A Bit of a Retrospective.

This year has been something of a singular one in the life of JJ for reasons which will be obvious to those who sat through all the whingeing and moping I did during the first half of it. And so, it being the evening of 31^st December, I suppose I should write something of a retrospective. That’s what blogs are for, isn’t it? But what can I say that didn’t get said during the running, contemporary commentary?

Nothing much, except to offer a few minor observations and hope to be excused for indulging the trivial:

1. Matters which have interested me vaguely all my life were suddenly thrown into much sharper relief – issues like meaning, motivation and the awareness of mortality. They were elevated to a higher mental chamber where the light is brighter and the shadows behind the furniture all the deeper for it.

2. I got to learn quite a lot about those parts of the body which we don’t usually talk about, and quite a lot more about how the experts seek to find out what’s wrong with them.

3. I further got to learn that the experts aren’t always quite as expert as you’d like them to be. When I was in my fourth hour of quite extreme pain and asked the registrar: ‘… but I’d just drunk a litre of water. Where had it all gone?’ he shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, and said: ‘Dunno.’

4. I also learned just how much I kick and scream mentally at the feeling that my movements are being controlled by somebody holding a rope that’s tied around my neck. It was nothing new, but it became a whole lot clearer. As a result, the thought of tethered or trapped animals became more horrific than ever, and the knowledge that slavery, abuse and armed conflict still happen brought the human condition into even more abject perspective.

5. For eighteen hours I had a young Asian woman less than half my age playing the role of surrogate mother with ease and skill. I decided that nurses are pretty bloody fabulous.

On Politeness, Prejudice and Style.

A man bumped into my shopping trolley in the supermarket today and apologised profusely. It was actually mostly my fault because I had the damn thing sticking out into the aisle, and so I said ‘That’s OK; my fault.’ And then he apologised again. A little while later I was in a woman’s way, and when I moved she didn’t say ‘thank you,’ she said ‘sorry.’

That’s what we Brits are like, you know. We have a compulsion to be polite, and even apologise when there’s no rational reason to do so. Which isn’t to claim that there are no impolite people in Britain. There are. And yet the xenophobes who pollute our culture are still ready to take the slightest perceived lack of politeness on the part of a foreigner or non-white person, and take it as proof that they were right all along and the Channel Tunnel should be filled in with reinforced concrete as a matter of urgency.

That’s sad, isn’t it?

*  *  *

But on the way back to the car I saw something I like to see: a young man running with his dog along the footpath. It struck me that if all young men had a dog and ran with it, the world would probably be a nicer place.

*  *  *

And there’s a middle aged couple I often see in Uttoxeter whose dress sense and general manner would be difficult to describe, so let’s just say that it’s notably different than the norm and arguably somewhat foppish. It isn’t my place to judge them, of course; what they wear is their business and nobody else’s.

But I was tempted to consider a question when they came into the coffee shop today. I think it reasonable to presume that they would call their dress sense ‘stylish,’ whereas I would describe it as ‘flamboyant.’ I’m sure the two concepts are different, but there’s an area of overlap between the two which is clearly grey. And so the question is: where do you draw the line?

Being neither stylish nor flamboyant myself, I’m in no position to offer an opinion.

*  *  *

And I encountered two young women of my acquaintance in Uttoxeter. One held my hand briefly; the other looked at me before walking on without speaking. Ah well, I suppose life’s about nothing if not mixed fortunes.

The Glumness of the Swede.

I just watched a Swedish psychological drama on the TV and now I’m in a bad mood. Swedish dramas have a habit of doing that, don’t they? Think of Ingmar Bergman and you’ll know what I mean. And what about Greta Garbo? She wasn’t exactly the life and soul of the party, was she?

Maybe that’s what it’s all about. Maybe she was searching for her soul, because Swedish dramas always seem to be about soul-searching people spreading glumness and grinding self-reflection in their wake. Or it could be that living in a country which extends north of the Arctic Circle gives you the right to go about depressing everybody who doesn’t. Then again, it could be that the Swedes are a really happy bunch of people who just don’t want anybody else to know it or we might all go there and make pathetic jokes:

‘Are you a Swede?’

Ja.

‘Oh, good. Got room for a few turnips?’

You can’t really blame them, can you?

I only ever knew one Swede personally. His name was Stefan and I never saw the slightest sign that he was searching for his soul. What I most remember about Stefan was that he was friendly, intelligent, polite, personable, a little on the serious side, spoke English so perfectly that you would never have guessed he was a Swede, and that he didn’t have blond hair.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. What I most remember about Stefan was that he screwed up my blossoming relationship with an attractive young theatre designer and I didn’t speak to him for several weeks. I relented eventually because he’d never intended to trip me up, poor chap, and I’d made an error of judgement anyway. And it’s an odd coincidence that the attractive young theatre designer did have blonde hair.

But there you go, you see? Meet a Swede and you end up depressed. Where on earth do I go from here?

On Belgian Chocs and Being Un-American.

I was given a box of Belgian chocolates this Christmas and they’re quite small by the standards normally expected of that excellent breed of confectionary comestibles. A whole one fits easily into an average mouth without risk of imitating a Texas redneck eating two whole burgers at once so as to stop the right side of his mouth being jealous of the left. Let’s face it, nothing in the whole world does gross and uncouth better than the good ol’ boy from the South.

(Hey, it’s Christmas so let’s have a go at Americans. Yeah, why not? If they can put a brain dead albino warthog into the White House, they can hardly complain. Although I will admit that Lisa Edelstein does have remarkably sexy eyes, and New England accents, at least when employed by young women, are pretty damn cute. But on the other hand, they did invent Walt Disney…)

But to continue my point about small Belgian chocolates:

What’s interesting is that, despite being only about five average chews big, a single chocolate has the remarkable capacity to demolish my appetite for several hours afterwards. And that makes me wonder whether Belgian chocolates should be recommended to those undertaking calorie-controlled diets.

(If my last trip to New Orleans was anything to go by, I’m guessing that Americans never submit to calorie-controlled diets. I assume they’re deemed unpatriotic and banned under some sort of Un-American Activities legislation.)

This is an example of British humour. And it is Christmas, so nothing harder than snowballs please, you Yankees. And I wanted to make fifty posts for the month in case I die tonight. (I was going to mention those middle aged American women with blue hair who spend the day comfortably ensconced on a florid couch, surrounded by lapdogs and sugary things and watching endless re-runs of TV-shows-from-the-basement, but decided against it. Besides, they’re not exactly unheard of in my country.)

On the Significance of the Mince Pie.

We start with a simple quiz:

‘What are the two great culinary icons of Christmas in the British Isles?’

Turkey and mince pies.

‘Correct. But suppose you’re vegetarian?’

Then the humble mince pie stands alone and proudly aloof as the only culinary marker of the festive season.

Correct again, and that’s why one of my very few nods to the Christmas tradition is to buy and eat a box of mince pies. And I pay due homage to the yuletide connection by never eating the first pie until Christmas Eve, and making sure that I leave the last one until New Year’s Eve.

Excuse me.

‘What?’

You have a bottle of port as well.

‘I know, but you don’t eat port; you drink it.’

Does that make a difference?

‘Yes.’

Oh.

