Reaching the Peak.

I’m always a little sad when we reach the end of May. May is the last month in the year during which the days continue to grow longer for the whole of its span. And then along comes June which brings us to the summer solstice. The days begin to grow shorter again and the sun begins its gradual descent en route to the dark days of winter.

And it’s usually the month when the swallows first appear to thrill us with their aerial acrobatics. And the kiddies dance around the maypole to the sound of an Irish jig on the school playing field. And the wild birds feed their young ones with great energy and diligence. And things of – usually beneficent – great consequence often happen in May. (Although not this year, and there’s only three hours of May left.)

And the wheel turns. And nothing is meant to last beyond its allotted span.

The young are generally unaware of this, even though the knowledge must be hiding somewhere, waiting for the right time time to spring the ambush.

(The priestess - remember her? - was an exception of course. She felt the knowledge from an early age. It's why she was one third hedonist, one third philosopher, and one third explorer. Unlike hedonism and philosophy, exploration has no limits. If I remember the novel Sidhartha correctly, there would appear to be a direct parallel between me and the eponymous hero in the matter of the priestess. If so, all I have to do now is work with the ferryman until it's time for the crossing. Maybe I should read the book again.)

*  *  *

I’ve decided that when I die I want be greeted on the other side by a pack of friendly wolves, come to guide me to wherever I’m supposed to go. They are, after all, the ultimate dog.

*  *  *

I found a picture of mine, published as a postcard, in the 'classic postcards' section of eBay. It was priced at £5.99. Fancy that. (And that was the second, incidentally, both taken in the English Lake District.) Mel thinks I'm going to be famous after I'm dead. I won't care as long as I have wolves for company.

Swamped.

Over the past two years the pageview count on this blog has been massively higher than it ever was during the previous thirteen. The month of May has already exceeded the all time record, and what’s odd is that in the earlier years it attracted many comments from mostly regular readers; now it gets next to none.

I’ve often wondered whether bot activity could be responsible, but it doesn’t fit because there’s no regularity of pattern and the visits are made by a wide variety of browsers and operating systems. And the individual posts are all listed on the stats page. It appears that a lot of people from disparate parts of the world – most notably Singapore, the USA, Brazil, Vietnam, and Mexico – are spending a good deal of time reading my old blog posts.

So the question is: who are they and why are they doing it? Is my blog performing some kind of function in various parts of the world? If so, I’d love to know what it is.

Bird News:

The blue tits in the nest box behind the kitchen fledged yesterday just as the weather turned cooler and damp. And also yesterday, I saw the first baby robin on the bird table. What’s concerning me is that some of the adult birds are now in full moult, and today we had the first proper rain for several months – several hours of it. This was good to see because the land was becoming dangerously dry, but if the birds don’t have their proper quota of water-repellent feathers, how will they cope with the cold nights? Being chilled is a major hazard for birds.

And I’m reminded of how easily we take the good things for granted. On nearly every day for the past three months it would have been appropriate to say to a passing stranger: ‘Good morning. Isn’t it a beautiful day?’ because nearly every day was. And yet I never heard anybody say it. But when I went out this evening to replenish the bird table, the remains of the day had a distinct ‘glooming down in wet and weariness’ feeling about it. I hurried back to the house, grumbling inwardly. It appears I don’t deserve to live in California even if I wanted to.

Trump's Tablets.

I see Trump is now directing his fire at America’s Ivy League universities. He says they’re not doing enough to prevent pro-Palestinian protests and are not supportive of his brand of American conservatism. Well now, what can they be thinking? And so the dear old US of A takes one more faltering step down the slippery slope to fascism.

American Conservatism According to Trump:

1. You will stand with hand on heart to recite the Oath of Allegiance every day.

2. You will repeat: ‘God bless America, land of the free where all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds’ every time you see my face or hear my name. (Although he won’t realise that Voltaire was joking.)

3 You will revere the insanely rich as demi-gods, for they are the descendants of the Founding Fathers and represent the spirit of America.

