Watching America.

This won’t make any sense to anybody who isn’t familiar with the movie Little Miss Sunshine, but to those who are I would like to say this:

I watched it tonight and it was moderately entertaining until it arrived at the kiddies’ ‘beauty’ pageant at the end. And then it asked some dark, disturbing questions, foremost among which was:

Do Americans really make sexualised dolls of pre-pubescent girls and call it wholesome entertainment?

Was that the point of the movie? Am I missing something? I don’t suppose I’ll get an answer.

Challenging the Aussie Dinosaurs.

This is why I have hope for the future of the planet and those who live on it:

 

This is a bunch of Australian school students in Sydney attending a protest against what they see is inadequate action by their government to address climate change. They were ‘ordered’ not to protest by their Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, who said:

"What we want is more learning in schools and less activism in schools."

And the Resources Minister, Matt Canavan, said:

"The best thing you learn about going to a protest is how to join the dole [welfare] queue because that's what your future life will look like."

So once again we have an example of senior politicians trying to sound high and mighty, but only succeeding in condemning themselves with their own stupidity.

To put it very simply: the future belongs to the young and it’s about time the leaders started listening to them and taking them seriously. And it’s becoming increasingly apparent, after all, that the young people get it; the dinosaurs don’t.

Shifting Places.

Call me a traditionalist, but when I watch a film I like to know where it’s set. The sense of place happens to be important to me because it establishes the cultural tone.

So tonight I watched a Studio Ghibli film called Kiki’s Delivery Service and I couldn’t help feeling a little disoriented. All the names in the credits were Japanese, so I was expecting it to be set in Japan. Clearly not: Kiki’s home in the opening sequence looked like an English country cottage, but it couldn’t have been set in Britain because the traffic drove on the right (which also precludes Japan.) And then the characters began to talk and they all had American accents, and Kiki called her mother ‘mom.’ So now we’re in America. Are we? Apparently not because the city where Kiki goes to live has south European/Mediterranean architecture. I began to wonder whether we might soon see the Taj Mahal in the distance or a herd of wildebeest sweeping across the savannah.

This isn’t a criticism; I’m sure they had their reasons and it’s a nice film. But I still felt disoriented.

*  *  *

And on the subject of architecture, I was looking at the Christmas cards in Ashbourne yesterday and noticed how many of them featured Moorish/Middle Eastern architecture (because of the three wise men theme.) Such architecture is one of the classic icons of the world of Islam, which I thought amusingly ironic on a Christmas card. And I wondered how I’ve managed to get this far in life without ever noticing that before. I also wonder how I manage to be this tedious after midnight.

Connected by a Cello.

I’m posting this music video mainly because I think the phrase ‘ghost of a rose’ is one of those phrases which stand out like silver jewels among the shifting sands of the language.

The music is pleasant, too. The melodic phrase which opens the piece is, as I’m sure many will know, lifted straight out of Elgar’s Cello Concerto. I could tell a story about Elgar’s Cello Concerto, but I won’t because I’m slightly ashamed of it.

*  *  *

A young woman with the most darkly compelling eyes kept staring at me today as we passed each other behind the Waitrose store in Ashbourne. I was sure I recognised her and struggled to remember where I’d seen her before. And then I got it. The only other time I’ve seen eyes like those was in another music video on YouTube. They belonged to a young woman cellist who was backing a singer. I watched the video repeatedly for several weeks just to watch the darkly compelling eyes of the cellist, and there they were walking past me behind the Waitrose store In Ashbourne. Isn’t life odd sometimes?

Dipping a Toe into Other Worlds.

Two questions:

1. Do fairies exist?

2. Is the answer to that question a simple yes or no?

You see, I find myself attracted to two theories on the question of reality:

The first has it that our notion of being individual entities operating in a fixed environment is wrong. The environment isn’t fixed, but is to some extent a projection of our perceptions. If that theory is true, then fairies do exist for those who truly believe in them, but don’t for those who don’t.

The second postulates that our environment is fixed, but it isn’t the only environment. Reality is made up of several – maybe an infinite number of – environments, all occupying the same space and time but operating on different wavelengths. In this version, we’re sharing our space with fairies, unicorns, nargles and so on, but we’re not generally aware of them because we’re not trained to recognise wavelengths outside our own spectrum. My own experiences with the Grim and the flock of nocturnal butterflies – not to mention all the things which have mysteriously disappeared and sometimes equally mysteriously re-appeared down the years – leads me to strongly favour this one.

So where do we go from here? Nowhere, because it raises all sorts of ancillary questions around subjects like God, ghosts, death, dreams, magic, insanity, mental aberrations generally, and the effect of mind-altering drugs. All I feel inclined to say further on the matter is:

I’m relieved that I managed to think of a post before reaching midnight on my birthday. Failure to do so would have been a sad dereliction of duty.

If when I die I find that there’s no pudding over there, I’m going to be more than a little disappointed.

Betwixt and Between.

You see, for all my quasi-serious rambling about life, perception, intimations of mortality, and Harry Potter, I’m still left with the suspicion that the secret of making progress lies with understanding time, dimensionality and the limitations of physical laws. And at the moment two things are bothering me:

1. I don’t seem to have sufficient intelligence to do that.

2. At this time of night I shouldn’t be thinking of such things anyway, I should be lapsing into the kind of wholesome silliness which comes closest to giving me a sense of purpose.

