This Year's Bit of Beltane.

At approximately 8.22 British Summer Time this evening the sun set in my part of the world to usher in the start of Beltane. According to the old Celtic calendar, it is now, therefore, officially summer.

I say ‘approximately’ because the website I use fails to offer any information regarding the time differential between the eastern and western extremities of the UK. I regard this as a major omission because everybody surely understands that such a differential exists. Well, maybe not. It appears that, according to Google, there are people still asking the question: ‘does the sun rise in the east or the west?’ The extended erudition conferred on us by the mania for tertiary education certainly gives hope for the future of western culture, does it not?

Bearing in mind the aforesaid, and notwithstanding the fact that I live just about exactly in the middle of the UK, I naturally made due allowance and lit my Beltane fire at 8.27. (This runs directly counter to my usual principle of ‘better early than late’ but nature doesn’t work the same way as hospital appointments, a self-evident fact which I offer by way of justification.)

So there you have it: another year, another Beltane. The world continues to turn, the remains of the fire are still glowing but growing ever darker, my felicitations have been extended to the natural world, and now it’s time for a mug of cheap coffee by way of celebration. I know how to live, even if… But no, never mind that bit.

Late Learning and an Ungrateful Bird.

I was thinking about one of my ditties earlier, and realised that it consists of four quatrain stanzas in iambic pentameter with the conventional rhyming pattern A-B-A-B. Now, here’s the thing: I couldn’t have said that a few days ago before I read an extensive article on Thomas Gray‘s much-loved poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Isn’t it good when you discover, just when it’s too late to really matter very much, that you’re actually cleverer than you thought you were?

And here’s another one:

I remember that when I was a child, my friends and I believed that the condition we referred to as ‘yellow jaundice’ was an illness. ‘Where’s Charley today?’ somebody would ask. ‘He’s got yellow jaundice.’ ‘What’s yellow jaundice?’ ‘It’s a disease that turns you yellow, and you have to stay at home so nobody else catches it.’

It took a teacher, somewhere in later childhood, to explain to us that it was not an illness in itself, but an indicator of several possible illnesses connected with a malfunctioning liver. This I have long known, but what I only just realised (me being a writer of sorts and a deeply thinking person) is that the term ‘yellow jaundice’ is effectively a tautology, since I think it reasonable to assume that the word ‘jaundice’ derives from jaune, the French for yellow.

Lifelong learning is indeed a wonderful thing, if generally rather pointless in the end.

And I had something else to say but I’ve forgotten what it was.

I suppose I could mention that my sinuses are suggesting a change in the weather. I hope it’s going to be a warm change because it’s been depressingly cold and dull for the past few days and cold weather makes me dull and miserable. 

And on that note I might also mention that I failed to rescue a little bird today, but not for want of trying. I was in the process of cooking my dinner when I saw a nuthatch lying on one of the feeding tables and looking near-lifeless. Assuming the likelihood that it had either flown into a window or been struck by a vehicle, I took the pan off the hob, donned my coat, and went out to hold it gently under my warm armpit until it recovered. (I’ve done it several times over the years and it’s always worked.) As I approached the table the bird came to full attention and flew away in a panic. I didn’t know whether to be pleased or disappointed.

Being Made of Two Halves.

I’m currently going through one of my not infrequent bouts of feeling ill, the symptoms of which are nausea, soreness, mild fever and general debility. It produces a deep sense of apathy which removes the will to do anything requiring even a modicum of mental or physical effort, and so I seek to read something which I hope will take my mind off the symptoms and possibly lift my mood. 

It doesn’t work. What happens instead is that the condition pollutes whatever I’m reading and turns it from a positive, pleasant experience into a negative and unpleasant one. This reminds me of being given oil of cloves as a remedy for toothache as a child. I liked the taste of cloves, but I soon came to associate it with pain and developed an aversion to it.

And so now, me being me, I’m pondering whether my response to the situation is universal or just me being a wimp. It’s all about understanding the human condition, you see – that old sense of splitting into two people, the observer and the observed. I wonder whether the same process will happen when I’m taking my last breath. I imagine half of myself watching the other half and feeling desperate to tell somebody about it. I think I’m going to need a good medium.

(And half of me finds it surprising that the other half managed to write this little post. Do I feel better for it? A reply in the affirmative would be tempting fate, wouldn't it?)

Tiny Creature, Tiny Note.

I just saved a life. It was only a woodlouse stranded in my kitchen sink, but in the matter of saving lives I decline to recognise the word ‘only’. Earthworms on the road, beetles on the office floor, bees in the bird’s water bowl, woodlice in the sink. All the same to me.

An Endgame Ramble.