4. You will do as you are told at all times by men of wealth who wear the badge of status conferred by me.

5. Women will be treated as objects of play to suit your pleasure, for that is their purpose in life. You will only take them seriously if they are young, pretty, and reading from an autocue words written by me or which have my approbation.

6. You will have no truck with dictionaries. However I define ‘terrorism’ or ‘anti-Semitism’ shall be the new truth.

7. You will develop the habit of somnambulance at all times and remain quiet except to roar angrily at my enemies.

I didn’t make this up, you know. This is what I’ve heard Americans with brains say about America.

Hypocrites or Specimens?

Two items on the BBC News website caught my attention this morning. The first was the shooting of the Jewish couple in Washington DC, and the second was the ‘meeting’ between Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office. What most caught my eye were the words attributed to Netanyahu regarding the first incident, and those of Trump in the course of the second. The level of gross hypocrisy was staggering even by the sad standards of senior politicians generally, and I wondered yet again why, since there are so many good people on this planet, we allow our sacred space to be so hideously polluted by men such as these.

(Although I think it likely that conspiracy theories will soon start circulating around the murder off the Jewish couple.)

My first thought on entering Sainsbury’s to do my grocery shop yesterday was for the people of Gaza, especially the children who haven’t yet been slaughtered by Netanyahu.

*  *  *

You know, I was watching a magpie pecking at something on a fallen tree branch this morning, and as I wondered what was attracting its attention I had a deep inner sensation that I’m no longer connected to this world. If only I could hold on to that feeling, maybe I could start being merely observant of the dark creatures instead of being angered by them. Seems I have a way to go yet.

Things I Don't Understand.

I don’t understand why a charity shop on Ashbourne has a sign on the door saying ‘No Dogs.’ It’s why I rarely visit that one on principle.

I don’t understand why the human race regards sex so highly. I’ve reached the point in life where I now realise it’s boringly trivial and rather messy. (I didn’t used to see it that way, and I gather that neither do certain religious traditions.) Maybe my new focus in life should be to consort only with virgins.

I don’t understand how Netanyahu can commit genocide willy-nilly and get away with it.

I thought of another one earlier, but I’ve forgotten what it was.

*  *  *

I encountered Ms Medeea, my ex-dentist, in Ashbourne today. It seems she hasn’t gone back to Romania after all. She omitted to say whether she lives in a castle and engages in nocturnal, ne’er-do-welling practices guarded by a troop of gypsies and a pack of wolves, but it was good to see her. (Readers of longstanding will remember that she’s one of my heroes.)

An Unrealistic Suggestion.

I find myself asking why the US – preferably in conjunction with European partners – doesn’t have the balls to organise a massive airdrop of food supplies into Gaza, thereby challenging the Israeli armed forces to try to stop them.

Imagine what a shockwave would reverberate around the world of international diplomacy (especially if the Israeli armed forces tried to stop them.) And I suppose that’s the answer to the question, for we all know that politicians hold the world of international diplomacy in far higher regard than the mere matter of the deaths of children.

Dogs and Drones and Stuff.

Been too busy for blogging this week, so now I’ve got half an hour to spare let’s see whether I can remember anything worth remembering…

Nope, but a few nondescript oddments might avoid the next half hour going to  waste, so here goes:

I heard a loud noise going over my house one day. It was much louder than the commercial jetliners heading for East Midlands Airport, and it didn’t sound like a jet engine anyway, so I went out to take a look. Four big drones were crossing the field beyond my garden, so big that I assumed they must have been military drones. I’ve only ever seen one drone before. A small one spent five minutes hovering around me as I walked along Mill Lane last autumn. (Nearly everything of interest that happens in these parts happens in Mill Lane. Have you noticed?)

I encountered the Lady B’s dear mama, honourable sister, and Oscar the dog on my walk yesterday (as I was approaching Mill Lane.) ‘Hello Oscar,’ I said enthusiastically, because that’s what you normally say to dogs called Oscar. ‘You remember his name,’ said honourable sister in a tone indicating both surprise and approbation. Well, of course I remembered his name. It’s people’s names I can never remember.

