A Note on the Value of Memory.

My faculty of memory has taken an odd turn lately. I’ve started seeing memory as a kind of falsehood because none of my life ever happened. It’s as though all the people, all the events, all the feelings, all the pleasures and all the pains were but still photographs past which my consciousness was ever moving at a regular speed, observing and responding as though I were a part of them. And yet still I like to let them run through my mind’s eye like stop motion animations while being unable to know whether they were real or not.

Conversely, I’m becoming irritated when I read of somebody famous having died, and the news report always follows the fundamental fact with a list of mini obituaries dutifully written by other famous people who claim to remember them with fondness. I find obituaries pointless, you see. I struggle to know what value there is in casting plaudits at somebody who can no longer hear them.

A Change in the Weather.

Following on from today’s Shire narrative, the following just dropped into my head:

The weather had turned a little stormy by the time I went to bed that night, with frequent blustery gusts hurling squally rattles of rain against the windows.

Pity it doesn’t go anywhere. Maybe I should try writing something fictional again one of these days.

A Long Walk and a Coincidence.

Today I did my longest walk yet since the leg underwent its procedure five weeks ago. It took in the three major roads in the Shire (although the term ‘major’ must be viewed in relative terms, since two of them are only wide enough to accommodate a single vehicle comfortably) and covered a distance of around 2½ miles. 2½ miles doesn’t sound like much, does it, but when you consider that six weeks ago – and for a year and a half before that – I had difficulty walking 400 yards without serious discomfort, today’s accomplishment was suitably pleasing.

An aside

Do excuse me if my prose style emulates the tortuous characteristics of the late-period Henry James tonight. I’m currently reading his The Turn of the Screw again – slowly – in a valiant attempt to put flesh onto the bones of the many film and TV adaptations I’ve seen over the years. It’s a favourite story of mine, but what I don’t understand is why so many people who have, one assumes, better things to do with their time will insist on arguing as to whether it’s a supernatural story or a psychological one. There are ghosts in it, but whether they’re actual ghosts or figments of the governess’s sexually repressed imagination is the point in question. I really don’t see why it should matter. If you want to believe they’re ghosts, then do so; if you don’t, don’t. What’s the point of arguing about something which the author himself never made clear? It is fiction after all.

But to continue with today’s little adventure:

The route takes in the finest view across the river valley to be found on the far side of the Shire. It’s a panoply of recently mown meadows, woods, hedgerows, copses, and many fine individual trees, and culminates in a range of low, bare hills in the far distance. The Shire trees this year are particularly colourful, and so the vista is a veritable potpourri of still-green summer leaves splashed among the reds, oranges, browns and yellows of autumn. I swear it comes close to emulating the famed panoramas of New England in the fall. And the day was damp and misty which made the view all the more magical, the earlier heavy rain having stopped just before I set out. (By an odd coincidence, this is an exact copy of the weather described in tonight’s chapter of the Turn of the Screw. Maybe it’s fortunate that I didn’t venture into the churchyard. I might have seen a misty and malevolent character moving among the crenellations on the church roof, and have been shaken to my boot laces as fictional governesses are wont to do in such circumstances.)

On Lunchtimes and the Swedish Connection.

Back in the late seventies, when I was little more than a slip of a lad ever eager to make the acquaintance of nearly every colleen who didn’t have a beard, there was an equally slippish of a girl who worked as a typist in my office. We began the habit of going for lunch together, often to some local hostelry where we would listen to Abba songs and dream of an imaginary togetherness. (Abba was especially apposite to our situation because the colleen in question bore some resemblance to Agnetha Fältskog.)

Eventually our working situations changed, but our habit of meeting for lunch didn’t. She got married, but we still met for lunch. I got married and the habit continued. She had a daughter and I got divorced, but the lunchtime trysts remained a natural part of the calendar unabated. And so it continued for twenty years.

It never became physical, you understand, not unless you count the day in a pub car park when she kissed me on the cheek and blushed. And when I did finally decide that enough was enough and I wanted us to go away together, I rang her from a phone box to say so and she was out. (Mobile phones were still a cloud on the horizon then, and on such whims of outrageous fortune does one’s life path irrevocably depend.) But still we continued to meet for lunch.

So if you should ever read this, Miss JEG, be it known that I still occasionally think about you. My waking mind realises that you must be as old and ugly as me by now, but the half which dreams chooses to ignore the fact.

More on Self-Improvement.

My usual reaction to people who reply to my YouTube comments in brainless, acerbic, insulting ways has been to feel annoyance, irritation and indignation. When such a situation crops up I’ve usually been moved to conjure an acerbic and insulting response of my own on the reasonable assumption that, in the matter of words and general awareness, my firepower is probably a little more withering than theirs.

 

I’ve decided that this must stop, for why should I allow a soft snowball to assume the weight of a howitzer shell and cause any form of injury whatsoever to my mental state? And so, when I receive such a missive now I ask myself two questions: 

 

1. Should I be in any way concerned that the writer is demonstrating his or her own inadequacy in making such a statement? 

 

2. Would my riposte serve any useful purpose to me, the writer or anybody else? 

 

If the answer to both is ‘no’ I let their comment wither like a fallen leaf and walk over it. If, on the other hand, the troll is attacking someone else unfairly, I might still be tempted to offer a spirited defence.

That seems like a good idea to me, although it does make me wonder where I’ve been all my life. (And if anyone feels I’m falling into the trap of becoming sanctimonious, do feel free to say.)

A Slanted View.

This is the map Blogger stats uses to indicate the countries from which visits have come. Consider the projection they use, noting that the equator passes through the northern half of South America and the southern part of Africa.