My mother used to make her own mince pies, of course, and so did a neighbour of mine called Dorothy who was the closest I ever encountered to a Christian in the nicest sense of the word. But Dorothy belonged to a previous incarnation in another Shire many leagues from here and many moons in my past. And my mother is well settled in the undiscovered country, so these days I buy them in a box from the supermarket.

And so the tradition is now firmly established. Some time shortly after nightfall on Christmas Eve I open my box of mince pies, remove one carefully so as to spill no crumbs, and then declaim: ‘Greetings, oh humble icon, and compliments of the season to you. I am about to devour you so as to prove to myself and any others who take an interest in my spiritual wellbeing that I have no truck with prisons or workhouses, nor any desire to see the surplus population reduced. Your humble life is, therefore, and though short, of great significance, and you stand rightly esteemed before the heavenly host.’ And then I eat the mince pie (hoping all the time that I've just been talking to something entirely lacking in sentience because it would bother me a lot to see it shiver.)

My hero

And mince pies are not always humble, you know. All you have to do is add a little more butter to the flour, make the pastry thicker, stir something alcoholic and posh like brandy into the filling, and you have a confection fit to take pride of place among those smug, self-satisfied suburbanites smiling their sickly smiles on TV cookery shows. Or so I'm told.

But mine are humble. They come packed in a box of six for £1 from Tesco. Seems more fitting, somehow.

When Eyes Deceive.

There was a particularly striking young woman in the coffee shop today, and I’m sure my motive will escape misconstruction when I say that it is ever my need to discover what factor or factors are the cause of making a striking young woman look particularly so. And that’s why I studied her face for a few seconds and soon realised that the primary agent was her eye make-up. It was heavy.

So then I perused the fact over my Americano and quite expensive Belgian something-or-other fancy bun, and soon came to an interesting conclusion. The appearance of a person’s eyes can be, and usually are, radically altered by the strength and style of eye make-up. And you now what that means: it means you can neither assess their outer selves nor trust the inner person. That’s because:

a. You don’t know what they actually look like in real life, and

b. The revelations about character traits, which are usually so reliable if you know how to read them, are all but lost behind a cloaking device of Klingon-esque proportions.

So that must be my lesson for today. When encountering heavy eye make-up, ask first what it is trying to hide. (And while I’m at it, scorn the skilled make-up artist who works to create a false face in order to trap the unwary.)

I lived with a woman for three years once and never saw her without make-up, including the painted eyes variety. Every night at bed time she would disappear into the bathroom, there to remove the jaded mask and don a new one. And then she would emerge from the cocoon a freshened but flatteringly false butterfly. What time was left the relationship became characterised first by acrimony, and then silence, and then separation. And I never did get to find out what she really looked like or what she really meant when she said 'God will punish you.'

Vicarious Discomfort.

You know, I always find it most uncomfortable to watch somebody playing a long solo on the flute. I keep needing to take deep breaths because I feel I’m short of oxygen. It was the same when I watched Harry Potter dive into the freezing pool – having had to break the ice first – to retrieve the sword of Gryffindor. I had to put an extra sweater on. I expect the psychologists have a name for it.

The Human Touch.

I was just watching an old episode of House in which the young woman doctor in the team – whose name I can never remember so let’s call her Doris – is being told off by the consultant oncologist for being unprofessional.

Dr Onc – because I can never remember his name either – has been watching the lovely Doris chatting amiably with a young woman patient who has just been revealed to be suffering from terminal lung cancer. What Doris should have been doing was not chatting amiably, but calmly informing the patient that she has only about six months to live.

‘It’s not your job to be her friend,’ says the very professional Dr Onc rather too sternly for my liking.

But the lovely Doris seeks to correct him. She informs him that the patient has nobody close in her life. Her husband has left her, her parents are dead, etc, etc. And then she gives him the punch line:

‘When somebody dies it should matter. Somebody should be upset.’

Well, I’m not entirely sure that I agree with her, but I did appreciate the thought.

Picking the Bones of Christmases Past.

As the course of yet another Christmas Day runs inexorably to a close, I find myself looking back and trying to remember details about the many which have gone before. It surprises me that the album of Christmas memories is so sparsely occupied. Most of them seem to have congealed into a gloopy mass of inconsequence, which is odd given how magical I found Christmas during a couple of phases in my life.

I remember the two bad ones well enough – the one in which my 17-month-old daughter was badly scalded and spent Christmas in a specialist burns hospital, and the one in which I was literally on the verge of suicide. And then there was the amusing one when a young actress friend of mine from the theatre invited me to the flat she and her husband were renting at the end of my street. When I got there at around 7pm she was just putting the turkey into the oven, and was suitably horrified when I pointed out that a turkey that size would take around 4½-5 hours to cook. She was young, as I said, and it was her first married Christmas. She’d never cooked a turkey before and hadn’t bothered to research the matter, so we ate rather late that Christmas night. The following year I went to stay with them in London. That was when I had that surreal experience of lying on a four poster bed in a room above an Italian restaurant in Soho, talking all sorts of drivel to a similarly-recumbent middle aged woman while sundry thespians wandered around the bed in party atmosphere.

So that’s four, and that’s virtually it – apart from the one which I consider the best. It was the first year in which I was allowed to stay home instead of accompanying my parents on the reciprocal visit to Mr and Mrs Greenwood. Being on my own at Christmas, playing with the half size snooker table which had been my main gift, was an enlightening experience which led me to understand my distaste for too much close company. I was fourteen at the time and the reclusive tendency was in its early stages, but it grew as the years and the lady companions came and went. And that’s how I got to where I am today.

But now I have to write a brief note back to my young friend in America who tells me that my grammar is 'really nice.' She says she loves magic and still believes in Santa Claus. Such are the people I cope with best these days.

Christmas Day Notes.

I’ve thought about Christmas from all possible angles and I still don’t know why people do it, allowing themselves in the process to be subjected to all manner of social and financial pressures. I assume it has something to with the cultural togetherness thing, which is why it’s such a mystery to me.

The correct answer to the question ‘how many wise men were there?’ is: nobody knows. I gather the Bible doesn’t say, although I admit I haven’t checked.

I've decided that when people ask me why I don’t have a Christmas tree or decorate my house in any way, I should do the sad face and tell them it’s because I have nobody to share it with. It strikes me that it would make a fitting antidote to being called Scrooge.

I had a visitor this morning – a slug in my kitchen. It’s quite common to get slugs in my kitchen at night, but almost unheard of during daylight hours. I supposed it had something to with it being Christmas Day. I’ve never had a visitor on Christmas Day in this house before.

It hasn’t escaped my notice that even visits to my blog plummet on Christmas Day. If I didn’t know better I’d assume that people have something more interesting to engage with.

I did go for a walk today after all, but chose a time and route which would minimise the risk of being accosted by trite and inappropriate felicitations. It worked.

The bottle of port I just finished off was about seven years old, so now I’m wondering whether the new one I subsequently opened, and which I bought last week, has any chance of being consumed before I head off into the undiscovered country. I also wonder whether they have Christmas in the undiscovered country.

A Little News Question.

Every year on Christmas Day the British royal family attends a Christmas service somewhere, and every year the BBC News website gives the event headline coverage complete with a smiley photograph.

I wonder why they do that. Isn’t the news supposed to tell us about things we didn’t already know?

On Christmas Turkeys and Other Creatures.

