Age and Perception.

One of my Christmas gifts from Mel this year was a copy of the Rupert Bear annual. I might have mentioned in a recent post that the latest Rupert Bear annual was always one of my favourite gifts as a kid, and so it's been interesting to see what has changed since I last had one at around age ten or eleven.

Well, the artwork looks exactly the same, and the rhyming couplets accompanying each panel sound about the same. And as far as I remember, the stories follow the same lines. What’s changed is the character of Rupert himself. Except, of course, it probably hasn’t.

Back in those innocent and relatively simple days of childhood, Rupert seemed to me to be quite grown up in a childlike sort of way. I identified with him. His mother, on the other hand, homely and comfortable as she undoubtedly was, seemed a little remote.

Rupert has now become a child. He has a child’s mind and speaks a child’s language. His mother is the one I relate to now. Given the volume of experience which has passed under my personal bridge in the interim, I suppose I should have expected it.

Holding the Key to Charlotte's Code.

I said in a recent post that the principal delight in reading Charlotte Brontë’s novel Shirley lies in reading between the lines to discover the nature of Charlotte Brontë. Over the past few nights I’ve come to realise that there is a quality to be discovered by reading the lines themselves: she has the most marvellous and mischievous sense of humour.

I never noticed it in her better known novels, Jane Eyre and Villette, yet here it is in all its glory. It’s a subtle, dry, ironic sort of humour, sometimes softly stated and sometimes sharply. Who could not, for example, fail to raise a smile at her choice for the heading of Chapter XVIII:

WHICH THE GENTEEL READER IS RECOMMENDED TO SKIP, LOW PERSONS BEING HERE INTRODUCED

I suspect that plenty of people would fail to raise a smile, and that’s the beauty of it. It gives the impression of a cipher devised to be intelligible only to those whose instrument of perception is tuned to the same key. And that feels like a compliment to those of us who see her eyes so clearly that we discern the glint in them.

Being Satifactorily Alone at Christmas.

I went for my Christmas Day walk before lunch today in order to avoid having my steps constantly dogged by people wishing me a Happy Christmas, thereby effectively forcing me into making a disingenuous response.

(I have observed down the years that most people take a walk after lunch in order to ‘walk it off’, and I’ve often wondered why people gorge themselves on Christmas Day until they feel bloated and uncomfortable. Where’s the pleasure in that?)

But anyway, the fact is that I dislike making disingenuous responses. If I were to be honest, I would say something like: ‘No thanks. I don’t do Christmas.’ But then they would probably call me Scrooge, and sneer and shriek and set their dogs on me, even if they paid obeisance to the spirit of the season and delayed chasing me to the burning mill with pitchforks until Boxing Day.

I do wish people would learn to understand Scrooge because then they might realise that I am very nearly his antithesis. Why do so many people think A Christmas Carol is about correction, when it’s actually about rehabilitation?

But here’s the nice bit. During the whole progress of my walk only one vehicle passed me and guess who was in it. Yup, the only person domiciled within a 25 mile radius of here who I welcome seeing on Christmas Day. And being a passenger in a car, she was unable to wish me a Happy Christmas. Perfect. (Actually she just might know me well enough not to wish me a Happy Christmas, but as the aforementioned Mr Scrooge says at one point in A Christmas Carol – it’s the bit all the dramatisations leave out – ‘Excuse me. I don’t know that.’)

A Christmas Carol Revisited.

So what does an ageing recluse, becoming ever more cynical and tired of the daily round, do on Christmas Eve now that he’s remembered what day it is?

Well, it’s turned cold outside tonight, and when it turns cold outside it soon becomes cold inside. The first thing he does, therefore, is sit on his hands at the computer so as to relieve them of some of the chill. But while he’s doing that he’s unable to type or even read the next chapter of Shirley, and so he thinks. And after he’s thought for a while he feels the need to write something in consequence. Out come the hands and apply themselves to the keyboard.

One of his thoughts was about all the children who are currently engaged in a troubled sleep – troubled only from the excitement of knowing that tomorrow is Christmas Day, and that time is exasperatingly tardy when Christmas Day approaches. Their resting minds know that the clock is ticking and will eventually reach a point when they will be able to switch on the light (for it will probably be early) and go in search of gay wrappings hiding a multitude of pleasures. That was what he did as a child (in the days before he became cynical and tired of the daily round.)

But then he thinks of the children in poor, or maybe abusive, households who have no gay wrappings to search for. Do we still have such children in these enlightened times? I think we probably do. And he thinks of those who have lost loved ones to the pandemic, and who will be waking on Christmas Day to an empty space probably for the first time in their lives. He thinks of those shivering in feeble boats crossing dangerous seas for no better reason than to escape violence, persecution and poverty, hoping that charity will prevail and bring rescue. Christmas is, after all, supposedly about charity. But some of them won’t even have a Christmas Day, now or ever again, because the deep sea will take them and relieve them of their misery. And what of those on terra firma who have no walls to shield them from the cruel frosts of winter? How will they be spending their Christmas Eve?

And that’s when he thinks that sometimes he would rather not think at all, but stride carelessly across a sunlit meadow, his body replete with the health, strength and vigour of youth, daring to do all that may become a man (even though he's read that he who dares do more is none.)

His free bandwidth beckons at midnight, and then he will be able to amuse himself with shallow pleasures beamed in from cyberspace while the top of the scotch bottle begs to be loosened. And tomorrow will be another (Christmas) day.

(And still he wishes everyone peace, joy and happiness. Christmas should be no time for ghosts.)

Replay.

Something odd just happened. For some reason – and I’m not quite sure what – I felt impelled to listen to the Tony Bennett version of Stranger in Paradise that I posted on yesterday’s blog. As soon as he began to sing the first line my conscious shifted. I was a child again, not as a memory but as an actual presence. I was back in the house I lived in between the ages of 1 and 11 – really back there, looking around at the hazy outlines of walls and furniture. I felt sure that it was Christmas and that my mother was in another room. It lasted only a few seconds and then I returned to the here and now. I was trembling, my skin was tingling, and I felt dizzy.

