More Meanderings and a Mug.

When I was walking around Uttoxeter this morning I was struck by how ugly everybody was. And then I caught sight of my reflection in a shop window. Whoever it was looking back at me, he was ugly too.

*  *  *

According to Blogger stats I’ve been getting an insane number of visits over the past few months – nearly 20,000 this month alone. Needless to say, I don’t believe it. I’m quite sure it’s either something to do with bots or a glitch in the system. But it was interesting to see the lists of supposedly accessed posts that came with it. There were hundreds of them every day, and I spent many an idle half hour reading them again.

It made me a little sad because as well as reading the posts I also read the comments that came along with them. Back in the day there were twenty or thirty people who used to comment regularly. Many of the comments turned into conversations, and the people who left them became my social circle. I would even say that some of them became friends. They occupied my firmament during my descent into the underworld of reclusiveness. And now they’re long gone. They’re mostly what I was referring to when I wrote in a recent post: ‘…finding the night sky utterly devoid of stars.’ If any of them are still perusing my scribbles silently, I should like to thank them and wish them all a splendid 2024.

*  *  *

I discovered today that one of my favourite pop songs from around twenty-odd years ago was actually a cover of a Russian pop song. I subsequently thought of the pantheon of major league classical composers which includes so many Russians, and the power of Russian folk music, and the multi-instrumental skills of a Russian lady called Alina Gingertail (on YouTube), and another Russian lady called Elena Koptova who transcribes Gaelic folk and other melodies for the cello (also on YouTube), and came to the tentative conclusion that music must be a strong component of the Russian soul. All these decades of life and it’s never occurred to me before.

*  *  *

I felt weak and ill for most of today, but at least I bought a new mug (another one.) It’s matt black and bulbous. 

Happy New Year

Final Words on Tenant.

I said I might write my thoughts on Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, didn’t I? Well, I’m not, at least not in depth because I don’t really see much point.

Very briefly, I might just say that I was troubled by the variation in prose style. Most of it was adequate and perfectly readable, but it lacked the fluency of Charlotte’s or the edginess of Emily’s. It was grammatically and syntactically correct, which I suppose is good enough for most readers but I’m a bit fussy about that sort of thing. And then there was the problem of occasional descents into a highly exaggerated style which I might describes as being either lurid or excessively florid, or both, and which caused me to wonder whether the author had been high on laudanum or something at the time.

My main concern, however, lay with the character of Helen Graham, the eponymous Tenant. The combination of an upright, straight-laced outer nature and a highly passionate – though mostly repressed – inner personality I found believable. What I found difficult was her response to her husband’s admittedly intolerable behaviour, which is the leitmotif dominating the central section of the novel and amounting to about half the whole. It was didactic, laced with a level of religious zeal which I imagine was unusual even for the time (it was never apparent in any of the other characters), and sometimes unashamedly sanctimonious. Reading it became tedious, partly because it was too wordy, but mainly because I found myself having less sympathy with the heroine than I was supposed to have.

Having said all this – in rather more words than I intended – the question remains: was it worth reading? I would say it was. The overall narrative is simply a love story with complications, beginning with a mystery, extending through a time of trouble, and ending satisfactorily. And so I did enjoy it and no more need be said.

Except to consider what I intimated at the beginning of this little journey when I expressed the desire to get clues to the nature and personality of Anne Brontë to compliment my impressions of Charlotte and Emily. Well, as far as I’m aware there are three literary clues available – the MC Helen in Anne’s Tenant, the MC Agnes in her Agnes Grey, and the character of Caroline Helstone in Charlotte’s Shirley, which Charlotte said was based on Anne. I already had two and now I have the third, so do I think I have a more rounded view of Anne Brontë?

Yes, but it’s complicated. Now it’s time for coffee and a mince pie.

An Odd Fixation on Words.

I fell to wondering today why writers of English tend to pair ‘small’ with ‘large’, and ‘little’ with ‘big.’ I came to the tentative conclusion that it’s all to do with a slight difference in nuance conveyed by the respective pairs of words. But that raised a second question: did the difference in nuance arise because of accepted usage, or did the usage develop because of the difference in nuance? Or is it something else entirely, such as the origin of the words?

And here’s something else that interests me:

We’re told that such-and-such an English word comes from an old source such as Latin (often through French), Greek, or Old Norse, but they rarely tell us where the Romans, Greeks, or Norwegians got it from. And even when they do give a comprehensive Indo-European lineage, they don’t tell us where the ancient nomads got it from. And that’s twice in two sentences that I’ve ended a sentence on a preposition, but the problem is that the alternative would probably have meant using ‘whence’, and that sounds a bit pretentious these days.

Does anybody else in the world care about such matters, or is it just me?

Conclusion Pro Tem.

Spoiler alert if you’re thinking of reading the book.

I finished The Tenant of Wildfell Hall tonight, and the reconciliation of Mr Markham and Helen was more soggy that psychedelic. But then the whole work is a love story, and I suppose all love stories have to be a bit soggy, don’t they, especially when the two protagonists are such paragons of virtue, propriety, and restrained passion?

Maybe I’ll write more about it tomorrow, or maybe I won’t. For now I need to apply myself to the task of persuading my cranky – but eminently lovable – old computer to play YouTube for me. Sometimes he takes a bit of persuading, but we usually get there in the end.

Notes on Just Another Day.

Christmas being over, I slept uncomfortably late this morning; and when I woke up my sinuses were sore as though I had a cold coming on. Tonight I feel a little feverish. Today we had yet more heavy rain including one spectacular downpour following a clap of thunder, and when I went for a walk I found the Shire to be impersonating Venice again. I suspect the three facts are connected.

I sometimes wonder whether I might benefit from allowing myself a day’s bed rest. I only did that once in my life, you know (apart from time spent in hospital.) It was twenty eight years ago and I’d come down with a particularly bad dose of flu. I spent all day in bed in an unheated bedroom (it was February), and then at about 7pm decided to go downstairs and get a hot drink laced with a shot of whisky. I thought it would make me feel better. What it actually did was make me feel sick to my stomach, and I hurried through the kitchen in the hope of making the bathroom in time. The next thing I knew I was waking up on the kitchen floor. The following day I began to feel better.

Throughout these wearisome, wet, windy days and dark, dreary, desolate nights, my mind keeps on returning to thoughts of the haunted Dr Haynes’s experience in James’s The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral. I keep seeing his habitual note in his journal: ‘I must be firm.’ Strange as it might seem, it’s oddly comforting – an experience shared, as it were. Just as long as the mysterious cat doesn’t show up and contrive to make me miss my footing on the stairs and break my neck.

There are rats in the garden again.

I’m getting very close to the end of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall now. The narrator, Mr Markham, is on his way to Helen’s current abode, hoping to finally see her again after several frustrating months contemplating a bleak future without his one and only. (Helen’s husband has died, you see, and so it appears there is now no impediment to their union. But time will tell.) I imagine the meeting will be described in the most mind-bogglingly florid and overstated prose, because Anne Brontë does have a habit of slipping into such a practice occasionally. I have seriously wondered whether she might have been snorting something during those episodes, but maybe the explanation is more mundane. Being the devout Christian of the family – even more than her father, apparently – maybe she wrote those passages on a Sunday having become intoxicated through taking an extra big sip of the Communion wine. How can we know?

So that’s about it for today. Hope it wasn’t too tedious. But I would like to end by paraphrasing something somebody said to me in an email a little over eleven years ago. This is my version:

‘I keep anticipating receipt of a missive, but somehow I know it will never turn up.’

The original was all about cakes and company; mine is about finding the night sky utterly devoid of stars.

That will do.

On Wetness, Wind, and a Worriesome Coincidence.

Another dark, gloomy, watery day again today. I had to take a detour after I’d parked the car in Sainsbury’s car park because the direct route to the store was interrupted by a large pool of water covering most of the width of the parking area. The river running through the town was in spate to an extent I’ve never seen before, and when I came out of the store at half past one it was dark enough for the exterior lights to be on. When I returned home my first job was to take a spade out to clear the road of large clumps of leaf and other debris which were redirecting the fast-flowing water away from the grids. Full night has long since fallen on the Shire, and now the wind of the earlier storm system has risen again to a constant moan and frequent roar.

And the house has turned cold tonight, which reminds me again of my favourite MR James ghost story, The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral, in which the protagonist, Dr Haynes, is alone in his elderly dwelling through the cold, dark part of the year. He is becoming increasingly beset by the growing sense – sometimes augmented by inexplicable sounds – that some invisible and unfriendly presence is beginning to insinuate itself into his lonely world, intending to do him harm. The tension grows ever stronger, as evidenced by the repeated note in his journal that ‘I must be firm.’

Not something to dwell on when you’re living alone in a cold, elderly house through the dark part of year, is it? But at least I’ve got YouTube in which to take refuge shortly. Better concentrate on some comedy and jolly music, I think. I’ve also got the benefit of knowing that, unlike Dr Haynes, I never murdered anybody. At least I don’t think I did.

