.

When I saw Chamisal, New Mexico drop into my Feedjit earlier, my first thought was: ‘I wonder how many Americans know there’s a place called Chamisal in New Mexico.’

*  *  *

I did the toughest job in my autumn garden schedule today. It was reminiscent of an assault course and now I have aches in muscles I’d forgotten I ever had. It’s definitely a job for a 20-year-old, and I’m not 20.

*  *  *

I heard a good joke in an old b&w movie last night:

My wife could give an aspirin a headache.

I expect everybody else has already heard it.

*  *  *

One week to go to Halloween and the wind is moaning mournfully tonight. I suspect the wraiths, the goblins, the little folk and all the other denizens of alternate realities are stirring to practice their technique. That’s OK just as long as the black dog doesn’t leap out of my bedroom wall and aim its fangs at my head again. You think I’m joking? Night.

Cloverfield Out.

OK, I admit that the second half of Cloverfield was scarier than the first, mainly because the director copied the technique used by Ridley Scott for probably the scariest scene in Alien.

The main problem for me was the occasional lapse in both credibility and continuity. If the man who is supposed to be holding the camera is shown pulling another man across the concrete with both hands, who is doing the filming? And HSPs are very good at spotting that the sweat stain on a man’s shirt changes from one scene to another and then back again. We get an immediate image of the crew member with the spray gun doing his job.

And of course, the military did an awful lot of stomping about and shouting, but I do have to commend the writer for one thing: not a single military man (there were no military women to be seen) ever once said ‘let’s kick ass.’ Maybe he was only National Guard. Maybe the ‘kick ass’ lines are reserved for the more elite Marine Corps.

(If only we British had made this film. How refreshing to see a young Royal Marine lieutenant saying:

‘Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen. Please walk this way.’

‘You mean you want us to march?’

‘No, I want you to follow me.’

‘Oh, right.’

Oh for the days of Ealing Studios.)

As for the ending, well… Hadn’t better say any more in case somebody out there hasn’t seen it yet. But I have to ask: did they nuke Manhattan or didn’t they? I’m genuinely intrigued.

On ECT and the Prodigal.

I electrocuted myself twice today, crawling under the electric fence which surrounds the field next to my garden. The first time I did it I suspected my own stupidity. The second time removed all doubt.

But then I wondered whether fate was giving me a little hand here. They used to routinely electrocute mad people in less enlightened times, didn’t they? It was considered a most efficacious cure for non-conformist mental states. So maybe I did myself a favour today; maybe I’m now less mad than I was when I got up this morning.

I really can’t wait to walk abroad among my fellow humans and hear somebody say:

‘Oh good morning, Mr JJ. I must say you are looking somewhat less mad today. Are you feeling quite yourself?’

‘I am, I am, Mrs Grimpenmire. Myself has never been so felt as it is on this fine morning. Might we talk about the weather, do you think? And would you be so kind as apprise me of all developments in the wondrous array of soaps of which I intend to avail myself this evening for the purpose of endless delectation and the assurance of a miraculous recovery?’

‘Oh let’s, Mr JJ, do lets. It’s such a pleasure to see you coming home like the prodigal in the dear Book, ready to take your place among we happy band of normals once more.’

And what a happy day it shall be, and how high my heart will soar to be finally dispossessed of the trials incumbent upon a non-conformist mental state.

But knowing my luck, it will all have worn off by tomorrow. I’m going to watch the second half of Cloverfield now to see whether I can find something to bolster my spirits.

A Colourful Force for Change.

Just been taking a trip down memory lane listening to some of the music that was big when I was a teenager. Much of the memory is a bit blurred, but I do remember that it was always sunny.

Another thing I remember is our dads always complaining that boys weren’t boys any more because they had long hair and wore pink shirts. I had a pink shirt; my friend Barry had a pink shirt. The ownership of a pale pink shirt was de rigeur at the time. It was our form of rebellion.

And so I do believe that the social historians have it all wrong when they claim that the major factors in the rise of the permissive society were sex and drugs. Where I lived it was the pink shirt.

Cloverfield: Boredom and Epiphany.