 

 

It's interesting to see how blatantly it exaggerates the Americas, Europe and most of Asia, while making the southern hemisphere seem small and therefore unimportant. I think if I were a resident of South America, Africa, Indonesia, Australia or New Zealand, I would be most displeased.

A Possible Side Effect.

I was thinking about the Lady B’s brace of kittens earlier, the Mistresses M and H. It occurred to me that there is something a little odd about being born into the world of Covid and being subject to its constraints for maybe the first year or two of their lives. I wondered whether it might inform their perceptions of the world, and whether it might produce significant emotional ramifications later in life.

On Being a Natural Wimp.

I feel completely washed out tonight, even though all I’ve done today is clear five of the road drains, gone for a short walk up the hill and back, had a shower, performed a few household chores, and kept the bird feeders topped up. That’s no excuse to feel hopelessly and remorselessly tired, is it?

I think the weather must be to blame. We’ve been getting a lot of fast moving weather systems this month, so we’ve been getting daily changes from dark skies and periods of rain to scruffy skies with spells of sunshine. I’m becoming so attuned to nature now that every change of barometric pressure makes me feel ill to some extent or other. You really can’t win, can you?

No insults from YouTube trolls, though. That’s a pity. They usually liven me up.

The Problem of Self-Improvement.

One of the comment replies I referred to in the last post suggests that I might, indeed, be sometimes guilty of arrogance, pomposity and a sneering disposition, and that isn’t good. My reputation with other people matters little to me, but my reputation with myself does. And so it occurs to me that I should try harder to be a better person, and it further occurs to me that the watchword should be ‘humility.’

The problem with humility is that it comes in several forms, most of which are quite awful to behold. The best of them, however, the most genuine sort, the most selfless sort, the sort entirely unsullied by affectation, is a consummation devoutly to be wished. So that is the sort for which I should probably strive. Ah, but… would I not then be falling into the trap of becoming sanctimonious? That wouldn’t be good either.

You know, self-awareness and the striving for self-improvement is not as easy as I feel it ought to be. I wonder how the self-styled gurus who infect YouTube like a latter day version of the Black Death manage it. I don’t suppose they do. I don’t suppose they even try.

So maybe I shouldn’t. Some of the most famous people who have ever lived have been arrogant, pompous and sneering. But do I want to be a most famous person? Certainly not, for what does fame avail you once you’ve gone the way of all flesh? Oscar Wilde might at this very moment be lying prone in the gutter with nothing but wet mud to look at, now that he has nowhere to declare his genius.

I find myself recalling the words of Jacob Marley on Christmas Eve: ‘Business! Mankind was my business!’ Maybe that’s the secret. Or maybe it isn’t.

A Minor YouTube Mystery.

The variable quality of YouTube comments continues to fascinate me. Many of them are so badly written that they would even outdo those phishing scams which purportedly come from African VIPs and promise to make you rich beyond your wildest dreams if you’ll only click on the link or send full details about yourself. Others – very much in the minority – can be well written and have something worthwhile to say. Today I had an odd reply to one of mine.

 

Five years ago I put a comment on an Omnia track which simply said ‘That drummer is bloody fantastic.’ It’s had over 1,000 likes and a lot of replies, mostly agreeing with me. Today it received another reply which is intriguing to say the least. Some woman called Megan said ‘Cheerio darling’ followed by a heart. What on earth does it mean?

 

And then there was the comment I left on a Kate Rusby track a similar length of time ago. In essence it said that the nice thing about this artist was that her music rarely attracted the attention of trolls. I received a response to that one yesterday which read: 'Can you go be a slimy little sneering 'intellectual' somewhere else? We're trying to enjoy a beautiful song.'

My, how that one did amuse me.

The Matter of Statistics.

I only just realised why I like statistics so much. Unlike pure mathematics, statistics use numbers to draw pictures. It’s actually the pictures I like.

On Matters Literary.

I found Dostoevsky more to my taste tonight, whether through some subtle change in his style or some improvement in my own perception I couldn’t say. But what really pleased me was finishing off The Gift Horse.

Remember me saying that chapter 7 badly needed editing? It certainly does. Chapter 8 is better, but that needs a little work too. Chapter 9, however, is quite splendid, and the reason is simple enough. It was lifted almost completely from personal experience, the profoundly moving events of Christmas 2004 to be precise. All I did was convert my dear real dog Penny into my dear fictional friend Natalie, and the rest was easily and competently stated. The epilogue continues in like manner and the final sentence is just about perfect.

They do say, don’t they, that a literary work is like a musical one – get the beginning and ending right and it matters little if you stumble somewhere in the middle. But the little is important to a perfectionist, so all I have to do now is smooth out chapters 7 and 8 and the opus will be ready to take the world by storm.

I won’t bother, of course, because the opus really isn’t that good. And so the original will lie unheeded deep in the memory of a computer somewhere in one of the Carolinas and the world will never be acquainted with either The Gift Horse or its author. But I will, so that’s OK.

Contrasting Days.

I didn’t make a post yesterday because I felt ill. Here’s the list of symptoms: 

 

Thick head

Sore sinuses

Sore throat

Sore chest

Reddened eyes

Pounding heart

Feeling constantly chilled in a warm room

Total lethargy

Medium grade depression (I grade them now.)

 

And the weather didn’t help matters much. The sky glowered darkly all day and the frequent bursts of rain seemed wetter than usual. And since rain always makes my old house damp, I could feel the chilly clamminess on my hands and face all day. By the time I went to bed I was fairly convinced that there was something wrong with me.

This morning I was fine again. I have sound theories to explain these occasional deleterious conditions of mine, but why bore you?

