Losing the Barn Owl's Voice.

I was coming in from the garden at dusk as the air fell below freezing, when I spotted a movement above my head. I looked up to see a barn owl settling to perch on the telegraph pole just beyond my hedge. It folded its wings and began to stare at me intensely, occasionally moving its head from side to side in that curious manner which owls are wont to exhibit.

I stared back. I greeted it courteously. I wondered whether it was considering my size to determine whether I was too big to eat. It stayed there and continued to give me its undivided attention, while I almost forgot the cold because the stare of an owl at such close quarters – especially a ghost-white barn owl – is little short of hypnotic.

It’s rare to see a barn owl here. I’m sure they’ve always been about, but a sighting depends on the coincidence of a bird beginning its nightly hunt in this part of the Shire and in the few minutes before I disappear indoors.

I remember that time shortly after I moved here when I was shaken in the early hours by a terrifying shriek puncturing the silence of the night as one flew overhead. It was the shriek to which Shakespeare was referring when he had Macbeth say:

The time has been my senses would have cooled

To hear a night shriek…

I’ve never heard one since then, even though I’ve occasionally seen one. It makes me wonder whether that’s another of the changes brought on by changing times and changing practices. I wonder whether the barn owl has lost its shriek as most roses have lost their scent.

Words and Wondering.

Arthur Schopenhauer famously said:

To live alone is the fate of all great souls.

This is a generalisation, of course, as the vast majority of popular sound bites from the great and the good are. I like it, nonetheless, for obvious reasons (for those who don’t know, I’ve lived alone for the last fifteen years.) And what’s interesting is that shortly before I came across that pearl of generalised wisdom, I’d had the oddest feeling that there is something of substantial significance – maybe even grand – somewhere up ahead in my destiny. I’ve never had such a feeling in my life before and I have very little doubt that it derived from a fevered imagination. But you never know. Come to think of it, I’m glad I don’t know because knowing that there is something of substantial significance – and maybe even grand – in my destiny would scare the living daylights out of me. Look what happened to Joan of Arc.

Schopenhauer also said:

Life swings like a pendulum backwards and forwards between pain and boredom.

I disagree with that one, even though it’s generally true of me these days.

*  *  *

I watched a bird perching quietly on the branch of a tree today. Eventually it flew to a neighbouring tree and perched quietly on another branch. I wondered why.

Tedium.

Currently beset by the dreaded ennui. Nothing to do, nothing to write about, and nothing to look forward to save a growing catalogue of things to be anxious about. I made another virtuous attempt to come to terms with the writing of George Eliot but continued to find it tedious. When she’s observing the quirks of human nature she can be most readable, but the seemingly endless, sluggish flow of trivial conversation in dialect threatens to send me to a premature sleep every time. Trivial conversation is no less trivial for being 160 years old whatever the academics say.

The birthday passed off largely without incident. I received one card and a box of Taylor’s Hot Lava Java coffee bags. The weather was dull and wet as usual.

But I did discover a few interesting things about Karen Carpenter, like the fact that she was a highly rated drummer and that if she were still alive she would turn 70 next March. It occurred to me that there is a perverse blessing in dying young because it means that nobody will ever see any photographs of you looking old.

If this isn't a reason to get drunk I don't know what it is, but I have to be up with the alarm in the morning to face one of the things to be anxious about.

Irritants.

I occasionally see hand written signs in shop windows which say something like:

Sorry. Had to pop out. Back in fifteen minutes.

And they never, ever put the time on, so you don’t know when the fifteen minutes started. This goes some way towards vindicating my attitude to human beings.

*  *  *

Somebody who knew of my many dalliances and truncated relationships once called me a commitmentphobe. They were in error. A commitmentphobe is somebody who is capable of making a commitment but dislikes the idea and so fights shy. I never disliked the idea of making a commitment. The intention to commit was, ironically, an integral part of the romance game. The problem was that by the time I approached middle age I realised that I was simply incapable of doing so. I was born without the commitment gene. I suppose it’s a bit like colour blindness and equally blameless.

And then there were those people who told me: ‘You just haven’t met the right woman yet.’ They were so certain of the fact, but they were speaking from ignorance. Had they known me they would have realised that there was no such thing as the right woman. Foolish people are so damnably convinced of their simplistic certainties. And now I really am tired of talking about women.

*  *  *

I woke up in the dark early hours of this morning certain that there was some sort of discarnate entity in my bedroom which was not friendly. It was pretty spooky, and I’m not easily spooked. I convinced myself that it was best ignored and eventually went back to sleep. It's happened before.

On Birthdays, Bikes and Things.

It’s my birthday tomorrow, but please don’t even think of offering felicitations. What is a birthday anyway but another number to add to a list which is growing depressingly long?

My reason for mentioning it is that I realised only today (or it might have been yesterday – the numbers on birthday cards grow in indirect proportion to the number of brain cells capable of storing short term memory) that I don’t remember ever having had a birthday party at any time in my life. Is that unusual? I don’t know.

I went to one once, at around age 10. The recipient was Janice Turner who lived in Friar’s Road, and the only thing I remember about it was knocking something off the table and feeling feverishly embarrassed. I suppose the fact that it was the one and only birthday party I ever attended suggests that such celebrations were much less common then than they are now. Or maybe I was known as the kid who knocks things off tables and was therefore persona non grata. Or it could have been the fact that I was a fat slob in my pre-adolescent period and fat kids didn’t get invited to things. I never knew and I never shall.

