On Fixes and Fundamental Lessons.

Having not had the benefit of a dog fix for several long, empty weeks, I was treated to four in the space of two days. Yesterday it was two scrufty little beasts here in the Shire who absolutely demanded my attention and approbation. They both raced towards me squirming, wiggling, waggling (assuming the two participles not to be synonymous, which they probably are) and flashing their tails almost to the point of invisibility. Today’s two were quite different. Two Labradors in Uttoxeter – one yellow adult and the other a chocolate puppy – who approached me more sedately with smiles and earnest eyes. All were received most gratefully and paid much attention, of course.

They were the good encounters. The other sort came later.

I was in a charity shop when I spotted a woman come in with a little girl of around seven of eight. The child had a most prepossessing look about her – long black hair, fierce eyes, and an independent manner. I found her most impressive, and was moved to remark to the mother: ‘Your daughter has remarkably strong eyes. I think she’ll be the sort to get what she wants when she’s older.’ The mother only half turned her face to me and said: ‘Actually, he’s my son.’

Well, what do you do but shrink to a height of around two feet and look for the nearest deep hole to hide in? I excused myself on the grounds that the long hair had led me astray, and the mother countered with the perfect rebuke: She ignored me and continued to examine the merchandise.

And so I scuttled guiltily away and remonstrated soundly with myself. ‘Jeffrey,’ I said, ‘learn this lesson: Observe, but don’t speak. You’re very good at one but hopeless at the other. Got it?’ I got it.

Crying God for Charles.

I just read an article on the BBC News website about next Saturday’s coronation service for King Charles III. It says that this one will be different than previous ones in several ways, one of which is that the public will be invited to play their part. The Archbishop of Canterbury will ask ‘millions around the world’ to ‘cry out’ when prompted:

I swear that I will pay true allegiance to Your Majesty, and to your heirs and successors according to law. So help me God.

And then the Archbishop of Canterbury will continue with ‘God save the King’, at which point all we faithful millions of minions should cry out again:

God save King Charles. Long live King Charles. May the King live forever.

Having sat here in awe at the sheer absurdity contained within this prospect, I finally came to a conclusion. The only way I can believe this is happening is to accept once and for all that parallel universes really do exist, and I’ve just slipped into the Monty Python version.

On Spring and Mixed Feelings.

You know, for me there comes a day every year when the reality of spring suddenly leaps out in front of me, smiles a broad smile, and says: ‘Boo. Have you missed me?’

It’s hard to say exactly what brings it alive and real, but I suppose it’s like a fine cocktail when just the right mixture of ingredients makes the whole greater than the sum of its parts. In the case of spring it’s mostly the growth in woods and meadows and hedgerows and verges. It’s reached a point of development when it looks substantial rather than merely aspirational. The colour green predominates and holds court over the varied hues of spring flowers – most especially the swathes of bluebells standing proud among the greening woodland – all bathed in wholesome sunshine and topped with a dressing of white cloud and azure sky. And finally there’s the piece de resistance: seeing the first few swallows of the season performing their unrivalled acrobatics. And so it was today.

And then a dark cloud entered my mind and placed a heavy hand on the burgeoning sense of optimism to which I’ve been sadly unaccustomed of late. I’m surrounded by breakdowns, malfunctions, and other sources of worry at the moment, the most immediate of which are the health issues. They’re growing in number and becoming more palpable, which obviously makes them more uncomfortable and burdensome. I decided to bite the bullet and make a doctors appointment, and what a frustrating affair that turned out to be. Three attempts at holding on until the recorded voice said ‘You are number one in the queue’ ended with some malfunction in the phone or with the signal, and the call was cut off. I decided to have my evening meal and try again. That one was successful and a date was set for May 16^th. I hope I’ll still be here. I expect I will.

But to end the ramble on a more positive note, I did something in honour of the season that I haven’t done since last autumn. I took an evening walk through the little wood at the top of the lane in search of a favourite horse on which to bestow the gift of raw carrot. That, too, was successful, and horse and I became re-acquainted after the long winter months. And the westering sun loomed large again.

On Garden and Other States.

I’m just watching the film Garden State again. I remembered liking it when I watched it several years ago, and since I don’t have much else to do after darkness has fallen I thought I’d watch again. I particularly like Natalie Portman, you see. I could never have had a relationship with her because she has no ear lobes and that would have been a deal breaker, but I like everything else about her.

Watching it reminds me of the time when I was a young dude (bloke? guy? I get confused over which version of English is most comfortable after watching an American film, and isn’t that quite some admission?) And how I used to subconsciously adjust my persona to suit the girl of my immediate interest. I thought that if I admitted to the fact that what I most enjoyed doing was sitting alone by a lake of mysterious countenance, watching my fishing float bob gently among the reflection of summer trees on the quiet water, she wouldn’t be interested. But what could I do, since my second favourite activity was attracting the interest and approbation of attractive girls (with perfectly formed ear lobes)? So pretend is what I did, and maybe that’s what we all do when we’re playing the game of life.

