Feeling Autumn on the Wind.

According to the UK Met Office’s way of defining the seasons, today is the last day of summer. In the traditional western calendar, summer still has three weeks to run until the equinox. But according to the Celtic calendar, now is the season of Lughnasa and so we’ve already had a month of autumn. I think the Met Office has it right this year.

I was standing in the garden this evening regarding the slim crescent of the new moon resting in a blue space between the drifting clouds. It was just after sunset and I became aware of a cool breeze blowing from the east. The winds have been mostly southerly and westerly for the past few months, but now the course has shifted. It wasn’t particularly cold, but it did feel autumnal.

The trees are feeling it, too. The meteorologists say we’re having a ‘false autumn’ due to the excessively dry summer, and leaf fall is evident everywhere. One lone lime tree in Church Lane was the first to succumb to the premature imperative, but most of the trees now look dry and tired of the year that was and seem to be ready for their autumn repose.

I estimate that the harvest moon will hold court around the 12^th September this year, at which point I hope everyone will head over to my other site and read When the Waves Call which is set on the west coast of Ireland. Well, where else would my favourite story be set?

And just for the record, here's a picture of me showing signs of things to come. (The teeth did improve, but they're going backwards now. Isn't it ever the case with life?)

My Hibernian Escape Clause.

Ashbourne was unusually replete with striking young women today. They were all slim, good looking, perfectly put together, and between 5ft 8 and 6ft tall. I wondered whether I’d been transported to another dimension. ‘Have I gone to heaven or to Sweden?’ I asked myself. And then I caught site of Gimli in Sainsbury’s and realised that I was still on Middle Earth and the Shire was but a short car journey away.

And I’m being reprehensible again, aren’t I? Objectifying women as usual. I stand indicted with drooping head and lowered tail, cowering in expectation of severe reproach. Except I don’t because it’s not my fault; it’s the Irish component in my ancestry. We all know what a roguish lot those Irish men are in the matter of pretty colleens, don’t we? You only have to listen to their folk songs (which I do quite a lot) to get that one. And so my defence is ready:

‘Don’t blame me, madam; blame the Irish in my bloodline. The rest of it – which, as far as I know, is a wholesome mixture of Welsh, Anglo-Saxon, and possibly a peer of the realm a couple of generations back – is the stuff of a perfect gentleman.’

So there you are. I plead not guilty. (The ‘peer of the realm’ stuff, by the way, is probably a fantasy engendered by my grandmother’s habit of secrecy regarding a certain matter, but what’s the point of life if you can’t indulge in the odd fantasy now and then? Putin probably thinks he’s descended from Genghis Khan.)

Dark Thoughts.

I just finished reading one of my favourite Shirley Jackson short stories. It’s called What a Thought, and the plot goes something like this:

A husband and wife are relaxing at home after dinner, and the story is told almost entirely through the medium of the woman’s thoughts. She watches her husband as he reads his newspaper and smokes his cigar. She reflects on how fortunate she is to have such a good, kind, considerate man to share her life with; how their marriage of ten years has been a happy one, and how they’re as fond of one another now as they were at the beginning.

And yet she feels unsettled and begins to have thoughts about how she might murder him. Various possibilities suggest themselves to her, but she keeps pushing them away because she can’t understand why she should have such thoughts. They persist, nonetheless, and eventually she succumbs. She chooses the first option that came into her mind and smashes a heavy glass ashtray over his head, while thinking ‘I didn’t want to do this.’

I gather Carl Jung talked about the need for us to acknowledge our dark side; to let it into our conscious thought where it might be observed, examined and worked upon. That way, according to Jung, it was far less likely to do any harm. The concept means something to me because I have occasionally had similar dark imaginings during my life, and they surprised and even shocked me because they were so diametrically opposed to the person I thought I was. At the same time, they also held a certain fascination, and so I did observe and examine them, and no one came to any harm.

So does this mean that I concur with Jung’s theory? Not really, because I’m the sort to consider theories merely theories, there to be added to other theories on the mental shelf reserved for theories. Not that I dismiss any of them, of course. Theories are, by their very nature, unprovable, but the sheer mystery of existence suggests to me that virtually nothing is impossible. And so I keep an open mind.

But the compelling nature of Jackson’s narrative is further evidence of something I’ve long realised: that, to me at least, good fiction illustrates the human condition more clearly than any number of academic theories or self-help books. It took me a long time to get there.

(And, purely as an irrelevant aside, my other favourite Jackson short story is called All She Said Was Yes.  Clearly, I have an abiding fondness for women who are quietly weird. The few truly weird women I've known in my life have all been too loud and aggressive in projecting their weirdness, and that's a turn-off.)

Passing Traffic.

You know how it is. You’re walking up the lane on a dull but dry summer’s evening when you hear a car approaching at speed from behind, so you step onto the narrow verge running alongside the hedge in order that it may have untrammelled access to the tarmac of the narrow road. As the car passes you notice the registration plate, and realise that it almost certainly contains, and is maybe even being driven by, someone of whom you have long been inordinately fond. But there has been no diminution of speed, no hoot of a horn, and no arm waved from an open window by way of acknowledging your presence. You’d be a bit miffed, wouldn’t you?

But then you continue your sojourn and discover that one of your favourite lady horses – Millie by name – is back in evidence in the field beyond the little wood. She receives your gift of an apple and two carrots enthusiastically, and the day is saved.

*  *  *

Today I read of an indigenous man who has been living alone in the Brazilian rainforest for twenty six years, ever since the other six members of his tribe were killed by wild animals masquerading as miners or loggers or some such. Now he has been found dead - apparently of natural causes - by those who monitor indigenous people from a distance. The news report referred to him as ‘the loneliest man in the world’, so I expect he sent even fewer Christmas cards than I do.

The Snelston Fiction.

A car pulled up beside me in the lane today. It contained two young women who looked to be in their late teens, and the girl in the front passenger seat asked me:

‘Could you tell us the way to Snelston?’

‘Of course,’ I answered, but then my face assumed a look of concern. ‘Oh dear,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘You have dark hair and blue eyes. The people of Snelston are a bit funny about people with dark hair and blue eyes. Something to do with a bunch of wild Irish labourers who did unspeakable things there back in the 17^th century. They’ve never forgotten it and it’s entered local lore. Still, you should be OK as long as you don’t do or say anything to upset them. But if you should see a man with three nostrils – he has the usual two plus a third in the middle – be careful. And one of his eyes is bigger than the other. And he has some sort of growth on the side of one temple which looks like a horn. Best avoid him if you can.’