And come to think of it, the only childhood birthday I remember at all was the one when I got home from school and was given a parcel sent by my older brother. That was at around the same age, and the parcel contained a set of lights for my bike. I remember feeling very proud of my acquisition because not every kid had lights for his or her bike. In fact, not every kid even had a bike. The fact that my bike had come second hand was of no consequence back then because I lived on the wrong side of the tracks and having a bike made you a bit special. I expect I’d get mugged for it these days, or maybe not since it was second hand.

I do vaguely remember one other birthday when I was much older. The woman I was living with offered to take me out for a meal to celebrate the occasion, but I declined and she became very cross. There were several reasons why I declined, but I don’t think I want to elucidate further because I’ve done quite enough confessing for one week. And I wouldn’t want people thinking ill of me on the eve of my birthday, would I?

Divided by the R.

One of the most noticeable differences between American and British RP pronunciation is the way we treat the letter ‘r.’ Americans mostly pronounce it wherever it appears in a word, whereas we Brits only pronounce it when it precedes a vowel. Anywhere else the ‘r’ merely extends the sound of the previous syllable. And that’s why the only time Gregory House’s accent grated with me was when he called a member of his team ‘thirteen.’ As a British actor expertly faking an American accent, his pronunciation of thirteen was the one time when I felt he overstated the difference.

Playing the Game of Romance.

The rant I engaged in earlier is now a distant memory, at least until tomorrow. I said I’d lighten up later, didn’t I? So maybe now I should permit reflection to replace the ranting and go back in time as I sometimes do anyway.

Somebody once suggested I write my memoirs, but the concept is far too grand for one such as me. Nevertheless, maybe a confession is in order, and maybe it can be taken as a memoir of sorts. I don’t expect anybody to be particularly interested, but it’s been running through my head since yesterday morning and I felt inclined to write it down for my own amusement.

*  *  *

The song playing in one of the charity shops yesterday took me back to the start of it all. The song had been a big hit when I was fourteen and taking my last holiday with my parents. We’d gone to Great Yarmouth in Norfolk and I was in the habit of going to the fairground every night on my own. Much of the reason for my regular visits to the bright lights and music was the group of teenage girls which I kept seeing there, and the one in particular who attracted my fancy to quite a considerable degree.

I’d already had a couple of regular girlfriends by then – one of whom had been three years older than me – but they’d both been girls I knew from the local youth club and we’d just drifted together. What I’d never done was approach a complete stranger and asked her to walk out with me (what a nice old fashioned phrase that is.) The problem I had at the tender age of fourteen, however, was that I hadn’t a clue how to go about it.

Now, it just happened that I’d got know an Irish lad of seventeen who was also on holiday with his parents and we’d become pals. It seemed to me that he would have a greater level of experience in the matter of pick up lines in consequence of his more advanced age, and so I asked him how he thought I should go about it.

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ he said. You just go up to her and say “are you coming, then?” and she’ll walk away with you no problem.’

Do bear in mind that he was Irish, and whatever else the Irish are or are not, they’re certainly the world’s best blarney merchants. It occurred to me later that he probably had no more idea of how to pick up strange girls than I had. At the time I simply wasn’t convinced that it would work, and I was also aware that such an approach would put my vanity at risk of being mangled. But I had nothing better to offer. I prevaricated until the last night before we were due to go home, and then desperation encouraged me to take the leap into unknown territory. I approached the group, singled out the gorgeous one, and said ‘Are you coming, then?’ Her eyes showed no evident response as they looked into mine for several pregnant seconds. ‘No,’ she said, and then walked away with her friends while I shuffled off in the opposite direction with a waddle and a quack and a very unhappy frown.

But that was the beginning of the great game of romance which became the abiding passion of my life (about equal with fishing but of greater longevity, and slightly ahead of playing rugby and partying.) For such it always was – a game of discovery and observation which I played compulsively for the next thirty years. And the benefit of experience made me far more adept at knowing the right moves in the right circumstances.

Sounds like a lot of innocent fun, doesn’t it? It wasn’t, actually. It was more of a bumpy rollercoaster ride than a soft sailing on sleepy tides. I’m a complex sort of bloke, you see, and the complexities played a game of their own with my sense of wellbeing on many occasions. The thrills were always followed by the ducking stool, and the feather beds were ever laden with sharp needles. It’s why I can say that thirty years of playing the game of romance caused me far more injuries than I received in twenty years of playing rugby.

And now it’s all over. The loner gene has finally achieved a position of unassailable ascendancy and I don’t need the mirror or my birth certificate to tell me that my body is no longer a vehicle fit for either of my favourite games. I’m washed up, worn out, and undecided whether to groan at the bitter taste of cold turkey or simply feel relieved at having acquired a safe spot on the sidelines. That’s where old men belong, isn’t it, however much the old instinct insists on whispering ‘I’m still here’?

So that’s about it – an inconsequential little anecdote which led to a life less sordid than you might imagine. Make of it what you will. Or don’t bother to make anything of it at all.

Trapped.

I’ve mentioned the TV series His Dark Materials a few times on this blog recently, and you might wonder why a mere fantasy TV programme should be important to me. I’ll tell you why: it’s because that sort of thing is becoming more real to me than the so-called real world outside my window. It comes with being a recluse, but there’s also another reason.

I’m currently being pestered by the agents and their contractors. Do this, do that, call us (at my expense) to arrange an appointment to do such and such. And their letter includes – in text coloured bright red so that it looks more impressive – a statement that this is most important for the sake of my health and safety. It’s nothing of the sort; there is no health and safety issue involved. I’ve had enough of being pestered by my real health issues over the past two years, and I don’t take kindly to being fraudulently pestered further over matters which are unimportant. It insults my mental faculty and it’s irritatingly patronising.

