Perception and Priority.

There’s an ad on my Hotmail home page for the University of London. The blurb reads: 

 

MSc Logistics and Supply Chain Management

Understand how to manage supply chains

 in a fast-paced, technology fuelled world.

 

Well now, all my life I’ve so wanted to understand how to manage supply chains in a fast-paced, technology fuelled world, so where was this ad when I was but a callow youth desperate to put my brain (which is the size of a planet, don’t forget) to some useful, life-enhancing purpose? Try to imagine, if you will, how gutted I must now feel. Meanwhile…

I did my very best to save the life of a tree today. Whether my actions will bear fruit remains to be seen over the next few months, but I’m hopeful.

I took a fall in the process of performing this duty of care – nothing serious at the time, but I now seem to have a sprained wrist. There are also signs that I might have exacerbated one of my neat little collection of health issues. So I considered the question of balance and value vis-à-vis the situation.

I came to the conclusion that all is for the best in the best of all possible perceptions. Trees are, after all, quieter than humans, nobler than humans, more long lived than humans, and best of all, they enhance the planet rather than running around chasing money and the superficiality of lifestyle obsession while wrecking the planet in the process. I doubt that trees need to learn how to manage supply chains. To them it’s simply a matter of ‘have sap, will manage.’

Wan, Weariness, and the Way of Things.

Today has been a non-day. The hours of light and wakefulness offered nothing pleasurable by way of practices or prospects, and the wan day went down in wet and weariness. For those who don’t know, the last nine words are taken from a work by Tennyson describing the last days of the court at Camelot. And that’s how the days feel to me now. These are the last days of the world as we know it and my life in particular. (But it’s all a matter of perception, isn’t it? It is.)

I was looking back over some old blog posts earlier and discovered that Tennyson gave me some of the best of them. However much I sometimes fell out with his style of writing poetry, I do at least have to thank him for that. I didn’t realise just how many times I’ve quoted ‘the world is white with May’ or some fragment from The Lady of Shallot. And it seems that he was highly attuned to the effect that climatic conditions can have on one’s state of mind, as all sensitive people assuredly are.

*  *  *

It’s been a bad week generally in the JJ world for various reasons. I drove through two areas of the city in which I lived for almost the entirety of my teenage years, and witnessed so many changes that I felt my personal history being taken from me by the rapacious appetites of time and exigency. My memory of those glorious years has always been an abstract phenomenon, as all memory is, but at least the environment survived to provide solidity of a sort. That’s no longer the case, and that depressed me.

And then there was the falling out I had with E.ON, my energy supplier, for the third time in a year. Their behaviour with regard to my account (which is fully paid up to date, I might add) is becoming increasingly incomprehensible, inexcusable, and consequently insufferable. I won’t tell the story because it wouldn’t be worth the time to either write or read it. I am inclined, however, to recommend to every reader living in the UK that they should have nothing to do with E.ON. But maybe that would be pointless, because maybe E.ON is simply following the rest of the corporate world into increasing seediness, self-obsession and the practice of placing profit before service. I don’t think it’s right for a utilities provider to behave that way in a civilised society, and I’d be glad to see the government take utilities back into public ownership. It’s not likely to happen, of course. Mrs Thatcher switched the points to the rails of the free market, and that’s where we’re likely to stay.

But now I’m off to close the curtains against the wet and weary night, and then fret a little over tomorrow’s prospect of having the Orcs of Ordinariness invade my private world. Hatred of invasion is the root of my principal neurosis, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I will probably be back.

On Swallows and the Future.

I’m going to be a true Brit and talk about the weather again, but with reference to my favourite truly wild bird, the swallow.*

I mentioned in a recent post that I had seen the first of this year’s visitors at the top of the lane, and made reference to the old adage ‘one swallow does not a summer make.’ Today there were at least thirty of them, and still the prospect of summer seemed hidden beyond the far horizon. There they were, gracing the sky with their aerobatics as usual, sometimes coming within touching distance of me, while the rain fell and the air remained disappointingly cold for late spring. It reminded me of that dreadful wet summer in 2012 when I was constantly concerned for the welfare of these marvellous birds, as well as their cousins, the house martins and swifts, which had flown thousands of miles to get here, only to find gloom, wetness and airborne food in short supply.

The day did not continue in similar vein; it got worse. The gloom grew gloomier and the rain fell heavier throughout the afternoon and evening, and eventually I felt obliged to go out into the downpour to clear the road grids again. And part of the reason for saying all this is to consider the possible effects of climate change.