Christmas Notes and a Gallic Preoccupation.

Two hours to go and then another Christmas will have come, been negotiated, and gone. I count them every year and wonder how many more there will be. I expect there’s a number written on a celestial slate somewhere out in the vastness of the universe, and I suppose it’s better that I can’t see it.

I just watched Amelie again. It always makes me feel better for a short period, and it’s not just the story itself which I find compelling, nor the loveliness and personal charm of Audrey Tautou; it’s that quirky Gallic humour which is rich, offbeat, and often quietly reveals some odd little corner of the human mind.

I recently heard an American ask why we in Britain call 26^th December ‘Boxing Day.’ I gather it’s because well off people used to be in the habit of taking unwanted gifts and food, packing them up in boxes, and taking them to the local poor. It’s nothing to do with pugilism.

Although I tend to feel my aloneness a little more keenly at Christmas, I much prefer that to the unwelcome duty of visiting or entertaining the in-laws every 25^th December. I suppose many people like that sort of thing; Christmas is, after all, supposed to be about togetherness. I was never the togetherness sort; all I ever wanted to do was have something special for dinner, curl up in front of a TV to watch Ghostbusters, Harry Potter, or 101 Dalmatians, (or Amelie) and get quietly and safely sozzled.

And that reminds me: the bottle of port which serves as a well-rationed pre-dinner extravagance at Christmas is getting old. There was a disturbing quantity of sludge in the bottom of today’s libation, so I suppose I’ll have to buy another one next year (as long as my number hasn’t come up.)

I need to visit several places in Ashbourne tomorrow and we’re due to have another named storm system coming through. We seem to be getting about one a week at the moment. I expect we’ll have rivers for roads and pond-studded fields again, and it’s becoming a little irritating. The new growth of winter wheat and barley is looking very patchy in a way I’ve never seen it before. I imagine it’s all due to the waterlogged ground. City dwellers don’t notice that sort of thing as much, you know. Living in the countryside makes you a lot more aware of the seasons and its latter day excesses. And I expect there’s worse to come over the next decade or so.

Watching Amelie makes me wish I’d been able to keep up my French when I was making a good stab at learning it back in the eighties. No opportunity to practice it, though, and now I’m too old a dog to learn new tricks. Sorry, Gallic chums, and thanks to those who speak my language fluently. It’s a little ironic, isn’t it, that English has come to be termed the lingua franca – ‘Frankish language.’ If I were French, I think I’d be a bit miffed.

That’s about it for this Christmas, so what shall I do now? Coffee, I think (which happens to be Sainsbury’s French Blend by an odd coincidence) and then carry on with Tenant. I’m nearly at the end and reading it has been an odd sort of journey. It’s a big novel and the going underfoot has been a mixture of firm, soft, and downright swampy at times. I’ll continue to persevere until I reach the terminus, and then maybe offer a note on the experience here.

Three Christmas Eve Women Encounters.

Please imagine that you’re reading this on Christmas Eve. That’s was when it was half written, but I ran out of time and can’t be bothered to change the tenses.

Yes I know it’s a tired old theme, but it’s one that is close to my heart. I made a post once about the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, and how it was said of him that he not only loved women, he liked them. And further, that he needed young women around him to set his creativity flowing.

Well, I’m the same. Blame my Irish ancestry if you like; I usually do. That’s how I’m made and I doubt I will ever change, so more women encounters is what I’m going to write about. Three of them.

The first wasn’t young. She was middle aged, lumpy, and somewhat leathery-skinned. She was selling Big Issue magazines in the High Street. Now, it is a fact that Big Issue sellers are always poor because that’s what the magazine was created for. And it was Christmas Eve, so I bought one. £4. I gave her a £5 note and told her to keep the change. She said something approximating to ‘Merry Christmas’ in reply. I smiled nicely back and went on my way.

There: that didn’t hurt, did it? Onwards and upwards to number two.

There’s a young woman who works in one of the discount stores, the sort who nobody notices (apart from me) because she’s plain, bespectacled, quiet, and looks a little undernourished. But today she was wearing a bright yellow sweatshirt and looked far more noticeable than she usually does. I made a point of going through her till so I could casually remark: ‘You look bright today.’ She smiled – which I’ve never seen her do before – and said ‘thank you.’ I took that as permission to get personal: ‘If you don’t mind my saying as much, wearing colour suits you.’ No response. OK, job done, move on. I moved on.

Tesco next and the young woman serving in the Costa franchise they have tucked away in the corner of the store. I admit no hint of hyperbole when I say that she was an absolute vision – perfect of form and grooming, and as pretty as it’s possible to be. And that was what so interested me: she was too perfect and I had difficulty processing the fact. That’s no exaggeration either; I really did have difficulty processing the fact. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such perfection, to the point that I even wondered whether she wasn’t human at all but Tesco’s first diversion into the realm of AI. So what did I do? I stared at her, no doubt frowning mightily because that’s what we do when there’s something in our line of sight which we’re having difficulty processing. Eventually she noticed me and so I took myself out her line of sight and proceeded to get what I went in for - a 300g pack of cashew nuts (They’re cheaper in Tesco than anywhere else. Good quality, too)

So that’s the three, but let’s add another couple of slightly less substance for good measure:

While I was standing outside Tesco drawing on my roly, a young woman walked past who looked remarkably like my Aunt Alice. And since my Aunt Alice died over twenty years ago, it’s a little disconcerting to see a lookalike of around twenty five walking past you outside Tesco. When she reached the doors she stopped and turned to look at me for a few seconds as though she knew me from somewhere. The moment didn’t last long and that was the end of that one.

So is the fifth encounter insubstantial or the best of all? You decide.

When I came back from a short walk up the lane at twilight, I saw that I had been followed by little Nell (my favourite little sprocker dog) and the male half of her human carers. Much fuss was made as usual, and then the man on the other end of the lead engaged me in conversation for some time. He always does, you know. Whenever he sees me – even if he’s driving his car – he has to stop and ask me how I am. What’s odd is that I never learned his name, and neither do I know the name of his little boy. And yet I do know the names of his wife, his daughter, and his dog – all female. That must say something, mustn’t it? Maybe I shouldn’t dwell too much on what it might be. (But I'm still sticking with my Irish ancestry.)

When Gloss is Misbegotten.

I was sitting in my living room and eating my dinner tonight – a paltry green salad with a piece of quiche and a few other bits – and flicking through the TV channels with the sound off (as usual.) At one point I arrived at a showing of what I subsequently discovered was the 1984 adaptation of A Christmas Carol starring George C Scott as Scrooge.

I have to say that I’ve never seen that version so I can’t comment on its overall quality, but the scene I dropped onto was the one in which the butcher is delivering Scrooge’s anonymous Christmas morning gift to the Cratchits – a huge turkey to replace the (presumably) much smaller goose for their Christmas dinner. It didn’t sit well with me.

The exterior shot showed the street to be quaint and liberally spattered with pretty half-timbered houses à la some hugely expensive touristy village in the English Home Counties, when a reasonable presumption would dictate that it should have been a dark, gloomy terrace in a poor part of Victorian London.

Cut to the interior shot and the Cratchits arranged around the dining table. The dining room in such a house would have been small and have the air of a hovel about it, however much the dutiful Mrs Cratchit and the kids might have tried to keep it tidy. In the film the room is large, pristine, and expensively furnished. It could easily have doubled as the drawing room in Chatsworth House.

And let’s remember that the Cratchits are grindingly poor, since Bob earns only a derisory salary as a miser’s clerk. That being the case, they would have been dressed accordingly in well-worn clothes that would probably show some evidence of having been routinely patched. So what were they wearing in the film? Fine attire that would have looked perfectly at home on the rich family who owned bloody Downton Abbey! All the family looked well fed, healthy, and comfortably off. Mrs Cratchit even had a hairstyle which bore testimony to the skill of a Hollywood hairdressing salon.

The whole thing was an unconscionable travesty, so how long do you think I sat there, mouth agape and waiting for the next forkful, before I switched it off? Not very long.

On Failures and Fairy Dust.

Life is treating me a little unkindly at the moment. So many things around me are cracking up, packing up, malfunctioning; and the body which continues to carry me along the road of life is not exempt from the process. I won’t bother to list the others.

But it isn’t all bad, for today I was treated to another horse fix. That’s two in two days. Maybe the Christmas fairy still has hopes for my redemption and is giving me the odd nudge or two in the right direction.

Today’s splendid equine was no ex-racehorse – he was too heavily muscled for that, and he was a skewbald. (Whoever heard of a skewbald racehorse?) He was helping himself to some fresh hay on the verge near the village post box, and as I came around the corner he turned to stare at me. He continued to stare as I got closer, and so I asked him why he was regarding me with suspicion. ‘Oh he’s not suspicious,’ said the young person to whom he was giving the favour of a ride, ‘he’s just nosy.’ And then he pushed his nose against mine and we became friends.