Occasionally I consider leaving all this behind and becoming homeless, but I’m intolerant of cold and I do so like to eat regularly. I’ve considered moving to a warmer country armed with a tent and a camp bed, but I would inevitably be arrested and repatriated. So what then? And when I try to explain this sense of alienation to people – which I rarely do because there’s rarely any point – they think I’m mad. I’m not mad, just cursed with an IQ (or so they tell me) only one less than Stephen Hawking. It doesn’t count for much in the general scheme of things and it’s nothing to be proud of, but it does mean that I’m capable of seeing through the pointless restrictions and absurdities which are increasingly evident in today’s so-called developed society.

And all this adds to the stress levels. It increases the intensity of anxiety and the inner constriction of depression. So while I’m still able to cope with the things I’m expected to cope with, it’s becoming ever more difficult to tolerate the kind of mindless nonsense which most people don’t appear to notice. At times it leaves me teetering on the edge of being unable to function because all I want is simply to be left alone.

I expect I’ll lighten up later, and the sun just came out after 2½ days of rain and relative darkness. Small mercies are most welcome.

The Bear Necessities.

I met Iorek Byrnison tonight. Iorek is the armoured bear in His Dark Materials. He’s one of my three favourite characters, along with Lyra Silvertongue and Serafina Pecula (Queen of the warlike witches.) I said I like bears and witches, didn’t I? There’s a good chance that I’ll be meeting Serafina next week. If I remember correctly from the book which I read eleven years ago, she and her clan come from somewhere in Eastern Europe – maybe Romania, maybe the Czech Republic, I don’t rightly remember – so I do hope she has the accent. Makes all the difference, you know. It does.

As for bears, I’ve been in awe of them since I was a kid. Of all the animals in all the world, the bear is the only one I revere. And for those who know the story of His Dark Materials, I do believe that if I had a daemon, it would be a bear – starting as a baby Himalayan Brown Bear and growing into a mighty grizzly as I found my feet in life (probably not a Polar Bear because I hate snow.)

Witches are more of a mystery to me. As far as I’m aware I only ever knew one, and she was neither warlike nor from Eastern Europe. But she did tell me a few interesting things before I moved house to a different part of the country and never saw her again.

Postscript

1. Lyra continued to evoke a sense of the Lady B in flashes tonight. I wonder whether she watches it.

2. I think I should add that bears also scare me witless.

3. I had an email from the priestess half an hour ago. She’s still threatening to come and visit me after Christmas. Pity the old roar is now reduced to a weakly grumble. Old bears have little to offer but stories.

Lunny and the Milkmaids.

This is the wrong time of both day and year to be publishing this little gem, but I only just found it.

It would be best heard on a summer's morning when the milkmaids are wending their way across the ley to the village after their morning's labour at home farm, relishing the fresh morning air, smiling in the face of the sun, and making ribald jokes about the foolishness of young men.

My imagination stopped surprising me a long time ago. What continues to surprise me is the soft spot I have for milkmaids. I wonder whether it stems from a past life memory of a time when milkmaids were the ones who didn't have pock marks. And I might just add, for those who don't know, that Donal Lunny is a legend among Irish folk musicians.

Roots and Reality.

I had some quite bad abdominal pain this afternoon and declined to broadcast the fact with commendable fortitude. I had a visitor, you see, and when one has a visitor, one has the matter of decorum to consider.

And in taking such an attitude, I’m led to suspect that I’m a bit too posh to be a proper peasant. I’m sometimes disturbed by a vague sense of inner poshness and occasionally wonder where it comes from. My best guess derives from the fact that a branch of my ancestry contains a mystery, and it is just possible that I might be the grandson of a duke, denied my birthright by a dastardly conspiracy of silence.

Not that I’m sorry. I don’t think I would have suited the peer of the realm role at all well. All that wearing of robes with bits of dead animal hanging off them and having people address me as Your Grace, not to mention having to have a well stocked gun cabinet and eat grouse every morning for breakfast. It’s really not me.

And I suppose I could always pretend to be a duke if I really wanted to. I could invent my own coat of arms and family motto. I’m sure I could find somebody who could translate Neither a Leader nor a Follower Be into Latin. That was always my motto in English anyway.

Further, I think I should add that the mysterious missing person from my ancestry was probably a factory labourer or coalminer from a northern industrial town. My lineage is, therefore, probably not only safe but also reassuringly respectable.

Pour les Visiteurs Francais.

I’ve often made reference on this blog to France, French people, and Frenchness generally (at least as it’s perceived by me or is a stereotype so common that it will be easily recognised.) And because there is a long history of conflict between the French and the English – now largely replaced by mostly friendly rivalry, I’m pleased to say – my references are often humorous in such a way that they could be misconstrued as insult.

Nothing could be further from the truth because I’m actually something of a Francophile. I like French culture; I like to hear the French language spoken; I like French music of the Impressionist school; and in particular I like the French sense of humour. And that’s encouraging because if I like the French sense of humour, there’s a good chance that the French will understand mine.

So please don’t be offended, Gallic chums. If ever I have something derogatory to say about something you’ve done, it will be stated plainly enough and you may rest assured that it will be well considered. You are, after all, no more perfect than anybody else (including us.)

(And I omitted to mention earlier that what I particularly like is hearing young French women speaking English with a genuine French accent. Mon Dieu.)

Confusing the Appeal.

I’m noticing a sorry trend these days. So much serious music is being sold in performance on the back of sex and cheap glamour. The young woman pianist walks on stage wearing skimpy shorts or other sexually provocative apparel, and then sits down to perform a piano concerto. So what are we supposed to do? Listen to the music or ogle her body? It appears we’re supposed to do both, but are they compatible? It seems to me that the appeal of good music does not sit easily with the objectification of women.

Identifying the Real Fantasy World.