While I was out walking today I made a mental list of all the things I most enjoyed doing in my life. There were six of them, but only one is still available to me: Writing; that’s all I have left now, which is why I keep on making tedious blog posts because I have so little of substance to recount. Then again, I’m becoming increasingly prey to the suspicion that I don’t have much longer to serve of my time on this earth, so maybe it doesn’t matter. But I still haven’t had a baked Alaska yet…

I think I need more Sarahs in my life.

Or maybe a waspish Italian signorina who will yell at me and throw things (preferably a baked Alaska which I can scrape off the wall and eat.) That would liven things up a bit, wouldn’t it?

Better still, what about a Japanese lady ghost with long black hair covering half her face and wearing a voluminous white nightgown which never gets dirty even while she’s crawling across my bathroom floor which I haven’t vacuumed for six weeks? She would say something to me which I wouldn’t understand because she’d be speaking Japanese, but I would be suddenly transported to the girls’ bathroom in a Japanese high school (because such is, I’m reliably informed, a favourite haunt of Japanese lady ghosts.) Mercy me, or some such.

Reincarnation beckons.

I think I should be careful what I wish for.

Feeling the Abstract.

This evening’s twilight was chilly but not uncommonly so by April standards. The grey day clouds had given way to a sky of evening azure, and what fragments remained held station in the still air. The crimson sun had slipped down to rest, leaving a hot-painted fringe in its wake on the western horizon. 

On a nearby bough a lone robin sang the twilight melody which only the thrush family knows, while all the rest was silence. A lone bat flew purposefully across the space between the two sycamore trees as darkness swelled to end the day.

At such times I almost pity those whose eyes see only the mundane and the material, and whose minds know only pragmatism and self-interest. I claim not that they are in any way inferior to me, but only less fortunate.

A Fitting Place to Meet.

Uttoxeter seems to be the place where I bump into people I like bumping into. First it was Lucy (ex-dental nurse and intrepid traveller), then it was the angel in the shoe shop, and today it was my old manager from the theatre, Sarah O, who has received honourable mention a few times on this blog. (I decline to post the picture of us at the By Jeeves performance twenty years ago because I’ve posted it three times already and I don’t want the colour to fade.)

We seem to make a habit of meeting accidentally every four or five years, so maybe there’s a pattern emerging and I should take notice. Then again, given the way my body is falling apart these days, it might well be that the swan song has now finally been sung. Be that as it may, I should like to add (in case she ever reads this) that despite her advancing years (her assertion, not mine) she remains as slim and elegant as ever. A little quieter maybe, a little more mature, but still statuesque and a most excellent subject for a random encounter.

I think I’ll post that old picture of Uttoxeter again, though, just because I haven’t posted anything to look at for ages. The old place is fading badly these days I’m sad to say (coincidentally, a bit like me.) Lots of empty shops as there are in many towns now, courtesy of retail parks, malls and the internet. (There used to be nine charity shops in the town; now there are three.) And I’m sorry I can’t credit the photographer because I don’t know who it was.

 

 

War and the Empath.

As I’ve grown older I’ve become ever more aware of the fact that conscription in time of war makes little allowance for the vagaries of human nature. All men aged between 17 and 45, with only a few specific exceptions, must submit themselves to the status of fodder for the shells, the bombs, the bayonets and the bullets.

Imagine what unnatural sights a person must be forced to witness in a battle. Imagine the unsavoury odours, and the sound of screaming shells blended with the screaming voices of people torn apart but still conscious. I do imagine it sometimes, and I wonder whether anyone with an empathic nature can possibly experience such horror without becoming hopelessly insane.

The Dedication of the Birds.

Most of the birds who feed at my bird tables disappear after sunset, presumably having gone to roost for the night. Except, that is, the blackbirds and robins who obviously have new life stirring in a nest somewhere in the vicinity. I watch them braving the cold wind as the darkness gathers, filling their beaks with rolled oats and then flying away at speed before returning for another consignment a few minutes later.

It reminds me of that female blackbird a few years ago when we had a particularly cold, wet spring. I think I made a post about her at the time. Her plumage was in a terrible condition due to having had feathers torn out in a fight with another female a week or so earlier. She looked like a drowned rat and must have been horribly chilled, yet still she kept flying to her nest through the downpour with a beak full of food for the chicks. One day I didn’t see her, and the next day there was a smell of rot in the vicinity of the nest. It was reasonable to presume that she must finally have succumbed to the cold and the herculean effort. I naturally hoped that at least some of the chicks might have been strong enough to survive and fledge because then her sacrifice would not have been in vain, but it was probably a forlorn hope because I’m often reminded that nature pays little heed to fairness.

The Hazards of Thinking Oddly.