You will immediately conclude, of course, that this was merely a psychological aberration, and you’d probably be right. We all know that the mind is capable of producing all sorts of odd experiences which have no basis in reality. But I also give much credence to Hamlet’s assertion that there are more things in heaven and earth… than are dreamt of in your philosophy. And the message coming from the cutting edge of physics appears to say: reality is not quite what we think it is. Watch this space.

So what should I make of it? Is the universe – or one of its agents – trying to tell me something? Is it right, as some claim, that all of time exists at the same time, and that it is sometimes possible to shift to a different groove in the vinyl and pick up an earlier or later state? Or am I just a little closer to the edge of sanity than I ought to be?

We don’t know, do we? That’s the problem. All we can do is let the experience remain a mystery and take its place in the treasure chest along with all the others.

Christmas in a Coma.

I’m sure there’s never been a year in my life when I was so unaware of Christmas as I’ve been this year. I went for a walk at lunchtime, and as I passed the village school I noticed that it was obviously closed. I wondered why, and it was only after I’d worked out the date that I remembered that today is Christmas Eve.

When I was a kid, Christmas Eve was the most magical day of the year, even more so than Christmas Day. It was almost agonisingly swamped with excitement and anticipation, and the feelings were re-lived when my daughter was a little girl. Now I don’t even remember what day it is until something prompts me.

So why is this? I’ve been increasingly lacking in Christmas spirit for some years now, but never as much as this year. Is this the latest manifestation of an ongoing process? Is it simply a matter of ageing? Is it to do with becoming increasingly distant from the culture and its habits? Is it the increasing incidence of dark tunnels on my personal road? Is it the strange and stifling atmosphere engendered by Covid?

I don’t know, but only remembering Christmas Eve after being prompted half way through the day still came as a surprise. And given my enhanced awareness of mortality since the cancer issue, I wonder whether I will have the chance to find out what my response to Christmas will be next year.

The New Story.

I talked in some recent posts about the writing of a new short story. It has now been posted to the other site.

It makes no claim to quality, having been written hurriedly on a whim over a few evenings when the constraints of current conditions weighed heavy. I worked out today (in furtherance of my fascination with statistics) that during the various versions of lockdown since the early spring, I have spent approximately 96% of my time alone in the environs of my little plot. Lately, since the winter has begun to bite, it has been mostly spent within the four walls of a damp and draughty croft.

Such a situation can wreak mild, but not infrequent, havoc on the nervous system even for a recluse like me, and the writing of an inconsequential little tale was a welcome expression of fancy, and also a useful aid to the maintenance of sanity.

And those with an ear for the nuances of language might have noted that recent posts to this blog have offered faint echoes of the mid-Victorian style. That is to be expected since I have fallen under the spell of the Misses Helstone and Keelder in the novel Shirley. Such is not, however, the case with the story.

Stages of Development.

I asked myself a question yesterday (I have no idea why, but I did.) It ran something like this:

‘If you were asked to list your favourite romantic ballads, which would they be?’

No problem. Three stand out, and three YouTube clips are appended in the order in which they took root in my consciousness.

So the next query was:

‘What do these three songs say about you vis-à-vis the position of the fairer sex in the progress of your life to date?’

Well, the first of them stems, I’m quite sure, from a time early in my infancy when I saw the film Kismet (from which this song is taken). This is interesting because it suggests that my predilection for the Romantic (rather than the lower case romantic) was established long before I was capable of rationalising the combination of lovelorn lyrics and Borodin’s ravishing melody. In fact, it was even before I could write, much less be able to spell ‘enchanting.’

The second came a bit later. I was still very young, and yet the tenor and verbal nuances were already obvious to me. But then, I do remember the school nurse saying to my mother on one occasion: ‘It’s surprising how early some boys develop.’ (I didn’t quite know what she meant at the time, but I took it as a compliment anyway.)

The third came along in mid life when I had undertaken not to engage in further romantic dalliances because people were getting hurt. It brings to mind two particularly lovely pieces of passion fruit which I felt had to be left on the tree for others to enjoy. Dear old karma finally caught up with me and it was my turn to suffer. Such is life, and it’s all over now, Baby Blue (as I do so like quoting when I feel inclined to use somebody else’s words for a change.)

The Mire on the Road of Romance.

A sound bite stepped into my head this morning and asked whether it might be granted an airing on my blog. I said I’d think about it, and so I have. I decided to accede, with the proviso that all sound bites – whoever claims their genesis and however wise they might appear to the undiscerning acolyte – are generalisations which might be tolerated and accorded a due place in the canon, but never relied upon. This was it:

A promise made in the throes of romantic entanglement is the most likely to be earnestly meant, but the least likely to be vigorously kept.

What I don’t know is whether the author of this sentiment was guided by observation, personal experience, or congenital cynicism.

Stretching the Seconds.

I just realised why the elderly become so sedentary in their habits and activities, so torpid as to be almost unmoving. It’s because lively activity makes time slip by quickly, and when you perceive your time to be short, the urge to wring substance out of every second becomes seemingly important.

That’s my theory. It probably has no merit.

A Candle in a Cold Twilight.

Recently received intelligence informs me that the sack of deleterious prospects for the new year and beyond continues to grow heavier, and so the persistent drip of anxiety is quickening.

Where have all the flowers gone? Where the sunlit company of the inestimable Lady B? Where the means to sit and observe some random minutes of the meandering steps of random strangers? Where the bright and mellow mornings when I was content to start another day? Where the inspiration to commit my own mental meanderings to the vastness of cyberspace?

Darkness rules now. Covid is the only headline. Warnings, restrictions and impediments block the view ahead. Risk is the watchword of the hour, and reluctance its dedicated bedfellow. And while the spirit feels cabined, cribbed and confined, the leaden sky continues to glower, disgorging its cargo almost daily to swamp the torpid landscape with wetness, filth and the detritus of decay.

*  *  *

But at least I have Charlotte Brontë and her Shirley to provide a little blessed relief. I’m about a third of the way through it now (much of the prose style is heavy and complex, and so requires a high degree of concentration) and am becoming engrossed for a most unexpected reason: I’m learning – or think I’m learning – an awful lot about Charlotte Brontë. I’m sure it’s the only book I’ve ever read in which reading between the lines is more engaging and enlightening than following the plot. There isn’t an awful lot of plot to follow so far.

