A Muse for Beltane.

It was a good Beltane fire this evening. No rain to spit indecorously in the embers, and no harsh wind to rouse the flames to demonic hostility. Just the temperate, dry air and the merest hint of a breeze to give harmonious life to the flickering.

And then I noticed something satisfactorily apposite. I looked westward into the uninterrupted blue of a darkening sky and saw the new baby reclining peacefully in the firmament. I’m referring, of course, to the slim crescent of the new moon which always reminds me of a new baby these days. (Does that indicate a growing awareness of symbolism, or is it mere incipient senility? I don’t know and I see no reason to care.)

Whichever it is, it put me in mind of the ouroboros which featured in a video I watched on YouTube last night – the snake or dragon which is constantly consuming its own tail, and which is a symbolic representation of the cyclical nature of reality, the persistence of soul, and the connection between the forces of creation and destruction. This is an ouroboros:

And that took me into further musing on the two active constituents of the Hindu lower trinity – Shiva the destroyer and Vishnu the creator. I asked whether they, too, are symbols of ancient pedigree and represent ancient knowledge of which the modern human is unaware, or whether they’re simply an early form of philosophical speculation.

I didn’t know and it didn’t seem to matter. It was just rather satisfying that the musing was engendered by the burning of a Beltane fire. And this is the 13th post of the month, which is probably irrelevant.

Being an Object of Scrutiny.

I was walking along Mill Lane today when a car drew up alongside and stopped. The view through the open driver’s window revealed an elderly woman of unknown identity, and she said:

‘I see you’re not wearing a coat today. You usually wear a coat when you go for a walk, but not today. Is that because it’s warm and sunny?’

I replied in the affirmative, of course. What else could I do? (Actually, I could have asked ‘Who are you and why do you stop my way upon this blasted heath? You should be a woman and yet your beard forbids me to interpret that you are so.’ I think it unlikely, however, that she would have been familiar with the provenance of the question, and that the irony and humour contained within it would therefore have proved elusive. In other words, she might have been offended, so I’m glad I didn’t think of it at the time.)

What little remained of the conversation was too perfunctory even to be memorable, so I won’t bother trying to remember it. Eventually she drove on. I think I waved.

It was a salutary experience nonetheless because it demonstrated yet again that I’m being observed in my solitary perambulations. Maybe I’m being studied, analysed even. And that’s the problem with small English villages. They’re full of Miss Marples.

A Special Sight

Most parts of my garden have plants in them that shouldn’t be there. (By that I mean they’re what people call weeds, only I find the term disrespectful and decline to use it.)  But anyway…

One of the wild flowers I have growing in my garden is the periwinkle. It grows on the narrow strip of land next to the side wall of my house, and looks quite at home with other plants which should (purportedly) be there such as snapdragons, teasels, climbing roses, basil, and a forsythia bush.

Well, yesterday – when it was sunny – I arrived at the top of my garden and something leaped into my vision like a nugget of gold on a pebble beach. There was an orange tip butterfly (the first of the season) sitting on a periwinkle flower and feeding on the nectar in the middle.  This is a periwinkle:

And this is an orange tip butterfly. (Sorry I can’t overlay one onto the other, but I don’t have the equipment or the expertise to do fancy stuff like that. Please employ your imagination):

I found the relative shapes, patterns, and colours so startling that everything else – the wall, the plants, the tall hedge, the shrubs, the lawn – became merely three-dimensional, but the butterfly on the periwinkle belonged to the fourth.

It’s because I’m neurodivergent, you see. I’ve known I’m neurodivegent ever since somebody on YouTube told me I am, but I haven’t been so diagnosed as yet because I don’t know anybody who would consider it an issue.

On Danegeld, Bad Ditties, Ducks, and Days.

Yesterday I read that President Xi of China has warned the countries of the world not to give in to American bullying in Trump’s trade wars. It reminded me of that episode in history when bands of Danish Vikings would rampage across a territory, terrorise the population, and then demand money in return for some peace and quiet (for a while at least.) The payment was known as the Danegeld, and Kipling wrote a poem about it which includes the line:

If once you have paid him the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane.

If Trump wins this one, he’ll know he’s got the world on a string, won’t he? We’ll all be puppets to be played with at will. Not a good idea, so let’s hope he loses.

(This week’s cover cartoon on Private Eye, by the way, shows a brat-like Trump bleating: ‘It’s Easter. Where’s my egg?’ And the reply comes back: ‘On your face, mate.’)

