Lockdown and the Thin Blue Line.

The headline issue in Britain today is the behaviour of the police in their new role as enforcers of the lockdown. They are being accused of inconsistency and an overly zealous approach, and my own local force came in for particular mention on the BBC News website. I quote:

On Monday, Lord Sumption, a former Justice of the Supreme Court, said the actions of Derbyshire Police "shamed our policing traditions".

"The tradition of policing in this country is that policemen are citizens in uniform, they are not members of a disciplined hierarchy operating just at the government's command," he said.

There’s a fine line between the two which some people seem to have difficulty seeing, but let’s put it another way. Under the British democratic system the police are employees of the people, and their first duty is to serve those people. They are not first and foremost instruments of state control as they would be if we lived under an oppressive totalitarian regime. And it isn’t the first time the British police have shown themselves to be ignorant of this principle. I well remember the miners’ strike when Mrs Thatcher was Prime Minister.

And there’s another unpalatable angle to this issue. When I was working for an inner city charity I had dealings with the police on several occasions, and one fact became obvious. A disturbing number of police officers are clearly in the job because they are bullies by nature and they like having the opportunity to validate their bullying tendency. I know this isn’t true of all officers, I know they have a difficult job to do, and I know we’re all happy to see them when we’re in difficulty. But bad apples are still bad apples and facts are still facts.

The people of Britain are under the cosh at the moment. Being denied their routines, their freedom of movement, and their accustomed connections with fellow human beings must be having an adverse psychological effect. Lockdown might be a sensible and necessary precaution, but the government and its minions must start thinking more about carrots and less about sticks.

The Plague and the Pits.

I don’t know what to write about today because I’m sick and tired of hearing about – and writing about – that bloody coronavirus.

But it did encourage me to find out a bit about other notable plagues, especially the Great Black Death of 1346-1353 (I think) and further outbreaks of bubonic plague which happened over the centuries in Europe and Asia. They were nasty, and I mean really nasty. If you got the plague in your household in those days, you had a red cross painted on your front door and you were denied the right to leave the house except to bring out the dead bodies for removal to the plague pits. I doubt there were any arguments about the availability of respirators.

Apart from that, I have little to say. I suppose I could mention that I found Dancer in the Dark (which I watched last night thinking it was going to be merely strange) probably the most harrowing film I’ve ever seen. It was so harrowing that I nearly switched it off twenty minutes before the end. Being so harrowing, I assumed that it must have been directed by one of those consistently-glum-but-highly-aware Swedish people, but no. He was Danish, and he did an excellent job.

What I haven’t yet worked out is whether it was intended to be anti-American or not. There was certainly a subtle sub-plot which intimated that America is a particularly insensitive and barbaric place to live if you don’t happen to be rich. 

(Please don’t take offence, Americans. I only watched the film, I didn’t write it.)

Gaia's Riposte.

I’m currently trying to tie two seemingly connected threads together:

1. There’s a feeling abroad that the coronavirus is nature’s way of giving us a rap over the knuckles for abusing and exploiting her purely for the convenience of one species, and that when it’s all over life in the ‘developed’ world is going to have to change.

2. In my novel, the protagonist discovers during his travels with the goddess that the story of Atlantis is not historical but a prediction for the future of a society which has become too selfish, greedy and exploitative to sustain its position in the greater scheme of things.

I haven’t managed to fully connect them yet – and maybe I never will – but I thought I’d say it because I felt like saying something. I’m going to watch a strange film now because I like strange things.

J'Accuse Boris Johnson.

I have to say that I’m troubled by the British government’s approach to the coronavirus crisis. It isn’t the policy of lockdown I’m objecting to; time will tell whether Sweden’s laissez faire approach will prove to be better or worse than our hardline one. What bothers me is the attitude of the government, and that of Boris Johnson in particular.

It’s all stick and no carrot. It’s based on frowns, fierceness and invective: ‘You will do as I say or be punished.’ ‘Things are going to get worse so expect even more draconian measures.’ It engenders a sense of oppression, fear and panic in people. Wouldn’t it be better if Johnson smiled and said: ‘Well done. We’re getting there, so let’s carry on working together to beat this problem.’

It seems to me that such an approach would engender a sense of togetherness in a time of shared adversity, instead of oppression, fear and panic. That was Churchill’s approach during WWII. People could still observe the procedures, but feel less stressed about it all. Because let’s not forget that it is now a well attested fact that stress makes people more susceptible to illness. Isn’t that ironic?

But of course, Johnson is an Old Etonian, an ex public schoolboy steeped in a long tradition which gave the gentry exclusive rights to form the officer class whose role was to keep the masses in their place. I’ve said this before about Johnson. It’s why I was always concerned that one day he might become Prime Minister.

And I think it pertinent to suggest that a true leader is not someone who simply gives orders and expects to be obeyed, but someone who has the innate capacity to inspire people to achieve a worthy goal and maybe go beyond. I'll leave the rest unsaid.

A Speech Not Spoken.

I was in my late teens when I heard Dennis Price utter these immortal lines to Joan Greenwood in the Ealing black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets.

‘I’d say that you were a perfect combination of imperfections. I’d say that your nose was just a little too short, your mouth just a little too wide; but that yours was a face a man could see in his dreams for the whole of his life. I’d say that you were vain, selfish, cruel, deceitful. I’d say that you were adorable.’

I thought at the time that Joan Greenwood was, indeed, adorable. But I'd say that her face was actually the essence of perfection, and her voice both inimitable and captivating. I still think so.

And I always hoped that one day I would have the opportunity to relate those lines to someone who could come within touching distance of the peerless Joan. I never did.

Swedes Out of Line.

I understand that Sweden is taking a rather more relaxed approach to the coronavirus crisis than the rest of Europe. People are being advised to carry on more or less as normal, but to observe a range of relatively simple precautions. This is provoking heated debate there, with some arguing that the country will fare better this way in the long run, while others are getting very angry and claiming that Sweden is a major disaster waiting to happen. Time will tell, of course, and times might change everything.

Meanwhile, I heard this morning that road blocks are now being set up in Britain, and the army are starting to patrol beaches to disperse people. I wonder whether the Swedish official had a point when he said that locking people in is also bad for their health. Try arguing around that one. But Sweden always did have a reputation for introducing psychological implications to an argument where others are inclined to ignore them.

What continues to attract my attention is the fact that I’ve seen no reference anywhere to the plight of the homeless. With most catering establishments closed, I assume there will be far less gash food to scavenge. And how do you stop homeless people congregating? And will they receive the attention of the health services? Maybe I just haven’t looked hard enough.

Being an Other.

Something unusual is going on. I feel unaccountably cold tonight, even though the thermometer in the room tells me that the temperature is perfectly reasonable. The computer is behaving unaccountably oddly. The fan heater in my office is behaving unaccountably oddly. People to whom I’ve written, and from whom I would normally have received a reply, are unaccountably silent. I fell asleep at my computer for an unaccountably long time. And there’s that strange, unaccountable smell of old cooking fat in the air. How do I know I haven’t died?

‘Well,’ you might reasonably offer, ‘if you’d died you would see your body lying unaccountably unmoving somewhere.’

Would I? How can I know? Maybe it doesn’t work that way. The ghosts in The Others didn’t know they were dead, did they? That was the whole point of the story.

