On Summer's End and the Metamorphosis.

So what do I have to say on this, the last day of summer? Summer officially ends tonight in Britain. The Met Office decrees it.

Well, I’d say that I haven’t really enjoyed this summer as much as I would like to have done. How much of this is imagination I don’t know, but it seemed that we had too many days when it rained, too many cold nights, and too much wind. And I couldn’t perambulate the lanes, footpaths and woods of the Shire because this vascular problem with my leg wouldn’t allow it. Summer used to be mostly about perambulation, to sink into a sense of nature and the elements and the landscape, but not this year. And what’s more, as we come to the end of it I don’t know who is still in my life and who isn’t.

Not that it matters much because I’m developing a new sense of self-perception. I’m starting to feel like one of those characters in sci-fi movies who’s been bitten by some strange animal or alien entity and is now morphing into something inhuman. Not necessarily sub- or superhuman, you understand, just inhuman.

Because I often consider the question of whether I feel superior or inferior to the run of humanity, and the answer is ‘sometimes one, sometimes the other, but ultimately neither.’ The simple fact is that I’ve never felt I belonged to the herd. No matter what situation I was in, I always felt apart from the rest. Sometimes it was a mere hand span of distance, and sometimes a country mile. And now when I look in the mirror I see a creature lifted straight from the X Files, and it all makes sense.

Being an Alternative Heathcliff.

Somebody asked me a strange question recently. She said: ‘Are you my Heathcliff?’

Now, anybody who has been reading this blog of late should have a fairly accurate picture of me by now. They will surely have detected the curious fusion of Eeyore, Emmett Brown and Quasimodo which makes up my persona. It isn’t a very edifying mix and hardly makes me a candidate to be Catherine Earnshaw’s soul mate. That much should be obvious. (It would have made more sense if she’d said: ‘My name is Esmeralda and I have no wish to swing on any bells with you.’)

And yet it’s true. She did say that. And it might surprise you to know that I have had two Catherine Earnshaws in my life. And the problem with Catherine Earnshaws is that eventually they always attract an Edgar Linton into the picture and you know what they say about three being a crowd.

So it is with me. I can’t do threes. Three is the best of numbers but the worst of combinations in the matter of connection.

‘May I bring my friend Edgar along on Wednesday night? He would like to meet you.’

No

‘Why not?’

Because I can only relate to people on a one-to-one basis. It’s the only way the energy of connection can flow. The psychic pathways need to be clear of obstruction if any melding of minds is to be achieved, and such an objective is necessary if I’m to find our companionship worthwhile. Edgar would get in the way.

‘But he’s a really nice man, and very interesting to talk to.’

That isn’t the point. Resistance is useless.

And the thing is, you see, I don’t have the wherewithal to do what the original Heathcliff did: go up to Edgar and say: ‘Now look ’ere Edgar, tha great dumb cowpat. Don’t tha presume to come between me an mah Cathy or ah’ll knock tha stupid block off and watch it roll all t’way to bloody Keighley.’ Or words to that effect.

(Those who don’t quite follow the subtleties of Yorkshire English needn’t worry. I don’t either.)

And there’s another big difference between the original Heathcliff and yours truly. As far as I recall, he and his Cathy were roughly comparable in age, whereas my Cathys are considerably younger than me. Which means that I’ll almost certainly die before they do. And that means that after I’m gone they’ll be the ones to get to get the comfort of a bed, while I’ll be the one standing outside on a winter’s night so cold as to set Pennistone Crag dragging its proud Yorkshire bulk southwards, pushing a pleading hand through the window and begging to be let in.

Let the haunting commence. Edgars needn’t worry.

*  *  *

Only kidding.

Back on the Rocky Road.

I did predict it, didn’t I? Yesterday’s sojourn through the Land of the Contented was but a brief respite on the road. Normal service has now been resumed. The issues started landing on my head when I first went outside this morning and continued – along with the wet stuff – for the rest of the day. As I sat in the coffee shop this afternoon I took encouragement from the fact that nothing in this physical realm is permanent. Even the Himalayas are merely enduring.

And it seems the momentous meeting with the Exalted One will definitely not now happen. I suppose it’s my fault for taking too long to change my mind. She’s gone the other way to Kazakhstan, there to climb mountains, commune with her new companion, and cultivate a profound appreciation of trees.

(It appears I’m incapable of avoiding the lure of the alliterative even when my version of reality is curdling like a month old bottle of milk. I blame Mr Poe and his … Darkness, Decay, and the Red Death held illimitable Dominion… Bloody Americans.)

I feel demoted.

Tomorrow I start dealing with the consequences of today. What I can’t do anything about is the fact that Boris Johnson just murdered democracy.

The Stranger in My Body.

It’s an odd fact that sometimes I can walk along a high street feeling a sense of my own presence. And when it happens I want everybody else to sense my presence, too, because at such times I want to be seen. At other times I feel small and insignificant and want to remain invisible. For most of my life the former was very much in the ascendant, but over the past few years the polarity has swung the other way.

