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.

Celebrating a New Dialect.

I’ve always been fascinated by dialects, you know, and the UK has had a rich collection of them going back a millennium and beyond. They could be so different even a hundred years ago that a person speaking in one local dialect could be all but incomprehensible to a person from another part of the UK. I even encountered this problem myself when I lived in Northumberland as recently as the late eighties.

But I’ve noticed over the course of my lifetime that they’ve largely been diluted by the spread of universal media, and are now largely replaced by a wide variety of local accents which are relatively easy to understand with a modicum of familiarisation. Most people now use something approximating to Standard English, but with different stresses and variation in vowel sounds and a smattering of buzz words that are more or less universal.

I’m happy to report, however, that one new dialect has defied the trend and gone against the flow. We now have the Football Coach dialect, a fascinating new way of abusing the Mother Tongue that’s become almost as incomprehensible as the traditional regional dialects were. It can be heard nearly every time a football coach is interviewed after a game and either shown on the TV or reported in writing on the news pages. They slaughter the common rules of syntax, appear quite incapable of comprehending the relationship between clauses, employ amusingly inaccurate vocabulary, and almost always use the present tense when describing or commenting on past events. They give the impression that they’re trying to sound important and failing miserably.

So does this disturb me? Well, sometimes it irritates, and sometimes it amuses, and sometimes I give up because I haven’t a clue what they’re trying to say. And when all’s said and done it really doesn’t matter because a game of football is only a game of football and there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the world of professional sport (however much the managers, the media, and the big money interests like to feed the message to the masses that football is the only true religion.)

But it’s still an interesting phenomenon.

(And incidentally, I’m only referring here to coaches whose first language is English. Those coaches – of which there are many – whose first language is something else must obviously be excused. Having said which, have you ever heard Sarina Wiegman being interviewed? She speaks better English than most of the English do, and she’s Dutch.)

Progress.

Blogger Stats seeks to inform me that I’m currently receiving a very large number of visitors from two untypical sources – quite a lot from Finland and a veritable tsunami from Germany. Why?

Well, I suppose the Finns might be visiting since I imagine they only get about four hours of daylight at this time of year (and I really do sympathise with them for that) and they’re probably tired of playing solitaire and sitting in saunas. But why the Germans? They must have about the same day length as we do, and there must be plenty of interesting things to do in Germany, so why 648 visits in half an hour?

Maybe they’re just checking that we Brits are not all comatose, or become zombies shuffling along shabby streets with tattered clothes and empty heads, since we left the EU. Maybe that’s it. Rest assured, Teutonic chums, such a movement is afoot over here courtesy of Tory government policies, but at the moment it’s largely confined to people who drive Audi A4s.

(That was a British-style joke.)

*  *  *

Meanwhile, I might report that today I finally did a job I’ve been dreading for several weeks. And then just as I was feeling lighter and able to see beyond the barrier of the-thing-I-was-dreading, along came an email to produce another reason to feel anxious. Such is life and it’s nearly winter.

The Shire Transformed.

The Shire is moving into that dowdy late autumn stage now. Most of the trees still exhibiting some autumn colour are to the north-west beyond the river valley and are hidden by the lie of the land from my garden. The view I get now is one of nature going to rest.

The trees stand mostly stark, dark, and skeletal. The green of the pasture fields is turning dim, and most of the arable land has only just been tilled or is awaiting the process. Even those in which spring wheat and barley have been sown only exhibit the faint green tinge of new growth to ease the brown of bare earth.

But at around 4pm this evening I was topping up the birds’ feeding tables when something unusual happened.

It was just before sunset and a cloud cleared the sun which suddenly bathed this rustic piece of earth in golden light. Everything responded in an instant. The greens on the pastures turned warm and mellow, and the arable browns softened to a kinder hue. But the real difference was in the trees which became truly and spectacularly gilded with a most intense golden light. There they stood, proud and burnished as though some celestial artist had waved a hand and wrought the rarest of other-wordly transformation on a rural scene.

It lasted only a few minutes, but when it all faded the question had to be asked: ‘If this isn’t magic, what is?’

A Note on a Plummet.

This post is going to be self-indulgent, so those who dislike blog writers resigning themselves to such expression should switch off now and seek out something more entertaining such as cookery hints, flower arranging for the simple minded, show business shenanigans, conspiracy theories, or near death experiences. (Or try YouTube instead. There’s plenty available there.)

This one is about my state of mind.

You see, I realised today that the dear old thing I call a mind used to occupy a place atop a hill somewhere pleasant and positive. OK, the evidence of circumstances related on these pages down the years leaves no doubt that it took frequent sojourns to some dark, gloomy places, but it always came back out onto the airy upland eventually. Things appear to have changed now.

It appears that several years ago – and I can’t put a precise date on it or relate it to any particular circumstance – it took a fall from the hilltop and plummeted down a precipitous slope. It didn’t fall to the bottom of the hill though, but rather landed on a ledge where the cold wind blows and comforts are in short supply, and has been stuck there ever since.