I’ve been considering watching Cloverfield for some time but couldn’t decide whether it appealed to me or not. Today there was little on the shelves that took my fancy and so I decided to take the plunge and buy the 2008 (I think) blockbuster movie that everybody was talking about (except me.) And now I feel entitled to a 22% refund (17.66/80 = 22. I seem to have quite the head for figures.) Here’s the tip:

If you haven’t yet seen this movie and decide to watch it, fast forward to 17mins 40. That’s when the delinquent monster sets about trashing NYC and the fun begins. (And fun is what it is; it isn’t the least bit scary. Jaws is scary; Alien is scary; most Japanese horror films are scary; and the fact that Americans voted Trump into the White House is really scary. This is just fun, but to continue…)

The first seventeen minutes and forty seconds amount to probably the most boring seventeen minutes and forty seconds ever committed to celluloid. They offer nothing more than a bunch of tedious American yuppies being tediously obsessed with trivial lifestyle values (like who is having sex with whom) to an extent that only tedious American yuppies could possibly be capable of achieving. (Actually, that probably isn’t fair; yuppies tend to be pretty obnoxious wherever they come from.) But the point is that it took a monumental effort of will to sit through the aforementioned 17.40 until the monster made its welcome appearance and dropped the head of the Statue of Liberty somewhere in Midtown Manhattan without turning a single fire hydrant into an involuntary fountain. Fun. See?

But do you know what’s really interesting? I paused the film at the half way point, meaning to watch the rest tomorrow, and went back to my blog, only to find that somebody had visited from New York while I was in the very act of watching yuppies in peril in that very metropolis. Aren’t coincidences wonderful?

(And in the course of writing this post I have been struck by an epiphany of the highest order. The apparently delinquent creature is not a monster from the deep at all, but a highly evolved and supremely philanthropic being from the future who has been reading his history book and knows what happened in November 2016. Having the status of a near demi-god, he travels back in time and sets about trashing New York in the hope of taking Trump down with it, thereby saving the good Americans from the trashing that Trump is visiting on their fair country’s reputation. Let’s see what hints we get in the second half.)

It's All a Matter of Tuning.

I decided today that there’s a suitable phrase to describe people like me: highly tuned.

It’s the HSP thing that does it; it makes us hyper-aware of every single little nuance which enters our environment, be it a change in the weather, the prevailing mood in a room, the expression in somebody’s eyes, a raindrop touching the skin, an unwanted noise invading our space, a smell that shouldn’t be there, etc, etc. And our emotional response faculty runs on a very high wavelength, too.

I read once that fighter planes are designed to be unstable; it’s their very instability which makes them so manoeuvrable. You don’t sit back in a fighter plane, apparently; you have to consciously fly it the whole time. It’s the same with racing cars; the slightest flick of a thumb at the wrong moment and you’re off into the gravel, the wall, or somebody else’s shiny, million dollar vehicle. And there seems to be some parity here with the HSP type: just one small factor in the wrong place and we come close to going off the rails. It seems we’re designed to be unstable and we can’t help it.

So if you know someone who appears to be unstable, please bear this possibility in mind. You know the sort: the kind who temporarily gives up on life when somebody close by is playing dance music or EastEnders through an open window, thereby screwing up the humming of the bees, the whispering of the breeze, or the little birds singing in the sycamore trees. They’re probably just highly tuned.

A Couple of Bits.

Another sad and postless day, I'm afraid, but at least you can have my current favourite music video from the Taiwanese combo OctoEast. The yangqin player is amazing.

You can also have the little ditty I just sent to the priestess wandering the high Himalayas in Nepal. I felt she needed a warning.

There once was a woman called Betty

Who declined to go out with a Yeti

She said ‘You’re so big

And you eat like a pig

And your armpits smell ever so sweaty’

Variations on Cheer.

Autumn in the Shire is coming up a little short of being classically autumnal this year. On Monday we had the waspish waist of Hurricane Ophelia, and today we got the flabby flank of Storm Brian. We’re hoping that Ophelia and Brian have now taken a fancy to one another and are currently engaged in a dubious relationship at a resort somewhere on the west coast of Svalbard.

Today was gruesomely gloomy again, with cold winds, leaden skies and spitting showers. Such conditions depress my spirits mightily now that the HSP gene has become well entrenched in what still passes for a brain. Acute awareness can be quite the curse at times.

