Age and Scarecrows.

It’s less than an hour until June, and yet it seems only a few short weeks since we were getting the first intimation of a pandemic about to sweep the world. It was only in China then (allegedly.) The way time speeds up when you’re getting older is really quite remarkable.

So I thought I’d post a picture of me looking like a scarecrow after fourteen weeks without a haircut.

 

Only I can’t be a real scarecrow, of course, because I have a brain and it still functions reasonably well. This is a real scarecrow:

In Homage to the Little Things.

The view down my sloping garden is to the west, and even after fourteen years of living here I’m still held in thrall by the sight of a blizzard of midges, backlit, glowing and dancing in the shallow rays of the low evening sun.

Dreams Good and Bad.

I dreamt about the Lady B last night. I remember nothing of it apart from the fact that we were going somewhere in a car. I think she was driving, and I recall a vague sense that she was cross with me for some reason. That’s all right; dreams of the Lady B are pleasant by default whether she be cross with me or not.

I fear tonight might bring a wholly different sort of dream. I’ve just read an old story of mine called The Charlie Club and found it quite disquieting. It tells of a mysterious character called Charles Morgan who might be ghost or superman or something else entirely. He practices cannibalism at a derelict site in an old, inner city neighbourhood, and entertains the local youth while so engaged. It’s a nasty story.

What concerns me is where I got it from. Did it come out of my head, in which case should I be concerned about the unwholesome state of my dark side? Or was it placed there by some mysterious being which hangs around writers, in which case should I be concerned about the kind of mysterious beings hanging around me? This could be the stuff of nightmares.

*  *  *

And on a lighter note, what about the nightmare that is America at the moment under Trump? It’s in a right old mess, isn’t it? As much as I’m generally a fan of democracy, I can’t help feeling that there’s a case to be made here for having him removed by force. It shouldn’t be too difficult, surely, to make a compelling case for psychosis. And what I don’t understand is why nobody has sued him for defamation over some of the tweets he’s been making lately. Or is the American President immune from such a process?

Considering a Change of Tack.

It often happens that I dream up a blog post during the day when I’m doing some job or other. (Today I pruned the biggest and oldest of the lilac trees in my garden. I always feel mortified by my capacity for brutality when I prune a tree, and always apologise to the poor thing and offer some sort of rationale which rarely fails to sound disingenuous.) But then when I finally sit in front of the computer with the night having fallen, and the curtains having been closed, and a cup of coffee having been made, which is usually around a quarter past ten, I can’t be bothered.

It happened again today. The post was going to be on the subject of life plans and goals, neither of which finds much favour with me. I could perfectly well explain why I find them mostly pointless if only I had the mental energy to do so, but I don’t. The mental energy is sadly lacking at a quarter past ten at night in the circumstances heretofore described. So forget that one (for now.)

At such times I consider whether I should transfer my blogging habit to a vlogging habit and take my place in the hallowed halls of YouTube with the great and the good. I wouldn’t expect to make any money out of it because I don’t need money. What I need are sparks, not spending power. I’m not much of a consumer, you see. Most of my clothes come from charity shops, I’ve never been one for taking holidays because the effort involved always seemed to outweigh the benefit, I eat simply, I live frugally, and I rarely engage in communal activities of any kind because I have little patience with people or their silly cultural activities.

The advantage with vlogging would be that I could just sit here and ramble. I wouldn’t have a keyboard draining my mental energy and irritating me because I’m not much of a typist and have to keep changing alos to also. But there are two major drawbacks:

1. I would have to get expensive equipment like a camera and things. I expect I would have to get editing software. And most of all, I would have to learn new skills and I think I’ve learned enough of those for one lifetime already.

2. People would see what I look like, so I would have to consider the question of a watershed. Children might accidentally click onto the JJ vlog irrespective of any warning I might place at the beginning with regard to parental guidance. And then they might have nightmares about this frowning, forbidding figure who looks like a cross between Quasimodo and Wurzel Gummidge with a bit of Methuselah thrown in. And if people can be so stupid as to destroy phone masts and attack British Telecoms engineers because they’ve read somewhere on the internet that 5G is responsible for coronavirus, how might an irate parent react upon being woken up at 4am by some hysterical kid who wants to talk about its nightmare in a squeaky voice? I could get lynched (or even driven to the burning mill by men armed with pitchforks, to reprise an old and cherished theme.) And the probability of the Lady B ever talking to me again would lose the 1% it currently holds. (Happy 3^rd, by the way, if you happen to be within earshot. Sorry I’m a day late.)

So that’s today’s blog post. What a lot of effort it took. Was it worth it? Is it ever worth it? Is anything ever worth anything? Shutting up now. Off to YouTube.

The Relevance of Titles.

I just re-read an old post of mine called Layers and Me and the Lady B. Having read it, I looked at the title again and it didn’t feel right. I decided it should read: Layers and Me and the Sweet Lady B.

Why? Well, not because the Lady B was particularly sweet. She was always a bit too distant to know whether she was sweet or not. She garnered more of my interest, affection and approbation than almost anyone else I’ve known in my life, but sweet? I couldn’t say.