I’m doing the toughest of the spring garden jobs at the moment – out with the pole hedge trimmer and ladder trimming the tall boundary hedge which runs down the length of my garden. It’s hard going these days because my energy, strength, and sense of balance are a little depleted now, and so I have to rely on courage to get the job done. The problem is that my courage is much depleted as well.

I was woken up last night by a deep, scraping sound above my bedroom ceiling. It sounded like somebody pulling a heavy object across the floor. This is a little odd because all there is above my bedroom ceiling is the house roof space, the floor of which is not boarded. I was reminded of the short but deep growling sound I heard outside my bedroom door one night, and so I did the same as I did on that occasion – decided I was unlikely to think of an explanation and went back to sleep.

The half hour is conveniently up.

An Assertive Avian and Another Mystery Maiden.

I’ve mentioned many times that it’s fun at this time of year to watch a pair of blue tits raising a brood in the nest box behind my kitchen. A few days ago I saw one of the birds fly in – from probably quite a long way away – carrying a caterpillar to add to the dinner table. He perched on a nearby branch, evidently aware that there was already activity in the box (and nest boxes aren’t very big, you know?)

And then the other bird flew out, joined the one on the branch, and flapped her wings rapidly. (That’s how I’m fairly sure that the second bird was the female, because females get more practice at rapid wing fluttering. It’s their way of saying ‘gimme, gimme, gimme.’) The male bird gave her the caterpillar which she then took into the box.

She tried it again today, but Mr B was having none of it this time.

‘No, I won’t give you the caterpillar.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I fetched it from quite a long way away, and I don’t see why I should give it to you so you can fly a mere three feet to the box while I fly a long way away again to fetch another one.’

‘You’re mean.’

‘No I’m not, I’ve just grown wise to that rapid wing flapping stuff. Go and fetch your own caterpillar.’

And then he flew the mere three feet to the box and disappeared inside. The female flew off rapidly in the opposite direction, presumably in a huff. Fascinating.

*  *  *

I passed another unidentified maiden in Mill Lane today, but this one did at least half turn her eyes in my direction and grunt something which I presume was meant to be taken as a reluctant greeting.

But where are these unidentified maidens coming from? If somebody’s opened a maiden factory somewhere in the vicinity of Mill Lane, why has nobody told me?

Baby's First Neighbour.

I heard somebody say on a YouTube video recently that part of the value of a mother to a baby is that she’s the first ‘other person’ the baby experiences in his or her new life. Sounds profound, doesn’t it? But is it true?

Not usually. The first other person a baby experiences is usually a midwife, a doctor, a paramedic, or a policeman in an emergency. And in America they charge the poor parents a fee to allow the mother to be, at best, only the second person the baby experiences as other. I believe they call it something like a 'skin contact' charge.

You know, I’m surprised that some American entrepreneur hasn’t developed a device to take the oxygen out of the atmosphere, then they could charge everybody to have a continuous supply of oxygen tanks strapped to their backs. If Trump only had a brain, he’d probably be working on it right now.

Mill Lane Bits and the Mystery Maiden.

I saw three swallows flying above Mill Lane today. ‘One swallow does not a summer make’ says the old adage. Maybe three do.

Walking north along Mill Lane gives a comprehensive view of the Weaver Hills, a final outcropping of the Pennines before the land descends southward to the Trent valley. In the years I’ve lived here I’m sure I’ve never seen them look so bare and brown, presumably because we’ve had the driest spring in Britain for sixty nine years.

Paradoxically, however, the barley growing in several fields alongside the lane is a very healthy bright green and growing well, with fully formed ears and beards. The blue-green wheat in other fields is showing no sign of ears yet, but it looks happy enough. And the maize seed which was sown a week or two ago is already germinating.