And the young person sitting on his back was female, pretty, and personable, so that made two fixes for the price of one. If the Christmas fairy continues in this vein I might be tempted to wish somebody a merry Christmas before the clock strikes midnight tomorrow.

On a Boy and His Bedroom.

I was reading a comment on an old blog post this morning from young Andrea Kiss of Tennessee, in which she talked of how she used to decorate her bedroom as a child. I never did that, you know. Maybe it was a generational thing; maybe British boys of my generation were too much influenced by the realities of post-war austerity to give vent to such frippery.

But in my case there was another reason. We lived in an apparently haunted house and I was terrified of ghosts, so my bedroom was not so much a valued and private space as the daily source of stress. Going to bed was always scary, especially at the dark time of year. Summer wasn’t so bad. 

And when I entered high school the family bureau was moved into the room for the purpose of providing a homeworking facility away from my parents’ TV viewing. There was no place for fancy pictures when I was labouring over French verbs, quadratic equations, and the question of whether Macbeth was a greater fiend than his wife or vice versa. It was about then that the magic of Christmas began to dissipate and I finally forced myself to turn the light off before going to sleep.

But before that happened there was, of course, one exception: Christmas Eve. I was always most anxious to go to bed on the most magical night of the year. My only fear that night was that I would be unable to sleep, and we all knew that Father Christmas declined to visit houses where the children were not asleep.  Needless to say, I always managed it in time.

But not before I’d spent a few minutes gazing out of my window at the sky over the wood at the back of our house. One Christmas I saw a meteor zip across the heavens, and was quite certain that it was the old man and his reindeer out on their rounds. Another year there was a single, very bright star sitting above the trees – probably Venus or Jupiter I expect – which I naturally presumed to be the very star which had guided the Wise Men to Bethlehem. Oh what a naïve little boy I was, safe and snug in the simple certainties of simpler days. I miss him sometimes.

1984 and the Pivotal Question.

I just noticed a headline on the BBC News website. It said that Wham’s pop classic, Last Christmas, has risen to the top of the charts thirty nine years after it was first released. For no other reason than mild curiosity, I mentally worked out what I was doing exactly thirty nine years ago. December 1984: Where was I and what was I doing in December 1984?

If I were writing my memoirs I would probably devote a whole chapter to that very month and style it ‘The Christmas of the Two Janets.’ But then I began to think on to what followed and realised something that’s never fully sunk in before. Christmas 1984 was about much more than the stirrings of clandestine relationships with two women who happened to be called Janet. It was the start of two years of turbulence, stress, and deep change that have never been matched by any other two years of my life. By the end of it I was a profoundly different person living in a totally different world. It was as though somebody had picked me up, pushed me slowly through a fire, and then set me down on the other side of the planet.

Upon realising that fact, I began to experience a sense of concern. Could this be a cyclical thing, I thought. Am I experiencing the plot of a JB Priestly time play? Have I come around full circle and, if so, why? Is it just another lesson in the ongoing process of reviewing a life, or is a new cycle beginning?

I decided I was being fanciful and that it’s neither. It is odd, though, that 1984 is such an iconic date in the calendar of socio-political direction, being the title of Orwell’s novel. So am I being told that I’m right in the reservations I entertain about where current world trends are taking us? I suppose time will tell, and I wonder whether I have enough of it left to find out.

On Couriers, Cliff, and the Christmas Spirit.

There appears to be something amiss with the couriers of modern Britain.

A few days ago a parcel was left in my porch addressed to somebody I’d never heard of at a house a quarter of a mile down the road. The mistake was difficult to comprehend, but I did my social duty and delivered it to the right address. Today, the man from the big house around the corner walked up my path with another parcel addressed to me at this house. It had been left in his porch and I told him of the previous mis-delivery. ‘They don’t care,’ was all he said, and it seems they probably don’t.

*  *  *

It’s been another dark, dreary day in the Shire today, replete with growling gusts of wind and spitting showers. Nevertheless, I lit my winter solstice fire as usual – and it went out. I’ve been lighting small fires to mark the solstice for at least twenty years and I’ve never had one go out before. Life is not being at all cooperative at the moment.

*  *  *

But I did get a rare horse fix today: Cliff, an ex-racehorse of around 16.1. Such a noble, handsome specimen he is, smartly clipped and friendly to boot. That was today’s reason to get out of bed. And Mel sent me the DVD of Bill Murray’s Scrooged, which is my second favourite Christmas Carol film after Alistair Sim’s 1951 version (which I’m currently watching on YouTube late at night in half-hour episodes. It has the curious effect of half convincing me that the Ghost of Christmas Past is following me up the stairs and telling me that I really could generate a little of the spirit of the season if only I tried harder. I suppress the instinct to reply ‘humbug’ and then forget it ever happened.)

The Ghosts of Barchester and the Brontes.

A few minutes ago I had a sudden yen to read what I consider to be MR James’s creepiest ghost story: The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral.

I think it was the moaning wind that did it, the remnants of a storm system that’s been passing through for the past 24 hours. And it’s the right time of year; and the coincidence of living styles between the protagonist and me is appropriate. In fact, the only significant difference between us is that I didn’t contrive to murder my professional predecessor in order to climb the career ladder. Apart from that, our natures and living styles are remarkably similar.

I didn’t do it because I regard it as my sworn duty to finish The Tenant of Wildfell Hall before embarking on further literary engagement. It’s all to do with my regard for – or maybe I should say my near-obsession with – the Brontë sisters.

I decided to make some coffee first, during which exercise it further occurred to me that a meeting with the said sisters on the moors above Haworth would have been oddly redolent of Macbeth’s encounter with the three witches on the ‘blasted heath.’ And that led to another thought: wouldn’t it be interesting to write a story about meeting the ghosts of the sisters upon those very moors? It would, but I don’t suppose I'll ever get around to it.

Pouring, Not Raining.

This year has been remarkable for the wasting of relatively small amounts of money through accident, ill judgement, or bad luck – like, for example, the litre bottle of whisky which leapt out of my backpack and smashed on the tiled floor of my office, a fact which I reported on this blog.

The latest occurred last night and involved a new bottle of Corsodyl mouthwash. At half past two this morning, while on my way to bed, I put it in a wardrobe which I use for, among other things, storing back-up stocks of regularly used items. It slipped off a bag, fell down the back of this big piece of furniture, and slid underneath the base. All attempts to retrieve it failed, and so I continued – in a very bad mood – to my repose.

I looked at the issue in the cold light of day and decided that the time and effort involved – not to mention the assault on my less-than-pristine physical condition – was simply not worth the loss of £3.49. It can stay there now until someone, some day, removes the wardrobe in consequence of my committal to some sort of care facility or my embarkation on the journey to the undiscovered country. I’m tempted to hope that it’s well beyond its Use By date by then, but I don’t suppose it matters.

If this year has been a bad one for wasting money, yesterday was a bad one for misadventures. Being robbed by the Fates of my bottle of Corsodyl was the last of a line stretching back sixteen hours. I wonder how many more times I’m going to find that little line from Hamlet apposite: When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions. (Or if you prefer the vernacular to the pretentious, ‘it never rains but it pours.’)

The Winner Mentality.

I was reading an interview today with a top British sports star. She said that she wanted to win every honour and championship there is to win, and when she’d won them all she wanted to win them all again. I found myself wanting to ask her why winning is so important almost to a manic degree.

You see, I’ve long held the suspicion that the desperate desire to win which is common among sports stars is largely a manifestation of emotional insecurity. It certainly was with me when I came top of the top class every term (semester) in my high school and was desperate to stay there. (I worked hard, believe it or not, to do just that.) It was simply the means by which I could prove that I mattered.

I do realise that ego also plays a part in the must-win mentality, but isn’t inflated ego also a manifestation of emotional insecurity one step removed? I wonder what the psychologists have to say on the matter.

Then again, I have heard a few sports stars – and they’ve been fairly rare examples of their ilk – say that winning wasn’t their major goal. They were more concerned about pushing themselves to their limits in order to produce the best performance of which they were capable. I suppose that’s about competing with yourself, and is probably different.

Odd Bits on Cares, Cars, and Christmas Food.

I was listening to a piece of music earlier and was suddenly beset by a veritable volcano of emotional reaction – a deep sense of anguish and despair upon realising that universal peace and harmony are so readily within reach of the human condition, but are buried by the darkness generated by the Golums running the world of mortal man.

The emotion subsided and logic brought much thought into play. It became complicated, and eventually I settled on the fact that reason is worthless without knowing exactly what life is about, which I don’t.

*  *  *

The car I drive has suddenly developed two odd characteristics which the mechanic who owns the vehicle can’t explain. It’s making me reluctant to drive it, and that in its turn makes life difficult living out here in the countryside with no public transport.

*  *  *

Today I bought my Christmas vegetarian roast, my Christmas Brussels sprouts, my Christmas mince pies, an extra baking potato to have with my Christmas dinner, and a rare chocolate and fresh cream concoction as an added bonus. (Cream has become anathema since the atherosclerosis reared its ugly head and encouraged me to avoid high fat foods.)