I gather there’s a popular misconception among foreign visitors to Britain; they seem quite convinced that it’s always raining here. It isn’t; the truth of the matter is that the weather in Britain and Ireland is notoriously capricious. I remember being told as a boy that you should never go far from home without a raincoat or umbrella, even if the day seems set to be fair and dry. And there’s an old saying along the lines of ‘Ne’er shed clout (clothes) ’till May is out.’ In other words, don’t be persuaded to break open the summer wardrobe until summer is with us in earnest because British weather is unreliable.

But in the last few years I’ve noticed a change. We used to be aware that the weather could change dramatically over the course of a day or two, or even from hour to hour, but now we seem to be more prone to long periods of one thing or another. The whole of last winter was depressingly wet. April, in contrast, was so consistently dry and cold that the land and early crops were suffering badly. May comes along and we’ve had rain, hail and sleet – and unseasonably low temperatures – nearly every day. We’ve also had at least six thunderstorms, which I swear we never used to get in May. Thunderstorms were associated with hot, humid spells in high and late summer. And I’m sure I’m not wrong when I say that we get far more easterly and northerly winds than we used to have. I’d be interested to have a meteorologist’s opinion on this.

Maybe this is why the Shire skies have been devoid of swifts for several years now, and house martin numbers are drastically lower than they used to be. Thankfully, the swallows are still braving the change – and long may they continue to bring joy and thrills to fair summer skies as and when we get them – but for how much longer? And I do realise that other parts of the world are suffering more extensive and dangerous changes, but I can only speak of my own observations in my own little piece of the planet.

So is this a preamble to the shape of things to come, and, if so, how should we view it? A core characteristic of the future is its perennial unpredictability, so maybe we should conclude that all is for the best in the most unfathomable of all possible worlds. If swallows are capable of considering a temporal concept like the future, it’s probably the view they would take.

* The reason I use the term ‘truly wild’ in relation to the swallow is this: I’ve said often enough that the robin is my favourite bird, and it still is. But the robin is a woodlands species and therefore, in common with other woodland species, the sort most given to utilising the conditions provided in a domestic garden. As such I tend to regard it, irrationally I suppose, as semi-domesticated.

The Joys of Spring.

May continues to fail in its duty to be merry. Today has given us another succession of cold winds, glowering skies and rain.

I had to go to one of the nearby city centres today and encountered far more traffic congestion than is usual for a Thursday morning. It was everywhere – on the main highway, in the suburbs, and in the centre itself. I had the impression that the latest of the staged releases from lockdown has resulted in everybody with a vehicle taking it onto the roads just because they can. At one point I turned the car around and took a detour, but that was nothing compared with getting back out again later.

I’d decided to take a different route home because of the congestion on the highway, only to find that everything is changing. Roads where there didn’t used to be roads, more new roads under construction, roundabouts where there didn’t used to be roundabouts, new layouts, diversions… This is the city in which I grew up, but at times I hardly knew where I was or how to get onto the route that I wanted to get onto.

Eventually I did, and began to drive through a large suburban area in which I lived for four years during my teens. It should have been a single, straight road for about two miles, but no. More new roads, more new layouts, more new buildings. I confess to feeling surprisingly depressed by the changes, and I don’t suppose the inclement weather helped very much.

… neither did the fact that I’d gone without lunch.

… neither did the fact that the car seems to have developed an issue.

… neither did the fact that I’d had to get up two hours earlier than usual and that always makes me tetchy.

… and neither did the fact that the job I gave myself to do when I got back just wouldn’t play ball, and what should have taken twenty minutes took over an hour.

And the rain kept falling, and the wind kept whistling, and the sky sulked incessantly, and the house continued to get colder. It was that kind of day.

But at least I got to have coffee with my daughter for the first time in over a year, which has to be said to have been adequate compensation for an otherwise awful day. I’m still hoping for another lockdown in June, though. A warm, peaceful summer would be welcome.

A Note About Angela.

I was doing some more clearing out today and came across this picture of my wife (or to be strictly logical – because even I sometimes like to be strictly logical – the woman who was to become my wife) taken shortly before I met her. It was a picture taken for a feature in the local newspaper when she was doing research for something or other. (It is a matter of eternal shame to me that I don’t remember what the subject of her research was, although I do remember that she liked doing research into things, and I also remember that Admiral Anson was the ancestor of the man who owned the big mansion close to where she lived.)