*  *  *

And talking of life, I’m becoming quite concerned about some of my body’s latest malfunctions and feel I should really see a doctor. The problem is that I have another issue to get settled first before I commit myself to appointments, and it isn’t being addressed because people have an irritating habit of not doing what they say they’re going to do. I sometimes think that I’m the only person on the planet who always does what he says he’s going to do, which is one of the reasons why I rarely mix with most of the other people on the planet.

*  *  *

But I did have one resounding success today. That’s pretty rare, so I suppose I should probably tell the tale. It goes like this:

I’ve been having a problem lately with my blog formatting, so eventually I got around to posting it on the Blogger Help Forum. It was answered by a man called Adam (from Poland, apparently, according to the evidence of Blogger stats, although his English was impeccable apart from the fact that his spelling was American.)

Anyway, Adam began his reply in the way techies do – assuming you’re perfectly competent in navigating the circuitous routes of some location you didn’t even know existed, much less having been brought up in a state of familiarity with such places as young people are these days – so I replied as follows:

In common with a lot of people who weren’t brought up with computers, I’m a complete dunce when it comes to computer technology and language. I’m not even sure what a navbar is, but assume it’s the line of buttons at the top of the page. It used to have several buttons there and I clicked on ‘Design’ to take me to what I think is called the dashboard (posts, stats etc.) I now access it by clicking ‘Sign In.’

As for the edit tool, I can still make edits to recent posts by going to the dashboard, reverting to draft and then re-publishing. This is very difficult, of course, if I want to edit an old post which might be a very long way down the list of posts.

The thing is, you see, I’m simply not conversant with the relationship between the various tech giants whose products all have to work with each other. I’ve had problems before with incompatibilities after a new update from Firefox. On the other hand, the problem with the navbar and dashboard has happened before and has turned out to be a glitch in Google’s Blogger software.

What this comes down to is that, along with many others, I expect to enter a URL or click on a link or bookmark and receive the web page in full working order. Mostly it does, but if it doesn’t I’m lost, and instructions to do this or try that are little more than gobbledegook to we non-techies. That’s why we come to you in the hope that you’ll be a good Hermione Granger and perform the necessary magic to put it right.

This intends no criticism of you. It’s simply an aspect of today’s highly technological society for which we older people were never trained. And it’s a particular problem for those of us who, like me, are highly right-brained. We can deal with philosophical discourse, but get hopelessly confused with even the simplest workings of computer hardware and software.

And so, if this issue can’t be fixed, or at least explained in simple language, my only recourse is to carry on as I am and hope it gets no worse. Thank you for your time and attention.

(I wonder how often such lengthy and impassioned tomes as that find their way onto the Blogger Help Forum. I further wonder whether Google will have it framed and hung on a the boss’s wall in Silicone Valley.)

But Adam was not to be dismissed so lightly. He was persistent, and today he sent me a link to an entry in the Mozilla manual which might be entitled ‘How To Stop Firefox Screwing Up Your Favourite Websites Even Though We’re Only Trying To Protect Your Interests. Sniff.’ He thought it would probably solve the problem, and might just be manageable for a dummy like me. And it was (just about.) And it worked. And everything is now back to normal, so I wrote back to say thank you. And he wrote back to say ‘thank you for writing back.’ And isn’t that how life should be?

*  *  *

But I’m still keeping A Fairy Tale of New York on the back burner. It simply wouldn’t be fair to waste something as funny as that on a mind still sadly out of tune. One day, maybe.

*  *  *

Is anybody still awake and reading this?

Another Delighful Day.

Why do days like today happen? Today was a bad day in so very many ways that I won’t bother to enumerate. Frustrating, irritating, stressful. The old legs weren’t much weaker than usual, but the newish heart condition was worryingly in evidence. And why are they happening to me so often these days?

*  *  *

The next time a doctor tells me to stop smoking I’m hoping he’ll use the magic argument: ‘Smoking is a creeping kind of suicide.’ And then I can enjoy answering: ‘I like the creeping kind.’

*  *  *

Remember the woman I wrote about a couple of weeks ago – the one I thought to be possible evidence of aliens being among us or the existence of parallel universes? I saw her again today. She was still skimpily dressed but slightly less so than the last time. That was odd because the weather was much better. Unfortunately, I was passing her in the car so I wasn’t in a position to question her origins.

*  *  *

I was in the supermarket today when I found myself standing next to a man in the bread aisle (I think.) He turned and stared at me with that kind of look which might be described as ‘knowing.’ What did he know? And then he smiled and opened his eyes wider. It was creepy, so I frowned back and hurried on.