I just realised one big advantage with being a prize curmudgeon who doesn’t do Christmas.

When I was a kid my parents had some friends called the Greenwoods, and every year they used to come over for tea on Christmas Day. My stepfather and Mr Greenwood would engage in manly discussions about the weather and the value of maintaining the gold standard, but the real delight came from listening to my mother and Mrs Greenwood talk about turkey.

‘This turkey’s nice, Irene,’ would begin the evening’s ascent into enlightening discourse.

Yes it is, very nice.

‘Sometimes turkey can be a bit dry.’

I know. Really dry.’

‘Ours was bit dry last Christmas.’

Was it?

‘Yes.’

I can’t stand dry turkey.

‘Me neither.’

How was yours this Christmas?

‘Oh, not too bad.’

Not too dry, then?

‘I’ve known worse.’

You get a lot of meals out of a turkey, so it’s better not being dry.

‘You’re right there. But this turkey’s nice.’

Yes it is, very nice.

Every year – and that was the bowdlerised version. Hence the advantage of becoming a reclusive vegetarian: turkeys are suddenly your friends and you don’t care whether they’re dry or not.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, I was outside Tesco today, having just used the cash point, when I felt something nudging my leg. I looked down to see that the culprit was a bulldog with a woman in tow.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said the woman, ‘he just wants to make friends.’

Well, few things are more well met than a dog who just wants to make friends, and so make friends we did. And then I said the darndest thing:

‘You don’s see many bulldogs these days – used to be the symbol of Britain.’

Well, what an embarrassment. It’s the sort of thing a Nigel Farage supporter might utter before proceeding into full flow with ‘Go to London these days and it’s a case of spot the white man.’ I only intended an innocent remark to make light conversation, but the fact that the woman agreed enthusiastically only made matters worse.

I changed the subject hurriedly to something I don’t recall, and then took my leave with thoughts of French cockerels, Russian bears, American eagles and Australian kangaroos running through my head. My mind is oft awry these days, but rarely to that extent.

*  *  *

And none of that has anything to do with Christmas, of course. It’s just that I heard Blackmore’s Night singing Way to Mandalay earlier and it put me in an uncharacteristically good mood. I particularly like the guitar bit at the end (I was going to type ‘riff’ but didn’t want to show off.)

Christmas Day Cabin Fever.

I suppose I’ll have to forego my daily walk tomorrow. I’ve always gone for a walk on previous Christmas Days and always been accosted by somebody either out for a pre-lunch ramble to work up an appetite, or a post-lunch trudge to burn off a few calories. And it is an unassailable fact attested by bitter experience that people are quite incapable of walking past you on Christmas Day without saying something.

Merry Christmas is the commonest, in which case I feel obliged against my better nature to gird up my loins and offer something in return by way disingenuous reciprocation.

Have you had a good Christmas? is less common, but it causes the bigger problem. To answer ‘yes’ would be more than disingenuous; it would be an outright lie. To answer ‘no’ would risk inviting sympathy and that would never do. And so the only way to escape the clutches of my inquisitors is to be honest and simply say ‘I don’t do Christmas.’ But then, as you might expect, such a statement is inevitably met with a reluctant and defamatory smile followed by the accusation of ‘Scrooge!’ So what do I do then, reply that they’ve either never read A Christmas Carol or, if they have, completely misunderstood it? It’s all too much effort.

I suppose the best way of addressing this problem would be to somehow contrive to make merry in some way, and then I can simply answer ‘yes thanks, have you?’ The day would be honoured, cordial relations maintained, and the cultural imperative properly observed. And we’d all be happy, wouldn’t we? But I haven’t a clue how to go about it. Better stay home.

The Problem of Yule Without Yin.

I took the extraordinary step of acknowledging Christmas today. I called up YouTube and ordered three minutes of The Holly and the Ivy sung by the choir of King’s College, Cambridge. I did say that carols should be sung by a choir, didn’t I? I did. And so they should.

It was pleasant enough watching a bunch of immaculately scrubbed young people in their cassocks and surplices singing a song with pagan roots so precisely and earnestly, and it did briefly remind me of my childhood in the church choir and the magic I used to sense around the Christmas season. But there was something missing: they were all male. Boys and men all, with not a maiden, mother or crone in sight.

Now, whatever the traditionalists and musicologists might say, I have to say that a boy soprano is no substitute for a woman, and that a choir without women is unbalanced. The universal energy is lopsided, you see, because the yin is missing.

On Rabbits and the Death of Christmas.

People sometimes ask me why I don’t celebrate Christmas. Well, there are several reasons, but I suspect it all goes back to when I was a wee boy in primary school and took part in my one and only Nativity play.

The thing is, you see, the teacher at my primary school who orchestrated the Nativity play must have had a bit of a Cecil B DeMille complex. He or she wanted a cast of thousands, so we didn’t just have a baby Jesus, adoring parents, shepherds, angels, wise men, and a flock of oxen, sheep, asses and other sundry farm animals. We also had rabbits. Three of them. I played the part of third rabbit, complete with papier maché ears, and no doubt approached the non-speaking role with all due sense of gravitas.

The experience stayed with me, and so did the ears. I kept them in my toy box for several years afterwards, and would occasionally take them out and reflect on those far off days when I was a star of stage, if not screen.

It was a hard act to follow, you must agree, and follow it I never did. I think that was the point at which a sense of anticlimax began to set in, and the situation was further exacerbated when I returned home one Christmas Eve from singing carols with the church choir at the local hospital to find that the arrival of my presents had preceded the visit of Santa Claus. My parents had failed to hide them well enough under the table in the hall, you see, and my suspicions were duly aroused.

As for the other reasons, they naturally accompanied the development of a curmudgeonly tendency as I gradually discovered that the human race and its funny little habits are hardly worth bothering with. And the rest – as Shakespeare remarked upon the death of poor Hamlet – is silence.

Summer Came and Went.

I was sauntering up the gently sloping lane known as The Hollow this afternoon, meandering between the puddles as a light rain fell unremitting and unhindered by the skeletal trees lining the top of the embankment. I was musing on the past year which began with an alarming show of blood last November and continued through examinations, procedures, four spells in hospital, and the currently ongoing recuperation. An oft-used phrase suddenly occurred to me: ‘The summer came and went.’

It’s such a seemingly innocuous little phrase, and yet it carries such profound and poignant intimations of time and passage. I think of how we wonder at the miracle of birth, while simultaneously reflecting on the fact that birth is just the first step on the road to death. I look at the creek in my fairy glen, currently in heavy spate, and remember last summer’s arid time when gardeners and farmers alike prayed for rain. I think of times past generally, and wonder whether the past is more real than the future, or whether it’s the other way round, or whether there is only the apparently non-existent present because the process of flow never stops. I think of all the people I’ve known in my life who are now dead, and wonder whether I shall be the next to reach my personal terminus. I think of the importance we attach to the ways of the world, and how we celebrate strength, conquest, success, high achievement, influence, acquisition, and even the righting of wrongs. And I wonder how much any of it really matters.

It has been rightly pointed out that the paths of glory lead but to the grave, and Shakespeare was wont to remind us that the worms which eat the bodies make no distinction between high and low status. But then we have to consider what, if anything, lies beyond the grave. The religionists tell us their certainties, the atheists hide behind the lack of evidence, while the philosophers ramble and wrangle interminably. In fact, nobody knows.