(I read recently about a sheep in Scotland which experienced the same fate. The news report called her ‘the loneliest sheep in the world’, and she remained on the ledge for two years until a group of local farmers came along with ropes and tackle and rescued her. I see no obvious prospect of me being so lucky. Adult humans don’t generally get rescued; they either rescue themselves or they learn to live with it. I’ve long been of the opinion that counsellors and psychotherapists can be quite efficacious in matters of trauma, but rather less so when dealing with long term issues. Maybe I’m wrong. How would I know? But to continue…)

This evening I came across an old blog post which featured a YouTube video of a short extract from the original version of Riverdance performed in Dublin in 1995. (It was the dance called ‘Countess Kathleen’ if I remember rightly.)

Well, the mid nineties were a special time in my life, a vibrant time characterised by positivity, connections, new experiences, etc, etc. So when I saw the piece and heard the music, it all came back and my poor old mind was suddenly assailed by a sudden onset of emotion. ‘How on earth,’ I asked myself, ‘did I go from that to this? How, when, and why, did the darkness fall the way it did?’ And I had no answer.

That’s about as much as I feel I need to say on the matter, except to add that the onset of emotion didn’t last very long. It was but a passing cloud, so I would ask those who’ve come to know me over the blogging years not to judge me too harshly. The fabled British stiff upper lip still occupies the watchtower to keep emotional onsets strictly in their place. (Although it can be briefly sympathetic in exceptional circumstances.)

Pointless Dreaming.

As I sit here alone in my rustic little garret, I sometimes give myself over to long association with fondly imagined fantasies, the nature of which is such that I can be quite sure they will never come to fruition. And some of them contain a surprisingly extended and detailed narrative, developing in their own way with no preparation or planning.

Why do we do that? Or don’t we? Am I the only one? (Apart from Mr EA Poe who famously said ‘those who dream only by night…')

On False Figures and a Reluctant Read.

I have two stats trackers on this blog. One is the old Flag Counter which used to record hardly anything and was all but useless. The other is Blogger Stats from Google which comes with the system.

At the moment, Blogger Stats tells me I’m getting several hundred visits a day exclusively from Singapore, India, Japan, South Korea, and the USA. The Flag Counter, which used to record 1-3 visits a day, has suddenly started telling me that I’m getting dozens of visits a day from such disparate locations as Ireland, Brazil, Thailand, and Guatemala, and very many US states as well.

Needless to say, I don’t believe either of them. Would it be unreasonable, I wonder, to wish that the techies would devise something that works?

*  *  *

I’m just arriving at the point in Tenant where I suspect that dear benighted Helen is going to start recounting the details of an abusive marriage. I don’t want to go there because heaven knows there’s more than enough abuse going on in the world as it is, but if you’re going to read a novel I suppose you should read all of it.

‘Must be firm!’ (That’s a line from MR James’s short story The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral. I find it the most chilling line in what I consider to be the most chilling of his stories.)

Life and the Hanging Coin.

I was making my bed this morning when I was struck, apparently without any obvious prompting, by the fact that I have never been or done anything notable. I asked myself whether I’d ever achieved anything of substantial significance. Not really. And then I asked myself whether I’d ever made any major difference to anything. Not knowingly. My immediate response was one of simple disappointment. I felt that I must have failed to grasp some opportunity somewhere along the road, and by so failing allowed myself to remain insignificant.

It didn’t last too long because it’s the same for most of us, isn’t it? We plod through our lives without ever scaling any previously unclimbed peaks, or winning any battles when the odds are stacked against us, or catching the serial killer before he can strike again. It seems that 99.9% of human beings are no more than monuments to mediocrity. And then it all comes to an end and, as Shakespeare wrote: Our little lives are rounded with a sleep.

So why do we venerate life so much, as most of us do? I’m no exception to that, regarding all life as sacred and preserving the life force of any creature when presented with the opportunity. Is this the obverse side of the same coin, and is it why I’ve never been able to accept that this mysterious and staggeringly complex thing called life stops and submits to oblivion when the human host casts off its mortal coil?

When regarding this question, it seems that most people toss the coin and accept the evidence of whichever side is visible when it lands. I’ve never been so lucky – or so gullible, if you prefer. When I toss the coin it hangs in the air in precisely the same way that everything else doesn’t. It hangs there still.

Discovering Anne and Some Oddments.

I’m now getting deep into Anne Brontë’s magnum opus (I hope you’ve been paying attention and know which magnum opus I’m talking about) and find myself surprisingly impressed by the level of intelligence she must have possessed. I’d come to think of her as the sweet and demure little baby of the family, forever slightly in the shadow of her more illustrious sisters. Well, I’ve changed my mind.