*  *  *

I’ve picked up the novel A Fairy Tale of New York again after a hiatus of a few months. It’s very rude, very funny, and very entertaining. Unfortunately, I’m not in the mood for funny at the moment, so it’s back on hiatus until I am.

*  *  *

I have to get up earlier than usual tomorrow in full knowledge that it might be pointless, but I won’t know until I get a phone call. That’s especially irritating because I hate getting up before I’m ready. It all stems from having to go to school on weekdays, church on Sundays, and working for employers who base their routines on timetables.

The Purple and the Black.

I’ve said before on this blog that I like to distinguish between what I see as the two types of melancholy.

Firstly, there’s purple melancholy – that which is downbeat, written in a minor key, encourages a longing for something desired but unseen beyond a translucent veil, and yet produces a tingle of anticipation to create a perverse sort of pleasure. Then there’s black melancholy which is unremittingly dark and indistinguishable from depression.

This track from Kristine Robin encapsulates, to my mind, the essence of the purple. Of course, it has to be listened to in a receptive frame of mind and an appropriate environment. And I do realise that musical taste is as individual as the listener, but it might be worth a try if the requisite factors are conducive.

On the Big D and Its Relentless Hum.

All my life (at least that which I remember) I’ve been prey to a depressive tendency which might be described in audible terms. Much of the time – for hours or days or weeks or months – it would remain silent, hidden away in a closed off space until some circumstance brought it to a rumble or a banging or a crashing cacophony. When the source giving rise to the din passed, as all things do, it would return to silence for a while.

Not so any more. I realised recently that the incessant hum of depression never stops now, but rises and falls in tune to the diurnal round or the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

And so I often ask myself whether this is something to be tolerated with fortitude or addressed with positive intent. The answer should be obvious, shouldn’t it? But it isn’t because I have no faith in either of the standard remedies prescribed by the professional cognoscenti, they being the twin treatments of therapy and medication. I’ve seen both fail almost without exception in others, you see, and I’m too self-aware and singular to consign the nature of my being to the interference of others, however expert they might be or claim to be.

And so I do what I do with everything – observe the process in hope of learning something about the human condition. I reason that it might prove useful one day when someone needs an ear that understands them, because most people don’t. Real depression is largely misunderstood by that great majority which knows only the universal lowness accompanying ill fortune like the death of a pet or receipt of a bill too big to pay – circumstances which hurt at the time but pass as the time does. Real depression is a hum which drones continuously away in the background. And much of the time – when the sun shines and the wind is set fair – it gets ignored. But it never actually stops. So when the sky grows dark and a chill wind invades the depressive’s precious and private world, the hum rises again until it becomes maddening. And the madness comes armed with a sense of hopelessness, helplessness, and a dearth of belief that anything matters. I know this from personal experience and the pronouncements of practitioners in the field.

And so I continue to observe for the sake of gaining experience which might or might not be useful one day. But I also stir in a large ladle of existential enquiry to add a measure of richness to the soup of self-knowledge. I like to think that the hum is the base and the rest the body, and therein lies the growth of wisdom or worthless, abject resignation depending on your point of view.

*  *  *

Having got that off my chest, I can report that my little abode might be graced with a visitation from a lady of Chinese ethnicity one of these fine days. It’s five years since a lady of Chinese ethnicity stepped over my threshold, so I’m hoping that, if it does happen, the genius loci of the place will be on it’s best behaviour. I also hope that I won’t find myself playing Quasimodo to an almond-eyed Esmeralda of the East. Depressives might be congenitally inclined to anticipate rejection, but it still hurts.

The Crown in Question.

In view of the fact that the world is shortly to stop turning for a day in Britain while a man called Charles has a fancy hat placed on his head, a recent opinion poll asked 4,500 people in the UK whether they thought the monarchy should continue. The answers were divided into:

 

Yes it should.

No, it should be replaced by an elected head of state.

Don’t know.

If somebody were to ask me that question, I would have to decline to answer on the grounds that two other questions have to be asked to make the enquiry complete. They are:

Does it matter whether the head of state is elected or not?

Do we really need a head of state anyway?

The first of those I could definitely answer with a confident ‘no’ because the head of state is, for all practical purposes, non-executive. It’s a position of ceremonial figurehead, nothing more. The monarch has a wide range of powers on paper, but they’re meaningless. An elected government makes the rules and the monarch concurs, because if they didn’t a constitutional crisis would ensue and the monarchy would probably be disbanded. A major part of the remit of the monarchy is that it stays out of politics, so what does it matter whether it’s elected or not?

