Today's Nonsense for the Sake of It.

Flowers will be blooming in Sydney today.

I wanted to post that because it reminded me of an old Brit TV show called Candid Camera, in which silly scenarios were visited on unsuspecting members of the public while a hidden camera looked on. I think they still produce such a programme, but with a different name. The only one I remember had a man sidling furtively up to a shopper and saying quietly: 'Is the Count eating kippers with your mother-in-law tonight?'

I tried it in a branch of Argos once, at a time when they followed the practice of asking you for a password before they'd give you the goods. The assistant at the counter didn't smile one inch, but frowned and said: 'I'm sorry?' Different generation, I suppose. And when I related the fact on an early blog post, somebody commented: 'What are kippers?' That was when I realised that the joke was all but lost.

I did half of the toughest job in the garden today. When I finished it, my energy level had achieved a negative value. Such a situation can be quite alarming, yet here I still am. 

And then my daily daydream broke forth. I was speaking French fluently and rescuing an elderly lady, whose English was inadequate, from a false accusation of shoplifting in Sainsbury's. It reminded us both of something from a M Hulot film and we both giggled. I can be quite a nice guy in daydreams, you know. I can.

Tit for Tat.

It occurred to me today that it would be amusing if Canada acceded to Mr Trump's invitation to become the 51st state, and then waited until the next 4th July to issue a Declaration of Independence.

Another Little Coincidence.

According to one of my stats trackers I had a visit today from the District of Columbia. It appears I get lots of visits from lots of American states, but DC isn't even a state, is it? As I understand it, it's effectively just the city of Washington. And who lives in Washington when he isn't sunning himself in his back yard in Florida? If I spy a black limo parked by the little grassy triangle down the lane, or a couple of plastic-looking men eyeing up the house and environs, I'll let you know.

But that isn't the coincidence. The coincidence is that when I looked at today's page view count up to that point, it gave 1776. Where on earth is Mr Jung when you need him?

What Dreams May Come...

I was picked up early in the evening by a friend of mine and taken to a place out in the countryside which I'd visited during my years as a revenue inspector. But this was no belated, official visit, but the opportunity to go to a party.

It was held in a large, shed-like structure fully kitted out with tables and chairs, bright lights, a bar, and even toilet facilities. The music was loud and and the place full of revellers, and I spent my time in my usual way -- observing the multitude, sometimes from the side of the room and sometimes in the midst of the throng, and exchanging the odd pleasantry here and there.

It went on for several hours until the outer door opened and three or four young women entered. The room went quiet and we were told by the newcomers that the party was over and they'd been engaged to clean up the place. I looked for my friend who had brought me there, but he was nowhere to be found. He'd obviously left earlier and forgotten about me. I knew I would have to walk home and began the trek.

The lane ran downhill to a dip where water had gathered to form a shallow pond due to heavy rain, and I was forced to walk through it. As I began to continue uphill on the other side I became suddenly aware of a profound stillness which arrested my progress. No sound of wind and no perception of either temperature or my own tiredness. And then I opened my eyes and discovered that I was lying in my own bed in the dim light of early morning. For a second I felt mildly shocked, since the recollection of the party and the rational, hours-long process was fresh in my mind. I soon realised, of course, that it had all been a dream.

But was it merely a dream? If so, it was of a most unusual kind, so unusual that I would call it unique. It went on far, far longer than dreams usually do, and it was all totally realistic and lacking the fractured logic normally present in the recollection of dreams. So what should I make of it? A dream or some sort of shift into a different reality? Now that such and similar possibilities are being given credence by a few on the fringes of mainstream science, you have to wonder.

I decided not expend too much time on wondering, but instead feeling grateful that at least my feet were not cold and wet courtesy of a reluctant walk through a shallow pond.

Reprising the Destiny Thing.

I just encountered an old post of mine entitled It's a Destiny Thing, which got me thinking (thinking is one of my less comfortable habits.) So what did I think? Does destiny exist or doesn't it?

Well, if Determinist philosophy is right, it certainly does. If the block theory of the universe is correct, it probably does. If Professor Dumbledore is (was?) right, it certainly doesn't.

But several times during the film version of Harry Potter I was of the tentative persuasion that Dumbledore wasn't quite as wise as he thought he was, so...

Still don't know. (Best way, probably.)

And it's a long time since I made a post this late so maybe I'll still be alive when I wake up.

A Major Design Error.

There's one question that's troubled me most of my life: Why is it that nearly all animals are good looking, but the majority of humans aren't? Human children are mostly good looking, but soon they develop the mature look, and then the ugly look begins to take over, and when they grow old they become really ugly. It seems to me that whoever designed genes and built them into different expressions of appearance must have been in a pretty bad mood when he was working on the human one.

An Act of Sedition.

I was thinking earlier about one of my all time favourite films, Children of Heaven. It's the story of a little girl from a poor family who loses her only pair of shoes and has to try to hide the fact from her poor father. She does, however, have the help of her older brother. It's one the most human, poignant, and intelligently made films about the simple matter of life's priorities and their consequences I've ever seen. But it's Iranian.

And so I was led to wonder whether any cinema proprietor (or movie theater if you prefer) would dare show it in the USA. It wouldn't be shown in a mainstream theater, of course -- too deep for that. It would have to be screened in some kind of art establishment. But the real problem would be government disapproval. I imagine Plastic Pete's hair would melt, and Trump would lose so much hot air that a climate catastrophe might ensue. It would be deemed unAmerican, no doubt (or even 'left wing', heaven help us.)

And so I'm sure good Americans wouldn't be allowed to see it. Shame, eh?

Rain and Repartee.

Guess what we had in Ashbourne today: Rain! It was the first time in about three months that anything worthy of the term has fallen on this blighted land. We had three showers of heavy stuff, each lasting about five minutes, and people were running for cover under the awning outside Sainsbury's. 

As I was waiting for my transport, a woman in her fifties walked past and looked at me with a surprised expression. 'I wasn't expecting anything likes this,' she said. My occasional capacity for hyperbolic repartee -- a common style of humour in Britain -- took the stage. I said 'At your age I'm surprised you know what it is.' 

She was made up (a routine colloquialism among the working class British which simply means 'pleased' or 'made proud'.) I decided to nominate 19th August as: Being Nice to the Over Fifties Day. Once a year is quite enough, I think.

I've also had conversations with two attractive young women this week. I wonder whether that could be installed as a weekly event -- a kind of Sabbath for the young at heart.

Failing Systems and a Fiery Adventure.

I spent half an hour this afternoon trying to sort out a matter to do with the re-ordering of medications. I got nowhere, of course, as is usually the case when trying to sort out anything these days. All I met was wrong advice, general dysfunction, a website that didn't do what it said on the can, and a reminder that British culture really is cracking up. This afternoon's business related to the NHS, which is gradually weakening ever since Mrs Thatcher -- whose primary dictum was, rather tediously, 'Nothing counts unless it sells' -- made friends with Ronald Regan and switched us to the American method. I suppose I'll have to try again tomorrow. I wonder how long it takes to die if you stop eating.

 

*  *  *

On a more positive note, we had a fledgling wild fire in one of the fields up the lane two nights ago.  Several people stopped to help and those from the nearest cottage came down the road armed with large canisters of water. Together we put it out, and just as I said: 'It needs spraying now or else it might flare up again' (because I'm a bit of a whizz with fire, having been an amateur arsonist as a child), the fire brigade turned up in a big tender and sprayed it.That was my first contribution to a communal exercise in many years. And one of the four firemen was actually a firewoman. She stood around 5ft 1 in her fireperson's boots, and I asked her whether she has to carry fourteen-stone men around for practice. 'Yes,' she said. 'And can you do it?' I asked incredulously. 'No. I drag them instead.'