It was actually because my mother was fond of telling me stories when I was a kid, and nearly all of them were dark or depressing in some way. I suspect she was trying to train me to be sentimental, but she needn’t have bothered. That sort of thing comes with the genes and my genes are replete with sentimentality. (I’ve occasionally suspected that my inordinate fondness for the Lady B had something to do with dogs and earthworms, but maybe there was more. There was, in fact; there was the Hermione Granger tendency, too.)

Anyway, one of the stories my mother liked to tell me was a nasty little tale about some hideous crone who captured children and roasted them for dinner. Sounds a bit like Hansel and Gretel, doesn’t it, but I remember it was called The Wig and the Wag and the Little Yellow Bag. (As far as I recall, the little yellow bag was the repository in which the children were carried to their doom, but just what wigs and wags were, and how they related to the plot, I never discovered.) The point is, however, I liked the title. It had something strong, well stressed, perfectly balanced and memorable about it. Seems I was an aficionado of language for its own sake at an early age. And that’s why I want to add ‘sweet’ to the title of the Lady B post. It isn’t quite the same metrically, but it carries the same level of balance and strength. So there you go.

And if you ever read this, Sal, no offence meant.

p.s.

I just realised that the idea of children going to their doom in a bag finds an echo in Dracula. Maybe that’s where it came from, although I think it unlikely. Just a coincidence I expect. And it still doesn’t explain what wigs and wags are, does it?

Suits Me.

I realised something interesting in Sainsbury’s today. If somebody smiles at you when you’re wearing a mask, there’s no point in smiling back so you needn’t bother. This might give rise to a permanent new feature in my sartorial style.

Big Brained Irony.

There’s a video on YouTube showing the final scene of John Boorman’s film Excalibur, in which King Arthur is lying mortally wounded and instructing Sir Bedivere to cast Excalibur back into the lake. When Bedivere falsely claims to have done so, Arthur sees through the lie and instructs him further, saying ‘One day the sword will rise again and another king will come.’ And so was born the legend of the Once and Future King.

As you would expect, there are a lot of pea-brained comments on this video from people who would have trouble working out how to switch an electric light on, and today I saw the latest, presumably from some anally-retentive Little Englander. It said:

‘And take out the Muslims and Communists.’

At first I was tempted to reply: ‘You forgot the blacks, the Asians, the Jews, the Catholics, the gays, the gypsies and the Irish.’ But I decided it really wasn’t worth my time replying to a brain as small as his, so I didn't.

But then a neat little fact occurred to me. The earliest reference to Arthur, not as a king but as the leader of a band of warriors fighting the encroaching Anglo-Saxons, comes from early British oral tradition, later committed to print in early Welsh folk tales. And so the people who the real Arthur - assuming such a person ever existed - was actually trying to ‘take out’ were the very people who were to become the English. Isn’t that deliciously ironic?

Being Useful.

The robins in my garden have been staring at me rather more than usual lately, and I think I know why. I know robins very well, you see. I think of them as my little alter-egos. They exhibit the same reluctance to associate with other birds as I do with other humans and we make eye contact a lot. And that’s how I know why they’re staring at me rather more than usual lately. They’re trying to decide whether my hair, which hasn’t been cut for fourteen weeks due to lockdown, would make a good nesting site.

Clouds in the Mind.

As predicted in an earlier post, I now have rats perambulating my garden.

I find rats unsettling, probably because I was brought up on stories of them which did not exactly present them in an edifying light. Consequently, they belong in the world of sewers and smelly places, not an English country garden which should be all about sunshine, sweet smelling flowers, the gentle rustling of breeze-blown leaves, the kaleidoscopic array of butterflies, the soporific hum of  bumble bees, and a general sense of bucolic peace. Rats just don't belong.

In actual fact, rats are just as much a part of the countryside environment as squirrels, hedgehogs, foxes, bunnies, badgers and the little birdies I’m so fond of. And yet I can’t get rid of the fact that I dislike having them in my garden. I suppose the failure is all mine. Ratism would appear to be my prejudice.

And then I read the story of the ill-fated Edmund Fitzgerald (which had nothing whatsoever to do with rats) and the cloud of unease grew darker.

Scraping the Barrel.

So what should I write about today, since nothing of great note has happened?

I suppose I could mention that the local thermometers have an identity crisis and think they’ve suddenly become yo-yos. The temperature was 26°C when I went to Ashbourne on Wednesday. Today it’s 12°. It’s been doing that all spring. And the wind has risen to gusts of at least gale force, showering the garden and my car with a comprehensive layer of seeds, leaves and bits of dead branch from the nearby sycamore tree. And the sky has turned grey, grim and gloomy, which makes me miserable.

I suppose I could also mention the mystery of the disappearing pheasants. I used to have six hens invading my garden and helping themselves to the food on the bird tables. Now there appears to be only one. My suspicions incline towards the local foxes.