The girl in the passenger seat said nothing but regarded me quizzically. The driver smiled and said ‘You’re having us on, aren’t you?’

‘I am,’ I said, and then gave them directions to Snelston.

And that’s how my mind amuses me when I’m sitting alone in the garden at twilight with a cup of tea and a pack of malted milk biscuits to dunk in it.

On Phones and Things Foreign.

I had a phone call from BT this morning, from the same young woman to whom I spoke about my fault recently. (Judging by her accent I’d say she was South Asian, probably of Pakistani heritage. My experiences over the past few years have suggested that young Pakistani women are the best people to speak to when you have a problem because – so far – they’ve proved to be calm, friendly, intelligent, and considerate. They listen well and know what to do about it. My hopes always rise when I hear a young Pakistani woman on the other end of the line. But anyway…)

When I spoke to her a few days ago she said she would call me on Tuesday to see how matters were progressing, so why the call three days early? Was it because:

1. She was so concerned for my welfare in the matter of communications that she couldn’t sleep for want of knowing?

2. She had a spare ten minutes and had finished filing her fingernails?

3. She was so enamoured of my dulcet voice that she needed a fresh fix to help her through a bad morning at the workface?

4. She was so tired of me and my whingeing that she needed to get the whole thing sorted so she could have a peaceful weekend without the stress of knowing she was going to have to speak to me again on Tuesday?

I’ll never know, will I, because I didn’t ask. The fault, incidentally, appears to have gone.

*  *  *

Isn’t this business of Egypt and the hijab strange? It appears that in Egypt, hijab-wearing women are discriminated against because the hijab is regarded as an indicator of low wealth and status. In Afghanistan, and some other Muslim countries, failure to wear a suitable head covering is enough to get a woman beaten at least, if not stoned to death. Isn’t the human condition absolutely crazy sometimes?

*  *  *

I was sitting in the garden with a cup of tea this evening when I heard a very high-pitched buzzing sound approach my right ear and hang around for a few seconds. The tone was far too high to be a wasp, a bee, a hornet, or even a housefly, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a sound before. So is this another symptom of climate change? Are we now to be pestered by foreign insects from southern climes, come to invade our green and pleasant land? If so, I imagine the French must already have them. Or could they be of Gallic provenance?

So what are they? Do they, perhaps, originate in the vineyards of the Languedoc? Are they attracted to the smell of wine, which I’m pleased to say I never drink? And are they inclined to attempt the building of nests in one’s ears? I’m generally quite tolerant of bugs, but there’s a limit.

Seeking the Essence.

I remember as a child being very taken with all things to do with myth or mystery. The myths came mostly in the form of King Arthur and Robin Hood, the mystery with tales of the supernatural. I would avidly read about such subjects and imagine the physical scenarios in which they were placed. But the physical aspects were vague and disjointed; what I experienced most strongly was the hidden essence of the environment. That was what I found most thrilling.

The problem with essence, of course, is that it touches none of the five senses to which our bodies are restricted. It can’t be seen, smelt, tasted, touched, or heard. It exists inside us, even though it might have its root somewhere on the outside.

And so for all my life, that has been the place I’ve most wanted to visit. There’s little in the physical world which attracts me sufficiently to want to make the effort to go there; where I’ve always wanted to go is to that place inside of me which I hope will project its own form of apparent physicality sufficient to allow the kind of navigation to which our physical forms are habituated.

I haven’t managed it yet and I doubt I ever will because I’m tempted to follow the standard interpretation of such a phenomenon – that I was just a sensitive and imaginative child who never quite grew up. And yet I still cling to the hope that I shall one day find a door that will offer access to a reality far more thrilling and engaging than the one available to the physical body functioning in a material world.

The priestess once described having entered such a state after taking a particular drug, but she avoided the usual trap of perceiving it in retrospect as merely a drug-induced illusion. She recognised it instead as an alternative form of reality. I respected that interpretation, and I envied her.

A Few Notes for a Thursday in August.

I had another frustrating day yesterday trying to get several issues sorted out with British Telecom. I spent a whole hour on the phone being told one thing by one person, having it contradicted by another, and then being given a garbled explanation to a query by a man from billing. I worked his explanation out for myself and read it back to him. ‘Is that correct?’ I asked. ‘Well, sort of,’ he replied. In consequence, I was a little concerned about the contents of my bill which I received in the mail this morning. I fully expected to have to spend another hour on the phone arguing again, but no. The bill was just as I knew it should be and it’s already been paid. Why does life have to be like this? (The phone line fault, however, is still extant. Engineer booked for Saturday.)

*  *  *

On a brighter note, I finally saw a flock of house martins hunting over the garden this evening. They left it late this year. I used to be able to watch them on a daily basis over the whole summer, but tonight’s show was this year’s first. I expect it’s all to do with climate change. (I wonder whether BT are going to start using that as an excuse for their ineptitude in the matter of customer service before too long.)

*  *  *

There’s an ad on my email inbox page for EDF, one of the UK’s power suppliers. It’s obviously in response to mounting concern over the insane rise in fuel prices which are bad and about to get a lot worse. It says: Our handy app lets you manage your account on the go, and we’re here for you on WhatsApp and SMS. Note the classic corporate claim: ‘we’re here for you.’ This is typical smoke-screening. The fact is that energy prices are rising at a crazy rate which is unmanageable for very many people and will cause horrendous debt issues, and no amount of 'managing' it on an app is going to make any difference.

*  *  *

Today’s good news is that we had some proper rain – over an hour of reasonably heavy stuff which we badly needed. And its timing was impeccable. It started just as I was shutting the door to go for my walk, and ended a few minutes after I got back. Since I was wearing a good quality raincoat and wellington boots, only my knees got wet so I didn’t complain.

*  *  *

And here’s a little oddity to finish the post: I’ve started to have warm feelings towards Sweden and the Swedes for some reason. I still think they have a tendency to exude glumness in the matter of films and TV dramas, but their general demeanour and attitudes have begun to appeal to me. From what I’ve seen and heard, both of and from them, it appears to be calm, considerate, open-minded, intelligent, commendably lacking ego, and altogether agreeable. It’s odd to think that in all my life I’ve never met a Swede, and I’ve certainly never been there, so maybe I’m just imagining it all. Maybe it’s the fact that of all the Nordic nations, theirs is the only flag to have yellow on it. That sort of thing matters to me. Or maybe it was that outrageous back-heeled goal scored by Alicia ‘Mad Dog’ Russo in the Euro semi-final against Sweden, and I just feel sorry for them. It must have been a bitter pill to swallow.