The second question is more open to argument. Personally, I feel inclined to the view that the position of Head of State is an unnecessary expense, but I can understand the alternative position that it performs a useful role in the matter of social cohesion. Does that justify the expense? I suppose it might.

Meanwhile, out here in our traditional little Shire, I gather there’s a hooly planned for the day of the coronation. (To take place at the village hall, I might add, which is uncomfortably close to my house.) I hope nobody asks me whether I shall be attending because, if they do, I’ll find it hard resist explaining that I see no point in celebrating the fact that a kiddies' pantomime is being staged a long way away in London. And then the ever-simmering possibility of being driven to the burning mill by a mob of rabid villagers armed with pitchforks will probably flare up again.

On Dolour and Some Delights.

There’s been nothing to write about this week. The days have been mostly bright, but the cold airflow has persisted so the twilights have been inhospitable. I continue to rise from my bed into a demi-hell and spend the morning laboriously climbing out of it so that I might get the odd household or garden job done in the afternoon. Several vital appliances and tools are breaking down in sympathy with my worn out body. The Shire perambulations have become a tiresome trudge on weak legs and painful feet. No dogs or horses have sought my company, nor any humans for that matter.

But the priestess came back with a good story to tell. And the bluebells have started to appear in the woods and verges. The first butterfly – an early Orange Tip as usual – made its appearance in the garden today, and I think I saw the first bat as the sky darkened this evening. So life has compensations of sorts.

And since the cherry trees are in full bloom around the school playing field opposite my house, I thought I’d post again one of my favourite scenes from one of my favourite films: Kirschblüten. The young Japanese girl is called Yu, and in some parallel universe somewhere she might be the older man’s very own priestess. Would that a trip to Mt Fuji were on the cards. It seems like a good place from which to move on.

Blaming Hollywood.

One of the things we Europeans find incomprehensible about America is the number of people prepared to wander around shooting innocent victims. But that’s only half the story. What we also find incomprehensible is the sheer passion so many Americans express with regard to their right to bear arms. Such passion doesn’t exist in Europe because guns aren’t part of the culture. We don’t even think about them. I, for one, have never in all my life known anybody who owned anything more deadly than an air rifle.

I’ve often thought about this and think I might have come up with a theory. I wonder whether it might be Hollywood’s fault. It goes like this:

Europe had its own periods in history when social violence was common and people carried arms for self-defence. Christopher Marlowe, for example, the Elizabethan playwright was killed in a bar brawl in 1593. But by the time the movie industry got underway in the early twentieth century, European society was relatively peaceable and well structured. Social violence on a dangerous scale had become a matter of history.

Not so in America, at least in the Midwest, far west, and south-west where the anarchy prevalent in the pioneering days was still part of living memory. (Or so it seems to me. Fell free to correct me if I’m wrong.) And then along comes Hollywood and silver screens across the nation are awash with guns, gunfights, and the routine bearing of arms, either to enforce one person’s will or defend against another’s.

If I’m right, doesn’t it suggest that Hollywood’s preoccupation with the western kept the gun-carrying mentality central to American consciousness, at least in those parts of America more influenced by the pioneering spirit than the European sensibilities established in the ex-colonies of the east and north-east?

If that is the case, it seems to me that it’s the essential link which needs to be broken. I wonder how long it will take so that school kids don’t have to be taught to run in a zigzag pattern when the shooting starts.

Being Thankful for Invaluable Advice.

I never cease to be surprised by the advice we receive here in the UK when some sort of real or imagined crisis appears to be looming into view. I’ve mentioned a few times the advice we were given to paint our houses white when there was a short heatwave expected to arrive, and today we were treated to another piece of mind-boggling wisdom. It gave a list of actions we should take when grocery shopping to help us deal with the cost of living crisis, and the first on the list was:

Check your cupboards before you leave home to see what items you already have in stock.

If only they’d told us this before. Then we wouldn’t have needed food banks, or had to rely on teachers providing food for children who’d come to school without breakfast, or learned of pensioners and others low on the income scale having to choose between going cold or going hungry during the winter. If only we’d known…

But do you know what’s possibly even sadder? I’ll bet there are people out there who really don’t know what they’ve already got in the cupboard, because modern culture conditions us to expect everything to be served up on a plate (as long as we’ve got all the technology, and all the apps, and as long as we trip dutifully along between the tramlines laid down by, and for the benefit of, the corporate world.) People aren’t really trained to think for themselves these days, are they? Then again, I expect most people who don’t know what’s in the cupboard are wealthy enough not to care, so they don’t need any advice, fatuous or otherwise. It’s all so sad, silly, and a little ironic.

And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall one of these days. I wonder what advice we’ll be given then, to help us stay dry in the deluge. Self-immolation to evaporate the water?

Cleaning Up YouTube.