Further afield, it was amusing to see Biden having to apologise and go into damage limitation mode over his remark about black people. And he isn’t even President yet. Shame for all those good Americans looking for a leader and being faced with a choice between Biden and Trump, both of whom need to keep the closet door tightly shut, and neither of whom exactly inspires confidence. But I suppose it’s their fault for giving one person so much power. We don’t do that sort of thing in Europe. The American Presidency now resembles a vaudeville warm up routine, and we got over that with events like the Restoration, the French Revolution, and the defeat of Hitler. The Russians and Chinese haven’t caught on yet, but maybe they will eventually.

So there you have it. Nothing to say. Maybe tomorrow.

My Pet Hate Again.

Something I’m curious about:

You know all those ads which proliferate on the internet like pustules on a leper? Does anybody ever actually click on them? (And isn’t the invitation to ‘Go to advertiser’s site’ just the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever read? Who the hell would want to?) Surely, we all go straight to the little cross and close the damn thing, don’t we? Please tell me we do.

I remember back when I was a naïve new user of a pc, I would sometimes click on the cross and discover that all it did was take me to the full ad. That is so dishonest, but at least I learned something about life and the human condition from it.

How the Irrational Does Prevail.

One of the main news items today concerned the high incidence of people driving their camper vans out to the coast and camping there overnight. Camping overnight is still forbidden in Britain under lockdown regulations, and the locals were none too happy about being invaded by scores of potentially plague-carrying strangers. The police descended en masse at dawn, apparently, and politely told them to go home.

Into the argument steps some man (whose name I can’t be bothered to go back and find out) from some camping and caravan organisation (the name of which I also can’t be bothered to go back and find out) to defend the ne’er-do-wells. We have to remember, he explained, that many of these people use a camper van as their primary form of transport. They even go shopping in them.

So is he suggesting that the owners of camper vans are obliged to drive out to the coast and remain there overnight, rather than driving out and driving back again like everybody else? Or is he missing the point?

*  *  *

A few days ago I saw another report on the BBC News website on the subject of Covid (because they rarely report on anything else these days.) This one was written by a BBC journalist and said that CO2 emissions have dropped dramatically since lockdown kept most of the vehicles off the road. Well, I think we could have worked that one out for ourselves. But then it went on to say that the emissions may rebound when the traffic gets back to normal.

May? May rebound? Where does the ‘may’ come from? Of course they’ll rebound when the traffic gets back to normal. It’s like saying that if you place a glass under a running tap and leave it there, it may get full and overflow. (Personally I would prefer ‘might’, but that’s immaterial to my point.)

*  *  *

The point here is that I simply don’t understand how people in positions of influence and authority can display such a lack of rational thinking. And it isn’t only journalists and spokespersons from organisations who are guilty of this. We get the same thing from politicians, Establishment figures and others in the public eye. Are they really that clueless, or do they think that everybody else is so they can say whatever they like and get away with it?

Really, I have to ask: What has happened to us British, or does the same sad state of affairs apply elsewhere? And is it getting worse, as it seems to me, or am I just noticing it more.

On Being Naturally Suspicious.

There’s been much talk over here about getting a ‘track and trace’ system set up so that those who have been in close contact with a person who has contracted Covid can be tracked and traced and warned to be vigilant. The system is intended to function through the use of apps downloaded onto smart phones. Everybody is enthusiastic, apparently, especially the government and the management of the NHS who are warning of a second spike in infections if the system is not set up quickly.

I confess to having doubts. I understand the desirability of reducing infection rates, but I wonder whether we should be looking further ahead. Could this be an example of the government and the Establishment taking the opportunity to use fear in order to prise open the door of surveillance a little further? Will the apps be disableable, and if so, will people bother to disable them? I did say that my trust in governments is becoming strained, didn’t I? I did use the phrase ‘rule by fear’, didn’t I? Or, in this case, maybe that should be amended to 'control through fear.'

Natural Changes.

I sat on my lawn today watching little dust devils careering around the field on the other side of the lane. That field was ploughed and raked recently so the soil is fine, but we’ve had no rain for weeks and now it’s becoming pale and dusty. My thoughts turned to Of Mice and Men, and it struck me that I was looking at a real dust bowl. In miniature.

And now I have a second rabbit burrow and a second pile of soil gracing my flower beds. The first one is on the north side of my garden, the second on the south, so maybe they’re not separate burrows at all but simply two accesses to the same one running under the garden. I considered having signs made carrying names like ‘Embankment’ and ‘Oxford Circus’, but decided it would be a bit silly.

Planning For the Future.

I just watched a video accompanying some Chinese ambi music and decided I would quite like to spend my next life as the man who walks behind the ox in a Chinese paddy field. And then I changed my mind. Can you imagine how boring it would be spending all of every day up to your knees in water following an ox? I daresay you’d be able to have all the rice you could eat and I quite like rice, just not that much.

Ah, but I suppose I could combine it with being a Zen master and then it would be OK. I don’t suppose Zen masters ever get bored.

(I watched a TV documentary once about a man who spends his whole life tending the Shinto shrines on a Japanese hillside. That struck me as pretty cool, too, but I think I’d have to learn the bamboo flute to keep myself amused in cold weather.)