Observing the Maiden's Hair.

I was walking behind a young woman this morning whose hair swung from side to side, and I was fascinated by the extent to which such a visual feature captured my attention. It has to be the right length, of course. Too short or too long and the hair doesn't swing.

It further needs to be augmented by a slim and evenly proportioned body, an upright posture, legs which operate close together, feet which remain pointed forward through the whole of the stride, and hips which maintain a fixed and balanced position in the centre of the image. But the swinging hair remains the main point of attraction. Whether the same holds true from a frontal position I don't know. I suspect it would become invalid if she had two noses, for example.

(Am I old enough yet to offer this sort of observation without being buried under a metric ton of underripe bananas?)

Hopefully Not the Swansong.

During the early days of my blogging habit two people suggested I should write my memoirs. They said that they thought my life sounded interesting enough to warrant the effort. I didn’t, and I still don’t, so I didn’t.

But now I’ve had a change of heart and decided that I should write a mercifully brief version for transmission via the blog. That way it’s unlikely that anybody will read it, and if the odd person or two does, it won’t interrupt the prosecution of their life for more than about ten minutes. So here it is:

*  *  *

The first five years of my life are a mystery to me. I was born into a working class family in an industrial area of the English North Midlands. My father was a bus driver and my mother a housewife, and when I was 5½ years old they separated acrimoniously. I don’t remember the separation and I remember hardly anything of the five years leading up to it, but my mother told me later that the break upset me mightily, and so I suppose my mind protected itself by blocking the whole thing out. Is that how it works? I don’t know.

And then my step-father dropped into my life. He was, I later realised, something of a sociopath whose interests and priorities amounted to little more than money, authority, status, violent entertainment, and the pursuit of unwilling females. In fairness I have to say that he wasn’t all bad, just mostly. And we had absolutely nothing in common.

At age seven I started primary school and sank straight to the bottom of the class, which didn’t help to improve my already low self-esteem. And I backed off from the bullies, which added a feverish and deep sense of shame to the poor picture of myself which I’d already formed. I remained at the bottom of the class almost to the end of my primary school years, occasionally exchanging rock bottom place with one Malcolm Viggars, who had – or so I presumed – what we would today call ‘learning difficulties.’ But then something interesting happened.

My stepfather was unhappy with my poor performance at school and threatened to disown me if I didn’t improve. He bought a scholarship primer full of exercises and forced me through several pages of it every night until I could hardly keep my eyes open, and the torture worked. In the final term (semester) my class position jumped from 31^st to 8^th and I was granted the prize for progress. It was the first prize I’d ever received, and going up onto the stage to collect my book was a proud moment.

Maybe that moment made the difference because I went up into high school and blossomed. By the end of the second term I was top of the top class in my year, and stayed there for the duration of my school days. By the time I was sixteen I was head boy, head prefect, vice captain of the school rugby team, a member of the school cricket team, and a pivotal influence in the school orchestra. When a pupil had to represent the school at some function or other, I was the chosen one. When a portrait of the city’s Chairman of the Education Committee was to be presented to him at Speech Night in my final year, I got the job. I made far more trips onto the stage to collect prizes than anybody else. (One teacher even apologised for not giving me more prizes, but said they had to spread them out a bit. I nodded acquiescence of course.) When we staged a play based on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales I played not one starring role, but both. (They weren’t on stage at the same time, you see.) In short, it’s no exaggeration to say that I was the school’s star pupil. And throughout all this, the bullies always backed down from me, although I’ve no idea why.

So did all this heady success and the concomitant accolades improve my sense of self-worth? No, it just made me arrogant, which is why I wasn’t much liked. Can’t blame them, can you? The combination of arrogance and low self-esteem does not encourage the development of fraternal relationships, as a certain senior politician – who is even older than me – should have learned by now.)

But then everything changed again when my stepfather flatly refused to allow me to continue my schooling and head towards university. ‘I’m not paying good money to keep you sitting on your fat arse in a classroom,’ he said, his face turning white and his whole body shaking. ‘You’ll get a job and earn a living like everybody else.’ And so I did, but not without suffering a severe assault on my sense of justice.

I’d been bullied onto the ladder of success; I’d climbed it well, but was only half way there; and the very man who had done the bullying was now kicking me off it again. It had the effect of fostering both indignation and apathy. And so I began the search for a place on a different but equivalent ladder, and found it in the Royal Navy. With what qualifications I’d earned at 16, I could join the highly educated young men learning to become naval officers. It was a different scheme with more limited promotion prospects, but at least the number of gold rings on the sleeve was the same. A lieutenant was a lieutenant whichever scheme he was on. I made the application, undertook the many and varied tests successfully, and sallied off to be a naval officer.

It didn’t work out. I loved the sea, I loved seaboard life, and I loved the three months we spent visiting places of note on the north-eastern edge of North America. What I couldn’t tolerate was the suffocating pressure of control. The first stirrings of the loner gene had begun to operate when I was around 11, and by the age of 17 it had become central to who I was. I applied to resign and my application was accepted. I returned home and began enjoying what teenagers are supposed to enjoy: the parties, the girls, the camp fires, the heady scent of the newly forged youth culture, and persuading my body to tolerate large quantities of alcohol. But that didn’t last long either. I committed an indiscretion which forced me to leave home and settle down with a married woman seventy miles away. And there was the impending birth of my child to take into consideration.

But I still hadn’t given up hope of getting back onto the ladder where I felt I belonged. After working at labouring jobs for a while to keep just sufficient money flowing, I took a job as a travelling salesman. It carried the benefit of a company car and a promotion ladder, but it never occurred to me that a sales job required a particular type of attitude and personality, a type to which I was a complete stranger. And so I failed miserably. I kicked the job into touch – losing the shiny new company car, of course – and was unemployed for the next four moths.

And then I saw a job advert for a clerical position in the admin department of a young offenders’ corrective institution. My sights became trained on the prospect of another career ladder, the importance of which still seemed evident to me, and so I applied and got the job. When I’d served sufficient time I took the exam for promotion to the executive grades and passed easily. Transfer to HM Customs and Excise to work as a revenue inspector followed about a year later, and I moved back to my home town to take up the post. I stayed there for eleven years.

But a significant change in my attitudes and perceptions began to take root, slowly and almost without notice at first, but becoming more entrenched as each year passed. By the time the eighth year came around I had already had two major relationships, both of which had ended with acrimony, and was married to a third. And I was feeling serious misgivings about the job. My bosses were telling me that if I would only apply a little more effort, I could easily achieve several promotions up the executive ladder. I wasn’t remotely interested. I’d suffered the attitudes and practices of bureaucracy and the hide-bound mentality of bureaucrats long enough. It no longer suited me any more than it had suited me to be a cog in the military machine or a false-faced travelling salesman. I needed the freedom to let the real me express itself.

I remembered that, as a boy, I’d had a fleeing interest in photography, and that interest began to ingratiate itself into my consciousness with gathering strength. I bought good equipment; I bought the textbooks used for photographic studies in art colleges; I took out every book I could find in the library covering technique, theory, and composition; and I made a point of practicing and taking notes every single day. What I couldn’t do was discover how to make the transition from a secure job with regular pay in the Civil Service to an insecure adventure as a freelance photographer. I did, after all, have a mortgage, a wife, two cats, and a much-loved dog to consider.