Tenant does not treat the reader to the honeyed prose of Charlotte’s work, and there’s no trace of the darkness, tempestuousness, and mystical implications of Emily’s Wuthering Heights, but her eye for detail is exemplary. More to the point, her understanding of the vagaries of human nature, and how those vagaries interact with social conventions and expectations, is most impressive. And even more to the point, she appears to have been way ahead of her time in presenting her heroine, Helen Graham, as a strong, independent woman who flatly refuses to bow the knee to any notion of feminine subservience in the matter of marital relationship. It goes way beyond what I was brought up to consider normal even in the relatively modern day.

Reading on (and being quite in thrall to the experience.)

*  *  *

There’s a woman I occasionally see walking up the road to the school. She’s very small and thin with unusually pinched features. One hand is always holding a lead, at the other end of which is a very small and thin dog with unusually pinched features. The other is always holding the hand of a small boy who looks normal in every way, and I’m never quite sure which aspect of this odd picture I should find the oddest.

*  *  *

Today I had two replies to comments I left on YouTube videos. They both agreed with me. I don’t think that’s ever happened before. Must try harder.

*  *  *

Late last night I began to write a blog post, but soon dispensed with it because of the lateness of the hour. I intended to write it in full today, and since it only contained the first few lines I didn't bother to save it. And now I haven't a clue what it was about. That's so typical of me these days.

A Trial, a Terror, and a Bad Habit.

Today I had my latest visit to the doctor arranged to evaluate my scrupulously kept daily blood pressure readings and conduct a minor medications revue. (I have a little blood pressure monitor, you know. It affords me a sense of being rather more competent than I actually am.)

Since I was in Ashbourne anyway, I decided to kick my heels for a while in the town rather than needlessly wasting petrol to go home and come back again. My appointment was for 3pm and I checked in at 2.40. The screen said ‘You are the first patient to be seen.’ ‘Oh good,’ I thought. ‘He’s running early for a change. Maybe I’ll be back in time to have some lunch after all.’ And so I waited expectantly for the call to come any minute. At 3pm the screen flashed up a short message which said: ‘Dr Curry is currently running 40 minutes behind schedule.’

‘Damn.’

(But at this juncture it might be apposite to remind any Americans reading this and feeling desperately sorry for me in my hour of trial, that these visits are free. Nobody has to forego a visit to the doctor just because they can’t afford it. We never had the issue of Obamacare here, so none of our dear, rich capitalist bigwigs had any cause to rise up raging, frothing at the mouth, and risking incontinence at best if not terminal apoplexy.)

It turned out that the screen was doing the worst case scenario trick because I got called in at 3.30. My readings were determined to be satisfactory, my current little cocktail of meds given the all clear, and the world declared to be the best of all possible worlds. ‘Can I go now?’ I asked (even though I’d only just walked into his office.) ‘Yes.’ ‘Thank you. Bye.’ (I was intending to relate my favourite joke from a Laurel and Hardy film – since we’re both fans – but I’d noticed the next man in the queue looking a little restive so I thought I'd do the poor chap a favour and skip the pleasantries. When I passed him on the way out he said ‘You were quick.’ ‘I know,’ I answered smugly. ‘I made it so.’ Because I had. But it was still too late to bother with lunch when I got back.

*  *  *

Last night’s dream was an unpleasant one. I found myself treading about in a mess of all sorts of random bits and pieces. I had no idea what they were, why they were there, or what I should do to put them in some sort of order. The confusion continued for about an hour after I woke up, and the Blogger stats facility chose that inopportune time to start malfunctioning. (It still is.) I was led to suspect that either the stars are in seriously unfavourable alignment, or maybe my guardian angel is experiencing hot flushes.

But that wasn’t as bad as what happened a couple of weeks ago. I woke up some time in the early hours while it was still dark, feeling seriously scared because I was sure that there was an unfriendly presence in the room. This has happened before, and my usual recourse is to open my eyes to be sure there’s nothing to be seen, and then say ‘what the hell’ and go back to sleep.

This time was different. I was reluctant to open my eyes because my mind’s eye was suddenly filled with an image of a little girl in a long white gown climbing onto the end of my bed. It watched as she crawled slowly up the bed towards me. Her eyes were large and dark, and her face carried an inquisitive expression. I began to fear that I would soon feel her hand touch my leg, and then I did feel something apparently touch my leg. But it didn’t feel like something physical; it felt like a mild electric shock which produced a rippling sensation in my knee and a spreading of the effect throughout my body. And then it happened again a few seconds later. I waited anxiously for it to happen again, but instead I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew I was waking to a bright morning.

It appears that my imagination is a most potent force. Either that or I must hope that my guardian angel doesn’t make a habit of suffering hot flushes.

*  *  *

I noticed in the supermarket today that I’m constantly fascinated by ugly people (and there are plenty of them about.) I stand and stare at them, wondering how they came to be so ugly and to what extent it’s an impediment to living a normal life. And then I tell myself that such thoughts are unbecoming, so I stop and look away. Until I see the next one…

Getting Me Spot On.