Whenever I finish watching a James Bond film (tonight it was Quantum of Solace) I always feel a bit silly. That’s because I wonder how I mostly managed to be taken in by it when I’m usually taken in by very little. And the realisation gradually returns to me that the business of the world turns largely on the little lives of mostly ordinary people, and not on the frantic posturing of power-obsessed villains, murderous henchmen, and emotionally fractured anti-heroes, all of whom can disappear into the maelstrom of a plot hole and emerge unscathed while we pretend that we haven’t noticed.

It’s just harmless escapism, you might argue. I know, but doesn’t this illustrate a broader principle – the question of what life is increasingly about in the modern developed world, where the system feeds us fantasy after fantasy on various levels instead of concentrating on deeper values with a view to progressing as a species? You only have to watch a few TV ads to realise that. It’s why I never do.

Meanwhile, in my own little world I create my own fantasies rather than swallowing the ones the rich and powerful dream purveyors try to feed me. Mine seem so much more real, but they come at a price. Maybe more on that another time. It’s much too late in the day to get too serious.

Relinquishing the House Style.

I seem to be attracting an entourage of middle aged female shop assistants in Ashbourne whose increasingly familiar manner is making me suspicious. What do they want of me? Are they possessed of some unsubstantiated notion that we’re friends? Do they think I need mothering? Do they see themselves as being on the shelf and hope to ingratiate themselves into my affections that they might benefit from my will?

One of them greeted me today by calling across the shop: ‘Are you all right there?’

Now, my first instinct on being so accosted would be to reply: ‘Why do you ask? Do you have reason to believe that my life would improve if I were somewhere else?’ But I’m trying to be a better person; I’ve said so often enough. And so I returned the greeting with a quizzical look, paused for a few seconds, and said: ‘Yes, thanks.’ Point made, but kindly made (relatively speaking.)

See what a nice person I’m becoming? Gregory House would be ashamed of me.

Complimentary Blessings.

I was in a charity shop today, moseying slowly between the aisles, when I noticed a young woman with a child in a buggy standing aside to let me pass. She was smiling at me expectantly, and she was so unprepossessing as to be remarkable for the fact.

She had relative poverty written all over her. Small in stature, so slim as to seem unnaturally so, devoid of prettiness or any vestige of make-up to disguise the fact, possessed of plain mousy hair and the plainest of clothes and spectacles, and probably not yet twenty. But the smile was warm and genuine.

I said ‘thank you’ and moved on, but encountered her again a few minutes later. She was still smiling at me, so I returned the smile and glanced down at the child. The little girl, who I guessed to be around fifteen months, was as unprepossessing as her mother, except for one particular. She raised her eyes to mine and I saw that they were large, open, intelligent, and coloured the most vivid shade of Wedgwood blue. I complimented them to her parent who smiled even more broadly still.

As I moved away it occurred to me that for a few moments I had probably made somebody with little in the way of material comforts proud and happy in her achievement. And for the same few moments I had the rare sense that maybe there's some point in my being here after all.

Being Creeped for Once.

I watched The Grudge tonight – the American version. (Although it did have a Japanese director so maybe it counts as an American-Japanese version.)

I’m pleased to say that it was the first thing I’ve found creepy for a very long time – sufficiently creepy, in fact, as to make me feel slightly uneasy about going upstairs. There’s a lot of going upstairs in The Grudge. I’d go so far as to say that if The Grudge has a leitmotif, it’s going upstairs. And it was only after I’d watched it that I realised how much the Japanese version of creepiness relies heavily on the presence of stairs. Maybe it’s because the Japanese are generally shorter in stature than Europeans and stairs are more intimidating to them. I’m guessing.

The other thing I realised was that Japanese eyes are better than European eyes at looking scared, thus transmitting fear to the viewer more effectively. This does not, of course, apply to the supernatural women who are often the prime motivators of the fear. With them it’s more usual to see only one eye hanging creepily in a gap between the long black hair hanging over the face, especially when they’re crawling down some stairs. Japanese lady ghosts do an awful lot of crawling, which, for some unaccountable reason, is creepier than floating through the air as European lady wraiths are more wont to do. It also adds an extra element of mystery because one is left wondering why they never get their voluminous white nightgowns dirty.

So there you have it. The Grudge comes recommended by me. Only if I might be permitted a spoiler, don’t expect Sarah Michelle Gellar to be the only one to escape the wrath of the disgruntled ones. There’s a woman in a white nightgown with long black hair standing right behind her.

Engaging With an Alternative.

Back in 2008 I read Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials. It isn’t quite a classic work when compared with the established canon of classic works, but I don’t think any work of fiction has engaged me in quite the same way, or to quite the same degree, as that one did. For me, it had everything.

On the side of us good guys there is a young female heroine, a small army of honourable gypsies searching for their kidnapped children, a giant polar bear of intelligence, integrity and courage, and a regiment of warlike witches whose aim is sure and whose love for any mortal man can be extremely hazardous to him. The witches are ambivalent. I like that.

The bad guys consist chiefly of the Church Establishment, their henchmen, and a beautiful female villain. I’m strangely fond of beautiful female villains. I never understood why.

And it’s all set in an environment of multiple parallel universes which can be accessed if only you know where the gateways are. I think I might have mentioned my fascination with the concept of portals and parallel universes on this blog.

So there you have it: the very perfection of an alternative reality into which I was more than happy to be placed back in 2008, and which is even more to my taste now.

So now we have the TV series to watch. I mentioned it here a few weeks ago. I found the first two episodes a little disappointing, but this week’s third episode was a substantial improvement and I have high hopes for the rest. The rest is where the bear and the witches make their entrance, you see, and I am inordinately fond of bears and witches.