 

I’m not quite sure why I’m posting it, apart from the fact that I quite like it and because something else I don’t remember is that she was this good looking. I suppose she must have been because she’s the only one of my live-in ladies I actually married.

And we got on, you know. We did. As far as I recall, we never fell out during the whole seven years we were together. I even acted as her roadie when she had a rock band because I was strong enough to carry the big amps around in those days. It could be argued, however, that we did have one sort of falling out. It was the morning when the following conversation took place:

‘Are you having an affair?’ she asked.

‘Erm… yes.’

‘Who is it?’

‘J**** *****’

‘But she’s fat and ugly.’

(She was neither actually, but perception is, after all, the whole of the life experience, which you might have noticed is something I quite like saying.)

But we didn’t really fall out as such. She simply made up a bed in my photographic studio, filled the walls with red things to match the black walls, and then slept in it until she moved out to live with an archaeologist called Cliff. She also took our pet rabbit, Beaumont, to live with them.

And that, dear people, is one of the more normal things I did in my life.

Still Going Unnoticed.

I went outside today and saw that there was an emergency ambulance parked at the bottom of my garden. Since I’d had no reason to call them, I naturally concluded that the person in difficulty was one of the neighbours next door. Not being a particularly inquisitive sort, I carried on with the gardening which was my reason for going out there in the first place.

Eventually, the man from next door came down the path with the paramedics to be taken off to the Royal Derby Hospital for investigations. His wife told me that she must now address all the text queries she’d had from people in the area who had seen the ambulance and were concerned.

Now, the place where the ambulance was parked was ambiguous, by which I mean that it could have been visiting either house. In other words, it could just as easily have been me who was in need of urgent medical attention. So did I get any queries? No.

The neighbours have lived here for eleven months. I’ve been here for fifteen years, so maybe my reclusive tendency is finally paying dividends.

On Amazon and the Smell.

I resolved this week never to have anything to do with Amazon again. It’s a convoluted story which I can’t be bothered to tell in detail, but it came down to their underhanded methods of trying to snare me into having an Amazon Prime account which I don’t want, never wanted, and never knowingly signed up for. It went much further than merely offering me a month’s free trial which they’ve been doing for a long time and which I’ve consistently declined. They’ve moved beyond that now and I’ve had quite enough of them. Besides which, they don’t have the best of ethical reputations either and I find that offensive.

So why don’t I want an Amazon Prime account? Well, several reasons, but the deepest of them is the same as the reason why I possess very little personal technological gadgetry and have no truck with social networking facilities. It isn’t because I can’t afford them or because I’m a reactionary in my attitude to modern times; it’s because they lie at the surface of a deeper issue: the smell of mother culture (which is similar to Daniel Quinn’s ‘hum of mother culture’, but with a different slant.)

It’s all to do with a culture which substitutes lifestyle for life; a culture based increasingly on the predominance of money, which makes the rich richer and more complacent while the poor become poorer and more stressed; a culture which seeks to buy the heart and soul of the masses and pays them with candyfloss laced with a soporific narcotic. To me, the culture smells bad and I dislike bad smells. It’s why I function at the edge of this way if life, taking just as much as I need to walk my own road and keep in touch with the few people worth keeping in touch with.

I could write reams about this, but I’m tired. And I do realise that touching on it so briefly and in such a perfunctory manner will probably result in misunderstanding. I stand to be shot at with accusations of hypocrisy and heaven knows what else. OK, but why should I care? I think I’ll move on now and write the post about my inestimable stock in the local community.

On Brits and the Weather.

Foreign visitors to the UK often remark on how obsessed the British are with regard to talking about the weather. We do, incessantly, and it’s probably because the islands of Britain and Ireland are renowned for the capricious nature of the climate. Getting hail and sleet one day, and calm, warm, sunny weather the next – as a matter of course – naturally makes for a never-ending source of conversation. The weather is one of our primary interests in life and we don’t even realise we’re doing it. And now that the climate is changing world-wide and the jet stream has become wavy, I expect we’ll do it even more in the future.

What’s interesting me is the effect this is having on the flora. This year we had a mild March followed by a very dry but cold April, and I’ve noticed that certain plants have been poor and late, while others have been early and proliferated. The blossom on my apple tree, for example, is 2-3 weeks later than usual, and the flowers are small and ragged. The bluebells and blackthorn, on the other hand, started to bloom earlier than usual and have given a magnificent display. (I’ve also noticed that more of the bluebells are turning pink, so what should we call them? Pink bluebells or pinkbells?)