Comparisons.

I’m currently reading Charlotte Brontë’s second published novel, Shirley. It’s a tough read in some ways, lacking as it does the surface charm of Jane Eyre and Villette, and replacing the more accustomed whipped cream prose with something harder but no less compelling – let’s offer a mature blue Stilton cheese by way of attempting comparison. The plot is not lacking in romantic interest, but there is no urbane delicacy or bucolic charm in the background. This story is set at a time of civil war during the Industrial Revolution between the men of business and their impoverished workers, when the mill owners' machines were being smashed and their bodies sometimes beaten, and when the starving peasants were having degradation, deportation, and even death added to an already desperate existence.

But that’s not why I’m writing this rare blog post. I’m writing it because the chapter I read tonight concerned two elderly spinsters – the Misses Mann and Ainley – who are both somewhat physically impoverished and therefore mocked by the bright young things of the time, but in both of whom shines the light of charity and selfless dedication to the cause of humanity and its needs.

And yet what mainly interested me was not the two ladies’ inner qualities, but the fact that Charlotte referred to them unequivocally as ‘old maids.’ Would a modern writer use that term? I doubt it. And my questioning went further to consider whether there is a male equivalent of the ‘old maid’, and if there is, whether it should be allotted to me. My domestic circumstances bear close comparison with theirs, even though the times are so different.

But let’s return to the inner qualities for a moment. I compared mine with theirs, and was reminded of how I sometimes long for some comely young wench to bestow on me the kindness of approbation – only approbation, you understand, nothing more – and wondered whether this encapsulates the difference between the selfless old maid and the selfish ageing gentleman. I concluded that it probably does.

(And might I add that the walls of the dark tunnel are still largely blocking the signal which used to flow from my blog, and simply said 'write.')

Undertakings.

The tunnel I’ve been stumbling through for the past couple of weeks must be getting a bit lighter because I finished my new short story tonight. It probably needs one more edit and then it can go up at the other place.

And I’m currently engaged in what might be termed a ‘discussion’ with somebody on YouTube over the matter of the vilification of King Henry VIII. I’m determined that it should not descend into acrimony because that would not accord with my new-found desire to be a better person. His stupidity irritates me, certainly, but it shouldn’t. I have no right to be irritated by another person’s stupidity because it’s his to own and none of my business as long as a third party isn’t involved. (That’s one way in which Gregory House and I differ. Did I say I was watching some old House episodes again? I am.)

I did think of pulling out of the discussion because a stupid person isn’t going to stop being stupid just because I make a rational point. But then I decided that if I can encourage even one YouTube comment reader to be more judicious in considering whether it is reasonable and just to judge a historical figure on the basis of current sensibilities, there was a reason to continue. And so I did.

(And now I feel indefensibly arrogant for saying such a thing. You can’t win in the matter of being a better person, can you? I think I’ll say ‘hang the cholesterol’ and have a piece of cheese. Cheese is the one thing I really miss in my undertaking to imbibe less cholesterol.)

Yet Another Message to the Regulars.

Some of the regulars out there (my Blogger stats indicates that there are regulars out there) might be wondering why I haven’t written anything to the blog for ten days. Well, I expect they already know because it’s a simple matter of ‘here we go again.’ Those same regulars will have noted, no doubt, that my life path frequently passes through dark, dank, dispiriting tunnels of varying lengths, and at such times I lose the will to do what I really want to do which is make blog posts.

This time is different. This time I’ve lost even the desire to make blog posts. The blog has come to seem irrelevant and therefore unimportant, which is a shame because it’s been my sole regular companion for nearly eleven years. It’s been my outlet for all the musings, observations, dark and light thoughts, general silliness, the relation of incidents interesting and uninteresting, grumbles galore, and all the other stuff which goes to make up the creature my consciousness is currently inhabiting. To lose it, therefore, would be a matter of some consequence.

But if it has to be, it has to be. Everything in the phenomenal universe is in a state of flux so why should my little blog be an exception? Then again, maybe it won’t. The fact is that I never quite know who I shall be the next time I emerge from one of the dank, dark, dispiriting tunnels. Maybe the urge to communicate will return and I will once again rise to take up the tools and verbal weapons necessary to do so. It might be tomorrow or next week or never. That’s all I can say. It’s called ‘going with the flow.’

But now I feel that I’m becoming too self-indulgent for my own comfort so I’m going to shut up. Do keep watching this space if you feel so disposed, or not if you don’t.

(And perhaps I should mention that two rather lovely horses came to greet me over the top of a field gate today. It was most gratifying, so now I have.)

For No Eyes in Particular.

I just watched the first half hour of the movie I Origins (a birthday present from Mel), having first taken ten minutes to work out how to get the dialogue in English but without the distracting German subtitles. All the instructions in the title menu are in German, you see, and I happen to be – to my eternal shame, I admit – a monoglot. (It’s the German issue of the DVD because all the English versions available on Amazon at the moment are Blue-ray.)

(And now panic sets in. ‘Oh my God,’ I think to myself. ‘I do hope no German people read this and take offence. I didn’t undertake to become a better person only to go and offend German people. I have nothing against German people, really I don’t. Just because they invade Norway every summer with camper vans is no reason to think less of them. I have personally had the honour of meeting two German people during the course of my life – one male and one female – and neither of them had horns, so that proves it: they have just as much right to exist as I do, and so does their language. Hope that settles the matter.)

To continue: I’m enjoying the film so far, but I had to turn it off because an odd conversation kept running through my head. I’m walking through Ashbourne when a young woman approaches me and says:

‘Excuse me. Would you mind if I took a picture of your eyes?’

‘Why?’ I reply.

‘It’s what I do.’

‘Oh, right. OK.’

She takes the picture, but I can’t let the matter end there.

‘You’re not going to take me into a toilet and attempt to have sex with me?’ I query.

‘Ah, so you’ve seen the movie too?’

‘I have.’

‘Nope.’

‘And you’re not going to claim that you recognise me from a previous life?’

‘Nope. I don’t believe in that sort of thing. I’m a scientist.’