Tonight’s Tenant session (three chapter’s worth) was a bit of an eye opener.

Mr Markham inadvertently witnesses Mrs Graham behaving in a – let’s call it an unusually friendly rather than ‘intimate’ manner with another man, because I mustn’t pre-judge the unfolding melodrama – and finds it an extremely distressing experience. Why? Because he’s heard all the gossip about her, but the strength of his romantic affection and uncompromising faith in her virtue has led him to dismiss everything as no more than idle tittle-tattle. And now he feels like an abandoned puppy that’s been taken in and then kicked out again (my words, not Anne Brontë’s.)

Dear Anne then goes on to describe Mr Markham’s feelings (in his words because he’s narrating the story.)

It reminded me of a night in 1995 and an incident involving a young woman with whom a romantic connection was developing. Markham’s reaction was eerily and disturbingly familiar, so much so that I was greatly impressed with Anne Brontë’s intimate knowledge of the male psyche. That’s unusual for a female writer (and the converse is also generally true.) So how did she come by this knowledge, having been the baby of the family and coming from such a sheltered environment? But it soon went further than that when I found myself questioning how she could know me so well…

Just an odd coincidence? I suppose so, but I’ve felt a strong sense of connection with the Brontës for a very long time.

On Visits and Verisimilitude

According to Blogger stats, the number of page views this blog has received since it began running nearly fourteen years ago passed 400,000 today. Is that a lot? I don’t know; I expect celebrity bloggers get more ‘hits’ than that every day. But who’s counting since all I’m really doing is talking to myself silently? At the moment it’s being kept alive by somebody from Singapore, or more likely two people, one using an iPhone and the other an Android. I’m curious to know who they are, but I don’t suppose I’ll ever find out. (Occasionally I entertain the notion that it might be the Tan twins – those two lovely ladies, Su-Min and Su-Hui, who featured on the blog some years ago making fine music on the guzheng and ruan. Ever fanciful, you see, and such is the stuff of which dreams are made.)

*  *  *

I did some more autumn work in the garden today, and it struck me – as it nearly always does – that all gardening jobs take approximately twice as long as I’d expected them to take. I give myself an hour to do a job, and then come back into the house two hours later feeling a sense that an unwarranted amount of that mysterious thing we call time has slipped away unnoticed on the creamy wake of the ship of life. And then I feel cheated.

Talking of work, I read something by a Taoist once in which he said that work is the fundamental point of being alive. Nothing else matters according to him. The business of making things, changing things, organising things, facilitating things, serving various needs, and so on and so forth, is what we’re here for, and it’s work to which we must give overriding priority. It doesn’t matter what the work is as long as it’s work. (On the other hand, the celebrated philosopher Albert Camus opined –as far as I understand it – that life has no meaning or purpose whatsoever so it doesn’t matter what you do or whether you do anything at all. Then again, the Taoist had a long tradition behind him, whereas Albert was just this random Frenchman, you know?)

And this reminds me of an elderly farmer we have living in the Shire – a true son of the soil and the most conservatively-minded person I’ve ever known. He declines to accept that anything ever changes and is most insistent that neither should it. When we had the heat wave in July ’22 during which parts of the UK hit 40°C for the first time on record, he stopped his car one day and asked me whether I was enjoying the heat. I replied something to the effect that it was a bit more than we’re used and he replied: ‘No, not at all. We had a hot summer in 1959.’ He flatly refuses to accept that climate change is even happening, much less that human activity is in any way responsible.

But then I remember him telling me once of the instruction he gave to his kids when they were young: ‘I don’t care what you do, as long as you do something.’ I always assumed it to be an example of thinly veiled invective against anyone who, for whatever reason, accepts welfare payments. Now I’m tempted to wonder whether he’s actually a closet Taoist.

Failure Bearing Fruit.

Most unusually for these troubled times, a new ditty began forming in my head this morning. It began I met a girl from Samarkand… And then other random rhymes kept rolling around like tumbleweed in the wasteland that is my brain these days, like do and shoe and shark and bark, and so on. But all the linking lines declined to take form, so I stopped bothering. Seems I don’t have the faculty of ditty mind any more, but the exercise did provoke a question:

‘Where the devil is Samarkand?’ I thought. It’s a familiar name and sounds exotic, but its location was entirely unknown to me.

So I looked it up. (It’s what I do.) It’s in south-eastern Uzbekistan, and that set me off on another train of thought.