I was engaged in pursuing a daydream on the subject of ‘why I could never have been a doctor.’ I had an image in my mind of a grossly overweight and excessively elderly man waddling into my surgery. He had grey, greasy hair, smelt strongly of the sewers, what few teeth he had were multi-coloured in which yellow and black predominated, and his nose was dripping constantly. He sat opposite me and said: ‘Me bottom’s awfully sore today, doctor. Would you take a look at it for me?’ Well, you’d rather be eaten alive by Sumatran Fire Ants, wouldn’t you? (Not that I can be entirely certain that there’s any such thing as a Sumatran Fire Ant, but it will suffice for the sake of making the point.)

But here’s the odd bit: I was engaged in my (lightweight) evening exercise routine at the time, whereupon I suddenly noticed that I had blood on both my hands. Two of my fingers were even stuck together where it had congealed. I finished the exercises (naturally), then went and washed it off. All I could find to explain this sanguinary occurrence was a hint of redness at the base of one of my fingernails, but there was no actual bleeding anywhere. And so a mystery was born, and there you go.

You know, funny things happen to me when I have odd thoughts. They always have.

Being In Thrall to the Three.

It’s almost unheard of for me to watch a film twice. Mel used to say that I didn’t need to because I picked up everything there was to pick up at the first watching.

One exception was the beautiful German film Cherry Blossoms. I watched that one twice because I liked it so much the first time that I decided it was worth watching again. And the second time, I enjoyed it just as much because I was watching exactly the same film.

Tonight, however, having nothing to say to the blog, no emails to write, and being in a general state of having nothing better to do, I decided to watch it a third time. And you know what? I kept seeing all sorts of subtle nuances that I hadn’t noticed the first two times. It was almost like watching an extended version.

This is mildly interesting to me because 3 has always been my favourite number. I favour triangles above other shapes. I’ve talked on this blog about my affinity with the three queens of Celtic myth. My one and only novel is about three characters taking a journey. Not so very long ago I had three special women who seemed to favour my company (they’ve all gone now.) And when I go into OCD mode and start counting things, I endeavour to make sure that everything comes in multiples of three. And so on and so forth.

So maybe I should make a rule for myself: if ever I greatly like a film, I must watch it three times. Or would that just be another submission to the tyranny of OCD? There stands another question defying the simplicity of a straight answer. It seems to me that, for most people, questions tend to function in twos, rather like see-saws or pendulums: up and down, back and forth, right and wrong. Being a 3 person can be quite a strain at times.

The Matter of the Fine Pheasant.

I seem to have attracted a part-time pet: a cock pheasant possessed of the most unusual plumage I’ve ever seen – lots of silver grey and brindle with chestnut patches on his wings and patterns of black dots and squares which would make excellent curtains if you were into that sort of thing. And what particularly struck me when I first saw him a week or so ago was that he didn’t shy away and regard me suspiciously as the other pheasants do. He walked slowly towards me, seemingly with purpose, until he was a few feet away, and then turned and wandered off in a different direction. I said something like ‘what a splendidly handsome bird you are’ and that was that.

He came into the garden again this evening, but this time approached me almost at a trot and came close enough to reach out and touch if I’d wanted to. (I didn’t for two reasons: 1. I was busy deadheading some daffodils at the time, and 2. I didn’t fancy adding bird flu to the already weighty bag of health issues I’m carrying around at the moment. I’ve become a bit of a wimp in the matter of health issues.) He was persistent, however, pushing his head out every time I snapped a seed off, and it soon dawned on me that he wanted me to give him food.

And so I did. I went and fetched the pot of bird seed and put a handful down on the path, then left him gobbling greedily while I went about my business. When I returned to the scene all the food was gone and so was the pheasant.

The combination of highly unusual plumage and untypical tameness leads me to suspect that my new pet (I’ve decided to call him Oscar) is probably a cross between a wild pheasant and one of those ornamental varieties which I gather fine ladies in country mansions like to have wandering their capacious gardens. If that is the case, it would seem likely that he’s used to being hand fed. Maybe some fine lady somewhere realised that he was a mongrel, and maybe she has an aversion to mongrels because she’s been conditioned by her elevated class to recognise the pre-eminence of racial purity, and maybe she sent him on his way with orders never to darken her peony patch again. (Which is actually a veiled compliment to the dear lady because her husband would probably have shot him and given the body to the cook.)

The only difficulty with this theory is that I’m unaware of any fine ladies living in mansions in the immediate vicinity. The closest thing to a fine lady in these parts is the Lady B’s Dear Mama. She lives in a house about three times the size of mine, but it’s still some way short of a mansion. And besides, she works for a living (or did the last I heard) which proper fine ladies don’t. Their work, if such it can be called, usually amounts to writing a few letters and instructing the serving staff to prepare for the next dinner party.

And so the mystery is unresolved and will probably remain so unless the bird has learned to speak his name and address in case he gets lost. To paraphrase a favourite line from a favourite film: “Where do ’e come from? Where do ’e go?” (The Ghost Train 1941.) But I bet he’ll be back to capitalise on my sentimental nature by further depleting my stock of bird seed. If an explanation should ever come to light, I’ll be sure to post it here.