The only difficulty I’m having now is that our young heroine, Lyra Belacqua, has a habit of occasionally looking disturbingly like the Lady B. Same hint of olive in the skin tone, same raven hair, same enigmatic look in those deep, dark eyes. (‘Dark’ eyes, incidentally, do not derive their quality from the colour of the irises, but from their conformation within the context of the upper face and the subtle meanings they convey.) Fortunately, the Lady B is now a million miles away and ever was so to all intents and purposes, so I’m managing the confusion well enough.

On Balance.

It seems that no matter how deep the mind falls into the darkness of despond, there’s still a little light left in there which lets you look out of the window and wonder why squirrels are always in such a hurry.

*  *  *

It’s very dark again in dear old England today. It’s become depressingly rare in recent weeks to go a whole day without rain, and today is not one of the favoured ones. We used to recite a rhyme when I was a kid:

Rain, rain, go away

Come again another day

But, of course, we could hardly be happy in a land without rain. And so we might add:

Swell the grain but leave the hay

Let us have more blue than grey

Keep the cracking earth at bay

But rest throughout our holiday

*  *  *

And have you noticed that men traditionally discuss while women natter? But the times they are a-changing.

Distant Days.

You’re sitting in your little cell of an old house late on a chill November night, the mist and wetness without insinuating its unwholesome influence on the air within, when you read George Elliot’s words in describing Adam Bede’s walk to his day’s labour on a June morning:

And perhaps there is no time in a summer’s day more cheering than when the warmth of the sun is just beginning to triumph over the freshness of the morning – when there is just a hint of early coolness to keep off languor under the delicious influence of warmth.

And you remember those far off days of youth when the urge to sit in quiet contemplation by some glassy lake or deep running river, rod in hand and the prospect of a dipping float keeping your pulse at the ready, drew you out on just such a morning. You remember the bus ride, the steady walk along empty lanes, the climbing of stiles or gates, the crossing of verdant fields, and the tackling up when the destination was reached. You remember the fading traces of dew on the grass, and the sweet scent of fresh water, and the high white clouds scattered thinly across the blue mantle to augur a fine prospect.

Such are the summer-strewn treasures contained within that musty bag of memories, brought out for perusal when the autumn of the year and the autumn of a life sinks the mind into the mire of inevitable mortality.

Returning the Waggle.

I forgot to mention that I passed the Lady B’s sister in Ashbourne again this week. She waved to me.

Now, I say ‘waved’, but I have to admit that the term is something of a misnomer in this particular instance. The verb ‘to wave’ normally indicates an action of some volume in which the arm is raised – if only slightly – and the hand is moved sideways and back again to indicate greeting. (I have a vague recollection that the Lady B’s waves were particularly voluminous, but my recollection might be faulty on the matter. Such is the way of life’s ephemera.) The Lady B’s sister’s gesture was not so much a wave as a waggle of the little finger, the hand on which it was placed being wrapped around a mobile phone into which she was speaking. It was accompanied, however, by a slight turn of the head, and one must always accept favour where even the slightest favour is offered.

I declined the almost overwhelming compulsion to wave back, but made do instead with a smile. It might even have been a wry smile; I don’t rightly remember. What I do remember is that the returning of a waggle with a smile had something of the enigma about it, and ‘enigma’ is always the watchword in matters pertaining to the mysterious lady in question.

Observing the Observer.

I find that the older I get, the more surprised I am when somebody takes an interest in me. I sometimes wonder why that should be, and the most immediate conclusion is that it’s simply a matter of low self-esteem. I’m a nobody and not fit to be noticed, so why does this person notice me? What’s going wrong here?

Thinking on, I doubt that’s right. My self-esteem moves as my moods do, and yet I’m always surprised when somebody takes an interest in me. I think it has more to do with the increasing self-perception that my role in life is to stand apart and observe.  I watch people and I watch their society and I try to work out what’s going on.

And so life for me is a bit like watching a cinema screen on which the world and its people are playing out the drama of life while I stand remote from it all. And when one of the images on the screen turns to face the camera and says: ‘Hey, you. Third seat in from the right on the seventh row. Yes, you…’ it’s a bit freaky.

And of course, it isn’t that simple because nothing ever is.

Meanwhile, the leaden skies and the cold and the unremitting wetness of everything are sucking the life out of me.

Seeing Samsara.

I watched the first two thirds of Samsara last night. I watched the final third tonight. Throughout it all I was gripped by a sense of something I couldn’t put a name to without sounding foolish and pretentious even to myself. This is powerful stuff, but knowing why it is powerful is the elusive part.

And yet I’m gripped, as I usually am, by the need to say something. Saying something is what I do. We all do whatever it is we do, and maybe that’s the point of it all. Or, to put it another way, maybe there is no point.

This was never more evident than when I allowed myself the time to read the credits at the end. There are a lot of them, and the purpose of presenting them seemed futile. Why does anybody ever take credit for anything, I asked myself. What is credit but the expression of ego, and what is ego but the empty heart of physical existence… the air in a flimsy balloon which disappears when the plastic is pricked… the strutting of an illusion destined to implode?

If there is any meaning to take from this most powerful collection of images and music, it is simply that we are born, we walk our respective roads with blinkered eyes, and then we pass. The rest is mystery.

Others will no doubt view it differently.

Three Brief and Disparate Notes.

I watched the first hour of Ron Fricke’s classic, Samsara, again tonight. It prompted three thoughts.

1. Which is the more to be feared: being sucked up into a tornado, or being sucked down into a whirlpool?

2. The baptism of infants is callous, arrogant and abusive.

3. We humans insist on objectifying the abstract, and in so doing probably remain enslaved to something we could be moving beyond.