It’s become a regular feature of modern life to read about pressure being brought to bear on the operators of social media platforms to remove not only hate speech, but also the malicious spreading of misinformation. And there are laws – in the UK at least, and I should imagine in other countries too – which provide for the forced removal of adverts which make false claims.

So what about YouTube, which to many people has become a major source of information and erudition? YouTube is awash with uploads appearing on the recommendations page which make idiotically sensational claims accompanied by transparently fake thumbnail photographs. And when you look at the statistics underneath you discover that they’ve had hundreds of thousands of views. No doubt it makes lots of money for the channel operator, so isn’t that clearly fraud? It certainly is as I understand the term.

Why doesn’t anybody put pressure on YouTube to remove such abject fakery from the gullible gaze of hundreds of thousands of simpletons who are taken in by it? Better still, why doesn’t Google have the good sense and social responsibility to take care of the matter itself without needing to be pressured?

Well, I think we all know the answer to that one. No doubt Google wants as many videos as possible up on its platform because videos attract adverts and Google gets a share of the revenue. And the issue of whether videos are genuine or fake pales into insignificance wherever the profit motive holds sway. That fact is plain to see, and apparently unchallenged, in a culture utterly dominated by the capitalist ethos.

But should we tolerate it? I don’t think so, which why I jotted this post. What else can I do?

Musing Again.

Today’s question:

How does one escape the prison of victim perception?

A thought followed:

A certain type of philosopher might argue that we are all, to some extent, victims of circumstance. Another, maybe more spiritually inclined, philosopher might counter that none of us can ever be a victim of anything since we all create, by way of some arcane mechanism, our own realities.

Another question:

Is there ever any real value in listening to anybody argue about anything? I wrote several replies to this but deleted them all since a scream is inaudible in a vacuum.

Quantifying the Influence of Quant.

The media in Britain are today mourning the death of Mary Quant, the leading designer of popular fashion for young women of the boomer generation and a major icon of the Swinging Sixties.

Her main claim to fame was the popularisation of the mini skirt, a sartorial feature lauded at the time for ‘freeing the female leg’ as one commentator put it. I would say that its influence went further than that because it made a substantial contribution to possibly the most notable feature of the period: the development of youth culture. It was a time when young men and women no longer wanted to emulate their parents as earlier generations had. They wanted to be their own people, respectful to the older generations but at the same time separate and a little way removed. And part of that movement involved the boys growing their hair long and the girls wearing their hemlines short.

As a leading light of this social development, therefore, Mary Quant is rightly regarded as a major social innovator. But did her influence have a downside?

Let’s go back to Mary’s main claim to celebrity – the popularisation of the mini skirt. Through a span of history going back hundreds of years, women’s hemlines had ranged from the knee to the ankle and back again. Thighs were strictly private, and the showing of them was not only improper but considered positively immoral. Suddenly the pressure was on young women to open them up to public view, and those of regular proportions saw the change as an emancipating one.

But what of those who were not of regular proportion, those whose thighs were heavy or laced with cellulite, or had other features considered unattractive even by the liberated standards of the Swinging Sixties? Such women would have been reluctant to wear the mini skirt for fear of mockery or disapproval, a factor which hadn’t applied during earlier times when skirt styles were more voluminous and hid a multitude of unfavourable characteristics. And so I’m tempted to speculate that this might have been the beginning of what today we call ‘body shaming’ with all its detrimental psychological consequences. It would be foolish to claim that it was the only cause, but I suggest it might have been the beginning.

Of course, I don’t intend any denigration of Mary Quant in saying this. Innovations are just innovations. Most of them have a good side and a bad side, and innovation is integral to human development. It’s just that I can’t help trying to see balance wherever balance is appropriate.

Another Woman to Wonder At.

You might recall that I made mention recently of two stand-out women I encountered recently. First there was the bag lady, and then there was the young woman who I referred to as a ‘pearl among pebbles.’ They were both in Uttoxeter. Today I saw another, in Ashbourne this time.

The weather in Ashbourne was unpleasant this morning. It was dull and cold with a biting, blustery wind and spitting showers of rain. People everywhere were frowning as they trudged head-first into the cold, wet blast, and the sartorial order of the day was back to winter coats and woolly hats. Not so the woman I saw come into the charity shop where I was perusing the merchandise.

She could easily have been a glamour model just moving beyond her prime – aged around 40 or a little over, tall, slim but curvaceous in all the right places, sporting long, immaculately groomed chestnut hair, and carrying herself with the practiced deportment of someone who knows how to balance a book on her head come hell or high water.