(Oh, have I? Oh. Sorry.)

And then Mel came over in the afternoon with a bag of DVDs to look through. I gave her the best three apples off my tree in return. I also gave her a cup of tea without charging for the tea bag, the milk, or the electricity to boil the kettle, so I think I can feel confident of having made fair recompense.

Off to wade through some more Dostoevsky now.

Meeting Millie and Perceiving an Improvement.

I bumped into an old friend today, a lady I haven’t seen for two or three years. There I was striding (yes, striding) up my lane, when I saw a horse suddenly shy as it approached me along Church Lane. It was none other than Millie, a rather lovely bay mare of around 16 hands out exercising with her human companion. As you might imagine, I was naturally keen to renew our acquaintance and Millie behaved most affectionately for her part.

‘She likes you,’ said her human companion. ‘You put her at her ease.’

Well now, in all my years of dealing with women – in a wide variety of ways, you understand – none of them ever said that I put them at their ease. I suppose it’s probably something to do with getting older, or maybe it’s just a further sign that I get on better with horses and dogs than I do with humans.

Tell you what, though. Ever since I renewed my traipsing along the lanes and footpaths of the Shire, my depressive tendency has reduced considerably. It might be only coincidence and I make no predictions for the future, but the resumption of the walking habit seems at the moment to have produced a significant boost to my mental state.

On Mr D and Chapter 7.

My latest foray into the Form 4A school prize is Dostoevsky’s The Little Hero.

I’ve decided I’m not much of a fan of Dostoevsky. I find his prose style turgid and tortuous by and large, and tend to accord with those critics who say that he is too concerned with philosophy and psychology. The occasional psychological insight is laudable, but page after page of nothing but psychological insight grows a little tedious. I remember reading Crime and Punishment when I was very young (in my early twenties as I recall) purely out of a sense of duty to acquaint myself with the classics. I remember gritting my teeth through the first eighty percent of the novel, and only finding some enjoyment during the last twenty when matters were coming to a head and we were finally getting somewhere.

And I think I should add that this opinion in no way reflects upon Dostoevsky’s nationality. I greatly enjoyed Chekhov’s The Kiss, which also contained quite a lot of psychological insights but which was balanced by some finely tuned lyrical observation.

When I grew tired of Mr D, I turned my attention to my own novella The Gift Horse again and read chapter 7. A friend of mine read The Gift Horse once, and suggested most firmly that chapter 7 should be ripped out and thrown away. I begged to differ; chapter 7 is a natural and necessary bridge in the plot to cover the return home after the startling revelations discovered during the trip to Donegal. But I must admit to cringing quite a lot on re-reading it after fifteen years away and feeling desperate to make some much needed edits. Too late now, of course, but if anybody should ever read The Gift Horse, please don’t judge me on the basis of chapter 7. Just get through it and move on. I have.

Briefly.

I’m feeling a little fretful tonight. The lightness which followed the CT scans yesterday has disappeared, and my mind has dived into dark imaginings mode again. I remembered that Filipino nurse who behaved oddly a few weeks ago, and especially the enigmatic look in her eyes when she turned and regarded me silently for several pregnant seconds on her way to the door.

But I don’t want take this any further. Subscribing as I do to the notion that thought is power, I would rather try to drive the dark imaginings away than swell their potential by elevating them to virtual ink blots on a blog post. And all will be revealed, one way or another, in due course.

Today's Hospital Notes.

The nurse who took me to the changing cubicles today asked whether I was wearing jogging pants.

‘Jogging pants?’ I queried.

‘Yes, jogging pants.’

‘No.’

‘So what sort of trousers are you wearing?’

‘Ordinary jeans.’

‘You’ll have to take them off, then.’

I knew this, of course. I’ve had enough CT scans to know that one strips down to socks and underwear and then dons a hospital gown to minimise any embarrassment. (It isn’t entirely successful, actually, because you still look a right Charlie sitting there with bare legs sticking out from under a blue cotton dress, but I suppose it helps.) The nurse wasn’t yet finished with me.

‘The next time you come,’ she continued, ‘wear jogging pants so you don’t have to take them off.’

‘But I don’t know what jogging pants are,’ I replied with just the merest hint of indignation. ‘I’m one of the pre-jogging pants generation. Haven’t you noticed?’

‘Very well, I’ll fetch you a gown.’

‘Can’t I have scrubs?’ I pleaded. ‘They’re so much more becoming.’

‘No. We’re short of scrubs.’

So gown and bare legs it was. You know, one of life’s many tragedies is that we come to an age where we just have to accept that such matters are no longer worth worrying about. The problem is, I do.

 

*  *  *

 

When I first arrived and took a seat in the outer waiting area, there was a woman sitting opposite who said ‘hello.’ Not wishing to seem impolite, I said ‘hello’ back. And then she continued with a statement which was quite unintelligible, to which I replied ‘Oh, I see.’ An hour and a half later, when the whole procedure had been concluded, the cannula removed and the ordinary jeans reinstated, I walked back that way to find her still sitting there. ‘Are you still here?’ I asked. She replied with a statement which was quite unintelligible, to which I replied ‘Oh, I see.’ And then I left. I blame the masks, you know. They’re not conducive to verbal communication, which is probably a benefit in my case.

 

*  *  *

While closeted in the inner waiting area, awaiting the procedure which one radiograper once described as ‘like going into a washing machine feet first just as the spin cycle starts’, I decided to kill a little time by reading the notices. One of them said that if I wished to have a chaperone I should ask for one. I mentioned it to the next nurse who walked through. ‘I didn’t know I could have a chaperone,’ I began. ‘Should I ask for one next time so as to feel better protected from the unwarranted attention of young women in uniforms?’ She took me seriously and answered in the affirmative. People do, you know. Why do people nearly always take me seriously when I’m joking? Is there time for me to alter my ways, do you think, or should I just hope for a terminal diagnosis?