And then fate took a hand and the great sea change began in earnest.

In November one of my cats was killed on the road. The following June the other cat succumbed to feline leukaemia. In October my dog – my beloved best girl – had been struggling and weakening for months with an aggressive tumour in her throat despite every treatment available, and so I had to say goodbye to her. And my marriage had little left to commend it. In January I began an affair with another woman, and when I admitted it to my wife she took over my photographic studio as her new sleeping area. She’d already had a couple of minor affairs herself, but saw them as no threat since she didn’t take things as seriously as I did. Four months later she left the marital home and went to live with an archaeologist from Bristol.

That was the final straw. I realised that my opportunity had arrived to leave the bureaucrats and the tram lines behind and do what I wanted to do. I put the house on the market knowing that even after splitting the equity 50:50 with my wife, I would have a reasonable sum to act as working capital. It hurt a lot because that house was the favourite of all I’d lived in, before or since, but it had to be done. And so the change from left brain to right was given free rein to guide the further progress of my life. I was 35.

The next stage may be summarised briefly: A new relationship which turned out badly, a move from the English Midlands to the wilder, far north-east of England, a six year career in landscape photography consisting of two years building, two years thriving, and two years slipping back into oblivion consequent upon the policies of the hideous Mrs Thatcher. A further period of unemployment followed inevitably and I moved back to my home town. But at least my self-esteem had taken a step up.

The house I moved to was a ten minute walk from a regional producing theatre – a fully professional set-up which employed the actors, the production staff, the catering staff, the admin staff, and so on. I soon learned that although these people were full time professionals, the organisation worked on a tight budget and used volunteers to do the usher work. There was also a voluntary body which organised various events and activities designed to raise funds. I joined both, of course. What else did I have to do except look though the job adverts in the local paper and learn computer skills at the local college?

After a while I became known, and one particular company of actors took me under their wing and made me effectively an honorary member of their clique. And so began a period of parties, games, sleepovers, and smoking pot late into the night. It should come as no surprise that I was able to relate to theatre people far better than I had ever been able to relate to the bureaucrats in the civil service. A fifth and last partnership came into view and took root, lasting a little longer than the others before ending without a hint of acrimony. And I began the writing of forty four short stories, one novella, and a short novel. About half the short stories were accepted and published by various members of the indie press, but the two longer works had to be self-published. I never became famous or rich.

The theatre work ended when I took the administrator’s job with an inner city charity. I didn’t enjoy it because the environment was hostile to my nature, and I wasn’t entirely sorry when Mr Blair’s policies changed and the funding for my job was removed. I went back to checking the paper for job adverts until I was able to claim my civil service pension early, and that changed everything because I was finally able to relax and live in permanent school holiday mode.

By then I’d written all my fiction and moved to this house in the lovely Derbyshire Dales, and that was the point when I started this blog. Living here hasn’t always been as pleasant as you might imagine, for several reasons, but it could have been a lot worse. The move to this house coincided with a catalogue of health issues, including a stage 2 cancer which had to be removed, and the change in my mindset led me a long way down roads of enquiry which had only been simmering before. I consider I’ve either learned a very great deal or nothing at all, depending on which way you look at it.

So how is life for me now? Slow, mostly quiet, difficult at times, extremely difficult at others, and occasionally quite satisfactory. The roads my mind has walked since living here have been bumpy and achingly jarring at times, and my perception of the human race has dimmed somewhat. My loner gene has gained in strength, and yet I still feel lonely at times, and the gaggle of blog correspondents who used to keep me connected have all gone. Dreams are frequent and often disturbing, morning moods usually scream at me to get out of this world, but the days are mostly tolerable and the god of small things sometimes encourages me to smile benignly. The health issues, apart from the cancer, are still with me and occasionally embrace a new member of their fraternity. Fortunately, they don’t seem to be in too much of a hurry to lay me out for the count, but I’m physically so much weaker than I used be, my energy levels are falling alarmingly, my sense of balance is waning, and my mental acuity is definitely not what it used to be. But I still have more hair than my natural father had at my age, even though it’s not a great deal.

I’ve grown closer to my family but hardly ever see them because they’re too far away and none of us has transport. My ex, Mel, is my only friend and we talk on the phone every other week. I never go a single day without thinking of the Lady B several times and that can be troubling. I still haven’t worked out why the Lady B is so prominent in my consciousness, but she has been so for a long time and continues to knock metaphorically on the door frequently. I’ve become very fond of most animals – especially dogs, horses, cats, and cows – and young children. I suppose it’s because they’re more transparent than adult humans, but the study of those humans is still a major form of mental activity.

*  *  *

I think this needs to stop now because I set out to write a blog post, not a weighty tome. A whole bagful of detail remains unrecorded, but that’s good since nobody would be interested. (I started to read a biography of Sylvia Plath recently and gave it up because it was too full of insignificant detail and was boring me.)

If anyone has made it this far, thank you very much and may your God be with you. I intend to continue the blog as long as we both shall live.

Moving the Clock Face On.

I realised earlier that today is my ex-wife's birthday. I worked out how old she is now and felt a slight, involuntary shudder. I tried to imagine what she must look like, but gave up the attempt as impossible. 

 

And then I remembered why I was never capable of making a lifelong commitment, which is effectively synonymous with saying why I was never the marrying kind. It's only a few years since I finally worked that one out, but I've never explained it on the blog and almost certainly never will. But happy birthday, Anna, notwithstanding. (I do wonder, however, whether she's still living in Wales with an archaeologist. And I do still wonder how old Beaumont the rabbit was when he died.)

I'm making this post to get the monthly post total off 13 because two 13s in one day sounds a bit risky. And I'm still working on the pocket edition of my memoirs. At the moment it needs two pockets and there's a bit to go yet. Hopefully, publication shouldn't be too far in the future. Maybe I'll die before it's finished, but I probably won't. And who the hell -- but me -- cares anyway?

A Literary Mystery.

To a perfectionist like me, one of the most lamentable aspects of modern life is the habit practiced by some young people of writing a word that sounds right to them, rather than the word which is correct. A notable example of this -- and one which I find most displeasing -- is writing 'of' instead of 'have', as in he should of taken the train. That being the case, you might accurately imagine my sense of horror when I discovered just such an error in the Shirley Jackson novel I'm currently re-reading (We Have Always Lived in the Castle.)

I cannot imagine for one second that Shirley Jackson, given her age, her circumstances, and her undoubted acumen in the matter of language, would have made such a glaring error. And even if she did, I'm sure her editor would have corrected it long before it went to print. So how on earth did it get there?

Today's Bad Joke.

Every day, and placed in a very prominent position, YouTube gives me a recommendation from The Church of Jesus Christ. It's hosted by a pleasant looking young woman - who might or might not be AI-generated, but the adjective 'pleasant' was carefully chosen - inviting me to 'request a missionary visit.'

Why me of all people? What is wrong with Google's algorithms?

Anyway, I gave it careful consideration and in the end chose to decline. What settled the matter in a closely run contest was the fact that I don't have a big enough pot.

Idiocy in the Van.