It would be interesting to see how this pans out over the next twenty or thirty years, but I doubt I shall be able to do so because there’s no history of longevity in my male ancestry. Nevertheless, it is pleasing to see the first signs of a copious flowering of the hawthorn blossom this year. There’s a good chance that the world will, indeed, be white with May, even if it waits until June to happen.

Inviting the Big Bang.

I’m one of those strange specimens of humanity who have a very high IQ but can be oddly deficient in the mere matter of common sense.

Today, it being the right time of year, I decided to trim the tall stand of forsythia which hugs the house wall next to my small porch. It involved using a ladder, a small hedge trimmer, and a long pole hedge trimmer. The hours leading up to starting the job had been pleasantly clement, with high cloud, little breeze, sunny periods, and a warmer airflow than we’ve been getting of late. I placed the ladder against the shrub, and then heard the first clap of thunder.

‘This is probably not a good idea,’ I thought. ‘I’ll be on a metal ladder with metal tools which have a few drops of water standing on them from the light shower we’ve just had. What more invitation does an impending build-up of lightning need to head in your direction?’

I estimated that the clap of thunder had occurred two or three miles away to the north west and decided to carry on regardless. I climbed the ladder, long pole hedge trimmer in hand, and the storm got closer, and closer…

‘Ah, what the hell,’ I thought – being all the time cognisant of the fact that lightning does occasionally kill people – ‘it won’t take long; just get on with it.’ So get on with it I did, and when I’d finished, the electrical storm stopped. Maybe it was disappointed at having missed a golden opportunity, but maybe that’s just me being fanciful again. And there were no wrecks, nobody drownded, and no human-sized pieces of roast meat littering the path in front of my living room window.

Afterwards, it occurred to me that I would never allow a child to climb a metal ladder during an electrical storm, nor carry anything made of metal for that matter. And if I’d had a partner, I would have done my best to persuade her of the same caution. But since it was only me at risk, I accepted it. So what does that say about me? That I’m more scared of losing a loved one than losing myself? That I’m more cautious when I have responsibility for others? I don’t know.

Further, I ask myself whether this is a British thing, an aspect of human nature generally, or an example of me being an idiot. I don’t know that either.

Updating the Anthem.

I’ve always been a keen fan of rugby union, and I always watch as much as I can of the annual Six Nations Championship. That’s a competition between the elite national sides in Europe – England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France and Italy. But there’s one thing that bothers me about it: the national anthems.

I’m not a big fan of national anthems anyway because, being something of an internationalist at heart, I find them disturbingly jingoistic. But when it comes to honest competition between nations, I tolerate them. All, that is, except the English one. The other five nations have anthems which are celebrations of the countries and their cultures, but the English have to put up with the British national anthem, God Save the Queen. This is the first verse:

God save our gracious Queen 

Long live our noble Queen 

God save our Queen

Send her victorious

Happy and glorious

Long to reign over us

God save the Queen.

 OK, so here’s my gripe:

Firstly, this has nothing to do with England or English culture. This is an outdated and simpering expression of undying fealty to the monarch.

Secondly, the Queen is not the Queen of England; she’s the Queen of England, Scotland, Wales and part of the island of Ireland.

Thirdly, I’m always tempted to wonder how many of the players – and accompanying members of the crowd – believe in the Judaeo/Christian version of God as implied in the words; and further, how many of them respect and offer up unquestioning allegiance to the monarch as also implied.

Fourthly, the melody is irritatingly tedious and dirge-like. It simply isn’t good enough to move the spirit as most other anthems do.

These sentiments have been expressed by others before me for many years, and it’s often been suggested that English sports teams should adopt the song Jerusalem as their anthem. Here’s the first verse of Jerusalem:

 And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England’s mountains green

And was the Holy Lamb of God

On England’s pleasant pastures seen

And did the countenance divine

Shine forth upon those pine-clad hills

And was Jerusalem builded here

Among the dark satanic mills

OK, I know it’s got a bit of God in it, but at least it’s about England and there’s none of the fatuous ‘King George commands and we obey’ stuff in there. And the melody is a million miles better and more stirring than God Save the Queen.

So why won’t the powers-that-be accede to a change? Have they not noticed that it isn’t the 18^th century any more, and that unquestioning veneration for the monarch and belief in the Jewish God began to decline with the birth of the post-WWII generation? Apparently not, and so England continues to be the only country denied its own national anthem, while the English continue to be kidded that they have the best of them. 

Baby Blackbird Update.

