On Bad Days and Curses.

What a day of days today was. The morning was liberally filled with one sort of malfunction after another – corporate systems, the computer, the printer, and the mobile phone. I spent so much time trudging through it all to sort out a nagging problem with my energy supplier (as usual) that I was over an hour late going for my routine lunchtime walk, taken in a state of mind wholly unsuitable for the enjoyment of the bucolic idyll.

But at least the lateness proved serendipitous. It placed me in just the right place to be passed by the Lady B’s car, and this time I could be sure it was her. The vehicle and sun were in just the right relative positions to see the driver clearly and enable recognition. The wave was no mystery this time, and the accompanying smile went a little way to improving my mood.

Until, that is, I got home and found a worrying email from my daughter. The parlous nature of the day was not be denied, it seemed, and it was followed by much difficulty with the book-keeping work I’d set myself to do in the afternoon. And then my internet dropped out. I reset the router to get it back, and then my browser crashed. Friday 13^th has never caused me any difficulty, but today was Thursday 13^th and I wondered whether the old superstition has been getting it wrong all these centuries.

This evening I went for a late walk armed with raw carrot for Millie the Horse. She was in the middle of the field and therefore unreachable (for reason previously explained.) But on the way back I was the grateful beneficiary of a second smile and wave, this time from the Lady B’s dear mama. She slowed as she passed me as usual, and I began to wonder why she does that even when the carriageway is easily wide enough to accommodate a vehicle and pedestrian in perfect safety. I came up with three theories:

1) She is naturally careful for safety’s sake, even when it isn’t necessary.

2) It’s a conscious or unconscious instinct when she’s passing a person she knows.

3) She fears that if she takes a hand off the wheel to wave, the car might take it in its head to become uncontrollable and disaster might ensue.

I decided that 1) is the most likely and 3) the most absurd. But if all those clever scientists can’t even be sure whether or not anything came before the Big Bang, what hope is there that one common mortal can know the mind of another?

*  *  *

Through all of today’s issues I made occasional forays onto the BBC News website, and sank even lower when confronted with the parlous state of the human condition. I saw the never ending procession of murderers, abusers, psychopaths, and the dispiriting panoply of presidents, potentates, and politicians who are so easily moved to take the life of innocents with a perfunctory wave of their blood-ridden hands.

I was thinking about it as I was walking along Meadow Lane (having just remarked to myself that the barley on a field running down to the river was ready for harvesting), when an inner voice accosted me:

‘But surely,’ said the still, small voice, ‘you must allow for the fact that there are many good people in this world – kind, humanitarian, altruistic people who truly want to make the world better.’

‘I know,’ I replied, but let’s put it this way: If you go into a pub and order a pint of beer, it’s reasonable to expect that you’ll get a pint glass of nothing but beer. If instead you’re given a glass consisting of half beer and half engine oil, you would discard it in disgust because the oil would pollute the beer and render it undrinkable. That’s the problem. Goodness should be the universal condition, but the bad people pollute it and render it unpalatable.’

‘You’re just a hopeless idealist,’ offered the still, small voice.

‘I know,’ I replied. ‘It’s one of the worst of my curses.’