This could be the start of a long conversation, and ordinarily I would invite her to share my table in a coffee shop and even buy her a coffee. But these are not ordinary circumstances because sitting in coffee shops is forbidden at the moment. (Bet the government didn’t think of that one when they ordered lockdown.) And so the young woman with the camera walks out of my sight and out of my life and my thoughts turn instead to the streetwise beetle. 

He walks under the door of a shed one day and encounters another beetle which has lived its whole life under a stillage at the far end.

‘Why are you languishing in here?’ he asks. ‘There’s a big world out there with sunshine and trees, and big metal things which move very fast, and huge creatures which walk on two legs. It’s really exciting.’

‘I don’t believe in that sort of thing,’ replies the second beetle. ‘I’m a beetle.’

‘It doesn’t matter what you believe,’ says the streetwise beetle, and then walks back under the door only to get trodden on by a huge creature walking on two legs. That’s because life isn’t fair and never rewards free thinkers.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, I’m dreading the onset of winter. The forecast for this week consists of dropping temperatures and the first light snow on Friday, and that makes me miserable. The older I get, the more intolerant I become of the cold. And this house seems to become more uncomfortable with every passing year. I’m reminded of Ben, a horse which used to spend a lot of his time in the field at the top of my lane. One autumn, when Ben was becoming old and infirm, his human told me she was thinking of having him put down to save him from the rigours of having to go through another winter. I’ve begun to feel pretty much the same way about myself.

Proposing Resolution.

I was talking to Mel tonight and an interesting topic cropped up: the apparent contrast between the seemingly linear progression of individual lives and the unerringly cyclical nature of the mechanism in which life functions.

It’s this question which leads me to give a high level of credence to the concept of reincarnation; the cycle of life, death and rebirth; the persistence of individualised consciousness through many lifetimes – probably until we gravitate to different cycles functioning at higher levels until we re-engage with universal consciousness and attain oblivion. I gather this is fundamentally the Buddhist view.

If such is the case it would follow that there is no contrast at all because the seemingly linear progression is not linear but only appears that way because our limited perceptual faculty is unable to see the whole of the circle on which we’re moving.

I can’t know this, of course – at least not yet – but I like the idea. The resolution of apparent contrast pleases me and feels right. But feeling right is not the same as knowing (at least not yet.) Maybe I’ll have a better idea after the body in which I’m currently living is dead. Pity I won’t be able to make a blog post about it. Sorry.

Finally Getting It.

I’ve nearly finished re-reading my novel, Odyssey, as reported in earlier posts. Just one short chapter left now, and it’s only the epilogue. Annie and Rabbit have gone, Brendan is alone again, and the journey is over.  I’m more than a little sad about that, and being sad is what’s given me the clue as to why I really wrote it in the first place.

At the time I thought it was about taking my writing activities to another level. I’d written about forty short stories – many of which had been published – and a novella, and now it was time to prove to myself that I could write a longer work. And so I did. And, as was usual with all my stories, I let it come to me in its own way rather than following the academic route of planning and structuring and so on. When it was finished I realised that it would be too short to interest a mainstream publisher, so I self-published it with Lulu (of somewhere in South Carolina I think) who had access to the major book retailers.

One woman who bought it wrote to me. She said that she had enjoyed it because she had read it to her mother who liked rabbits. ‘Is that it?’ I thought. ‘Is that all she’s got from it?’ Rabbit is, indeed, a most engaging character, but the book is about very much more than Rabbit’s personality. But that’s ego for you. Ego is petulant. It stamps its feet, crying: ‘All my fancy words and deep thoughts falling like fecund seeds onto stony ground. How very disappointing.’ Indeed, and how very childish. What it’s really about is this:

This book is the most powerful, the most accessible, the most engaging book I’ve ever read. Truly it is. But only to me, because it only relates to me. This was my journey, and there’s no earthly reason why it should be anybody else’s. And so it really doesn’t matter whether anybody else reads it, and if they do, what they think of it.

At the end of the main narrative, the enigmatic and other-worldly being known simply as Annie gives the simple human known as Brendan her final words on the point of it all. She tells him, among other things, that he shouldn’t force the spiritual road, that he should relax his search, follow the path, and let the learning come to him in its own way and its own time. And that’s what I’ve done.

All my old certainties have gone. My tendency to proselytise has gone. Now I walk and wait, brushing off the self-righteous rhetoric of religionists and atheists alike. And when the path offers the odd little revelation here and there, I take it in, roll it around my mind, and decide whether I like the taste of it or not. Whether that’s a good thing or not I’m in no position to judge. But it feels right.

It seems, however, that there has been a price to be paid. The last ten years since I wrote the book have been the darkest, stormiest and most depression-inducing ten years of my life, yet still it feels like the right path to walk. And that’s why I’m glad I put a dedication at the front of the opus, which simply says:

To Aine. With thanks.

Exciting Day, Exciting Life.

I had a recurrence of that old gastro-intestinal problem this morning and felt quite unpleasantly ill for a while. And then we had a power cut because some men were cutting branches off a tree around the corner. So, since all activities requiring electricity were out of bounds, and since I didn’t really feel up to doing anything in the garden, I decided to go to a hardware store in Ashbourne to get a couple of things I need. Only the hardware store didn’t have either of them so I came back again. The power was still off, damn it. It came back on eventually, so then I celebrated by removing the old nest from the nest box behind the kitchen so the birdies would be able to start afresh in the spring. That was my kind deed to round off an exciting day.

Sometimes I realise how lucky I am to be blessed with such an exciting life, while other poor souls have to make do with potholing and skydiving and boring stuff like that. And it helps that I’m nearly at the end of my novel which I’ve been re-reading. I’ve encountered dryads, nyads, little people, centaurs, the Oracle, the Loch Ness monster (who is really rather nice), demons, hungry ghosts, normal ghosts, the great god Pan… I’ve helped rescue a witch from execution by Puritans, and been killed and brought back to life again. And I’m shortly about to watch the pyramids being built. And that was only part of my adventure with Annie and Rabbit.

So tell me, how does jumping out of an aeroplane at 10,000 feet compare with that little lot? I’m not entirely sure how it should be spelt, but it would be something along the lines of pfff…

And it will be my birthday in less than two hours, when I will become a day older than I have been all day today.