This is frustrating. If I’m not bright enough to understand time, dimensionality and the limitations of physical laws, and if I’m also unable to access a state of wholesome silliness, how am I supposed to get through the rest of the night until I’m tired enough to go to bed?

‘Ah,’ you might say, ‘you need a guru.’

No I don’t. Gurus are no use to people like me because we have a built-in resistance to teachers. We have to get there in our own way and our own time. I’ve always been like that. The fact has even been remarked upon, most recently last Thursday. So now I’m confused. Maybe getting drunk might help, but I still don’t fancy the consequences.

I might buy a wrist watch tomorrow. I’ve noticed that normal people mostly have one.

Always Chasing the Carrot.

The Shire today has been excessively dreary. The rise in temperature and shows of occasional sunshine which we were forecast failed to become manifest. Instead it remained cold, the wind rose, the rain became persistent from around lunchtime, and the leaden sky occasioned the need of lights in the house from about 2.30 onwards.

We go into December on Saturday, and so begins the longing for the light time when the busy flight of bats and bees graces the air, butterflies float from flower to flower, moths dance seductively through the balmy evenings, and trees stand proud in their summer finery, whispering as the breeze strokes them instead of hissing in the autumn and falling silent in the winter.

When I was a kid people would tell me not to wish for tomorrow because to do so would be wishing my life away. I believed them of course, but I could never follow their advice. All my life my perceptions and responses have owed more to my prospects than my present, and so I suppose I’ve spent that life wishing it away. When life seemed an endless future this wasn’t a problem, but ever since those dear old intimations of mortality set in it’s seemed a little sad and somehow ironic that my eye was always set firmly on where I was going and largely belittled the experience of the present.

It isn’t too late to change, of course, but I don’t have it in me to change. It’s how I am and how I’ve always been. Christmas Eve was always the best day of the season for my childhood self, while Christmas Day was always an anticlimax. Only on a few rare occasions did I connect unreservedly with the moment. There are times when how you’re made is a life sentence, however much the writers of self-help books like to make money from telling you otherwise.

So how do you think I felt when there was a very real prospect that I would never see the sights of spring and summer again? I felt empty and pointless, that’s how I felt. And now that I’ve been afforded a reason to look forward to another summer, that’s what I’ll do.

One day it will end in that most cataclysmic of moments to which all life is directed, and then I might or might not have a bridge to cross. And when that moment comes, no doubt I shall be more interested in what lies beyond the bridge than the bridge itself. And the irony contained within all the above is that I could never get to where I wanted to be because where I wanted to be was always held firmly on the end of a stick strapped to my back. 

‘I hope there’s pudding’ seems oddly appropriate in the circumstances.

On the Blame Culture.

Another thing which bothers me about life in the west these days is the burgeoning blame culture. Rarely a day goes by when there isn’t somebody somewhere screaming blue murder and demanding that those responsible for this, that or the other have to be brought to account and made to pay.

OK, I know there are certain occasions when such an attitude is entirely justified, and I do know that we all have to be held accountable for our actions. And I know that history is full of examples of the guilty getting away with their crimes on a grand scale because they had money and power (and still are in some parts of the world.) But it’s becoming yet another example of the pendulum swinging madly too far in the opposite direction. It seems we’re losing sight of the fact that the world isn’t perfect and neither are people. Mistakes will happen. We all make them.

When it was discovered that a small leica clip had been left in my bladder after the kidney operation and that I would need a second, minor operation to remove it, I was surprised by how many people told me I should sue. My response might be paraphrased thus:

‘Why should I sue? I had an enormous amount of time, care and expense lavished on me, and all of it aimed at saving my life. I spent six hours on the operating table and four in the recovery room, and at the end of it all the surgeon – a highly skilled and dedicated man according to the staff who knew him – made one small, non life-threatening error which was easily rectified. I wouldn’t dream of suing. Wouldn’t that be a most extreme example of churlishness?’

‘But you could make some money,’ one or two of them replied.

Money, money, money… Money makes the world go round… Doesn’t it all so often come down to this obsession with money which the culture here in the ‘developed’ world so emphatically encourages?

‘But I’ve already had some money,’ I was wont to reply. ‘Lots of it – probably hundreds of thousands of pounds worth in time, effort and care. Why would I want more?’

And do you know what? In the end they all agreed with me, so maybe they were conversations worth having.

A Disturbing Suspicion.

I’ve always wondered how they get shots of babies crying in films and TV dramas. Do they employ somebody to stick pins in it? Or set off loud fireworks in close proximity to its ear? Or maybe somebody jumps up and down wearing a werewolf mask.

My best guess is that they set up a camera and then leave the poor kid alone until it gets so bored or anxious or hungry that the inevitable happens and everybody breathes a sigh of relief. I suppose that’s the kindest option, but it doesn’t ease my sense of disquiet very much.

Rambles After Dark.

All day today I kept having the urge to write a post about the totalitarian nature of the liberal alter-Establishment. But that was earlier. When night falls my serious side tends to evaporate like mist on a summer morning, and instead my mind rises to the level of apathy, silliness, and the making of mountains from matters of minor consequence. And so the post about the totalitarian nature of the liberal alter-Establishment slipped to the bottom drawer and might be resurrected one day, or then again it might not.