But still I went for walk with head bowed against the blast, hoping to see some traditional colour setting the dark greens and browns ablaze. There was none. It seems that as soon as the leaves wither and change their hue, brutal winds with disarmingly silly names come along and cast them cruelly to the ground.

My spirits are still depressed, so much so that I haven’t a clue how to conclude this post satisfactorily. Oh for the entrance of a cheerful sprite to cheer me up and move me to the making of a cheery post.

A Bad Day for Boney.

Today is Trafalgar Day here in Britain. It commemorates the day in 1805 when the British fleet defeated a combined French and Spanish force and thus thwarted the attempt of a man from Corsica to become Boss of the Western World.

And yet I gather that even British historians acknowledge that Bonaparte wasn’t such a bad bloke, and that he left Europe in a better state than he’d found it. So whether you cheer and sing Hearts of Oak or not is a matter of personal sensibility.

(Although bear in mind that if Napoleon had achieved his desired aim the history of Europe would have taken a different road and we might never have had the film Amelie, so I think half a cheer is in order. And I suppose I should mention Trump’s attempt to become Boss of the Western World at this juncture, but there’s not even the slightest comparison so I won’t bother. Napoleon was, after all, a small man with a big mind.)

The Happiness Sell.

There’s an ad appeared on my Hotmail page for a financial institution here in the UK. The thrust of the ad is that they’re offering overdrafts fee-free for 12 months to new accounts. (They don’t mention the interest, of course, which is separate.) Only after the first year will they start paying a fee of £182.50 a year on a £1200 overdraft (as well as the interest, of course.). And the image they use to promote this offer shows an attractive young couple looking relaxed and happy out wandering the open landscape and luxuriating in one another’s company. The message is happiness and freedom. And all because they’re now in debt and paying for it through the nose. Irresistible.

Winners and Losers.

It’s tempting to speculate on whether Donald Trump is happy. I was reading this morning about a journalist who pointed out that Trump is not as rich as he says he is (as well as noting that the Renoir which Trump owns and claims to be genuine actually isn’t.) The self-styled big man filed a lawsuit for defamation to the tune of $5bn, and lost. If that isn’t the action of a sad little creature, it would be hard to imagine what is.

I was also reading about a man in Nottingham who was dining in a restaurant when he saw a homeless man walking past barefoot. He ran out and gave him his favourite pair of trainers which cost £120. No doubt Trump would call him a loser. It’s a word he seems to like very much and uses to denigrate anyone who is bigger than him.

So let’s consider who is the real loser here. It doesn’t take much working out, does it?

Oh No, Not Trump Again.

I see Trump’s latest ignorant tweet which links a rise in the crime rate in England and Wales with ‘radical Islamic terrorism’ finishes with the words: We must keep America safe.

America? Safe? Is he aware that the murder rate in the US is over 4x what it is in the UK? Has he given any consideration to the underlying factors in American society which might give rise to such disparity, and is he proposing to do anything about them?

I’m thoroughly tired of writing about the idiot known as Trump, but as long as he’s President of the country which likes to think of itself as leader of the free world…

A Note on Ghosts.

On young Albert Ramsbottom’s birthday

His parents asked what he’d like most

He said “to see ’Tower of London

And gaze upon Anne Boleyn’s ghost”

(That isn’t one of my ditties, by the way; it’s from the third of the Albert monologues by Stanley Holloway. If I were to write one it would be more along the lines of: If I were a ghost, what would I like most? Vanilla ice cream or some hot buttered toast? It’s one of the reasons for having gone through life without the slightest hint of fame ever attaching to me. Well, apart from the time when I appeared on a TV quiz show, of course. But the only people who found my televisual manifestation worthy of note were an actor I knew at the theatre and a bunch of young girls who stared at me through the glass doors. And that doesn’t really count as fame.)

I think about ghosts a lot, you know; I always have. My life has been full of strange experiences, many of which seem quite inexplicable without reference to the paranormal. Mel once said that it was one of the things which made me difficult to live with. Spooky things happen around me. They do.

