Fragments.

I have no idea why these two lines of a (fairly) well known poem have been running through my head all day: 

 

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough

It isn’t fit for humans now

The only time I ever went to Slough was a very long time ago when I got a job as a merchandiser with a well known confectionery company and had to go there for the training course. It was the most hateful job I ever had but I thought I was over it. The poem was written, incidentally, by John Betjeman, a man generally thought of as a poet for some reason (maybe I’m missing something), two years before the Nazis invaded Poland. I suppose he wasn’t to know (or maybe he did.)

*  *  *

The Shire lambs are now half grown and very sturdy, but they still behave delightfully like children. I, on the other hand, am shrinking, suffering the depletion of strength and energy, and hoping that I’ll soon start feeling free to behave like a child because I won’t give a damn.

*  *  *

This is the list of the people I would like to have put aboard a spaceship and removed to some distant planet where it’s possible to have life, Jim, but not as we know it: Putin, Xi, Erdogan, Bolsonaro, al-Assad, and all those who support them or take advantage of their despicable predilections. They, along with London’s Metropolitan Police, are the prime movers of my current contempt for the human animal.

*  *  *

I was going to tell the story of last night’s dream, but I’m scared it might prove a temptation to something I wouldn’t want to tempt.

*  *  *

One of the few true delights still available to me is to stand in the garden on a warm, still evening when all is silence save the singing of small birds. I know I’ve said it before, and I’ll probably say it again because it’s one of the few things truly worth saying.

*  *  *

I’m now going to have another session of wading through Virginia Woolf’s stream-of-consciousness writing style. I think I’m getting used to it.