Why do I do it when I don’t do Christmas? I suppose the tradition of Christmas is simply the spur to prick the sides of my intent to do something different for a change. And I don’t suppose it matters since I don’t know what life is about.

Mlle Poulain's Magic.

Last night I watched a YouTube video of clips from the film Amelie (as we have it in English) accompanied by the associated piano piece called Comptine d’un autre été. It was the last thing I heard before going to bed, and as I was climbing the stairs it struck me that my mindset had undergone a radical alteration: my perception of life had swung to the positive and away from its usual position in the mire. 

 

The same thing happened both times I watched the whole film, and so I’m tempted to ponder the question: is there magic hidden somewhere deep in the plot or the character or both? I gather the film is universally popular, and I further gather that its popularity has promoted a tendency among the cynically-minded to enjoy announcing ‘I hate Amelie’ at every opportunity (as I do, I admit, in matters pertaining to Dickens’s Tiny Tim.) But for me, the magic does appear to be there. It’s more than just the ‘feel-good factor’ to which I very rarely succumb.

Or maybe it’s something else. I’ve read that Amélie Poulain is often cited as a prime example of the INFJ character type, and I’m also one of those. So maybe she is pointing me in a particular direction when I say that there is nothing out there that I want. Maybe there is. Maybe there’s an INFJ female somewhere who likes to play irritating, though generally harmless, tricks on the bad guys which I can stand and smile at. All I have to do now is find the means to locate her. 

(The only photo booth I know of in Ashbourne is in Sainsbury’s grocery store. I wonder whether that will do. Sadly, those unfortunates unfamiliar with the film will find the gentle humour contained within this parenthesis meaningless.)

A Surfeit of Stranger and Other Bits.

Remember the man I talked about on Friday, the stranger who was working on a drain in The Hollow? Yesterday he was driving down the road in his car and stopped to tell me what he’d found. And today I bumped into him three times in Tesco. Isn’t it odd how strangers, like sorrows, come not single spies but in battalions?

And talking of Tesco, I was going to make a post about my observation of how people treat shopping trolleys, both when they’re picking them up and when they’re putting them back. It was going to be about the distress I experience when I see evidence of people’s disorganised minds, and how today’s evidence outside Tesco indicated that when it comes to practical matters, men appear to have more organised minds than women. But I decided it was too boring to talk about and so I didn’t.

So let’s go back to sorrows coming not as single spies but in battalions:

Bits of crisp (chips to the DYs), dozens of them.

I was watching the live action version of The Last Airbender tonight and decided I could allow myself a pack of crisps because I’d only had a bowl of home made soup and a roll for dinner. After I’d finished I felt something crunch under my foot, and looked down to see bits of crisp – or battalions of them if we’re going to be fanciful – arranged around my chair. That’s disgusting, isn’t it? And when I bent down to pick them up while still listening to the soundtrack of the film, my headphones kept falling off my head. That’s really, really irritating.

And what, you might ask, did I think of the live action version. (Readers of longstanding might recall my running commentary on the animated version a year or two ago.)

Not impressed for several reasons, not least being the fact that I’m half way through the film and my favourite character – Toff – hasn’t appeared yet. If she doesn’t, or if she does but is as badly played as some of the other characters, the DVD is definitely going down the pan (but not quite literally.)

Why Women Do It Better.

I should preface this post for the sake of American readers by saying that what I call football is what you call soccer. I suppose you probably know that, but just in case you don’t…

*  *  *

The only sports I watch these days are rugby union and women’s football. I hardly ever watch men’s football because it’s a different game and doesn’t appeal to me.

I often watch highlights of a women’s game on YouTube, and I find myself disturbed by the comments left by apparently misogynistic men who feel that it’s a waste of time and shouldn’t be allowed. They say that the women’s game is not as fast, skilful, or strong as the men’s game; they say that a men’s amateur league side would easily beat a professional women’s team. I’m sure this is arrant nonsense, but it is true that women players are not as fast, strong, or skilful as the men, but there’s enough speed, strength, and skill in evidence and so it’s just as entertaining. If you’re going to take the view that it shouldn’t be allowed, you can apply the same argument to women’s tennis championships and women’s events in the Olympic Games. Men have their events and women theirs. The principle is the same.

So why do I prefer to watch the distaff side of the ‘beautiful game’? Because it’s played in a different spirit. There’s less naked ego on show in the women’s game; the one-to-one aggression between players doesn’t spill over into abuse – sometimes physically – of referees; if a player is injured she gets sympathy and concern from both teams, not just her own; you rarely hear women coaches shouting from the rooftops that they were ‘robbed’ by poor refereeing decisions; and the women players have much closer contact with their fans than the men do. But the big difference lies not on the pitch but on the terraces. They’re not filled with gangs of loud, aggressive, foul-mouthed, pea-brained simians as they are at men’s games. People can be comfortable taking their young families to a women’s game.

In summation, the women’s game is simply a lot more civilised. It’s truer to the Corinthian ideal, and that’s a major plus point with me. The Corinthian ideal is all but dead in the high-powered, must win at all costs, money-obsessed world of professional men’s sport now. The women, on the other hand, still mostly match up. Maybe it will disappear from their game one day, although the evidence of women’s tennis and athletics suggests it’s unlikely. I suppose it’s because women in general are less inclined to drop to base level than men are.

Time will tell whether I’m right on that issue, but if the women’s game does get to the point of emulating the men’s in all respects, I’ll stop watching it.

A Different Sort of Ink Blot.

You know how the brain has a curious faculty for seeing pictures where there are only random shapes – like the death’s head or the elephant or the smiling woman in patterned curtains or wallpaper? (I used to see them everywhere as kid, especially in the patterned curtains in my bedroom.) Well, the electric fan heater in my office gives me a fascinating alternative along similar lines.

It’s a good heater in several ways, but it’s quite loud and the sound often carries odd harmonics (if that’s the right term) which sound like somebody singing. Usually the song is gentle and ethereal – the sort of song a fanciful person like me might associate with wood nymphs or minor goddesses – and is quite pleasant.

But tonight it was Polly Wolly Doodle. Should I worry?

On Gaining Notoriety.

I was walking down The Hollow today when I saw that it was blocked by a big stationery vehicle. There was a man standing next to it and a large hose was snaking from the top of the tanker – for it was that kind of vehicle – down into one of the road drains. The Hollow was one of the lanes badly flooded during recent wet spells, and since I’ve long been curious as to how the professionals clear blocked drains, I thought I’d stop and seek a tutorial on the matter.

He gave me one, only the explanation was a bit garbled so actually I’m none the wiser, but that isn’t the point of the post. The point is that he said to me ‘I’ve noticed at the bottom of your garden…’

Bottom of my garden? How did he know who I am and where my garden is? He was a complete stranger to me, so how did he come by this knowledge?

This happens all the time, you know. I do my best to stay apart and play the recluse, and the next thing you know I’m hearing Hi, Jeff, when I’ve never told them my name, and I noticed at the bottom of your garden coming from a complete stranger. And then there’s the woman who smiles and waves at me as though she’s known me for ever. I happen to know where she lives because I’ve seen her sitting in her garden during the summer, but I only noticed her because she smiled and waved at me as though she’d known me for ever.

They must watch me and talk about me, mustn’t they? And that could be seen as a bit creepy, couldn’t it? It has shades of conspiracy about it, like The Stepford Wives and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. How fortunate that I’m not inclined to paranoia, merely curious and a little dumbfounded. But if I disappear from cyberspace for an extended time, do feel free to harbour suspicions.

*  *  *

On a seemingly unconnected note, the keratosis which I had sprayed with liquid nitrogen on Wednesday has grown bigger and darker, so now it looks stupider than it did before the treatment. The same thing happened the last two times I had it done, so there’s nothing to worry about. It should drop off in a week or two.

Ah, but here’s the connection: I expect the locals will have noticed it and gone into urgent discussion while waiting for their children to come out of school.

‘Have you noticed that mark on Jeff’s cheek?’

‘The one that looks like a sycamore seed?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘I have, yes. Weird isn’t it?’

‘Certainly is, and it’s got weirder. It’s bigger and blacker than it was last week.’

‘You don’t say. Do you think he’s got some sort of foreign disease?’

‘What, like leprosy?’

‘Could be, but doesn’t leprosy make your toes fall off?’

‘Well, have you ever seen his toes?’

‘No.’

‘There you are, then. Or it could be he’s one of those alien beans they’re always talking about.’

‘True, but the vicar says it’s more likely to be the Devil’s mark. Or so I’ve heard.’

‘Better keep the kids in, then.’

‘And the cats.’

The burning mill beckons again… And all I want is to be left alone.

Being About Sheep of a Different Hue.

Shortly after sunset this evening I went out to top up the bird feeder at the front of the house and was struck by the profusion of bright pink clouds filling the western sky. And when I turned to regard the sloping, west-facing field at the back, I saw that all the sheep grazing there had been painted pink.