So now one of the things I find fascinating about death is the possibility that I might finally discover whether it’s possible to join the league of ghosts. The thought of being a ghost appeals to me, although I’m not quite sure why it should since it must be a lonely sort of existence. People don’t usually invite them for tea and muffins, do they? People are not generally in the habit of boosting the poor ghost’s confidence by reassuring them that ‘you look really quite fetching today. That particular shade of off-white suits you perfectly; it matches the pallor of your skin so that one completely fails to notice the absence of colour in your eyes.’ They don’t, do they? They run away instead, and the more you run after them the more they shriek.

Besides, I’m a considerate and mostly inoffensive soul at heart and I would be more mortified at the prospect of frightening somebody than they would be at the prospect of seeing a ghost. I must admit, however, that there is one person on this planet under whose window I should like to roam in the early hours singing the first verse of Raglan Road, but I haven’t a clue where her window is these days so that possibility must lie begging. And the same impediment also applies to my other wish: to whisper in her ear at unguarded moments: ‘You once promised to tell me what the ‘y’ meant and you never did, so now I cannot rest in peace and it’s all your fault.’

(But if ever you read this, my lady, you may be assured that my abiding fondness for you is quite undiminished and I would rather engage with perdition’s flame than cause you any distress. Have no fear; sleep peacefully. You may rejoice with confidence when somebody informs you of my demise. That’s if anybody bothers, of course.)

Happiness is a Big Supermarket.

I’ve decided that I dislike supermarkets. They’re bland, soulless places designed – at least in the aesthetic sense – to do homage only to the god of corporate identity. I consider corporate identity to be a dark, selfish demon disguised as a god, whose only concern is to engender delusion among the masses in order to sate its ravening and rapacious appetite.

I accept that supermarkets serve a practical purpose which could no longer be served by small, independent retail shops, but that in itself raises the question: is the availability of a greatly expanded range of products a good thing, or is it actually a prime example of a modern tyranny?  

Did we miss them before we had them, and is life better for the having of them? Or do they exist merely to expand the economy and produce the greatest delusion of all: the belief that people are happier now than they were in simpler times?

Establishing Identity.

I’m not Chinese, Jeff, I’m Australian.

No, she didn’t say that, but she might have done.

So what are we: our genes or our minds? My existential musing would favour mind. Genes inform the mind, but the mind determines. And mind is suitably abstract. So I stand corrected, or would do if she’d ever said it.

Vegetating.

No dog or horse encounters, no lady stories, no existential rambles, no nightmares worthy of note, no surreal streams of consciousness, no film reviews, no Shire happenings apart from the fact that I cleared some road drains and gave the remaining crop from my apple tree to the local school, no Trump rants since he’s being nothing more than boringly maladroit as usual…

Where do I go from here? What is life if there’s nothing to write about?

Should I bask in past glories and read some old stories which I wrote near a decade ago? Or should I climb into a waste paper bin and get used to the new status quo?

Notice, observe, consider, imagine, write, edit, post. That’s my MO these days. I like the growth energy of my garden, but I find working on it tedious. I used to enjoy rambles around the Shire, but that was when there was reasonable prospect of meeting a ray of sunshine walking towards me (two rays actually.) I used to like capturing images on film, but that was before I discovered the limitations of a two-dimensional medium.

Nowadays I write. Without writing I am but a runner bean with no legs, a kidney bean with alcohol intolerance, a broad bean with anorexia, a French bean that’s lost its beret. My purpose is absent.

That will have to do for now. I expect there will be more eventually.

Fearful Priestess and Fake Kipling.

I think I’ve finally discovered the priestess’s Achilles’ heel. I had an email from her this morning as she was about to board her flight to Nepal (I thought she was already there, but apparently not) and she admitted to feeling nervous at the prospect of the cold in the mountains. I suppose it’s understandable really, since Himalayan temperatures, even in autumn, must be at a level to which Australians are drastically unaccustomed.

It still surprised me, though, because I’ve been observing the priestess for 7½ years, during which time the conviction has grown in me that she fears nothing at all. Seems she does: being cold. So should I smile? No, because I fear lots of things, among which is the knowledge that my greatly esteemed Lady Qin is trekking in the vicinity of some of the highest and wildest mountains in the world, thereby exposing herself to such dangers as hypothermia, attack by Yeti, and whatever else the remoter parts of the planet might have lurking.