And then there was another serious matter knocking on my brain and saying ‘write me’, but I beg to be excused from writing that one because I can’t remember what it was. So what should I write about instead?

Don’t know. Let’s see…

I encountered a few seconds of Strictly Come Dancing tonight while flicking through the TV channels and realised just how much I hate glitz. I had a work colleague once who was big into modernist design and architecture, and he told me that the word ‘fancy’ was probably the word he hated most in the English language. I suppose my dislike of glitz falls into a similar cradle. I really do find glitz vexatious to the spirit, you know. I do. I’m more inclined to favour elegance, style and subtlety. So there: that makes a bit of a mound from a matter of minor consequence.

So what’s next?

I decided that I should make myself a rule: never reveal the existence of your blog to somebody you know personally because it could have deleterious consequences. The person will come to know all sorts of things about you which they never suspected, and then they might never speak to you again. They might give you the cold shoulder when passing you in the street. They might decline to allow their dogs to make friends with you. They might come around to your house late at night and push frog spawn through your letterbox. They might even distribute rumours of such a calumnious nature that passions will become dangerously inflamed and you will be chased to the burning mill with pitchforks.

I made that mistake today, and I think it an undoubted certainty that I shall never hear the words ‘have this one on me’ again.

And now I’m empty of inspiration so I’m going to wash my dishes. Dinner tonight consisted of chips, a green salad, a portion of potato salad, and a piece of bread and butter. And then I had a strange concoction that came in a small plastic pot from Tesco (73p on the clearout shelf because it was on its Use By date.) It was labelled ‘strawberry sundae’, but I’m curious to know what else it contained because it had a strange and not entirely wholesome taste. At the time I suspected that it might have been adulterated with something scraped from the musty floor covering of a house of ill repute, but it probably wasn’t. I expect it was just some junk food manufacturer’s idea of a joke. Such is life now that we’re leaving the EU, even though there aren’t very many people left who still want us to.

(Sorry I lapsed into serious mode at the end.)

A Conversation with My Aunt.

So here I am writing a post about Harry Potter and conspiracy theories. It’s all too silly, isn’t it? Silly seems to be what I do these days. It’s the sort of thing your Aunt Alice would remonstrate with you about.

‘Jeffrey,’ she would say in that implacably calm manner which so endeared me to her (she was the only person who ever called me Jeffrey until Zoe Mintz engaged with the habit a few years ago.) ‘You really should have taken your mother’s advice when you were but a callow youth and sought an apprenticeship with the Michelin Tyre Company while you still had the chance. Instead you succumbed to a life of indelible impoverishment and look what it brought you to.’

‘Indelible?’ I would reply, thinking it an odd choice of adjective.

‘Well you can’t rub it out, can you? It’s too late now. The moving finger writes, and all that.’

‘Oh I see. I suppose you’re right.’

‘But at least your impoverishment had a certain honourable air about it. You used to be so earnest once; you used to write such sensible things, and now you’ve descended into rampant silliness and I really don’t know what to make of you. You’ll be writing about imaginary llamas next. Couldn’t you see your way to writing about sensible things again?’

‘What did you have in mind, Aunt?’

‘There, you see: you don’t even know what sensible means any more. I despair of you, I really do.’

Well, there you have it. Maybe I should be grateful that Aunt Alice died quite a long time ago.

It’s just that life on the surface of civilised society is so tedious. Brexit, Brexit, Brexit is all we’re hearing about these days. We’re being force fed so much bloody Brexit that it’s pouring out of every orifice and turning the place into a sludgy cesspit reeking of rancid politicians.

And so I ask you: what is so wrong with elevating your tortured mind to the level of the fictional, the fantastical and the unknowable? It all makes so much more sense to me than the economy, international relations, and the price of school meals in the age of austerity.

(Zoe Mintz doesn’t call me Jeffrey any more, by the way, because Zoe Mintz doesn’t write to me any more. And I do wish the dear old llama would show up again because I miss him. But at least there’s still pudding.)

Harry Potter and the Grassy Knoll.

I made this comment in a post recently:

And am I the only person who thinks Hermione Granger is the perfection of womankind, except when she’s descending the staircase at the Tri Wizard’s Ball looking like a CGI representation of a soggy Disney princess?

Well, I came across this recently:

  

Freaky, eh? Same colour dress… and the kid on the left is surely Harry sans specs. So is this something we don’t know about? Did the soulless muggles at Disney make an animated version of Harry Potter, all based on the one scene in the whole franchise to which they could relate? And did some discerning wizard point his wand and consign the whole project to the deepest and darkest depths where only baselisks roam? (Well, slither I suppose.) I don’t suppose we’ll ever know, but I reckon it beats the lone gunman question.

The Movement Morphing.

I was just listening to Melanie singing Look What They’ve Done to My Song, Ma, and my mind went straight to the hippie movement. It’s hard to believe now that it ever happened. All those people standing up for peace and light and tolerance. ‘Make love, not war,’ they cried as they held out flowers to the good ol’ boys of the National Guard.

And the system crushed it; and the disillusioned gave up and became corporate executives and bankers; and the pecuniary principle held sway; and America gave the world the gift of Trump; and the psychopaths and bullies tightened their grip on humanity, and the world became darker.

But I do believe that the battle is now joined in more subtle ways. I do believe there’s hope that light might ultimately prevail. I do.

Another Film Review.