Oh well, back to the old favourite – deep space astronaut with Kate Beckinsale as co-pilot. As long as she never aged beyond 28, of course.

An Unusual Place to Call Home.

I’m in a better mood today. Do you want to know why? OK, I’ll tell you why.

Eight weeks ago, or thereabouts, I acceded to a request from certain personages of the clucking hen variety to self-isolate. The rationale for such a request hardly matters, but the fact remains that I agreed to go into quarantine for their sake.

And so for the past eight weeks I have kept myself well apart from my fellow humans. I didn’t mind that bit because I’m not all that keen on most of my fellow humans anyway. What bothered me was having to have somebody else do my shopping. I had to prepare a list every Friday for the weekly shop on Saturday, and the pressure of doing so became heavier and heavier. Why? Well, for several reasons, but mostly because I greatly dislike having to rely on other people to do things for me, and also because I was most uneasy at seeing other people taking risks on my behalf. That’s the bit that really bothered me.

Things came to a head last weekend and I decided that I was going to start doing my own shopping again. I made the announcement and got moaned at, but I held firm because enough was enough and my decision was made. And today I went to Sainsbury’s.

I would never have thought that going to Sainsbury’s could be such a thrill. I mean, it isn’t exactly the Taj Mahal or the temple complex at Angkor Wat, is it? It’s a supermarket, a supermarket I’ve been using every week since I moved to this part of Derbyshire eighteen years ago. But a thrill it was after eight weeks of isolation. I drove there, I parked up there, I used the recycling facility, I walked among the people there, many of whom have worked in that store since before I even started shopping in it. I felt free at last, and dear old Sainsbury’s felt almost like coming home.

That’s why I’m in a better mood today.

And I suppose I should add that if I do contract Covid-19 and die from it, I hope I can rely on the readers of this blog to fill the comment section with a healthy array of LOLs.

A Rare View of Perfection.

I stood at the side of my house in the silence of the late evening, gazing out to the far western horizon beyond the river valley. The air was soft and mild, the breeze a mere zephyr. What little cloud stood above the hills was thin, drawn in rough strokes, and painted orange by the sun’s wake. The sky above was clear and blue in all directions. And I spoke out loud, saying ‘This is the perfect evening. How many more, I wonder.’

The Minor Matter of Survival.

I was reading this morning about the famines that are starting to bite in some parts of the world in the wake of Covid. Possible starvation looms for millions, apparently. And it struck me as absurd that this is happening while I’m complaining about having to get top brand breakfast cereal instead of Sainsbury’s own brand which is cheaper. The stark gap in priorities can be more than a little scary sometimes.

And then I fell to wondering – not for the first time – whether there might be some way in which the food reserves could be shared on an international basis. The idea has been mooted before, of course, and the objection usually comes down to a matter of logistics. (‘Where there’s a will there’s a way’ is frequently trotted out when it suits, and equally frequently forgotten when it doesn’t.)

But suppose the will was there to do it. It would still be unacceptable to most people because the cry would go up: ‘We must take care of our own first,’ closely followed by ‘charity begins at home’ uttered smugly and proudly by those convinced of the wisdom contained in what is actually one of the saddest of sad platitudes.

But maybe we should be thinking beyond charity. Maybe we should be taking seriously Daniel Quinn’s assertion that human society cannot go on forever in its present form, based as it is on the pre-eminence of money, the obsession with variety, and the imperative to consume. He postulated that if the human race is going to survive in a sustainable form it needs to get back to small scale living based on self-supporting communities. And maybe he’s right. I think history has largely shown that societies which get too deep into hedonism usually fall eventually (and I did offer in my own novel the possibility that the story of Atlantis was not a prehistoric fable, but a prediction for the future.)

So could we follow Quinn’s advice and do that? It seems unlikely because we’ve spent the last few thousand years forgetting how to do it. There are still a few people spread around the globe who remain practiced in such ways, those in remote areas relatively untouched by the hedonistic agenda, those whose land we steal and who we occasionally murder so that the likes of McDonald’s can continue to thrive and grow, but the rest of us wouldn’t have a clue. And so I’ve no doubt that we will to do our very best to carry on worshipping money, variety and consumption once the latest plague has retired into the background.

But the real cause for concern here is money. We all know that it doesn’t exist; it’s just a theoretical exchange mechanism based on trust and consensus. So what happens if things get so bad that trust and consensus fall and money becomes worthless? What then?

Random Jottings.

Most days nobody wants to talk to me, and that’s when I wonder whether I’ve died and gone into limbo. Today I had seven messages and a phone call, so now I’m bemused and wondering why everybody is suddenly beating a path to my door. I get a bit fatigued if I have to talk about lots of things – including myself, heaven forbid – because it means finding the right words and means of approach, as well as concentrating on not saying anything which might upset somebody because I’m trying to be a better person than I used to be when I virtually made a career of upsetting people.

Are you getting all this? I’m not sure that I am.