Last summer was, for me, a time of unfamiliar weakness when the watchword was caution. It came and went and now I feel almost back to normal. But for how long and does it matter? And does it also matter that the woman who has been the major occupier of my thoughts and recipient of my affections for so long might actually be no more real than I am? It might or it might not. I know nothing of the reason for being here, and neither does anybody else.

Resuming Old Habits.

I seem to be suffering an intermittent recurrence of the old Chronic Fatigue Syndrome which received so much airplay on this blog six or seven years ago. Symptoms include getting no more than around six hours sleep in bed, and then falling asleep in front of the computer in the evening and waking up feeling like a week-dead cod fish which even the local feral cat won't eat.

And yet today I went for a longer walk than has become usual during the post-operative period, in the course of which I saw somebody driving up the lane who I thought to be in Australia judging by the unreliable evidence of my stats trackers. There’s definitely something odd going on with my blog visits lately, so much so that I’ve taken to feeling that I’m being watched surreptitiously from behind a metaphorical tree.

But at least today’s unexpected sighting brought a couple of meaningful revelations in its wake:

1. If somebody takes something precious away from you which was never yours in the first place, there's no way of justifying the irrational sense that you've been robbed.

2. You can’t realistically call yourself weird until you start wearing odd socks habitually and unselfconsciously.

It seems the resurgence of old ailments has a habit of encouraging uncomfortable memories and unusual thoughts. If the next set of CT scans – which are due in the spring – reveal that I’ve used up all my Christmases after all, I might just manage a rueful smile.

Muddling the Gold Standard.

Why do people leave comments on YouTube like: ‘This is the most beautiful song ever written.’ Have they heard every song ever written? Do they really believe their judgement to be impeccable when considering the quantitive assessment of beauty? And more to the point, do they seriously imagine that such an abstract and ultimately subjective concept as beauty can even be definitively assessed in such terms?

Mel once scolded me for being hyper-rational. Maybe she was right, or maybe I just like people to talk sense. Muddled thinking must run religion and greed pretty close in the race to be most responsible for the ills of the world.

And when am I going to re-establish my old rule that serious posts are banned after 10pm? I remember a time when my blog was somebody’s favourite bed time reading (or so she said.)

Not the TV Type.

I’m doing that other-way-round thing again. I need to get a new TV because my old one is driving me scatty and I do like to watch it about twenty times a year.

Now, the thing is, most people needing a new TV at this time of the year would be busting a gut to get it before Christmas, whereas I’m leaving it until after Christmas in hope of getting the one I want at a reduced price in a sale. That’s because I don’t believe in paying any more than I absolutely have to for something I hardly ever use. And it will be a small one because I want my living room to look like a living room and not a cinema.

I’ve been researching them in catalogues and I find the experience somewhat unnerving. I still think of the TV as a box with a glass front and an aerial socket on the back, but they don’t just have an aerial socket these days. They have a plethora of colour-coded sockets of various sizes and shapes into which you can plug this, that and the other device. What this, that and the other device? All I expect of a TV is that it gives me sound and pictures. Why would I want to plug a device into it? What end would it serve? And does that attitude make me old fashioned or a free thinker? The only thing I want to plug into it – apart from the aerial – is a set of headphones because you get better sound that way.

And talking of headphones just made me realise an interesting fact: at no time during my twelve-year tenure in this house have I ever watched the TV in the company of another person. TV watching is not a communal activity in my house.

It never was with me. I was never the sort to relax cosily on the sofa next to the current co-habitee-of-the-opposite-sex, laughing at the same funny bits and engaging in earnest discussion over such matters as whether dark hair suits the leading actress and who’s going to make the next cup of tea. I’ve seen such a scenario many times in films and adverts, but I don’t believe it happens in real life. Personal space is sacrosanct to me, and especially so on those rare occasions when I want to engage with a moving picture.

And another thing: the TV used to be known colloquially in Britain as ‘the box.’ I suppose modern ones would be better styled ‘the communion wafer.’ Opening the window is a bit risky these days in case there’s a strong breeze blowing and the poor old dog becomes a casualty of the communal activity.

On Doing Carols Properly.

I’ve been hearing a lot of Christmas carols sung by ballad singers this year and I don’t like it. I’m not the biggest fan of carols anyway since the lyrics mostly don’t do a lot for me, but at least I can tolerate them as long as they’re sung properly by a proper choir in a proper cathedral or the choir stalls of King’s College, Cambridge. (And please note that I dislike the word ‘proper’ because it’s indelibly associated with those of reactionary persuasion. You can be pretty sure that if I use the word ‘proper’ I do so facetiously, sarcastically, ironically, or as some sort of literary device that I don’t know the name of. Just saying.)

Carols also sound perfectly fine when sung by villagers congregated around the village green or coal miners buried deep in the bowels of the earth, and therein lies the core of my difficulty.

It’s a fundamental part of the essence of Christmas carols that they lend themselves naturally to the group dynamic, be it in a sacred or secular environment. When a ballad singer sings a carol, he or she does so in a personal style, and style comes accompanied by its cousin, ego. Hence the group dynamic is missing and artifice has taken its place. And on such a shift in energy and intention is the essence of the traditional carol lost. Bing Crosby is welcome to sing White Christmas, but not O Little Town of Bethlehem.

And since I mention Bethlehem, I thought it worth remarking that I once heard the claim that, according to the archaeological record, the Bethlehem of the Gospels was uninhabited when Jesus was born. That’s interesting, isn’t it? Then again, it was in a TV documentary so it might be completely wrong.

The Sandwich as Indicator of Sanity.

When Mel and I meet in Derby we usually get a sandwich each for lunch and I always pay for both of them. Now, it’s an odd thing that the sandwich I buy for myself is always the cheapest I can get which vegetarians can eat, whereas Mel gets whatever she wants. In consequence, her sandwich is always more expensive than mine and I don’t mind at all. So now I hear a chorus of praise clamouring for space in my ears:

‘What a generous, selfless man you are, Mr JJ. Blessings be upon you.’

Wrong. I’m sure the real reason is that my sense of self-esteem is so low that I don’t think I deserve more than the cheapest sandwich, whereas other people do. And I suppose that makes her saner than I am.

Actually, that’s wrong too. She’s just as insane as I am. And do note the paraphrasing of Luna Lovegood who happens to be Mel’s favourite character. I might be lacking self-esteem but I do know how to tie threads together.

In Praise of a Deeply Disturbing Film.

I watched a film last night called The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. I found it vaguely unsatisfying at the time, but today I saw it differently. It was the sort of film which stayed with me and insinuated its meaning ever more strongly as the day wore on.

It tells the story of a German army officer and his family during World War II. The father is promoted and assigned to be commandant of a concentration camp, a posting which requires him and his family to move their residence to a fine house just beyond the perimeter fence where they live in luxury.

And then we watch the family gradually disintegrate as the ill-informed mother and the totally innocent children discover the true nature of the father’s position. And the father strikes an ironically heroic pose as he maintains his commitment to the cause while his personal life is breaking up. David Thewliss plays the tortured but resolute father brilliantly. In fact, every actor in the film is superb. Meanwhile, the horror of the Holocaust is subtly understated and is all the stronger for so being.