Merely a trailer to be precise. The new Mary Poppins movie no less, which I've just seen on YouTube. Mmm, let’s see: what’s it got?

I’d say it has less charm than a week-dead codfish and less soul than a flake of eczema from a rabid dog’s nether regions. It’s overprojected and over loud, and Emily Blunt resembles a second rate am-dram thespian as she shamelessly overplays the posh Englishwoman with lots of mouth but no flair. But maybe it wasn’t her fault. Maybe she was acting under the orders of a director who wouldn’t know a posh Englishwoman from an Essex girl on her tenth vodka. Frankly, the only place for this director is in the garbage bin with the discarded kite.

I wasn’t impressed, and neither was I surprised when I learned that it was made by Disney Studios. I seem to be having a dismal time with Disney this week. Or maybe it was just a bad trailer. And I expect everybody will disagree with me. The human race usually does.

On Researcher Fatigue.

I was reading a day or two ago that researchers in the UK and US have discovered that alcohol consumption rises in the winter. They conclude that it has something to do with adverse mental factors attaching to the cold and low light levels, and they are now insisting that alcohol advertising be greatly reduced during the winter months.

The first thing that needs to be said about this is that if people perceive a need to drink alcohol in order to get them through the depressing season, they will do it whether alcohol is advertised or not. But I think there’s a bigger issue here.

I’m growing ever more troubled by the fact that western culture is becoming increasingly oppressed by researchers and their demands for remedial action. Research is a fact of modern life and much of it is genuinely useful, but I think we’ve reached a point where overkill is becoming a serious problem. It seems that hardly a day passes when there isn’t some body of researchers somewhere demanding prohibitions and the living of life by numbers. It’s stifling and unwelcome, and it’s also probably counter-productive because people grow tired of the pressures and confused by the messages, and then fatigue sets in. You encounter a headline which says ‘Researchers discover that…’ and don’t bother to read any further. I suspect it even exacerbates the level of increased stress which is becoming a major issue of modern times.

I think we need to lighten up. In fact, I’m sure we do. I might even go so far as to suggest that a substantial proportion of the academics working in research need to be taken out of their laboratories and given something more useful to do.

So who decides which research should be wound down and which shouldn’t. That’s the difficult part. Couldn’t we somehow learn to rely on common sense? Or maybe we could simply limit research to a defined number of factors which are undoubtedly of paramount importance, like climate change, cures for major killer diseases, the fostering of humanitarian values, and how to get Donald Trump speedily committed to a maximum security asylum.

On Lions and the American Way.

Can you believe that I’ve never seen the movie The Lion King? As far as I’m able to judge, every person on planet Earth knows and loves The Lion King. Except me.

Well, today I found a copy of the DVD in the village book exchange and decided it was time to lay this troublesome ghost to rest. I made 15 minutes and 41 seconds tonight before I could stand the assault on my sensibilities no longer and switched it off.

It began promisingly with, insofar as the limitations of the animated format would allow, a reasonable evocation of the Romance of Africa. And the opening song was a splendid African one sung by a splendid African voice in some splendid African language.

And then it went downhill rapidly: down, down, down into that deep vat of excessively sugary gloop on which Disney Studios founded its unenviable reputation. When it got to the point where two little lion cubs began singing a typically soggy, Disneyesque song in the kind of voice explicitly reserved for the classic, pre-pubescent American brat, my strength of purpose evaporated. Shame, but there it is.

 

Did you know that lionesses will sometimes gang

up on a lone male and kill it?

(And I’m aware that my posts of late have exhibited an apparent hint of anti-American bias. Sorry, Americans; no offence meant. It’s just that I’ve felt a little swamped lately by manifestations of the negative side of the American image – most notably Trump, Walt Disney, gun crime, and support for the alt-right Establishments in Israel and Saudi Arabia. Trump’s assertion that the Saudi regime is a fine and upstanding one because it buys lots of American guns is both irrational and difficult to swallow. I expect I’ll get over it.)

Nice and Nightmarish.

You might remember the woman from the coffee shop in Uttoxeter who I’ve mentioned a couple of times recently. She was the one who said ‘have this one on me’ when I told her my scans were clear. Well, I learned her name today. It’s Christabel.

I remember reading AS Byatt’s novel Possession a few years ago and being mildly captivated by the character of Christabel LaMotte. It was the name that first drew me in, and I remember thinking what a lovely name Christabel is. It hints at gentle strength, feminine sensibilities, and maybe a little fairy heritage somewhere along the line. I was also struck by the fact that I’d never – to my knowledge at least – met a Christabel. Well, now I have. Isn’t that nice?

In other news, I’m currently encountering issues of the most absurd nature with my ISP, my energy supplier, and my mobile phone network. Try as I might, I’m not getting anywhere and the whole experience is beginning to feel like one of those nightmares out of which you simply cannot wake.

I'm a bit obsessed with nightmares at the moment. Mostly they happen when I'm asleep, but today I had one walking through the town while a cold wind blew and the reluctant sun reclined wearily on the rooftops. I was locked in a room with no means of escape and there was a Daniel O'Donnell album playing day and night on a loop. I got rescued by a fresh cream doughnut.

How a Thought Does Travel.

I just watched an American movie called The Angel Doll. I’m afraid I wasn’t impressed. The problem was that it constantly trod the fine line between the moving and the mawkish, and too often it slipped on the syrup, became disoriented, and wandered off in the wrong direction, especially at the end.