On Me and the Next Number.

I imagine I must be repeating myself when I say that I’m having difficulty writing this blog at the moment. The combination of lockdown and my innate reclusiveness makes it difficult for me to find anything to talk about.

One thing I do find amusing, however, is reading all the headlines and analyses around what the government says I’m not allowed to do at the moment, because I didn’t want to do any of it anyway. (Apart from sitting in a coffee shop to observe the ragged multitude, I suppose. I do miss that one.) And I realise that lockdown has far wider implications for most people than it does for me. Most people are people people who need occupations and diversions and regular communion with like souls, whereas I’m not. My problem is finding a like soul to commune with. They’re very rare.

(I just realised something. Any person out there with whom I wish to commune should feel privileged, shouldn’t they? They should. I’d never thought of it like that before. And I’m kidding, of course. I’d be horrified to think I had that much ego.)

*  *  *

I have a birthday coming up on Saturday, and I’m at an age where birthdays are something to be dreaded, or at least ignored. I got a bit depressed about it recently, and then a little voice in my head told me that you don’t become a year older on your birthday, you just become a day older than you were the day before. It helped (a bit.) I wonder why we humans – at least those of us in ‘developed’ cultures – are so obsessed with numbers.

Reviewing an Old Journey.

I mentioned in a recent post that I’m reading my own novel again, the one I wrote nearly ten years ago and haven’t picked up since. I say ‘I wrote’, but I’m not at all sure that I did write it. I think I can claim the credit for chapter 1, but as for the rest, well…

And may I be permitted to say that I’m greatly enjoying it? Re-engaging with the all-too-worldly Brendan taking that journey of discovery with the other-worldly duo of Annie and Rabbit is not only enjoyable, but enlightening. I’d all but forgotten large chunks of the plot, and much of the spiritual philosophy had become dormant too. One of the darker chapters even had me feeling genuinely anxious in a way that established ‘classics’ like Dracula and Frankenstein never did. And I’m reasonably pleased with the writing style. It’s formal and complex when it needs to be, and lightweight and frivolous when it doesn’t. The only fly in this celestial ointment is the incidence of typos. I’ve found three so far, which I suppose at least offers the lesson that writers should always get somebody else to proofread their manuscripts.

So what of the bigger picture; what does it say about the progress of my life in the intervening years? I’ve changed a lot since then, which no doubt is a good thing, since standing still and being comfortable leads only to apathy. I’m far less certain of things than I was ten years ago, less dogmatic, even humbler in a way that I hope is not sanctimonious. Nevertheless, it’s good to recap and set a few things back on the shelf where they belong.

*  *  *

I had a visit from Mel on Sunday. She talked about the business of dying and wondering who would be there to collect her when it’s her turn to go. I said that I doubted there would be anybody to collect me because I’m too much of a loner. I’ve changed my mind now and decided that I should like it to be Annie and Rabbit. I can’t think of anyone better qualified, if only such a thing were possible.

Attracting Excitement

Today’s only notable event was being caught up in the melee as six females caused severe traffic congestion on the narrow lane leading down to my house. What made it even more notable was the fact that the six females comprised the Shire’s First Family – the Lady B, the Little Princess (in a papoose), Dear Mama, Honourable Sister, and the two noble canines, Inca and Ivy, proudly forming the advance guard. I should mention that the traffic congestion only amounted to three vehicles, but since mine was one of them I thought I’d exaggerate. And I was rewarded with a smile and a wave, which gave me a lift for several hours as it always does.

But then, just as I was writing this, I heard a clattering sound outside my office window followed by the brief sound of galloping feet. I went outside to check, but all I saw moving was a slug and it wasn’t galloping. (Slugs don’t, as you probably know.) So that’s a little mystery to add to the story of today.

You know, however hard I try to remain quiet in my quiet little world, excitement will insist on brushing me with its fiery talons. But now that all is peaceful again, it’s time I carried on with the new short story. Sophie has decided they’ve got a ghost.

Story Update.

No blog posts at the moment because I’ve been engaged in getting the new short story up and running at speed. It doesn’t have a working title yet. The Word file is simply called ‘Marcie’ which I suppose will suffice for now.

It’s coming along nicely – nearly 2,000 words so far, duly edited as I’ve gone along, and I anticipate it being about twice that long if and when it’s finished. Can’t know yet, of course, because I still can’t be sure where it’s going, although tonight I had a very strong impression of where it should go and probably will.

If it does get finished, I’ll then have to decide whether to publish it at the other site. It’s very personal, you see. The four characters are based closely on four real people – me and three others. I’m concerned that it could cause a modicum of disquiet to one of them if ever she read it, and I really wouldn’t want to do that.

But what are bridges for but to be crossed when you come to them? Quite right, so that’s what I’ll do.

What's Up, Rudy?

This business of Trump and the election is becoming ever more unbelievably absurd to an outside observer. On the one hand it’s causing a shift in my perception of the so-called President. I’m now beginning to wonder whether he has some serious and identifiable metal health condition which prevents him from accepting his loss and creates delusions which are absolutely real to him. If so, maybe we should be wishing him a speedy commitment to treatment.

But what of Giuliani? Why is he still hanging in there making preposterous statements? Is he mentally ill, too? The rest of the Trump team may be excused their idiocy on the grounds that they’re merely lackeys and lackeys have to do and say whatever the boss orders. But surely, Giuliani is a man of status, so why is he not walking away from this surreal attempt at pantomime?

Maybe we need to paraphrase Shakespeare here and simply say:

O strange New World 

That has such imbeciles in charge of it

Maybe it’s as simple as that.

Resuming an Old Habit.

Well, here’s a turn up for the book. Tonight I felt suddenly and unaccountably moved to begin another short story. I’ve jotted the first 214 words so far and it begins:

Marcie Thompson was three years old and had an imaginary friend. At least her parents, Jeremy and Sophie, thought she did.