So now I’m curious to see whether this post will appear on my blog if I publish it. If it doesn’t there will be no point in repeating the exercise. If it does I’ll feel silly, even though it is not unreasonable to speculate that if I've become a ghost, my computer might have done likewise. Feel free to judge as you will.

Revelations.

You know, after several years of becoming more reclusive and thus having little to do with one’s fellow humans, it comes as something of a revelation to remember that at times of adversity and danger, the sharing of it reduces its power to frighten and depress the spirits. When you’re alone you carry it all unaided.

I suppose it comes back to that old saying, a version of which probably exists in all languages: ‘You made your bed, you lie on it.’

And so we do.

But at least I heard the priestess’s voice tonight. That was a revelation, too. It was very different from how I imagined it would be, and much better.

A Ghost Post.

On young Albert Ramsbottom’s birthday

His parents asked what he’d like most

He said “to see ’Tower of London

And gaze upon Anne Boleyn’s ghost”

~ from “Albert and the ’Eadsman”

*  *  *

I watched a video on YouTube last night in which an American medium went to the Tower of London and recorded a woman’s voice which he speculated might have been Anne Boleyn. He played it, and it said one word very clearly:

Jeffrey

Even though the narrator was himself called Jeffrey, it was still a bit creepy, you know? (In case anybody hasn’t noticed, it happens to be my name, and the last time I heard a woman’s voice say ‘Jeffrey’ it belonged to one Ms Zoe Minz of New York City. The way Ms Zoe Minz said ‘Jeffrey’ came close to making my knees tremble in precisely the same way that seeing Anne Boleyn’s ghost wouldn’t. But I’m getting a bit off the point here.)

So, the point is this: I’ve been searching for evidence of what might lie hidden beyond the surface of physical reality for most of my life, and during my late teens I subscribed to Spiritualism. I attended séances and development circles once or twice a week for a few years, but then lost interest and looked elsewhere. And now I attach little credence to the notion that the spirits of dead people hang around and communicate with us, at least for any length of time. I can’t know that I’m right, of course, but it doesn’t make sense to me because it doesn’t fit with the principle of metempsychosis which does make sense to me.

So where did the voice come from? I don’t know. I can’t accuse the medium of being a charlatan because I don’t know him, although the volume and clarity of the recording and the ‘coincidence’ of the man’s name leads to a modicum of suspicion.

But the fact is, as I’m always saying, I don’t actually know anything. My feeling is that an open mind is the only vehicle with which to approach anything for which there is evidence but no proof. And that’s why this interesting snippet will go into one of the lower draws of the filing cabinet.

Anne Boleyn

 Somebody from New York, NY

Knowing.

After all these decades of searching for spiritual truths, there’s one notion beginning to emerge as pre-eminently credible. It’s the idea that every one us knows everything there is to know because we are all fragments of the Universal Consciousness, and it’s obviously in the nature of such a phenomenon to know everything.

So why don’t we know that we know everything? Ironically, I don’t know the answer to that, but maybe it’s the fact that our physical brain – which is the organ we use to operate memory – is far too small. If we tried to carry everything in it, maybe we would blow our lids off like a pot of overheated strawberry jam.

Whatever the answer, the fundamental proposition still appeals greatly to me. Now, if only I could prove it. If only anybody could prove it. Why does life and the nature of existence have to be so frustrating to people like me?

Tomorrow I might make the post about the ghost of Queen Anne Boleyn saying ‘Jeffrey’ to an American medium. That was creepy, so maybe I will or maybe I won’t. I don’t know yet. I don’t know anything. (I think I said that before. It’s my mantra. It’s also getting late and I go to bed early these days.)

Lockdown Notes.

The lockdown is getting to me already and we’re only two days into it. I didn’t mind when self-isolation was voluntary, but now that the government has decreed that it shall be so and resistance is useless, it’s getting to me. I hate being told what to do, and now I have some idea how a caged bird feels. I suppose it’s all a matter of psychology.

My daughter is looking on the bright side. She feels that the crisis is doing some good because there’s far less pollution in the air and the Grand National has been cancelled, thereby saving an indeterminate number of innocent horses from injury and death. Can’t disagree with that.

I spent much of today sitting in my mild and sunlit garden with Douglas Adams’s novel The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul for company. I like funny stories about severed heads rotating on the turntables of record decks, and sassy young women called Kate from New York bossing the great god Thor about. (I’ve just reached the point at which Kate is about to accompany Thor into Asgard, although we don’t know why yet.) And the golden eagle scaring Dirk Gently witless is a real star. I would recommend it to anybody with a taste for Douglas Adams (whose sensitivities, sensibilities and general thought projections seem oddly in tune with mine.) I just wish I didn’t feel that I was reading it in prison.

But today’s mystery is the fact that my blog has started receiving visits from China again after a break of several years. I was under the impression that people from China weren’t allowed to read my blog. Has the firewall been dismantled? Is there some ulterior motive at work? Is Mr Xi taking a personal interest in me? I would quite like to know. Meanwhile, welcome back Chinese people. Let me know in the comments section…

Bad Timing.

The spring has definitely sprung into full vigour this week. The weather has been sunny and dry, there’s colour and fresh growth aplenty in the garden, and the birds have started to sing the songs they sing in the spring. The days are growing noticeably longer, the sun is higher and warmer, and the shadows are shortening. Such conditions engender a mood of optimism, a feeling that nature is awake again and fecundity is on the rise. I even saw the first bat hunting along the lane this evening.

So what does the government do? It announces lockdown. Nearly everything is to shut down, the energy of human movement and interaction must come almost to a standstill, we are all to submit to virtual or actual house arrest, and failure to obey the diktat will result in the malefactor gaining a criminal record. Resistance is useless, as always.

I’m not saying these precautions aren’t necessary. I do understand the reason for them. It’s just a bloody shame that they had to happen just at the moment. That’s all.

*  *  *

A man who lives at the top end of the Shire walked up my path this afternoon and asked whether I was all right. He said he would be happy to help if I needed anything.

Why do they always pick on me? They don’t know my age or my circumstances. Do they think I’m old and feeble or something? Why me?

He has an attractive wife, you know. Do you know what she’s called? I don’t either, but I very much doubt that it’s Incontinentia. (I do hope everybody has seen Monty Python’s Life of Brian, or this paragraph will be the source of some confusion.)

When Habits Become Bad.

And here’s another problem with the corona thing: it’s impinging on the practice of our treasured and traditional social habits.

British people can no longer shake hands when they meet. The French have to say bye-bye to la bise. Young boys on Lambrettas in Italy have to stop pinching girls’ bottoms. And the poor Swedes have to accept that taking a sauna stark naked with sundry strangers of the opposite sex is no longer de rigueur.

The final upshot of this must surely be that sex, even between consenting adults, will soon become illegal. Any woman found to be in the terminal stages of pregnancy in nine month’s time will be sent to prison rather than the maternity unit. As for the men, well…

A Note on the Other C Word.

One of the side effects of the coronavirus crisis has been the gradual onset of social communality. It’s become a newsworthy event that people are rallying round to support each other in their respective hours of need, and a damn fine thing it is too. I approve of the communal principle.

Except that it doesn’t apply to me. I can’t do communal. I’m not a communal sort of person.