Right now I keep getting the urge to eat a couple of plum tomatoes, but I have to remind myself that my digestive system objects to the combination of tomatoes and scotch whisky. The whisky is non-negotiable at this time of night, so now I’ve probably upset a couple of perfectly friendly and sensitive plum tomatoes.

But I think I’ve reached an accommodation with the hen pheasant who stamped her foot and said ‘but I’m hungry.’ I like being taught lessons by non-human creatures. Such lessons generally make more sense than the stuff humans try to teach me.

Wondering.

I’m beginning to smell a rat over this Covid thing. Or am I being fanciful and there’s no rat to be smelt? It’s always impossible to know when gut feelings are involved.

It would be foolish of me to elucidate further because I have no evidence for my suspicion. It’s just a suspicion. All I can say is that the phrase ‘rule by fear’ keeps jumping into my head, and I feel a little less inclined to trust the leaders of the powerful countries than I did when the pandemic started and all responsibility was being laid at the feet of China.

Days.

The days these days are very strange days. So many things to trouble and confuse the little JJ mind: decisions to be made, accommodations to be made, choices to be exercised and explanations to be attempted. It’s all a little exhausting, and I’m sure life would be so much easier if I were not both an INFJ and an HSP. Don’t we so love our labels these days?

The African woman who seems to like communicating with me has sent me two YouTube music clips so far, and they’ve both been splendidly to my taste. That’s unusual. And I had a strange incident with a hen pheasant today. I swear she said ‘but I’m hungry.’

Post-Midnight Black Hole.

There are still two hours to go to my bed time and there's plenty of scotch in the house, but YouTube has crashed. Is this just the latest manifestation of the matrix crumbling? What do I do for the next two hours? Wait for the house walls to dissolve and reveal the true nature of reality? Will it be to my liking? Will there be a tomorrow? Do I really exist? Is it worth caring?

On Watching the Birds and Being Noticed.

Just to add another little note to the changing of life’s landscape at the moment, the view to the heavens from my garden has taken on a new aspect. It used to be filled with house martins, with the occasional swallow mixed in, swooping and diving and riding the air currents in their hunt for airborne food. Now it’s a large flock of squawking gulls flying in circles and five or six buzzards drifting sedately on the breeze.

What’s interesting about the gulls is that they don’t all circle in the same direction. Some circle clockwise and some anti-clockwise, which caused me to wonder whether they have a version of right-handed and left-handed members in their society.

And that caused me to further consider the fact that most of what we know about birds and animals derives from the practice of scientists capturing and killing them, and then dissecting them to find out what makes them tick, which bits relate to other bits, and so on. I asked myself whether we humans have a right to kill other species merely to bolster our knowledge base just to prove how clever we are. Should knowledge be that important, or should we leave them alone, observe them without interfering, and be content with what we see? I’d be happier with that.

*  *  *

And on a different tack entirely, I’ve discovered that there’s a new qualification abroad in today’s society. You no longer have to have a PhD or be a famous celebrity to gain approbation; all you have to do is make it known that you’re a Myers-Briggs INFJ and people want your autograph.

Accepting the Compliment.

Somebody told me tonight that I’ve achieved self-actualization. Sounded a bit too grand for me, so I looked it up. It means:

‘You can now die in peace.’

OK.

Moans.

The last two nights have been very cold here in dear old Blighty. Some of the leaves on the spring growth in the garden were frostbitten this morning.

A veritable horde of wild pheasants has started invading my garden from the nearby field and eating all the food I put out for the garden birds. They’re very persistent. (I suspect the alpha cock pheasant is called Attila, but he doesn't wear a funny hat so I can't be sure.)

The female rat which has been living in the garden for several weeks has given birth, so now there’s a family of rats living in the garden. Families of rats tend to grow exponentially very quickly.

Something has dug a damn great hole in the middle of one of my flower beds and thrown a large mound of soil over the nearby plants.

I’m clean out of coffee and won’t be able to get more until Saturday. I don’t think I’ve ever been out of coffee at any time in my life. I didn’t drink coffee while I was bedridden in hospital because it tasted as though it had been made from mud dredged out of the Humber Estuary, but at least it was there if I’d wanted it. This is serious.

The Covid thing is beginning to feel like wartime now, and the garden is becoming enemy territory.

Noticing the Chinese Tongue.

I think I’ve heard enough women speaking Mandarin by now to arrive at a bold conclusion:

When they speak it soft it’s very sexy. When they get agitated it’s hilarious. I swear I could easily spend quite some time being entertained by a woman speaking Mandarin even though I wouldn’t understand a word of what she was saying.

Screwing With the Season.

This spring is proving to be an unusual one – very dry and very sunny, but with temperatures vacillating between modest June and modest February. I sometimes find myself walking around parts of the garden with a watering can while chill winds encourage me to wear a coat and woolly hat. It feels unnatural. More to the point, it leaves me with that constant nagging sense of waiting impatiently for summer to start in earnest.

But what sort of summer will it be this year? People like to be out and about in the summer – sitting outside coffee shops and café bars with their cappuccinos and iced drinks, taking weekend trips to the tourist spots, grilling pieces of dead animal on their barbies while assorted friends and family sniff the air expectantly – and Covid isn’t likely to be settling down for some months yet. And so I wonder whether this year’s season is going to go down in living memory as The Great Wasted Summer.