I went into the kitchen musing on this unfortunate state of affairs and decided that I would have liked to be around a movie theatre when it was being shown. It amused me to think that I could have run onto the stage just before the lights went down and yelled to the audience: Hey, everybody. The kid dies. There are times when eschewing the spoiler alert is indeed a blessing.

Sorry, Americans, but this is something to which you appear to be habitually prone. You will insist on losing the plot and loading the bowl of pathos with so much sugar that the brew becomes unpalatable.

*  *  *

But then that phrase ‘the kid dies’ reminded me of one of my earliest memories. I was around six when I was taken to see an old British film called A Kid for Two Farthings. I well remember bawling so loudly when the young goat died that I had to be removed from the auditorium because I was irritating the rest of the audience. I think I was even told off for it by my mother, but I might have imagined that bit. (I always was a martyr to guilt.)

The point is that if one of the humans had died I wouldn’t have given a tuppeny toss. But the goat? The other memory I have is of wanting the man responsible for the animal’s demise to be killed slowly, methodically and painfully. I got over it, of course; I’ve never been one to bear grudges for very long. And yet I wonder whether that little incident was the source of my loathing for mawkishness.

*  *  *

And then another thought occurred to me. Back in the days when I was of interest to attractive young ladies, I never met one who invited me back to her place and won my affection with the words: ‘Would you like to come and meet my goat?’ What an event that would have been; I think it might even have beaten ‘may I make you a baked Alaska?’ to the gold medal of fond memories, but the sun of abundant fortune never smiled quite strongly enough.

The Fruits of a Whim.

I sometimes wonder how I would feel if I suddenly won or was given a large sum of money (or even if my novel were to be published by a mainstream publisher and became a best seller and so I sort of earned it.) I don’t think I would feel anything because I don’t know what I would do with it, and that’s because I can’t think of anything to buy with a large sum of money that I actually want.

I suppose it’s because I don’t seem to be interested in anything any more (apart from the sensation I get when I walk in a quiet wood and feel half convinced that there are invisible beings around me, and then question whether I would really like to see them and connect with them because they might be nasty and fierce and want to cause me Pain and Distress.)

Occasionally I read lists of interests in other people’s blog profiles and think: ‘Nobody could be interested in all those things. They’d burst.’ And then I hear a disembodied voice say: ‘Just because you have the intellectual range of a teaspoon…’

I think part of the reason for all this is the fact that, in spite of the assurance given to me by the medical profession that I’m doing just fine and can carry on living, I don’t really believe them. I still think I’m probably dying, and so there wouldn’t be any point in having a lot of money because there probably isn’t the time left to enjoy it (that’s if there was anything I wanted, which there isn’t – except maybe a house in a remote location which was free of neighbours and warm in the winter.)

At other times I don’t think I’m dying at all; rather I think my inherent strangeness is simply coming of age and assuming the role of alpha persona. At such times I imagine I’m becoming a sort of masculine, negative version of Luna Lovegood. But maybe this is a poor analogy because much of the time I just want to go to sleep. When you’re not interested in anything there doesn’t seem a lot of point in staying awake.

And I don’t know why I’m writing all this. It just came to me half an hour ago on one of those things people call a whim. And then I had another sub-whim to the effect that I would like to grace my blog with a picture of a pretty woman. Accordingly, I entered ‘Images of pretty women’ in a Google search with the intention of choosing and publishing my favourite, but I couldn’t find one. They were all wearing make up. Such is the Google mentality.

I did, however, find a song which vaguely matches the indigo periphery of the current mood (and the woman on the cover is moderately pretty in spite of the lipstick) so I’ll publish that instead.

Steaming.

I’m having an angry day today. Everything I encounter is making me angry. YouTube videos – and especially the woolly-minded and hatefully obsequious comments – are making me angry. News reports are making me angry. Crappy American films reflecting the crappier side of American culture are making me angry. Corporate customer service assistants who try to manipulate me into doing their bidding while getting the facts wrong and talking complete gobbledegook in the process are making me angry. (Especially the latter. Where does the corporate world get its customer service assistants from? The ranks of Bedlam dropouts?) And am I the only person who thinks Hermione Granger is the perfection of womankind except when she’s descending the staircase at the Tri Wizard’s Ball looking like a CGI representation of a soggy Disney princess?

I fancy getting properly drunk, but I wouldn’t like the consequences.

(And talking of Hermione Granger - and just in case anybody is interested - my 'perfect woman' had to have all the following attributes:

1 Not wearing make up because she didn't need it.
2 Being dressed either in a baggy sweater and scruffy jeans, or one of my shirts and nothing else.
3 Having long, natural and unrestrained hair.
4 Being blessed with an open mind on matters existential.
5 Being possessed of more intelligence than me so she could slap me down with a velvet glove whenever I started talking nonsense.

I was always turned off by pretentious make up, plastic hair, ball gowns, and frilly lingerie.

And still I never found one. And now I'm too old, so none of it matters anyway.

The American Sitcom Continues.

I was just reading the news report about the judge ordering the White House to re-instate CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s press pass. Sarah Sanders said that the order will be complied with, but went on to say that the administration will ‘also further develop rules and processes to ensure fair and orderly press conferences in the future.’ The best bit was yet to come, however:

‘There must be decorum at the White House,’ she added.