And I saw a deeper message contained within the surface plot – that the Holocaust is not so much an indictment of the German people, but of the tendency in humanity as a whole to allow itself to be driven deep beyond the bounds of reason and decency by strong and skilful propaganda. It’s a lesson which still seems to be lost on many people today, even in countries which see themselves as developed, sophisticated and civilised.

As for the ending, it would be too much of a spoiler to tell. Let’s just say that it’s deeply ironic and quite shocking. And this is far too serious a post for this late at night, but it’s going up anyway.

On Scarves and Paradise and Moving On.

I was walking through Derby with Mel today when I thought of a good subject for a blog post. And as is so often the case, now that I’m sitting on front of my computer with nothing pressing to do, I can’t remember what it was.

I think it might have had something to do with scarves and the fact that they are the closest I ever come to expressing my virtually non-existent sense of style. I’ve never been stylish, you see, but I did realise a couple of weeks ago that scarves are my only sartorial vice. I have more scarves than I do shoes, jeans, best sweaters, jackets and winter coats. (Fortunately, I do have even more socks and underwear, but such items are hardly fit for general discussion.)

And then it probably would have continued to a muse on the extent to which the awareness of style is connected with the expression of ego, and whether that makes scarves a progressive or regressive element of clothing to a person who is trying to improve his inner self.

Sounds a bit serious, doesn’t it? OK, let’s move on.

*  *  *

I remember as a young child seeing the Howard Keel version of the film Kismet, and the one part that made an impression on me was the duet which became a classic standard: Stranger in Paradise. And what an abiding impression it made. The magic, mystery and sense of promise in the title, combined with Borodin’s wonderful melody, still has the capacity to raise mild goose bumps even now. I’ve often wondered whether my response was an early indication of my soppily romantic nature, or whether it was in itself responsible for engendering that unfortunate personality trait which has given me so much trouble throughout my life.

  

I watched part of the film on YouTube recently and found it wholly unimpressive. I can’t say that the tyrant time withered my predilection for the great adventure, but it certainly taught me to expect more robust standards. My problem now lies with accepting the fact that great adventures are no longer available to me, and that such a departure is probably a very good thing. It helps to remember what somebody said to me a few years ago: ‘Life moves on, Jeff.’

*  *  *

And now the tyrant is telling me that I should wash my dishes. I had home made pea and potato soup for dinner tonight, with a buttered panini roll and a paprika rice cake. Home made pea and potato soup is one of my favourite dishes and I’ve promised myself that one day I will take the extraordinary step of crumbling the rice cake into the soup. At that point, I expect life will move on yet again.

Being the Wrong Target.

I had two recommendations on YouTube tonight which left me more than a little incredulous. One was for an alt-right channel, the other for the online Daily Mail. Anyone who knows me even slightly – and, by inference, my viewing habits – would know that giving me such recommendations is a bit like sending Hilary Clinton a Christmas card featuring a picture of Donald Trump in a Santa suit. Quite the granddaddy of insults.

So what’s going on here? Can Google’s algorithms really be so far up the creek, or is there something more sinister at work? I confess to being a little concerned.

Searching for Status.

For some time now I’ve wondered whether I might have some recognisable mental condition that I can lay claim to, but I haven’t found anything so far. Nevertheless, I continue to find my interest piqued when I come across articles on matters mental, and a few days ago I encountered one about Borderline Personality Disorder.

Well, the article wasn’t terribly specific but it said enough to encourage me to Google the term and read the NHS website page. It contained a preliminary questionnaire which doctors use to assess whether further investigation is warranted, and so I duly took the test.

No luck, I’m afraid. I needed to answer ‘yes’ to at least five questions if I were to be considered a worthy candidate, and I only got one. It seems the search will have to continue before I hear some doctor say: ‘Aha, Mr JJ, you have Garfunkel’s Grey Cell Lapsidosis. We can give you prescription medication for that and you’ll be a whole lot easier to understand.’ And I can reply: ‘Actually, I’d prefer it if you’d keep the medication on the shelf. Is there any chance I could have a prescription for a printed T shirt which says Certified Loony. Keep Away?’

A Name Passing Through.

It’s an odd thing, but sometimes I get an unfamiliar name drop firmly into my head like it’s supposed to mean something. I never have any idea where it came from or how it got there, but when it does I have to lick it, suck it, roll it around my tongue, and do that thing the pretentious, prancing people do with wine. What’s it called? Volatising. That’s it; I have to volatise it. (It means sucking the air in through the front teeth so as to release the flowery top notes, woody undertones, intriguing hints of cyanide, and things like that. It all sounds a bit daft if you ask me, but nobody is asking me so I don’t suppose it matters.)

Anyway, today’s unfamiliar name was Leonora Bullstrode. I haven't a clue who she is or was, but I decided it would be an excellent name for a character if I was still writing fiction. But I’m not, so that doesn’t matter either.

A Mostly Failed Day.

It’s been one of those failed blog post days today. I get them sometimes and fall out with myself because I wonder whether it’s all due to a chronic lack of self-worth.

‘What’s the point of writing a blog post?’ I mutter. ‘What I’ve got to say isn’t worth saying.’

So who are you going to talk to if not the blog?

‘Nobody, but then nobody who might read this blog would be any more interested in what I’m saying than I am.’

How do you know?

‘I just do.’

Does it matter?

‘I don’t know. Why shouldn’t it?’

Because you’ve often said that you only write the blog for yourself, not for an audience.

‘Oh, yes. I did, didn’t I?’

But what you’re now saying is a bit like: ‘In space, nobody can hear you scream.’

‘No it isn’t. It’s nothing like that at all.’

So what is it like?

‘I don’t know. Go away.’

And so I wrote most of quite a long post on why I so dislike TV cookery shows, but I lost interest just as I was getting to the end and put it away. I decided it was turgid and dry and terminally boring.

Then there was the post on the irony contained within the accusation of ‘Scrooge!’ which is frequently hurled at me when I tell people I don’t celebrate Christmas, and my frustration at the fact that most people misunderstand, or miss altogether, the most important bits of the story. But I’m sure I’ve done that one before – probably more than once – and I wasn’t in the mood for repeating myself.

So then we come to the post I nearly wrote, about the woman in the charity shop who occasionally stares at me in an unsmiling sort of way. You might recall me mentioning her a week ago. I quite liked that one, but subsequently decided that it goes into areas I’d rather keep under wraps for the time being. I could tell you the first bit though, if you like. It goes like this:

You might remember me mentioning the woman in one of the Uttoxeter charity shops, the one with a pale complexion and no make up who stares at me in an unsmiling sort of way and seems to want to turn me into a frog. You might further remember that I resolved to smile at her during my next visit to see what would happen.

Well, today I did. I engineered a plausible excuse to talk to her and smiled occasionally in the course of my opening gambit. It wasn’t easy, but I managed it. And do you know what she did? She smiled back. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her smile, and what a pleasant smile it was. All the appearance of severity normally engendered by her staring-in-an-unsmiling-sort-of-way habit dissolved into a light radiance, albeit with serious undertones. And when I pointed out to her that whoever wrote the notice on the door got their verb and adjectival forms mixed up, she said ‘thank you’ without any trace of sarcasm or passive aggression.