The Woman from Montana.

I have no idea what brought it about, but for some reason tonight I remembered the young woman from Montana who I think I mentioned a long time ago on this blog.

She said she was American, and if she’d been born and raised in Montana I suppose she probably was, although I later learned that Montana is considered something of an oddity even among Americans, at least those from the more celebrated states like California, Texas, and New York. (I always thought Florida to be the oddest of American states, you know. It sort of dangles limply at the bottom of the map, reminding one of things about which one would prefer not to be reminded.)

In any event, the young woman in question (I think it best that I don’t give her name, just in case any reader from America should know someone of that name who was born and bred in Montana and feel disposed to dish the dirt, as I gather the vernacular has it) seemed to take an uncommon interest in me. She wanted to visit me at my house after she’d ‘hit the store’, which I managed correctly to translate as ‘go to Sainsbury’s.’ She wanted to accompany me when I went out somewhere. She wanted me to show her the city centre, even after I’d protested that it was as unprepossessing a city centre as she was ever likely to see. When she went to relieve herself she came back still fastening the zip on her jeans, an activity which required rather less time than it took to walk from the bathroom. And twice during our brief liaison she contrived an opportunity to say ‘but then, I’ve never seen you naked.’

Odd, don’t you think?

The point is, you see, she was a post graduate student at a nearby university, so I presume she must have been possessed of a modicum of intelligence. And she was, I would estimate, around twenty five years younger than me. And what makes it even odder is the fact that I was in a bad way at the time, being in a situation which was causing me to suffer the most intense period of acute anxiety that I have ever had the misfortune to experience, so I couldn’t have been the best of company.

I remember her telling me that she was forever falling foul of the law in dear old Montana on account of her refusal to keep her dog on a leash in public places. Maybe she was intent on impressing me with her boldness, a feature of American women which receives mention in both Lolita and The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Maybe it was meant to embolden the cold old Brit who, she undoubtedly presumed, would be more familiar with the more diffident and refined ladies of the Old Country.

It wasn’t long before her boyfriend arrived (presumably also from Montana) to keep her company. We went for a drink and I asked him what he thought of England so far. ‘It’s OK,’ he replied with evident reluctance. As far as I recall, that was all he said for the duration of the evening, and I never saw the Woman from Montana again, and she never did get to see me naked.

Now it occurs to me to wonder whether she ever thinks of me as she approaches the privations of middle age. I expect the dog is long gone.

On Shame, Learning, and Prospects.

I was struggling to think of something to write about on the blog earlier because I’ve had no encounters with person or beast, not been anywhere, and not done anything creative or even notably useful. Nothing in the garden, nothing in the house, and not even a phone call to try to sort out a problem which shouldn’t be there. (I did think of writing a piece about the wider societal significance of the direct debit system, which is a particular bête noir of mine, but I got bored just thinking about it.) And so I felt a sense of shame to add to all the other reasons to feel dutifully ashamed until I remembered that life is not so much about doing as it is about learning. Shame done for the day; time to cook dinner.

And then along came some correspondence and I learned something very interesting…

Did you know that in America, at least the civilised bit in the north east, it’s required that you get a doctorate before you can have a baby? I had it on good authority, and it concerned the cleverest person I’ve ever known who not only attained the doctorate by way of qualification, but also acquired a doctor to assist in the process. Smart creatures, these Borgs.

As for me and my day, well… The one reasonably useful thing I did was sort out some stuff in the shed ready to take it off to the municipal tip in Ashbourne tomorrow. I’m still possessed of this notion, you see, that I don’t have much time left, so it would be no more than reasonable to start clearing out my rubbish in order to save some poor soul having to do it for me just as they’re about to go on holiday. I’m considerate like that.

And that led me to consider what I want to be in my next life. I eventually decided on a big silverback gorilla because the prospect of being a herbivore at the top of the food chain sounds just about right.

A Muse on Covert and Overt Allies.

We all think, do we not, that the war in Ukraine is simply a matter of one big bully state attacking and fighting the brave and determined defenders of a much smaller state. And yet right from the beginning I felt a nagging suspicion that a third party might take an interest in the matter – one which might have reason to be anti-Russian, which is expert in covert operations, and which is effectively immune from open reprisal. That’s why I wasn’t surprised when I read of the car bombing involving Darya Dugina recently.

I’m probably wrong, of course. This is merely idle speculation, not a conspiracy theory.

But what of the conspiracy theory which I imagine must have taken root in Russia by now? The fact that Durina’s father changed his plans and didn’t accompany his daughter in the same car is interesting. Some of those who believe that dark plots are routinely hatched beneath the radar must have wondered whether it was more than mere fortuitous coincidence. Alexander Dugin is, after all, a leading ally of Putin. A latter day Abraham and Issac situation, perhaps? Probably not, but it would put a wholly different complexion on the matter, wouldn’t it?

I’m musing again, you understand, just musing.

Today and Nothing Much.

I have a lot of stuff running amok in my brain at the moment, some serious and some not so serious, but all of which might be suitable for the making of blog posts at another hour on another day.

I could talk about my sense of astonishment at the righteous indignation being expressed by official Russian channels to the Darya Dagina incident. I could talk about my drive to the other side of the big city, how I got trapped in a massive traffic jam on the dual carriageway, and how it disappeared suddenly and mysteriously. I could talk about my fresh appreciation of Shirley Jackson’s literary merit occasioned by a re-reading of some of her short stories. I could talk about the absurd text message I received from the NHS regarding this winter’s flu jab, and how it won’t be long before we’re instructed that we must even start going to the toilet online. I could talk about the two big, powerful horses which have appeared in a field down the lane, how they took a keen interest in my presence and came to say hello, and how the slightly bigger grey bullied the slightly smaller skewbald. (I think I'm going to need more apples.) Or I could talk about the strange dream of wheelie bins and the sense of utter confusion they granted me when I woke up prematurely.

But my brain needs a rest and I’m tired, so I’ll just mention that we had a little welcome rain this afternoon combined with a pleasantly warm airflow. It made the evening stroll most refreshing and I even said hello to four people as well as the two horses. Saying hello to four people during the course of one short stroll is rather more momentous than you might think, and so the daylight hours, at least, ended on a positive note. Unfortunately, I now have the song Down by the Sally Gardens running through my head on a loop. I’ve no idea why, but it’s almost as irritating as dreaming about wheelie bins.

A Disturbing Sight.