Today was a positive day when I wanted to be seen. I smiled a lot, too, especially at the little girl of around two who was being carried in her mother’s arms. She turned to look at me and smiled. And then she waved. There’s something rather cosmic about being smiled and waved at by a little girl you’ve never seen before. It feels like a message from some higher realm telling you that everything will be all right in the end.

But now I feel a little concerned that my accustomed grumpiness hasn’t quite returned to normal yet. I expect it will be back in full swing by tomorrow morning.

And I had another first today. I saw a dog wearing sunglasses. She was a rather lovely, straw-coloured German Shepherd, and the frames of the shades were coloured black and psychedelic pink. Her human was wearing sunglasses, too, although his frames were plain black. I might have remarked ‘cool dog, man’ if only I’d had the chance, but I didn’t.

But I did at least have the opportunity to say ‘welcome’ to the group of foreign people who were sitting at the next table outside the coffee shop. It was warm and sunny and they were laughing at something being said to them through their iPhone. I like seeing foreign people looking relaxed and happy in my country. There’s something wholesome about it. They said ‘thank you.’

I said I was in a good mood today, didn’t I? Heaven knows how the LSD or fairy dust got sprinkled onto my cornflakes this morning.

Comparisons.

My daughter says Wallander reminds her of me. Mel says Dr House reminds her of me. If I took these things on board I could get quite confused, couldn’t I, although I do recognise a couple of points of similarity between them. They’re both diligently searching for some sort of truth and they both have intense personalities. Whether or not either is like me is for others to say, since I don’t know who I am.

Then again, does anybody? The question ‘who am I?’ can be simple enough to answer at shallower levels, but it’s one of those questions which, if you pursue it far enough, disappears into a black hole in which pragmatic reasoning gets a bit lost.

Blue Mornings.

I really must stop reading the news in the morning. There’s something odd going on with mornings these days. Every morning after I’ve risen from an oft-truncated sleep I feel weak, tired, dizzy, depressed and dysfunctional. (All of them; no exaggeration.) It usually lasts until lunchtime and seems to have something to do with a reluctance to go through another day.

But I do read the news in the morning. I did so this morning and finally realised something interesting: as much as I feel inclined to keep my distance from most people, for some perverse reason I still care what happens to them. I want little to do with the vast majority of individuals, and yet I still want them to be happy.

The news doesn’t help. It constantly reminds me of one of the core principles of the human condition: that the stupidest people are usually the most arrogant. This morning I read about the Greenlanders’ response to Trump’s desire to treat them as ‘just another real estate deal.’ They remember that time in 1953 when the Americans ordered the local Inuit to leave their homes within four days because the land was needed for an expansion to a US airbase. That sort of thing doesn’t die with the individuals involved; it enters folklore and stays there. And there was a reference to Trump calling the Danish Prime Minister ‘nasty.’ It seems to me that she was nowhere near as nasty as she should have been, but then she’s probably more intelligent, considerate and diplomatic than Trump. Most people are.

I shouldn’t read emails either. This morning I received one from my daughter who is suffering badly on various fronts, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

And all these difficulties seem to stem from one fundamental cause – not fitting in with a world run by fools and psychopaths obsessed with wealth and power regardless of the effect they have on the lives of people and the state of the planet.

And therein lies another of my difficulties: for as much as my body lives a narrow little life deep in the English countryside, my mind will insist on stretching to the furthest corners of the globe. And what I see there has too much about it which is dirty, disreputable, downtrodden and destructive.

But at least my tribe of little sparrows looks as bright as ever today. I suppose their secret is that they don’t care what happens beyond the confines of the garden they call home. Maybe they know something about life which we humans have forgotten.

The Westward Connection.

My garden faces west, and tonight I stood in the gloaming looking at the dark blue sky above me grading to a lighter and lighter shade until it changed abruptly to blood-red above the horizon. There was no breath of wind to disturb the warm evening air, and the trees stood like black statues in silhouette as the landscape faded to near-darkness. And then another silhouette appeared: the silent flitting of bats across the darkening sky. Some of them came into my garden and flew so close that I could feel the air displaced by their wing beats.

I’ve never been able to explain why such a view means so much to me. There are prosaic explanations for every element, but they don’t come close to the magic of the whole. No prosaic rationalisation will account for the waking reverie which holds me spellbound in such a scene.

And this isn’t a new thing. I remember as a child having a picture book with a story of the Santa Fe Express heading across the prairie at dusk on its way to a far off destination. I felt the magic of it then, and I felt the magic again when I first heard the expression ‘Westward Ho.’

There’s something about facing west at twilight which carries my consciousness to a rarefied level beyond simple reason. Might this be the means by which the mind of the sensitive – be he poet, prince or peasant – is taken to the near end of some mystical bridge, there to stand and look across it into the mist of a different reality?