I expect I’ll have breakfast as usual tomorrow.

MRI In Brief.

I went for the MRI scan on my legs today. The letter which calls you for the appointment includes a questionnaire to fill in. It includes things like:

Have you had any operations in the last eight weeks?

Do you have any metal things inserted in your body?

Do you wear dentures?

Have you ever had a body part fall off in consequence of having been intimate with a leper?

So you ring the No option to all of them and hand it in at reception.

And then an Indian woman comes and asks you all the same questions again before inviting you to take all your clothes off except your socks, shoes and underwear, and shows you where the scrubs are to change into.

And then you go and sit in another room where a woman from Lincolnshire asks you all the same questions again before telling you that they’ll be ready in about five minutes.

And then they invite you to lie on a bed and offer you music to listen to through a headset, only it’s mainstream rock and pop which you don’t like so you decline the offer. ‘What sort of music do you like?’ asks the young Italian radiographer. ‘Classical,’ you reply because it’s the easiest option. ‘Ah, classical,’ says the young Italian guy, evidently warming to you because Italians think they invented everything classical.

And then you start sliding in and out of this tunnel thing which makes an awful lot of loud and strange noises so you can’t hear the music anyway, while an electronic voice disguised as a woman keeps telling you to remain still while the table moves. This is confusing until you realise that ‘table’ is the term electronic voices use when they actually mean ‘bed.’ But since you’re not in a particularly rebellious mood, you remain still as ordered.

And when it’s all over they let you out of the MRI suite and tell you not to go home until your cannula has been removed, at which point you wonder whether there has ever been an example of somebody walking out with a big plastic thing sticking into his arm.

And then the same Indian woman who asked you the damn fool questions comes and removes the cannula and you head homeward. And on the way you witness a serious near miss because some idiot coming the other way is engaged in overtaking another car on an unlit road on a bend and at speed. And it’s all very exciting. 

But at least the young woman radiographer impressed you because she exhibited just the right combination of efficiency and familiarity. And you told her so because that’s what you do. And she said ‘thank you.’ And that’s about it.

A Troubling Prospect.

I forgot to mention last Friday that my latest post-cancer screening procedures proved clear, so now I can breathe again on that front until the next one is due in February.

The next issue to receive attention is the vascular constriction problem which is causing my left leg to ache badly if I try to walk more than about 300 yards. Tomorrow I’m due to go for the angiogram to establish how the blood is flowing and what, if anything, can be done about it.

What concerns me about this is what the doctor said the last time I saw him – that if the issue is manifest in my left leg at the moment, the chances are that the process is happening everywhere in my body. And that raises the spectre of other problems such as angina. Angina isn’t such a big problem in itself, but what about the other manifestation of arterial constriction which is of no small importance to men? You know, that word nobody likes to use. Impotence.

Well, the prospect of impotence is also of relatively minor concern to me since I see no likelihood of ever needing to be potent again. Those days are in the past. But suppose I were to be shipwrecked and washed up on a desert island, and on regaining consciousness on the sun-kissed sand I were to see a number of bronzed maidens rushing in my direction with delight and anticipation in their eyes.

‘A man! A man!’ they would be crying. ‘Now we can breed again and the future of our people will be secure.’ At which point I would have to say:

‘Breed? Not with me you won’t. Those days are in the past.’ And then I’d feel a prat.

But that wouldn’t be the end of the matter. The looks of delight and anticipation would change to daggers and other sundry pointed things, all racing towards my person at speed. And their leader would say:

‘If you cannot breed with us, you are of no value and must die. Prepare for your end, half-man. Resistance is useless.’

And then the looks of delight and anticipation would return to the eyes of the bronzed maidens and they would cry out with one voice:

‘Man meat! We haven’t tasted that in many a long year. Should we have him now or save him for Christmas?’

And I don’t think I’d like that very much.

On Wetness and the Ladies of Uttoxeter.

The first thing I did this morning (even before breakfast) was take a spade out and clear five land drains up the hill from here. The object was to return the road to its proper status as a hard, black thing suitable for the progress of motor vehicles, rather than a torrent of fast flowing water begging to have a hydroelectric damn erected at its lowest extremity.

The subsequent drive to Uttoxeter was unusual, since the lane that runs south from the village in the appropriate direction had become a succession of causeways linking many shallow lakes through which driving a motor car had to be done slowly. Britain is very wet at the moment. If October was the John the Baptist of wetness, November is proving the very Jesus himself. And if a man called Noah makes an appearance, we won’t laugh at him this time.

Having negotiated the watery obstacles successfully, I arrived at Uttoxeter to find that I had no change for the car park ticket machine. I looked for a place to deposit notes in the hope that the machine might have the facility to give change. There was none. I went to the two nearest shops and asked whether they could oblige me by changing a tenner. They both declined. I came back and tried to use my credit card, but the machine was having none of it.

By that time there were two women waiting behind me, neither of whom could change a £10 note, but one of them insisted on donating a £2 coin to my cause. I felt guilty but felt I had little alternative than to accept, and I hoped to bump into her again so as to effect reimbursement. The hope proved to be forlorn, so I assuaged my feelings of guilt by reasoning that the day’s adverse circumstances had afforded her the opportunity to demonstrate her generous nature. I’m clever like that.

But what of the attractive, raven haired young woman who walked past me while I was munching my vegan sausage roll, and who looked at me long and hard before presenting me with a rather nice smile? What about her? Well, I found myself standing behind her in the checkout queue of a discount store on the retail park later. Among her purchases were two mugs, one with a J printed on it and one with a C. I couldn’t resist the opportunity:

‘Excuse me asking,’ I said, ‘but are you the J or the C?’