In Case Anybody is Wondering...

As far as I know I haven’t succumbed to the plague and died or anything, I’ve just been too busy to make posts. I dislike being busy; it brings fatigue symptoms in its wake and they're a pain. And on a related note…

I never cease to be surprised at how quickly time goes by when you’re gardening. You go out to do a half hour job, and when you come back in you find that three hours have passed. And so, being an ultra-rational person, I’ve come to a tentative conclusion…

Since time is as much about perception as it is about clocks, it seems natural to me to reason that gardeners have much shorter lives than non-gardeners. I read once that insects have the same problem.

Currently listening to...

Cathie Ryan singing 'Lament of the Three Marys.' It's a wonderful track to have playing in the car when you're driving alone on a country road at night.

I've also been listening to a lot of North African music lately, and ended up in conversation with a woman from Morocco. This is the point at which YouTube proves its mettle, in spite of the lamentable state of the people who run it, the advertisers who advertise on it, and most of the people who use it.

Incomprehensible Recommendations.

I’m curious to know why my YouTube recommendations continue to offer me videos which appear to have no relevance to my watch history. These include:

1. Advice on how to get the upper hand over narcissists. Narcissists? Why would I want to?

2. Self-styled gurus telling me what life is all about and what I’m doing wrong. I would have thought that any algorithms engaged in tracking me should have the nous to have noticed by now that I regard self-styled gurus as supremely ignorable.

3. So-called reports from Sky News, Australia which are usually highly right-biased, predominantly engaged in anti-Chinese propaganda, and certainly promoting the dubious value system of the sordid little cesspit known as Murdoch. This is the one which comes closest to insulting me, but I’m generally pretty adept at letting insults run off me and disappear down the nearest grid. I take the view that if they’re right, they’re not insults; and if they’re wrong, they’re just wrong and why should I worry?

What I would like to see is a video explaining to me why the three stands of bluebells in the wild patch at the bottom of my garden have become multi-coloured this year. They all used to be the standard blue, but this year one of them is nearer purple, another is lilac, and the third is pink. And something similar has happened to the three stands of antirrhinum up by the house. That’s the sort of thing which interests me.

And aren’t the ads supposed to be tailored to my interests? So why do I keep on getting ads for some kind of computer game in which the tank commander is called Frank – and narrated in one of those deep, masculine American accents which I thought only existed in the sickliest type of nightmare? I really am baffled.

*  *  *

So now you can have a picture of my Grandma. She was one of the Turner girls, and the Turner girls were a lot tougher than tank commanders called Frank. One of them even scared her husband so much that he quietly and secretively emigrated to America. Whether he had a deep voice or not, I've no idea.

Robin Tales.

You remember the baby robin I mentioned recently, the precocious one that was behaving more like an adult than a baby robin is supposed to behave? I noticed yesterday that he isn’t only feisty with other small birds, he’s now being feisty with adult robins, and the adult robins are giving him a wide berth.

I think this kid must be either on his last incarnation as a bird and now be in training for his next life as a Bengal Tiger, or he was a Hell’s Angel in a past life and is now serving his sentence. Either way, I’m getting a bit concerned about when he’s going to turn his aggression on me:

Give us some oats or the kid gets it.

‘The kid gets it?’

Yeah. You heard what I said.

‘But you are the kid.’

Oh, right… erm… Give us some oats or I’ll poop in your beer. C’mon. Make with the oats, Buster, or the Italian lager gets it, ice cold or not.

*  *  *

And now for something completely different:

There are two adult robins which frequently visit my bird table together, and they nearly always engage in the same routine. One picks up a piece of rolled oat and waits for the other to notice. When the other one does, the first one hands over the food.

Now, male and female robins are indistinguishable but I have a theory. Well, two theories actually. I suspect that the donor is male and the recipient female, and the reason the male engages in this apparently selfless behaviour is either that he’s trying to court the female’s affection and female robins are unimpressed by flowers, chocolates, or iced spritzers in some smart café bar after work, or he’s practicing for when he has to feed her while she’s sitting eggs.

Either way, it’s a most engaging practice to watch.

Nature and It's Dramas.

There I was, sitting at the side of my shed this morning (because the side of my shed offers the best prospect of sunshine and the least disturbance from the cold east wind), musing on life, the universe and everything as is frequently my wont, when something interesting happened.

I think I’d just got to the point of wondering whether the fact that I’ve never even seen a bowl of petunias, much less owned one, had any bearing on my ignorance of probability theory, when I heard the sound of a momentous disturbance a little to my right. Much loud and agitated screeching, to be precise.

I looked around to see a male blackbird running at speed along the path pursued by another male blackbird and a female one. I assumed it was the latter two who were responsible for the noise, and further assumed that they were a breeding pair. And hopping along in the middle of this melee was a baby blackbird which was opening and closing its beak aggressively at the one being pursued. Whether it was actually contributing audibly, or whether it was just trying to look the part, was impossible to tell.