Avoiding an Undesirable Axis.

I see Trump and Johnson are being all very chummy at G7. Trump is trying to push the view that the EU is a ball and chain around the legs of the British, presumably because he knows that if Britain leaves the EU it will slip further under the influence of America and be driven further in the direction of American interests as he perceives them. And Johnson is manically pro-Brexit.

It’s all nonsense, of course. Britain is a significant player in Europe, and Europe is generally a saner place than America. If Britain is to align itself with any bigger body, better the lateral alignment with Europe than the subservient one with America. And I’m not being anti-American in saying that, just privileged to look at the place from a distance.

So the big question for me at the moment is whether the Americans and British will be able to rid themselves of these two impostors – neither of whom was given their elevated position by public consensus – before they do too much more damage. The next elections will be interesting.

Living on a Wheel.

Ever since I first began to understand the workings of the natural world at age 30 I’ve been struck by the poignancy of the annual cycle.

We see the new growth appear in spring. We watch with optimism as it develops and flourishes. We rejoice as it burgeons and blooms and stands proud during the spring and summer, alive and fully functional. And then autumn comes along and it begins to fade. Green turns to brown; the stems which held the plants upright and strong grow thin and weak until they bow in the face of the inevitable; leaves fall and join the general dead detritus on its way back the land and oblivion. And then the torpor of winter holds sway until spring arrives and the whole cycle begins again.

And yet it’s interesting that I’ve only recently become highly conscious of the fact that precisely the same thing happens to us humans. We, too, grow old, fading and growing weak and dysfunctional in the face of the inevitable. We, too, fall over as dead detritus on our way back to the land and oblivion.

Or is it precisely the same? Do we or don’t we rise again with the coming of another spring? If the world of perennial plants works that way, why shouldn’t we? If only we could know the truth of this, I suspect that the human animal would treat life very differently and the world would be a different place.

Trials.

I’m currently attempting to negotiate one of the most difficult problems known to mankind:

How do you allow somebody fully into your life on their terms, not yours?

This is a difficult one for me. Always has been. It makes me feel as though I’ve been consigned to the servants’ quarters below stairs while somebody else is getting breakfast in bed. Maybe it’s because I’m a Sagittarian, or a slow learner, or a born leader, or emotionally immature.

Trying my best.

*  *  *

It’s been a very warm, dry, sunny day here in the Shire. I was planning to eat my dinner al fresco until I heard the rock music marching up the hill from the pub, and then I changed my mind.

I can’t stand being forced to listen to other people’s choice of music, you know. I really can’t. It’s one of the strongest of my foibles.

‘Don’t you like music?’ I get asked when I grumble.

‘I do like music,’ I reply. ‘Music is supremely important to me. I deem it the monarch of the artistic genres. It’s the only one capable of moving my spirit through all shades of the emotional spectrum. I love music. That’s the problem.’

They rarely get it, and if truth be known I’m not entirely sure that I do. But that’s how it is and that’s that.

*  *  *

If the Spanish for ‘what will be will be’ is que sera sera, what’s the Spanish for ‘what never was never was?’ Questions like that often occur to me when I’m on trial.

Scratching My Head.

My YouTube recommendations tonight included videos of games played at the St Louis Chess Club.

Where do they get them from? Why on earth would anybody think I’m interested in watching games of chess? Do they think I’m intelligent or something? And why do they regularly recommend that I try things I’ve already watched twenty times or more?

It would appear that Google is so convinced of its God-like stature that it feels compelled to move in mysterious ways.

Better Than Heaven.

I just found this on YouTube:

Well now, a girl who looks like this and can play the uillean pipes like that. What a discovery.

So I just cast a piece of paper to the wind (you know, like you used to cast your Christmas wish list up the chimney en route to Santa’s grotto) with a request to those who preside over the spirit world. It says:

After I’m dead, this is the sight and sound I want to wake up to. And definitely no Grammarly ad to follow it like there is on YouTube. Call yourself spiritual?

The Great Grammarly Groan.

Nearly every YouTube video I pick up these days is preceded by an ad for some dippy English language tuition course called Grammarly. I don’t want Grammarly, I don’t need Grammarly, and my advice to anybody who wants to learn good English is not to pay money to the damn Grammarly people but simply to read a few good books instead. (Try something by Charlotte Bronte. It's a bit archaic, but smooth as a strawberry milkshake.)

So there I am, just clicked onto a picture of JS Bach in sunglasses so I can listen to one of the master’s rather nice pieces of music, when this awful woman’s voice leaps at me through my headset. It isn’t a nice voice. Some American accents I like; this one I don’t. In the course of a single phrase it drops down the scale from something sounding almost feminine to something resembling a frog in pain.

It’s extremely irritating.

And so I reach for the Sound Off button and press it. And then I wait for the Skip Ad button and press that. And then I have to go back to the Sound Off button and press it again to get the sound back on. Only now the rather nice piece of music has already started so I’ve missed the first few notes – and that’s important, you know?