When I was a boy at school, geography was given quite a high profile in the matter of important subjects, but all the places we studied were places with which we had current or historical connections – other European countries, the USA, ex-colonies which were still part of the British Commonwealth, and so on. We even looked at South America because it’s a big land mass, and East Asia because of its involvement in WWII. We didn’t bother with Russia or Eastern Europe because they were on the other side of the great divide (see? involuntary rhymes again). All we knew about Russia, for example, was that Russian women were huge, hairy, and could throw canon balls further than anybody else’s women at the Olympic Games. (Admittedly, the music master did occasionally mention Russia because they produced the odd decent composer or two. I remember him sniggering over some chap called Rip-Your-Corsets-Off who wrote Scheherazade. And then there was another chap who wrote a tune about a vulgar boatman who, according to the music master, was called Stinky Razin.) But anyway…

The one part of the world which was pitch black on the world map, and therefore presumably empty, was the bit called Central Asia – you know, those countries north of Afghanistan which all have names ending in –stan. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Uncle Stan, Ollyandstan, and so on. This is probably because for the first few decades of my life these places were part of the USSR – which, in itself, made them a bit persona non grata – and they weren’t even in Europe. Consequently, the public imagination was naturally inclined to think of them as a bit wild, a bit primitive, and probably mostly desolate.

But when I read the Wiki article it came with pictures, and such pictures they were. The architecture of old Samarkand is as sophisticated and beautiful as anything in Western Europe. In the Middle Ages the city was a main crossing point on the silk road, and was coveted by many a would-be conqueror. Ghengis Khan conquered it, and Tamerlane is buried there. And I never knew. I had an image of goat herders, home made musical instruments which played out of tune, and very little else.

So that’s what happens when you find your ditty faculty failing. You get to learn something.

A Very Short Note on Confusion 'Cross the Ages.

I was reading chapter eight of Tenant tonight when a line of text included the term ‘lol.’ My brain, ageing though it is, calculated in a millisecond that ‘lol’ is an unusual term to find in a 19^th century novel, so I paused and re-read it. It actually said ‘lo!’ How easily the brain can be confounded by the juxtaposition of ages.

If you want to know what’s going on, by the way, Mr Markham is desperately and respectfully trying to woo the widowed Mrs Graham, and she is starchily but respectfully rebuffing him. All very proper, as you might expect. Long way to go.

A First Family Encounter.

Guess who I encountered on my pre-lunch perambulation today: The Shire’s First Family, or at least most of them.

There was the Lady B, Honourable Sister, Dear Mama, two of the canine companions, and one of the Little Princesses. The Little Princess – the youngest of three – was the one I hadn’t seen before. She was very small, very sweet, smiled the whole time, said lots of things I didn’t quite catch, and held my forefinger when I offered it. Does life get any better than that? And one of the canine companions was a recent addition whose acquaintance I also hadn’t made before. I think he was probably a Sprocker, and his name was Oscar. Fine name for a dog, Oscar. I would be more than happy to admit the choice had it been mine. And wasn’t it just a delight that my favourite dog for many a long year, Inca the cocker spaniel, was still with us and still stepping lightly? She’s an old lady now, but her tail wags as briskly as ever.

So did my subsequent step have an unfamiliar hint of a spring to it? It certainly did.

Did I experience a little lightness of mind for a while afterwards? I did.

Were the little people, the birds, and the animals peeved that I was paying them less attention than usual? I hope not.

Did the encounter with the three women bring to mind Macbeth’s meeting with the three witches on the blasted heath? Unusually for me, no.

Did I ever mention that the Shire’s First Family amount to the only people in this area with whom I’ve ever wanted to connect? I think I probably did.

*  *  *

So should I now go on to write about Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s latest outlandish pronouncement? I don’t think so for two reasons:

1. It appears she’s in serious trouble over it and is possibly facing the sack, but the element which is causing great concern in political and diplomatic circles doesn’t trouble me at all. It’s the second part which demonstrates her unmitigated bigotry yet again. As usual, I’m out of step.

2. I wouldn’t want to pollute an otherwise positive post. Positive posts are a rarity these days and therefore precious.

A Day of Light and Ladies.

Tonight I lit a candle in front of my statue of the Chinese Goddess Kuan Yin (more fully Kuan-shi Yin, which means ‘she who hears the cries of the world.’)

In China she is the Goddess of Compassion, but has her origin with the Sanskrit name, Avalokiteshvera, the Buddhist bodhisattva of Compassion. Since today is the start of Diwali, and since Buddhism originated in India, it seemed a fitting time to illuminate the illustrious lady with a flame. And since Diwali is the celebration of the victory of light over darkness and good over evil, it occurred to me that rarely has the world been more in need of her.

*  *  *

Today I was standing in front of Sainsbury’s munching my weekly treat (a Cadbury’s Wispa Gold) when a woman of handsome aspect came towards me with that look which says (more or less): ‘You probably don’t remember me, so I’ll pass you by to avoid any embarrassment unless you speak to me first.’ At the last moment I did remember her. She was a woman with whom I had the occasional chat in the Costa Coffee shop in pre-pandemic days, and I particularly remembered that she used to have her little daughter in tow. In consequence, I was able to greet her confidently with ‘Hello. Haven’t seen you for a long time. I expect the little one is rather bigger now.’ Not very inspired, but it sufficed and we had another chat while I continued chomping my Wispa Gold.