There was another notice which identified the statistical probabilities involved in the causal relationship between X-rays and cancer. I mentioned to one of the radiographers that there was something ironic about a post-cancer screening process which involves going through a machine which can give you cancer. She didn’t get it either, so now I’m waiting to be informed about a petition among the clinical staff requesting that I be barred from entering the Royal Derby Hospital and directed to their sister hospital twenty miles away.

 

*  *  *

And finally, I decided that the next time I go in there I must ask the receptionist whether they have an Ariadne box. The thing is, you see, nearly every department in the Royal Derby Hospital is a veritable Minotaur’s maze of corridors, waiting areas, interview rooms, doors which lead into mysterious closets to which only the handmaidens have access, and treatment rooms.

‘What’s an Ariadne box?’ the receptionist will query.

‘A box containing balls of string, so I can tie one end to your desk and keep the other with me in order to find my way back out again.’

She won’t get it, of course. She’ll ask ‘but who is Ariadne?’ to which I will reply ‘erm…’

Another Little Irony.

I’m scheduled to have my next set of CT scans tomorrow, the result of which will be recorded here.

I find this whole process of post-cancer screening a bit stressful, and I often wonder what deleterious effect it might be having on both my mental and physical health.

Evening Entertainment.

I’m at a bit of a loose end through the dark evening hours now that I have no new DVDs and have finished Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy. Out of a mild sense of desperation I located an old school prize that I still have entitled Classic Choice. It’s an anthology of six short stories by classic writers, and one fortuitous upshot is that I’m using as a bookmark the original slip of paper which says: 

 Form 4A 1^st

Jeffrey Beazley

Reading that note every time I open the book reminds that I once mattered, in a manner of speaking, and that’s encouraging. And so far I’ve discovered – through subsequent research – that I have much in common with Anton Chekhov, that he had the same birthday as my mother, and that he died at the same age as my grandfather and of the same disease. I’ve also discovered that Thomas Hardy’s prose style is nothing like as thick as I used to think it was, which suggests that my literary appreciation is rather more advanced than it was when I won the race to be top of Form 4A. I’m now into Theodor Storm’s novella, Immensee, and becoming a little irritated with the translator.

And when I’ve had enough of classic writers, I move over and read my own novella, The Gift Horse, which I wrote shortly before I moved to this house fourteen years ago. I’m finding it surprisingly enjoyable, and even the prose style is generally pleasing me. I was expecting it to be rougher that far back. And of course, I’m falling in love with Natalie and her little red Citroen all over again. I’ve decided that if Dan Brown can create a woman of considerable charm and substance in Sophie Neveu, I can match him with my Natalie.

 

(Natalie is half Irish, incidentally. She has dark hair and blue eyes. At one point, when the protagonist (me) is prevaricating, her eyes 'burned with that brand of Celtic fire peculiar to the women of Ireland.' Given that Dan's Sophie is repeatedly said to have 'burgundy hair which framed the warmth of her face,' I make no apology.)

Encountering the High Family.

I was out on the lane this afternoon, performing my civic duty on the leaf-encrusted road drains, when I saw two ladies a-walking my way. It was none other than the Lady B’s dear mama and Honourable Sister, accompanied by the elder of the little princesses, riding howdah-style in a carrier strapped to grandmamma, and Ivy the cocker spaniel.

Now, it is an interesting fact that when Dear Mama is out perambulating with members of her family, it is she who asks the questions and she to whom one addresses the answers.  She is the one clearly most possessed of erudition, loquaciousness and a voice which sounds as though it were trained at Roedean. (This is, you understand, partly why I like her. The other reason is that she’s straight, and straight people are not as common as they ought to be.) And so a short conversation was had with Dear Mama.

By contrast, the other members of the retinue – all highly likeable, I must stress – were somewhat more reticent. Honourable Sister restricted her contribution to the two words she usually affords me (‘hi, Jeff’), the little princess held me with that mildly discomfiting stare to which 2-year-olds are generally given, and Ivy barked aggressively while simultaneously wagging her tail to add a note of confusion to proceedings. But a good time was had by all.

And it occurred to me that Dear Mama looked a lot younger than she has a right to look. In fact, Dear Mama seems to look younger every time I see her. I considered asking her whether she was in possession of one of those pictures so I might warn her of the consequences, but decided that Oscar Wilde and his decadent creation would not be her choice of reading matter. So I didn’t.

I have no idea where the Lady B and the other little princess were at the time. It strikes me that the answer might be unpalatable.

Interpreting the Whisper.

It struck me tonight that if you woke up in the early hours when the bedroom was still fully dark and you felt a chill breath of air on your ear accompanied by the whispered words ‘you are not alone,’ you’d be forced to assess what it meant.

If you were a positive, optimistic sort of person, you might well perceive it as a message from some friendly entity like a guardian angel letting you know that you have help in your difficult endeavours. If, on the other hand, you were a neurotic sort of person given to dark imaginings and pessimistic expectations, you’d take a rather different view. You would assume that you were being haunted by something scary and malevolent and feel desperate to get hold of an exorcist. But if you were an ultra-realist completely convinced that there really are no more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, you’d go back to sleep.

A Maddening Melody.

I had to call my doctor's surgery today to give them my new mobile phone number. They have a new jingle playing which is presumably intended to keep the caller entertained between the various recorded announcements being repeated pointlessly about every twenty seconds.