The thing is, you see, being communal works very well for normal people (‘normal’ being defined according to the habits and thought processes of the majority in any given culture.) I’m not normal. Much of my behaviour is generally normal because I was conditioned that way as a kid, but my thought processes are hardly ever anywhere near normal. Let me give you an example.

I gather it’s becoming common practice in Italian apartment blocks to hold communal, but physically distant, keep fit sessions. People come out onto their respective balconies and join in, while others play music to entertain their fellow residents. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? It does, and most people would see it that way.

I don’t. If somebody started playing music outside my window without my express consent, I’d be hopping bloody mad. I love music, but it has to be my choice of music and played precisely when I want it. Not before and not after. Being forced to listen to somebody else’s choice is tantamount to a serious invasion of my private space, and a hatred of invasion is one of the strongest of my neuroses. (I have others.) I think I would be driven to total distraction if I lived in an Italian apartment block.

So that’s why I’m not communal. And it’s a hard life.

Something Completely Different.

Just to take a welcome break from all this corona stuff, I thought I’d relate a snippet of conversation between the arch ne’er-do-well, Professor Marcus, and dear, dotty old Mrs Wilberforce in The Ladykillers (original Ealing version.) I watched it last night.

‘Who is that?’ asks the Professor suspiciously when he hears a voice downstairs.

‘That’s only General Gordon,’ replies Mrs Lopsided with a dismissive air. ‘He belonged to my late husband. I had four.’

‘Husbands?’

‘No. Parrots.’

The Question of Self-Internment.

I spoke to Mel on the phone today. Being employed in catering, she knows a lot more about this coronavirus thing than I do and she set about trying to scare me into self-isolating. She’s convinced, you see, that my health issues over the past two years will have compromised my immune system and so I’ll be more prone to picking up the damn thing and more likely to suffer serious (!) consequences.

It sort of worked because she might well be right. Going into shops and suchlike now feels to me like walking the mean streets of Tombstone while the Earps and Doc Holliday are sleeping off the previous night’s carousing, and shouting ‘the Clantons are a bunch of cissies.’ You don’t know whether they’re listening, do you?

So now I don’t know what to do. Mel offered to drive over here and get my groceries in, but groceries aren’t all I need. My requirements go some way beyond that and my normal routine involves visiting at least seven different establishments in two different towns. And that doesn’t include buying some lunch. I can’t expect somebody to go that trouble, can I? Then there’s the danger of developing cabin fever cooped up alone in this house for several weeks.

What do I do? Don’t know yet. I’ll sleep on it and decide tomorrow.

The C Word and the Sunday Feeling.

There’s a long post wandering around my head on the subject of the Establishment’s and media’s almost total and tiresome preoccupation with coronavirus. But it’s complicated; there are too many ifs and buts clouding the arguments and I’m not in the mood for further complications at the moment. What I’ll do instead is say this.

I always disliked Sundays, especially when I was younger and nearly everything closed on a Sunday. I always felt a sense of stagnation in the air; life seemed to slow down to the point where people became semi-comatose, and the flow of natural energy felt laboured and uncomfortable. HSPs are highly sensitive to atmospheres, and so are INFJs. It isn’t surprising, therefore, that my mood was always subdued on a Sunday.

And now the Sunday feeling has become ubiquitous. Town centres are so much quieter than usual. The pubs and catering establishments are closed and so are some of the shops. The schools are closed, the sporting calendar is in stasis, and the message is resoundingly one of ‘stay indoors and avoid contact with other humans.’ Even the village Quiz Night where I live has been cancelled. It seems that every day is now Sunday.

That’s why I would personally prefer it if people ignored the whole issue and carried on as normal. I’m not recommending it, of course, because I realise that to do so would probably set in motion an exponential progression leading to more deaths. But it’s how feel. I could do without having the cocktail of health issues and other worries being further augmented by the consequences of a plague, dragging me further into the dark place which has become my natural environment of late.

But I rely on the presumption that all this will pass in due course. And in the meantime I make humorous comments on the issue here because that’s a notable British characteristic. When faced with adversity we like to laugh at it in whatever way we can. Maybe others do the same. I wouldn’t know.

Approving the Woman From the Walsage.

Remember the Woman from the Walsage who I mentioned in a post a few weeks ago? She was the one I discovered clearing the road drains in my lane when I went out to do the job because I live here. Well, today I found a note from her in my box. It was an offer to help me out in the event of my having to self-isolate. Services include:

Picking up shopping

Posting mail

Urgent supplies

A friendly phone call

It’s the last one that really gets me. That one is definitely well above and beyond the line of communal duty. I think I would rather die of Bubonic Plague than engage in small talk with some stranger who would probably be old as well as ill.

Hello Mrs Smith.

‘Hello Mr Beazley. Do you believe in God?’

What?

‘Do you believe in God?’

Do I believe in God?

‘Yes. Only I’ve got this horrible illness and I’m scared I might not make it, so do you believe in God?’

How long have you got?

‘What, before I die?’

No. How long have you got to listen? Only you’re going to need more minutes than you’ve got brain cells, and I’d like to know before I bother starting.

I’m not very tactful, you see. The Woman from the Walsage probably is. I only spoke to her briefly that day in the lane and decided she was OK immediately. There are very few people I would describe as OK, but we INFJs are reputedly very good at assessing people with remarkable accuracy in the blink of an eye.

The INFJ

Tact: Poor.

Capable of accurate and fast intuitive assessment: Excellent.

A Modern Cause of Insanity.

I spent four hours yesterday trying to sort out a problem with my energy supplier. I got as far as ascertaining that it’s all their fault and just the latest example of the corporate world becoming ever more dysfunctional. And a mystery remains because the facts don’t add up. However…

… why did it take four hours? Because of the massively long wait times to speak to an advisor. What really bugs me about long wait times isn’t so much the wait itself – I can always put the phone on speaker and get on with something else – it’s what you have to put up with while you’re waiting:

1. A long stream of recorded messages giving advice to the feeble minded or information to those who don’t need it, while directing you to a bunch of websites which are effectively irrelevant to your specific problem, your personal interest, or the human condition in general. Can you do anything about it? No.

2. The constant, repetitive noise they subject you to and which they would no doubt claim to be music. It isn’t music; it’s a formula-derived racket approximating to a rather poor melody which is fit to drive a musically sensitive person into an early grave. Can you do anything about it? No.

3. The recorded message which cuts in every 30 seconds (I did time it) saying: Were very sorry you’re having to wait. Please continue to hold and your call will be answered shortly. After half an hour you’ve heard it sixty times and your head is fit to burst, only you have to stay in control because, if you didn’t, you’d throw the phone through the window and have to buy another one. (And get the window repaired.) So are they really very sorry? I very much doubt it. And is there anything you can do about that? No.

I have complained about this several times, but nothing changes.

On Vanishing Treats and Toilet Rolls.

I’m becoming ever more curious about the fate of the country’s toilet roll stocks. The last four times I’ve been into Sainsbury’s the shelves which normally contain the paper products – toilet rolls, tissues and kitchen towels – have been conspicuously empty, so today I asked whether there’s a supply issue involved.

Apparently not. I was told that supplies are coming in every day, but they all disappear very quickly after being put onto the shelves. So, given the reasonable presumption that no more are actually being used, I can’t help wondering where they all are.