I still find myself a little nonplussed, you know, by the fact that certain women – especially those of handsome aspect – seem to want to associate with me, even if only for a few minutes. I never was tall, dark, or handsome, and age is taking its toll on my visage quite cruelly now. And then there’s the keratosis adorning my left cheek which I’m waiting to have removed by the doctor with his spray can of liquid nitrogen. (Liquid nitrogen freezes benign skin tumours to death apparently, a prospect which causes me a little disquiet.) Why don’t they give me as wide a berth as seems credible and pretend to be looking with great interest in any direction other than mine? Life is strange indeed sometimes.

*  *  *

I also complimented the young woman sales assistant in Boots the Chemist for being bloody good at her job, which she was. I even smiled at her. I thought I’d forgotten how to do that.

Oh Brave New Britain.

There is a chronic shortage of affordable housing in the UK at the moment. In fact, there’s a chronic shortage of housing generally, one consequence of which is that there are now hundreds of thousands of homeless people when there used to be effectively none.

What is disturbing Mrs Braverman, our valiant Home Secretary, is not so much the causes of this iniquity, but the increasing incidence of tents appearing on the streets of our green and pleasant land, pitched by homeless people seeking shelter from the elements. She intends to make it illegal, she says; there is no excuse for being on the streets, she says; it’s a lifestyle choice and she won’t tolerate it.

This is another step beyond her recent pronouncement that she won’t tolerate having the ills of America polluting our Great British cities, conveniently ignoring the fact that the decision to redirect British culture to accord with the American Dream (and, in consequence, to follow the American Way) was taken by a former Tory Prime Minister.

Do forgive my descent into triteness if I quote that much-loved line: Oh brave new world that hath such people in it.

On Meeting Mrs Graham and a Question.

I read another chapter-and-a-bit of Tenant tonight. A few hints of lyrical expression showed themselves once the narrator was tramping the wild moorland on an afternoon in the desultory and dying days of October, so I’m hoping there will be no dearth of outdoor scenes in this relatively hefty tome.

The writing style continues to be a little ponderous, however, as most 19^th century literature tends to be. (It’s why I could never finish a Wilkie Collins novel, and could only tolerate short stories by Thomas Hardy.) Ponderous prose is not to my taste, a fact which further enhances my enjoyment of Charlotte’s prose which slips down the gullet like a chocolate milkshake served at room temperature.

As for the characters, it’s very early days as yet. So far I’m finding the narrator of the story (a gentleman farmer) irritatingly presumptuous, but the MC – Mrs Graham, the eponymous tenant of Wildfell Hall – most engaging. Her strength of character and refusal to be cowed by the conventions and mores of the time make her both commendable and attractive. And since, as far as I’m aware, she is the heroine of the piece, it must say something about Anne Brontë, her creator. Mustn’t it?

Onwards.

*  *  *

I keep wanting to write a post about a fact of life which is a great mystery to me: How do two young people, pristine in mind and body, manage to tie the nuptial knot and still be together sixty year later when they’re bent, stiff, heavily wrinkled, deformed in shape and bearing, and wracked with functional degradation? I see them often, you know. I do.

If I were still married – and this desire to write the post occurred to me when I realised on Saturday that it would have been my wedding anniversary – I would expect both of us to be ashamed of keeping one another’s company at a distance of less than 100 yds.

I considered the question at some length and arrived at three preliminary theories. But they wouldn’t do; the matter began to get complicated, so that’s why I’m saying no more.

(I do sometimes wonder, though, whether my ex-wife is still alive and what she probably looks like now. My inadequate mind does not produce the pretties of pictures, but since she was seven years younger than me I expect she’s probably still chewing the cud somewhere in remotest Wales. That’s the place to which she decamped with her beau, an archaeologist-cum-woodworker who was probably a lot more interesting than I was. And is it merely coincidence that he had the same name as an ex-racehorse currently domiciled in the Shire? I expect it is. I append below a picture of her when we first met. I imagine her features will have evolved somewhat by now.) 

Making Disney Rational.

‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?’ asked the vainglorious Queen as she stood in front of her gilt mirror fondly brushing her silken, ebony hair.

‘Don’t know,’ said the mirror.

‘You don’t know?’ replied the queen crossly. ‘Of course you know. It’s your job to know.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Who said so?’

‘The writer of the fairytale said so. This is a fairytale, you know.’

‘Oh I see,’ said the mirror, warming to the challenge. ‘But there’s still a problem. Well, three problems actually.’

‘Which are?’

‘Firstly, you said “fairest of them all.” But I haven’t seen them all, have I? I might be a thousand years old, but in all that time I’ll bet there haven’t been more than about fifty women who’ve stood where you’re standing now. Hardly “all” is it?’

The queen rolled her eyes.

‘Secondly,’ continued the mirror, ‘it all comes down to personal taste. The last woman – no, the second last – was that frumpish old dowager, the King’s grandmother. She was ugly as a warthog with acne, but somebody, somewhere probably thought her the pinnacle of feminine attractiveness. And even the pretty young ones would all appeal differently to different potential suitors.’