The new jingle is about as bad as anyone could possibly make it. It’s so bad that I was tempted to wonder whether there was a touch of malevolent genius involved in its creation. We hear a synthesised guitar playing a simple rhythm as a simple chord which starts on the tonic, rises to the fifth, returns to the tonic, rises to the second, then returns to the tonic again. Repeated endlessly and with scant regard for the mental health of the poor caller.

It’s anything but entertaining. To anyone with the slightest grain of musical appreciation it’s maddening. If the call had been answered in less than ten minutes I would have explained the issue to the receptionist, but it wasn’t so I didn’t. And I’m sure my complaint would have fallen on deaf ears anyway. It’s just how things are.

A Mini Memoir.

I’m generally inclined to the view that my reclusive nature is something that has developed over the last decade or two, and especially since I moved to this house fourteen years ago. And yet I’m occasionally reminded that the reclusive germ was probably alive and stirring quietly in the mould even from birth.

I remember how, during my twenties, the lifestyle I envisaged as ideal consisted of living alone in an offshore lighthouse, provisioned with an unlimited supply of books, films and music, and receiving infrequent visits from interesting people and attractive young women. (I also wanted a couple of dogs, but they raised a difficulty. I would have been scared to allow them the run of the island for fear that a large wave might wash them away. That would have upset me terribly.) Add a then-unheard-of pc into the picture to provide access to a word processor and the internet, and the image of perfection would have been complete.

In stark contrast, however, the reality of my life during my twenties was entirely suburban, and for a few years I was comfortable with it. I was living for a while on a housing estate on the edge of a market town in the East Midlands (which, ironically, is about as far as you can get in the UK from any lighthouse) and even fraternised with my neighbour. That’s what seems oddest of all to me now.

Looking back on it, though, I recognise that there was a degree of novelty informing my sense of ease and it lasted only a few years. The main road that I drove on to go home faced west, and I often felt inclined to ignore the right turn into the estate and continue driving into the sunset instead. And the neighbour’s extremely sour breath began to irritate me and encouraged the need to keep him well at arms length. The close proximity of the unattached and rather pretty Judy Claridge, on the other hand, was tempting, but I never succumbed and never regretted the fact.

And so, from small acorns great oaks do grow, and thus it was with my reclusive tendency. And here I am.

Do excuse me being even more boring than usual this evening. When the night is dark and quiet, and pointless memories begin to swirl around an isolated mind like upland mist on a lonely moor, they tend to fester if I don’t write them down.

Staying Stum.

I thought of a piece of fake news today which could easily be put out as real news to woo the waverers in America. It would be fully believable to those of limited brain capacity and, given the way the electoral college system works, could well win Trump the election.

I’m not going to say what it is, of course, because those of us with slightly more brain capacity can’t wait for the day when Trump is confined to the mire of forgotten history. I’m just surprised that it isn’t plastered all over YouTube, either by the less developed primates posing as loyal Americans or Murdoch’s media empire.

The Turnip Treat.

The local dialect word for a turnip where I grew up in one of the UK’s industrial heartlands was ‘chonnock.’ At least I assume that’s how it was spelt. I never saw it written down because you don’t with dialect words, do you? But it looks right.

Anyway, there was a patch of ground behind my primary school where one or more of the teachers grew them and sold them to the kids for a penny each. We all used to buy one, you know, and eat it raw as a snack at break time.

Can you imagine young people these days eating a raw turnip as a snack? We hardly ever had chocolate, of course, or any of the other multitudinous snacking comestibles which are freely available now, so a raw turnip was a rare treat. I expect it still is in places like Bhutan.

Dreams and Swedish Cars.

The dreams are coming almost nightly now, dreams of being in a strange place and wanting to go somewhere or do something but being unable to work out how to go about it. Feelings of confusion, frustration and mild panic soon ensue and continue until I wake up. 

 

This morning I woke up wondering whether they are a sign of the early stages of dementia, but I don’t suppose they are. I expect it’s just a reaction to the isolation, the increasing difficulty I have relating to the world and its expectations, the almost certain onset of angina, and this pain of a persistent bloody pandemic.

 

*  *  *

But at least I got waved at today by Honourable Sister. At least I think it was Honourable Sister. The car was the right make, the right colour, the right age as far as I remember it, and it was approaching from the right direction. It didn’t stop and offer me a lift, of course, because Volvos rarely do. I suspect it’s a Swedish thing. I think Greta Garbo was probably a Volvo in a previous life.

The Mystery Man in Our Midst.

I think I have a rival in the Shire. He lives in a detached house, which shall be nameless, surrounded by a modest garden. He keeps the gates to his drive shut and locked – which is most unusual for these parts and previous tenants never shut them – and there’s a big red notice on them in a foreign language. It appears to say ‘no mail’, but I can’t be sure because I don’t know what language it’s written in. There’s another notice in English instructing delivery drivers to ring his mobile for attention, which is also unheard of in these parts, and I’ve seen him in his garden accompanied by a dog of unfamiliar breed.

This is a little mysterious, you understand, and seriously untypical of an English country village mostly populated by people who are comfortably well off, drive around in 4x4s waving at everybody they know (which is more or less everybody), attend the summer garden show at the village hall, and vote Tory by default even if the candidate is a headless chicken.

This man does not belong, and one is left to speculate that he is either engaged in some nefarious activity or is even more reclusive than I am. In either case, I fear he is likely to be chased to the burning mill with pitchforks ahead of me. Should I mind?

October Light.

This October is proving unsatisfactory so far. I like my October days to be characterised either by a low and mellow sun casting its golden glow on trees and stonework alike, or still, misty conditions in which the trees at least seem somehow to produce a glow of their own. This October so far has given us too many sullen skies dropping frequent and copious amounts of rain on a sodden, unprepossessing landscape. 