The Terrible Twins are now fending for themselves. You might recall the two plump blackbird fledglings I mentioned a couple of days ago, being frantically fed by a hard working dad. Today they were together again, but this time they were helping themselves to as much of the rolled oats as they could eat. And I know they’re the same pair of fledglings because they’re unusually marked.

They’re still engagingly naïve, though, as fledglings always are. Watching baby birds finding their feet is one of the delights of spring for me. And one of the Terrible Twins came onto the bird table when I was standing right by it, watching me and seeming uncertain as to whether big creatures standing upright are dangerous or not. I said ‘hello’ and looked the other way. Baby carried on eating.

As for dad, he’s been mostly absent. I assume he’s had quite enough of pushing food into the broad beaks of bonny bouncing babies for one year, thank you very much, and taken himself off to get his life back.

The Ramblings of an Ageing Mind.

I was watching the aforementioned Ellie Taylor on a TV show earlier, and something occurred to me about my nature. Whenever I see a particularly attractive young woman (and I don’t just mean a pretty face; my perception of ‘attractive’ is rather wider than that) I still feel the stirrings of the same old instinct that’s been with me since the age of around 12. It was dangerous when I was young and it’s pointless now that I’m growing long in the tooth, and yet I can’t find the means to consign it to the farthest reaches of the cosmos where it belongs. All I can do is grit my teeth and put up with the frustration.

On a wholly different tack, I broke something I was fond of in the garden today. It saddened me and led me to take stock of everything else in the garden, both natural and constructed, whereupon I was suddenly consumed with the notion that everything in my world is breaking down and rotting away. This is not unrealistic, of course, and it’s all a matter of perception anyway. Have I not consistently averred that perception is the whole of the life experience?

These are the thoughts which pass through a beleaguered mind as I stride, shuffle or stumble along the multifaceted road we call life, especially now that I’ve had most of what I’m going to get this time around. I must try to find that sense of humour I used to have. I’m sure it’s buried deep in a pocket somewhere around here.

The day has been warm and settled, and now I have a beetle for company in my office. Did I say I like beetles?

I know, I know… I should be commenting on the situation in Israel, the persistent lurking of Trump in the political shadows, and the high-handed attitude the Establishment takes to the individual, but I can’t be bothered.

(I feel inclined to add, however, that the Vittoria cherry vine tomatoes which I obtained at some not inconsiderable expense from Sainsbury’s this week are splendidly tasty.)

And now it’s off to read more of We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Miss Mary Katherine Blackwood is delightfully loopy in precisely the way that I can easily understand.

Buried Charms, Blackbirds and Bossy Women.

I was in a shop today and heard a soppy pop ballad that was big when I was fourteen. I remember sitting in the bath singing it and feeling forlorn after having had my advances spurned by the girl of my dreams. Hearing it today I wondered how on earth I could ever have considered finding such a pile of dingo’s droppings worth singing, dream girl or no dream girl. ‘How much I’ve changed,’ I thought. ‘How hard edged and cynical life’s vitriol has made me. Where has my soppy side gone?’ And then I realised that the soppy fourteen-year-old is still in here somewhere; he just sleeps more soundly these days and it takes a different kind of trigger to wake him up.

Later I saw two female blackbird fledglings standing together on the edge of the bird table, being fed with much dedication and energy by their dad. Poor bloke was working himself to a frazzle, tirelessly filling eager, gaping maws with beakfulls of rolled oats. And it struck me as amusingly ironic that the two juveniles were bigger than him.

Later still, I discovered that Ellie Taylor has the same birthday as me. ‘Who is Ellie Taylor?’ I hear you ask. Well, by an odd coincidence, it was the very same question which led me to discover that she has the same birthday as me. So who is she? Still not sure. A celebrity of some sort, which is all you need to be these days if you want to be one of the candles on the birthday cake. And might I just add that I’ve never yet met a female Sagittarian with whom I could get on. Too demanding. (Which brings me neatly back to female fledgling blackbirds. I must be well tuned in tonight.)

Tonight's Deep Theory.

I find it interesting that women routinely notice and comment upon the attractiveness of other women, whereas men hardly ever notice – and certainly never comment upon – the attractiveness of other men. I suspect it has something to do with gender roles in the hunting of mastodons.

May: Harbinger of the Apocalypse.