The hawthorn trees and bushes have been unusually heavily stacked with May flowers this year – in Mill Lane and everywhere else (which fact would be worth a post of its own, given the magnificent sights it’s produced.) What’s odd is that second showings are appearing which I don’t remember happening before. Maybe hawthorn likes dry springs. If I’d been aware of that sort of thing as a young lad I would have kept notes and would probably know by now.

And then there’s the mystery maid of Mill Lane who I’ve now seen twice. I first saw her about two weeks ago and at first thought it was the Lady B: same slender build, same height, same elegant, upright walk, same shoulder length dark hair. We were walking in opposite directions, and as we passed I saw that she was probably about fifteen years younger than said Lady. I intended to offer a greeting but she declined even to look at me, much less speak. And so I walked on (because gentlemen don’t accost young ladies – unless they have a dog with them, of course – but merely invite them to speak if they so wish.)

Today I saw her again, only she was following me this time. And she continued to follow me almost to the end of the road. When I stopped to talk to the sheep in the little paddock where the white pony used to be, I looked over my shoulder to see that she’d turned tail and was walking back the way she’d come. Evidently she had no intention of entering my orbit and saying ‘isn’t it a wonderful day, and did you see the three swallows flying above the lane earlier?’ Maybe she dislikes men. Maybe she dislikes old men. Maybe she’s been told that I’m the village weirdo and might behave unpredictably (though surely not inappropriately, surely not that; I’ve never given anybody the slightest hint of a reason to suspect I might be that sort of weirdo.)

The fact is, I’m familiar with most of the people who live at the bottom of the Shire where Mill Lane is situated, but I haven’t a clue who this young woman is. Maybe she’s a ghost, or somebody come through a dimensional or time shift. I thought the same about the young Chinese woman I saw wandering aimlessly around the environs of Mill Lane a few years ago, with no vehicle in sight. We don’t get Chinese women in the Shire – ever.

On Blackbirds and Bonding.

There’s something unusual going on with the blackbirds in my garden. Around the time of sunset and shortly after, they suddenly become active and numerous just when the other birds have mostly disappeared for the day. The males are usually flying fast and determinedly from tree to tree, often chasing other males. The females are mostly hopping around the lawn and vegetable plots, or in among the vegetation in the flower beds, picking up unidentified morsels from the earth. And they come closer to me than usual, only moving away if I put a foot one step too far in their direction. It feels almost as though I’m beginning to bond with blackbirds in the twilight hour.

But as I said to the woman in the pet shop where I went to buy my sack of wild bird seed yesterday: ‘there are worse things to bond with than blackbirds.’ She agreed. And then I asked whether she was familiar with the story of Molly Lee, ‘the Burslem witch’ who was buried with a live blackbird in her coffin, and how disturbing the thought of such an atrocity is. She did know the story; she’d even visited Molly’s grave which had been re-aligned north-south in an apparently successful attempt to lay her ghost.

I also suggested that the pet shop acquire two friendly dogs to work shifts sitting by the till near the door. It occurs to me that the shop would be constantly full of people wanting their dog fixes (as I do.) You wouldn’t think a visit to a retail park could be interesting, would you?

Alice in America.

There’s something real and yet surreal going on in the USA at the moment. It has a distinctly Lewis Caroll feel about it.

First there was the man thrown into prison for writing something critical of Israeli policy on social media. Then there was the college professor sacked and deported for taking part in a pro-Palestinian rally. And then along comes Mr Bannon bemoaning the fact that the new Pope might be American, but critically is not America First. Why would anybody think that he should be? The Pope is the spiritual leader of the world’s Catholics, not America’s altar boy. (It’s hard to know with Bannon whether he’s a complete imbecile, or whether he’s sufficiently au fait with the culture to realise that 43% of Americans really are complete imbeciles and he can get away with acting like them.)