The bird at the head of the pursuit turned the corner of my house and ran out of sight, at which point the two pursuers stopped the screeching, rose into the air, and then flew away in the opposite direction. Why they did that I have no idea, and what the hell it was all about anyway I also have no idea, but the little fledgling was left all alone and looking bemused. So was I for that matter, but that isn’t the point. The point is that the little fella clearly shouldn’t have been out of the nest because its wings weren’t fully grown and it couldn’t fly. It could hop well enough, but that was all.

And so I wondered whether I should intervene and considered what form such intervention should take. I remembered the advice I’d heard years ago: if you see a fledgling prematurely out of the nest, don’t intervene. Leave it alone and the parents will find it and carry on feeding it.

Well, it’s not that easy, is it? You want to help the little guy, don’t you? Of course you do; it’s human nature. But expert opinion is expert opinion, and so I left it alone. A few minutes later it hopped around the corner of the house and disappeared into the undergrowth.

But then you start wondering. What of the cold night which was clearly in the offing? Would it survive outside a nest where it has the parents’ warmth to keep it comfortable? And what of the rat which lives at the bottom of the garden? Rats are not known for their compassionate natures or their habit of showing kindness to baby birds. Fortunately, I saw a female blackbird hopping around in the vicinity a little while later, apparently looking for something. And so I hoped for the best.

And that’s why I wish nature wouldn’t produce such dramas. It makes life difficult for people like me.

An Oblique View of Mental Health.

I read a short piece this morning on the particular problems being experienced in treating mental health patients during lockdown. Of particular note are those suffering serious psychoses and being treated at home where many are in isolation. Instances of typical symptoms such as hallucinations and the hearing of voices is causing concern to doctors and patients alike.

And then I had a thought. Let’s suppose the Buddhists are right, and this material environment in which we live and which we think of as reality is actually an illusion. I suppose it would lead to a different way of seeing the issue of psychosis. While diagnosis and treatment would remain valid, it would be interesting to consider that psychosis is simply a shift in perception of what is illusory anyway. In other words, it could be argued that we’re all suffering psychosis in a manner of speaking.

Confused.

Every time I shiver in the chill winds of spring I take comfort from the fact that summer is not far away. But then a voice whispers in my ear and tells me that when I get to the end of summer, winter won’t be far away. And then I ’gin to be a-weary of the cycles and wonder why we have to put up with them. Summer comes and winter comes and there’s nothing most of us can do about it.

The rich are different, of course. They can own properties in various parts of the world and have permanent summer if that’s what they want. They can live in comfort and security the whole year round.

But then I wonder what the point of being comfortable is. What purpose does it serve? You see, I can’t divest myself of the notion that a life is supposed to have some sort of meaning and purpose. And if it does, it seems reasonable to speculate that it has something to do with learning. And what on earth can you learn from being comfortable? So maybe being rich isn’t such a good thing in the long run.

But then, the old depressions are deepening at the moment, especially the morning tendency to be depressed and dysfunctional. When I hear people say ‘I’m not a morning person,’ I have to reply: ‘You don’t know the half of it.’

And I seem to be getting the first hints of yet another health issue about to break on the eastern horizon, one which would probably lead me to shun people and live the life of a hermit even more than I do now. I wonder how on earth I’ve managed to go from being effectively a middle aged man to effectively an old one in the space of two short years, and whether this bodes a similarly speedy race to the line.

And that, of course, bring up the old question of whether the dead go anywhere and, if so, whether it’s somewhere I would want to go. That’s the point at which I begin to wish I could accept that death is total oblivion. Only I can’t.

Maybe I’ll be in a better mood tomorrow. Maybe I’ll even find something funny to say. It won’t be before lunchtime.

Odd Ad and the White of May.

There’s a very strange ad on my Outlook inbox page. It shows a happily smiling, middle aged woman, and the caption reads:

Brits Love Hassle-Free Funerals

How true. Can’t get enough of them.

*  *  *

Two more firsts today:

The Woman from the Walsage (who’s such an angel with the lockdown shopping) and her husband are farmers who keep sheep and cows but don’t have land of their own. They rent fields in the area on a needs basis, and at the moment their herd of pregnant females is grazing the field which runs around my house. Today I saw the first of the calves walking proudly ahead of its mother, and there will be more to come shortly. It will be the first time since I came to live here that I’ll be able to watch baby cows playing in the sunshine from my bathroom window. Maybe I should move my computer in there.

And today the May blossom began bursting forth. Should I quote Tennyson yet again? OK. Did I say how much I like the May blossom? I did? Well, I’ll say it again.

I love it when the world is white with May (trumpet optional.)

Platitudes and Randomness.

I was writing a reply to somebody on YouTube tonight and realised that my YouTube comments are mostly just shortened versions of what I write on my blog. I suppose it’s why I occasionally get yelled at and rarely get liked.  If you’re to get people cheering you on YouTube, you need to write things like:

This music is wonder full (sic.) It touches my soul.