Are people stacking them in their living rooms, obstructing doorways and causing a fire hazard? Are children being evicted from their bedrooms and forced to sleep on floors and couches to make space for the precious articles? Are people taking second mortgages and having extensions built to provide additional warehouse space? Where are they all? I expect the burglars will stop taking gadgets, jewellery and money now and start drooling over 6 and 12 packs of toilet rolls instead. They’re going to need bigger vans.

*  *  *

Ashbourne was eerily quiet today. I wondered whether it was because people were afraid of contracting the plague, or whether they were all at home guarding the toilet rolls. And Costa coffee has closed its doors except for takeaway sales. That’s no use to me. My purpose in going into a coffee shop is to sit in a coffee shop and enjoy the ambience. It was my only treat.

The Mirror Image.

I just watched Brief Encounter again. Mel lent it to me because she thought I might like it.

Like it? I find it engrossing and disturbing in equal measure. It’s all so shatteringly familiar. I know the lines, the situations, the highs and lows, the feeling of being pulled apart by irresistible forces, and the sense of helplessness when faced with an impossible choice. But I saw it through to the end with nods and grimaces aplenty.

There’s a scene in which Celia Johnson is sitting in a train compartment looking out of the window into the darkness. Her face is reflected in the glass, reminding me that whatever we see when we look in a mirror, everybody else sees something different. Whether that fact is in any way relevant to the point, I have no idea.

Mirroring Art.

Does anybody know whether Donald Trump can read? If he can, maybe somebody could take advantage of the present situation by passing him a copy of Poe’s Masque of the Red Death. There’s a chance he might decamp with his rich friends to some moated, presidential-style mansion deep in the bayous of Louisiana or somewhere, there to cut himself off from the plague fodder. Because we all know what happened to Prince Prospero, don’t we?

Better still, if he really is illiterate, maybe somebody could read it to him and surreptitiously change the ending so he isn’t forewarned.

Questioning Leadership.

There’s a certain amount of confusion around the dreaded C issue at the moment. The government says that the schools must close, but added that some children will still be allowed to go to school. So how does that work? Nobody knows, apparently, which is why clarification is being sought because the government hasn’t been very clear on the issue. I remember the government once saying ‘carry on as usual’, closely followed by ‘it is likely that someone you know will die.’ Is it surprising that people panic and buy enough toilet rolls to last a family of six for at least a year?

It’s often said that at times of crisis people want strong leadership. I don’t. What I want is to be given accurate facts so I can make an informed decision with regard to how I proceed. I don’t want to be led. I’ve never been the sort to want to be led, and especially not by the people in Parliament. And that’s just one of the reasons why the present situation is encouraging my depressive tendency to gather strength.

There are others, some personal, but I really must keep the whingeing – however well justified – to a minimum.

My thoughts at the moment are being largely dominated by the dispute among historians as to where exactly the Battle of Hastings was fought. The Battle of Hastings has fascinated me for as long as I can remember, maybe because it changed the course of world history, or maybe because I was there.

On Being Insignificant.

I wrote a post earlier on the subject of ‘coronavirus and an example of ageism in the charity sector.’ And then I decided I wasn’t significant enough to write on a matter of such gravity and shelved it.

So then I had a thought concerning the nice little irony contained within my observation that a predilection for bigness usually stems from a small mind. But I didn’t feel significant enough to expand on that either, so that one also got scrapped.

And then I watched a classic old British spy movie called The Ipcress File (1965), and thought what a shame it is that they don’t write movie theme music like that any more. I felt significant enough to say as much, so I just did.

Ashbourne was dull and damp today, and large areas of Sainsbury’s shelving were empty, courtesy of the panic buyers. But they had tea. I’m told they didn’t yesterday. And tomorrow they might have baked beans. Life is quite exciting at the moment for an insignificant person.

Considering the Alternative.

I really don’t understand why people are falling over each other to panic-buy toilet rolls during the current situation. They’re missing a simple trick here which could save them an awful lot of money, not to mention the pejorative glances they might receive from the supermarket cashier which can mean either ‘what a plonker you are’ or ‘what on earth do you eat in your house?’ depending on the IQ of the cashier.

One of the suggested origins of the pejorative term ‘toe rag’ or ‘tow rag’, meaning a disreputable person, is that it refers to a practice used in old sailing vessels at a time when toilet rolls were considered surplus to requirements (assuming they’d even been invented by then.) Apparently, a piece of rag was used to perform the required function, and then it would be towed behind the ship where it would be cleaned by the passage of water. So all these panic-buyers need to do is purloin one of the kids’ old tee shirts, apply it to alternative use, then hang it on the washing line when it rains. Heaven knows we’ve been having enough rain over the past few months, and if it has to fall we might as well put it to good use.

As it is, I’m wondering when the black market will get into full swing. Maybe a time is coming when you’ll have to knock on the door of 14 Sackville Terrace after dark, wait for the door to be opened by no more than an inch, and then a gravelly voice will ask ‘what d’you want.’

‘I’ve come to look at the Hornby OO guage train set you’re selling.’

‘OK, come in. There you go. One toilet roll. Ten quid.’

‘Ten pounds for a bloody toilet roll?!!! That’s outrageous.’

‘Well, they’re like gold dust these days, mate. I assume you’re not interested in a second hand one for five quid? You don’t look the type.’

‘Certainly not.’

‘No, they're a bit whiffy. Tell you what then, I can do you five sheets of unused stuff for 50p if you like. Take it or leave it.’

Thirty Three.

Today is March 17^th. March 17^th is a significant date in my calendar, not because it’s St Patrick’s Day (my Irish ancestry is sufficiently historical as to preclude the urge to wear a green leprechaun hat once a year), but because it’s the birthday of somebody I used to know. And because it’s her birthday, I feel naturally inclined to send her birthday greetings. The problem is, however, I doubt she would welcome them now.

But I had a thought. Suppose she is still prepared to receive my greetings on her big day, and suppose she still has my blog address. It is just within the bounds of possibility that she might drop on here to see whether such a greeting is forthcoming. Stranger things have happened, after all. So that’s why I’m making this post. And so:

Sincere greetings to you, my lady, and very many happy returns.

You know, for some reason that old song Where Have All the Flowers Gone kept running through my head earlier, and maybe this is why. Maybe it’s all the fault of March 17^th.  Nearly all my flowers have disappeared over the past few years, and she was one of the biggest and brightest of the lot. And by an odd coincidence, she was the only one who went to a young man – although, to the best of my knowledge, he didn’t become a soldier, merely a proud father. At least I hope he’s proud, and I hope he knows how to treat princesses well. Both of them.

YouTube and the Plague.

I said in an earlier post that YouTube is becoming infested with coronavirus vids, didn’t I? They’re increasing by the day, and now there’s one about God and what He wants us to know.

I knew there’d be one about God before too long. It’s too good an opportunity for the preachers to miss, after all. I haven’t watched it because I won’t watch any of them, but I expect it’s something to do with God punishing us for inventing the question mark.

Another Monday.

Some years ago I wrote about a woman who used to manage one of the charity shops in Uttoxeter. She always impressed me for several reasons, most notably the strength of her eyes, her air of authenticity (she was plain in every respect and never wore make-up), the fact that she always looked stylish in clothes which were transparently inexpensive, her general helpfulness which sometimes went a little beyond the norm, and her random acts of kindness. In short, she was a rare example of the sort of person who impresses me.