 

When I was a landscape photographer I found that there was a particular kind of shot which could only be found in October. The following picture of St Mary’s Lighthouse on the coast of Northumberland comes close to illustrating it. The quality is poor because I scanned it at moderate resolution from a postcard (my photography career was pre-electronic) but it will suffice, I think. The second picture was taken a little further up the coast where I lived. It was also taken when the day was fading, but this time in December. The quality of light is so different.

 

St Mary's Lighthouse, Whitley Bay

Druridge Bay, Northumberland

The Take-Down Mystery.

I’ve had another YouTube comment, which was complimentary, taken down. I’m losing count. Oddly, another comment I left on the same track some months ago, which was also complimentary, has now been elevated to top spot. It’s even had one like.

(Allow me to step out of season for a moment and paraphrase a line spoken, dewy-eyed, by Kathleen Harrison in the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol: ‘A like? For me?’)

Anyway, I suspect there’s a bit of cross-cultural misinterpretation going on here, and so I think I should take the lesson: If you’re talking to anybody who lives more than six streets away, keep your mouth shut. I won’t, of course. Perception is the whole of the life experience, and its pitfalls are there to be tolerated.

Beware Old Blokes on Bikes.

Remember the two horses and a donkey in Mill Lane to whom I fed some fresh hay recently? I went to see them again today, only this time I took them an apple as a special treat. They weren’t there.

What was there was an old bloke on a bike who stopped and insisted on talking rubbish to me for at least twenty minutes. I hate that, you know. I do my best to be polite to tedious people, but the pressure of constantly nodding and saying ‘mmm’ gets to me after a while. His main bleat was about the fact that farmers make the road muddy, and the second was an extended rant on the fact that the contents of slurry pits are full of toxic chemicals which give you cancer. And then he asked ‘Are you a farmer?’ At least I was able to exercise different muscles in my neck and answer ‘no’ to that one.

But he persisted. He wanted to know what the blocks of yellow stuff were that were loaded on a trailer being pulled by a tractor.

‘Straw,’ I replied. ‘It’s the stalks of cereal crops.’

‘Is that for feeding to the animals?’

‘No. Straw’s for bedding. They feed the animals with hay or silage.’

I was expecting the next question to be the obvious one: ‘What’s the difference between straw and hay?’ I think he’d reached the limit of his learning for one day, however, because he didn’t ask it but rode off and left me rueing the fact that lunch would be taken later than I had anticipated. But not before he’d told me that he was 79.

It struck me that I might be 79 one day. I’ve long said that I don’t expect to make 80 because no male that I’m aware of in my family ever has. You never know I suppose, but I can’t say I really fancy it. I might be persuaded to get a bike and ride around irritating people. Do you now see why I tend to be reclusive?

Ridiculous Recommendations.

You really have to wonder who writes Google’s algorithms, don’t you? They’re a complete, and occasionally funny, mystery to me, and I’d like to offer two brief examples from YouTube to illustrate my point:

The first is a 1hr 31min video showing the whole of the debate between Ms Harris and Mr Pence. Now, could somebody please give me a single acceptable reason why an Englishman with his own opinions should want to watch two American politicians wasting an hour and a half disagreeing with one another in exactly the way everybody knew they would. (Come to that, why would anybody?)

The second is entitled Seven Things to Do in Your Evenings by Marcus Aurelius and is subtitled Stoicism Evening Routine. I assume we’re not talking wild, drug-fuelled partygoing here, nor even settling down to watch Brief Encounter for the 17^th time. Thought not.

 

Take me somewhere east of Suez

Where the best is like the worst

Where there ain't no Ten Commandments

And a man may raise a thirst

~ A famous Englishman 

 

Oh, and then tonight I was recommended a video of the ending scene from the movie Dead Poets Society. I assume they picked up a mention of it on my blog and assumed I'd want to watch it again. 

Trying Times.

Here I am again, needful of writing something to the blog because the night is dark and entertainments are conspicuous by their absence.

It’s been a trying day today. All days are trying these days, but today was especially so courtesy of attempting to submit somebody’s tax return online. The whole online business is becoming really quite silly now. More and more barriers keep appearing as both the corporate world and the bureaucrats dive ever deeper into the mania of online communication and security hysteria.

The days when business was conducted using paper and telephone calls used to be so simple. Now we’re increasingly required to be masters of mental dexterity if we’re to negotiate the maze of user IDs, passwords, time-limited access codes, security questions, and so on and so forth. Even the need to have a mobile phone ready to hand gets pulled into the picture. Suppose you don’t have a mobile phone. (Suppose you don’t even have a computer. It’s less that ten years since I had a neighbour who had neither, but the whole messed up juggernaut of modern systems presumes you do.)

I wasn’t brought up in this world and I don’t relate easily to it. I’m also not quite as mentally dextrous as I used to be and I’m growing tired of climbing barriers. And today’s efforts were occasioned by the fact that somebody much younger than me is even less able to cope with online communication mania than I am.

And then there was the rain which chose to fall at the most inopportune time, as it has developed a habit of doing every day for the past week or so. It should come as no surprise that persistent rain causes me a problem which it causes very few other people. It’s all to do with my mechanic friend not knowing what’s wrong with the car and being disinclined to find out.

OK, I know, I’m complaining again. Sorry. It was either that or nothing.

But I forgot to mention that Sainsbury’s is getting busier now that they seem to be allowing more people in. Social distancing is becoming increasingly difficult in there, and just at a time when the Covid infection rate in this area has increased tenfold in the course of a week. Should I hope for a brighter tomorrow?