*  *  *

I made mention of Ellie, the new barista at Costa Coffee, didn’t I? I did. It occurred to me that the name Ellie should be suitable for the creation of a ditty, something I haven’t done for a very long time. I tried to think of suitable rhymes and decided that ‘smelly’ and ‘belly’ were entirely inappropriate. In fact, I didn’t do very well at all and could only come up with a second rate Limerick which doesn’t really pass muster. I’m going to publish it anyway, though, because even a cupfull of your own urine is better than nothing when you’re stuck in an arid desert awaiting rescue and there’s no water for miles.

There was a young woman called Ellie

Who saw something strange on the telly

A cook with no taste

Preparing a paste

With cow dung and raspberry jelly

*  *  *

For a span of several evenings last week I saw a pair of ducks flying over my garden at twilight. I thought it a rather comfortable image, but on the fourth or fifth night only one duck flew over and I thought it a little sad. The following evening there were no ducks at all, so I reasoned that they might have argued over the best place to spend the night and one of them had won. The female probably. Females usually win that sort of argument. So then I felt better.

*  *  *

I often wonder why I’m still trying to keep this blog going. It isn’t what it was, I know that. It lacks the flow, the humour, and the little bits of cleverness it used to have. It’s all in the mind, of course, beleaguered and belittled as it is by a consciousness become very demanding. I’m trying to stay afloat in a sea of existential speculation replete with capricious tides and opposing cross currents. Most of what I have around me is malfunctioning and so is my body, so there’s an ever present end-of-days feeling in the air and in my dreams. But the blog is still here and sometimes plays the role of pressure valve, so letting it go would probably be a bad idea.

Did I ever mention that words have a similar effect on me that certain foods have on other people? The wan day went glooming down in wet and weariness is my baked Alaska, and Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable Dominion over all my slice of chocolate gateau. I expect I probably did.

On Pitfalls and Pleasant Things.

Let’s have something we haven’t had for quite a long time, eh? A My-Day-In-Ashbourne post. (Sounds grander than it is, but I suppose it will do in the absence of anything better.) Here goes then:

The generally quiet little market town called Ashbourne has a troubled air about it at the moment, courtesy of the county council choosing to spend millions of pounds it doesn’t really have making a difference that doesn’t really need making. They’re digging up all the pavements (sidewalks) and replacing them with smart, off-white flagstones which obviously won’t stay off-white for very long. They’re also re-laying and making changes to the two town centre streets which carry all the summer tourist traffic heading for the Peak District as well as the year-round quarry wagons going in the same direction. Consequently, the quiet and normally unobtrusive little town is littered with yellow signs redirecting vehicular traffic, and red barriers doing the same to pedestrians.

It’s occurred to me a few times that if only we had steam vents blowing off and the odd broken fire hydrant treating us to an impromptu fountain, it would be easy to imagine being in Manhattan. Apart from the honking of horns, that is, or rather the lack of them. I think it’s probably self-evident that British – and other European – drivers are less given to impatience, angry outbursts, and the making of excessive noise in protest, than those who frequent New York City. But I might be wrong.

*  *  *

(The line break is so you don’t get bored because you think there’s something completely different about to take the stage. There is actually.) This:

Costa Coffee has a new Ellie. She has all the physical credentials to be eminently noticeable, and I was somewhat intrigued by her nose. I couldn’t decide whether it was Jewish or merely aquiline, but decided it didn’t matter. She’s also energetic – constantly shifting from one foot to the other and occasionally breaking into a little dance to complement the background music. Ashbourne Costa has become somewhat downbeat and characterless since the last crew left after the Covid lockdown, so I have hopes that the new Ellie will re-invigorate the old place.

And do you know what she said to me? ‘I think I remember you.’ That’s what she said. Me? Memorable? The only time I remember anybody saying that was seven years ago in a different coffee shop (that was Lucy, the ex-dental nurse.) That’s how rare it is. It transpired that Ellie used to work in the pet shop where I bought seed and peanuts for the feeding of wild birds, although that doesn’t explain why she should have noticed me and remembered my face all these years later. (Then again, both Gollum and Quasimodo had pretty memorable faces, so maybe…) I chose not to smile at her lest she thought me creepy. I’m not, you know, not at all. It’s just that some people are wont to get the wrong impression when faced with the odd creature that masquerades as me.