So it’s off to the Pause button, then slide the search bar back to the start, and then press the Pause button again. Right: now I can listen to the master’s work from the beginning as it’s supposed to be listened to.

Ironically, it occurs to me that this is an example of Google getting it right for once. They’re obviously doing it to irritate the life out of me so I’ll subscribe to the premium service. Nice one, Google, but I’m not playing your sordid little game. I do understand that if I’m to have free music I have to pay for it with ads because that’s the way the money-obsessed free market world operates. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and there’s no such thing as free music. But isn’t it a bit like meeting an ice cream vendor who says:

‘Hey kid. Would ya like a free ice cream? OK, but it has to come with a spoonful of dog’s diarrhoea on the top. You can either lick it off or scrape it off, and then eat the ice cream. Your choice. Am I kind, or am I kind?’

Oh, and I forgot to mention: When the master’s nice piece of music ends it goes straight into another ad for bloody Grammarly. The ice cream vendor didn’t tell you about the spoonful of dog’s diarrhoea at the bottom of the cone, did he?

Joy at Lunchtime.

It’s become a habit of mine at lunchtime to flick through the TV channels – at least about the first thirty of them – in the hope of finding something to watch while I’m eating. It’s a little absurd, actually, because I never find anything worthwhile and it tends to drop my mental state into a dark and musty place where Mr Negative is king while Mr Positive languishes in a dungeon.

It’s the adverts which are the most abhorrent abusers of my mental state. Lunchtime TV adverts mostly fall into one of three categories:

1. The elderly person who is content almost to the state of delirium because he or she has discovered that the Acme Insurance Company is his very best friend and not a bunch of whizz kids in suits trying to get as much money as possible out of him. This is probably the worst of the categories because it really does encourage in me the genuine desire to die before I get there.

2. The late middle aged and comfortably off suburbanite who thinks that happiness is a new – and often aesthetically hideous – sofa which costs more than some people spend on food in a year. I admit to having gone through this stage myself in my twenties, but saw through it and left it behind when I moved house to a place closer to nature.

3. The gambling ads which generally show groups of purportedly smart young things jumping about like a troupe of deranged chimpanzees with advanced dementia. These are clearly aimed at people with nothing better to do in the middle of the day than watch the box in the corner, and whose few brain cells have long since atrophied beyond hope.

So why do I do it? Why, to observe of course. It’s what I do, and it’s what I have to do because my only activity of note these days is writing. Housework is a chore; gardening is a chore; I can’t go for walks to observe either the workings of nature or the urban jungle at the moment because my left leg won’t let me; and I don’t get visitors because I’m not the kind of person who does.

That’s the explanation, and I’ve smoked three cigarettes while writing this in an instinctive attempt to keep the negative vibes to a manageable level. It probably isn’t good for me, but it might yet perform a useful service. Off to do some housework now.

A Good Day to be Danish.

I see Trump is stamping his foot again – in the direction of Denmark this time:

‘If you won’t sell me Greenland I’m not coming to visit you.’

Well, that should save the Danish government a few kroner in dealing with Trump pollution. I expect they’ll have to contribute to the celebratory street parties in Denmark and Greenland, but at least they’ll be getting something worthwhile for the money.

A Note on Unicorns.

I said to my dentist today: ‘All I want to do is walk in the woods and look for unicorns.’

‘You certainly won’t find any,’ she replied with that sense of certainty which comes with being a fully paid up member of the enlightened world.

How does she know I’ll never find a unicorn? How can she know that unicorns don’t exist and never did? She can’t; she can only surmise that unicorns don’t exist because the culture has persuaded her that unicorns are a matter of myth and myths never happened.

So I’ll keep on looking for unicorns. It’s almost certain that I’ll never find one, but that’s no reason not to search. You have to spend your life doing something, don’t you, and the search for unicorns is far more intriguing and imaginative than busting a gut to have enough money to buy an open-top Ferrari. Unicorns might be mythical, but that merely makes them mysterious. It’s the notion that Ferraris make you important which is the real delusion.

The Robin and Me.

I’ve mentioned before that the robin is my favourite garden bird, and today I realised why: it’s because they’re so like me. They’re solitary birds, only joining with a mate during the breeding season. And not only do they avoid the company of other robins, they generally avoid the company of all birds.

I’ve watched them hanging around the bird table when the sparrows and blackbirds and tits and the rest of the feathered breed are engaged in a feeding melee, only taking their place when there is a gap big enough to keep themselves apart from the hoi polloi. I watched one this morning feeding alone until a flock of common-or-garden sparrows – busy little gluttons that they are – descended en masse, and then the robin legged it (well, winged it I suppose.)

And so they give the appearance of being the snobs of the bird world. They give the appearance of feeling superior. Or maybe they’re just naturally cautious, or maybe they feel like alien beings trapped on the wrong planet. It’s how I feel sometimes and I wonder whether the robins’ behaviour tells me something about myself.