I never said anything to her, but today I was sitting in my car eating my lunch when I saw her approaching with her little girl. She was carrying a bag of shopping and was accompanied by an elderly woman who I assumed to be her grandmother. Not so. They stopped at a car parked in the next bay to mine and I heard the gist of the conversation. It seemed the young woman had spotted the old lady struggling with a walking stick and a heavy bag, and had offered to carry the bag to the car, thus going some distance out of her way in the process.

A few minutes later I saw her in another shop and couldn’t resist the urge to compliment. I went in and said ‘I hope you won’t mind a personal comment, but I want to tell you that I’ve observed your acts of kindness several times down the years and I have to say that you are a good person. And incidentally, I’ve also noticed that you always manage to look stylish no matter what you’re wearing.’ She presented an apparently bemused stare throughout my little speech, and then said ‘thank you’ very quietly. And that was that.

And there was a third thing I wanted to say to her. I’d seen her in another shop earlier. She’d been bending down to pick something up and her skirt had been made of some kind of lightweight material which showed a vague profile of what was underneath. And so I’d wanted to say: ‘So glad to know that you wear proper knickers instead of those awful thong things. They really are quite sordid, don’t you think?’ I didn’t, of course. It struck me that three compliments in one day might be too much for a sensitive and self-effacing soul to bear.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, I realised today that the Costa coffee shop has only three tables by the window since its revamp a few weeks ago. It used to have four, and so I complained. I didn’t complain that the Costa girl was absent again, though, because it seemed pointless.

You wouldn’t think I crossed the Atlantic twice, would you?

Considering the Case for Overkill.

I wonder whether I’m the only one growing utterly tired of having a wagon load of coronavirus information thrown at me every time I look at the news pages (and it’s even infesting YouTube now.) I ask myself whether this isn’t a case of overkill taken to ludicrous extremes. I can’t answer that with any degree of certainty, of course, because I’m not an expert in the matter of diseases. But what I can say is this:

We live in a world suffused with, and to some extent controlled by, deceit and self-interest. That world is also populated by an awful lot of people who want to be led by the hand and told what to do. And over the last forty or fifty years, western culture at least has become more and more immersed in risk-avoidance mania. So what of the main agencies which are dictating the information, the strategy, the advice, and the seriousness of the situation?

First there are the politicians, so what of them? Well, politicians are manically aware of their image. They want to be seen to be providing strong leadership in times of ‘crisis’ because it boosts their ratings with the followers. So could they be guilty of overplaying the issue here? It strikes me as entirely likely. I was, for example, highly amused when Trump banned everybody from mainland Europe visiting America. It gave the impression that we were seen as a boatload of rats infected with the plague and about to leave a trail of death and decrepitude across the USA. (And I wondered why anybody would want to go to America anyway while Trump is still in charge, but that’s a separate issue.)

And what of the bureaucrats, of whom it is often said that there are far too many? They do so love to be seen to be organising matters and handing down vital advice. (I remember us having a short hot spell one summer a few years ago, and some of those bureaucrats advised us all to paint our houses white…) It encourages the view among the public that they are really quite useful after all.

As for the media, they simply thrive on sensation, and always have. It’s why I consciously avoid reading newspaper headlines when I go into stores.

So is the coronavirus being overplayed here? I’m inclined to suspect that it is, even though I repeat that I am unqualified to offer a strong opinion on the matter.

And even the corporate world is getting in on the act. I went into Tesco today and found notices around the toilet area telling me to wash my hands for at least twenty seconds. And there were other notices telling me how to do it:

Water

Soap

Rinse

Dry

Such a communication can surely only serve to remind us of how timorous and juvenile the human condition can be, because if you need to be told this you should be self-isolating as a matter of routine.

Hints of History in the Gloom.

No posts from me today. Today has been tiresome and dispiriting. Members of the government have been running around like headless chickens over this Covid thing, encouraging the mass of the population to follow their lead and prepare the lychgates of Old England for a spell of overwork to rival the good old days of bubonic plague. Meanwhile, the staff in two separate departments of the Royal Derby Hospital seem incapable of co-ordinating the simplest of actions, leaving my immediate prospects hanging limply from the ceiling like a flaccid Christmas balloon. I have no idea where I am at the moment, or how to proceed in a productive direction.

In consequence, I feel frustrated and deflated. Tomorrow might be better or it might be worse or maybe I’ll forget how to wake up and that will solve everything at a stroke. Time will tell.

But I did have a visitor today. According to the pronouncements of headless chickens – presumably from the end not usually associated with the making of pronouncements (except in the case of politicians) – visitors are scary beings these days. In fact, they’re even threatening to ban them from that section of the population which most needs them. That should be fun. Make ready for the plague police, polish the bells, and prepare for the tolling.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, it occurs to me that the YouTube premium service is tantamount to a protection racket. ‘Give us money and we’ll keep the spam at bay.’ Back in 9^th century Europe it was known as the Danegeld.

Valuing Higher Education.

This week has provided further evidence for my suspicion that people working in admin – especially those in august institutions like the health service and universities – are selected more for the quality of their degrees than their qualities as people suitable for admin jobs. These qualities are, of course, common sense, organisational ability, and the capacity to comprehend the fact that if you have two apples and add two more, you now have four apples.

As I heard somebody say on a YouTube psychology channel recently: ‘the problem with degrees is that they don’t prepare you for the real world.’

Learning From a Broom Handle.

When I was around ten or eleven my parents knew a husband and wife who kept a pub, and one night they agreed to serve behind the bar to enable their friends to go out for the evening. These friends had a son who was the same age as me, and they left him behind because they knew that I’d provide him with company for a few hours.

At first he was friendly and personable, but then he underwent a total change and became – for want of a better expression – a maniac. He picked up a broom handle and began hitting me with it quite viciously. Well, I was a strong lad and eventually I wrestled it off him, at which point he became calm again, apologised, and asked for his broom handle back.

You have to understand at this point that I had always been a naturally trusting person. It was a fundamental part of my nature, so I gave him the broom handle. Within seconds he turned into a lunatic again and repeated the assault. I wrestled it off him a second time, and again he apologised, and again I gave the weapon back to him.

Now, you might find it hard to believe that this happened four times before I was reluctantly forced to conclude that this strange creature’s apparent contrition was a duplicitous ruse. My trusting nature was so deeply ingrained that I hadn’t been able to see beyond it. Eventually I did, and after the fourth betrayal I kept possession of the broom handle until his parents returned and we went home. That was the point in my life when a gaping hole was rent in my wall of trust.

But this remains one of my conflicts to this day. My first inclination is still to trust people – to believe that they will do what they say they will do, even though I know that no one is 100% trustworthy, not even me. And many times since that night I have been reminded that the hole in the wall has a right to be there.

But it can cause difficulties because it has a tendency to encourage the onset of suspicion in inappropriate circumstances. When somebody asks ‘don’t you trust me, or something?’ it doesn’t help much to reply ‘of course I don’t trust you. I don’t trust anybody. A broom handle taught me that when I was eleven.’ The warm water in which association bathes can suddenly turn cold.