When a Story Is Just a Story.

I’ve decided that I dislike the concept of metafiction and wish to offer a brief reason by way of justification. But first I’ll copy and paste the Wiki definition of the term for the benefit of those who are ignorant of its meaning (as I was until recently. Who was it who said: ‘an ignoramus is a person who doesn’t know something you didn’t know until ten minutes ago’? Or words to that effect.)

Metafiction is a form of fiction which emphasises its own constructedness in a way that continually reminds the audience to be aware they are reading or viewing a fictional work. Metafiction is self-conscious about language, literary form, and story-telling, and works of metafiction directly or indirectly draw attention to their status as artifacts.^[1] Metafiction is frequently used as a form of parody or a tool to undermine literary conventions and explore the relationship between literature and reality, life, and art.

So why do I dislike it? Well, it goes something like this:

It seems to me that metafiction is a step along the road of that process whereby academics refuse to accept that a cigar can ever be just a cigar, and so exercise their minds and mouths in gainful employment constructing fanciful notions of what it must represent. All manner of things are subject to this process, none more so than literature because literature is one of those pursuits which are lauded as pillars of what we like to term ‘civilisation’ (and, ironically or fortuitously or inevitably according to your own judgement, academics themselves are also products of the same societal perception.) If that’s how you like to view the matter of literature, then the concept of metafiction is fine. But I don’t.

To me, the cover of a book containing a fictional story is the gateway to an alternate reality, and when I engage with the contents I’m pitched into it. It might well be identical in every respect to my experience of everyday reality, but it isn’t the same one that my body is occupying back in the armchair. It’s why I so like fiction which constructs a strong sense of place because the more it does that, the more the alternate reality becomes believably real and the concomitant experiences all the stronger. And so for me, good fiction amounts to an escape into a world which mirrors aspects of everyday reality and helps me to make sense of things which I might otherwise miss. If I’m to be constantly reminded that this is just a story, an artificial construction, then the value of the story is debased.

So that’s my objection for what it’s worth. And I still wish I could find something funny to say, but I can’t because nothing funny happened today and I still don’t feel entirely well. (But it might be worth mentioning that I saw my angel in the shoe shop again this morning and she still recognises me. She has a relaxed and taciturn manner and appears wholly secure in the fact. I like that.)

On Oddities and a Ditty Failure.

Having been engaged in a particularly long phone call this evening, I had to go out after dark to top up the feed tables for the early rising birdies. Before I did so, however, I made sure that the curtains were closed because I’ve developed a new oddity. I dislike looking back into my house from the dark outside because I fear I might see something in there that I really don’t want to see! This would appear to indicate that I’ve added being fanciful and neurotic to the growing list of undesirable traits.

In consequence of this, it occurs to me that my personality has so many odd angles that if I were a rough diamond freshly hewn from the primeval rock, I would be considered unworkable and cast aside.

And this morning I saw a cow resting by a farm gate. When I approached he didn’t shy away as cows usually do, but remained placid while I stroked his nose and scratched his ears. This reminds me of another little oddity: I hate the thought of having any part of my body – even my ears – scratched by any fingernails other than my own. I’m not at all sure of where, when or why this negative sensibility achieved genesis, but it belongs in the general category of pollution aversion.

*  *  *

A rare event occurred yesterday: the beginnings of a new ditty dropped into my head and asked to be developed. It began:

My name is Svetlana

I’ve lost my banana

And now I don’t know what to do

I really did try to develop it, I did, but it kept sliding into murky places so I stopped.

Jabbering for the Sake of It.

I’m fresh out of words again. I feel there’s a limit to how much a chap can wax eloquent about the delightful newness of spring and the pleasure to be had from the first of the year’s balmy twilights. Further, I doubt anyone domiciled beyond a mile radius of my house would be interested in the fact that somebody has put the village hall cloak right. And I think I’ve vomited enough bile around the Ukraine crisis to last at least a few days, although there’s plenty more I could say if I thought it would immobilise the Russian tanks.

A little aside, however:

I was reading about Alexander Borodin today, marvelling at his multi-faceted talent in being a leading doctor and chemist whilst also writing some of the world’s loveliest melodies. It led me to wonder how a culture which can produce the likes of Borodin, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and the rest – not to mention the great literary talent for which Russia is justly famous – could still end up being led by the likes of Stalin and Putin. But to continue...