Pink sheep are a rarely seen phenomenon, and so I was tempted to wonder whether it was an omen of some sort. I decided against it. Believe it or not, there are times when I naturally incline to the rational, though not necessarily prosaic, presumption.

The Light Bulb in the Waiting Room.

Being confined for forty minutes to the doctor’s waiting room yesterday with no form of diversion save the NHS advice screen – which is mostly so silly that it drives me to distraction – I reverted to my time-honoured habit of people-watching. And what did I see there? Mostly a lot of old people.

There was the elderly woman enveloped in a heavy woollen coat and tea cosy hat who hobbled slowly out of the building and then hobbled slowly back a few minutes later because she’d forgotten to pick up her stick. And then there was the elderly man who was walking even more slowly along the corridor, being physically supported by another man who was probably his younger brother. There were more, but let’s not make the post too tedious.

The point is that this caused me to muse yet again – and at some length – on the issue of ageing. The two people in question were older than me, but not by very much, and so they represented another reminder of how the tyrant time drags us into one of varying states of decay and dissolution before it throws us, mostly unprepared, into the undiscovered country. That depresses me (for all that people tell me it shouldn’t) and I came to think about how we kid ourselves into ignoring the process.

I look in the mirror every day for one reason or another, and what I see appears no different from what I saw yesterday. The process is too slow to discern it on a daily basis, and so part of our mind remains deluded into thinking that we’re not visibly growing older. We even half imagine that we look the same as we did twenty or more years ago. It’s only when we look at a photograph taken twenty years earlier that we’re forced to accept that we looked very different then.

And so more glumness descended on my blighted brain as I sat there bored, alone, untended, and uncared for (I had a melodramatic moment there) until the epiphany happened. Words came down from on high – whether from an ancestor, some celestial being, or my own higher mind (if I have one), I can’t say, but descend they did. They said:

‘Look at it this way. You’re simply a young man living in an old body. That’s all. So conduct yourself with that assurance in mind and it won’t be so bad.’

And I felt a bit better after that. Not much, but a bit.

On Aliens and Odd Thoughts.

As I was standing outside Ashbourne Sainsbury’s today, an odd-looking woman bearing shopping bags came out of the store and walked past me. So what was odd about her?

Well, for a start she was very small – under 5ft I would say – and looked slim without being sleek, if you see what I mean. She was wearing tight leggings which displayed the contours of her legs where heavily muscled buttocks, thighs, and calves contrasted sharply with narrow knees and ankles, as though she’d borrowed them from a piece of Baroque furniture. Her midriff was bare in spite of the cold wind that was keeping everybody else in tightly fastened coats, and though it looked trim, tight, and firm, it displayed an unusual propensity for wrinkling. Her face was deathly white and her hair jet black. And after she’d passed me and was walking away, I noticed that her head seemed slightly too big for her body, and her hair rather too full for her head. Did I stare at her? Well… yes.

My first thought was that maybe here was one of those alien beings which some people claim to be walking among us. But why would she be shopping in Sainsbury’s? It seemed like an odd thing for an alien to do, but who knows? Maybe she had twenty bottles of pure virgin olive oil in her bags, and maybe pure virgin olive oil is a suitable alternative to the fuel alien spacecraft normally use. Maybe they’d run out of the proper stuff.

I suspect I might be entering the realm of fantasy here, but you never know. (I also noticed that there was an unusual number of very tall women in Ashbourne today. Curiouser and curiouser, eh? The plot thickens. Whatever.)

*  *  *

I visited my doctor while I was in Ashbourne, to get the ugly little keratosis on my cheek sprayed with liquid nitrogen. I arrived ten minutes early for the appointment – having got up in the middle of the night (8am) by my reckoning – and he was running half an hour late as usual. I got bored while I was waiting and started to notice what worries me when I go to the surgery:

People wearing masks.

‘What are they hiding?’ I ask myself. Do they have some sort of communicable condition? Should I move to a different seat because the man over there is only about ten feet away? Tonight I feel a little ill. Is it mere coincidence?

I’m still bored. That’s why I wrote this.

On Longevity and the System.

I read somewhere once that people who spend a lot of time sitting down have shorter lives. It claimed to be based on research, but I suspect it was something trotted out by a hard-bitten mill owner from Rochdale to frighten his workers who he delighted in watching operating cotton looms from a standing position all day.

Or it could have been Mrs Thatcher, but I doubt it. She was the one who consigned all those lacking the questionable character traits to become entrepreneurs to a miserable life in the nouveau sweat shops called call centres. And call centre workers do, after all, endure their misery sitting down.

There was a man in my home town once who had a call centre. He made his millions very quickly while his workers spent much of the day trying not to wet themselves because they were allowed only two toilet breaks per nine hour shift.

You’ve got to love rampant capitalism and the entrepreneurial spirit, haven’t you? Be it Victorian or Thatcherite, it doesn’t change very much.

Connected and Unconnected Notes.

It occurred to me recently that I haven’t heard the word ‘hamburger’ for a very long time. When I was much younger and not yet vegetarian, the brown things which sat between two halves of a bun and which you bought from a street vendor were always called hamburgers. These days they appear to have been completely supplanted by beef burgers.

Since I am now vegetarian this is of scant consequence to me, but I still find it interesting. I expect the change has something to do with the President of Brazil and the reprobates running the big fast food franchises, but I’m only guessing.

And on a possibly-connected note, there’s another matter of scant consequence I find interesting. The room I use as my office and general relaxing space has a built-in cupboard in one corner. It’s an old fashioned cupboard with a wooden frame, wooden doors, and brass hinges, and this week it’s begun to squeak when I shut one of the doors. In 17½ years of living here it’s never done that before. A matter of scant consequence it might be on the surface, but is it further evidence of climate change? Maybe I should mention it the next time I encounter a climate change denier. It might make all the difference.

On a totally unconnected note, I have a little crack in the skin of a knuckle on one of my fingers. It’s the sort of thing you get if you do any work outdoors in cold, damp weather. It’s only about 3mm long, but it’s surprising how painful such a tiny wound can be.

I was going to read another chapter of Tenant tonight, but I wrote this little post instead. Must have been feeling productive. (In the last chapter, Mrs Graham sent poor Mr Hargrave packing because she was fed up with his incessant habit of making romantic overtures. She found it bloody irritating – five words of mine to stand in lieu of the five hundred Anne Brontë wrote to say the same thing. In response, Mr H decamped to Paris and stayed there, for which Mrs G gave thanks to God.)

The Musical Mystery and My Mental Faculty.

I’m curious to know why I’ve suddenly developed the habit of tapping out the first few bars of Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy with my feet while I’m sitting at the computer. Where did it come from? I haven’t heard the piece and I have no regard for it, so what deficient or diseased part of my mental faculty gave rise to the habit?

The fact is that I’m used to most of the deficient or diseased corners of my mental faculty, and generally quite accepting of them. But not where music is concerned. Music is very important to me and has to suit. Tchaikovsky doesn’t; I find it all rather too sugary. (Except the 6^th Symphony known as the Pathetique. I gather he was very unhappy when he wrote that, and I suppose the fact that it’s the only work I can tolerate must say something about the deficient or diseased corner of my mental faculty.)

A Brief Note on Corporate Caps.

It’s interesting, isn’t it, how certain verbs enter the language not from Greek, or Latin, or Old Norse, but from association with brands. A tech company called Google starts up, produces an internet search facility, and before you know it we have the verb ‘to Google.’ And people, even today, use the verb ‘to Hoover’ instead of ‘to vacuum.’

The fact itself is of little consequence, but what I find irritating is that if you type ‘I’m going to hoover the carpet’ in Word, you get your wrists slapped and told that the first letter of the verb must be in upper case. Why? Because Hoover is a brand name and that makes it a proper noun.

So what? Normal verbs which come from creditable ancient sources like Greek, Latin, and Old Norse aren’t afforded that privilege, so why should those emanating from the corporate world?

Seems I now have another reason why, if I have to come back to this dysfunctional and divided world in my next life, it had better be as top boss. Then I can put the corporate world firmly in its place where it belongs.

On Roaring and Retribution.

After the ice came the snow. After the snow came the rain and the rapid thaw. That was when the Shire took on its new guise as Waterworld. A few days of calm and clement weather followed, and today the rain came back – not very much of it, but enough to have us confused as to whether the water courses have earth beneath them or roads. The Shire is a hilly place, you see, and the wet autumn has left the land saturated to busting point.

Tonight we have another change. A storm system is crossing the Shire and the wind is roaring like a beast from hell bent upon finding something to destroy just because it can. Do I exaggerate? No; that really is what it sounds like.

I went out and moved Beddy the Garden Bear into the little porch by the front door earlier. He usually sits next to one of the wheelie bins (dumpsters) at the side of the house watching the birdies, but the wind was offering a clear and present threat of danger. A few minutes later I heard one of the bins go over, so it seems my instinct was right for once. This is Beddy taking the sun in warmer, calmer times. Such a cheerful little chap. You wouldn't want him to get hurt, would you?