In spite of these misgivings, however, it still occurred to me that Kathmandu must surely offer the opportunity for a new ditty. It didn’t. Try as I might, nothing dropped onto the ditty plate like seeds from an overripe melon. Until I thought of Kipling…

On the road to Kathmandu

Where the yaks all do their poo

And the smells rise up like thunder

From the roofless outside loo

And then I felt thoroughly ashamed at having the sort of lavatorial sense of humour which would seem immature in a 7-year-old.

Rambling About Non-Existence.

I was thinking today about how deep you can go when musing on the concept of colour, but it’s a simple truism to say that colour doesn’t exist except as a concept. A combination of electro-magnetic wavelengths being reflected from an object enters the eye and then proceeds by way of an electrical signal to the brain which informs that abstract thing called perception that here is a phenomenon which the receptor has been conditioned through instruction to call ‘red.’ There’s actually no such thing as red. It’s all a matter of reflection and perception, sub atomic particles and wavelengths. The universe is colourless except in our minds, and while the brain is constructed of atoms (which are also just bundles of energy) the mind is an abstract thing.

It’s the same with money. Money doesn’t exist either except as a concept. It’s just an abstract mechanism manipulated to function through confidence and consensus. You have no money in your bank account; you just think you do because the system of exchange is designed to operate through your belief that it is so. Ergo, there is also no such thing as a bank account in an objective sense. But as long as we perceive it in a quantitative sense, it works.

Pain is another one. It's all in the mind, and the mind isn't something you can put in a box.

All of which appears to vindicate my assertion that perception is the whole of the life experience, and that the fundamental nature of being is abstract.

So why do I suddenly feel constrained to say this when a thousand philosophers and holy men have said it better since time immemorial? I don’t know. I suppose I’m still trying to work out who the hell I am, who the hell you are, and what the hell we’re doing here. That’s if we really are here, of course.

Oh for a cup of coffee with the Lady B's erstwhile host. I need something to make sense and keep me sane. (Did I say 'keep'?)

Reviewing Half a Film.

I watched some more of Lost in Translation tonight, until I reached the half way point. And then I switched it off.

When I picked it off the shelf I had high hopes for this film. I like the two stars and the synopsis suggested the potential for something moving, meaningful and subtly humorous. What I’d seen by the half way point was too loud, too brash, too superficial, too predictable, too overheated; in short, too Hollywood. I found it cheap and about as compelling as wet candyfloss.

Scarlett Johansson was wasted as an empty-headed creature merely bored, pretty and nothing much else, and Bill Murray played the older man with what for me is the poorer side of his professional range. The direction was little better than soap standard, the script was verging on the incoherent at times, and the only funny character was Murray’s wife who we never even see except through the faxes and letters she sends from the good ol’ US of A. And please strike Tokyo from my earlier post. The cold mountains of Nepal would probably suit me better after all.

Maybe the second half is better, but once the tone is set…

Defining Collywobbles.

Let’s see, what should I call her? How about the most significant woman in my life? That won’t really do because she has several rivals for that title. The most important woman in my life? Same objection. Let’s try the most compelling woman in my life. Mmm… no, not quite there yet. At least two other women could claim that level of status, all in different ways but it would be hard to choose between them. I think the best I can manage would be:

The woman who got under my skin a long time ago, who doesn’t know she’s there and wouldn’t want to be there, but who occupies my consciousness (in a positive light, that is) for more hours of the day than anybody else.

I know it’s a bit long winded, but at least it’s accurate. And so to the point of the post:

She smiled and waved at me today and I spent the following hour feeling shaken and mildly dysfunctional (even though the smile had more of duty than of pleasure about it.) I always do whenever I see anything even remotely connected with her. In Britain we like to call it ‘an attack of the collywobbles.’ (Although ‘collywobbles’ is defined quite liberally and has various nuances attached to it, including one relating to fear.)

And then, later that day, another, much older, woman walked into the coffee shop and also smiled at me. But it was a different sort of smile, an interested sort of smile that I found less than compelling. So then I got another attack of the collywobbles, only of a different sort than those which comprised the previous attack. At which point I considered beginning the grand tome entitled Collywobbles and Their Multifarious Hues, but I don’t expect I will.

The Way Out of the Web.