The Queen huffed and puffed and tutted, and said: ‘Well, just answer the question on the basis of the ones you have seen using your best judgement.’

‘Third problem,’ intoned the mirror with the merest hint of triumphalism beginning to rise in his voice, ‘I’ve never seen anybody standing in front of me.’

‘What are you talking about?’ asked the Queen incredulously. 'You saw them all, just as you’re seeing me now.’

‘Precisely,’ said the mirror. Just as I’m seeing you now. But I’m not seeing you, am I? I’m seeing a mirror’s image, in which everything is reversed. And no face is ever completely symmetrical, so no mirror image is ever accurate. Will that be all, your royal highness?’

The Queen was too angry to respond. She hurried away with a face dark as thunder to find a bottle of sleeping sickness poison and the rosiest apple she could lay her hands on.

A Reason to Read and Being a Misanthrope.

Having seen dear Natalie safely across the bridge leading into the college grounds, and being relieved that she is now free of the influence of the tyrant Tony (whose status as either real or imagined remains a matter of conjecture), I am now travelling back two hundred years to see whether I can gain insight into the mind of baby Brontë. In short, tonight I began reading Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (hereinafter referred to simply as Tenant should I have reason to do so.)

This is an issue with me, you see. When I read a novel, and certainly if it’s a celebrated one, I’m as much interested in what it suggests about the author’s nature as I am in the writing style, the evocation of a sense of place, and the overall plot. And Tenant is certainly celebrated, being considered a significant marker on the road to feminist enlightenment (which happens to matter to me.) It will also have been noted, no doubt, that I am somewhat fixated on the Brontë girls. (And you may draw inference, if you wish, from the fact that I use the term ‘girls’ rather than the more usual ‘sisters.’)

I gather that Charlotte once said that the character of Caroline Helstone in her own novel, Shirley, was modelled on Anne, so that gave me some clues. But now I want to hear what Anne has to say for herself to add more flesh to the bones of my existing impressions. Having tonight read the prologue and first chapter, I have to remark that it contained rather too much trivial domestic detail for my taste, and the writing style – while being impeccably constructed – was a little stilted and lacked any trace of lyricism. But it’s early days yet and maybe that will change. And if it doesn’t, the fact in itself will stand as one of the clues.

*  *  *

Having reviewed this post, I’m reminded that sometimes I don’t like myself very much. I wonder why I seem condemned to observe people going about the business of prosecuting a life without ever really joining them in the process. (It sometimes seems a little arrogant, which I don’t really want to be.) And in so doing I find that I don’t like very many of them either. There have been, and still are, exceptions.

Friday's Little Notes.

I stuck my courage to the sticking place and finished Hangsaman. And then I read the Wiki article on Hangsaman and concluded that the writer had read a different book than the one I’d just finished. That’s usually the way with me. It’s why I’d make a terrible reviewer or academic or even editor. I suspect it’s similar to the phenomenon whereby sub-atomic particles change their nature when they pass through a slit in a barrier. (I also discovered that there are a surprising number of women in this world called Natalie Waite. It led me to wonder why I’d never met one.)

*  *  *

Last night I thought how interesting it would be to have a magic mirror which, when you looked into it, would show you exactly what you would look like at any point in your future. You could keep going further and further out of curiosity, couldn’t you, until the mirror suddenly went dark. And then you’d discover something which you didn’t really want to know, and you’d curse yourself for not predicting that obvious eventuality earlier and wished you’d never used the damn thing.

*  *  *

Also last night I dreamed about somebody I haven’t had cause to dream about for many years. In fact, I never dreamed about her even when I did. She went swimming at night, in a lake situated close to a big house in a big city. It was very vivid and lifelike in ways that dreams usually aren’t. Should I read anything of significance into it?

Communion and Coincidence.

I’m nearly at the end of Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman now. The final part of the narrative sees Natalie having to face the final part of her mental degradation, and the first time I read it I found it more horrifying than anything I’ve ever read in a novel. And that’s no exaggeration. I remember the gut-turning sense of fearful tension, and I remember writing about on this blog.

Maybe it wouldn’t mean the same to anybody else; maybe it was all to do with my sense of communion with Natalie Waite. Maybe I was feeling her fear because we’re a bit like those twin particles the quantum physicists talk about, the ones which react to one another’s states instantaneously however much they’re separated by distance.

But tonight there was another factor involved. I’ve always been drawn to the skill of a good writer in being able to create a sense of place with carefully described word pictures, and tonight it was even more real than it was the first time. The scene is set at this time of year, you see – November – and beset by the same conditions we’re having in the here and now – a dull, cold, wet day and a dark, cold, wet night as Natalie takes her bus ride beyond the town and to the end of the line. Mentally and physically.

I couldn’t face it so I put the book down until tomorrow (maybe) and watched twenty minutes of a Studio Ghibli film instead. I needed the balm.