‘I’m the J,’ she replied with an even broader smile.

The temptation to play the guessing game was all but irresistible, but resist it I did. It would have been a step too far. It might even have provoked the suspicion that I was in some way disreputable. Brevity is almost always a virtue, and restraint is the true stuff of wisdom. That’s the English way, or used to be.

On Potterheads and Loopiness.

I’m sick to the back teeth of idiots on YouTube arguing over whether Hermione should have married Ron or Harry, so tonight I entered the discussion with:

I think Mr Rochester should have died in the fire. I think Charlotte Bronte was completely wrong when she allowed him to live and marry Jane.

Will there be gnashing of teeth or merely shaking of heads (either in disbelief or utter confusion)?

I’m in a very strange mood tonight, courtesy of seeing the priestess close the book of my life and then massage my corpse with oil. (Oh, and reading Poe in a state of extreme tiredness. Definitely not recommended.)

In Praise of Kai.

I treated myself to a bar of 70% Santo Domingo chocolate this week (on the pretext – possibly valid – that it’s good for reducing cholesterol. ‘However low your bad cholesterol is,’ said my doctor, ‘it’s always better to be lower.’ Good enough for me. Hang the expense etc, etc.)

Savouring this dark, relatively un-sweet chocolate reminded me of a drink I experienced during only one period of my life. You might remember that I was in the navy for a brief period in my teens, and during the night and early morning watches somebody would bring you a mug of kai (pron. as in pie.)

Kai was a hard block of unsweetened chocolate which was scraped with a knife until there was about three teaspoon’s worth in the mug. Boiling water was added while stirring, and there was your mug of hot kai. How simple was that?

Simple, but magnificently effective. I can attest to the fact that, when you’re standing on the bridge wings of a frigate during a force 11 storm being drenched with ice cold Atlantic spray and it’s 3 o’clock in the bloody morning, no drink in the world prompts the pleasure centre into rousing applause better than kai.

I learned two things tonight: first, how to spell it, and second, that it was popular with sailors on the convoy runs during WWII. I can well imagine it was. I also imagine that the U-boat crews probably didn’t have the pleasure, which maybe explains a lot.

A Reason To Be Isolated.

I just watched a YouTube video made by a young Swedish woman on the subject of Nationalism. And I read some of the comments, in spite of the concern that they would irritate the hell out of me. They did. Contributor after contributor hijacked the lecture to their own various prejudices and demonstrated yet again why I have a problem with most humans.

There are too many small minds out there, too many beetles living in the garden shed and being oblivious to the wider world, let alone the even wider perception of material existence. It’s why I’m a loner and a recluse. It’s why I decline to join the discussion. Discussion is a game I’ve found I cannot play because I’m not on the same playing field.

I thought of commenting myself with the quotation from Herman Hess which I have on my sidebar:

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.

But why bother? It seems that being a loner is the only way to pursue that goal.

On Poe and Purple.

Reading isn’t the most comfortable of occupations when you feel cold, tired and vaguely out of sorts. And that’s why, having read a mere ten pages of The Fall of the House of Usher, I gave up and laid my head on the desk. And then I tried not to go to sleep because I knew that if I did I would wake up, ten or fifteen or thirty minutes later, feeling colder than when I dropped off. It’s happened before, often.

But I did notice something interesting before the spirit weakened. I’ve said before that I insist there are two forms of melancholy: the black and the purple. Black melancholy is a form of depression and not at all pleasant. The purple variety, however, rides on the soft waves of reflection and resignation. It washes the spirit with a dark but somehow wholesome calmness, and makes the skin tingle gently and pleasurably if you’ve a mind to allow it. Bearing this in mind, it seemed appropriate that Poe should say this about his first view of the Usher mansion:

… a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible.

Maybe that’s the clue to purple melancholy. It’s poetic.

Considering the Lady B's Wheels.

It appears the Lady B is now driving a different car. It’s an Audi A4 and doesn’t suit her at all. The first car I knew her have – a Vauxhall Astra – didn’t really suit her either. Neither did the third one, which was a VW Golf. The car which best suited the beguiling Lady B was the second one, the British racing green mini with two white stripes down the bonnet (‘hood’ to colonials.) That one had style.

The fact is, you see, Audi A4s have no style at all. They’re just big and pretentious, which is why they’re indelibly associated in my mind with estate agents and used car salesmen. The pointy shoe brigade, as Mel calls them. So what on earth is the Lady B doing in one? Is she becoming middle aged? Should I mourn the fact or not give a damn?

OK, I know the answer to that one.

Failing the English Test.

There’s something of which I disapprove about modern retail culture. It’s the practice common among chain stores and coffee shops of forcing female assistants to wear name tags.

Why should I, as a mere customer, be permitted the presumption of knowing a woman’s forename when we haven’t been introduced? This is an English thing, of course, and I quite like certain English things.

The new girl in the branch of Lloyd’s Pharmacy next door to my doctor’s doesn’t wear a name tag, but she does quite impress me. I noticed when I first went in there (to pick up my statins which I’m now popping with gay abandon) that she has an unusually distinctive look. I discovered on Wednesday that she also has a vibrant personality. And she dresses stylishly. English or not, there are times when I really do wish that I was thirty or so years younger. I wonder what her name is.

Did I ever say that I become a different person after midnight? I could understand it if it was dependent on the moon’s phases, but it isn’t. It has more to do with Scotland’s major export.

I have my next procedure at the hospital tomorrow. How I do hate hospital procedures. I sometimes think they’re trying to worry me to death in order to reduce the drain on the beleaguered health service.

A Momentary Question.