 

 

Soon be time for evening coffee and a further excursion into the troubled world of Helen Graham, eponymous tenant of Wildfell Hall. Two thirds of the book gone and we’re still in flashback reading the contents of her diary. At the moment she’s agonising over how she’s going to cope with a cold future living with a man she hates in a marriage bereft of pleasure, purpose, or any semblance of affection. But of course, it won’t end there; we know that from the beginning of the story. I imagine he will probably die, removed from Helen’s life by a God bent on consigning him to the rack of retribution. And then Helen’s faith will be vindicated.

But I’m only guessing. Time will tell.

Another Winter Issue...

… the afternoons are alarmingly short.

It’s a well-attested fact that I’m a night owl who lives life approximately three hours behind the average mortal, one result of which is that I don’t rise until 10-10.30.

And then the morning routines start, culminating in my morning walk to help keep the atherosclerosis at bay. It’s usually around 1.30-2pm by the time I get back, which means it’s lunchtime. Lunch is prepared and eaten by around 2.30, and that’s when I’m free to do jobs outside.

But darkness is beginning to fall by a quarter to four on dull days, so then it’s time to stow the tools (because I’m a stickler for the time-honoured principle of having a place for everything and keeping everything in it), top up the birds’ feeding tables, close the curtains, and settle to a little housework, dinner, dish washing, and finding something to keep my mind occupied through the long winter evenings.

Still, at least I can use it as an incontrovertible excuse to avoid doing very much, which suits my nature quite well. It’s why I don’t complain about it once the autumn clearance work is finished in the garden. (I have only one small job left to do now, once the Himalayan Honeysuckle tells me she’s ready. I listen to my plants, you see, because I suspect that their place in the Grand Illusion is different than most people think it is.)

On Tenant, Porridge, and Gender Inequality

The middle part of Tenant is proving to be a bit on the tedious side. If ever I’d had occasion to walk ten miles through a mire of extra thick porridge, I imagine the experience would have been roughly comparable.

You sit patiently through ten pages of fractious argument between Helen and her feckless reprobate of a husband. Then you sit – still patiently – through another ten pages of enigmatic discourse with one of her husband’s friends. Your patience is beginning to wear a little thin as you sit through a further ten pages of Helen engaged in deep and meaningful discussion – all couched in that highly verbose style so beloved of 19^th century writers – with her friend Milicent on the subject of matrimonial obligation. And so it goes on.

But finally it’s looking up. Dear upright Helen has witnessed a tryst between her husband and the local society belle, the amoral Lady Lowborough, in the shrubbery, and it’s obvious that they’re having an affair. She is somewhat downcast, degraded, and disgusted, poor thing, at having been so deceived, and confronts her husband in a manner which reveals her inner scorpion. (Fun at last!) She tells him that she intends to leave and take their son with her, but he refuses to allow it and Helen has no option but to submit to his will. (Because that’s how things were in those days. The presumption of male dominance was unquestioned, and women were required to undertake to obey their husbands in the marriage vows no matter what the consequences. No exceptions.)

And that brings me to my second difficulty with the novel. To Helen, the litmus test of rightness in all situations is the question of how the response accords with every individual’s first duty in life – to serve and glorify God. It crops up time and again, and is often couched in the most mawkish of language. It is said that Anne Brontë was by far the most devoutly Christian of the three sisters, and it shows a bit too much for my taste. I find her alter-ego, Helen Graham (if alter-ego she be), unacceptably sanctimonious at times.

Persevering (because I said I would.)

On Something Sadly Relinquished.

I was just starting my second scotch and watching something on YouTube last night when I realised that a major element has gone out of my life.

When I was a very much younger person, young and youngish women of handsome appearance, fulsome personality, and sound intelligence would occasionally take an interest in me. Their facial expressions and body language would express a message which went something like: ‘I find you interesting and possibly attractive, at least in a manner of speaking, and would like you to come closer so that I may investigate further. What you see in my eyes and body language is the invitation.’ And then I would decide whether to accept or decline the invitation depending on whether the interest was reciprocated or not.

It doesn’t happen any more, of course. Overripe fruit is neither attractive nor interesting unless you happen to be an artist with a taste for nature’s process of decay. I think I’m resigned to the loss now, but I still miss it.

Young and youngish women do still regard me somewhat enigmatically now and then, but there’s no invitational body language any more, just a quizzical look which leaves me wondering what they’re seeking to know. I’m tempted to speculate that maybe they’ve just entered into a long term commitment and are pondering how they’re going to feel when they find themselves attached to a piece of overripe fruit a few decades down the line.

Going Unnoticed.

Last night I watched again a YouTube video I saw a year ago. It was a symphony orchestra playing a medley from Pirates of the Caribbean. In spite of the fact that the channel has 276,000 subscribers and the video itself 1.8 million views, there was only one comment. Mine. And above my lone comment it said:

0 Comments.

Do you ever get the impression that you don’t count for much?

On Point and Pointlessness.

I often think of all those heroes of history who gave up their bodily comforts, their freedom, and even their lives on a personal crusade to make the world a better place.

And then I think of all those people of high intelligence and learning who tell us that time as we perceive it is an illusion, that all of existence is contained within a moment (or a grain of sand as Blake would have it), that material reality is but some form of simulation which only appears to be real because of our entrapment in the illusion of time, or that there is only one consciousness projecting the whole notion of form and we are all a part of it.

So that leads me to wonder whether there was ever any point to the suffering of the heroes. And on a personal level I wonder whether the whinges of which this blog is largely composed have any validity.

No doubt I will continue to whinge and deal in trivia because I’m not enlightened yet. But then, nobody seems able to prove to me that any of the above is true and that enlightenment is real.

So what do I do? Cary on pretending, I suppose, while I await the epiphany which might or might not be out there in the darkness somewhere. And if it does suddenly appear and take possession of me, how will I know that it isn't merely the product of a diseased mind?

A Hint of a Ditty and Some Trivia.

I saw the Lady B this morning and the start of a ditty dropped almost instantly into my mind. This is quite an event, you know, because I haven’t felt the inclination to write a ditty for a very long time. This is what came quickly and naturally:

 

As I was driving into town

I saw the Lady B

A-sitting in a traffic queue

Too wrapt to notice me

Very short, isn’t it? I felt it should continue through two or three more verses, but everything that came into my mind included something I didn’t really want to say so it will have to fill the role of my unfinished symphony.

And there was something else I wanted to write about, but as usual I can’t remember what it was.

I did splash out some money today, though - £4 on a boxed pair of Turkish mugs to replace the French one I broke recently. They’re not as stylish as the French one, but they are a rather fetching shade of blue/grey (like my eyes.) And the packaging impressed me, being both strong and eminently functional. UK packaging is generally poor, so well done the Turks.

Oh, and Mrs O’Grady in Sainsbury’s told me how my ancestral Irish name (O’Goidin) should be pronounced. That was today’s big success.

I wonder whether I should stop adding to this blog until I’ve got something less boring to say.

Waterworld.

The Shire today might reasonably be described as a watery wonderland. Several of the lanes were deluged with fast flowing water, as well as voluminous ponds where there ought to have been only tarmac. In fact, there were considerable quantities of quite deep water – both running and resting – in places where I’ve never seen the stuff in all the years I’ve lived here. I’ve known the lane outside my house flow like a river a few times, but only for an hour or so during and after a heavy downpour. Today it was a river when I got up, and it was still a river at twilight when I was topping up the bird tables.

Being ever the rationalist, I tried to work out a possible reason for it. The best I could come up with was:

1. We’ve had a wet autumn and the ground is fully saturated.

2. We had four days last week which were dry but very cold, and the land turned hard with frost.

3. On Friday night we had a substantial fall of snow which added several more inches of water-in-waiting.

4. Last night the temperature rose and the snow melted quickly.

No doubt the land couldn’t take any more, and so a very considerable quantity of water headed downhill towards the river where it belonged. The lanes just happened to be on its line of travel.

Seeing so much water in places where it shouldn’t be is interesting but also disturbing, because if this is being caused by climate change there’s probably worse to come in the not-too-distant future. Being the sort of person who is unavoidably inclined to be constantly looking ahead, this adds another worry to the ones already here.

Fall for Fall.

Forget the previous post for a minute. The negative mood has eased slightly.

I braved the snowbound landscape this morning (we had heavy snow overnight) and took a walk up to the Harry Potter wood at the top of the lane. And there I saw something unusual.

The early snowfall (it’s still technically autumn by the old reckoning) had been heavy and prolonged enough to get through the bare tree branches, and so the woodland floor had gained a substantial and all-encompassing covering of white. But many of the trees were not finished with the shedding of their desiccated leaves, and I watched them falling onto the snow, turning the white carpet into a piebald one.

It looked odd, incongruous, the turning of the seasons getting confused, and I wondered whether it boded something. I don’t suppose it did.

The Underworld and Me: A Bad Match

I was reading an old blog post earlier in which I said how much I like the changing of the seasons, and I have liked it for most of my life. Well, some process has taken its course and altered my perception, because I no longer do.