I was walking along Mill Lane this afternoon when I heard a strange warbling sound coming from beyond a small clump of trees. Thinking it might be an injured bird or animal, I peered through the trees and saw an alpaca attempting to mate with a sheep which was relaxing in a prone position on the grass and didn’t seem to give a damn. The alpaca was the one making the noise, and it stared at me with a look of indignation. Not wishing to be privy to such an outrage, I hurried on.

The Matter of Durya Dugina and Innocence.

I was reading the news report today about Darya Dugina, daughter of a prominent Putin ally, who was killed by a car bomb in Moscow yesterday. I feel the need to say a few words about it, and so that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll keep it short.

First of all, it must be obvious by now that I abhor violence except in certain circumstances such as genuine self-defence or the justifiable defence of the innocent. I’m not the sort to say ‘she deserved it’ and I have no intention of giving that impression. But let’s ask a couple of questions:

1. How many innocent Russian civilians have been killed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Is Darya Dugina the first?

2. How many innocent Ukrainian civilians have been killed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Have they stopped counting yet?

And then there’s the fact that Darya Dugina was a strongly pro-Putin journalist who made it her business to openly support Russian aggression. She had a right to her views, of course, and she had the right as a journalist to express them. But let’s not forget that journalists are among society’s foremost influencers, so they must accept a certain degree of responsibility for the effect they have on public opinion, in this case public support for the invasion of Ukraine. Does that not at least slightly dilute her right to the status of innocence, at least when compared with those truly innocent civilians killed by a rocket attack on a Ukrainian shopping mall?

I’m not gloating here, you understand, just offering what I consider to be a rational view of the matter. 

And that’s it.

Writing and Waiting.

It’s a well accepted axiom that conversational English is not the same as written English, at least it’s not supposed to be if you’ve been brought up to appreciate the finer points of literacy in a sophisticated society. (I suppose the same is true of all languages, but English is the only one I know to any extent so it’s the only one I can talk about. I’m a little ashamed of the fact, but that’s a separate subject.)

The point I want to make, however, is this: Because I generally follow the mainstream attitude with regard to language use, I find myself irritated when I read YouTube comments in which people write as they speak. I even become a little sniffy about it, which is a terrible admission but there you are. But it now occurs to me that there’s no reason why people shouldn’t write English as they speak it, as long as it doesn’t include so much regional dialect that it becomes unintelligible. In fact, it makes good sense.

I have the opposite problem. I’ve spent so many years honing different writing styles to suit the requirements of different mediums that I now speak as I write, and I can almost hear people thinking: ‘why doesn’t this bloke talk like we do?’ And so I find myself translating my thoughts to suit the person I’m talking to, simply in order not to be thought pompous. It can be a little tiring sometimes.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for that email or phone call or letter which will energise my tired spirit and put a spring back in my step. I don’t know who it will come from or what it will say, but I’m sure it’s waiting in the wings somewhere. Or maybe it isn’t; maybe the black dog has eaten it. (I’m becoming ever more desperate to find something funny to say.)

*  *  *

And you know how I go on about the fact that the corporate world and the bureaucrats are exerting more and more control over our lives? (I had another example today.) Well, it seems some philosopher called Deleuze has written a book saying pretty much the same thing. That’s the good news.

On Freedom of Speech and the Little Accident.

Today I felt that I should make a long post on the subject of freedom of speech. It came about as a result of reading that some young ‘influencer’ (God, how I hate that term) called Andrew Tate has had some of his social media accounts closed down because of the unacceptable nature of their content.

His opinions run along similar lines to those who objected to the suffragette movement in the 19^th century. He says things like ‘there is no such thing as an independent woman’, ‘women must take responsibility for sexual abuse’, and ‘if I’m to be responsible for a woman, I must have authority over her.’

Strong stuff, eh? And wholly unacceptable to somebody like me, but does he have a right to hold such opinions? Of course he does; we all have a right to our opinions. So, second question: does he have the right to express those opinions to the size of audience now available to him through social media?

My first instinct is to say that he does, because the right to express opinions is fundamental to our modern concept of democracy and our holding to more liberal mores regarding freedom of speech than those to which our ancestors subscribed. But it isn’t that simple because the problem here is the size of the audience.

Let’s go back a few decades and ask whether Hitler had the right to preach Nazi ideology, which included the opinion that Jews are the world’s pariah and should be physically attacked and ultimately annihilated. If you hold to that view, then you must stop blaming Hitler for the Holocaust and blame the German people instead. Hitler was expressing an opinion to a mass audience; it was the audience who went along with him. Not simple, is it?

Personally, I would like to see Mr Tate dropped into a deep, dark hole from which there is no escape and with only Donald Trump for company, but that’s just my opinion.

Other news:

I had a fall today. I was coming down a ladder, having just trimmed part of the tall hedge at the bottom of my garden, when the distorting effect of my eye protection goggles fooled me into thinking that the second step at the bottom was actually the first. I ended up flat on my back on the unremitting tarmac of the lane.

It was a little embarrassing. My first thought was that some vehicle might, just at that inopportune moment, be coming around the bend a little further up the lane. It might even have been the Lady B, and how terrible would that have been? Her Land Rover Discovery might have run over me and reduced me to a soggy mess (rather than the merely weak and ineffectual mess to which I readily admit.) And even if she’d managed to stop in time, it would still have given her a shock, poor thing, and she might have been forced to admit – maybe even orally, though I doubt it – that she would rather I didn’t die just yet.

No such catastrophe ensued, however, and the only injury I sustained was to my pride. I’m highly averse to being so clumsy as to be reduced to a supine position on a public road, you see. It’s indecorous to say the least.

On Time and Cycles.

I went for my now-customary evening walk this evening, along Church Lane as far as the Copper Beech tree this time (it’s a place which holds a fond memory.) It was warm but damp with a heavy cloud cover and a little light rain in the air, conditions which I find ideal for engagement with the musing habit.

I was struck most strongly by the sense of time flowing endlessly, of how countless people have lived and loved and laughed and cried and fought and worked and raised families and, ultimately, died here for at least a thousand years and probably longer. They would have tramped the same lanes and footpaths, seen pretty much the same fields even before the Enclosure Acts, gathered on the same spot where the modern 14^th century church now stands (the current church is the third to occupy the site, there having been an earlier Norman building and a Saxon one before that), and watched the sun set over the same range of hills on the far side of the river valley. And with it came that familiar sense of life’s conveyor belt which runs on and on, seemingly for ever, picking us up for a ride and then pushing us off again a little way along the line.