Decorum at the White House? With Trump in charge? Thanks for the laugh, Ms Sanders.

An Individual's View of Reality.

Throughout my many brushes with the hospital this year I had a stock reply to the question: ‘Are you allergic to anything?’

Yes. Politicians and celebrities.

Sometimes I let it pass and sometimes I varied it, but you get my drift.

So how do you think I feel when I see that the incredible, incomparable, irrepressible Hermione Granger grew up to be a celebrity called Emma Watson? I feel troubled. That’s because, to me, a compelling fantasy of substantial value is more real than a celebrity.

So does that make me a fantasist? No, it makes me a realist.

Why?

Because perception is the whole of the life experience. Why else?

Looking for Something Different.

There was a programme on one of the TV channels today which had something to do with appreciating our beautiful planet. At one time I would have been highly attracted to such a programme, but the appeal is waning now. I still recognise its visual attributes, but somehow it isn’t enough. These days I’m becoming ever more consumed with the search for other, more intriguing, realities which might or might not co-exist with this one but on different wavelengths.

The difficulty with such a search is that the key to unlocking the door is seemingly held in a part of the consciousness of which most of us are unaware, since western culture doesn’t see fit to advise us on such matters. In my case the difficulties of the past year have led me to sometimes feel that I’m getting close, but then it always vanishes into the distance again.

And there are times when I wish I had more of a sense of conviction to promote the effort, but then I would fear that psychosis really was setting in. For now I suppose I’ll just have to keep an open mind while walking on the far edge of the herd, peering at the darkness in the opposite direction. Maybe the solution is obvious: if there’s no one alive to show me how to look, maybe I need to talk to someone who’s dead.

*  *  *

Nearly time for a beer, and then maybe sleep will bring more of those dreams about crumbling houses and alien places and being a long way from home. And my legs still ache from excessive walking and garden work today.

A Thought on Sex and Romance.

To some people, romance is the injection of fuel that ignites the engine of their affections and sets them on the path of a lifelong journey. To others it is an episodic phenomenon driven by the insatiable need for repeated exploration of new ground. And the latter is not to be confused with the instinct of a rake. To the true rake, romance is an alien concept.

As for sex, the notion that it is somehow connected with romance is a delusion generated by cultural and religious conditioning. Romance is a function of the higher mind which simply arouses the grubbier end of the Id and lends it a measure of disingenuous validity.

I learned this when I was eighteen and had two notable relationships, both indubitably romantic. Mary played midwife to my impatient libido, Pauline didn’t. And I was always a Type 2 romantic.

And let it not be said that I ever had the emotional range of a teaspoon. My emotional range was more on the scale of a paddle steamer’s blade, so maybe I’m not talking the complete rubbish some might think I am.

Irritated by Overkill.

I ordered a bag of 80 cod liver oil capsules online yesterday (£5.49 incl p&p – for the benefit of my worn-out-through-overwork-knee, you understand.) Today I got an email from the supplier which said:

Good news about your order!

(Note the exclamation mark. It’s what makes good news great news.)

Your order has been shipped and it will be with you soon!

(Another exclamation mark, just to leave you in no doubt that this really is great news.)

Look: I order something online, I pay for it by credit card, they send it to me. That’s all that’s going on here. If you went into your local grocery store and asked for a Hovis thick sliced loaf and a bottle of milk, and the guy behind the counter proudly presented them intoning ‘Great news, Mr Customer! Your bread and milk is herewith produced! Haven’t I done well?’ you’d think he had a screw loose, wouldn’t you?

And that’s one of the things I find disturbing about online shopping. It does so encourage mindless hyperbole.

Rambling Randomly.

So, here I am. The medical people have given me the green light to carry on living, for the time being at least, and now I’m ready to take up the old blog again. Only I haven’t got anything to talk about. Isn’t it always the way?

I thought of talking about the letter I sent to the Home Secretary this afternoon, but decided it was a matter between me, the Home Secretary, and my new-found resolution to be a better person. Besides, having made the effort to write the letter, I couldn’t be bothered to write a blog post about it as well. And then there was the matter of the names of the two African women who were the subject of said missive. They were African names and consequently difficult to spell. Having struggled over them once, I think that should be enough.

Maybe I should talk about tipping instead – the kind of tipping where you give money to waiting staff in restaurants and suchlike in recognition of their service (apart from in America, of course, where I gather it forms the major part of their remuneration no matter what the standard of service. But let’s not talk about America where the value system, and cultural mores generally, are something of a mind-boggling mystery to most of the rest of the world. And who am I to judge?)

I disagree with tipping. I think it should be banned. Why? Read on if you can be bothered.

Tipping gives waiting staff a reason to be nice to you, but they shouldn’t need one. They should be nice to people because being nice is a nice way to be. So if a waiter or waitress is nice to you, you don’t know whether it’s because he or she is a nice person, or because they want you to give them some extra money to bolster their wages. And that makes the question of authenticity obscure. I like authenticity; in fact, I value it greatly. And that’s why I disagree with tipping.

In the unlikely event that anybody agrees with me, don’t worry about it. You’re just as sane as I am.

And pudding tonight was what it usually is – a thick piece of buttered toast with a liberal spreading of jam (or sometimes marmalade.) It’s a lot cheaper than trifle and you don’t have to worry about the Use By date.

(Actually, I’m still waiting for somebody to make me a baked Alaska. I’ve been waiting all my life and time is running out.)