But we haven’t come to the best one yet, and this is the important one: Trump’s entourage are seriously – or so it is said – considering suspending habeas corpus. If there’s one thing giving rise to the serious suspicion that the USA, the ‘leader of the free world’ (and for ‘free world’ read ‘democratic world’), is sliding or being pushed into fascism, it’s this. Habeas corpus is a major part of the foundation of any democracy. It has to be, otherwise you might as well be living in 1930s Germany, and look where that led.

Personally, I think one of two things needs to happen. Either the bulk of Americans needs to rise up to remove Trump and his donkeys from their positions of power, or the rest of the world – especially Europe – should find a way to turn its back on the USA.

Neither is likely to happen, of course. Big capitalism has ingratiated itself too far into the American psyche. I’m quite sure that the lure of trinkets and baubles, devices and lifestyle accessories has long since killed off the spirit of 1776. Nobody with an outdoor swimming pool, four cars in the driveway, and a plethora of electronic devices with which to bitch, insult, or praise effusively is going to want to occupy the barricades. (Ironically, the only ones likely to do that are the hardcore Trump supporters. That’s part of why the whole thing is surreal.)

As for the second part, that’s also not going to happen because it would mean reordering the whole system of world economics. America is too big a player to simply shut it out, much as we would like to.

And so I suppose all we can do is wait and see. Sometimes I like the idea of a cataclysmic nuclear war coming along to kill off most of the human population, and then maybe we could start again and make a better job of it next time. But it’s easy for someone like me to say at my end of life. What about my daughter and her kids? What about the Lady B and hers? What about all the young and middle aged adults and the millions of babies being born every day?

And so we wait. And, as usual, maybe I’m wrong.

Excitement Shire Style.

I saw the first two swallows of the season at the bottom end of the Shire today. I watched them approach from a southerly direction and settle on somebody’s TV aerial.  I thought it reasonable to presume, given their southerly approach route, that they were finally making their first landfall since leaving South Africa a few weeks ago. I said ‘welcome and good luck’ to them as you would. Exciting things like that often happen in the Shire. Sometimes the adrenalin rush is hard to tolerate, especially if you’re blessed with an underperforming left ventricle.

The second exciting thing which happened to me was being passed in a motor car by the Lady B. She slowed, smiled, and waved, which is exactly what her mother always does so I suppose it’s an example of learned behaviour. I fully expect that one day one or the other will actually stop the car, lower the window, and proclaim:

‘Good morning, Mr Jeffrey. I presume you’ve noticed that I always slow down when I pass you on the road.’

‘I have indeed, ma’am,’ I will make hasty reply, ‘and I cannot thank you enough for your care and courtesy.’

‘Well actually,’ one or the other will continue, ‘the reason I do so is to avoid making an intolerable mess on the road. You know, all that blood and skin and broken bone and gelatinous tissue and so on. I fear it might frighten the horses, you see, and that would never do. I’m sure you understand. Goodbye.’

Being in a Deep, Dark Hole.

This post was begun on Monday 5^th May, three days after my phone line became comatose and my internet access naturally followed suit. The people at British Telecom said they were sending an engineer to trace the fault, but no result so far. I decided to write a post anyway – mostly for the sake of having something to do – and publish it if and when BT get their lethargic fingers out and resolve the matter.

During my enforced separation from the internet I discovered a file of images which I’d forgotten I had. It was a large selection of photographs from my pro days, held at that time (and probably still held as far as I know) by the publisher of a magazine which specialised in the landscapes and other places of interest in the UK. It’s a long time since I’d seen them and I was truly surprised by how good many of them were. I never realised how good an eye I had for form, visual balance, atmosphere, and the qualities of tone and texture. And then I remembered something else: I remembered how massively enthusiastic I was about my photography. Here are a couple of examples, chosen only because they remind me of the difference between nature’s endeavours and those of mankind. Nature is all about softness, sinuousness, and impermanence; the works of man are hard, run in straight lines, and built to last forever or as close as we can manage:

 

And that took me back to something I once wrote a blog post about: the tendency throughout my life to be subject to a variety of monomanias. There were mostly three of them – fishing, photography, and the writing of fiction. These were interests which consumed my waking desires at all times when I wasn’t being forced to walk the treadmill of school or salaried employment. I remembered the day when I went for a walk around the lanes where I lived, cameras and notebook at the ready to practice my new interest in the craft of photography. I was working as a revenue inspector at the time and a dispiriting revelation suddenly descended upon my consciousness and almost forced me to my knees – a sense that the time I spent in the office or out doing visits was akin to being trapped in a cold, musty crypt with only desiccated bones for company. It was at that moment that the aspiration to become a freelance pro was born.