At twilight tonight the sky was an unbroken mess of multitudinous greys, ranging from light smoke to dark gun metal. Some of the clouds were rushing northwards, while others – presumably at different altitudes – were heading west. There was a sudden, arresting flash followed almost immediately by a cacophony of banging fit to have its origin in the forges of hell. The cold, cutting wind rose spitefully and suddenly, scattering the garden with fresh new leaves torn prematurely from their hosts. And then I heard the knocking on my coat hood when the hail started. It was a fitting finale to a capricious day in which the sun and cloud vied for supremacy, the cold wind rose and fell with maddening indecision, and the clouds unloaded their cargo in the form of sleet.

This is not fit weather for the middle of merry old May in merry middle England. This had the feel of the rent temple curtain, or the omens on the night of King Duncan’s murder. And so one has to wonder whether this is a minor and temporary tear in the fabric of normality or an early sign of the promised environmental apocalypse. I don’t suppose we can know for some time yet, but if I were young I think I might be a little fearful of the future.

Things of No Interest.

I’ve been very busy today. I generally dislike being busy because I’m not the busy sort; I’m the observing and musing sort. My place is either deep in the countryside observing nature, or sitting quietly on the dock of the bay wasting time and observing the oddities apparent in the human condition.

Must admit, though, today’s busy-ness did include spending a couple of hours or so deep cleaning both my living room and my bedroom, in consequence of which I felt really, really pleased with myself. But now I wonder why I bother saying things to people they couldn’t possibly have any reason to be interested in.

And today was one of those awful ones in which mishaps and frustrations keep pouring out of the ether not as single spies but in battalions. Such days can be quite maddening, and I spent much of my time today feeling quite maddened. A little dog did come over to its garden gate at one point to say hello to me, which was rather nice but didn’t help very much. And another dog wanted to say hello to me but I’m not allowed to reciprocate its advances because its human is scared of being pulled off her feet. The dog is big and powerful, you see, and she isn’t. I know the feeling.

I had home-made pea and potato soup for dinner tonight, accompanied by an olive oil roll with a Japanese name. That’s about as close as I ever get to being an epicure. And I haven’t caught sight of the Lady B since the day before Methuselah was born.

This Week's Firsts.

1. I saw a hare hopping up the lane which goes past my garden. In all my life I’ve never seen a hare on a road before. They’re usually in a field and some distance away, but this one was only a few yards from my gate and at one point started hopping towards me. Being cursed with a neurotic tendency, the singularity of the event worried me because hares are said to be harbingers of bad fortune. I thought of writing a post on the question of whether harbingers exist and whether superstition in general has any merit. I didn’t because I was in a bad mood from seeing a hare hopping towards me.

2. I saw the first swallow of the year at the top of the lane this morning, and then I saw two more. And I thought, as I always do when the first swallow graces the sky and my sight line, ‘One swallow does not a summer make.’ I don’t suppose three do, either.

3. The first leaves appeared in the potato patch, and now there are seven new plants and climbing. The last of the broad beans also appeared, which means I now have a whole regiment of broad bean plants growing strongly. That’s only a first because it’s rare for all the seeds in the first sowing to germinate. The peas, however, are being disappointingly reluctant at the moment. Too cold, I expect.

4. I saw the first parent bird feeding one of its chicks at the bird table – a male blackbird and a plump young female. Now I’m waiting to see how long it will be before he tells her to go away and get a life. They usually do eventually.

And now I’m asking myself why anybody should be remotely interested in my little life in the Shire, and whether I care.

On Clocks, Socks, and the May Delusion.

Remember last night’s post? Well, I didn’t wake up when the alarm went off this morning; I woke up when it went off a second time ten minutes later. The loss of ten minutes was the first of many minor stresses, but there’s only an hour left before today will be tomorrow (or yesterday depending on which way you look at it) and I’ve survived so far. But now I’m tired because I’ve been dragged out of wholesome slumber by a demented beeping tone emanating from a mobile phone two days in succession, and that’s an intrusion on my personal liberty.

I called in at Tesco on my way back from the city and bought some new socks. That was the most exciting thing I did today, and also the least stressful.

Meanwhile, the month of May continues to exhibit an identity crisis. It seems to be convinced that it’s early March, and I wish it would wake up like I was forced to do this morning. We had hail two days ago, sleet yesterday, and snow today. There’s nothing merry about snow unless you happen to be a skier, and who on earth would want to be one of those?

On Smoke and Contrast.

This is a picture of the Manhattan skyline, taken, I should think, some time during my lifetime.

 

And this is a picture of the Stoke on Trent (my home town) skyline, painted, I’m fairly sure, a little before I was born. 

 

Not so very different really, are they?

