Too Many Bits for a Title.

Today was unusual in that I had an intelligent (yes, intelligent) conversation with a woman on YouTube around the Henry James novel The Turn of the Screw and its subsequent, highly regarded film adaptation. She had a foreign name and her use of English was impeccable. How often do I have this experience on YouTube? Both intelligent and a good writer? Not often.

I then had an email conversation with a customer advisor from my fuel provider. Her name was an English one and her use of language was pretty poor in several respects. This is an odd phenomenon, but not unusual.

But anyway…

I was walking up the lane today commiserating with my tree friends about this summer’s unusually dry weather. I wished them a good rest, a successful return, and a better year next year. (I talk to the trees, you know, but they don’t listen to me. Or maybe they do; it’s hard to tell with trees. Whether I was born under a wandering star or not I wouldn’t know, but I have my suspicions.)

I felt a sudden, rushing sense of how quickly the years are passing now, and I wondered how trees perceive time. Tolkien probably pondered the same question.

*  *  *

I subscribe to a YouTube channel in which an American woman called Dr Ellie Anderson discusses – mercifully briefly – the pronouncements of the world’s most celebrated philosophers. She is highly intelligent, highly attractive, highly personable, and therefore highly entertaining. Sounds like the woman I’ve been looking for all my life, right? Wrong.

Imagine sitting down to the dinner table every night and deciding which philosopher’s wisdom to contemplate. You’d have indigestion before you’d even consumed the hors d’oeuvre, wouldn’t you?

Incidentally, I’m a fan of the 5-course meal. The 7-course version is beyond me because I don’t know what mignardise is. If it’s a cheese board, OK. If it’s brandy, also OK. And if I could be bothered to find out I would, but I can’t. And whatever it is, I couldn’t afford it anyway.