Following last night's post about the eclipse, I noted that the BBC News page led with it this morning. They described the phenomenon as 'spectacular.' They claimed that millions were 'wowed' by the experience. And they'd already reported that shops everywhere had sold out of the special glasses needed to view the sun safely. It covered several features as well as the lead, and they referred to it as a 'once in a generation event.' Well, that claim was at least true since the last one occurred twenty seven years ago, but let's note what actually happened:

The light level dropped slightly for about half an hour and then returned to normal, as it did in 1999. I think the phrase 'mildly interesting but otherwise unremarkable' would be more accurate than 'spectacular.' And so the big question has to be 'why is the media becoming dominated by the idiocracy which seems to be gaining leadership of life's habits and imperatives?' How are our children being brought up and what kind of world are they about to inherit?

This could go much further than the ineptitude of the BBC, but I'm going to stop there. It's too hot today to work outdoors, so I'm going to write a bit more of my extremely potted biography. It's growing rather bigger than I originally intended, but since I'm writing it for my own sake without any expectation of it being read, it doesn't matter.

Much Ado About Nothing Much.

At 7 o'clock this evening I noticed that the light level in my house seemed a little on the low side. I looked through the window and saw that the sun was still shining, and then realised that I was experiencing the much-vaunted solar eclipse.  BBC News has been going on about it for days. One piece this morning said that the world would be 'plunged into darkness.' 

I ignored it, of course, because I remember the last solar total eclipse in 1999. I was sitting on a bench in a town centre and noticed that the light level had dropped slightly so that it resembled an early twilight. The BBC used the phrase 'plunged into darkness' on that occasion, too.

So what's wrong with journalists? Are they really so ignorant of the subject about which they're writing, or has it become permissible in this post-truth age to write total nonsense just to sound dramatic? And are people really taken in by it all? Do they not realise that while a certain amount of direct sunshine will be lacking during an eclipse, the sun will still be illuminating the atmosphere so the sky will still be bright enough to read a book quite easily. Solar eclipses are interesting, but there's nothing extravagantly exciting about them.

 

For my part I occupied myself washing the dishes and then wrote this. Now I will go out and water the parched garden (or at least parts of it) while there's still plenty of bright daylight.

I'm All Right, Jack.

I read this morning that, a few months ago, a plane due to carry Donald Trump and the usual hangers-on to a meeting in Iran was delayed. This was to allow Trump to be smuggled secretly off the plane because there was credible evidence that Iran was planning to attack it. It said that Trump was transported incognito in a service vehicle to another plane and completed the trip. Although the article didn't explicitly say so, the natural presumption must be that the original plane then completed its journey once the President was clear.

If that was the case, it would surely mean that the original plane would have flown into the 'credible' danger still containing the captain, co-pilots, cabin crew, politicians, diplomats, and journalists. Isn't there a serious, but unasked, ethical question here?

A Very Short Note.

There's an awful lot of anti-Trump invective doing the rounds of the internet these days, and yet I don't see anybody talking about 2028. If Trump hasn't been committed to an asylum or six feet of good American earth by then, I can't see him going quietly. For the sake of all good Americans - and I know there are plenty of them - I do hope contingency plans are being made behind the scenes.

Noting the Lunar Graveyard.

I've mentioned the waning crescent moon and its sickly aspect before on this blog. At the moment it's in the north-eastern sky when I go to bed at around 2.30, and it looks as though it's about to utter the death rattle. I regarded it through the bathroom window last night and a thought occurred to me. 

If I'd been the tribal wise person in a group of hunter/gatherers during less complicated times, I probably would have advised my flock not to walk in a north-easterly direction at night because that's where moons go to die.

The Brit Priority.

One of the YouTube channels I regularly watch is called Lauren the Mortician. It's run by a woman called Lauren who is a mortician. She's American - from somewhere in the Midwest, I think - and her channel covers the whole process of death from the effects of crashing on a motorbike to spirits haunting the corridors of the funeral home for a few hours after decease. It's all fairly light-hearted and even funny in parts.

But at the end of her videos she usually brings her French Bulldog (called Mango) into the act. Mango is very boisterous, squirms an awful lot, and licks the Lady Lauren furiously around the chin and mouth. Lauren refers to the whole process as 'mango kisses.' I would call it something else, which is why I dropped a comment on a recent post, praising her personality, humour, commentary skills, and storytelling, and finished with an opinion that when it comes to her turn to be laid out on the mortuary table, her embalmer will probably have difficulty washing all the dog spit off her chin. She hasn't replied.

Expletive Accepted.

Being a natural student of the English language, I often wonder where our expletives came from, and also how they've progressed in terms of strength and commonality of use down the years.

When I was a boy the expletive 'bloody' was considered reasonably serious, and any child using it would have been soundly reprimanded. But it became less serious over the following few years, and when my young nephew attended a wedding and exclaimed loudly about one of the guests: 'Look at that bloody hat!' everyone thought it was funny. The f-word is the current serious one, of course, but even that is now becoming very nearly acceptable and used at all levels of society.

What caused me to think about this was wondering how the word 'blasted' became a mild expletive - as in if he does that again I'll box his blasted ears or you're a blasted nuisance, boy. I wonder whether it came from Macbeth's question to the witches: Why do you stop our way upon this blasted heath? I don't suppose I'll ever know.

A Modern and Mathematical Issue.

Because I live in a rented house I had to submit to a four hour check on the whole electrical system recently. The electrician found one issue: my bathroom had a standard pendant light fitting on the ceiling – you know, the simple sort into which you screw a new bulb when the old one blows. Apparently, this is now frowned upon and deemed to be unsafe, so today I had to have a new light fitting mounted in its place.

I went to have a look at it after the electrician had finished because it was completely unfamiliar in design and I wanted to know how to change the bulb.

‘It doesn’t use a bulb,’ said the expert. ‘It has an LCD panel permanently fitted.’

‘So how do I change the panel when the old one blows?’

‘You don’t. You have to have a complete new unit.’

‘Sounds expensive.’

‘It is.’

‘In that case, how long should the LCD panel last?’

‘I believe it’s about 10,000 hours.’ he replied confidently.

Right, so now let’s do the sums:

I estimated that the light in the bathroom is on, year round, for about 20 minutes a day – less in the long days of summer and more in the short, dark days of winter. So 20 mins a day equals an hour every three days. That’s step #1. Now for the calculation.

How many periods of three days are there in a year? Let’s call it 120 for simplicity. So the light is on for 120 hours per year. Is that correct? (I think so. I used to find that kind of thing very easy but my brain is older than it used to be.) Now for the big one. Let’s get the calculator so my brain doesn’t melt.

10,000 ÷ 120 = 83 years.

That seems an awfully long time to me, but if it’s correct I needn’t worry too much because it will see me out by a long way. Then again, the electrician might have been guessing. And if my logic is faulty, please, please, somebody tell me.

But now for the real problem. All the bulbs in my house are Warm White in colour temperature. The one in the new fitting is Daylight and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it. And what it means is this. Since my eyes are accustomed to Warm White, when I go into the bathroom and switch on the light, every white surface – and there are a lot of them – appears pale blue. To an ex-photographer who is very sensitive to colour, that’s irritating.

Wilding the Shire With Yellow.

We have a re-wilding programme in the UK through which farmers are paid a subsidy to give part of their cornfields over to the sowing of wild plants. Two of the fields in Church Lane, at the dip below the landlord's mansion, have been so treated. (That's where the huge Copper Beech tree stands, the one under which I've requested that my ashes be scattered when I'm gone. There's a very fond memory attached to that spot, you see, and it will be a pleasant place for my ghost to say 'boo' to unsuspecting passers by. I might even whisper their names if I happen to know them.) 