In a physical sense, life is about walking round and round the annual cycle, each footfall bringing us one step nearer to the next season on the wheel. Apart from the inevitability, there’s a certain balance about that progression. But I no longer perceive the balance. I’ve now become hopelessly fixated on winter being the dominant season.

I’ve said before that I’ve come to have an abiding hatred of winter with its cold, its low light, its disturbingly long shadows at noon, that damned white stuff which makes movement hazardous as well as killing birds, animals, and even humans occasionally, and its unfailing habit of producing all manner of discomfort and inconvenience. But here’s the interesting fact: This fixation means that winter is the only season with which I feel truly and consistently connected.

In spring I feel only a passing awareness of the new colour appearing in the ground and the fact that my steps are taking me towards summer. In summer I’m aware of the life and fecundity of the high season – and I make a point of reporting it on the blog – but I’m equally conscious of the fact that autumn is only a short way along the road. And when I arrive at autumn I’m not entirely blind to the colour and mellow fruitfulness, but the feeling is always accompanied by a sense of high anxiety that I am shortly to be sent back again into the frigid darkness of the underworld.

And then winter bites and I’m almost manically aware of every shiver, every snowflake, every patch of ice on the road, every skeletal tree clothed in hoar frost, and the growl of every cold wind rampaging across the landscape and sometimes invading my living space. For three, four, or five months, winter is the whole of my existence. The rest of the year is a pleasant but very short dream.

This is bad, isn’t it? This is negative. But it has me in its grip now and I haven’t a clue how to get rid of it. I wonder whether anybody else feels the same way.

I will keep trying to make objective and positive posts on this blog, though, as occasion permits. Here’s hoping for a fresh window on a wonderful world.

But meanwhile, a note about snow scenes…

I saw an advert on the TV today in which happy people were cavorting happily in a pretty, snowy landscape (because snowy landscapes are pretty and joy-giving, right? Right. And they’re connected in the public consciousness with Christmas, which was the point of the advert.)

This particular pretty, snowy landscape was there to promote the message that now is the time for all happy people to reach for their wallets, their cheque books, their cards, their phones, and their smart watches, and range far and wide to find ways of spending at least what they can afford – and even what they can’t – on keeping the wheels of the free market economy turning smoothly. And then all will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

And then I saw a news report about a large number of people in Cumbria being trapped in their vehicles for up to nineteen hours without sustenance in some situation caused by the heavy snow which fell overnight. So much for the prettiness of snowy landscapes. This was the reality. So it appears I’m not the only one feeling the dark and chilly atmosphere of Hades at the moment.

Becoming Persephone.

A dull blanket of damp cloud descended on the Shire today, trapping the sub-zero air and depressing the view beyond about 400 yards. No sight of the creepy copse in Church Lane, no sight of the view beyond the river to the Weaver Hills, no sight of the Lady B’s erstwhile abode across the fields. All hidden somewhere in the deep, depressing maw of the frigid fog.

I wore my top-of-the-range mountaineering gloves when I went for a walk this morning, and my fingers were still becoming uncomfortably cold by the time I got back.

And there was no sun in the middle of the day as there has been for the last four days of clear, cold weather, so the brickwork on the south wall of my house was not treated to the slight injection of warmth which even the winter sun normally gives it. In consequence, the cold house has become colder today. My fingers are cold as I type this (as are my legs, my feet, and my nose.)

I’ve been trying to remember when my intolerance of winter cold began. As far as I recall it was when I moved into this house 17½ years ago, and was brought on no doubt by the inadequate heating, the 100-year-old structure, and the pernicious physical timidity consequent upon advancing years. And now, every autumn, I feel a sense of dread as winter approaches, and it’s becoming stronger as each year passes. I’ve said on this blog before that when it’s my turn to leave this earth I would like it to be in September. One day, maybe.

But in a mere three weeks the sun will start to rise again. And in a mere three months the early flowers will bring the colour back to the garden, the field margins, and the woodland floor. And two months after that the world will be white with May and the sound of trumpets will welcome the burgeoning life of summer. For six months, maybe.

Having a Smashing Time.

I broke my favourite coffee mug tonight, although to be strictly accurate it wasn’t I who broke it

I put it on a piece of board, you see, which I have on my desk to write on away from all the computer paraphernalia which makes office desks almost unusable these days. And then I reached out for something and accidentally knocked the board which slipped sideways and cast the mug to the floor where it smashed. So actually it was the floor which broke the mug with an ‘assist’ (as they’ve been saying in football ever since we picked up yet another bad habit from America) from the piece of board. I plead my innocence in the matter.

I liked that mug, though. It was French and rather stylish, so I was a bit peeved at seeing it in many pieces on the floor. What saddens me more, however, is that it was one of a matching pair, so its identical twin is now bereaved. I considered reducing the second one to the same condition as the dear departed and sending them together to whatever the French version of Valhalla is, but that seemed an awful waste so I think I’ll just sympathise instead.

And on the subject of football, I put the TV on tonight and watched the women’s game between England and Netherlands in some competition to decide which teams will play at the next Olympics. The England women didn’t get quite the result they wanted, but the pill was sweetened for me by the fact that, in my estimation, the Dutch had more good looking players. I can’t imagine why I noticed that. I don’t usually…

Collections.

When I was a kid it was stamps. Then it was my cornflake collection. Then it was women. And eventually the women gave way to anecdotes. It seems, however, that constantly adding to my habit of collecting things continues to be a major component of my lifestyle choices. The latest addition is beanie hats.

You see, I went to Uttoxeter today for the third time in five days. (I don’t think I’ve ever visited Uttoxeter three times in five days before, but that isn’t the exciting bit. This is the exciting bit:)

I went into the new PDSA shop which I mentioned in a recent post, fully intending to buy something even if it was only a second hand shoelace. It wasn’t; it was a beanie hat (and a cable knit beanie hat to boot, at least that’s what it said on the label.)

My oldest beanie hat is a red one that my mother knitted for me over thirty years ago. She did so, as a mother would be wont to do, to help protect me from the possibly deleterious consequences of rambling o’er wintry moors and mountains during my days as a landscape photographer. But it isn’t terribly substantial, and so a few years ago I bought a commercially-made one in a rather fetching shade of black. Well, a chap can grow a little tired of black, especially since my winter walking coat (the expensive one from Mountain Warehouse) is also black and I’m often to be seen wearing black jeans. (If I could think of an amusing simile to attach to that fact, I would. But I can’t, so I won’t bother trying.) 

The upshot of all this rambling o’er beanie hats during my days as a blog scribbler is that I recently decided that I wanted another one which would be more substantial and not black. And the PDSA shop had one – new – for £4.99. As for the colour, you might call it taupe or you might not. You might prefer to call it tan with a hint of a greenish tinge. In any event, it’s a colour of sorts and not black. And it’s felt-lined. And it’s quite thick because it’s cable knit (or so it said on he label.) I consider the latter two facts to be reason enough to presume that it will be warm.

So there you have it: I am now the proud possessor of three beanie hats. Would you say that amounts to a collection? I would. I might even buy another one next week. Multi-coloured stripes, perhaps. I have a reason to live at last.

And do you know what I just realised? When you’re a loner living alone and hardly ever talking to anybody, your life becomes ever more replete with routines, and you elevate trivia to matters of great consequence. Must remember to add that to my CV when I arrive in the undiscovered country and attend my interview with the recording angel.

On Course for a Post a Day.

Here we are again. Winter doesn’t officially start until Friday and already the temperature is low enough to be worthy of remark even in January.

So here I am sitting on my hands in an attempt to warm them, occasionally releasing one of them to cradle my nose in the hope of effecting a little heat transference, and rubbing my legs to the same end. And this is the warmest room in the house, so it’s a little galling to have to leave it and go upstairs or into the kitchen because I know it will be appreciably colder there.

While I’m there I get even more chilled, and when I come back into the warmest room in the house I can’t get rid of the chill because the warmest room in the house isn’t warm enough to do the job.

But all of this is largely about how you handle it. There was a time when I was more tolerant of the cold. It’s only a few short years since I was in the habit of donning my tattered old winter coat and going out for a walk on colder nights than this, armed with a notepad to sketch the constellations and an eye to appreciate the light of a cold moon on a sleeping landscape. I think I’m well into my wimp phase now. Whatever next? Wealthier people than me simply move to Portugal.

I know, I know… I whinge about the winter every year, but I was looking for something to rant about in order to achieve thirty posts in thirty days. I like neat ends. One more to go.

Off to plod through more of Anne Brontë’s wordiness now. I do so wish she’d hurry on to the end of her diary and come to the point.

A Bad Trip in a Time Machine.

I’ve been beset rather a lot lately by an unusual fantasy. I imagine myself being in possession of a time machine and travelling back to Haworth in 1846, there to meet the Brontë sisters and bring them back to the 21^st century.