But it got even better. The Bernese Mountain dog sitting with its humans at the next table, and the chocolate Cockapoo I encountered in the street following my departure, both insisted that my company and approbation were every bit the equal of a juicy bone and became my very best friends for a few minutes. And life made sense after all.

A Notable Week of Sorts.

The past week has been a bad one, hence no posts. Matters are a little improved at the moment, but not by much.

*  *  *

I’ve listened to several people talking about the nature of the sigma male on YouTube and they all described me pretty well. Imagine being a sigma male, an INFJ, and an HSP all in one person (if you can.) Not much hope for a contented dotage, is there?

*  *  *

Nevertheless, I still managed to be mildly intrigued by the news that Signorina Meloni of Italy has gone cap in hand to visit Mr Trump of somewhere over the big water, hoping to persuade him to be kind to us poor Europeans. The news report suggested that she might have some success because, being one of the most right wing of Europe’s leaders, she has more in common ideologically with Mr T than most other European leaders. If she does, I suspect it will owe more to the fact that she is blonde, petite, good looking, and thirty years younger than him.

*  *  *

I also caught a video on YouTube made by a well spoken and intelligent American man (a creature rather commoner, no doubt, than we poor Europeans are wont to acknowledge in the circumstances currently prevailing.) He spoke about the possibility that, contrary to popular belief, consciousness is not a product of the brain but the creator of my brain, your brain, and every other fragment of material in the whole of the universe. This idea is not new to me, but the way he explained it impressed me to the point of almost believing him. I didn’t, of course, because I don’t do belief, but I did feel a satisfying sense of vindication.

*  *  *

Should I talk about the three knocks which woke me up at 3am a few nights ago, and the shuffling sounds I subsequently heard in my bedroom? Don’t think so. That sort of thing is best left to fly past on the wind.

On Trump and the T Word.

I read earlier that a woman has been charged with criminal damage after splashing some red paint on the walls of the clubhouse on one of Donald Trumps Scottish golf courses. Donald called it ‘an act of terrorism’ and said he hoped that she would be very harshly treated.

Well, come on. Turnberry isn’t exactly a national monument, is it? And the building hardly stands out as a notable piece of architecture. Vandalising property is, indeed, criminal under British law, but it’s a pretty minor sort of criminal. It doesn’t come close to wanting to steal Greenland from the Danes, or evict the Palestinians from Gaza so he can turn their ancestral homeland into another Mediterranean playground for the rich.

And have you noticed that Trump reacts to every bit of protest aimed at him or his entourage by calling it ‘terrorism’? He’s obsessed with the word and clearly hasn’t a clue what it means. A simple definition of terrorism would be: ‘purposefully hurting the innocent with the aim of reducing their resolve or morale.’ Writing ‘go home Trump’ - or whatever it was - in red paint on the wall of an unprepossessing building is hardly hurting the innocent. And I wonder whether Trump realises that American policy has been responsible for some of the greatest acts of true terrorism the world has ever known. How many innocent people were cruelly killed or hurt by the bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden in 1945? There was a war on, yes, but none of them were combatants. That’s terrorism. Defacing a building or trashing a Tesla car isn’t (except to Mr Dunderhead.)

On the Battery God Being Belligerent.

I was on my way out to go to Ashbourne for my weekly shopping trip this morning, but when I pushed the button to unlock the car nothing happened. I tried it from a different direction but still nothing happened. I tried it from several directions, and even returned to the house and came back again, thinking it might be one of those odd temporal shifts in the matrix. And then I unscrewed the key fob and jiggled the button cell in there. Nothing. Not a clunk or a wink-wink was in evidence to set my mind at rest. And of course, the door wouldn’t open.

Thus began a long period of telephonic and other activity aimed at remedying the situation, the details of which may be mostly omitted to avoid the risk of inducing an atmosphere of terminal boredom to the relating of the tale. Apart from one interesting fact:

When I made the first call using my mobile phone I noticed that my phone battery had hardly any charge in it, so I plugged the charger in and proceeded with the calls in situ. But the screen kept flashing up a message saying ‘charger plugged out.’ Only it wasn’t plugged out, so now I had another problem. Was it a fault with the charger, the phone battery, or the phone itself? You never know these days, do you? That’s one of the problems we have with modern technology in the modern world.