(At such times I prefer not to ask where it came from, where it’s going, and why it exists at all. The moment is more poignant for being kept simple.)

And then I spent an even simpler ten minutes leaning on a farm gate, watching two tractors ploughing and raking a field a little way in the distance. I’ve always found the ploughing process particularly meaningful, being the manual labour by which we prepare the land for the production of next year’s food.

It’s also part of the rotating colour scheme of rural living, something which people in the cities sadly miss. I remember that field being brown before, and then it turned a pale green as the crops began their own little life, and then the green grew stronger as the plants developed, before turning the gold of ripened wheat and barley ready to sustain us on our journey. There followed a short spell of pale buff after the harvest, and now it’s brown again. No wonder the city dwellers think more of lifestyle than of life.

And so it’s back to the matter of time, in some ways the greatest of tyrants, but one we have no choice but to embrace if our perception of existence is to have any meaning. And what of cycles, I ask? If the seasons and the land and all things which grow in it are designed to go around and around on an ever turning wheel, why should we be any different?

*  *  *

In loosely connected vein, I might mention that I did the toughest job in the garden today. It was a tough job when I first did it, when I was sixteen years younger, fitter and stronger. It gets tougher with every year that time allows me.

Rare Treats.

I had my monthly treat this evening. The Lady B’s dear mama smiled and waved as she drove past me on the lane. It happens about once a month on average, and usually finds its way onto the blog because it’s about the only treat I get these days.

I suppose the rain was a sort of treat. It did rain today – not a lot, but it was real water falling from the sky. The windscreen wipers grumbled a bit at having to wake up after weeks of quiet repose, but they performed well enough in the circumstances.

The garden, on the other hand, was not quite so accommodating. As I walked up the path I heard little voices raised in unison: ‘Call that rain, do you, because we don’t. I suppose you’re going to use it as an excuse for not watering us tonight.’

Did I feel guilty and hang my head in shame? I did.

The Great American Stand Up.

There’s a small news report on the BBC News website to the effect that Sarah Palin is attempting a comeback. I remember Sarah Palin when she was the world’s biggest political joke, having assumed the reins after George W Bush left the stage. And it seems she’s being roundly supported by the world’s second biggest political joke (but by far the most dangerous) Donald Trump.

The absurdity of this situation led me to imagine a story which has been gently simmering in the background for some time. Briefly, it goes like this:

Trump manages to cheat his way back into the White House.

He takes the USA out of NATO (he threatened to do so during his earlier tenure.)

He then makes a deal with his pal Putin to the effect that if the Russians want to invade Europe, America won’t intervene. Putin seizes the opportunity, declares himself Tsar, and assumes the mantle of Vlad the Great to be inscribed in the annals of history.

Trump has a quiet word in the ear of Mr Xi of China. ‘If you want Taiwan, take it. We don’t give a damn. And you can take the rest of those shithole countries in Asia as well if you like, as long as you make sure they buy lots of American automobiles. Japan? Yeah, why not? Japanese dames are all ugly anyway, but have those dippy anime guys pay over half their profits to Disney Corp. Oceania? Where the hell’s that?’

Trump then sets about taking over Canada and the South American countries and renaming the whole land mass Greater America. (He always said he’d make America great again, didn’t he?)

And so WWIII gets underway. The Russian bear manages to subdue Europe, the Chinese dragon holds sway over Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Greater America is isolated with the might of Russia to the east and China to the west, and everybody’s happy. Except, of course, those Americans with an IQ over about fifty who now have no escape route.

The End.

Fanciful I know; just my befuddled British mind running pointlessly amok. But you must admit: America is never short of a joke in the matter of politics. Liz Cheney probably thinks so.

Banking on the Women in White.

The world is going through stormy waters at the moment, and to somebody with as strong a neurotic tendency as mine, that’s a problem. I find myself constantly pressured by the incessant, nagging conviction that the ship of life is about to be swamped and go under, either through environmental catastrophe, economic meltdown, or the onset of WWIII. (I also worry that Trump will somehow get back into the White House, but that seems unlikely since the Republican Party appears to be split between conservative traditionalists and redneck dunderheads. Maybe the Democrats will benefit from a split vote for once.)

I’ve been feeling like this all year. The only thing which has put a smile on my face has been the English women’s football team winning the European Championship, so maybe I should put my faith in them to save the day – to save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray, as it were.

No pressure, ladies, just do your best and at least I’ll have you to think of when the lights go out.

My First Dead Hedge.

One of the characters in Klara and the Sun is an ex-pat Englishwoman living in America. At one point in the book she says she misses the hedgerows which are the standard rural boundary markers in lowland Britain. She complains that in America it’s all fences which are temporary structures easily removed, whereas hedges are rooted deep in the ground and connect people with the earth. So where am I going with this?

Well, today I had another first (this year has been utterly replete with firsts.) I saw a stretch of hawthorn hedgerow – hawthorn is the commonest hedgerow shrub – about twenty feet long which looked dead. Nearly all the hedges in the Shire are looking tired and depleted after the hot, dry summer we’ve been having, but nowhere else do they look dead. In fact, I’ve never seen a dead hedge in the landscape ever, but this one was black and the branches were brittle.

Hedgerows have been a fundamental feature of the lowland British landscape for hundreds of years. Most of those currently defining the patchwork of fields were planted during the various periods of enclosure legislation in the 16^th, 18^th, and early 19^th centuries, and some are even older than that. They’re a lot of work because they have to be trimmed every year, but they’re havens of wildlife and have a character which would be impossible to quantify. I remember there being much concern among environmentalists some decades ago when cereal farmers, especially in the east of England, were grubbing up hedgerows for the sake of more efficient – and therefore more profitable – production, but that seems to have stopped now, thank heaven.

So what will the farmer who owns the dead hedge do about it? He might replant it, which would then take several years to become re-established. I think it more likely that he will cut it down and replace it with post and wire fencing, and that would be a shame. 

 

On Water and the Wheel.

I was thinking today that we in the developed world don’t respect water enough. We respect its place in certain aspects of the environment such as heaving seas, placid lakes, bubbling streams, or the majesty of mighty rivers. And we respect it as a facility when the water utilities who have to collect, store, purify and deliver it tell us we mustn’t waste it. But then we simply turn a tap on and take it for granted. We rarely respect water for its own sake, despite knowing that without it we couldn’t exist as physical beings.