 

*  *  *

I’ve had my dinner, I’ve drunk my coffee, I’ve eaten a chocolate bar, I’ve written a blog post of sorts, and there’s still an hour to go before I can start trawling my YouTube recommendations and finding nothing but renditions of Bolero, self-styled gurus, cutesy animals, the-latest-from-the-government-on-Covid, Trump claiming he’s become Superman, and scantily dressed belly dancers for some inexplicable reason. Where on earth do they get them from?

Still resisting the scotch bottle.

Becoming Corpse-Like.

I was massaging my temples earlier and thought I detected a slightly increased depth there. Being highly conscious of the physical consequences of ageing, I’ve noticed that different people change in different ways.

As I understand it, the universal fact about ageing is that muscle and fat deposits move as you get older, but they do so in different ways. In some people they sag, producing fleshy jowls and sometimes thicker necks. In others they seem to move in waves and produce a plethora of deep wrinkles. The third type is characterised by a general sinking where fat deposits used to lie, producing hollower temples and cheeks. The actor Peter Cushing was a prime example of that type, and it’s the way I expect to go. We are the gaunt people, the ones to whom the adjective ‘cadaverous’ might be applied.

Well now, I’ve had a lot of adjectives applied to me through my life, some of them complimentary and some pejorative. I wonder whether ‘cadaverous’ will be the last of them. At least it has the benefit of being neutral.

 

*  *  *

I’m clean out of DVDs, you know, and I’ve finished the Paul Auster book. How am I going to wile away the long, dark evenings now except by finding inconsequential things to ramble about on this blog?

Rediscovering the Shire.

I gave my newly refurbished leg its sternest test yet today – to walk the field which climbs for about 400 yards from the low lying Mill Lane up to the creepy copse on Church Lane. Doesn’t sound much, does it, but three weeks ago I wouldn’t have had a chance of making a quarter of that distance on rough ground and with such an incline.

The legs did just fine. What didn’t do so well were my lungs. Seems the lack of exercise over the last year and a half has taken a severe toll on my fitness levels, and both heart and lungs were pounding to a disturbing degree by the time I got to the top. But at least I did it without stopping, and practice will hopefully improve the situation.

By way of pleasant compensation, I got to meet with some old friends on the way: two horses and a donkey which were happy to be fed handfuls of hay from my side of the gate. I wondered whether they remembered me from before the inactive time. Do horses and donkeys remember people who feed them fresh hay? I wouldn’t know, but it’s a nice thought that they might.

I’m seeing changes, though, most notably in the Harry Potter wood at the top of my lane. The sections of path which used to be narrow and almost blocked by wild summer growth are now much wider and clearer, presumably to allow easier access to those who like to spend their Saturday afternoons shooting pheasants. That’s a shame; I like pushing through wild growth and watching out for the man traps set by newly rooted brambles, and I much prefer to watch pheasants running free in the woods and fields than flying, panic stricken, into the path of shotguns greedy for the dispensing of death and injury.

The worst moment, however, came when I got to the end of the wood where it opens onto a track bordered by a field of crops. There are two very old and very big ash trees in the hedgerow there, the biggest of which I estimate to be around 300 years old. It’s long been one of my favourite trees, and you should know by now how fond I am of trees. All of its massive bulk above 10ft has now gone, ripped away by either the wind or a lightning strike. Only one side branch remains, and it was sad indeed to see the ignominy to which it has now been brought.

On a lighter note, did I ever explain why I call it the Harry Potter wood? There are two reasons: Firstly, it has a rich and magical atmosphere which reminds me of the wizarding world of Harry Potter and his associates. Secondly – and perhaps more significantly – it’s the place where the Lady B did her best Hermione Granger impersonation some years ago. It counted for a lot.

Being Led by a Headline.

There’s a video appeared on YouTube from the South China Post to the effect that Coronavirus can survive up to twenty eight days on certain materials.

I read effectively the same headline on the BBC News website this morning, only it wasn’t referring to Covid-19. It was about an earlier form of Coronavirus called Cov- 2 which caused the SARS outbreak some years ago.

So is this an example of the South China post doing a Donald Trump and trying to mislead the public by spurious means, or is it perhaps a shameless piece of clickbaiting?

You really can’t trust any public mouthpiece these days, can you? Maybe you never could.

Discarding the Ditty.

I find it interesting, and sometimes a little disturbing, that rhymes drop suddenly into my head from an unknown source. A recent example reads:

Mr Joshua Crum

Had a very big bum

It resembled two halves

Of a gigantic plum

 

I always feel constrained at such moments to extend these seminal insights into a ditty of substance, but I didn’t much like where this one was going so I stopped. 

On Blame and the Control Freak

Those familiar with the movie Dead Poets Society will no doubt remember the pivotal moment when Neil, a free-thinking student dominated by an intractable martinet of a father, commits suicide. We the audience are horrified by this, and are led by the writer to blame the bullying ways of his parent. The conservative school Establishment naturally takes a different view, preferring to massage the evidence so as to place the blame on Keating, the English master who encouraged Neil’s free-thinking nature. I’m on Keating’s side for my own reasons, of course: I hate any attempt to dominate me and despise any martinet who tries.

But it wasn’t always thus. I was born into a generation – not so very far behind Neil’s – which insinuated into boy children the view that the male is the dominant gender, and that firm, unbending control is the key to personal success and a harmonious society. We were taught that when we reached adulthood it was our right and duty to exercise firm control over women, children, animals, and anything else which moved. And this indoctrination went so deep that the old impulse occasionally comes to the surface in me even now.