But here’s the interesting bit: at the end of all the testing and theorising, the problem with the car was diagnosed as being simply a flat battery. It wasn’t flat yesterday, but now it is. ‘That’s the problem with modern batteries,’ said the mechanic. ‘Full of life one minute and dead the next. They don’t give you any warning any more.’

A new battery was ultimately located and fitted, and now the little French princess is purring and blushing prettily again just as she should, and opening her doors freely to welcome my august presence into her midst.

But isn’t it odd that I should have two unconnected battery failures at the same time. Is there a god of batteries up there in the cosmos somewhere, and might he have a toothache today? And there’s a little adjunct to the tale:

Yesterday I went to the GP surgery for my spring Covid booster, and when the nurse came to insert the needle she jumped back. I suppose I probably asked some feckless question like ‘do I really smell that bad?’ (because that’s what I usually do). ‘No,’ she replied, ‘I just got an electric shock off your arm.’ Well, maybe the battery god has a more extended portfolio which includes all matters electrical. And maybe he’s had toothache for two days. Whatever the likelihood or otherwise of such speculation, there definitely seems to be summat up (as they say in the wild north country.)

The Mystery of Donald and Greta.

I’m currently thirty minutes into a documentary about Greta Thunberg, and one of the questions which has become uppermost in my mind is this:

How can Donald Trump and Greta Thunberg both be members of the same species?

One sub-ordinary and the other super extraordinary; one deluded follower and one a visionary leader; one of achingly narrow perception and one who sees the world as it truly is. And both claiming descent from Adam.

Didn’t I read once that the chimpanzee has 98% of its DNA in common with the human? That might be true of Trump, although I suspect the figure might be higher in his case, but Thunberg? Therein lies the mystery.

Having Prospero for President.

I once read that an American – presumably a sound man of business – had stated the opinion that the president of a country should always be a businessman. Well, America now has one and the question has come into sharp relief. Personally I think it’s a load of tosh, so I thought I’d make a case for the opposite assertion.

The problem with businessmen, certainly at a level which would qualify them to run for President, is that they’re conditioned by, and committed to, the notion that the overarching concern in any organisation is the pecuniary principle. Money is the bottom line; money is everything. This must surely give them an unrealistically narrow view of the spectrum of cultural concerns and values, and lead them to consider that the only thing which really matters when creating a stable and contented society is economic growth.

But economic growth, at least in an overwhelmingly capitalist system, doesn’t create a contented society. What it creates is the illusion that having things like prestigious cars and big houses and trinkets and gadgets and expensive pastimes is the predominant means by which happiness and contentment are gained. And it simply isn’t true. The main effect of having more and more things is to create a permanent desire to have yet more things once you’ve become habituated to those you’ve already got, and that in turn produces a perpetual state of discontent. It’s usually subconscious, but it’s no less real for so being.

The creation of stability and contentment requires the right balancing of the spectrum, and this is something the high flying businessman is ill prepared to understand. Money really isn’t everything, and that’s a fact. And as long as the businessman running the country thinks it is, the pestilence of discontent and social division will not only continue to thrive but probably grow stronger.

As Edgar Allan Poe wrote at the end of Masque of the Red Death, when the plague has taken Prince Prospero and proved it knows no boundaries (and I hope I might be forgiven the necessary paraphrase):

And Darkness and Decay and the scourge of the mighty Dollar will hold illimitable Dominion over all

The Matter of the Reflective Posts.

A little way down the lane from my gate stand two curved metal posts hammered into the shallow grass verge. They’re reflective and coloured red, white, yellow, and black, and were put there a couple of years ago to warn drivers at night away from the drainage ditch which lies the other side of the verge.

The problem is that the red, white, yellow, and black had been completely obscured by road dust, leaving them a dirty dark grey and anything but reflective. Today I went out and cleaned them, and also hammered one of the posts further into the ground because it had worked loose and was in danger of falling over. Several cars passed me while I was so engaged because it was school run time. Two people and a dog also passed me on foot, and none of them stopped to ask ‘what’ya doing?’

And so I fully expect that one day someone will be driving along that part of the lane at night and say: ‘Oh look, somebody’s cleaned those reflective posts. I wonder who it was.’ And any generally uninterested passenger will probably reply: ‘The council, I expect.’ And they’ll be wrong, but I won’t mind a bit because I will tell myself that virtue is its own reward. Yeah.