Get the picture? No, because you haven’t got the full picture yet. I haven’t said how she was dressed on this dull, cold, wet, windy day in our grim little market town. She was wearing skin-tight (so tight they might have been painted on) white jeans cut off at the knee to reveal bare calves and shins. Above the jeans there was nothing but a skimpy cotton halter top in red with a bit of frilly stuff around it. Bare midriff, bare back, flawless skin exposed to the elements as though elements didn’t exist. No coat, no hat, no apparent concern.

How do they do it? It reminded me of a man I saw many years ago walking across a road on a cold, ice-laden morning in January. It was early enough to be still dark, and he was wearing shorts and a T shirt.

Do they come from a different world somewhere? Are they proof of aliens being among us or the existence of parallel universes? I would love to know. I should have asked her, shouldn’t I?

‘Excuse me madam, please don’t take this amiss, but since you’re dressed that way I’m curious to know whether you come from another planet or a parallel universe. I imply no criticism whatsoever, merely a sense of wonder.’

I think I would have been safe enough. There was no possibility of her having an advanced weapon hidden about her person with which to fry me and send me to my maker like a piece of battered cod. (Unless it was small enough to fit in her ear, of course. Aliens can be a bit sneaky like that.)

Oddly enough, the charity shop had the complete set of Star Trek movies for sale. I chose not to buy them even before I spotted a disguised Romulan female perusing the cheap dress jewellery. Maybe there’s a connection.

A Blessing in Disguise.

I’ve mentioned a few times on this blog that I’m a confirmed loner. And it’s true; I am. But the fact is that I’m not quite a total recluse, and the barren nature of my lifestyle is becoming difficult to tolerate. It’s encouraging depression, anxiety, OCD, reliance on increasingly tedious routines, and so on. And maybe it’s also encouraging the onset of further health issues because we know that our mental state can affect the physical body and it’s difficult to know whether certain ‘symptoms’ are psychosomatic or not. That being the case, life for this confirmed loner is becoming a tedious, dispiriting trudge.

But today I had a thought. There’s a growing groundswell of suspicion, even among certain elements of mainstream science, that the whole of material existence might be some form of illusion which our consciousness is pre-programmed to fully accept as reality. It’s often suggested by those who are convinced of such a notion that the living of a human life is, in effect, merely playing a part in a virtual reality game. (Even Shakespeare said something along those lines several times, although routine scholarship in the matter of Shakespeare would interpret his words differently.)

But let’s suppose it’s true (and I’ve become quite a fan of the idea myself.) It seems to me that living a normal, active life full of distractions would serve to keep a person constantly conditioned to the belief that the game is reality. And conversely, that those who have very few distractions are more likely to see through the illusion. So maybe being a loner and finding life a tedious, dispiriting trudge is but a step along the road to enlightenment. That sounds good, doesn’t it? As far as my limited knowledge goes, it’s the core essence of Buddhism.

Or maybe it’s just the madness of cabin fatigue taking hold. Today has been a bad day on all fronts.

Crossing the Line.

I heard something this evening which made me smile broadly. (Smiling broadly is something I rarely do, you understand, so it was an occasion of some moment.)

I was watching the first episode of the comedy Blackadder II, having picked up the whole series for the princely sum of £1 in a charity shop. Queenie, modelled on Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII, is recalling things which amused her as a child.

‘What were those people called, the ones with funny faces and bells?’ she queries.

‘I think you’re referring to jesters, ma’am,’ replies Lord Melchett.

‘No, no, that’s not right,’ says the Queen. ‘Oh yes, I remember. Lepers.’

And then I wondered whether such a joke would be tolerated these days. We wouldn’t dream of engaging in light hearted repartee about, say, a Downs person, or anyone else with a recognised disability or condition which set them apart from the majority. We would consider it offensive to the sufferers of such conditions, and rightly so.

But we in the modern western world think of lepers in exclusively historical terms – even biblical ones – and imagine that leprosy no longer exists, at least nowhere that’s likely to be reached by a 20^th century western TV comedy show. So does that make a difference? I suppose it probably does.

*  *  *

And talking of people set apart from the majority, I saw a young woman in Uttoxeter today who came close to arresting my breath. She wasn’t just pretty – pretty girls are, after all, ten a penny – but her looks, her bearing, the simplicity of her dress and demeanour, and the strength of her presence were exceptional to the point of being as rare as a pearl among pebbles.

I so wanted to tell her, but you can’t, can you, not even when you’re old. I forced myself to stop staring at her and smiled at the baby girl she was carrying instead. The baby smiled back, which was ample recompense for the frustration of having to remain quiet and unobtrusive.

Easter Sunday's Only Thrill.

I got accosted by a woman in Uttoxeter today. I’d say she was in her fifties, a little dishevelled but some way short of down and out, and she was pushing a supermarket trolley containing two well stocked carrier bags and what looked like a folded duvet. Does that suggest a bag lady? I’m not sure that I’m qualified to guess.