 

In previous years the predominant colour of the flowers growing there has been blue, and blue is beginning to show itself again this year. But this year we have a treat. Rising above the wild plants are a number of golden yellow sunflowers. I assume certain insects and birds must be partial to sunflower seeds, but to us mere mortals they simply provide a feast for the eyes.

A Brief Note on Defining Value.

I was thinking again this morning about the fact that money doesn't actually exist; it's just a theoretical exchange mechanism which relies solely on consensus and trust to establish its apparent validity. And then it occurred to me that a far more 'concrete' form of currency is gold because gold is at least solid. People covet gold because it's so valuable, but gold is only valuable because people covet it. An ingot of gold is actually just a lump of metal. Don't we humans have some very silly ways of doing things? (And then it occurred to me that the most valuable commodity on earth is clean water which falls freely from the sky. And some people accumulate monetary wealth by being in the business of supplying it. Capitalism disappearing up its own fundament?)

Adding to the Knowledge Base.

As a result of discovering a spider trapped in my kitchen sink this morning -- and being subsequently rescued by me, of course -- I discovered something interesting. Spider silk is remarkably resistant to water pressure.

Fancy getting to my age without discovering that little gem, so many thanks to the arachnid in my kitchen. (And does this go some way to vindicating the old maxim that your enemy is your greatest teacher?)

The Problem With Imagination.

I went into my bathroom tonight and was suddenly beset by a vivid flash of imagination. Something was in my house and approaching me – something which the most extremely speculative reasoning couldn’t possibly account for; something which clearly had no right to be there. It was surprisingly scary, especially since it allowed the possibility of a repeat encounter.

I considered whether I should write it down as a piece of fiction since it had a commendable hint of Murakami about it. But you see, all the scary stuff I wrote during my period of writing scary stuff never scared me. Why would it? My imagination was, after all, just having fun. This wasn’t fun, so I probably won’t.

Serving the Cruelty Gene.

My YouTube’s recommendations have suddenly started to include videos of people being ‘eaten alive’ by predatory animals. Needless to say I haven’t watched any of them, but it raises certain questions:

1. What kind of human being wants to watch a video of anything, especially a fellow human, undergoing the horror of being eaten alive?

2. Are these videos real or AI-generated? If they’re real, who is filming them and how? I think AI generation is most likely.

3. Why is YouTube recommending these travesties of decency to me? The only animal videos I watch are the occasional animal rescue ones if they look genuine, and that doesn’t amount to very many. And I never watch videos of people being forced to suffer in any way, so what is going on with YouTube’s algorithms?

4. Have we reached the point at which a public and highly profitable platform is allowing the production of fake and extremely nasty material clearly aimed at perverted minds, and claiming that it’s real? If these things can be allowed to exist, shouldn’t they be restricted to the dark web which, apparently, thrives on the darkest side of human nature?

I suppose the opportunity to watch this kind of thing is the modern alternative for those who used to shake with excitement at the prospect of watching some poor soul being burned alive at the stake. Will the human race ever aspire to its potential, I wonder?

Re-Posting to Fill a Gap.

Yesterday I thought of two blog posts which I intended to write up on the morrow. But now the morrow is here I can’t remember what they were about, so I can’t.

Nil desperandum, however. Something I was musing on earlier reminded me of an old ditty I posted to this blog many years ago. Though short, it’s one of the very few I might almost grace with term ‘poem’ (but only just.) The muse, incidentally, centred around growing up in an industrial area surrounded by a hundred thousand chimneys belching soot into the air (day and night during the winter.) The ditty (almost poem) never had a title, so I’ll give it one now. It’s called On Seeing a Chinese Lady Looking Wan in February.

Should I compare thee to a smoggy day in old Beijing

Where ne’er a merry roundelay is heard

 

For not a bird will deign to sing

To woo his mate with lovelorn din

 

But coughs instead

(In Mandarin)

And now I’m in the mood I think I’ll re-post the other ditty-which-comes-close-to-being-called-a-poem. This one doesn’t have a title either because I was never able to think of one. I still can’t.

Is there something afoot Mistress Bella la Belle

Are you going away in the morning

Will you leave the home shore without saying farewell

While the dew is still sweet at the dawning

 

As I’m settled in sleep and the sun tolls a knell

Will I heed not the want of a warning

And whene’er you return will the spectre re-tell

Of the day you set sail in the morning

If I said that this is about Egypt you’d call me puddled, wouldn’t you? (At least you would if you came from my bit of industrial England.) In that case I won’t bother.

And it might be considered notable that the last time I made thirty or more posts in one month was 2½ half years ago. Make of it what you will.

More Post Truth Blues.

For some time now I’ve been meaning to make a series of posts on YouTube Tasters I Refuse to Click On. You know, things like: ‘She died and went to heaven. She met Jesus there who told her…’ Nobody would click on something as absurdly fake and manipulative as that, would they? Apparently they do, in their tens or even hundreds of thousands, and my faith in my fellow humans sinks a little lower every time. Anyway, I never seem to get around to making a list to compile in a blog post, so I thought I’d pick out one to make a general point.

This evening I came across a taster about the mysterious circumstances around the death of Edgar Allen Poe. I’ve heard the story from several sources, but a quick glance at the thumbnail told me something was off. It has a picture of a dark sky over an American-style, high rise cityscape, but the most prominent feature is a picture of an ageing Nikola Tesla. Why Tesla? Where’s the connection? As far as history recalls, there’s no connection whatsoever between the two. They weren’t even contemporary, Poe having died five years before Tesla was born.

So was the uploader so ignorant that he didn’t know the difference between a famous writer of gothic stories and a ground-breaking scientist? Or was he simply using a well known image to encourage other ignorant people to click on the video, which is fraudulent? This happens with images of Carl Jung a lot. ‘What Carl Jung said about…’ Rubbish. And there was a trend at one time for uploading songs credited to Enya, when nothing about the writing or performance had anything to do with Enya. People pointed it out in the comments, but the fake credit stayed.

So here’s the real question:

If Google wants to own and run YouTube for the purpose of making huge amounts of money, why do they abdicate the responsibility to exercise some control over the veracity of the information?  We all know the answer to that one, of course. Truth doesn’t matter any longer, only money does. You can tell as many lies as you want to invent, and peddle as much garbage as you can find, and it’s wholly acceptable as long as it’s making money.

There is no such thing as quality literature. There are books that sell and books that don’t. ~ Margaret Thatcher.

So what do we do about this lamentable trend? Decline to watch any more YouTube? I think I might, but that would be a shame because there are genuine people out there making a living out of it at a time when the jobs market is faltering. And it’s obvious from the production values that most of them put a lot of effort into it. And some of them are genuinely informative and/or entertaining. (Try Hilary Layne’s channel for a good example.) Besides which, the protest of one little man like me wouldn’t amount to a hill o’ beans in this crazy and dishonest world. We would have to do it in our hundreds of thousands. And what about the rest of the media world? They’re all becoming just as bad.

I’m sorry to say this – truly I am – but I think America largely took us down this road. ‘Thou shalt have no other Gods before me,’ said the Great God Money. And so they don’t. (Hilary Lane is American, by the way. At least I think she is. I suppose she could be Canadian. We Europeans get easily confused by North American accents.)

Opposite Poles.