The celebrated photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson, coined the phrase ‘the decisive moment’ as an umbrella term for the content of his candid photography. This is an example:

And this is one of mine (because why not?)

  

It’s interesting that the phrase should have come from a photographer because photography is probably the medium most responsible for our flawed notion that there is such a thing as an instant, and that ‘instant’ and ‘moment’ are synonymous. They’re not. There can be no such thing as an instant because time never stops flowing. Time can be infinitely subdivided because there is nothing at the end of the calculation except a value which can be further subdivided.

During the period when the shutter was opened to expose these two photographs– probably around 1/250^th of a second – something moved. Time did. And maybe that’s why Cartier-Bresson used the term ‘moment’ instead of ‘instant.’ What we see in even a static photograph is not an instant, but a small period of the passage of time.

Ah, but what about the point at which the shutter stopped being fully open and began its return to being closed? Now we’re talking about the transition from rest to movement, and here the fields of logic, mechanics and philosophy become uneasy bedfellows. Surely there is a point at which something stops being still and begins to move. So are the concepts of ‘point’ and ‘instant’ synonymous? I don’t know. I want a logician to tell me. Does anybody know one?

And I only wrote this because I had nothing better to do and it just occurred to me. I don’t suppose it’s at all important. So should I now consider how we define importance? Imagine how long that would take.

Swarbrick Booming.

Seems I’m beginning to be proved right about young women leading the way into the future. After Greta Thunberg impressed the world with her mettle, my latest heroine (and I use the gender-specific term advisedly) is Chlöe Swarbrick of New Zealand.

  

Good on yer, Chlöe. Feel free to put us boomers into the spotlight and the firing line. It is, as you say, your future that most of my generation don’t seem to care about. A few of us do.

On 007 and Vital Components.

I’ve never been much of a fan of James Bond movies, but lately I thought I’d give the Daniel Craig incarnation a try just in case my life has been missing a vital component. Tonight’s member of the esteemed canon was Skyfall.

Now, the thing about James Bond movies is that they’re an exercise in so thrilling the audience with dastardly deeds, thrills and spills, bad guys and good coming to gut-wrenching conclusions, and glamorous women taking showers-for-two, that they fail to notice occasional plot holes the size of Jupiter. In tonight’s offering, for example, it was never explained how James managed to be shot in the chest, fall several hundred feet into a gorge from the roof of a moving train, plunge into a raging torrent that would easily have despatched an elephant, get carried over the most gigantic cataract, and then turn up in a quiet beach-front bar sipping pina coladas and musing on whether life would be better spent with pipe, slippers and the Big Book of Daily Mail Crosswords.

4 Across: The sound a gun makes when you pull the trigger. Four letters. B-blank-N-blank.

That one should keep him guessing for as long as it takes to empty a bottle of 20-year-old Speyside malt.

Ah, well, at least it gave me something to make a bit of a post about. I’ve had nothing to say lately, and since I have no Big Book of Daily Mail Crosswords to keep me occupied during the long autumn evenings, writing is about the only vital component available to me. Watching a James Bond movie couldn’t quite compete, although it was interesting that M died in tonight’s blockbuster. I gather that doesn’t happen in most of them.

(I have written quite a lot of emails to the priestess this week, though. The possibility still exists that she might be coming to visit for the sole purpose of establishing once and for all what colour my eyes are. Why she doesn’t just ask I can’t imagine.)

A Step Up.

I’ll tell you what’s interesting. You’re regarding somebody in your mind’s eye, somebody you’ve known for ten years, when their familiar human exterior dissolves and you see a spiritually higher version of them. So this is who they really are? And maybe this is only the start of the revelation. Maybe there’s more to come yet.

What worries me a little is that I now feel an uncommon level of trust for the person in question. Trust is a dangerous and usually foolish thing to embrace, but I always was a risk taker in all matters meaningfully abstract.

And could this, I wonder, have anything to do with the pungent scent of fresh jasmine flowers which is assailing my nostrils more frequently than ever? Or do I need brain surgery?

Planet Bedlam.

In tonight’s episode of X Files, Scully had a line:

Nonsensical, repetitive behaviour is a routine sign of mental illness.

Isn’t that what most people do most of the time? I’m thinking shopping malls, television, and trusting the system.

After Poe.

Having some time to kill in consequence of there being a state of idleness about me, I decided to read again my favourite Edgar Allan Poe short story. I went into my cold and gloomy living room, took my volume of Poe short stories from the bookshelf, collected my reading glasses, and returned to the relative welcome of my desk light in the office.

I didn’t read The Fall of the House of Usher as intended, but fell to reading Berenice instead. And when I’d finished – having read both stories several times before – it struck me for the first time that I seem to be particularly fascinated by tales in which a young female relative – in one case a sister, and in the other a cousin – should be prematurely buried and then re-appear in a state of abject depletion. I wondered whether there might be some reason in fact for my fascination, or whether my mind is as devoid of healthy rest as Poe’s evidently was.

Further, it is a fact that whenever I read a story from the inner turmoil of Poe – as opposed to the stories of detection and the search for buried treasure – I always feel driven to write something myself. This was the best I could manage.

Influences.

Just lately I’ve taken to watching a Laurel and Hardy short every night on YouTube, and I think it’s having an effect of the progress of my life.

A few days ago I was raking some plant debris off the embankment behind my house, when I forgot where the other end of the rake was and broke a pane of glass in my kitchen window. That’s pure Laurel and Hardy, right?

What I find interesting is this: Some years ago I was in the habit of watching a Japanese horror short every night, and creepy things started happening in my house. Now that I’ve changed to Laurel and Hardy I’m breaking windows with the top end of a rake. Who says life doesn’t mirror art?