She’s very polite, you know. She is. But in a serious sort of way, you understand. I’ve come to an early, tentative conclusion that she wouldn’t appreciate my sense of humour even if I got the chance to express it, which I don’t suppose I ever shall. I also came to another early, tentative conclusion: that she would be admirably suited to the name Abigail, although I expect it’s actually something very much more prosaic. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know that either.

So that’s the first part of the post. If ever I get to write the next part I’ll probably do it in retrospect. It all depends on whether I proceed with my cunning plan or drop it as a lost cause. I do have this driving urge to discover people, you see, but sometimes I just can’t be bothered.

The Nameless Genre Problem.

Ever since I was a child I’ve been drawn to what I call ‘French café music.’ I’m sure that isn’t what it’s really called, but I’ve no idea what it is really called.

I suppose La Mer would be on the fringe of the genre, but it isn’t quite right. I seem to remember there was another one called Under the Bridges of Paris (or more likely Sous les Ponts de Paris), and I have a vague recollection that the English translation of the lyrics began: ‘How would you like to be down by the Seine with me?’ But I could just as easily have made that up myself. I did that sort of thing as a kid because my imagination hadn’t yet stretched to writing publishable fiction or silly blog posts. And there was another one which had the same opening melody as I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You, only the French version went on a couple of bars longer to bring the melody to a different resolution.

The point is, you see, that I want to find some on YouTube, but how do I do it if I don’t know what it’s called? And here we are in age where new technology is falling from the sky like bats’ droppings, but nobody is inventing a program which allows you to hum a melody into a YouTube interface and say ‘please show me things like that.’

We’re failing, aren’t we? Wrong priorities. Story of the 21^st century.

On Things Turning Up.

I keep getting ladybirds crawling across my monitor screen. It’s December and they’re supposed to be deep into hibernation, but I just had another one. And they’re not easy to catch and remove to a place of relative safety, being small, fragile and possessed of a go away, I’m having fun attitude. I managed it, but for how long?

But at least they have no air of mystery about them, which can’t be said of the hacksaw blade I found lying on the seat of my computer chair earlier. I know it wasn’t there at six o’clock when I vacuumed the chair seat, but it was there when I returned from my shower at 8 o’clock. I’ve had nothing to do with hacksaws or their blades since I nipped some ivy on my lilac bushes over a year ago, so how it came to be lying on my chair this evening is a complete mystery. I’ve stretched my mind every which way to think of an explanation, but nothing is coming through.

These things happen to me, you know. They always have.

On Wizards, Witches, and a Better Way.

Early in the Harry Potter story Hagrid tells Harry ‘You’re a wizard, Harry,’ and this simple statement establishes the young protagonist’s place in the scheme of things. He is a superior being and all set up to be recognised as the Chosen One. But imagine if Hagrid had turned up at the Granger’s residence with the message ‘You’re a witch, Hermione.’ I suspect the reaction would have been quite different, and that isn’t fair.

 Reassuring

Menacing

 

Western culture – for which read Christian culture – has always not only tolerated the wizard, but honoured him as a wise and mysterious older man fit to move in the most exalted of circles. This is nothing new; the basis of what became the current Arthurian myth goes back at least as far as the 12^th century when Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote The History of the Kings of Britain. Merlin might sometimes be a mysterious and reclusive character, but he is also the trusted advisor to the king, the one who engineers the quantum shift from dark to light.

So what of his female counterpart, the witch? She has never been tolerated in Christian culture, never been trusted or afforded the right to belong. She, too, is mysterious and reclusive, but there the similarity with her male equivalent ends. She is dark, evil, reviled and hunted down. While Merlin is allowed to be a pillar of the Establishment, Morgan le Fey is the bad girl of the story who will stop at nothing to destroy the rightful king and return the dark times.

There is nothing new in my saying this, either. It’s just that I think certain worthy causes need reviving now and then.

*  *  *

And since I started with Harry Potter, I might go on to mention that I’m beginning to wonder whether the whole concept can be viewed as an allegory. It’s just that Lord Voldermort strikes me as the epitome of those who have largely run the world over the past few thousand years – and most of them have been men. Maybe we should be considering that the world would be a much better place if it were run by a committee of Harry, Ron, Hermione, Luna, Ginny and Neville Longbottom.

And how satisfying that there should be three men and three women. I do so like equality of respect and opportunity. A battery does, after all, require opposite poles if it is to function properly.

A Small Seasonal Ditty.

I often muse on my adverse reaction to winter, so I thought I’d express it in the form of a mini ditty. Sorry it’s such a short one, but it’s a long time since I wrote a ditty and even small steps do tend to lead somewhere eventually. And at least it’s a nice shape.

No swooping bats, no snoring bees

No hay crop on the blasted leas

And all the roving eye e’er sees

Are skeletons instead of trees

On Joining the In Crowd.

There I was trying to think of something to make a post about when a remarkable thing happened. I received a compliment on YouTube in reply to one of my comments.

It said:

Dang how old are you? Your grammar is really nice.

Well, there you go. I’m more accustomed to getting replies from some species of primeval humanoid giving its considered opinion that I’m stupid, so this one was a pleasant surprise. But now I have to consider whether to answer the nice person's question.

I think I will. Since my comment was made on a video of clips from Harry Potter movies I think I’ll say that I’m too old to go to Hogwarts as a student but not quite old enough to be its Headmaster, and hope that will suffice.

I could, of course, simply reply: ‘mind your own business.’ But we celebrities – even those of only the grammatical variety – don’t say that sort of thing to our public. We have our reputation and entitlement to the VIP lounge to consider.

Lost in a Blank Canvas.

I keep feeling the urge to write a post around this piece of music:

  

Every time I hear the 30sec intro I get the impression that I’m being plunged into a situation ripe with excitement and the prospect of pleasure and discovery. And it happens again when I hear the instrumental with clappy bits in the middle. The problem is that I can’t for the life of me put a bloody picture to it, so how do I write a post about looking at a blank canvas?

I think it might have something to do with taking a road trip with an attractive-but-mysterious woman through the Scottish Highlands while the sky glowers in that peculiarly Highland manner and thunder rumbles in the distance. But I can’t be sure. Another possibility high on the list would be meeting a wood or water nymph deep in some dark wildwood somewhere in the Celtic fringes with only my personality for defence (which I sort of did once, but failed miserably. And did she make me pay for my failure! It’s a long and private story which formed the basis of The Rain Maiden. Blessings be upon you, lady, if you should happen to stumble onto my blog.)

*  *  *

And another thing. What’s up with YouTube tonight? It’s doing all sorts of idiotic and irritating things. I wonder whether the person who used to compile Google’s ‘Images for…’ section got fired for incompetence and is now running YouTube.

*  *  *

My house is even colder tonight. I wanted a mug of hot chocolate earlier but I’ve developed a sensitive tooth which reacts in an unfriendly manner to hot things. So now I want some cheese. It’s one of my foremost addictions. I think it might be linked with an overactive imagination and I suspect the nargles are behind it.

Avoiding Well Fed Men in Red Suits.