I spend a disproportionate amount of my time watching robins and being fascinated by their aloofness. I’m also fascinated by the fact that the robin is the only bird which spends a lot of its time on the bird table not feeding, but looking back at me. I remember the one which followed me around for three years before disappearing for good. I remember how it used to be standing on my doorstep looking up at me in the morning. I remember how it once flew up and hovered before my face, staring me in the eye for several long seconds. Maybe it knew something about our connection which I don’t.

On IT Tinkerers and Other Bits.

I find the workings of the software giants a little mystifying sometimes. Take my Hotmail account for example. The process of putting an email into a folder used to take three clicks. They’ve changed the system and now it takes six. Could someone suggest how that amounts to an improvement? And you have to work out the new method yourself because they don’t bother to tell you.  And both they and Google have started confusing the inbox with the spam box – putting stuff that has been previously marked as spam into the inbox, and consigning transparently genuine emails to the spam folder.

What I don’t understand is why, with all the vast wealth at their disposal, the software giants can’t employ people with common sense instead of – one is led to assume – a bunch of whizz kids with fancy IT degrees who like to mess with perfectly functional systems while being blissfully unaware of the fact that their mindless meddling is driving the users up the bloody wall.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, back in the real world, I spoke to Millie the pigeon today. She was up by the town hall feeding enthusiastically on bits of lunch detritus left behind by sloppy eaters. She ignored me as usual – didn’t even look at me. I did notice, however, that several passers by were looking at me, so I moved on to get a new strap fitted to my watch.

*  *  *

And this evening I noted with a mild ripple of sadness that the evening sunshine is visibly and palpably weakening now. Summer is nearly over up here on the north western edge of Europe. Did I mention that I’m strictly a summer person? Thought so.

*  *  *

I was going to buy a new pair of jeans from Tesco today for £15, but didn’t have to. I went into one of the charity shops and found the same thing – same brand, same colour, same fit, right size, everything – for £3. And they look unworn. It’s the Lady Fu, you know. I’ve mentioned the Lady Fu before. She’s the alabaster, or maybe marble, figurine which I rescued from a charity shop and brought home. Whenever she comes out with me I always get bargains and young women smile at me. It’s how I know she’s there.

* *  *

But I wish I didn’t feel so depressed and dysfunctional every morning when I wake up.

I suspect that my brain

Is being squeezed by the strain

Of a whole lot of losing

And too little of gain

*  *  *

I’m going to watch the next episode of the murder mystery Broadchurch now. My money is on the vicar.

A Note at Bed Time.

It’s been a rocky old week, one way and another. The big news is that the priestess arrested my pathetic attempt to walk away from her. She understood, of course, but simply said ‘no’, and explained in typically forthright manner - expressed in typically lyrical fashion - why she said ‘no.’ I suppose it’s what priestesses do, or maybe it's an old soul Chinese thing.

So do I feel trapped? Not at all. I feel bathed and blessed and happy to belong to something worth belonging to. This is a new experience for me.

And yet I still want to know whether Mary has her mother’s eyes.

It seems a long time since I was this irritatingly enigmatic. Welcome back.

The Potter Problem.

I have a problem with the world of Harry Potter. It goes like this:

In Goblet of Fire, the mandarins of Hogwarts School send people off to Romania – or wherever it was – to capture some innocent dragons who just want to go about their lives in peace, bring them back in cages and chains to an alien environment, and then pit them against their will against a bunch of egotistical wizards all trying to prove how superior they are by killing them.

At least we British muggles have banned bear baiting, badger baiting, dog fighting, cock fighting, fox hunting and hare coursing, and I can’t help feeling it’s time for these magic people who think they’re so bloody clever to be brought to heel. Maybe it’s time for a protest movement to spring up. Let’s call it MADE – Muggles Against Dragon Exploitation.

Today's Letter from Uttoxeter.

You might remember me writing about the Tea and Toast Lady who frequents the coffee shop in Uttoxeter with her nondescript husband. Well, the first thing I need to do is update her soubriquet because further observation revealed that it is she who has the Americano and her husband who has the pot of tea. She should, therefore, be known as the Toast and Americano Lady, and so it shall be henceforth.

But today the sky turned black, the ground shook fit to reduce the Town Hall to its foundations, and Millie the pigeon was seen devouring a very big buzzard she’d just despatched – and all because of an event as momentous as the murder of King Duncan: While the T&A Lady’s husband had the regulation two slices of buttered toast as usual, our re-named heroine had a chocolate twist instead. And that remarkable fact is surely adequate testimony to the conclusion that, notwithstanding her advanced age, the fact that she walks with a stick, the suggestion of dottiness, the fact that she has been a fish, a bird and a rabbit (probably in that order) during the course of previous incarnations, and the fact that she still looks like this…

  

… she is clearly a woman of substance possessed of an adventurous spirit, and the sort of person about whom anything might be revealed given the requisite passage of time. The problem is that I can no longer observe her because she’s taken to staring back at me and I get scared. So let’s move onto something a little less menacing.