That might be enough to offer certain suspicions as to where it’s going, and you might be right or you might be wrong. Time will tell of course, even for me because even I don’t know where it’s going yet. It was ever thus at the best of times because I enjoy watching a story unfold just as much when it’s one of mine as when it’s one of somebody else’s. One thing I can be quite sure of, however, is that there will be a dog in it. And since it’s some years since I wrote a short story, I’m inclined to ask myself two questions:

1. Will my writing style be so very different from what it used to be? Early impressions suggest the affirmative.

2. Will I have the attention span to complete the undertaking even though I don’t expect the story to be very long? That’s something else which remains to be seen because my mental energy is considerably reduced since I last wrote short stories, and my attention span is very much shorter.

And I think that will do for now. Better go back to the story and see whether I can get as far as introducing the dog before I put it to bed for the night (the story that is, not the dog. The dog is sitting on the bed already, waiting to be introduced. It’s a black and grey Cocker Spaniel if you’re interested.)

A Note on the Walking Dead.

I wrote this post a few days ago and have been reluctant to post it. It’s a bit glum, a bit earnest, and has an air of generalisation about it. But this is a blog not a text book, and its purpose is to give vent to random musings which arise during idle moments. And so I’ve decided to throw it up. I managed to apply my unfathomable sense of humour to the subject of cancelling Christmas yesterday, so why not?

*  *  *

Something is troubling me more and more lately. It’s difficult to explain, but I feel inclined to try so here goes.

Let me start by repeating my favourite dictum: Perception is the whole of the life experience. I don’t know, any more than anybody else does, whether there is any meaning or purpose to life, but as far as the general prosecution of life is concerned, that dictum would seem to hold true. And what it means is that, in practical terms at least, life effectively consists of nothing more than a flow of experiences.

And so we walk through the tunnel of time, mentally picking the fruits of experience off the seemingly never ending line of trees along the way and devouring them. As each experience slips through our minds it becomes the waste matter of our personal history, at which point we call it a memory. We value memory, pretending that it allows us to re-live the experience. But it doesn’t, not really. We might smile at the memory of something amusing, but the experience itself has gone. (And it’s worth bearing in mind that two or more apparently identical experiences are actually subtly different because they’re each informed by the mood and precise circumstances of their actuality. So once any experience has been consumed, it’s gone forever.)

And so we go through life anticipating the next experience – we look forward to the holidays, the Christmas gathering, the next career promotion, the excitement of a new relationship, the birth of our children or grandchildren, the football match on Saturday, and so on and so forth.

But then the big question comes into play: what happens as we grow older and find the fruit trees of experience growing ever more widely spaced because much, and eventually all, of what we like to do is no longer available to us? Our ageing bodies degrade in so many ways and our ageing minds become slower and duller. And as that inevitability gathers pace, our capacity to act upon our desires and revel in favourable circumstances diminishes proportionately. Our core perceptive faculty might remain keen, but eventually there’s little, if anything, left to perceive.

What price then the value of perception? The thing is, you see, that if perception is the whole of the life experience, it follows that experience itself is life. So when there’s nothing left to experience, we’re dead. No matter what the biologists, the lawyers and the medical fraternity say, life is over.

And that’s why, when I see old people sitting silently and dejectedly in the common room of a care home, not even bothering to watch the trash oozing out of the communal TV set, I realise that a lot of people die long before they stop breathing. And the worst part for me is that I think I can see at least the mirage of such an eventuality looming not too far ahead.

On Doing the Right Thing at Christmas.

‘Cancel Christmas!’ is the only memorable line from the 1991 movie Robin Hood Prince of Thieves in which our iconic English hero, complete with American accent, travels from the south coast of England to London, stopping en route to rest at Hadrian’s Wall. (That’s about the equivalent of travelling from Calais to Paris via Vienna.) It’s spoken by the dastardly Sheriff of Nottingham (the incomparable Alan Rickman) who is being dastardly merely for the sake of it because he doesn’t even have Covid-19 to blame.

And that’s the point. Will we be following his example and cancelling Christmas this year? The news is carrying dire warnings from experts that allowing Christmas to proceed as normal will have very serious consequences for the health of the nation. So does it matter if we cancel Yuletide for once?

Well, not to me it doesn’t. I don’t do Christmas for reasons I’ve explained ad nauseum on this blog. But suppose I were a child. I would have been devastated as a kid if I’d had to endure a Christmas without all the trimmings and the visit from Santa Claus at the very witching time of night. Christmas was as magical as magic can get, and no amount of disingenuous explanation from half-baked parents along the lines of ‘Poor Santa Claus is a very old man, and old people are especially at risk from the pandemic. He could even die, and then Christmas would be gone forever’ wouldn’t have carried much weight with me because I’m selfish like that (or rather I used to be; I’m trying to be a better person now as you very well know.)

So should we all endeavour to have a proper Christmas for the sake of the kids? Lets' face it, Christmas is all for the sake of the kids anyway, isn't it? Unfortunately no, because if the worst were to come to the worst and either granddad or grandma succumbed to the dreaded corona, the poor kid would have to spend the rest of his or her life weighed down by the knowledge that they’d personally despatched one or more of their ancestors. As things stand, kids only have to suffer the weight of knowing that their parents lied to them all those years because Santa Claus doesn’t actually exist, which probably isn’t as bad.

So let’s cancel Christmas for the sake of the kids and tell nice Mr Scrooge that he was right all along. That’s my vote for what it’s worth. Take it or leave it.

On Form and Playing the Game.

Here in Britain the foreign news continues to be dominated by America’s President Tantrum behaving a little strangely, and it leads me to wonder whether our two nations are divided by more than a common language.

Over here, you see, we have a fundamental expectation regarding the matter of game playing: the loser is expected to shake his opponent’s hand and congratulate him. It’s seen as a sign of strength, maturity, honour and good grace, with the obvious corollary that a bad loser is demonstrating weakness, immaturity, dishonour and bad form.

It seems to me that the American presidential election is essentially a matter of game playing, with all the manoeuvring, razzmatazz, sleight of hand and dirty tricks that go with it. So now, with the game clearly over and the final whistle resounding in the ears of everyone who isn’t profoundly deaf, I’m wondering whether Americans see it differently. As a relatively disinterested observer, I would love to know purely for the sake of knowing.

The Question of Revision.

Now that the span of daylight is almost as short as it’s going to be this year, I find myself feeling adrift between the closing of the curtains at around 4.30 and the extinguishing of the bedside light ten hours later.