I like to think that my home town skyline is better looking because it has more character. But then I would, not because it’s my home town but because I’m a little strange. And appreciation of character is as personal as appreciation of both beauty and humour.

And for those who don’t know, the bottle shaped structures are bottle kilns which were used for commercial pottery manufacture before the ceramics industry embraced electricity. Imagine what the air of Stoke on Trent must have felt and smelled like when row upon row of terraced houses occupied most of what space was left in the landscape, and burned standard house coal almost constantly between October and May.

Grumpy.

I’ve mentioned several times on this blog that my body – especially my upper body – is sensitive to changes in the weather. Well, it’s also becoming increasingly sensitive to household chemicals, and now I have a problem.

I have an old fashioned enamel bathtub in my bathroom which functions as both bath and shower, and for several years the lime scale has been building up and depositing an unpleasant brown stain on the surface of most parts of it. This week I decided to tackle the issue and set to with a squirty thing containing a proprietary lime scale remover and a scrubbing brush. Now I feel ill, and I’ve little doubt that the Dettol Lime Scale Remover is the offending agent. It wouldn’t be such a catastrophe if all the stain was removed, but it isn’t. Much of it is, but at least a second application will be needed if the poor old bathtub is ever to be properly shining white again.

And on the subject of health issues – of which I have an enviable cocktail since the kidney cancer started the ball rolling – I watched a YouTube video presentation last night in which some American doctor told me what I mustn’t eat if I’m to ease one of them. No sugar, no soya (which he called soy because he’s American), no dairy products of any kind… I switched off at that point because I was becoming depressed.

It would mean no chocolate, no sugar on my breakfast cereal, no jam or marmalade on my toast, no grilled cheese and oatcakes, no spread containing buttermilk, no potatoes and vegetables tossed in butter and herbs, nothing containing caramel (which I very much like), no vegetarian chilli or Bolognese… And even the instant gravy I have with my vege pie dinners contains milk powder. That’s most of my diet gone. I decided to be a masochist and pick up the video again, just to see what the doctor from America would tell me I can eat to improve the issue: tomatoes.

I do actually like tomatoes. I buy Sainsbury’s most expensive little plum tomatoes and occasionally snack on them, but can you live on tomatoes? Would I want to live on them? Hardly, so it appears I still have to live with the deleterious consequences of an unsuitable diet.

And tomorrow I have to get up early in order to something I don’t want to do. I have a number of pet hates, two of the most hated being:

1. Getting up early with the alarm.

2. Doing things I don’t want to do.

So I’m in a bad mood. 

On the Missing Word and the Big House.

The month of May is being a little remiss in upholding its reputation so far this year. It appears that the word ‘merry’ was inadvertently dropped in March, and nobody has yet noticed its absence and gone back to retrieve it. 

 

One of the mature sycamore trees had a portion of its bulk removed last night by the heavy rain and a wind gusting to storm force, and my twilight perambulation this evening was accompanied by an icy blast and stinging hail. No singing robin tonight, or any other creature for that matter. Even the rats at the bottom of the garden were keeping their heads down. (I tell a lie. There was a single male blackbird on a nearby branch, not singing but guarding his territory as male blackbirds are wont to do at twilight irrespective of climatic conditions or my close presence.)

 

*  *  *

 

When I went out for a walk this morning, Mr A was out with his chain saw dealing with the fallen bulk of the sycamore tree. Mr A is retired and lives in my favourite house in all of the Shire. It’s big and rambling, built of old red brick, with lots of angles and unusually tall chimneys. I imagine it’s probably late Georgian and is graced with 3-4 acres of garden consisting mainly of lawns and a wood. And the back of the house has the writer's dream - French windows leading onto a terrace with a lawn beyond. The only dichotomous element stems from my indecision as to whether it’s redolent of a set for an Agatha Christie murder mystery, or one of MR James’s ghost stories.

I mentioned to Mrs A once that her house reminded me of MR James. She said she’d never heard of MR James, and I’ve noticed that life can sometimes be a bit unfair like that.

Simon and Sarah: Stanley's Response.

Simon, Sarah and little Stanley were sitting separately in the room which doubled as both living room and dining room. Stanley was sitting at the table, busily engaged in building a property of indeterminate function with Lego bricks, Sarah was reclining on the sofa reading her Woodland Trust newsletter, and Simon was gripping the TV remote in both hands, surfing the channels.

‘What do you fancy?’ he asked, directing his query at Sarah without actually looking at her.

‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘You watch what you want. I’d rather read.’