A Rare and Welcome Occurence.

I was given a gift today. The receiving of gifts is something of a rarity in my life, so it always comes as a shock when it happens.

Remember the young woman in the coffee shop I mentioned last week, the one to whom I remarked that her irrepressible niceness seemed authentic? She served my coffee today and asked me how I was.

‘Or are you still not sure?’ she continued. I told her about the latest scans being clear, and she smiled.

‘Have this one on me,’ she said when I held out the price of an Americano with cream.

I felt – and probably looked – incredulous. I asked ‘Why?’

She said nothing, just looked back at me and smiled nicely. No compliments, forced or otherwise, just a smile. Isn’t that sweet? And genuine, so it seems I was right.

It’s at such times that the weight of living life among my species is considerably lightened, and I suspect the Lady Fu was behind it. The nargles were conspicuous by their absence.

*  *  *

I really must stop referencing Harry Potter. People will begin to think I’m strange.

On Being Targeted.

I keep getting an advert from ebay on my email home page for a non-wired soft bra. I’m not quiet sure how today’s supposedly targeted advertising manages to think that I might be interested in such a product – and I can only make an educated guess at what a non-wired soft bra is anyway, since lingerie never appealed to me, not even when it had an attractive young woman strapped into it – but the point is this:

It’s called the Naturana 86954. Makes it sound like the latest surface-to-air missile, doesn’t it? I wonder whether Trump has ordered a few with which to threaten the Iranians (or whoever he happens to be threatening today.)

Stress and Stuff.

It occurred to me today that life is too short to be wasted on pursuing a career.

It’s not a position I’m taking seriously and so I don’t need to explain or defend it. I certainly haven’t wasted my life on pursuing a career, but that had more to do with my need of freedom and a predilection for radical change when the situation permitted.

And yet I’m still tempted to wonder whether people in the developed world are less happy these days than they used to be, now that they’re forced to endure the twin stresses of aspiration and competition from an early age. It seems that nowhere is this truer than in Japan where they have an alarmingly high rate of school age suicide. (I gather they have an unenviable rate of working age suicides, too.) Is that merely coincidental?

For most of history people simply got on with following the road allotted to their class. In the case of the class in which I grew up, it meant that the men went off and laboured in the fields, factories and coal mines, while the women submitted themselves to a different form of labour and then spent their days tending to the consequences. Hardly an ideal situation, I know, but if it’s stress you’re concerned about you do have to wonder whether we’ve simply jumped from the rock to the hard place.

But this is all tediously familiar, and I really must resist the tendency to be tedious now that I’ve been released from limbo and sent back to the land of the living (albeit temporarily, I expect.) I need to rediscover my sense of humour if I’m to have a place to call home.

*  *  *

I haven’t seen my friend the llama for a long time. I wonder whether it was something I said.

*  *  *

The Shire is unusually colourful this autumn. Even my favourite oak tree in Church Lane had golden leaves today. Oak trees are not normally associated with autumn colour, that distinction being reserved more for the beeches and sycamores. I’ve certainly never seen this particular oak dressed in golden leaves before, yet there it was as I walked up the rise, washed by the pale autumnal sun and looking quite resplendent.

*  *  *

I hope there’s pudding.

Falling on Stony Ground.

I put a comment on a YouTube track by Natalia Tsarikova a couple of months ago. It was complimentary, but then digressed in the middle paragraph which read:

I only ever met one Russian woman in my whole life. She was working as a checkout operator in an English supermarket and patted my hand in congratulation when I successfully identified her accent. She didn't look like Natalia, though. I suspect she might have been a goat herder from Siberia, but who can tell?

Now, isn’t that worth 100 likes? It didn’t get any. The man who wrote:

Very Good. Nice song and music…

… got 146. I decided that either YouTube commenters have no taste, or foreign people (foreign to me, that is) just don’t get my sense of humour. (Having said which, a lot of British people don't get my sense of humour either.) But then I console myself with the sure and certain conviction that approbation by all but the chosen few is of no consequence.

Your Culture Needs You.

This is one of the many recruiting posters devised for and on behalf of Her Excellency Mother Culture. The subtext reads:

If you join me in the glorious wage slave revolution, if you toe the line with only a minimum of acceptable questioning, if you agree that the privations attaching to the primitive persuasion are the due reward of the lower life forms, if you accept that the space between the tram lines as defined by me is the only proper place to subsist, if you follow my commands and conditioning at all times, and if your aspirations are limited to those which I say are worthy, then you, too, can have little glass ornaments to make your Christmas season all the more joyful.

I sometimes wonder how we got here.

Reasons to Feel Fortunate.

I went to the hospital for yet another procedure today. When you go to hospitals for procedures they run you through a questionnaire first, to find out whether you’re allergic to latex, have any metal parts fitted, are wearing clean socks just in case you have to take your shoes off… that sort of thing. One of the questions they routinely ask is ‘do you have any problem with your kidneys?’

Only a 50% deficiency.

‘I’m sorry?’

Well, I know it sounds like the Monty Python sketch about the man with three buttocks, but I have a 50% deficiency in the kidney department. One of your blokes cut me open and removed one of them back in March. Whether he took it home and fried it up with some onions and a dash of Tabasco sauce – and if he did, whether he ate it himself or fed it to his dog – I wouldn’t know. On the other hand he might have done neither, in which case I’m curious to know whether the poor little organ was given a proper funeral as was undoubtedly its due, but nobody ever said.