I was engaged in my regular people watch outside Sainsbury’s today when I saw a young man and woman – around mid to late twenties – walking briskly towards the car park. The woman had jet black hair (a rarity in the UK) cut neatly in a bob style at collar length, but what most caught my eye was lower down. Beneath her midi length skirt she was wearing flat formal shoes and ankle socks. The usual attire for women that age is either shorts or jeans with trainers, and so I decided she was either from another time, another place, or was maybe a little odd. I wanted to make her acquaintance because I like people who are a little odd, but her male companion was thin and wishy-washy with fine, pale blond hair, so I didn’t bother. And she might not have spoken English anyway.

What was even odder, however, was the pair of men standing outside the doors. One was tall, thin, and around thirty. He had very long and heavily permed hair, and was wearing the oddest two piece suit in a random mixture of retrained colours. The top garment was tight and clung to his overly slight frame, and the trousers were heavily flared with tassels up the back. His face carried an overly enthusiastic grin and he was being equally enthusiastically interviewed by a fat, slobbish, middle aged man holding one of those little furry microphones which some YouTubers use. I decided that their brand of oddness was one with which I’m wholly and gratefully unacquainted, and so I gave them a wide berth. Heat and sunshine does bring the strangest of creatures out into public view, doesn’t it?

Recovery: The Garden Diary.

The bats are back. Anyone reading this blog in the old days might remember me waxing eloquent about the bats at twilight. It was the delight of the day to stand among them during their feeding frenzy, but then the long, cold winter of 2012/13 (or whenever it was) decimated their numbers and they’ve never recovered since.

This year they have, and once again I’m able to stand outside on a warm evening being thrilled by a veritable tribe of the little creatures flying rapidly around the house and pirouetting at mesmeric speed. And some of them are bigger than others, so I’m hoping they’re a family and the kids will survive next winter to carry on the tradition. They might even multiply.

There are also very many more butterflies in the garden than there have been in recent years, and even two species I haven’t seen here before. The bees are still a cause for concern, though. There are plenty of bumble bees, but still very few honey bees. I assume it’s why my apple tree has failed to crop for about five years now. And there’s also a dearth of wasps, maybe because the apple tree is failing and wasps seem to be particularly attracted to fruit. Maybe they’ll appear in numbers once the plums begin ripening. It seems odd to most people that I like wasps, and yet I do. They’re good looking and I don’t find them at all threatening as long as I accept their presence with equanimity.

On the Precious and the Perplexing.

The dream I had last night was a vague, misty affair. I was helping somebody do a job with a pile of white plastic pipes which had a bore of about two inches. But I was hesitant because I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with them, why I was there at all, and I couldn’t properly see the man I was supposed to be helping.

When I woke up I was beset by the fear that if the present drought in the UK continues, the rivers and reservoirs might soon run dry. I imagined the consequences and they became ever more awful until we were all dirty, decrepit, and finally dead so it didn’t matter any more.

And then I remembered that all through my life – even as a young boy – I’ve wondered why we don’t commit resources to the development of desalinisation technology and the provision of infrastructure to distribute purified sea water to where it’s needed. It always struck me that this would be a far more sensible use of resources than going to the moon, keeping huge militaries, killing children in Iranian schools, and producing shiny things to bolster the egos of the dim witted. The confidence we have that the planet will always continue to behave in a manner commensurate with human interest sometimes seems a little risky. And it seems a little odd that while we can develop software capable of doing nearly everything that people used to do, we still can’t develop the means to take salt out of water efficiently.

And then I used a few dozen gallons of precious water to have a shower. I always feel weak and a little ill after a shower, and I don’t know why. Maybe it has something to do with guilt. They say the INFJ mind works differently than the normal mind. Well, I’ve spent a lifetime being driven into the wilderness, mostly alone, by it, so they’re probably right.

But here’s a little end note: When I was walking up the lane earlier I was passed by a big, articulated box truck. The whole of its back doors was covered by an image of white plastic pipes, seen end on as they were in the dream. And up came that old question about coincidence again.

Getting to Know Me.

There’s an American woman on YouTube who does reaction videos on old British children’s TV shows. Her gravelly voice sounds a bit New York to me, but I’m no expert on American accents (except Deep South, of course; we all know the drawl), but the point is this:

She’s done at least two now on The Magic Roundabout, and it just occurred to me that when I’m in high functioning mode I’m the perfect cocktail of one part Dylan, one part Ermintrude, and one part Dougal. Anyone familiar with the British version of the show (the original was French with the same characters but different stories) will know what I mean. And the main point in saying this is that I think I need a Florence.

(When I’m in low functioning mode I’m pure, unadulterated Eeyore – which I thought was an oxymoron before I learned the true definition of the word. I blame a cousin of mine from whom I first heard it.)

Must stop making Me posts.

Phloxes and Fallacies.

The garden was scented this evening. It’s the first time the garden’s been scented this year, so I tracked down the source. It was the phlox flowers, two clumps of which stand next to the big dogwood shrub. And it was rather pleasant.

‘Excuse me.’

Oh, God, I’m about to be interrupted by one of my lesser known personality variants.

What?

‘You shouldn’t say that.’

Shouldn’t say what?

‘That you like the smell of a scented garden.’

Why not?

‘It’s girly.’

Why is it girly? Why am I allowed to express a liking for the smell of new-mown hay, salt sea air, women’s perfume, and pubs, but not a scented garden?

‘Where was the scent coming from?’

Some flowers.

‘And what colour were they?’

Pink.

‘Well there you are, then. Girly.’

Bugger off.

Now do you see what I have to put up with when my depression is in high functioning mode?

The Peril of Panpsychism.

I was just reading an old post about the night my Spanish guitar went west (or ‘went south’ to the colonials.) I remember the feeling of sorrow I felt at the prospect of casting it into the tip on its way to lie broken and unwanted in some smelly old landfill site somewhere. And on recalling the fact, something crystallised in my mind – something I already realised but hadn’t thought much about before. What I was feeling was guilt, not loss.

I give some credence to the doctrine of panpsychism, you see (consciousness is present in every cell of material – the basis, as I understand it, of the old Sufi saying {originally ancient Indian, apparently}: that God sleeps in the stone, stirs in the plant, dreams in the animal, and wakes in man.)

So that was the real basis of my regret: not so much the sorrow of losing something precious to me, but the worry that I might be hurting its feelings. I feel the same way about most things I discard. It’s one of my oddities.

On Topping Up the Bird Table For the Morning.

Imagine a late afternoon or early evening when the sky is a dull, unremitting grey, interrupted only by the various shades of greyness here and there. The land and all who move upon it take on a torpid and reluctant air, and a mild sense of misery afflicts those sensitive enough to feel the oppression.

And then a break appears in the western sky and a low-hung sun reminds us that he wasn’t gone after all, but merely hiding. The world suddenly explodes in golden brightness, and we mere earthbound creatures are startled by the rapid elevation in our mood.

Don’t you just love that moment?

It didn’t happen this evening. I wished, but the sky stayed grey, a cold wind rose, and light rain began to fall. Shame.

W Again.

2 o'clock on a Sunday morning.

The World is quiet. The Whiskey is mellow. Listenin’ to the Wailin’ Jennys singin’ This is Where.

I love alliteration almost as much as I love good music. Just sayin’.

The Shirley Jackson Mystery.