I suppose I should be ashamed to admit the fact, and I am to a large extent. But conditioning of that sort is hard to excise completely because it sits at the base of perception, and how many times have I suggested that perception is the whole of the life experience?

You may rest assured that I now recognise the control imperative when it shows its ugly face and take whatever pains are necessary to reason myself away from it. And fortunately, it doesn’t happen often anyway. But it’s still there, and is why I find myself questioning whether responsibility for Neil’s predicament is quite as straightforward as it appears on the surface. And I’m often moved to ask the question: ‘What sort of innate quality do we need to possess in order to rid ourselves completely of unacceptable childhood conditioning.’

Yet More Random Thoughts.

I had a most unfamiliar sensation this morning: I felt, quite suddenly and with no obvious source of prompting, that I wanted to touch somebody. I wanted a woman of whom I approved to slip her arm through mine, or a man of whom I approved to shake my hand. This is odd because I’ve never been the touchy-feely sort, and it never occurred to me that the restrictions consequent upon the pandemic would cause me to miss it.

*  *  *

I saw a headline today in which the term ‘mental health’ was used in a way I deemed inappropriate. I think we’re becoming far too inclined these days to substitute ‘mental health’ for the simpler, more general, more accurate, and less emotive phrase ‘state of mind.’

*  *  *

I felt moved by the sight of the yellowing leaves while out on a walk today, and experienced a growing conviction that the individualised consciousness is driven by the same cyclical imperative as drives nearly all natural processes in the phenomenal universe. Metempsychosis is gaining ground.

*  *  *

And then an uninvited thought sprang into my own consciousness and advised me that the secret of Life, the Universe and Everything is contained within the phrase ‘even earthworms defecate.’ I frowned, but didn’t disagree.

A Foreign Body Down Under.

I strongly suspect, in fact I’m nearly certain of it, that I have a foreign body in my groin. (And just in case you think I’m being uncomfortably personal here, I should point out that it’s in the top part of my groin adjacent to where my left thigh pivots. It’s all to do with the procedure I had done a couple of weeks ago to get my left leg functioning again.)

I won’t bother to offer what evidence I have to support this suspicion, but it’s very strong and I don’t much like it, especially since the object is almost certainly green and made of plastic. This won’t do, will it? If it were a piece of shrapnel coloured gun metal grey I’d be able to hold my head up high in any company. I could even fly to Australia, and when the customs man asked the question which determines whether or not you’re a fit person to be allowed entry – do you like Vegemite, mate? – I could answer: ‘I really couldn’t say, my fine fellow, but I do have shrapnel.’ And then he would be duly impressed and reply: ‘Oh right, mate. That’s the next best thing. In you come and pick up your barbie vouchers by the door.’

But green and plastic? How can I possibly walk freely among my fellow creatures with a green plastic article loitering indecently off limits? And what about when I’ve shuffled off my very own mortal coil and been cremated? Some curious person might empty the ashes out onto an old newspaper or something and exclaim in a tone of disgust and disbelief: ‘Yerk! What’s this lump of green stuff, here?’ And then somebody from the assembled multitude in the room would offer: ‘Looks like a bit of melted plastic to me.’ And the rest would concur, and then I’d be too ashamed to haunt anybody ever again. 

On Spanners and a Single Blessing.

Today the cyber glitches came not as single spies but in battalions – glitches in Blogger, Skype, and my online bank account, all of which caused confusion, frustration and delays.

This afternoon I made three attempts to get some autumn gardening work done. I did so because I was encouraged by the light white cloud, the sunny periods, and the general air of calm and settled weather. Three times I got half way through the job when the black stuff appeared, closely followed by rain. On the third occasion the rain was heavy and driven by the sudden onrush of a gale force wind. It was also accompanied by a blizzard of falling leaves which seemed to take great delight in making clattering noises everywhere. That was when I yelled at the universe and asked it just how many spanners it had at its disposal to throw into the machinery of my life just because it can. I received no reply and I doubt it did any good.

That’s how my life is at the moment. Every day I get one or more spanners landing in the machinery of my activities and bringing matters to at least a temporary halt. It seems to be getting worse, and I’m certainly growing very tired of it.

*  *  *

But today there was one redeeming feature which blessed the occasion of my walk. The Lady B’s dear mama came down the road in her Audi (Audis seem to be catching on in that family), slowed, smiled and waved. It was the first time I’ve ever seen the Lady B’s dear mama drive an Audi, but it mattered little since she does have such a lovely smile. It even looks authentic, which I happen to consider important.

I like the Lady B’s mama, you know. I always have. I think she is now the only person in the whole wide world who may be relied upon to slow, smile and wave when she passes me in the car. She is also the only person currently domiciled in the Shire with whom I welcome a conversation. Having said which, there is of course the matter of Honourable Sister. I think I would very much like to have a conversation with her, too, but Honourable Sister occupies the inner sanctum of some remote and impenetrable part of the palace. One imagines a regiment of hardened personnel securing the labyrinthine approaches from the likes of me. Whether they be eunuchs or a detachment of the Praetorian Guard I couldn’t say, but I imagine it’s something along those lines.

A Change in Image.

Remember when fashion models looked like this:

 

 

I suppose the defining word would have to be something like ‘wholesome.’ Nowadays they look like this: 

 

 

If I may be excused for paraphrasing a well known line from Kind Hearts and Coronets, I should say that her mouth is just a little too full, her eyes a touch too widely spaced, and her nose perhaps a little too fleshy. But the defining difference is in the descriptor: 

Badass.

That’s the name of the game now. And what continues to amuse me is that people who wear top branded clothing which vaunts its name for all to see apparently give little if any thought to the fact that they’re paying large sums of money to give the company free advertising.