The Scourge of Automania.

I had to change my mobile phone provider recently because my old one (a company called Plusnet who were mostly a delight to deal with) were ceasing their mobile operation. They directed me to EE, one of the ‘big four’ mobile providers in the UK, and so I set about becoming an EE customer. That was the beginning of a nightmare.

I won’t bother to go over the initial troubles, partly because I can’t be bothered and partly because the initial difficulty is now history. But today I had a few questions to ask – like why have they got my name wrong, why have they got my address wrong, how on earth did they manage to get them both wrong because I’m certainly not responsible for the errors, and what is my account number because they’ve given me two different ones. I decided to call them in an obviously forlorn hope that I might be able to speak to somebody. What I actually got was the beginning of an automated service.

The Voice began the menu options with ‘If you want to speak to someone, press 1.’ I pressed 1.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ said The Voice, ‘that’s not on my list. I’ll run through the options again.’ And so it did, and I pressed 1 again because what else was there to do? ‘I’m sorry,’ said the voice a second time, ‘that’s not on my list. I’ll run through the options again.’ And so we continued until The Voice finally accepted the 1 and moved onto the second level of menu options, which was much longer. The right choice was 4 that time, and so I pressed 4. ‘I’m sorry,’ said the voice, ‘that’s not on my list. I’ll run through the options again.’ And so it did, and so I pressed 4 again, and so we continued until The Voice finally accepted the 4 and moved to the third level of options.

This continued through a third, a fourth, and a fifth level of menu options. Sometimes The Voice would say ‘I’m sorry, that’s not on my list’ and sometimes it would intone ‘I’m having difficulty with your choice. I’ll run through the options again.’ This went on for at least half an hour until The Voice eventually said ‘I’m having difficulty with this call. Goodbye.’ And that was that.

I found the EE website in the (again, forlorn) hope that there might be an email facility. Nope, only a live chat option. Not the best of options, but at least I might get somewhere. Only it wasn’t a true live chat facility; it was a virtual assistant. ‘Oh dear,’ I thought, ‘the worst of all modern methods of communication, but let’s give it a try.’ I typed my three queries carefully and pressed Go. The reply came back almost instantaneously: ‘I’m sorry, I’m having difficulty with your long sentences. Please say the same thing again using shorter sentences.’ Having by that time wasted over an hour, I decided enough was enough. I replied ‘Go away.’

So my name is still wrong, my address is still wrong, and I still don’t know what my account number is.

I remember a time – not as long ago as we might imagine – when you simply dialled a number and someone picked up the phone with ‘Hello, my name’s Alan. How may I help?’ How did we get to the current parlous state of affairs in so short a time? (Don’t bother to answer that. Several factors are to blame, not least being the fact that Mrs Thatcher made the corporate world the cornerstone of the economy and, in so doing, rendered it virtually untouchable.) And so the phrase of the time was born and may be heard on lips the length and breadth of dear old Blighty:

‘Everything is broken.’

On Latent Insanity and a Little Profit.

In tonight’s episode of Hangsaman, Natalie Waite remembers the time as a child when she realised that breathing was automatic; it wasn’t something you had to force yourself to do. And she remembers having thought how laborious it would be if you did have to constantly force the process. And she further remembers how she had suddenly realised that all the time she’d been thinking about this she had been breathing automatically without being aware of the fact.

This is the sort of thing which touches a chord with me because it’s the sort of thing I used to think about as a child. So does it indicate that I, too, was in the process of developing some sort of dissociative condition? I don’t think so; to me it’s simply the result of having an inquisitive nature combined with high awareness.

But maybe I’m wrong; maybe the question should be framed: does having an inquisitive nature combined with high awareness as a child indicate latent mental illness? Am I really quite mad after all? Is there a psychiatrist in the house?

*  *  *

I bought a pack of three pairs of socks today. The shelf ticket gave the price as £3.99, but when I went through the checkout the till charged me £4.50. I wasn’t in the mood for making a fuss and decided that 51p was an acceptable price to pay for not doing something I wasn’t in the mood to do, so I let it go apart from telling the cashier that they needed to put it right

And then I went to Sainsbury’s, and one of my purchases was a pair of West Country Cheddar Stick bread rolls priced at 55p each. When I went through the checkout the cashier couldn’t find West Country Cheddar Stick bread rolls on her screen, so she called a supervisor. The supervisor couldn’t find them either, so she handed me the bag containing the comestibles and said ‘They must be free today. There you go.’

It means I made a profit of 59p, so now I have to decide whether 59p profit is sufficient to justify an extra scotch by way of celebration. Causes for celebration are rare in the life of JJ.

(Is there really anybody out there who is remotely interested in either my state of mind or my little adventures in Ashbourne? I can’t imagine why there would be, so I don’t suppose there is. But at least writing about them gives me an excuse to carry on breathing, automatically or otherwise.)