I had a concentrated string of encounters with spiders a few days ago, and so I asked Mel what it means in shamanic terms. She said it means that I feel trapped in a spider’s web and am fretting because I fear that the spider will come and eat me. The message is that I should stop fretting and look the spider in the eye. That, apparently, is the way out of the web.

So much for shamanism. I’ve got a better idea.

For some years now I’ve indulged in the fantasy that one day somebody will email me and say ‘Please come to Tokyo, Jeffrey san. We want to make horror movie from one of your stories and would welcome your input. We pay for flights and all expenses, including unlimited access to the cabinet with the glass doors under TV set where all the little bottles are.’

Do you know how long it’s been since I stayed in a hotel? I think I’d better not say. And I dislike them anyway, but they probably beat spiders’ webs.

I just watched the first half of Lost in Translation, you see, and decided that I really do need an exotic experience. I think I’d prefer to leave out the frustrated young American woman with the inattentive husband, though, because that would create too much emotional disturbance and result in a resurgence of the fretting habit. But the bright lights and funny locals would do just fine.

And it wouldn’t have to be Tokyo. New York would do, or Melbourne, or Singapore – anywhere really as long as there were bright lights and funny locals. Anywhere except Nepal; I might bump into the priestess in Nepal and then the fretting would start in earnest.

Does anybody with influence ever read this blog?

Better at Sea.

A hurricane came a-visiting these fair shores today – Hurricane Ophelia by name. But of course, hurricanes are rarely classifiable as hurricanes once they’ve crossed the deep Atlantic because they’ve shrunk a bit by then and become merely storms. But today’s merely storm was particularly severe by all accounts, so let’s dignify it with the term ‘sub-hurricane.’

Ireland got the worst of it, which I sort of hoped might persuade the odd hardy soul to read my story When the Waves Call because it’s set on the west coast of Ireland in just such conditions. But I don’t suppose anybody did because it isn’t exactly famous, is it? (But note the clever link I put in because I’m good at that sort of thing.)

And it does prompt me to mention that I once spent time in a small frigate out in mid-Atlantic in the throes of such a storm. The effect it has on the deep ocean is quite remarkable, turning it into an ever moving mountain range of heaving brown water which lifts the ship onto a peak one minute, then drops it into a trough the next, while all the time the little vessel is pitching, rolling and yawing like Nijinsky on speed. It’s really quite thrilling as long as you’re not seasick (which I wasn’t) and as long as you don’t expend too much imaginative energy on the possibly deleterious consequences of such a situation. After all, you don’t get rescued when the nearest solid ground is 1,000 miles away.

In fact, we did have a man washed overboard on the first day when the storm was still but a strengthening gale, but he got rescued by a hardy boat’s crew of the bulldog breed and so, in the immortal words of Stanley Holloway, there were no wrecks and nobody drownded, in fact nothing to laugh at at all.

But back to the present. We in the middle of England are getting Ophelia’s flank tonight and the noise is not exactly thrilling, just irritating.

Losing Ladies (and Friends.)

Who am I going to chat to in Uttoxeter now that my two favourite serving wenches are serving no more?

Lucy, late of the coffee shop, has left.

‘Already?’ I said with just sufficient expression of disbelief to appear surprised but still in control of my emotions.

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘Where’s she gone?’

‘It’s personal.’ (This final and decisive statement being delivered with a nudge-nudge, wink-wink sort of look which suggested that my informant thought I should know what he meant. I didn’t, but since it’s personal it’s none of my business anyway, so that’s OK.)

Chelsea, late of another retail establishment, has also left, but at least I know where she’s gone. She’s gone to learn to minister to bodies which aren’t dead yet.

Why don’t you just say she’s gone to do nursing training?

‘Because I like to use unnecessary words and idiosyncratic means of expression so as to fill the page and encourage the belief that I’m odd.’

It’s crass, bad form, bad English, and likely to lose you friends.

‘It’s not the worst of my faults.’

I know.

The thing is, you see, I find that young women make much better conversationalists than young men because they have more savvy and broader minds. Middle aged people aren’t usually worth talking to because they’re too set in their ways and convinced that the panacea for the ills of modern society is a pot of white paint, and the elderly are too distracted by the need to find the nearest toilet.

That last statement is definitely going to lose you friends.

‘But I’m only kidding.’

That’s no excuse.

‘Can I plead insanity?’