The first thing they see when they step out of the vehicle is an aeroplane flying overhead. Inevitably they ask the question: ‘What the hell is that?’, only in a form of words to which young, genteel women of the mid-19^th century would be more accustomed. Fortunately, the question of how an aeroplane manages to fly is a matter of simple physics and so is relatively easily explained.

Then I take them for a drive in the car. They’re fascinated and terrified in equal measure by the speed, the volume of traffic, and the complexity of modern road systems, but most of all they want to know how the car manages to move without a locomotive on the front. That’s not too difficult either because the internal combustion engine works largely as a steam engine does, only using a small explosion to depress the pistons rather than steam power. That’s how the engine manages to be so much smaller.

OK, then it’s back home where I switch an electric light on. It seems like magic to the Brontës, of course, and so I have to explain how electricity travels through cables and causes an incandescent element to glow brightly. So far so good, but then comes the first truly difficult bit: what exactly is electricity? Now I’m struggling. Wouldn’t you be? How many of we lay persons truly know exactly what electricity is?

It gets worse when I boot up the computer and demonstrate simple things like word processing and spreadsheets, because now we’ve moved beyond electricity and into electronics. And what about the internet with its websites, multifarious educational resources, emailing, zoom meetings, social media facilities and so on? I have to go into binary form and the transmission of digital data, only I can’t because I haven’t a clue. And at some point the satellites orbiting the earth are going to come up…

And this is just the first hour of their trip to the 21^st century. There’s plenty more to come yet and the fond dream is already turning into a nightmare. Time to wake up, I think.

But at least I learned something: how little we modern humans know about the things we all take for granted. It’s become a world of specialists, those elevated cognoscenti on whom we’ve come to rely to smooth our path through the business of functioning and belonging. I’ve begun to envy the simple ways of yesteryear, while knowing that there’s no way back except by taking a trip in the only time machine we have at our disposal: the 19^th century novel. Maybe that’s part of the reason why they remain so popular.

Dull But Lined with Silver.

The low grey sky hung heavy for most of today, dropping copious amounts of wetness on lane and field and those who drove or walked thereon. And it was cold, too – the sort of damp, incisive cold which creeps through any number of insulating layers placed there in forlorn hope of protection. In short, it was a depressing day.

But there were silver linings.

My daughter and one of my granddaughters came to Uttoxeter today where I met them for coffee and pastries, catching up, and convivial companionship. I haven’t seen them since two summers ago, so that was today’s first treat. And I was more than happy to pay for it all since my daughter is currently homeless, courtesy of a Section 21 (no fault) eviction. There are a lot of people in that situation at the moment.

And then I discovered that dear old Uttoxeter has a new charity shop. It’s big, bright, well stocked, smart, and serving a cause which finds great favour with me – the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA for short.) It’s a more or less voluntary organisation providing low cost veterinary care to the animals of people trying to eke out their meagre existence on welfare. I believe a contribution of sorts is expected, but it’s still a lot more affordable than the prices charged by commercial practices. So the people have the NHS and the animals have the PDSA. That’s good in my book. Uttoxeter used to have nine charity shops, but the number dwindled to three as the lack of footfall in the high street (a common malaise the length and breadth of Britain) gradually swept two thirds of them away. I try to get as many of my needs as I can from charity shops – because both of us get the benefit – and so I expect the new shop will be receiving patronage from me in the future.

So that’s about it for the end of a mostly dolorous day. Winter cold is beginning to become established here in dear old Blighty, and after several months of feeling comfortable over the summer and early autumn I’m finding it difficult to accept that cold is the new normal. It is ever thus at this time of year, of course, but I’m not getting any younger.

Hot coffee, toast, and Tenant next. Anne Brontë does use an awful lot of words to expound upon matters of relatively little consequence, but I tell myself that decompressed fiction has its merits and perseverance is a virtue.

An Anti-American Post of Questionnable Virtue.

I was reading an old blog post tonight and came across a line of text which disturbed me. In fact it made me feel almost queasy, so I read it again to discover the reason.

I found the problem immediately. I’d only gone and split an infinitive... Call myself a writer? (Well, not exactly, but everybody needs some sort of a peg to hang themselves on.) But there it was, as plain as the tails on the serif fonts.

Americans do that a lot, you know. ‘I decided to not go,’ they say without so much as a hint of shame or remorse. It makes me froth at the mouth and want to scream at them (which wouldn’t be very nice if I was frothing at the mouth.)

‘You did not decide to not go,’ I want to rail, ‘you decided not to go. Get it? Go is a verb. To go is the infinitive form of said verb, and infinitives are as conjoined twins – inseparable. I’m the first to admit that there are no absolute rules in the English language because it isn’t classical Latin, but there are certain principles so deeply ingrained that they function as rules, and to break them so wantonly amounts to criminal behaviour. It makes you appear ignorant of acceptable practice in the matter of linguistic propriety. Don’t do it. It’s bad. More than that even, it makes the guardians of the Mother Tongue – that’s us – much given to apoplexy and frothing at the mouth, which is highly unbecoming and therefore unacceptable. Are you with me? (Bloody colonials!)

Can you imagine how I felt when I discovered that I’d published a post containing a split infinitive? ‘Shabby’ would be an understatement. I chose to assume that the fault lay with all the comments from colonials I read on YouTube after midnight. Bad habits have a way of slithering between the cracks when it’s 2am and you’re crossing no man’s land between being fully sober and acceptably drunk.

Ruminating on the Point of LIfe.

I was walking up the grotto that is The Hollow yesterday, mildly entranced as usual by the high, steep embankments on either side crowned by mature trees. (They include one magnificently venerable old oak, and three younger trees growing close together which look magical to me, although I have no idea why.)

And as I walked I asked the question I have asked myself many times: ‘What is life all about? What is the point of being alive?’ The answer came quick as a flash:

The point of being alive is simply to live, nothing more. The act of living consists of doing and feeling, be it climbing a mountain, vacuuming the carpet, being driven to despair, or reading a newspaper. There is no need to look further than that because there’s nothing more to see.

I felt a little nonplussed. I was even disappointed because I’ve spent my life searching for the big answer to the big question of life, the universe, and everything. I remember having an epiphany once – or so it seemed at the time – that the purpose of life is to achieve oblivion as an individualised entity.

But today it occurred to me that the point of life and the purpose of life are not quite the same thing. It all comes back to my favoured suspicion that an individual’s consciousness is a fragment of the universal consciousness which created material reality – including life – in order to experience itself.

So doesn’t this suggest most strongly that the point of life as stated above and my favoured view of the big picture are actually one and the same? I think it probably does. And it leaves my epiphany wholly untouched because where else should we be heading than to be re-subsumed into the universal consciousness?

I wonder why it took me this long to get here. Whether I’m right or not I probably shan’t know for a very long time yet.

More on Getting to Know Anne.

I said in an earlier post that one of my reasons for reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was my desire to educe something of the nature of Anne Brontë. I presumed I would glean insights from her plot points and the way she presents major characters.

But this raises a question: Is there any reason to suppose that an author’s nature becomes manifest in their writing? I gather the academic view is that there isn’t; I disagree. It seems to me that the driving force behind the plot, the choice of which major characters are promoted as good and which bad, and the underlying tone of the writing must betray something about the person who wrote the work. It’s evident, for example, that the whole of the canon of Charles Dickens leaves no doubt that he was a philanthropist.

So what have I ‘learned’ about dear Anne so far (I’m about half way through the book)? I don’t intend to go on at great length here because I don’t have the mental energy these days, but let me illustrate two examples of what I believe to be central to her nature:

Early in the narrative, Helen Graham – the eponymous heroine – is vehemently opposed to Mr Markham’s mother’s assertion that a wife’s first duty must be to the needs and comforts of her husband, her second responsibility is to her children, and the wife herself comes strictly third in line of priority. Helen’s counter position is that marriage partners must be equal and that a woman has as much right to personal freedoms as a man.

Later in the book, but earlier in timescale (we’re reading from her diary now), she berates her new husband for his rabid self-interest in all things. This matches her apparent feminist inclinations. But then she goes on to say that she would forgive him any amount of hedonistic obsession, and even mistreatment of her, if only he would make commitment to the glory of God his first guiding principle in all things. Her major source of disquiet is the fact that he pays mere lip service – and often rather less – to religion and the pre-eminent status of the Church. (I think it reasonable to presume that Anne’s perception of God comes from the writers of the New Testament, not the Old, since the God of the Old Testament is unquestionably masculine, much given to vengeance and even cruelty, and the ultimate proponent of male superiority.)

So what should I make of the author so far? My first tentative impressions are that she is a feminist in outlook and a very devout Christian. It’s also apparent to me that she is highly intelligent, a keen observer of human nature, and has a natural bent for perceiving and appreciating the workings and variable moods of the natural world.

And so to the bottom line: do I like her? Don’t know yet – probably quite a lot, but the God thing bothers me.

Are my tentative deductions accurate? Don’t know that either. I don’t think it’s possible to be sure one way or the other.

In that case, why am I bothering with the exercise? Because it’s more to my taste than most of the other things clamouring for my attention. There’s no stress factor with this one.