She began by telling me how awful Uttoxeter had become and how much better it was to live in the countryside. I concurred and offered the obvious reply that high streets are dying these days, suffocated under the weight of retail parks and online shopping. And then she entered into a string of further diatribes to which I also concurred, partly because I heard little of what she said and partly because it was easier than engaging in a conversation which I was quite sure would have no ultimate purpose.

Being an affable and polite sort of person, I tried hard to think of a closing statement which would set me free without giving offence. I came up with one, said it, and started walking away. It wasn’t good enough. She refused to let me go and I had to come up with another one. And so I did, and eventually escaped.

So then I wondered why she’d chosen me as a suitable object of engagement. I suppose it was because there was hardly anybody else in the town on account of it being Easter Sunday and all the shops were closed (which encouraged me to further wonder where she might have obtained the supermarket trolley. Even the retail park was shuttered and deserted.)

And then I wondered why she hadn’t asked me for the bus fare to Derby. The last one did. Ah, but of course. Being Easter Sunday, there were no buses running.

So that was today’s exciting encounter, and just when I was thinking how drab and boring Easter Sundays are.

Two Sides of the Picture.

You know how it is when you’ve sent two emails to two different people, and you consider both emails to be important so you’re expecting a quick reply if not necessarily an immediate one, but no reply has arrived by the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that?

And so you blame the recipients and consider them inconsiderate.

But then you question your sense of priorities and realise that they’re greatly influenced by your reclusive lifestyle. And you soon come to further realise that people who have close families, friends, work commitments, a social life, etc, etc, will have different views than you do on the matter of what is and isn’t important.

So you forgive them, and then you forgive yourself, and then you try not to become increasingly fractious as each day goes by and there’s still no return email.

(I jotted this down because I thought it important at the time. I’m sure it isn’t.)

So What Can We Rely On?

Having recently been made aware of the Mandela Effect, I decided to read the Wiki article on the False Memory phenomenon.

My, what a complex subject it is, given all the angles and the extent of research on the matter. When I reached the end of it, one thing (and one thing only) was clear:

Trust your memory at your peril.

And that’s rather scary when you consider how much we rely on it for our judgement and prosecution of life in general.

Life in general is giving me little to write posts about at the moment. Mostly it’s a continuous catalogue of discomfort, malfunctions, reasons to be seriously anxious, and despair at the dilapidated state of the human condition. I’m becoming bored with writing about it all.

It will, no doubt, be self-evident that signs of spring continue to manifest mother nature's munificence in the Shire. And the fact that I made friends with a splendid skewbald horse today would be of no interest whatsoever to anybody but me, even though it’s a pleasant memory to carry me through to bed time. At least, I think it’s a memory. No, I’m sure it is because I also remember being disappointed that his companion, the grey, ignored me utterly. (As far as I recall, or think I do.)

Revenge of the Little Person.

The checkout I went through in Sainsbury’s today was being operated by an Irish woman with whom I occasionally have a chat. At one point she said ‘gloomy weather out there today.’ (Which it was, being dull, wet, and chilly.) ‘Irish weather,’ I replied, at which she smiled and appeared to concur. When I got home and was putting the shopping away, I checked the till receipt and discovered that one item had been charged twice. I suspected a connection and rued the loss of £1.

And then I discovered that a pack of broad bean seeds I’d bought with several other items from the hardware shop was missing. That was another £2.90 down the drain, and I remonstrated with myself for having been so absent minded as to have presumably left it on the counter.

And then the more rational explanation presented itself in a flash of green light. It seemed obvious that my family leprechaun (my male ancestral line being Irish) had given me a box on the ears for casting aspersions on the Irish weather. No doubt he’d calculated that £3.90 was sufficient to greatly irritate me, but not enough to warrant a petition for bankruptcy. Clever little blighters, aren’t they? Lesson learned.

Another Brief Note on Mr Tantrum.

I do wish they’d stop all this legal razzmatazz with Donald Trump in New York. Even if he’s found guilty on all charges, his supporters will still cheer and run riot for him because his popularity is based on the cult of personality. And the sort of thing he’s being accused of is what good ol’ boys do anyway, isn’t it? They represent that aspect of American culture which the rest of the world laughs at until one of their number gets to be President and the whole thing assumes dangerous proportions.

Meanwhile, those of us in Britain – and presumably most of the rest of the world – have to put up with his face emblazoned across every newspaper, watch with a mixture of amusement and alarm as he performs his Mussolini impersonations, and cover our ears to his maniacal rantings.

And therein, I think, lies the true nature of the problem. The more I see of Trump, the more convinced I am that he’s suffering from some sort of psychotic condition. I do realise that I’m no psychiatrist, but I would be interested in the result of a psychiatric assessment. Do you think it could be arranged?