I wonder whether I should mention the young woman I encountered on my walk today, replete with the prettiest of pony tails and riding a handsome brute of a horse along Church Lane. She told me that my personality, intelligence and sense of humour were so impressive that she wanted to stay close to me, on a strictly platonic basis of course, for as long as I have left. I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it because I made it all up. (Although there is such a young woman who seems content to stop and talk to me. I even have a question of an equine nature to put to her if ever our paths cross again. And let’s face it, you’ve got to have a dream – if you don’t have a dream – how you gonna have a dream come true? So it might be worth mentioning that I saw two bats flying in tandem a couple of nights ago. I always worry about how many of them will re-appear after the winter, so maybe it was an omen.)

Over and out.

Mother Russia and the Matter of Growth.

I often ask myself why I get so hot under the collar about the war in Ukraine. It’s partly the obvious reaction of an empath to the suffering of the innocent, as it is in other conflicts, but it goes a little deeper than that.

I find it greatly disheartening that people like Putin – and others – can still wield power in the affairs of the world. After at least 100,000 years of being on this planet, the human race still refuses to grow up. Too many people still allow themselves to be swayed by emotive rhetoric which rants wildly on feeble matters like patriotism and the scourge of traitors, while failing to see through it all and ask the obvious question: if being a traitor matters so much, who is the real traitor here?

Under Putin, Mother Russia has become a dishevelled and dark hearted old hag sitting in her hut on chicken’s legs. She has become Baba Jaga, largely isolated from the affairs of the world and reviled by most of its inhabitants. Only other tyrants in other states still regard Mother Russia as a sister. (Baba Jaga had sisters, too.) And this is my own rhetoric, I know, but at least it’s honestly intentioned. That’s the difference.

And so I continue to wonder whether the human race will ever grow up, and I wonder whether it isn’t supposed to. Maybe the ways of the world are supposed to be like this in order to teach the more enlightened a few lessons they need to learn in order to progress. How can I know?

Meanwhile, the innocent continue to suffer and the tyrant continues to persuade the feeble minded of his rightness. Mother Russia continues to wallow in the darkness of her deep forest, and that disappoints me because I’d allowed myself to believe that the Cold War was over and we could now be good neighbours at last. And I’m aware that nothing I say is going to make a blind bit of difference, but I felt like saying it anyway. (And this post was made as an alternative to the one I was going to make about how weak and feeble I've become, in both mind and body, and why I find this lamentable state of affairs a matter of concern.)

An April Rhapsody.

This evening’s twilight finally gave me a taste of April as it should be – dull and damp, but mild and with hardly a breath of breeze.

There’s actually no such thing as a perfect April, of course, but it’s how I remember it from back in the day when I was a rookie photographer honing my observation of the seasons and the natural world. It was the month when I most enjoyed taking my dog for rambles along the lanes, across the fields and through the newly greening woods.

I was living in another village then, about twenty miles from here, and there was a tree-fringed hollow in one of the fields where I used to sit among the wild primroses while dear Em ran off her boundless energy to her heart’s content. In fact, I can honestly say that I’d never really noticed primroses before, nor their association with the quiet splendour of mid-spring as long as the weather gods are feeling benevolent. I set one of my stories in that very place, and in this very month, and with characters based on people I knew well there. It’s called The Gypsy Rover if anyone should care to read it, but be warned: The dénouement is as enigmatic as April is; it’s for the reader to play god and determine the solution.

So this evening I went out and stood at the edge of my little porch, there to luxuriate in the heady atmosphere as the gloaming gathered. To smell the earth and feel the touch of dampness on my face; to see the near-glowing greens at their greenest; to drink in the sense that here, to my perception, is the closest we come to a deeper meaning of life.

Paying Up Front.

My new health issue is keeping me in a state of discomfort tonight, as it does much of the time. I suppose I should see a doctor about it (not that it’s easy to actually see a doctor during these troubled times), but I’m tired of the attention of clinicians, tired of investigations and procedures, tired of waiting for results, tired of the hassle involved with attending the Royal Derby Hospital, tired of being told I mustn’t drive for a month, and tired of people trying to coerce me into taking yet more medications. I’m holding to the view at the moment that when you get older your body starts falling apart and that’s just how it is. I’m the biggest fan of the NHS because they saved my life four years ago, but I’d much rather its bountiful ministrations were heaped on other people while I was able to stay under the radar.

And I’ve had a frustrating, stressful day today, courtesy of E.ON Next (my energy supplier) and Epson (the manufacturer of my printer.) I think I’ve made it quite clear that I’m no friend of the denizens of the corporate world these days. I understand why they try to force you into doing things their way – although I greatly dislike it and fight against it as much as possible – but what I don’t understand is how, given the wealth, technical expertise and university degrees at their disposal, they manage to be so dysfunctional.

And now I’m whingeing again. I dislike myself when I whinge, but yesterday’s niceness reversed its polarity today. I suppose it’s just an example of having to pay for everything you get, and maybe instant karma is better than building up a debit balance.

The Power of a Smile.