*  *  *

There was a woman cycling down the High Street today. She was quite a big woman, a little sagging in parts but some way short of obese, and placed somewhere in that indeterminate phase between late middle age and elderly. She was wearing all pale green clothes and riding a pale green bicycle. Only her oversized cycle helmet stood conspicuously out of step to give blessed relief to her general colour scheme. It was white. The overall impression was a mixture of eccentricity and the distaff side of the bulldog spirit.

Such women used to be a common sight in the villages and market towns of England, but since the professional classes moved in you’re more likely to see the modern breed showing off their Cartier sunglasses from the driving seat of an open-top Lexus. (I wonder what they do with their sunglasses in wintertime. I doubt they store them with the salted pork, so maybe they place them judiciously in a window to be ogled by sundry visitors and charity collectors.)

*  *  *

And talking of charity collectors, there was a group of high school students with a stall and donation tins in the High Street. I spoke to one of them and learned that their charity was all about helping poor and disabled children. I put something into her tin, but couldn’t resist going back later with some bags of fancy chocolate things, just to have an excuse to say: ‘This is a pretty awful world one way and another, so thank you being young and giving your time freely to make a difference.’ And can you believe that there were about twelve of them and only one was male? It didn’t surprise me in the slightest.

*  *  *

And on a marginally related note, did you know that a pair of Dolce and Gabbana DG2027B sunglasses will set you back $383,000? Doesn’t this take us into realms way beyond the absurd? I could say quite a lot about it, but I’m sure it would all be obvious so why bother?

Today's Meagre Miscellany.

The glums have set in again. It’s been a messy sort of weekend over here in Blighty – lots of rain and strong, cool winds, with splashes of occasional sunshine to lift the mood temporarily before the glowering ’gins again. And I’m still trying to come to terms with the fact that I gave up probably the only chance I’ll ever have to meet that very special person I mentioned in earlier posts. I’ve also upset an Australian woman (another Australian woman…) with a glowing tribute I left on one of her YouTube videos. Seems I didn’t compliment the right element sufficiently and now she says she’s failed.

*  *  *

I came in from the garden earlier to find a Devil’s Coach Horse beetle on my kitchen floor, raising its abdomen at me in typically threatening manner. It’s what they do, apparently, having been born with the delusion that they’re not beetles at all, but scorpions.

 

Not being the sort to be intimidated by a beetle, I gently encouraged it to leave the premises and take shelter in a damp, dark place. I gather beetles like damp, dark places in which to pass the daylight hours. And then I read up on them via Wiki and learned that in Mediaeval Britain there was a superstition that to crush a Devil’s Coach Horse gave absolution from seven sins. I was rather pleased that I’d preserved the life of the creature and kept the sins, especially since a mere seven would make little impression on my spiritual passport anyway.

*  *  *

So then I idled away an hour sifting through my pictures file on the computer, and came across three which seemed to tell the story of my life from boyhood to now rather succinctly. These are they:

Scent and Speculation.

I had to set my alarm early this morning because of the hospital appointment, and for an hour or two before it went off I kept waking up and dozing again. Nothing odd there; probably just a stress reaction to a prospect I find uncomfortable. What was odd was that every time I woke up I smelt jasmine so strongly that its pungency irritated my sinuses.

I have no jasmine in my house, so where was the smell coming from? I’ve heard it said that smelling something that isn’t there can be indicative of a serious brain abnormality, but others might tell me that it was some sort of spiritual or supernatural experience. Well, I’m neither a brain specialist nor a believer in anything so I’ll have to be content with counting it another of those little mysteries which have been dropping into my life for as far back as I can remember.

Mia and Miscellany.

One of the assistants at my favourite coffee shop is leaving. I was made privy to that fact only on Wednesday, at which point I also learned that she’s 19 and her name is Mia. The fact that she’s slim, pretty and highly style conscious I’d already noticed.

She was waiting at the counter when I went in there today, which pleased me greatly because I had something to say to her:

I know a young lady called Mia, I began.

‘That’s me,’ she exclaimed brightly.

I could have replied ‘I know’, or I could have replied ‘do shut up and listen.’ I’m not used to being interrupted just as I’m launching into a ditty, you see, and I felt slightly irritated that she failed to recognise an obvious first line. But I was patient. I allowed a brief silence and then continued:

I said ‘are you leaving, my dear?’

She said ‘that is so

I’m not sorry to go

So I won’t shed a hint of a tear’

It’s easily the poorest ditty I’ve ever thought up in an idle moment, which is why it won’t be going into the Ditties file, but that isn’t the point. Mia seemed uncommonly delighted. ‘Nobody’s ever written me a poem before,’ she declared with a smile which illuminated the surroundings just a little, and which might have been responsible for the snigger which emanated from another member of staff who was preparing my coffee.