No, you can apologise.

‘Sorry.’

Oddments and the Colour of Voices.

When I was a kid my impatient nature was forever being addressed by that hoary old saying: Good things come to those who wait. I grew to have faith in the statement until the email was invented. 

The priestess is currently wandering the cold mountains of Nepal.

I keep on having the first two lines of a new ditty drop into my head. They’re very promising, too, but I find myself quite unable to complete them. It seems that a part of my brain on which I have come greatly to rely over recent years is being blocked by a mysterious force.

I talked at some length today to the ghost of the Lady B. Her replies were reticent as usual.

I read about some research which has established that magic mushrooms really are good for you, but the researchers advise us not to eat any until they have extracted the magical ingredient and formed it into an expensive pill.

No attack by the ravening black dog last night. I didn’t expect one.

I’ve been noticing lately what beautiful voices Japanese women have. They’re smooth, well modulated, quietly sensual, and the colour of new butterscotch. The priestess is part Japanese.

The Lady B’s erstwhile host also had a beautiful voice, but it was higher – more the colour of well ripened barley. It, too, was well modulated, but more direct and mature than quietly sensual. And it demonstrated an uncommon clarity of diction which allowed no excuse for repetition, while hinting at that velvet quality of feminine assertiveness which defines the value of the distaff.

The cerise hue of times past can be unsettling when the mud through which you’re attempting to trudge is becoming thicker.

Seeing Fear.

It occurs to me that the wolf-like dog which menaced me last night brought an interesting message. It’s a curious trait of humans to be frightened by things which have no substance and can do us no harm. It’s often the case that what we fear is only fear itself; we’re afraid of being frightened. Maybe that’s what the dog came to tell me, and maybe I should be grateful.

(Having my sleep disturbed by a ravening monster – however illusory – is a different matter, but that’s merely irritating.)

An Aspiration.

I think I would quite like to be one of those dishevelled old men who are the enigmatic proprietors of tiny emporiums set at the far end of quaint little alleyways, and of which the milling mass of busy shoppers are entirely unaware but to which the rare and needful people are inevitably drawn

And true to my nature I will only sell things which are old, incongruous in relation to each other, and also enigmatic – compellingly so.

And I will decline to sell any of my treasures to anyone unless I know them to be in need of some chastening lesson which only a well chosen item of my merchandise can supply.

And because I sell them at a mysteriously low price, my customers will ask how I manage to make a living. I will decline to answer, but they will remain assured that I do.

Encouraged by Coincidence.

I bought two DVDs in Ashbourne last week. One was the film Lost in Translation and the other was That Mitchell and Webb Look, Series 2.

I started the Mitchell and Webb first, and by an odd coincidence there was a line in the first episode I watched which ran ‘or Lost in Translation, in which nothing happens at all.’

Don’t you just love coincidences like that? And it’s fortunate that I have a long history of very much liking films in which nothing at all happens, so thank you David Mitchell.

A Minor but Enigmatic Horror.

Just as I was drifting into sleep last night a huge, black, wolf-like dog leapt at me from the darkness. It came from my right side and a little behind me, and its jaws were aimed at my head. I pushed it away, sat up in bed breathing heavily, muttered ‘what the hell was that?’ and eventually went back to sleep. I think it would be fair to say that it was the most frightening dream I’ve ever had.

And of course, speculation might be offered as to its cause and implications, but I’m ill-qualified to judge and so I’ll just have to hope that it doesn’t happen again.

 

Edited to add. February 2021

 

This post was made a month before I had the show of blood which led me to consult my doctor two months later. Subsequent investigation revealed that I had a cancer in one of my kidneys, a condition likely to prove fatal in about two years if not addressed. I had the kidney removed in March 2018. Speculations of a more concrete nature may now be made with regard to the origin of the beast, although the shaman and the psychologist would probably differ in their diagnosis.

That Kind of Day.

Friday 13^th lived up to its ominous reputation today. No details, it just did. I suspect it felt honour bound to accord with the recent trend, but my unquenchable optimism continues to sustain me.

Will things be better tomorrow? Will there be a tomorrow? I expect so. Watch this space.