Simon glanced at the clock and realised that Strictly was about start. He liked Strictly, so he clicked button 2 and caught the beginning of the announcement:

We are interrupting the next programme to bring you a special report from the border between India and China, where conflict between Indian and Chinese troops is threatening to escalate into serious violence. Strictly Come Dancing will follow at 6.15, and subsequent programmes will run fifteen minutes later than advertised.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ shouted Simon petulantly. ‘Shut up, you stupid git. Who the bloody hell cares if Chinese and Indian soldiers shoot each other.’

Sarah continued to read, but said quietly:

‘There’s no point in shouting at the TV set.’

‘I’m not shouting at the TV set. I’m shouting at the stupid announcer.’

‘That’s a bit unreasonable,’ countered Sarah. ‘It’s like blaming the weather forecaster for the weather.’

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘Of course it is.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ repeated Simon. ‘Everybody blames the weather forecaster. Even you do it when they tell you it’s going to be sunny, but it rains instead so you can’t put the washing out.’

‘But I’m blaming the weather forecaster for the forecast, not the weather.’

‘Same thing.’

Sarah shook her head and declined to be drawn into a pointless conversation. Simon huffed a little, before turning to watch little Stanley walk out of the room. He soon returned carrying his child’s watering can, the contents of which he poured over the completed Lego construction standing on the table.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ shrieked his father.

‘Making it rain,’ answered the diminutive son, whose precocious grasp of irony was matched only by his amused toleration of marital disharmony.

Defining the Gentleman.

I’m currently engaged in a little bit of banter with somebody on YouTube, and the question has arisen: ‘what is a gentleman?’ (This is all to do with the differences between American and UK conventions with regard to certain words and expressions, and the term ‘gentleman’ has come up in conversation.) Since most of the readers of this blog are either Americans or non-native speakers of English, I thought I might explain that there are at least three definitions in the UK, depending on the situation and the person using it. They are:

1. The formal term for any male personage over the age of majority. I am, for example, always referred to as ‘a gentleman’ (rather than ‘a male’) in reports sent to my doctor from the hospital after investigations or treatment.

2. Any male adult (loosely speaking) who is notably polite, courteous – especially to women – and helpful.

3. (This is the interesting one, the traditional definition): Any male – whatever his temper, habits or predilections – born into an upper class family, preferably one of great longevity and possessed of aristocratic, or at least landed, credentials. And this one brings up the issue of classism.

At the time of WWI, officers in the British army were almost exclusively ‘gentlemen’ of this type. They were seen as the natural leaders, and were often referred to as ‘the officer class.’ They would have gone to a public school, which I should explain is not what Americans call a public school. We call those ‘state schools.’ A British public school is one of a small number of private, select, and very expensive schools which only very rich people can afford, and so anyone who attended Eton, Harrow, Winchester and so on, was marked out as being elevated above the level of ordinary people.

But it also meant that they were relatively few in number, and this became a problem during WWI. So many of them were getting killed in the trenches or no man’s land that the ‘officer class’ was becoming an inadequate source of officers, and the authorities were obliged to lower the goal posts. Young, well educated men from the proletariat were drafted in to fill the dwindling ranks and the officer class didn’t like it. The classic attitude of a traditional ‘gentleman’ to one of the new upstarts is exemplified in the oft-quoted retort:

‘You may be an officer, sir, but you’re certainly no gentleman.’

The Singer at the Close of Day.

I was out in the garden at twilight tonight being treated to the most delightful of company. A little robin was sitting on a nearby branch singing his little heart out. Although other members of the thrush family also sing wonderfully, only the robin sings quite like that. And in my experience, they only do so in the spring and summer. (Others say differently.) Allow me to reprise a ditty I published to this blog some years ago: 

 

When I have given up the ghost

And gone to take my final rest

Please lay me where the robin sings

For robin’s song is quite the best

 

And here’s a sampler from YouTube to offer some vindication of my belief: 

 

All we need now is for the twilight hours to feel more like May and less like February.

 

Footnote:

 

I sometimes wonder whether the robin is a bird at all. I'm very fond of birds generally, but the robin is more just than a favourite; there's a singularity about it that seems to place it into a category of life all its own, as though it's only pretending to be a bird. I remember the robin which used to follow me around the garden, taking the private little piles of oats I gave it to feed its nest. I remember the day it flew from the ground and hovered in front of my face, making the kind of eye contact which is its most compelling characteristic. It disappeared a few days later and I never saw it again.