A couple of hours before that I was taking my walk when a young Cocker Spaniel gleefully made my acquaintance. He then proceeded to wrap his paws around my arm and chew my thumb. My, how it took me back to happier times when another Cocker Spaniel and I got on famously. (This is the point at which ‘hey ho’ would come in useful if it weren’t such a cliché.)

And then I got the ladder out and trimmed the ivy festooning the side wall of my house, so now it looks all smarty pants.

I’d say that today might be described as ‘productive.’ Do you know how rare that is?

Coincidence and a Dark Suspicion.

I came across a second hand book in a charity shop today, a glossary of mainly archaic, but with some new, words which have fallen out of use or not yet become common. One of the archaic terms is the verb ‘to betrump’ which means to deceive, to cheat, to evade by guile, and the example of usage is given as ‘he betrumped her out of winning the election.’ (And the book was published long before Kamala Harris entered the presidential lists, just in case you’re wondering.)

It seemed to me that this is the good old universe showing us connections again, so I bought the book.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Starmer is apparently going ahead with his plan to give tax breaks to the American tech giants – huge, soulless multi-billion dollar organisations – in the hope of gaining favourable terms in the matter of Trump and his trade war. He also still declines to extract a little more tax from the multi-millionaires in this country, but remains committed to reducing welfare payments to the sick and disabled. Methinks there is something rotten in the state of Albion.

And it isn’t just dear old Albion under the microscope. I’m beginning to sense the spreading of an aggressive cancer across the politics of the whole western world. I read today that Putin’s little lackey, Mr Orban of Hungary, is to allow a visit from the genocidal and land-grabbing Netanyahu without arresting him, in spite of an arrest warrant being issued by the International Criminal Court to which Hungary is a signatory. And I gather that the new German Chancellor is likely to do the same.

So am I right with my cancer analogy? And if so, has it reached stage 3 yet?

*  *  *

While I was eating my dinner tonight I took to thinking of all the things I’d done today. And then I thought about the things I did yesterday and the things I’m likely to do tomorrow. A sinking feeling began to take over as the realisation set in that it’s all completely bloody pointless. And then I remembered that there were lots of dogs in Ashbourne today and they all seemed happy, and as long as the world has happy dogs in it there’s reason to carry on.

Open Wounds and the Baby Moon.

A week or so ago I was doing a small job at the top of the stairs using a piece of hollow metal tubing from an old vacuum cleaner. I dropped it and one end of the tube scraped along the white-painted lining paper on the opposite wall, scraping off a small piece of about 2”x½”. I carried on with the job meaning to repair it later.

But then I looked at it more closely and noticed something. Behind the paper is a thin layer of polystyrene sheeting which is meant to provide a little insulation between the paper and the plastered wall. It’s normally smooth, but the sharp metal had dragged across it and broken the surface into small polystyrene granules. At that point a sense of horror and disgust came over me, so profound as to be genuinely enervating, and it lasted for about ten minutes. Every time I went up or down the stairs my eye was drawn to this scar and the same thing happened. Eventually I had to make a point of not looking at it until I got around to repairing it.

That’s a little strange, isn’t it, and it reminded me of how I’d felt as a boy when I read a horror story which I think was called Lukundo, or something similar. It was about a man camping out in a remote area who develops a nasty condition: every so often a small, human-like being breaks out of his skin and talks to him in a foreign language. I felt the same sense of horror and disgust then. I also remembered that there was a time in my young life when the sight of a tree troubled me because it was growing out of the ‘skin’ of the earth, and anything coming out of the skin from beneath it produced a sense of loathing. Seeing the skin broken, and that which is normally hidden become visible, appears to have a strangely disturbing effect on me.

So where does this odd sensibility come from? Is it a form of neurosis which has it origin in some long forgotten trauma? And could my adverse reaction to very loud noises spring from the same source?

*  *  *

Meanwhile, the nice news this week is that the first bluebells are flowering. They’re early, as are the flowers on the wild garlic and the blossom now growing heavy on my plum tree. But we need rain because we’ve hardly had any for about two months. Unusually dry springs are becoming the norm in this little outpost of Europe.

*  *  *

And yesterday evening I noticed something unusual about the super thin crescent of the new moon. Its height in the sky relative to the position of the sun below the horizon put it a certain angle, which caused me to see a new-born baby lying back in the crook of its new mother’s arm. Such is the potential for imagination in this little outpost of the human condition.