Six weeks ago I wrote a post called An Angel in a Shoe Shop, which related the sense of connection I felt with the woman who served me. Today I went into the same store and was served by another, younger, woman who was also a model of everything a first rate shop assistant is supposed to be (a faculty now somewhat rare, I’m sad to say.)

During the process of conducting business – a rather inflated expression considering the fact that I was only buying a £1.99 shoe horn – the subject of the previous post appeared and smiled at me. Nothing significant there, you might say; ah, but there was. It was the kind of smile that surprised me. It was a smile of recognition, and had a genuinely ‘it’s nice to see you again’ look about it.

I’m not used to that sort of smile. I’ve always thought of myself as being too innocuous to be memorable on such short an acquaintance. How many customers, I ask myself, must she have encountered over the past six weeks? Why would she remember me, much less be apparently pleased to see me again?

And yet it seems she did, and it was of substantial significance to me, and so the angel in the shoe shop reprised her elevated role and sent me on my way considerably lighter of heart. It also afforded me a nice little lesson which I should have learned a long time ago:

A genuine smile is worth a thousand complimentary words, just as a false smile is one of the ugliest features in the human spectrum. I’ve learned to tell the difference, much to my edification.

The Coldness of the Lambs.

Newborn lambs are such delicate little creatures until their legs grow sturdy and their fleece develops. This morning I saw two of them in a field, resting and apparently sleeping in the cold wind while their mother grazed nearby. Their tiny faces looked pinched in resignation. My own body was perfectly warm in my super winter walking coat, but my mind felt their coldness and sank into a bleak place.

On Seasonal Firsts and Startling Epiphanies.

I saw the first lambs of the season yesterday, and today there was another first – the first blooming of the wild garlic on the embankments in Bag Lane. (That’s the sunken lane I’ve talked about before on the blog, probably the best example of a classic English sunken lane I’ve ever seen. Sunken lanes feature in Lord of the Rings, you know. They do.) The point about the garlic flowers, however, is that they’re about a month ahead of their time. The broom bush in my garden is the same. That’s almost in full flower, and both are usually one of the highlights of May. The hawthorn flowers, on the other hand, are showing no inclination to be so precocious. I suspect they fear getting beaten up by their blackthorn cousins if they were.

But the real epiphany came when I was giving the lawn its first mow of the season this afternoon. I was a bit wary of doing it because one of my cocktail of health issues makes any sort of strenuous work uncomfortable, and my lawn has a slope up which the mower has to be pushed. And so it was at the start, but as I went on it became easier. I got to a point where I felt a sudden upwelling of appreciation that I was able to mow my lawn without significant distress, and that was a new one on me. We take such things for granted, don’t we? The lawn needs mowing so you go and mow it. You always have, so there was never any reason to appreciate the fact that it was possible. I enjoyed the feeling and put a little tick in the am I growing up yet box.

I remember seeing a character in a film once luxuriating in the fact that she was alive, and at the time I thought it odd. Being alive is something else we take for granted because we have no conscious experience of not being alive in a physical body. But there was a day shortly after the operation to remove a cancerous kidney four years ago when I learned that particular lesson in abundance. I went for a walk on a warm, calm, sunny day in May. The leaves in wood and hedgerow were fresh and bright green, the woodland floor was delightfully dappled as it is in late spring, the year’s new crops were growing strongly, a profound sense of peace hung in the balmy air, and I stood entranced at seeing the whole thing afresh. I could almost hear the music of Vaughan Williams playing in my head and wondered why I’d never seen it quite like that before.

So there, maybe, is a lesson to bring into the next life: don’t wait until you’re ageing and have a cocktail of health issues before appreciating the value of being young, strong, healthy and alive. Luxuriate in the blessing while you’ve got it.

Matters for a Cold Spring Day.

When I was wondering what to say on the blog today, my first thought went straight to the matter of how wrecked and useless and uncomfortable I’m feeling these days, both physically and mentally. But that seemed unconscionably whingey, and I’ve done quite enough whingeing over the past four years as it is. So I thought I’d move onto the matter of Ukraine.

It didn’t help. The problem here, you see, is that when I read about the atrocities being committed by the Russian troops I wasn’t in the least surprised. The dogs of war have always had a tendency to turn feral and rabid whatever colours they were wearing, and so I’ve been expecting it all along. (When I was researching Gustavus Adolphus, the Swedish military genius, I came across a reference to the fact that after a successful campaign, one of the decisions he had to make was whether to allow his troops to have some soldiery fun with the local civilians. It all came down to political exigency, apparently. This is the nature of war, as any political leader would know.)

So I wasn’t surprised, but I was still shocked and sickened. And the problem with me nowadays is that such feelings no longer stay on the outside of my consciousness; they go deep into the core of me until I feel like one of the victims. It isn’t pleasant, but that’s the nature of empathy.