And who knows, if I’m right and he were to receive treatment, maybe he could live out what life he has left as a retired and retiring old gentleman of pleasing disposition. Wouldn’t that be a relief?

Embracing the S Word.

I had an email last night from somebody who said she was ‘becoming more spiritual’, and something interesting occurred to me.

It’s only relatively recently, maybe in the last thirty or forty years, that the word ‘spiritual’ has entered the lexicon of common speech. It turns up everywhere now; you even see it on YouTube (where it’s generally better understood than the ubiquitous ‘soul’ incidentally.)

We all know that the word itself is ancient in its various forms, but in the early part of my life it was hardly used at all here in the west because there was no need for it. People back then declared themselves to be either atheist or Christian. Being spiritual amounted almost exclusively to believing in God, heaven, and Christ the Redeemer. What else was there?

It’s true that there were Pagans and followers of other arcane traditions, but they were very few in number and usually kept themselves hidden for fear of mockery and alienation. It’s only since the growth of globalisation and the increasingly multi-cultural nature of western society that people have been moved to express their spiritual inclinations while simultaneously distancing themselves from organised religion. And for my part, I see that as a rare step in the right direction.

A Tale of Two Mechanics.

Two acquaintances of mine are car mechanics, and they’re also friends with one another. Let’s call them Neil and Derek, two men of practical disposition doing the most practical of jobs.

A few years ago Neil’s father – also a car mechanic – died, and Neil believed that his father still existed in some little-altered form somewhere beyond an invisible curtain. Derek took the opposite view. As far as he was concerned, death is the absolute end, and those who believe in ‘life after death’ (as popular perception likes to term it) are fools deluding themselves because they are too weak to accept that we are not immortal. He was more comfortable with the notion that life begins at birth, ends with death, and there is nothing else, because such a view makes life less complicated.

So both men believed what they wanted to believe, one as a reaction to grief and the other as a way of avoiding complication. And they were both quite certain that they were right. And such is the nature of conflict.

Some people turn to religion and believe what the priests tell them, while others turn to that brand of science totally immersed in material perception and believe what their favoured scientists tell them. And still they’re all sure that they’re right. And so it goes on.

Why don’t they just adopt a position whereby they believe in nothing but embrace the possibility that nothing is impossible? Then they wouldn’t claim to know anything and a better level of tolerance would have to prevail.

Farewell, Mr Sakamoto.

I wonder how many YouTube hits this piece of music will receive on computers around the world tonight:

 

 

It’s the theme music from the film Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, about an episode in a Japanese POW camp during WWII, and is probably one of the most evocative of all pieces of film music. And the reason why it might get a few hits tonight is that the composer and performer, Ryuici Sakamoto, died five days ago aged 71. His death was announced today following his funeral.

What I didn’t know until I read the article was that Sakamoto also played the part of the camp commandant in the film – a man whose delicate and sensitive nature had to be locked behind a wall of cultural expectation and the pursuit of duty, and who was consequently tortured by the conflict thus engendered.

And that, for me, was the main point of the film. It had nothing to do with the politics behind the war, but about the clash of personal ideologies and conditioning contained within disparate cultures. The suffering experienced was not, therefore, wholly unilateral, but affected people on both sides in different ways. Sakamoto’s music and dramatic skill captured the pathos beautifully.

Berenice and the Power of Poe.

Instead of reading my daily chapter of Gorky Park tonight, I decided to read again one of my favourite stories of Edgar Allan Poe – Berenice. (I have two favourites, the other being The Fall of the House of Usher, and those familiar with Poe will know that there are similarities which might indicate something fundamental about my oddness.)

So why was I suddenly taken away from my current novel and directed towards a very short story by the master of the macabre? Was I in a macabre mood? No, it was because I seemed to recall having seen the name somewhere – I don’t even remember where – and I felt intrigued to wonder why it was a favourite. I tried to remember the plot, but was met only by vagueness and one word: teeth. I knew it had something to do with teeth.

And so I collected my anthology of Poe and found that the page marker was at the start of the story in question. This had to be significant, didn’t it? The good, wise old universe is telling me that I must read this story again. Well, in all honesty, probably not, but I read it anyway

Oh my giddy aunt, what a masterpiece of short story writing it is. Formal and highly complex in its syntax, it’s not an easy read. I persevered, took my time, concentrated hard to understand every word, and was rewarded with a most intelligent, observant, and lyrical exposition on the madness of extreme monomania, the tragedy of sickness so pernicious as to utterly destroy the essence of natural beauty, the horror of premature burial, and the iniquity of grave desecration further stained by involuntary torture.

So why was I unaccountably driven to read it by some agent of unknown provenance? You tell me, but not until you’ve read and understood every word of the genius contained therein.