In the process of idly musing on the subject, the concept of ‘wasting’ caught my attention and I began to wonder whether it’s possible to actually do that in the broader sense. Surely, I thought, water is indestructible. However much we ‘waste’ it in terms of end use, it will always end up somewhere in the earth or in some water course before it goes through the water cycle all over again. And so I did a bit of research on the subject of water.

There’s been an awful lot of words written about it down the years. Some of it is mind-boggling yet practical, like the fact that the water we drink today is the same stuff as has been on the earth for an estimated 5 billion years. Other writings have been more, should we say, speculative, such as whether water is sentient, whether it has memory, and whether it reacts to emotion. Much of this I discovered by following the questions people have asked about it on Google, the most mind-numbing of which was:

Who invented water?

I’ve often found it intriguing to imagine that there must once have been an early Homo Sapien who discovered the rolling tendency of round things and realised that this could have very useful applications. But wondering who invented water never occurred to me.

A Footnote:

When I lived on the coast of Northumberland I was in the habit of walking into the sea every morning to pay my respects to the spirit of the water. I entertained the vague notion, you see, that it might protect me from drowning. I suspect the habit had its origins either in a race memory carried in the genes, or possibly an earlier incarnation as an Andaman Islander.

Ignoring the Evidence.

We in the UK are experiencing an unusually hot, dry summer this year. Most of Europe is, and I’ve little doubt that it’s a precursor of worse to come over the next few decades. We’re getting more wild fires; water levels in rivers and lakes are critically depleted; farmers are losing crops which they’ve worked hard to grow; and wildlife is being affected because the wild plants on which many of them depend are falling into decay earlier than usual. We’re being warned by those in the know that we need to take action to slow the warming trend, and in the short term we need to change our habits with regard to water usage.

But you know what will happen, don’t you? Next summer might be a cool, wet one because seasonal conditions will continue to fluctuate even as global warming accelerates. And then the naysayers will smile knowingly, convinced that the warnings are nothing more than scaremongering, and that everything is just as it should be and always has been. And there won’t be any point in showing them the graph of seasonal conditions over the past two hundred years which exhibits a clear and undeniable upward trend because they probably don’t understand graphs. Chilling, isn’t it?

Maybe I shouldn’t concern myself too much because I’ll probably be dead before the worst effects come to pass. And I’ve long thought that humanity needs a good shake up because I’ve long thought that the way the developed world lives is too obsessed with lifestyle and too ignorant of life. But if reincarnation is a fact, I am concerned about what sort of world I’m going to be born into next time around.

All day I’ve been trying to think of something silly to say on this blog, but I’m struggling. (Although it does occur to me that maybe today’s humans are reincarnated dinosaurs. Is that silly enough?)

Ms Anti-Robin Hood.

Two of the big issues currently running in the UK are the cost of living crisis and the vote to establish who will replace Boris Johnson as the next Conservative (Tory) Party leader. Whichever of the two candidates is chosen will automatically become the next Prime Minister, and the Prime Minister has a great deal of power.

The bookmakers’ favourite – by a long way – is a woman called Liz Truss. Obviously, I don’t know her personally and so my opinion of her must remain speculative, but on the basis of her manner and her intentions she appears to be a pretty nasty piece of work. The Tory party is already favoured with the nickname ‘the nasty party’, so if Ms Truss becomes leader we will have the dubious prospect of having a nasty leader of the nasty party. Oh, such fun.

What she says she intends to do if she becomes Leader (and therefore Prime Minister) is reduce taxation in order to stimulate the economy. That would be fine if we were living in ordinary times, but these are not ordinary times; we have a cost of living crisis going on which is really going to bite once winter arrives. And Ms Truss says she doesn’t agree with handing out allowances to help poorer people cope. She’s going to reduce taxes instead to solve the problem.

So who benefits from tax cuts? Well, it’s pretty simple really. The more you earn, the more tax you pay so the more you benefit from tax cuts. In other words, tax cuts largely benefit the rich. The poor on the other hand – the low paid, the unemployed, older people living on state pensions etc – mostly pay little or no tax because they don’t have sufficient income. And these are the very people who are going to be in greatest distress from generally rising prices and, in particular, the absolutely insane increase in power bills. This is the prospect facing the poor of Britain if Ms Truss wins the election to be the next Prime Minister.

So let’s look at another angle by asking who is entitled to vote in this election. Simple again – only the members of the Conservative Party are, and that amounts to between 160,000 and 200,000 people depending on which website you read. And even the higher number – 200,000 – amounts to mere 0.3% of the population.

And so I ask you: is it right in a so-called democracy that the British public should be forced to accept somebody like Liz Truss as Prime Minister on the whim of such a tiny minority of the electorate? Her current tenure will only run until the next General Election, of course, but that’s likely to be 3-3½ years away. It gives her plenty of time to do an awful lot of damage.

(Maybe there will be riots on the streets, but Liz already has that one covered. When one of her speeches was interrupted recently by protesters, she responded by saying that she will work to reduce the right to protest. So for ‘riots on the streets’, read ‘bloody riots on the streets.’ Where are we going?)

Retaining Some Prospect of a Future.

I finally got the all clear on the CT scans this afternoon, and was politely informed that the delay in letting me know was my fault. I don’t do as I’m told, you see. I choose which bits of the screening process to accept and which not, and that messes up their systems.

’Twas ever thus. I’ve always had to do things my own way rather than the ways prescribed by my elders and betters. It’s why I accept certain medications and decline others, a practice which causes some clinicians to treat me in an irritated and dismissive manner.

I expect it demonstrates some deficiency on my part, and I know it makes me a pain in the ass sometimes, but I doubt I’ll ever grow up. And it occurs to me that regular readers of this blog probably know me better than most of those who know me personally.

Just off to post a letter to the complaints department of British Telecom now. I find it hard to understand how a commercial organisation of that size can be so inept in the matter of customer services.

The Week's Notes to Date.

1. I was visited by a sparrow hawk again today while I was sitting in the garden with my evening cup of tea. It flew onto the washing line about fifteen feet away and perched there for a while. The sparrow hawk is a rare sight in my garden which usually only happens once every two or three years, and even then they don’t settle down somewhere and watch me. Maybe I should research the question of what the incidence of unusual sightings of hawks is supposed to denote when they’re messages from the universe, or maybe I shouldn’t.

2. Remember the angel Ellie May from an earlier post? Twice this week she’s undertaken to call me back over my landline phone problem, and twice she’s failed to do so. I suppose even angels have the right to be fickle sometimes.