I’ve had internet problems again today. Twenty minutes of attempted solutions failed to remedy the matter and I thought I was gong to have to engage with the agonising prospect of trying to contact BT again. Fortunately, I restarted the computer as a last resort and the internet came back. Is that encouraging or worrying? I don’t know. In any event, now I can make the post I’ve been wanting to make since yesterday, so here it is:

I want to say a brief word about Shirley Jackson who has become one of my favourite writers. Everything I’ve read about her has been united in seeing her literature as belonging to the mystery/horror genre, and her work routinely described as ‘gothic.’ I’ve even seen her absurdly, in my view, described as 'following in the tradition of Poe', and I don’t for the life of me understand why.

I’ve read five of Jackson’s six novels and greatly enjoyed them. (I didn’t read the first of them because the synopsis suggested it was all about suburban politics, and suburban politics are not my style.) I’ve also read a fairly comprehensive anthology of her short stories. One of her novels, The Haunting of Hill House, is, to my perception, the only one which fits the category universally applied to her. It is unquestionably gothic and fairly well loaded with mystery and horror. But the rest?

There are slight hints of all these appellations in other works, but they are infrequent and often combined with a dry sense of humour, itself a rare component in the horror genre. What I see and relate to in Shirley Jackson are various forms of neurodivergence in female MCs, and especially the sparkles and misapprehensions which ensue when the neurodivergent heroine comes into contact with the world of neuro-normals. It’s all psychological observation related back to the reader in great detail and quite brilliantly. Her plots are pegs on which to hang this observation and there is very little in them which might be described as mysterious, horrific or gothic.

So what on earth is going on here? Is my own neurodivergent tendency shining a light on just one aspect of interest and leaving the rest in darkness? Are all the critics, editors, and bookworms right and am I the one in the wrong? Is that it? I wish I knew. Meanwhile, I’m well into my second reading of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and getting more from it than I did the first time. Good enough, I suppose.

Being Here.

I stood in the garden this afternoon and looked around at the heavy summer growth. I looked at the trees by the lane, at the fields of high-grown maize across the hedge, and at the high hills beyond the river valley. I looked at the sky, now turned grey after weeks of sunny weather. Two birds flew across it heading north.

I felt a strong sense of being here; nowhere else. It struck me that if I’d made one different decision somewhere back in the sands of my history, I might not be here. I might be somewhere else, or maybe nowhere at all.

The thought has occurred to me before, and I suppose the same thought has occurred to just about everybody at some time. And yet it’s an oddly profound thought, and what was different about today’s example was the intense clarity and strength behind it.

I think I might be turning into one of Shirley Jackson’s neurodivergent heroines.

Missed Opportunities.

I saw a woman I know in Sainsbury’s on Wednesday. It's some years since I last saw her. ‘Oh, hello,’ I said, ‘I didn’t recognise you at first.’ ‘I suppose that’s because I look so much older, is it?’ she replied ruefully. ‘My response was rapid and almost unequivocal: ‘I hadn’t intended to say so, but now you come to mention it…’

The first three sentences are true. The rest amounts to a succession of lies, the fact of which constitutes yet another of life’s multitudinous missed opportunities. 

Meanwhile, Ashbourne was awash with young women in shorts and dogs with wagging tails. What is a chap supposed to do in such circumstances? Which is he supposed to admire first? The dogs won, of course, because you can stroke a dog’s back, pat its head, and tickle its ears without fear of being driven away by men in uniforms and treated badly. Young women are in a different category.

Killing Time.

While I was sans internet I decided to put my enforced idleness to good use by dusting, vacuuming, and generally tidying my living room. It hadn’t been touched, or even used for that matter, for two months or so and I was feeling almost committed to my place in the human environment for once. It took two hours to complete the job, and when I’d finished I was taken aback by the fact that it looked very little different.

In all ways, that is, apart from the lack of spider silk. It had been everywhere – between this and that, underneath every horizontal surface, beside my armchair, behind the big unit thing containing mostly wooden bowls, books, and various expressions of my interest in the worlds beyond the veil, strewn across the ceiling and down the walls… The room was full of the stuff. Being a sensitive soul I made every effort to do no harm to the spiders scuttling hither and thither, but their handiwork had to go.

I realised, of course, that the spiders would not have taken kindly to being so outrageously inconvenienced, and a dream began to form in my mind. I saw an army of Cellar spiders – for such they all were – approaching me with revenge in their eyes and determination in their spindly gait. I knew that their objective would not be to drive me to the burning mill with pitchforks as the local villagers might, but to suck my vital fluids until I breathed my last. The fact that I have no straws of either paper or plastic in the house was no consolation since spiders have their own methods. The sound of gurgles, slurping, and the death rattle filled my mind, and the dank odour of something unrecognised hung in the air.

The Story of the Browser Playing Dead.

On Monday 20^th July – four whole, agonising days ago – my browser had an accident and died of its injuries. No browser, therefore no internet. And so began the job of getting a new browser, the prosecution of which brought me into the frustrating business of trying to deal with BT’s new system of customer contact. It is, as usual, idiotic – or at least disturbingly deficient in thought and consideration – and the only way of dealing with the problem was to report a fault to the wholly automated system.

An engineer turned up the next day and I told him the story, finally asking ‘so how do I get a new browser?’ ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘I’ll order one for you.  You might get it tomorrow or at least by the next day. They’re very quick with browsers.’ It arrived today, three days later. I haven’t hooked it up yet so I’m nervous because I have personal experience of new browsers being faulty. I’m currently living on hope as I type this in Word.

And so for four days now I’ve been seeing my desktop image staring back at me from my monitor screen. Usually I see my Hotmail inbox because that’s where I park it when I’m not working. Seeing only my desktop image evoked a cold feeling of desolation and disconnection. It said: Something vital is missing. Are you sure you’re still alive? Are you sure you’re still breathing? Are you sure you’re still functioning? It’s a little like walking into a room and seeing walls normally festooned with pictures now bare of all decoration. The only reminder of more wholesome times are the faint grey rectangles around the edges of where colour and life used to be. I’m sensitive like that. I tried to read instead (Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle for the second time, and an anthology of shorts by Virginia Woolf for the first.) It helped, but only so much. Mostly I felt too tired to read.

And what all this demonstrated is just how reliant I’ve become on the internet to provide a portal to the outside world. The very few people I know personally are all either disinclined to know me, or too far away to be of help. Being a loner by nature is sometimes inconvenient.

I’m going to attempt to install the new browser now. If you read this you’ll know it worked.

Added Later:

The new browser is installed and working, but here’s what’s interesting:

When I plugged everything in I saw that there was no light on, suggesting that the new bit of kit was faulty, Not so. I looked at the back and discovered an on/off switch, a small, black, circular button all but hidden against the black background. I pressed it and voila: we have light.

I’ve had several browsers over the past sixteen years and none of them had an on/off switch. You just plugged things in and they worked. And bear in mind that the original new browser was fitted up by a BT engineer, not me. So I tried connecting the original, now ‘dead’, browser to the power and it lit up as a functioning browser should. It appears the old lad’s accident didn’t kill it after all, it just switched it off.

So much for the past four days. So much for silly old me. And it’s life and life only.

Incidentally, the two posts above this one were written for the sake of having something to do when I thought I had no internet. Just to avoid any confusion.

Shire Diary July '26.

The barley crop is now all harvested and the stalks bailed up neatly and awaiting collection. The wheat looks just about ready to me, and so the majority of fields will soon be laid to waste and awaiting the muck spreading, the tilling, and the sowing of winter wheat and barley. And so the changing colours of a mostly arable farming area will go through their annual transformation, from gold to brown and back to green. The cycle continues as it has done on these very fields for more than a thousand years.