And yet mistrust still has to be allowed its place, simply to counterbalance the innate tendency to trust too easily. And as with all psychological difficulties, there’s an element of reflection involved, realisation of which is of no help whatsoever. In the end it all comes down to accepting the fact of being different, and making the best of a life among strangers.

The Comprehensive View.

Dr Kutner has a line in an episode of House:

‘I like being different. The view is better from the outside looking in.’

Is it? It's certainly more all-embracing, but does that make it better?

The view from the outside is like looking at a pretty girl with X-ray vision, so you see the tumours, the parasites, the waste matter and the slimy stuff behind the come-hither smile and the model girl figure. You can even smell it all.

Is that better? Maybe it is, but it comes at a price. And it’s what I’m stuck with.

Questioning the Definition.

I’ve been waiting all week for a call back from the hospital regarding the procedure to address my leg problem. (You know, the one that’s scaring the bloody life out of me.) Today I decided to call them.

I was informed that all routine procedures have been temporarily suspended to keep staff available to cover the eventuality of a surge in coronavirus cases. You wouldn’t think that a procedure which carries the potential to finish me off without doing me the kindness of killing me altogether would be classed as ‘routine’, would you?

In the Blue Corner...

I just watched a confrontation between a squirrel and a much bigger pheasant for a coveted spot on the bird table. The squirrel won, just in case anybody’s interested.

The Spring Dichotomy.

This coming spring will be my fifteenth living in this house. Every year I watch the garden plants display their regeneration in regulation order – first the fading snowdrops hanging over from winter, then the crocuses and primroses, then the daffodils and newly leafing bluebells, and so on and so forth. And every year I wonder how I should respond to this process, since it is but a visual expression of a never ending cycle.

It depends on my mood, of course, but the question remains: should I see it as an optimistic expression of timelessness, or a reminder of the grinding, inescapable tyranny of time? I suppose the first is the more positive reaction, and maybe the correct one in the final, deeper analysis. But in terms of this life alone as an individualised being, the second – much as I regret it – has to be the more realistic.

Parisian Bits.

I just watched a portmanteau film called Paris, je t’aime. It was quite delightful, by and large, but I found it a bit wearing having to constantly switch from one plot arc to another – all eighteen of them – for nearly two hours.

Still, I was glad to see that Natalie Portman was still the spit of my old actress friend, Katy Stephens, and I liked something Bob Hoskins said while arguing with his wife (who was the proprietor of a sex emporium): You don’t know what it’s like being a man when everything’s gone. I can’t feel anything any more. Well now… Oh, and the vampire episode was very sweet.

*  *  *

I should have gone to Paris once, when I was fifteen. The rest of the class went on a trip there during the summer holiday but my stepfather wouldn’t pay for me to go. On the first day back at school everybody was full of talk about their French adventure, except me. And nobody cared that I was the odd one out.

That’s something I’ve noticed about me, you know. I’ve never been the sort to evoke sympathy. I suppose it’s one area of life in which I can claim some rare measure of success.

More Strangenesses.

I was thinking earlier about how much I dislike washing things. I dislike washing the dishes. I dislike washing the car. I even dislike washing myself. I do it, of course, because I also dislike bad smells and disgusting skin conditions, but I always do it under protest.

I think this might hark back to the time when I was a baby and my father was bathing me. My mother had to snatch me out of the water because it was too hot, or so she told me once. I suspect it might have made me a little suspicious of water, so now I can add aquaphobia to my treasure chest of neuroses.

*  *  *

And Bertha Rochester keeps dropping into my mind lately, insisting on being heard. I imagine somebody asking me who Bertha Rochester is, and having to explain that she’s a woman with several unconventional personality traits, not the least of which is pyromania. ‘What’s pyromania?’ I am further asked. ‘The taking of uncommon delight in setting fire to things,’ I explain, ‘most notably things which were never meant to be set fire to.’ Once I’ve got to that stage, my mind is then free to move onto other things.

*  *  *

Like dreams, for example. I had another of those uncomfortable ones last night. My car broke down on a lonely road close to a wooden shack, and so I took refuge in the shack while awaiting assistance. I stood there looking out of the window at a railway track which ran alongside the road. A train came by and I saw my work colleagues going home on it. They were standing in the carriage watching me as they passed by, and waving to me sympathetically. And then I was alone again.

*  *  *

I wanted to say something funny in this post but couldn’t think of anything.

Smart Bird.

I have two bird tables at my house, one at the front which I can see from my living room, and one at the side observable from my office. They were built for the benefit of the small birds – sparrows, robins, chaffinches etc – which live in and around the garden, and I gather that after a while they become an essential resource for such birds. That’s why the experts say you shouldn’t stop feeding them, and certainly not during cold weather.

But this year my tables have been discovered by other, bigger birds which come in for an easy feed from the surrounding countryside. They include two cock pheasants, three hen pheasants, a flock of five jackdaws, and an indeterminate number of wood pigeons. There are also at least three squirrels which have taken to making regular forays to the food bank and eating rather more than the small birds do. The result is that I am now having to re-stock the tables several times a day and am spending an amount on seed, rolled oats and peanuts roughly equivalent to what I spend on my own provisions.

Today I had two new visitors: a pair of rooks. The rook is a sister sub-species to the common carrion crow, and is alike in all respects except for the fact that it has a white beak. And they’re smart; being smart is what crows are known for, and here’s an example.

Each table has a water bowl on it. They’re made of metal because that makes them easier to de-ice on cold mornings than ceramic bowls. But they’re also lightweight, which means that if one of the bigger birds steps on it – which they have an irritating habit of doing – the bowl will upset and usually fall to the ground. It happens a lot.

Today I watched as a rook placed its foot carefully on the water bowl, and when the bowl began to tip, it took its foot back off again. That’s smart, and that’s why crows have a high reputation with bird lovers who like smart birds.

 

Connecting With Harry.

I just watched Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone again, and again I was reminded of the similarities between going to Hogwarts and going to the Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, as I did at the tender age of seventeen.

Those familiar with the movie might recall that the students arrived by train and were then ferried in darkness across the lake with a view of Hogwarts standing on a hill above them. We, too, arrived by train at Kingswear station and were then ferried across the River Dart with a view of BRNC standing proud and aloof on a hill above the town. Being late on a day in early January, it was dark at the time.

And when we made our first entrance into the grand old building there was a wide staircase, down which an officer came to greet us. Hogwarts had its houses, we had our divisions. The Hogwarts students had robes, while we had uniforms. They competed for the House Cup, while we competed in sailing races, sports events, and personal leadership exercises. My division was St Vincent, and we nearly always won.

I suppose that makes me somewhat akin to an alumnus of Gryffindor. I’m fine with that.

Not quite Hogwarts, but grand enough

Corona Conspiracy.

Judging by what’s going on in supermarkets throughout the developed world – and especially in Australia, apparently – one might be tempted to suspect that Covid-19 was developed by the makers of toilet rolls and released secretly in Hubei Province to cover their tracks.

And I suppose I should point out that this is a joke, just in case anybody out there believes me. I gather you only have to say ‘a Martian ate my hamster’ on the internet these days and the sale of security devices for small cages skyrockets overnight.

