For No Eyes in Particular.

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

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

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

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

‘Why?’ I reply.

‘It’s what I do.’

‘Oh, right. OK.’

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

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

‘Ah, so you’ve seen the movie too?’

‘I have.’

‘Nope.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*  *  *

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