If the wind is strong I listen to it howl. If the rain is falling copiously enough I listen to the trickling sounds in the downspout at the rear of the house. If the two are in alliance I listen to the taps on the window pane. If all is silence, I enjoy the rare commodity for its own sake. And in between the listening or the reverie I read.

Tonight I finished Henry James’s The Romance of Certain Old Clothes. It’s an entertaining little tale written in an infinitely more accessible style than the formidably dense The Turn of the Screw; and as someone who takes a more than passing interest in word craft, the style of writing is as important to me as the drawing of plot and character. And that’s why, having finished the James, I started reading my own novel, Odyssey, again.

I haven’t read it since I finished writing it over ten years ago and I wanted to get a feel of how someone coming to it cold might respond. I read the first chapter and had a few minor misgivings – nothing too serious, just the odd phrase and bit of construction here and there, and some punctuation which I now find injurious to the flow. Nevertheless, I considered the question of whether or not I should go to the effort of making some revisions.

I decided against it for two reasons: Firstly, because both I and the book are entirely unknown and I foresee no prospect of it ever being otherwise. Secondly, and more importantly, because the writing of it was a labour of love undertaken by the person I was over ten years ago (and I strongly suspected at the time that the writing of it was greatly influenced by an elevated personage not of this realm.) I’m not the same person now, so what right do I have to interfere with somebody else’s labour of love?

And then another question presented itself: Am I a better writer now than I was ten years ago? It’s a moot point, isn’t it? On the one hand we humans generally improve with practice. On the other, the judgement of quality is ever a matter of infinitely variable perception, however much the denizens of academe insist on drawing their lines, dreaming their speculations, and committing their rules to the academic statute. I think I am a better writer now, but am I really qualified to say?

A Different James.

Having fought the good fight and seen The Turn of the Screw to its demise, I’ve now turned my attention to an earlier short story by Henry James called The Romance of Certain Old Clothes. It’s very different in style, being contemporaneous with the last years of Dickens, and much easier to read. In fact, Dickens is very much what it reminds me of stylistically, albeit with the odd American idiom splashed here and there to arrest the attention and require extended concentration.

What I’m finding a little surprising for an American story is the distinct – one might almost say indecent – whiff of Anglophilia which suffuses the piece from the very beginning. Take this sentence on page 1 for example:

The boy was of that fair and ruddy complexion and that athletic structure which in those days (as in these) were the sign of good English descent – a frank, affectionate young fellow, a deferential son, a patronising brother, a steadfast friend.

From that point on such unreserved obeisance is constantly made to the superiority of England and all things English that I, a typically reserved Englishman, find it mildly embarrassing. And bear in mind that this story is set in and close to Boston in the middle of the 18^th century. There’s been no mention of tea and tipping yet, but it’s greatly entertaining me so far. Reading on.

JJ the Dull.

I’m finding it impossible to write anything at the moment, and I’m not sure whether it’s because life itself is uneventful or because my perceptions are uncharacteristically dull.

I started writing a piece about hats with especial reference to little girls. Why is it, I began to ask, that if you put a hat on a little girl she suddenly becomes elevated from the merely adorable to the inexplicably magical? But it seemed trivial so I discontinued it.

I was going to embark on a little essay about the negative perceptions of Romania held by West Europeans during the cold war, how that negativity deepened after Romania first joined the EU, but how its star is now rising and how glad I am to see it. There’s something encouragingly unpretentious about Romania. The only national characteristic I’ve noticed so far in my limited personal experience has been the niceness of the people. (That’s if you exclude Vlad Tepes, of course, but he’s long gone so I think we can ignore him.) And then it all seemed too serious so I gave that one up as well.

Then there was the anticipated epilogue on The Turn of the Screw which I finished last night. The problem here is that, having waded laboriously through James’s prose style which often resembled thick porridge gone lumpy and mouldy, I found the ending rather sudden and anticlimactic. So why bother, I asked myself. (The plot is excellent, but parts of it desperately need re-writing in a language closer to readable English.)

In jotting these few inconsequential words I still feel dull and unfulfilled. And I’m getting those dreams again – the ones in which I find myself trapped in an uncomfortable situation but can’t find a way to get out of it. Maybe it’s because I sort of got lost in a wood yesterday (but only sort of; I worked out where I was and how to regain the path easily enough.) Or maybe it’s because my inbox is empty and nobody is talking to me through the medium of YouTube. (By an odd coincidence – or maybe it isn’t – the most recent replies I’ve had were rather nice and came from Romania.)

You know, the only activities which lift my spirits these days are walking alone around the Shire and watching videos of shuffle dancing and people taking the Jerusalema challenge. Where on earth is that spark I’ve been anticipating for what seems a very long time?

Being a Martyr to the Whims of the Weather.

The extent to which my ridiculously sensitive body gets affected by changes in the weather is quite remarkable. Today’s plunge into low pressure and its concomitant conditions – dark sky, growling wind and intermittent light rain – has granted me a persistent headache and extreme tiredness. Another time it might be a tight chest, sore throat, sore sinuses, and even toothache. I really do get very fed up with it, you know. I do.

And now there’s somebody on YouTube answering an old comment of mine with a demand to know whether I think he’s a joke. How should I respond to that when I really am trying to be a better person? Reply under consideration.

That’s probably it for today. I just woke up from an hour's asleep with my head on the desk. Quite absurd. And I’m reminded of Shakespeare’s line:

Blow wind, come wrack, at least we’ll die with harness on our back.

Here’s hoping.

Two Literary Notes.

It’s occasionally struck me as odd that there are so many authors called James. There’s Henry James, MR James, Adobe James, Clive James, PD James… How many authors are there called Dickens, or Fowles, or Nabokov, or Hemmingway? Or even Smith, for that matter. At one time I considered writing my own fiction under the nom-de-plume Jeffrey James, they being my two forenames. I didn’t, and I doubt it would have made the slightest difference to anything anyway, but at least I would have insinuated myself with some justification into good company.