(Let me side-step onto a completely different track here and suggest that the Belarusians might consider being a little more circumspect in their support for Russia. If the hyena in the Kremlin goes off his head and escalates the war into direct conflict with NATO, Belarus will be in the unenviable position of providing the hyena with his very own human shield. I suppose that’s why he’s keeping the junior hyena close by his side.)

*  *  *

And now let’s move onto a prettier and more wholesome matter. I saw the first lambs of the year today, in the field at the top of my lane. There were seven of them to raise a smile on my jaundiced visage, but one of them was lying by a fence on the far side of the field and looked dead. That was sad, but I reasoned that the little guy might well have been hale and hearty and merely resting after a long frolic. My mind does tend to wander so easily into dark imaginings these days.

The Question of Worth.

On the subject of Ria Lina again (see last post.)

When I looked her up I came across one of the standard questions you nearly always encounter when researching a well known individual on Google. It asked: ‘How much is Ria Lina worth?’

It’s the phrase ‘how much’ that indicates something about modern attitudes because the more transparent version of the question is ‘how much money does Ria Lina have?’ It can be taken to imply that in most human societies, worth is synonymous with wealth. It happens to be an impertinent question because Ms Lina’s wealth is nobody’s business but hers, but the point I’m making is the more important one: a person’s worth is assessable by all manner of personal qualities, none of which have anything to do with money. I would be loath to suggest that any human being is entirely worthless, but some of those who possess the greatest wealth come closest.

A Woman for All Seasons.

I’ve been watching Ria Lina on a TV show this week and I’m much impressed. She has everything – looks, presence, personality, an offbeat sense of humour, an intriguing voice, a brain the size of a planet, and a generous, self-effacing spirit. What more could a woman need to simulate perfection? (Legs, that’s what. She has excellent legs, too.)

I decline to post a picture of her because none of the ones I’ve seen do her full justice. That’s usually the way with people whose projection of self derives more from a strong personality than mere good looks. And I’m only making this post in case she becomes a fan of mine and needs an excuse to invite me to tea.

On Statistics and Suspicions.

Being a veritable anorak when it comes to statistics, I quite like working out how long it’s been since I had an email from a person. The priestess, for example, hasn’t sent me an email for six weeks. It’s exactly six weeks to the day since the priestess communicated with me. (Seems I’ve also developed a penchant for saying the same thing twice using slightly different words.) This does contain a grain of minor significance, however (unlike some statistics), because it seems eminently possible to me that the priestess might never darken my doorstep with her brightness ever again. And that statement makes more sense than you might think on first reading it.

It’s also just about 2½ years since I last visited Ms Medeea, my lovely dentist. This is also of some minor significance because I lost a piece of filling from one of my teeth earlier in the week and now have a grand total of three cavities (one of which was aching in the wind this morning.) I had no cavities the last time I went to the dentist, which causes me to worry that Ms Medeea might not recognise me, and that would be a shame because she’s one of the nicest people I know. So why don’t I pay a visit to my dentist, you might ask. Because…

1. The rate of Covid infections is currently at record levels, and I harbour a vague suspicion that dental surgeries might be a hotbed of Covid infection.

2. Given the progress of my life over the past four years, I’ve become massively reluctant to submit to the attention of any more clinicians. (There’s something I should really see a doctor about, but I’ve had enough. Being in thrall to statistics is a more peaceful – and mostly less painful – pursuit.)

Seeking the Real Metaphor.

I said in an earlier post that the Japanese venerate cherry blossom as a symbol of the perennial state of flux which permeates all aspects of life. It seems to me that the same can also be said of gardens generally. 

When I look at an attractive garden in spring I often feel a hint of frustration that the view is in a state of passage. You can’t hang onto it however much you want to. The flowers that are there now will be gone in May, and new flowers will have taken their place. In June the view will have changed again, and so it will continue until everything will have passed and autumn will be on us to presage the seeming emptiness of winter. At such times I can’t help seeing the garden as a metaphor for the finite nature of life, and that includes mine.

But is it only that? Could it not also be nature’s way of showing us the cycle of life, death and rebirth which, according to eastern religions and philosophies, also applies to us? Is there something hidden in plain sight here, or am I pointlessly juggling concepts because I have nothing better to do?

Getting Away with Murder.

Following the discovery of mass graves in Ukraine, along with other evidence of atrocities, Boris Johnson has said that ‘those responsible must be brought to account.’ This is typical of the empty rhetoric to which politicians are routinely given.

Let us accept for the sake of argument that the received presumption is accurate, and that Russian troops are guilty of committing wanton acts of murder against civilians. The chances of individual soldiers being ‘brought to account’ are effectively nil. So if Johnson is being serious here, who does he consider to be ‘those responsible’?