I’ve also come to realise that if YouTube is a reasonable guide, phrases which include the word ‘soul’ are the most overused platitudes of modern times.

*  *  *

I had to set the alarm and get up at nine o’clock today to take delivery of my groceries. That’s early for me. And I mowed the lawn. And I turned over the garden plot in which I was going to set some new strawberry plants, only I can’t get any strawberry plants at the moment. And I went for the short walk to the post box and back, which is just about the limit of my range while the leg problem remains untended. And I talked to a neighbour about Covid and related subjects, which is about all anybody talks about these days. And I ironed the week’s laundry. And I did lots of other chores. And I finally finished at a quarter to eleven. And now I’m tired.

*  *  *

The priestess and I agreed that experiences are ephemeral to the point that they are probably not worth taking seriously, and that the concept of individuality is questionable. And did you know that Norwegians like nothing better than to live in a remote, snowbound cottage for a week during the coldest part of winter? I wonder whether I’ll ever belong anywhere.

*  *  *

Today is the fourteenth anniversary of my moving to this house. Where have all the flowers gone?

*  *  *

This is a picture of me being shy. (I'm the smaller of the two, in case you're wondering.)

The Gloom Gurus.

I see the YouTube self-styled gurus are capitalising on the Covid crisis. Only these are the gloomy variety, frowning manfully and meaningfully while telling us how terrible life is going to be after the crisis is over.

Why do they do that? They’re like those irritating people who delight in telling you how bad the weather is going to be tomorrow. Why would I want to know? If I’m going to live through tomorrow, I’ll do so anyway. Knowing that the weather will be bad will only send me to bed in a bad mood.

And, as usual, the self-styled gurus don’t know any more than I do. And yet 79,000 people tune in just to have themselves made miserable.

On Age and Suppleness.

You know what? When I had my shower today I found that I could push my left arm up my back from the waist, and my right arm down from the shoulder, and make the fingers on both hands touch. It’s the first time I’ve been able to do that since the operation two years ago. Does this mean that I’m getting ready for heaven or that the shoulder rolls I do every night are working?

And then I listened to this…

… and realised something odd: Getting under the desk to pick up my pen takes rather more effort than it used to, but I can still dance like a tipsy cobra. (But not for very long.) What a shame that getting under the desk to pick up a pen has more practical merit than dancing like a tipsy cobra.

Failing with Holly.

I asked a question of a machine today. It was the cyber assistant to which I was directed when I wanted to know something from a supplier. Its name was Holly and I didn’t get an answer.

I assume she was named after the talking face of the computer in the TV series Red Dwarf which used to be a favourite of mine, a virtual woman whose thought processes could be a little odd at times but who looked human and was perfectly capable of rational appraisal and response. But there were two vital differences:

1. Today’s Holly had neither a face nor a voice and the question was directed entirely through a keyboard.

2. Neither did she have a brain.

I’ve had this experience twice lately. This is what they do these days: direct you to a cyber assistant which can’t think. It seems the cyber assistant can recognise certain key words, presume to know what you’re asking, and then respond from a list of FAQs. Only the presumed question bears little or no resemblance to the actual one, which isn’t a great deal of help. Resistance is useless, and then it says ‘goodbye.’ (It doesn’t even say ‘it was nice talking to you’, which might at least ameliorate your frustration very slightly. In fact, today’s cyber assistant didn’t even say ‘goodbye’, it just said ‘Finish’ in big red letters.)

It seems this is yet another example of the corporate world having its own way and making life increasingly dysfunctional. Isn’t it time we got all the CEOs together and forced them to stand neck deep in ice cold water – liberally populated by well fed piranhas which won’t feel well fed for very much longer – until they come to their senses?

Trump and the Mouth.

I suppose I shouldn’t let the day go by without mentioning Trump’s assertion that the Chinese deliberately engineered Coronavirus in a lab as a bio weapon. I’m not sure just how effective an indiscriminate virus would be as a weapon, but let’s leave that one aside.

When asked to state his evidence for such an assertion, Donald said ‘I’m not allowed to say.’ Allowed? A week or two ago he was boasting that he was President and the President can do what he likes. So who, exactly, isn’t allowing him? Or did he mean that it is not in the national interest to reveal the source? Is this another example of Trump’s inadequate command of English, or maybe evidence of the fact that his mind is incapable of understanding the difference between ‘not allowed’ and ‘not in the national interest’?

And what of possible alternative theories? Could it be that the virus was actually engineered in America and released in Wuhan in order to discredit China? Is that ridiculous? Maybe, but there is an unofficial Cold War going on between America and China, or at least between Trump and China, and America has been regarded with some suspicion since the official explanation for 9/11 was settled on. A lot of people didn’t believe it and still don’t. Or what of Australia? They don’t like the Chinese either. Do they have biohazard labs in Australia? I’ve no idea.

All this is idle speculation, of course, and speculation is always foolish in matters of this kind. Trump might even be right about this, but there are two real problems here. The first is that we don’t really know just who is pulling the world’s strings, and the second is that Trump needs to learn to get his apparently limited brain in gear before shooting his mouth off.