3. I had my visit from Emma, the land agent, today. She was fifty minutes late keeping the appointment, and the first thing she said when she came in was ‘I have a meeting with William (the landlord) at one, so I only have ten minutes. What’s the problem?’ The landed gentry are known to complain that ‘you can’t get the quality of staff these days.’ Meanwhile, we tenants have trouble getting the quality of land agent.

4. I had an ice cream in Ashbourne yesterday. Not such a big deal, you might think, but it is to me. I’m on a mission, you see, to reduce my intake of fat because of the vascular problem, but I’d decided to allow myself one summer ice cream for old time’s sake. Yesterday being a warm and pleasant one, the decision was made and the comestible purchased. It was a disappointment. It was supposed to be vanilla flavoured, but you would hardly have known it.

5. Twice this week I’ve taken an evening stroll up the lane to take an apple and a carrot for my friend Rosie, and twice she hasn’t been there.

I’ve known worse weeks.

Learning from the Flies.

During the current spells of hot, sunny weather, I’ve noticed that a number of the horses in the Shire are wearing hoods made of some gauze-like material. I mused on the likely reason for it and came up with the bright idea that it was to protect the animals’ eyes from the glare of the sun. Now I don’t think it was such a bright idea, because…

This evening I trudged off to the far end of Mill Lane with an apple and a carrot for the little white pony, and she was wearing just such a hood. When she came over to accept her treats I found myself coming under wholesale assault by horse flies, and the penny dropped. The gauze-like hoods, I thought, are actually to protect the eyes and nose from the attention of irritating little flying things which would otherwise drive the poor horses mad.

I’d call that an example of serendipity, and I expressed my thanks to the flies for their important lesson by not swatting any of them.

The UN and the Concept of Security.

The United Nations organisation was founded after the devastation of WWII in order to keep the peace in the world, and at the head of the UN is the Security Council made up of the five major combatants on the Allied side during the war – USA, UK, France, Russia and China. So let’s see what’s been happening lately.

In 2003 the US and UK engaged in the probably unwarranted invasion of Iraq, Russia is currently engaged in the unwarranted invasion of Ukraine, and China is dedicated to taking full sovereignty of Taiwan by force if necessary. It’s quite absurd, isn’t it? So much for the concept of security. It only needs France to do something dastardly and we’d have a full set.

It got me thinking about which countries I would trust to do the job properly, and I came up with three – New Zealand, Iceland, and Bhutan. So there’s my new Security Council. Sorted.

(You might think I’m joking because this is inconceivable, but joking? Not quite.)

A Kind of Synchronicity.

I just remembered that today is the anniversary of my mother’s death. I looked at the clock and it said 11.20. My mother died at 11.20pm on 9^th August 1995. Isn’t that odd?

The NHS and Coloured Tickets.

It appears that the UK’s National Health Service – the dear old NHS, much loved by the population and envied by many other countries – is under intolerable pressure at the moment. It’s actually been under pressure for quite a few years through underfunding, and the pandemic brought it close to its knees.

But it isn’t so surprising, since the concept of a universal, free-to-use health service doesn’t really sit too well with the increasing reliance on free market economics foisted on us by Mrs Thatcher’s policies. We live in the age of monetarism, in which the emphasis is on reduced taxation so that people will have more money to spend, spend, and spend some more. (Thereby creating the kind of addiction which has been the subject of several earlier posts.)

The problem with reducing taxation, at least in the short term, is that it means there’s less money going into the exchequer so there’s less money to spend on public services like the NHS. And that’s why I fear that the days of the NHS as we’ve known it for the past 70+ years are numbered. I imagine we’ll retain a public system of sorts, but it will be much reduced in scope and quality as the advertisers get to work persuading all those who can afford it – and many who can’t – to take out private medical insurance. We might even change its name from the National Health Service to something like ‘the People’s Health Facility’, and then those who have no option but to use it will be marked out as belonging to the lowest social class.

It reminds me of something I witnessed as a schoolboy. Every Monday morning we were required to hand over payment for the week’s lunchtime meals and we were given blue tickets to demonstrate entitlement. But the poorer kids – those whose parents were in receipt of some kind of means-tested welfare payments – were entitled to free meals, and they were given white tickets. Why the need for different colour tickets? When those kids walked into the dinner hall bearing white tickets, it was immediately evident to all those in visual range that here were the different ones, those belonging to the basement tribe populated by lesser beings. I found that unfair to the benighted parents, and even more unfair to the innocent kids.

Four years ago the NHS saved my life, and it didn’t cost me a penny. I wonder whether my daughter’s generation, and my grandchildren’s generation, will be able to rely on the same good fortune. Or will that age old class awareness push us even further down the slope of social division?

Klara and the Change of Mind.

I mentioned some time ago that my latest reading matter was Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. I usually offer some thoughts on my latest books and their authors (especially when they’re ripe for lampooning as was the case with such novels as Dracula, Frankenstein and The Duh Vinci Code) but I’ve said nothing about Klara, and the reason is simple: from the outset I was disappointed with it. But now I’ve finished it and I’ve changed my mind. I have, and here’s the reason.

At first I was discomfited by the writing style. It was too simple, too prosaic, utterly lacking any fragment of richness or lyricism. I’ve long made it known that a book’s writing style is of pre-eminent importance to me. I love richness and lyricism because I love the power of words for their own sake, and there was nothing here to whet my appetite.

And then there was the fact that the story is told by the eponymous Klara. Every aspect of the plot is seen through her observations and her limited knowledge of the world, and it may simply be stated that for the first two thirds of the book, seemingly very little of note happens. Klara, you see, is an advanced form of android who begins the story sitting in a shop window waiting to be bought as an AF (artificial friend) to a 14-year-old girl with an unspecified illness. Once the sale is made, it continues in a mostly domestic vein which only just managed to keep me turning the page.

But then, at about the two thirds mark, we’re given the big revelation: the real reason for purchasing Klara in the first place. And so the story grows suddenly darker – in a sad rather than sordid way – and my interest was taken to a higher level. My nightly readings even became shorter because I didn’t want the book to end. Eventually it did end, of course, and the final scene is high on understated poignancy. And for the next few days my mind kept coming back to it, which is surely a major sign of quality.

At that point I came to realise what should have been obvious from the beginning: the writing style had to be the way it was because it was being expressed by an android who would have limited knowledge of language and would lack the mental faculty to understand the concept of lyricism. To write it any other way would have been irrational.

And so I finished the book happy with the whole work, if a little saddened by what is an appropriate ending. Good endings are very important, and this is a good one. Accordingly, I’m more than content to rate the book highly and recommend it with one proviso: be prepared to persevere through the gentle, seemingly inconsequential stuff. It’s all worth it in the end.