And do you know why I haven’t talked about the ghost of the Lady B lately – apart from the mention of the Paddington Bear hat, that is? Because she’s resting. (Note my deliberate avoidance of any reference to a famous Grimm fairy tale – original story by Charles Perrault, by the way. Too much cheese.)

A Tale of Brawn and Sweet Revenge.

I don’t remember whether I told this story before, but if I did it was a long time ago and those who were reading my efforts then have long since moved onto better things.

Time runs apace.

Time’s a blockhead.

~ somewhere in the Works of Shakespeare.

Right then…

When I was seventeen and waiting to go to Dartmouth I got a temporary job as a labourer on a building site. I was told to start on Monday.

Monday duly arrived and so did the Monday lunchtime break at around 12 o’clock. I went to the canteen armed with my British working man’s salt-of-the-earth-style haversack, which my mother had dutifully filled with my luncheon requirements, and joined the big, brawny builder types in the tea queue.

All hands clasped a big earthenware mug, apart from those who had a tin one. I held out a small teacup fashioned in translucent bone China and sporting a most attractive floral design.

Mother, why are you doing this to me?

We all sat down and the countless brawny hands of the assembled brawny builder types produced sandwiches which would have competed favourably with the doorsteps of Old England. Mine were thin, white and cut with embarrassing accuracy into quarters. I chose not to look at the big, brawny builder types since I feared what I might read in their eyes in return.

After lunch I was called to the site office and told they couldn’t keep me on. They’d just looked at my cards, they said, and discovered that I was only seventeen, and since the company operated a closed shop and union membership was restricted to those aged eighteen and over, my employment had to be terminated.

I went to a phone box and rang my mother.

‘I’ve been fired,’ I told her.

‘Fired?’

‘Yup.’

‘Why?’

‘I had an argument with the foreman and pushed him off the scaffold. He’s been taken to hospital.’

‘OMG!!!’ (Or whatever passed for OMG!!! in pre-internet days.)

And then, of course, I confessed the joke. But at least I’d had my revenge for the teacup and sandwiches. I’d also learned how to push a heavy wheelbarrow over a narrow plank (it’s just matter of confidence, like swimming and arranging dates) and how to throw two bricks at a time to a pair of brawny hands attached to a brawny bricklayer up on the scaffolding. Neither skill has ever served me since, sad to say, but I’m not dead yet so who knows?

Tit-for-Tat.

I see the US has pulled out of UNESCO, citing the UN body’s ‘excessively anti-Israel bias.’ I suppose it’s not surprising really, given that over the past few years many of us have felt a teensie bit disappointed with America over what we view as its excessively pro-Israel bias. I sent an email to Barack Obama on the issue. He replied: ‘It’s complicated.’

OK.

The Diurnal Jekyll and Hyde Problem.

All my life I’ve been subject to an odd phenomenon: the person who wakes up in my body in the morning isn’t the same person who went to sleep in it the night before. The waking person usually holds shift all through the day and into the evening, and sometimes carries on until quite late at night. But at some point he undergoes a curious metamorphosis.

He stops being sensible, preferring instead to adopt a mixture of subversion and silliness. He hates all expressions of earnestness with a passion. He acknowledges the fact that moths are really fairies in disguise, rates aardvarks above academics, and would rather talk about the positive aspects of insanity than the State of the Union. (Neither of them understands how the hell Trump got to be President, but that’s pretty universal.)

Take the last post, for example, the one about hedonism. It was written yesterday, partly through the daylight hours and partly in early evening. When I came to post it later, the other guy had come on shift.

‘What the hell is this pile of shite?’ he asked sardonically. ‘It’s too serious, too rational, too grey; it stinks of earnestness, for heaven’s sake. It makes you look like the sort of person who went to school and wears a necktie sometimes. Do you? Wear a necktie, that is? No? No. So do not post the bloody thing. It’s bilge.’

And so I didn’t. The problem was that the current incumbent had nothing particular to say about anything that was either subversive or silly, and that’s why there were no blog posts last night. I watched another Japanese horror movie instead.

(Actually, I only watched half of it because the night shift operative has a very short attention span. As for the movie, it’s called Kaidan and I’m very much enjoying it. The only problem is that the male protagonist is uncannily like me in attitude and behaviour, so I’m finding him lacking credibility and somewhat dislikeable. The women are good, though, and mostly pretty.)