And so the monomania became a career, and a very pleasant career it turned out to be. The enthusiasm never waned, you see, and being paid to do something you really like doing is a blessing indeed. Mrs Thatcher’s recession eventually killed it off and circumstances led me into theatre work, first as a volunteer and later in a paid position. I wouldn’t quite call the theatre work a monomania, but I was certainly enthusiastic about it and that means a lot.

And this brings me to the point of the post: the operative word is ‘enthusiasm.’ I was massively enthusiastic about all my obsessions – fishing, photography, the writing of fiction, and even the lesser matter of the theatre work. And that’s what’s missing in my life now. I have nothing to be enthusiastic about, and without enthusiasm life is a cold, grey affair. (I think that’s part of the explanation for the Lady B’s place in my life. Her presence was about the only thing which raised my consciousness to a state resembling enthusiasm, and why she has been mentioned so much on this blog. But life moves on, and so do people, and that’s just as it should be.)

So now for the complication:

There is something in my life which now provides the fuel to keep the motor running. Strange as it might sound to those who know of my attitude to the modern world and its oft-disturbing ways, it’s the internet. The internet has achieved a place in my life which I would never have thought credible in the early days. It’s where I go for information on news, sport, and the weather. It’s what I use to control my bills and general finances. Google searches provide most of the information on people and various sundry subjects. The internet provides my blog and feeds my love of Blogger stats. It’s the source of both learning and entertainment through YouTube and BBC iPlayer. And it’s been my main medium of correspondence for the past fifteen years. The internet very nearly fills what remains of my life when I’m not engaged in the chores of gardening, housework, and grocery shopping.

*  *  *

It’s now Tuesday 6^th May and I still have no internet because the land line problem remains unresolved. The consequence of this is to feel an overwhelming sense of something massive missing from my life. When I look at my computer monitor all I see is my desktop looking impassively back at me. It reminds me of a cold fireplace on a cold winter’s morning. Where there should be glowing embers, flickering flames, and wholesome heat, there is only black metal, soot-stained fire bricks, and dead cinders. That’s what having no internet is like and it’s depressing.

*  *  *

Wednesday 7^th May. My phone line is restored and I have access to the internet again. There were a lot of matters awaiting my attention when it returned this afternoon, including two emails from BT which provides the phone line. They were both apologies for the delay, and they’d been sent to me by email (duh?)

1st of Beltane.

In the pleasant month of May

As I roved out on a fine May morning

In the merry, merry month of May

Three lines from different folk songs, all recognising the fact that May is a special month. In the Celtic calendar, May is the youthful first month of summer, and in the Shire this morning all was green and bountiful in the Mayday sunshine. Vast swathes of white flowers on the wild garlic in The Hollow, veritable regiments of fresh young bracken everywhere, rockery gardens festooned with hanging colour of every hue, and the tree canopies in wood, field, and hedgerow proudly presenting their summer finery of leaf and seed.

When I came back to my house I heard music playing. I looked over to the school playing field where the kids were performing their maypole dance, and doing so to the lively brilliance of an Irish jig. Perfect; and for a brief few minutes the conviction held that life in this often torturous place called reality has compensations.

In the afternoon the loss arrived. I decline to go into detail, but I was reminded again of the connection between the forces of creation and destruction. But even that was ameliorated by the steady shower of light rain which graced the gardens and the dusty fields for a while this evening. We needed it after weeks of warm, dry, sunny weather.

And that was the first day of Beltane in a nutshell.