‘So you only have one kidney?’

Yes.

That conversation should have happened, but didn’t unfortunately. They didn’t ask me any questions about kidneys today so I needn’t have bothered rehearsing it. Instead they asked a very small number of questions and then got on with the uncomfortable, briefly painful, and considerably demeaning business of examining the inside of my bladder.

Have you ever seen the inside of a bladder? It’s disgusting. The veins look like those little mealworms you find under stones when the ground is damp. I suppose I should consider myself fortunate that there were no beetles, earwigs or wood lice in evidence. And the young registrar performing the procedure with all the studied indifference of a North Korean torture consultant didn’t find anything untoward either. That’s two reasons to feel fortunate.

And did you know that you don’t have to take your shoes off when they examine the inside of your bladder? That’s a pity because I’d been especially diligent in ensuring that my socks were fresh on this morning so as to avoid the shame of costing the NHS a squirt of air freshener subsequent to my departure.

Oh, and they also advised me, upon being questioned, that the CT scans I had three weeks ago (on the results of which I have been fretting less than manfully for twenty one days) also showed nothing untoward. It appears I’m as clean as I was before this whole damn business started and am quite likely to live through another winter after all. I suppose that’s three reasons to feel fortunate. There’s a possibility that I might even start blogging again before too long.

*  *  *

But tonight the DVD player in my computer packed up when I still had five episodes of Father Ted to watch. Is fortune faltering, I wonder.

A Flawed Aspiration.

I sometimes amuse myself through the empty evening hours by reading the profiles of other bloggers whose listed favourites have something in common with mine. I suppose I’m curious to know whether Hermione Granger is hiding among the flotsam and jetsam of mankind, playing hide and seek for amusement now that Hogwarts has faded into the ether of history and she’s been cast adrift among the muggles. I haven’t found her yet – and never expect to. I suspect her cloak of invisibility is sewn tightly shut and that the nargles are probably behind it.

What I did find tonight was a woman who listed among her interests the desire to inspire others to fulfil their hopes and dreams in life. I find that arrogant, didactic, presumptuous and ego-driven. It seems to me that inspiring others is fine as long as you don’t do it consciously. It’s fine as long as you do it by simply being yourself. Most of all, it’s fine as long as you take no credit for any effect your example might have.

(Tomorrow is scheduled to be a day of inconvenience, discomfort and revelation. Big revelation. I admit to feeling rather more than nervous.)

Second Hand Humour.

My sense of humour is the latest casualty of The Situation. That’s a disappointment because it’s usually the last of my personality traits to fall asleep when the days turn dark, but fall asleep it has. I can, however, still recognise humour in others.

Last night I was reading some comments on a YouTube compilation of Harry Potter scenes. One man – presumably not a native English speaker – said that he would love to be at Hogwarts where he could wear an invisible clot and spend his time making poisons.

I chose not to correct his deficient vocabulary. It seemed churlish, given that his amusing imperfection in the matter of my language is more than matched by my complete ignorance of his.

One Duty Done.

I finally got around to telling the woman in the coffee shop that her irrepressible niceness seemed authentic, and that such a quality is not as common as one might reasonably expect in the catering trade. (Well, there are certain things you just have to do when you have reason to suspect that the grim reaper might be coming too close for comfort.) She assured me that it was, and demonstrated the fact by confiding that people find her chirpiness irritating first thing in the morning.

Such a short and superficial conversation, but still a minor obligation discharged. And if it does transpire that I’m to carry on regardless, maybe it will serve as a signal to start a little bridge-building.

Not Getting Emma Watson.

At the moment I'm highly nervous about what I might learn from my friendly consultant later this week with regard to my future prospects. That’s why I haven’t been adding sweet and sour little nothings to this blog. Nevertheless, something is irritating me and so I decided to come out of my shell and let off some steam.

Ever since my recent three week love affair with the Harry Potter movies (and Hermione Granger in particular) I’ve been watching quite a few themed compilations on YouTube. So what does the Google machine - which is programmed to assess my every whim and offer me more of like kind - now give me as a recommended topic? It gives me Emma Watson.

So let me ask a question here. Why would I be interested in Emma Watson just because she played the incomparable Hermione Granger in a series of movies? Emma Watson is an actor, effectively a mobile mannequin. None of the roles Ms Watson has played or ever will play can be relied upon to give any indication of her own nature. Such intelligence is known only to her and those close to her. It certainly isn’t known to me and I see no reason why it should be.

Let’s put this simply, albeit figuratively: To those who don’t know her, Emma Watson isn’t real. To fans of Harry Potter, however, Hermione Granger is very real. What’s more, she’s the closest I’ve ever encountered to the perfect woman. For all I know, Emma Watson might be about as interesting as a plate of cold cabbage. And the point is this: I really don’t care whether she is or not, which is why I'm not interested in watching videos about her. Or let’s put it another way: when it comes to the matter of drama, it’s the characters who are important, not the actors.

So please, clever people at YouTube, do stop assuming that I’m one of those drooling inadequates who hang around stage doors no matter what the climatic conditions in the hope of having the opportunity to say ‘Please, Miss Watson, please may I have your autograph. I thought you were absolutely brilliant.’ I’m not, so please stop it.