*  *  *

And on a related note, I’m told that the owners of a Vietnamese restaurant in Ashbourne have put a notice in their window to the effect that, contrary to uninformed belief and in an attempt to ameliorate their fear of abuse, they are not Chinese. And it’s interesting that I saw no Chinese people wandering the streets of the town freely today. Might I be permitted to suspect that some people are not quite as sensible as they ought to be?

On Ads and Simple Minds.

So here’s the anti-ad argument:

You invade people’s life without being invited and ingratiate yourself into their consciousness. You use whatever means are available to manipulate their thoughts, tastes and desires. You aim to brainwash them until they are receptive enough to want whatever it is your interests require them to take. You have no thought but for yourself because at the core of your being there is no human component.

That being the case, would somebody please tell me what the difference is between spam and advertising. Am I wrong in regarding all advertising as spam, and wondering why on earth we make the distinction?

This is at the heart of my problem with YouTube. The way in which Google uses advertising on YouTube is vexatious to the spirit of anyone with a modicum of sensitivity. I’m sure Google knows this, and encourages the practice in order to persuade people to pay them to have the ad-free premium service. And people fall for it because people are generally as weak as Google is unprincipled.

The Three Ladies of Middle Earth.

No, this isn’t about the three ladies from Lord of the Rings. This is about the three real ladies of the year 2011.

I just read my evening post on New Year’s Eve of that year, and they were the subject of some honourable mention. There was M’Lady S (later re-titled the Lady B), The Woman in America, and the Priestess. They were the three queens who ferried the old man to his death on Avalon in my little allegorical story An Episode in Three Lives, therein known as Princess, Life and Priestess respectively.

The first two are gone now, one to marriage, motherhood and the subtle maelstrom of domestic bliss, the other to some unknown place which I might guess to be a faraway urban jungle. The Priestess is still hovering in plain sight somewhere in the North Country. At least I assume it’s somewhere in the North Country, for you can never know with the Priestess. Here today, there tomorrow; the world is both her playground and her workplace. Just where I fit in is something of a mystery to me.

And do you know what I wrote in that post? I wrote:

And where else should a mere man be but in thrall to a special woman?

Did I really write that? Seems I did. I wouldn’t write it now, of course, because aspiration in all its varied forms faded with the changing face in the mirror and the coming of the fog. Aspiration is for the young, the fit and the strong, those able to swim with confidence through high waves and deep water.

(A little aside: Did I ever write a post about the time when I was being dragged out to sea by a combination of currents and an ebbing tide? I don’t remember. It was scary, but the point is that I was fifteen at the time and physically strong enough to deny fate its catch. Not so now. Now is the winter of discontent, disenchantment, and just plain decrepitude.)

But no matter, at least my mind is still maddeningly active. In fact, most of the time it’s so maddeningly active that I can’t focus properly on the things I’m supposed to be focusing on.

And do you know what’s odd? The more I become aware of mortality and the increasing speed of time, the more I’m coming to feel that my life hasn’t started yet – that I’ve spent all my past years just waiting to set my foot on the right road. And here I am, totally lacking aspiration because aspiration has become untenable. It’s a weird feeling. Maybe three ladies and a mystical isle hold the clue.

Changing Tack.

I just read an old post of mine from 2010 about apparent visitations to my house (the other-worldly variety, of course.) It reminded me of the only one I ever found truly scary – the black dog which leapt out of the wall at me two years ago, shortly before I discovered I had cancer. So now I need to re-establish a measure of equilibrium.

That’s why I’m going to pass on the serious post about falling standards among staff in the retail sector and watch Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone again instead. (I bought the two-disc set in a charity shop yesterday for 50p. I like charity shops.) I’m hoping it will provide an effective antidote to disturbing memories of snarling black dogs leaping out of the wall with fangs barred and heading for my throat. Whether it works might or might not be indicated in a later post.

But first I have to wash the dishes and vacuum the floor. Isn’t life exciting?

An Amusing Similarity.

I saw a hen pheasant and a jackdaw feeding on one of my bird tables earlier. The pheasant is a big bird and completely dominates the space on the table. The jackdaw, on the other hand, is one of the smaller of the crow family.

What held my interest with some degree of amusement was watching the jackdaw having to duck every time the pheasant shifted position and swung her long tail feathers around. It reminded me of my days crewing in sailing races at Dartmouth, and hearing the coxswain call ‘prepare to jibe.’ If the boat had a fore-and-aft sail with a boom arm, ducking was required then for precisely the same reason.

A Current Dilemma.

Should I draw a line under something which has been of substantial significance for so long? If I did, who would replace her? Is the prospect of a resultant void adequate reason to avoid drawing a line where a line should be drawn, or does this dilemma stem only from a delusion engendered by the dripping tap of high functioning depression?

(Does the unconscious use of alliteration indicate guidance from the universal consciousness as the synchronicity of repeating numbers is said to do?)

I think this is still at the wait-and-see stage.

On Considering the Fish Tank.

I’m occasionally intrigued by the fact that people keep glass tanks of water containing tropical fish in their living rooms. I ask myself what the point of it is, because fish can hardly be described as pets in the commonly accepted sense of the term. They don’t join you on the sofa and lay their heads in your lap, do they? Neither do they perch on your finger and mimic your expletives. Humans and fish live in totally different, mutually exclusive environments which greatly limits close contact or any real attempt at emotional bonding.

I assume the appeal is purely visual, and I concede the point because coloured fish swimming around in bubbly water do look attractive. So is that it? Because if it is, the question has to be raised as to whether it’s entirely ethical to keep sentient beings in an unnaturally restricted environment just because they look nice. Personally I think not, but I reserve judgement because, in the absence of substantial familiarity with the nature of a fish’s consciousness, an informed opinion is difficult to establish.

Drawing Blanks in Uttoxeter.

It was good to see that the Costa girl was back in Uttoxeter today. ‘You’ve been absent,’ I said. She looked irritated and mumbled an incoherent reply, so I backed off. That’s what we INFJs do, apparently. We don’t push, prod or pester. If the signal says ‘back off’, then back off is what we do.  We’re nice like that. Besides, she’s bigger than me.

*  *  *

So later I asked some supervisor-type woman in Tesco whether the reason the pasta – which had obviously suffered almost total wipe out at the hands of the panic buyers – hadn’t been replenished because pasta comes from Italy and Italy is in partial lock-down. She didn’t know. You’d think she would, wouldn’t you? You’d think Tesco would have the wherewithal to inform their staff of such details so they can answer the inevitable questions. Modern times, I suppose.

Questioning the Compliment.

In last night’s post I reported that I’d had a visit from a lady called Leila (universally known as ‘the lovely Leila’ to all who know her.) It’s twelve years since I last saw her and I was prepared for a woman approaching middle age.

Not a bit of it. If anything she looked even younger than I remembered her, but I confined my expression of surprise to the more realistic: ‘You haven’t aged.’

‘Neither have you,’ she replied enthusiastically (Leila applies a notable degree of enthusiasm to nearly everything she does.)

‘You must be joking,’ I said. ‘According to what I see in the mirror, I’d say I’ve aged ten years in the past six months.’

‘But what I’m seeing is the same light in your eyes.’

Light in my eyes? I had no idea I still had light in my eyes, apart from the minimum expected of anybody who hasn’t yet rung down the curtain and become a 150lb piece of something unfit for human consumption.

(I quite liked something a pathologist said in a TV programme once. A dead body isn’t a person. The person has gone.)