‘It isn’t a poem,’ I replied apologetically, ‘it’s a ditty.’

I could have explained that the five line stanza construction and the metrical style employed actually made it a Limerick, but decided that I’d probably been technical enough for one day, and so a ditty it remained.

I like young women, you know. Not in a lascivious sense, you understand; I simply get a buzz from being in close proximity to their energy. And my belief bears repeating that if any group of people is going to save the world from its stupidity, they’re the ones most likely to do it. It’s why I like this picture so much:

  

And this is the ship in which I went to America for the first time:

  

And this is the commonest butterfly in my garden at the moment:

 

And this is me when I was still young enough to think I mattered:

  

And this is what never happened to me at any age:

And this is Kate Beckinsale:

  

This isn’t:

  

And one of these has taken to visiting my bird table and staring at me suspiciously when I’m sitting close to it. It’s a baby robin:

  

I’m bored now.

*  *  *

I went for my latest cystoscopy today. I don’t want to talk about it except to say that I learned why they want to keep doing them for the next 3½ years. It didn’t improve my perception of my future prospects.

Fiction and Fact.

They say that life is stranger than fiction, don’t they? Well, sometimes it is, but very rarely.

For two days now I’ve been consumed with self-recrimination over my lamentable decision to turn down the offer to meet the person I have held in such high esteem for so long. And at times I fell to imagining scenarios which would save the day. She would knock on my door anyway and say: ‘You don’t get rid of me that easily, Jeff. I’m here, like it or not.’ I put words into her mouth and practiced my responses. Sometimes I even imagined it might actually happen.

It’s what comes of being a fiction writer. Things like that happen in fiction because anything can happen in fiction as long as it’s plausible. It’s what makes fiction entertaining and exciting and horrifying and upsetting and uplifting. Chance meetings, coincidences and random acts of determination happen routinely in fiction. And if you write fiction habitually, the line between it and the real world becomes blurred. It’s so easy to become persuaded that life is just another story in which the hopelessly improbable transcends all barriers of probability to bring the plot to a satisfactory conclusion.

Only it doesn’t happen that way. Real people rarely behave like their fictional counterparts. Chance meetings, coincidences and random acts of determination are very much the exception rather than the rule.

And so I smile through the anguish of self-recrimination because deep down I know there will be no knock on the door. I know I won’t look up from my garden chair to see a figure standing by the corner of my house watching me. I know that my practiced responses are no more than fantasies dissolving into the ether. And then living in the real world becomes tedious again and the grip of self-recrimination tightens.

Maxim and Axiom.

It’s easily argued that while beauty exists, nothing is objectively beautiful. And so I’m back to my old axiom that everything of true meaning in what we think of as reality is abstract. And then up jumps my old favourite maxim: perception is the whole of the life experience. I wrote it in chalk on a flagstone in Uttoxeter recently – because I was invited to write something and that was the best I could manage. I’m not quite as mad as you might think.

When the Little Voice Chides.

A person I have long held in high esteem asked this week whether I would agree to meet her. I declined. It wasn’t the first time I’ve declined her request and I always thought my reason was sensible and wholly justified. Now I’m not so sure.

A little voice spoke to me tonight in the way that little voices emanating from somewhere deep inside the consciousness have a habit of doing. It suggested that my reason was actually less than edifying. Could it have been cowardice, it asked, or maybe vanity? Could it have stemmed from a fear of abandonment under which I suspect I might have been labouring since age 5½?

The question made me feel bad about myself. It hinted, with that suggestion of certainty which little voices from the consciousness seem to possess in matters subtle and psychological, that I should have agreed to the meeting so the matter could be settled once and for all. ‘Hang the possibility of abandonment,’ it whispered. ‘Isn’t that what a braver man would have done?’

It made a compelling argument, but I’m not sure how I can know whether it was right or not. Maybe I’m just finding another reason to beat myself up because I feel dead in the water at the moment and I dislike feeling dead in the water.

Well, right or not, I now wish I’d agreed to the meeting. Even if nothing else, it would have splashed a lot of vibrant colour into a life that is grey and tedious. It might even have been one of the most momentous meetings of my life. But it’s too late now and it’s almost certain that I’ll never get another opportunity. Consequently, I worry that I might have failed both myself and a person I have long held in high esteem.

But life’s a mysterious business and sometimes things happen for the best of reasons even though you’re not privy to the workings of fate. I expect I’ll survive, and I’ll try not to regret its latest machination because regret is always pointless.

Mysteries and a Beetle Called Lazarus.

I have a new species of butterfly in my garden. I looked it up and discovered that it’s a Painted Lady. Did no one tell it that I prefer my ladies without make-up?

They’re common enough apparently, but I’ve never seen one here before. It seems they come up from North Africa for the summer. Why do they do that, I wonder. What does northern Europe have that northern Africa doesn’t? I don’t suppose I shall ever know because I don’t suppose I will ever go to northern Africa. Maybe our flowers are tastier.