I expect I’ve mentioned before that one of the things I dislike about Christmas is the image of Santa Claus. It seems I’m not alone because there are still some people in Britain who prefer to use the more traditional ‘Father Christmas.’ OK, so here’s a picture of Father Christmas:

He could never catch on in mainstream society, could he? He’s too spartan and spiky, too grimy and grizzled, and altogether too suggestive of the Old Ways and the Old Religion. Father Christmas has pagan roots, whatever we choose to call him, and pagan ways are reserved for the small band of aficionados now.

Christmas is a Christian celebration, and western culture is – for the most part and theoretically at least – the Christian homeland. And so its primary icon has to be seen to spread the message of comfort and cheer to interpret the tidings of comfort and joy. Father Christmas doesn’t match Christmas as we now know it, whereas Santa Claus does.

But does he? Here’s a picture of Santa Claus:

  

What I see here has nothing to do with Christianity. He smacks mostly of corporate America, which has nothing about it remotely connected with the Christian message. And we use him to coerce the children into the habit of proper obedience. ‘You have to be good and do as you’re told or else Santa won’t come and bring you lots of presents.’ I suppose it’s better than using Krampus since the carrot is less severe than the stick, but the Santa Claus method has become a primary tool in teaching children to subscribe to the imperative of material acquisition from an early age. Not very Christian, is it?

‘You’re overstating the case,’ I hear you protest. ‘You’re just being a killjoy. Santa Claus is nothing more than a harmless, sweet old man and we love him.’

Very well. Have it your way. And maybe you’re right. But I still want nothing to do with him.

(Then again, I recall my daughter occasionally reminding me that ‘Santa’ is an anagram of ‘Satan’, so maybe he does have a connection with the Christmas story after all.)

A Further Aside:

I have no idea what these ladies are about, but I'd be surprised if they're wearing underwear:

 

On Being Slightly Less Ignorant.

Being something of a fan of traditional Chinese culture, I decided in an idle moment to Google ‘Chinese art’ to see what delights it would show me. The first example given under ‘Images for Chinese art’ was this:

  

A note of doubt entered the simple mind of JJ. ‘Correct me if I’m wrong,’ I muttered to the wall, ‘but isn’t that Mount Fuji in the background? And isn’t this one of the most famous works by Japan’s most famous artist, Hokusai?’

Knowing myself to be deplorably ignorant in an awful lot of subjects (Hokusai is the only Japanese artist I’ve heard of, for example), I investigated further and discovered that it’s called The Great Wave off Kanagawa and is, indeed, by Hokusai. So now I’m beginning to suspect that whoever chooses the images displayed in the ‘Images for…’ section at Google might be even more deplorably ignorant than I am.

This is Chinese art…

  

…and I rather like it. And at least I’m not so deplorably ignorant that I fail to recognise the significance of the four toes. (It means that it isn’t an imperial dragon because they have five toes. My ex wife taught me that a very long time ago, probably while we were watching an episode of Monkey or The Water Margin. And it’s an odd coincidence that The Water Margin was actually made by a Japanese production company. I’m digressing. End of post.)

Except to say that I also like this one:

  

And I love this Qing dynasty figurine:

  

And I could go on and on, but I won’t.

Added later:

I just discovered that the dragon does has five toes, so it's an imperial one after all. I missed the fifth digit because of where it was placed in the picture. Bloody artists! You'd think they'd understand human frailty and make allowances, wouldn't you?

Sorrowing Over Sarah.

I just read about the murder of a young American student called Sarah Papenheim in the Netherlands. Given the difference in murder rates between the US and Europe, it seems tragically ironic that a young American should come here to continue her education and get killed.

It comes shortly after a young British backpacker of around the same age was murdered in New Zealand. The NZ Prime Minister said ‘She should have been safe in New Zealand. The whole country mourns.’

And that’s why the death of somebody I didn’t know disturbs me as much as it does. Being European, I take it personally.

A Short Muse on Longing and Dreaming.

Lost to sadness and a sense of longing tonight.

One shouldn’t long. The Buddhists say so and I happen to agree with them. Longing is an extended form of desire and desire leads ultimately to suffering. OK; sorted.

But what about that fat woman who sang:

You got to have a dream

If you don’t have a dream

How you gonna have a dream come true?

I heard it on the radio as a kid and it became a sort of mantra. And since I’ve never fully grown up, it sort of still is.

So is longing and having a dream the same thing or two different ones? Gets complicated, doesn’t it, life?

And I don’t know why I’m scribbling this bit of a post. I suppose it’s because I’m about to go to bed and I don’t like doing so on an empty finger. I don’t know whether it’s pointlessly shallow or actually quite deep. I never do when I’m about to go to bed.

Have to be up and out early tomorrow. Hate getting up early. Hate alarm clocks. They stink of authority. My house is cold tonight.

In Place of Self-Rebuke.

I was in a charity shop today where the piped music was not exactly to my taste. I mean, Ave Maria sung by a pretty average tenor with a sugary orchestral accompaniment is a bit close to the knuckle, right? So I thought of asking the woman behind the counter: ‘Who on earth chooses your music?’

And then I remembered that it was the Mind charity shop. Mind is a charity which works to help those with mental health difficulties, and for which I have every respect, and yet I couldn’t help wanting to add: ‘Is it one of the loonies?’

Well, such a thought is just about as non-PC as you can get, isn’t it? It’s the sort of thing which should generate a sizeable amount of shame and the donning of sackcloth and ashes. Ah, but here’s the rub:

As a writer you don’t have to. Writers can take every unwholesome thought and personality trait and apply them to some future character better suited to own them. It’s what we do (and pretend in the process that they come from external observation, not the internal variety.)

So that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it.

On Staring and Sarahs and Things Like That.

Thought I’d reprise an old theme for a change:

You might remember me being concerned a few months ago about the fact that women had taken to smiling at me and I didn’t know why. Well, they don’t any more. They’ve stopped smiling at me now, but a few of them still stare at me unaccountably, only in a non-smiling sort of way. As you might imagine, it’s rather worse than simply being smiled at because it carries a hint of unfriendly intent and I don’t know what I’ve done wrong.

Take the woman in one of the charity shops in Uttoxeter for example. She’s done it quite a few times; she did it again today. And what’s particularly worrying about her is that she has a very pale complexion and doesn’t wear make up. When women with pale complexions and no make up stare at me it reminds me of a recurring nightmare I used to have as a small child, about a mad woman who lived in a nearby tower and was coming to get me. Oddly, she never did and so I never saw her face, but the woman in the charity shop reminds me of what I thought the mad woman would look like if I had - if you see what I mean.

The thing is, I don’t know why she does it. I’ve always behaved perfectly properly in her shop. I’ve never made a fuss or tried to make off with a woolly jumper or shouted at anybody or vomited over the bric-a-brac or anything like that. I’ve even bought the occasional thing from there. I bought a Chinese knot only last week, complete with bronze medallion and red silk tassel, as a present for the Lady Guan Yin who lives in my bathroom. And I’ve never spoken to this woman apart from saying ‘excuse me’ on one occasion when she was in the way, and then saying ‘thank you’ when she moved out of the way, to which she replied ‘you’re welcome’ (which I thought a little odd, but I suppose I shouldn’t have done.)

And yet she will insist on staring at me intensely and unsmiling, as though she’s trying to turn me into a frog. And because she has a pale complexion and doesn’t wear make up, I half believe she might accomplish it one of these days.