But back to the light in my eyes…

At first I took it as a compliment because I like the idea of having light in my eyes. But then it struck me that there are lots of other signs of ageing, none of which got mentioned, so whether it was a compliment or not became questionable. It could be seen as an example of that lovely old expression: ‘damned with faint praise.’

But that’s the half empty side of me. The half full side is still clinging to the compliment.

Relating.

I had two unexpected visitors today. The normal rate of unexpected visitors to my house is about one every ten years, so to get two in a single day is a little unusual. One was my ex, Mel, and the other was her friend Leila who has received mentions on this blog before.

Leila is the sort of person to whom extraordinary things happen, like the time she took a walk along a riverbank in the snow at around midnight, and an otter climbed out of the water and walked alongside her. Things like that don’t generally happen to human beings, and there is a generally held belief that Leila may not be quite human in the generally held sense of the term. In short, there is nothing identifiably general about Leila.

Fortunately we seem to get on very well, even though she is about the only person I know whose eyes I find almost impossible to interpret. They appear to have their genesis in some other realm or version of reality. Maybe it’s one with which otters are more familiar than me.

*  *  *

The second, relatively minor, mystery today was that my blog had a visit from Turkmenistan. How in earth anyone from Turkmenistan would find my blog, and why they should have chosen to visit it when they did, is a little baffling. ‘But why not?’ you might ask. I don’t know. I suppose it’s what happens when you’re baffled.

*  *  *

I woke up this morning feeling so scared that it felt like walking at night through a jungle infested with man-eating tigers. I’m not kidding; I was that scared. You tell me.

*  *  *

The weather being unusually clement this morning, I did a little manual work in the garden. It was the first this year. My chest felt ill the whole time, but the rest of me was OK.

*  *  *

I’ve started singing the White Tara mantra along with a YouTube video every night, and now I fear that if I stop she won’t like me any more. Wasn’t it ever thus? And Siegfried’s Funeral Music from Götterdämmerung continues to give me goose bumps.

2012 and the Giant Tsunami.

I watched the movie 2012 a few nights ago and greatly enjoyed it. But I thought about it the following day and realised that I’d been entirely swept along by the special effects. Certain doubts and questions had tugged at my sleeve along the way, but I’d pushed them aside because a 1,000ft tsunami was about to swamp several things that everybody had always thought unswampable (such as a Buddhist monastery that was probably 5-10,000ft above sea level, but I’m coming to that.)

  

So let’s have a list of the minus points:

1. Several bits of irritating and quite unnecessary mawkishness had me wondering whether Spielberg had been behind the scenes whispering instructions into the director’s ear.

2. There were a few too many of those extreme, groan-inducing coincidences which I assume writers think you won’t notice. (Like the fact that the big plane which has just flown all the way from America to China happens to crash land close to a road along which a particularly significant group of people just happens to be driving. Sixty seconds later and the future course of world history would have been substantially altered. Or, to put it another way, there would have been no movie.)

3. Some of the plot points are, predictably I suppose, more than a little implausible (like the 1,000ft tsunami which swamps a Buddhist monastery which is probably 5-10,000ft above sea level.)

4. In choosing which characters should live and which should die, I suspect the writer was cribbing directly from the chapter in The Film Maker’s Guide entitled ‘Which Type of Character Must Make It and Which Mustn’t.’ If you’ll excuse one spoiler, I’d quite like to reveal that the little dog makes it, but his reluctantly bimboish, gold-digging, gangster’s moll of a human doesn’t. (She did choose a Russian gangster after all, so what could she expect? In fact, neither of the Russian characters survive, which is probably rule #1 in the American version of the Guide.)

5. I gather that the science behind the whole story was even less plausible than a 1,000ft tsunami overreaching itself, but I’m no scientist so I’ll reserve judgement on that one.

But as I said, the special effects are most impressive. A 1,000ft tsunami is still a 1,000ft tsunami when all’s said and done. And I did like one particular fragment of script. When the giant solar flare has finally stopped rearranging planet Earth and everything on it, killing 99.99% of its inhabitants in the process, the politician (who we don’t really like) looks incredulous as he asks the quieter, more self-effacing of the two scientists (both of whom we do really like):

‘Are you telling me that the North Pole is now in Wisconsin?’ to which the scientist replies, in a suitably quiet and self-effacing manner: ‘The South Pole, actually.’

It’s probably complete tosh scientifically, but it did make me smile.

On a Crowded Car Park and a Little Lesson.

There was something of a scramble for parking spaces at Sainsbury’s, Ashbourne this morning. I was informed that it was all due to a rush of panic buying in response to the coronavirus issue. It appears that an awful lot of people fear they will either be confined to a sick bed and risk dying of starvation even if the plague doesn’t take them, or maybe that Ashbourne will declare self-isolation as the Derbyshire village of Eyam famously did 350 years ago. Thankfully, there was neither queue nor shortage in the coffee shop.

The lady in the coffee shop asked me what I wanted, and I replied that I would have my usual coffee and a lemon curd tart. Only I didn’t call it a lemon curd tart; I called it a lemon turd cart. I was in that kind of mood.

She paused and looked at me questioningly, and so I had to tell her what I knew of the Rev Spooner and his curious speech habits. She now knows what a spoonerism is. That was today’s contribution to the cause of improving the human condition. Sometimes life is easy, and sometimes it isn’t.

Stressful Days and Nights.

I had a long and disturbing dream last night. I dreamt that someone moved into my house to share it, and soon they were followed by a tribe of visitors who filled the house with their presence and noise, occupied my most sacred spaces, and began breaking things that were precious to me. No amount of protest had the slightest effect and I was helpless in the face of the onslaught.

I woke up and tried to write it down for a blog post, but the words wouldn’t come and what form it should take confused me to the point of mental arrest. And then I woke up for real. I know what little incident triggered this dream and I know there’s nothing I can do about the future prospects related to it.

*  *  *

This morning I had a phone call from the hospital giving me a date for my next procedure. It’s a minimum three day affair and they tell me I shouldn’t drive for four weeks afterwards. I live in the countryside with no public transport and no close support, so I need to make such preparation as I can for this eventuality. The date they gave me amounted to too short notice, so I had to decline it and request a longer period. I’m waiting for the call back.

But the real problem with the procedure is this: It will have one of three outcomes:

1. It could fail to solve the problem it’s meant address.

2. It could give me a new lease of life.

3. It could finish me, and that isn’t an exaggeration.

So I’m very nervous about it. Is that surprising?

A Late Muse of Little Consequence.

I spend a lot of my time these days feeling disappointed and dispirited by the stupidity and selfishness of the world’s leaders, the lamentable flaws in the human condition, and even the indifference of Mother Nature to suffering. But my jaded senses just identified three things to be impressed by. They are:

The power of the viola to move the spirit onto another level of reality.

The power of the young feminine to move the world into a better condition.

The power of the stronger Beta to execute the vision of the weaker Alpha.

I doubt this will mean anything to anybody, but it’s late at night and late in life and I just felt like saying it.

Oh for the days of llamas, silly ditties, and the girl with richest raven hair. But no regrets because regret is irrational. Guilt, on the other hand, is allowed. Whatever the man on YouTube says, guilt is the best of teachers if you have a mind to listen constructively.