I also I have a new career. I go out several times a day and rescue sundry flying things drowning in the birds’ water bowl. Most of them survive thankfully, but what I don’t understand is this: My birds have three water bowls at their disposal, but the sundry flying things only ever drown in one of them.

But what mystifies me most is why people from several parts of the world read this blog. Why would anybody be interested in the minutiae of my life, the state of my mental and physical health, or my sometimes unconventional opinions on random subjects? There’s nothing much else in it these days. The ditties are conspicuous by their absence, I seem to have lost the ability to express the surreal in untypical prose, and my friend the llama hasn’t visited for months. I don’t think I understand very much.

(Oh, and I won’t tell the story of the squashed beetle which apparently rose from the dead because it would sound too fanciful even by my standards. I’ve developed a curious affection for beetles since I came to live here. It’s a shame they dislike being stroked.)

Irrational Fears Update.

The visit to the hospital produced no wrecks and there was nobody drownded (and just to remind those for whom English is not a first language that there is no such word as ‘drownded’ in the lexicon. It’s a colloquialism quoted here from Albert and the Lion.) Today’s main problem was having to take circuitous routes several times because of unexplained road closures, which nearly made me late.

The visit was a preliminary assessment using a fancy pulse reader and some blue jelly. The resultant diagnosis confirmed the GP’s tentative effort: the blood is flowing in my left leg but not as well as it should. The next step is to have a more sophisticated scan on a date to be arranged to find out where the problem lies, and then I will almost certainly have to have an operation to fit a stent in the offending vessel. And that will mean having to have yet another pre-op procedure. All in all, therefore, I have the prospect of making at least four more visits to the dear old Royal Derby over the next few months (which includes yet another bloody cystoscopy next Friday.) If this were an episode of House it would all be done in one day, but it isn’t.

I wonder whether this is fate’s way of doing me a favour. It occurs to me, you see, that I shall probably die in the Royal Derby one day, and maybe this is fate preparing me for the eventuality by giving me the chance to feel at home there before I do. How very kind of it. Thank you, fate; you’re a pal.

On the way back I decided to make a detour to Ashbourne and treat myself to lunch of an egg and cress sandwich and a large cup of Americano with cream. That was good, but what came next was unusual.

I was walking back to the car when I was accosted by a comely young woman who held up a notice for me to read. It said something about deafness and the desire to set up some kind of centre in the area. ‘Do you just want me to sign the petition?’ I asked. She nodded (and smiled nicely.) And so I did, but when I got to the last box it said ‘Donation.’ Oh.

I could have left it blank, of course, or I could have entered a zero. But that would have been churlish, and it might have upset the comely young woman who had by then intimated that she was deaf herself. And so I gave her a £5 note, whereupon she mouthed ‘thank you’ and blew me a kiss. Being the perfect English gentleman I declined to reciprocate, but mouthed ‘you’re welcome’ in return.

And then it occurred to me that the whole thing might have been a scam. But it probably wasn’t.

Irrational Fears.

I have my next hospital appointment tomorrow, my initial appointment in connection with the leg problem. And now I’m scared because I’ve developed an irrational fear of hospital visits.

It increases as the day approaches. It’s bad when I go to bed the night before, it’s worse in the morning when I wake up, and when I’m travelling to the hospital I’m so scared that I worry about the standard of my driving. It’s what happened the last time I went for CT scans. Visiting the hospital has now become the source of a deep sense of doom-laden dread.

So where has it come from? I’ve been to the Royal Derby Hospital fifteen times over the past year and a half and I don’t remember any of the visits killing me. I had two operations, four incarcerations, and countless procedures both invasive and non-invasive. I was anxious from the start of that process for reasons I’ve explained on this blog, but this is more than anxiety. This is different; this is cold fear.

I reason with myself, of course I do. I tell myself that I’m being irrational. I argue that this is some sort of neurosis which has developed, that it’s effectively a kind of phobia and that phobias are irrational. I try to work out where it’s come from, but realise that the source of such a phenomenon is rarely as simple as one event.

I remember, for example, what I was led into the last time I went to the Royal Derby for a first appointment regarding a new issue. It began when they told me I had cancer. It wasn’t pleasant, and maybe that’s part of the answer. And I know that the events of last year brought intimations of mortality into sharp focus. Maybe that’s another part of the answer. I also know that I’m cursed with a painfully acute sense of awareness and a high emotional response faculty. I’m sure that’s part of the answer, too.

So is that it? I don’t know, but the reasoning doesn’t seem to help much in allaying the fear. It goes quiet for a time when my mind is occupied with something else, but then it jumps back in at the first opportunity. And when it does it stares me in the eye and snarls like a ravening tiger. Who wouldn’t be scared of a ravening tiger? Maybe I will have more to say on the matter tomorrow night. (Or maybe I won’t.)