Being Reluctantly Drawn by Darkness.

A little over seventy years ago a man called Timothy Evans was hanged for the murder of his wife and baby daughter. The police investigation into the case was tragically – and it would be reasonable to suggest, criminally – flawed, but the trial went against Evans and he was sentenced to execution. Not long afterwards, a curious turn of fate revealed that the real murderer had been one John Reginald Christie, a neighbour of Evans, and subsequent investigation showed that he had murdered several other women over a number of years. He, too, went to trial and was also executed. The Wiki version of the story is here if anybody wants to read it.

I first came across this story many years ago when I watched the movie 10 Rillington Place based on the book of the same title by Ludovic Kennedy. It woke something in me, and ever since then I can’t stop myself being drawn to watch or read everything I encounter about the case (I watched a YouTube video a couple of nights ago.) I don’t know why this should be because I’m far from salacious by nature. In fact, I’m quite the opposite. I’ve always loved supernatural horror movies, but I avoid real horror because real suffering disturbs my empathic tendency too much.

So why do I feel compelled, essentially against my will because I know it always depresses me, to read or watch everything I can find on the subject? (I’ve even tried to find the exact location of the murders, but it’s now impossible because the whole street of houses was demolished some time after the war, and the site redeveloped.) It’s hard to say, but it has something to do with the feeling that I need to know everything there is to know, even those details which will never be known. And, more disturbingly, because I feel a deep sense that I am somehow personally connected with it.

Explain it as you will. I have my suspicions but that’s all they can ever be. And they are speculative at best, and probably fanciful.

Missing the Priestess and Other Bits.

A little over twelve years ago I received a comment on this blog from a young woman living in Australia. There came further comments, and eventually the correspondence shifted to email. By then, so impressed was I by her understanding of life which went way beyond her years, that I had already come to style her ‘the priestess.’

And so she attained a level of importance in my life which I never fully understood, but decided I didn’t need to. It was apparent to me that here was a special connection and that was good enough, and she appeared to see it the same way. The correspondence continued until a few months ago, by which time I had been experiencing a growing suspicion for some time that whatever mysterious factor had given rise to the connection was now weak or missing altogether.

It wasn’t a matter of either party being to blame. It was simply that our respective roads had begun to diverge – hers rising and revealing natural proclivities which I hadn’t recognised before, and mine falling as the health issues, my increasing reclusiveness, and other issues commensurate with advancing age took their toll. And so I felt it was time to say goodbye.

But I still miss her. Even at the end I still experienced a visceral thrill every time I saw her name in my inbox. It was a special name which seemed to glow even though our paths were far apart and the light should have been no longer visible.

So what am I missing? The memory? The sense of companionship because I have no social circle as other people do? Or is it a nagging awareness that special connections are born of some arcane factor which transcends distance, be it geographical, ideological, psychological, or social?

I really don’t know, but all things come to an end sooner or later because that’s the nature of life. INFJs are known for not going back, and so I plod on to the terminus which sits waiting, inscrutably and inevitably, some way ahead. No renewing old dreams and past glories for me (quoting a favourite song, I’m ashamed to admit.)

*  *  *

The toothache has been absent for a few days (heaven be praised) but the depression, anxiety, and frustration at the ways of modern times continue to keep close station. And I’ve still had no news on the recent CT scans. Three weeks seems like a long time to wait to be told whether or not you still have some prospect of a future.

*  *  *

I have more posts knocking on the door of my brain at the moment – most notably my strange attraction to the true and truly dark story of a serial killer and the execution of an innocent man, the downside of being born into a wealthy environment, and another which has temporarily slipped my mind. Maybe tomorrow.

Unfathomable Greed.

It would appear that a major thread of current international concern is the fear that WWIII is getting closer, and the presumption that such a conflict would decimate the human population of the planet. We all know that the two factors giving rise to this fear are the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the growing clamour of sabre-rattling coming from the Chinese over the matter of Taiwan. What I don’t understand is this:

In terms of territory, Russia is the biggest country on earth. China is the third biggest. Why on earth would either party want to generate the conditions which could lead to such a conflict merely in order to have a little more?

Being Robbed by Advancing Age.

I was sitting in my car in a car park today when I saw a young woman climb out of the passenger seat of another car nearby. She was tall and slim with uncovered legs, and was wearing a very short dress. When she leaned into the car to get something, the dress rode up to reveal more than half of her naked posterior. Since the dress didn’t climb quite as high as her waist, it was impossible to know whether she was wearing a thong or nothing at all, but the fact is that nothing else was left to the imagination.

Now, it isn’t my business to concern myself with the casual attitude to privacy held by millennial women. That’s their affair and nobody else’s. What disturbed me was the fact that there was a time when such an impromptu revelation would have aroused a degree of libidinous reaction in me. Today's reaction was mere curiosity, and that’s disappointing because it means I really am getting old.

On the Cares of the Day and the Angel Ellie May.

(I like the title because it reminds me of my mother’s infamous horror story: The Wig and the Wag and the Little Yellow Bag. Why would a mother want to tell her kid a horror story? But whatever…)

Today was another agonisingly frustrating one. It started about ten minutes after I got up and lasted until late afternoon. Phones (both mobile and landline) and the car were the issues this time, and the main villain of the piece was British Telecom who have received brickbats aplenty on this blog down the years.

The point about BT is that if you can manage to speak to a real person – sometimes you can and sometimes you can’t – their call centre assistants are fine. Today’s assistant was Ellie May, so a special shout out to her. (She’ll never read it, of course, but the energy goes out into the ether anyway and maybe it will land in her lap in some subtle form. Ellie May giggled a lot – which was engaging in itself – but never lost sight of the need to address the problem or the means of going about it. Ellie May was today’s angel sans wings.) The problem with BT, on the other hand, is that their system, and particularly their online organisation, is the very definition of the pits.

*  *  *

And so this evening I set off up the lane with carrots and apples for the ladies Millie and Rosie. Millie was very stand-offish and declined the gift, so Rosie got the lot. And on the way back I saw a group of young bulls in one of the fields, so I leant on their gate for a while to watch them. Three of the black ones saw me and raced over for lots of ear and head scratchings, which they seem to enjoy immensely once they’ve plucked up the courage to trust the strange creature which walks on two legs.

And you know, it’s interesting how gaining the trust of animals and having that sort of contact with them makes you feel better about the irritating vicissitudes of life. I expect some manual somewhere says so.