I wonder what would happen if I smiled at her. I’ve never seen her smile at anybody, not even those at whom she doesn’t stare intensely. I think I’ll try it the next time I go in just to see what will happen, and because I quite like her really so it wouldn’t be dishonest. And if the worst does come to the worst, it might be interesting to become intimately acquainted with the mindset of a frog. And then a princess might come along and rescue me…

Talking of princesses, did you know that the name Sarah comes from the Hebrew for princess? I only found that out a few months ago, which is an odd coincidence because…

Oh, never mind. It is nice to be writing something slightly nutty again. I have so missed being slightly nutty, but enough is enough.

Vilifying the VIP.

One of the concepts to which human beings in nearly all cultures subscribe is the notion of the VIP. We laud them, applaud them, report on their movements and activities, give them superior accommodation in travel facilities, and so on. We even bow the knee to some of them.

Well, it seems to me that relatively few people are actually very important. Among their number I would include the doctors and other health professionals who work diligently to heal us, the practical people like builders and car mechanics who make and mend things, those who work tirelessly in charitable and social work (often for small salaries or none at all), and the true artists of the various disciplines who use their awareness and skill to inform our perceptions by showing us things we might otherwise miss.

Are these the people we call VIPs? Rarely. Instead, we afford the accolade to celebrities, rich folks, and those who run the world in a dubious way and usually to suit their own interests. (I suppose it has to be admitted that the princes, presidents and prime ministers are important, but usually in a negative sense.)

I just noticed an article, you see, on the BBC World News page to the effect that Beyoncé is to sing at the wedding of two very rich people in India. When you consider how many issues of major significance are happening every day around the world, the fact that the BBC gives valuable space to this little piece of nonsense means they must consider it important. I find this really quite absurd, and I’ve no doubt it’s because one of the people involved is a celebrity and the other two are very rich.

A Rare Positive Film Review.

I watched a British film tonight called A Street Cat Named Bob and enjoyed it more than most films I’ve watched lately. It’s based on a true story about a homeless man and the feline friend who stays with him through thick and thin, even managing to do a high five without being taught.

And the point is that although Bob is adorable and the co-star of the film, it isn’t just about the cat. It’s about homelessness and helplessness and trials and courage and uncaring bureaucracy and relationships and the way in which some human beings react to other human beings. And in the end it’s about a thoroughly nice guy making it through against the odds. I suppose that was what impressed me most because it showed that people are capable of achieving success in the realest sense without being psychopaths, bullies or wealthy morons.

Oh, and I suppose I should mention that the protagonist achieved his elevation from the gutter with help from two exceptional young women, thus amply demonstrating that wisdom is not the sole preserve of the aged ones and youth most certainly not wasted on the young.

(And I really must get around to making that post about the nature of importance. Sometimes I have trouble understanding human priorities.)

On Corporate Vogons and the Illusion.

A couple of my current issues are taking on the air of something written by Lewis Carroll. Or to use another, darker metaphor: they’re becoming Kafkaesque.

This kind of thing riles me badly. I tell the half-wits on the other end of the phone line that the whole situation is absurd, that we’ve been going around in circles for months getting nowhere. And what do I hear in return?

That is the system. Resistance is useless.

Or words to that effect. I’m curious to know how and when the corporate world got taken over by the Vogons. When did the ranks of the customer service facility become populated by minions capable of nothing more than reading from a hopelessly blinkered script even when it makes no sense at all to even a semi-rational mind?

Tonight I made every effort to persuade my own mind that this is just life, and that life is a kind of illusion whichever way you look at it. I told myself to remember my favourite maxim: perception is the whole of the life experience. That being the case, the whole nonsense must be viewed with equanimity.

‘Just keep on walking,’ I tell myself. ‘Do what you need to do and smile at their stupidity. Understand that they’re working for a system which exists solely to make profit, a system which has no heart and is therefore incapable of truly caring for the interests of the customer however much they claim otherwise. Such a claim is just another illusion to add to the others. And if it comes to the point where a formal letter of complaint is warranted, then write one without rancour. Remain calm and rational. It might work or it might not, but in the end it’s only life as we know it. Keep walking and eventually the corporate Vogons will fade into history and the scenery will change again.’

The advice sounded a little Arthurian, and maybe even a little Buddhist. Or Taoist, or Zen, or something like that. As such it appealed to me, but I’m not sure whether I’ve attained such a level yet.

Is this learning? Is it even the seed of enlightenment taking root? Is that why we’re here playing this odd game called life? 

I don't know, but for now the question remains: can I do it? Can I lower the heat on the need to tear heads off because my own head is being fed through a mincing machine? I suppose I’ll find out eventually.

Going Backwards.

I wish I could throw off this dullness which seems to be infecting my brain lately. My sense of humour and whimsy is deflated, my fondness for the silly and the surreal lies languishing like a pan of day old porridge, the delightfully dotty ditties are failing to find access to my beleaguered brain, there are notable and valuable people to whom I can no longer talk because I can’t raise my consciousness to the appropriate level, and even my old friend and mentor the llama is conspicuous by his absence.

Maybe it’s the weather; maybe it’s the fact that the year now sinking below the horizon has been a difficult one; maybe it’s a growing empathic response to the state of the world and the people running it; maybe it’s the perception that the sands of time are running apace; or maybe it’s nothing more than the usual low-light blues of the winter season.

What really worries me is that I might be descending into the grey pit of sanity. That would be a backward step indeed.

But at least I had a heartening dream a few nights ago. I was looking out of my living room window when I saw a mountain lion walking up the garden path. I was just considering whether to go out and see what it wanted when I saw an elephant sauntering up the lane. It didn’t last long, but it was better than the nightmares.

About the Boy.

I have nothing to say tonight because I’m feeling stressed and irritable. That’s because I’m still having issues that have been going on for months and the corporate world continues to demonstrate just how incompetent it can be when it comes to solving relatively simple issues (even when you’re paying them money and they’re very good at finding new ways to try to persuade you to pay them even more.)

So I thought I’d fall back on a simple expedient and post this picture:

 

I do so to demonstrate that:

1. I’m not gay.

2. Somebody liked me once.

3. I’m fond of dogs and know how to protect them from the hot sun.

4. Dogs trust me sufficiently to fall asleep on my foot.

5. I have been known to travel beyond the precincts of the Shire.

6. My dress sense might be described as ‘functional.’

7. The sun does occasionally shine on Scotland.

8. Smiling comes naturally to me.

9. I once owned a wrist watch.

There might be more later, but I doubt it.

And incidentally, a nice lady on YouTube informs me that I have high functioning depression. Another one says people avoid me because I’m an empath. We function as mirrors, apparently, and people don’t like having their flaws reflected back to them. Isn’t life fun? (I still hope there’s pudding.)

Be it as Bus Driver or Brain Surgeon.

When I hear the Establishment figures, the mealy-mouthed managers, the doyens of the corporate world, and the self-righteous educationalists all talking of aspiration and achievement, success and superiority in that arid way they are wont to do, I find it quite disturbing. It all sounds so blinkered to me.

It seems that those who presume to tell us what life is about and how we must go about living it ignore the basic fact that life is fundamentally a matter of travelling from birth to death enjoying the pleasures and coping with the pains along the way. And if you can have more pleasures on that journey, and if you can learn something from the pains, that’s the only success you need. How you go about doing it really doesn’t matter.