The fact is that soldiers are necessarily conditioned, both constructively and by dint of circumstances, to have a different perception of right and wrong, and even the value of life itself, to that held by civilians. Such has always been the case to some extent or other. Ergo, anyone who starts a war without impeccably justifiable reasons is de facto a murderer. And we all know who that is in the case of Ukraine.

So what are the chances of Mr Putin being successfully arraigned on a charge of war crimes? Again, virtually nil. There have already been calls for Mr P to be subjected to a Nuremburg-style trial, but this isn’t 1945 when Germany was held in the grip of the Allies and the Nazis could be rounded up to end their days on mass gallows. Nobody is going to invade and crush Russia unless Putin crosses a line and starts WWIII, which isn’t very likely. So unless the great dictator goes completely mad, the person responsible for mass graves and other atrocities will almost certainly get away with it. And that, it seems to me, is that.

(And while I’m on this topic, I have to say that I regard both Tony Blair and GW Bush as also being guilty of mass murder, since the civilian death toll in the 2003 Iraq war was immeasurably higher than that in Ukraine. They both got away with it, and now live a prosperous peace far from the madding crowd.)

Age Problems.

Do you want to know what really worries me about getting old? The fact that I might start to smell bad without realising it so I could keep my distance from people. I suppose the solution is to keep my distance from people anyway, just in case. Come to think of it, I already do, so maybe I should let that one go. 

Hmm… What about dribbling into my tea just as I’m about to drink it? That one would really freak me out, even if there were no witnesses. (Even more than making babies cry by peering into their prams to say hello and welcome. And did you know that I declined to meet the priestess because she would remind me too much of Esmeralda?)

On the Matter of Bed.

I’m having terrible difficulty finding something original to say today, so I thought I’d fall back on the tried and tested remedy of quoting somebody else’s words for a change. These come from Mr Flann O’Brien in his tome, At Swim-Two-Birds. Not only are they fine words in themselves, they also represent the kind of thing I would say if only I had a mind original enough to say them. In other words, I suppose I sort of agree.

Several men are engaged in conversation, and one of them is called Byrne.

What is wrong with Cryan and most people, said Byrne, is that they do not spend sufficient time in bed. When a man sleeps, he is steeped and lost in a limp toneless happiness: awake he is restless, tortured by his body and the illusion of existence.  Why have men spent the centuries seeking to overcome the awakened body? Put it to sleep, that is a better way. Let it serve only to turn the sleeping soul over, to change the blood-stream and thus make possible a deeper and more refined sleep.

He pauses for a drink, then continues (and this is the bit I really like):

I’m not ashamed to admit that I love my bed, said Byrne. She was my first friend, my foster-mother, my dearest comforter…

He pauses for another drink (this is familiar):

Her warmth, he continued, kept me alive when my mother bore me. She still nurtures me, yielding without stint the parturition of her cosy womb. She will nurse me gently in my last hour and faithfully hold my cold body when I am dead. She will look bereaved when I am gone.

These are fine words indeed to somebody much given to reflections on mortality, and much wondering on the place and nature of the final consummation.

Tomorrow I will try to find some words of my own, if indeed I will have a tomorrow, but these will do for now.

On Titles and Values.

I haven’t had a moan about the existence or contents of adverts for a while, have I? OK then, here’s one:

There’s an ad in my inbox at the moment for some sort of employment agency. One of the jobs being advertised is for a Change Management Consultant, and the salary on offer is £950 per day. Two issues arise:

1. I’m curious to know what on earth a Change Management Consultant is. I assume it’s yet another example of that trend prevalent among right-thinking business types to invent gobbledegook at every opportunity so as to sound deeply important. (Remember the ticket collector, now known as a Revenue Protection Assistant?)

2. People on a state pension who’ve spent fifty years working their butts off and paying into the system get less than that in a month.

Further comment would be redundant.

World Cup Woe.

I only watch one TV programme as a matter of routine, and tonight it was displaced to make way for the football World Cup draw. Why? Why does the BBC do this when the full draw results are available on the BBC Sport website within minutes of it being made? I expect there will be complaints, and I expect they will be ignored because the prospect of vicarious success has long been one of the greatest narcotics to which the human animal is ensnared.

But this is just the start. The competition will begin in November, at which point the thoroughfares of Britain – both vehicular and pedestrian – will become heavily laden with drunken, noisy, brain dead idiots resembling rampaging howler monkeys on speed. And if you decline to join them because you regard football as merely one of life’s moderately interesting diversions and nothing more, you will be treated with suspicion at best. In some people’s eyes, declining to drug the dog, lock the baby in a sound proof room, and send the wife to her mother’s for a month so you can settle in an armchair surrounded by large bags of salt-and-fat laden comestibles and at least ten cans of cheap lager makes you no less than a traitor to your country.

Previous World Cups have been relatively untroubled where I live in the countryside. Here’s hoping.