*  *  *

I finished the movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula last night. I still have misgivings about it, but it was interesting to see Mina cut off the Count’s head to serve her duty to romantic love for him, rather than for the sake of vengeance or the saving of humanity. And I’m not sure whether I was pleased or disappointed that at no time did the four intrepid vampire hunters – good, brave men all – ever squeeze each other’s hands or become too emotional to weep. I suppose that, at least, was one improvement on the book.

Spoiling Romania's Best Ambassador.

I’m currently watching Francis Ford Coppola’s film Bram Stoker’s Dracula again. It used to be listed among my favourites on my blog profile, but I’ve removed it. It displeases me now.

I think the main reason is Coppola’s overblown flights of stylistic fancy. In my opinion they’re self-indulgent and unsuited to the dark, Gothic nature of the story. Consequently, I see them as nothing more than an ego trip. I’ve been at the point several times of becoming more aware of the director than the plot, and that can’t be a good thing. Once the artist becomes more important than the art, we’re on the slippery slope. Or so it seems to me.

I also have to say that Keanu Reeves’s attempts at both righteous indignation and a refined English accent fall rather short of the mark. Together they portray Jonathon Harker as being even more ineffectual than Stoker wrote him. And then there’s the matter of Winona Ryder’s ears…

Matching the Animal.

I saw two women out riding horses today. The horses were tall, slender and elegant. The women were tall, slender and elegant. And then I saw a short, thick-set woman with a broad head walking her two bulldogs down the lane. Seems to be true what they say about people and their choice of animal companions.

I asked myself whether I had a favourite breed of dog these days. I couldn’t think of one. It used to be the Border Collie and I used to have a Border Collie. Seems I was a Border Collie type back then, and she was one of the biggest lights of my life. But now? No idea.

I wonder whether this indicates that I’ve lost my sense of personal identity since I can’t think of a dog to represent me in the table of equivalents. Probably not; it probably indicates what I already know. Dogs belong with people and I don’t.

Two people told me, in quite different circumstances, that my totem animal is the bear. That sounds about right, especially the grizzly bear. Bears don’t belong with people either.

Reading the Birds' Behaviour.

I said earlier that I had nothing to post about tonight. Well, I just remembered something.

Every evening this week, just as the gloaming is beginning to gather, I’ve seen a very large flock of jackdaws – maybe a hundred or more – fly across my house from west to east. Many of them settle in the trees in the back field while others fly around in circles, and then they all fly back again and disappear into the distance. I’ve never seen that in the fourteen years I’ve lived here, and I don’t know why they’ve suddenly started doing it.

And tonight there was another first – several small flocks of gulls flying north in a chevron pattern as though they think they’re migrating geese.

So what on earth is going on here? Is it something to do with climate change, or what?

There are those who believe that birds act as messengers to us humans. There are others who say that this is mere superstition arising from the fact that birds can fly, and were therefore seen – in the minds of our ignorant and superstitious ancestors – as being privy to arcane knowledge stored in the heavenly realm.

I’m naturally given to accepting the latter, as any modern human would. But I can’t know, can I? Maybe there’s more to birds than meets the eye, in which case I wish they’d be a little more transparent in their mode of communication.

Finding the Opportunity to Praise.

Since I can’t think of anything to post about tonight, I thought I’d copy something I wrote in an email by way of trying to help somebody feel better about herself:

I admit that I don’t know you perfectly. Nobody could, much less somebody who has never met you, never looked into your eyes, never observed how you smile or what kind of tears you shed. But I can say after more than ten years of close correspondence that I’ve never seen any bad in you. I’ve never seen any trace of vindictiveness, vengefulness, cruelty, nor even harshness, and your lack of any judgemental faculty is unique in my experience. You’ve always struck me as a person of light who loves to spread light to others. Even when your actions have seemed selfish, they’ve always been at least ameliorated if not wholly excused by the sort of vulnerability we must all be allowed if we’re to be human.

And I meant every word of it, so here’s the good bit. To a misanthropic old curmudgeon like me, it really makes me feel good to be able to say such a thing honestly. And it should go without saying that I would never say such a thing dishonestly.

Thank Heaven...

I was listening to a piece of music on YouTube tonight which was accompanied by paintings of little girls looking adorably little girlish, and I found myself wondering whether it’s a shame that little girls have to grow up and become women. I’m sure it isn’t, but it does raise a point.

Little girls are relatively simple. All you have to do is take care of them, give them everything they want, and make damn sure nothing ever gets close enough to threaten them. Even their occasional tantrums are cute.

And then they grow into young women. At that point they draw you inexorably towards them with emotional magnets – against which resistance is useless – while scattering the path along which you’re forced to walk with broken glass.

And now I’m wondering whether that makes me a misogynist. I’m quite sure it doesn’t because most of my heroes are women. But it does make life complicated.

Thoughts on the Wobble Room.

Anybody who’s been reading this blog for any length of time will know that the Royal Derby Hospital has become a reluctant second home to me over the past 2½ years. They will also know that the commonly used superlatives do scant justice to my feelings for the nursing staff there. I love them to bits, I really do.

Today the lovely RDH nurses were given a little feature on the national BBC News website. It talked about their setting up of a ‘wobble room’ – a room in the hospital reserved for the clinical staff where they can go and have a cry when things become just too much, before pulling themselves together and carrying on. And there’s a board in there on which they can write about ‘what I’m going to do when all this is over.’ One said ‘have the best party ever.’ Another wrote ‘hug my mum.’ Both so very human, so simple, so unprepossessing, and yet so touching.

I know they’ve been under intense pressure for the past eight months, and I know that eight months is a long time to hold yourself together under the weight of such pressure. That’s why, on reading about the wobble room, I wanted to go in there and ask them:

‘How do you do it? How do you continue to smile calmly when dealing with patients day after day, week after week, month after dispiriting month, some of whom must drive you to distraction occasionally? Why is nothing ever too much trouble for you? How do you continue to be everybody’s surrogate mother without complaint?’

And this is the National Health Service I’m talking about, so we patients don’t even have to pay for such care and dedication. We just turn up at the appointed time, lie back and wait to be cared for by caring people. The nurses, for their part, are public servants who get paid a modest salary for doing a job like everybody else. The NHS might not offer the opulence and frills of a privatised service, but the people who work there get the job done because they’re up to it. Do we deserve it? I hope some of us do.