Several of the fields here are owned by the Church rather than the estate, and on those the crop is maize. Maize is sown later than the cereal crops for harvesting in the autumn or even early winter. It’s growing rapidly through the warm weather, though, and the tallest patch on one side of Church Lane is now up to around seven feet in height and flowering well.

So tall is this forest that the view from Church Lane to the Lady B’s erstwhile abode is now completely blocked. Usually at this time of year the top of the chimney pots and TV aerial are still visible, but not this time. Too tall for a person of my height. People often smile and gaze at the forest of maize, you know. ‘Just like Lord of the Rings,’ they enthuse. Several early scenes in the Jackson film version show the intrepid four hiding and getting into mischief in just such a location.

As for the wild flowers, the persistently warm weather has sent most of them to bed early. There’s a premature brown and shrivelled look about the embankments, the verges, and the hedge bottoms this year. And the elder bushes which showed promise of a fine berry harvest are further casualties. Such berries as a forming are tiny, I suppose for lack of water to plump them.

And here’s the sad story: I’ve mentioned the flock of sheep which now occupies the big sloping field behind my house. I often watch them going about their lives slowly and peacefully, but this morning I saw them being driven en masse down towards the bottom of the field where it abuts Bag Lane. When I walked that way later I saw a large transport vehicle standing by the gate, and presumed that a journey of some sort was imminent.

When I returned from my walk I heard much bleating as I walked up my garden. It was more plaintive than usual; it had a hint of desperation about it. And then I realised that all the bleats were adult ones. No kiddie bleats; no question and answer sessions between mama sheep and baby sheep. The impassioned bleats, it seemed, were the sounds of mother sheep either calling for their now absent kiddies, or simply vocalising a sense of sorrow for their loss.

The final sentence would have sounded like vegetarian propaganda, so I omitted it.

Time and Changes.

For some reason this evening my mind has been filled with recalling people in my past, from friends I had in primary school right up to people I connected with more recently on this blog. I particularly remembered one boy called Howard Graham. I got a little confused sometimes because I had trouble remembering whether his name was Howard Graham or Graham Howard. And it often occurs to me that most of the people I knew as a child are now dead.

*  *  *

And then I took a look at the website for the theatre where I used to work. It had a large picture of the restaurant and I was curious to see how different it looked. For one thing they’ve removed the carpet and installed parquet flooring instead. Why would they do that, I wondered? Well, maybe they had Christmas in mind and considered the practical benefit. During matinees for the Christmas Show the place was invaded by hordes of school kids, and there was always one who treated us to the sight and smell of his or her half digested breakfast steaming on the restaurant floor. I suppose it’s more easily removed from wood than carpet. (And did you know that the smell of vomit can be nullified by pouring tonic water on it?)

*  *  *

After that I wrote my daughter’s birthday card. I hate writing longhand now, you know. I blame the ubiquity of keyboard communication which has greatly reduced the manual coordination required for such a feat. It leaves me full of admiration for those writers of old who constructed significant tomes, mostly using a quill pen and in longhand. And impeccable cursive, to boot.

In the Language of Sheep.

I was outside having a cup of tea in the sunlit garden this afternoon when I heard the deep bleat of an adult sheep the other side of the hedge. It was followed by the higher pitched, juvenile bleat of a lamb nearby. And then the ewe bleated back and the lamb answered again. And so it went on and on for about five minutes until I was quite sure that this was a mother and her kid having a conversation. OK, it might just have been:

‘Where are you?’

Here, mum.

Oh, there you are.

Mum.

‘What?’

I’m here.

‘I know. I can see you.’

Mum.

‘What?’

You’re not looking at me.

‘I don’t need to look at you, dear. I can hear you well enough.’

Mum.

‘What now?’

What are you doing?

‘I’m grazing. What does it look as though I’m doing?’

Oh.

It’s a conversation of sorts, isn’t it? And it might all be in my imagination, and I might be guilty of anthropomorphising a couple of animals, but as long as it makes you smile it doesn’t matter, does it? And the kid reminds of me when I was that age.

A Parking Issue.

When I returned from my walk at lunchtime I was surprised to see the narrow lane beyond my garden lined with parked vehicles for a distance of around 200yds. Evidently there was some sort of end-of-term event going on, and it isn’t unusual to see cars parked on the lane during the progress of such events. But in twenty years I’ve never seen as many as there were today. And the car park was also full, of course.

I’m curious to know the reason for this. Has the school had a major increase in pupils, I wonder? (Have you noticed, by the way, that in the UK we mostly use the term ‘pupils’ for people in primary and secondary education, and reserve the term ‘students’ for those in college and university? Students are young adults, you see.) In any event, it seems to me that the school needs a major extension to its car park.

I was, however, pleased to see that the Lady B’s car was parked with precision in the car park (lording it over a tiny, Mk1 mini, I might add.) But then it always was a feature of the Lady B that she was inclined to park cars with fine precision in car parks. (I love that woman, you know. Sometimes it even hurts a bit.)

And I do realise that this post is boring and of little interest to anyone but me. I just felt like writing something before making lunch, so I did.

A Recommendation in Fruit.

I saw a woman I liked in Ashbourne today. She wasn’t good looking, she wasn’t young, she didn’t have a model girl’s body, and I never spoke to her. And so I asked myself: why do you like that woman? The answer was simple.

She was eating an apple. I realised that a person eating an apple looks wholesome and healthy (just as a person eating a Big Mac looks gross and unfit.) It even suggests honesty, which probably has nothing whatsoever to do with George Washington. It just does for some reason, maybe because there is something sweet and unassuming about the humble apple. No ego, you see.

The fact that the woman looked thoughtful also helped. I’m generally well disposed towards people who think, and I gather the skill is becoming rarer.

Imaginings and Partings.

I saw a woman in the coffee shop today who looked very like my imagined image of the priestess. Same height and build, same approximate age, dark brown hair with a few highlights pulled neatly behind the neck, a discreet but apparently expensive gold bracelet on one wrist, bright and active eyes, no hint of apparent mood which suggested high self-awareness and practiced restraint, and eyes which left no doubt as to her East Asian antecedents. I’d say she was fully in control of her body, her mind, and her space. I doubt the priestess looked like that at the time when several future roads were beckoning in her maiden years, but this one fitted the mature entrepreneurial route perfectly.

I spent some time visually examining everything about her, and yet never once did she notice and stare, or even glance, back. That was where I got the ‘self-awareness and practiced restraint’ from. I wondered whether she might have been the actual priestess making an inquisitive trip to my home territory because she had nothing better to do. I rejected the possibility on the grounds that priestesses never have nothing better to do.

*  *  *

I signed out of my dental practice this morning, even though there are no other NHS practices in the area and I can’t afford private dentistry. It was an uneasy call fraught with attempted explanations and icy tones. And now I wonder whether I’ve been a little rash.I also wonder why I always have to move on even when there's nowhere else to go. I even wonder whether I would have left the much esteemed Lady B behind if she hadn't preempted the possibility.

Care vs Control, and Unrelated Bits.

Tomorrow I intend to scratch my name off my dentist’s panel. As far as I know there isn’t another NHS dentist in Ashbourne, so my future dental prospects will lie at the feet of my good friend, Lady Luck. The cost of private dentistry is so excruciatingly high that availing myself of such a ‘service’ stands not within the prospect of belief. (The greed of good old American-style capitalism, eh? Good old Mrs Thatcher.)

So why have I taken this decision? Well, it’s like this: Over the weekend I’ve received two text messages from the practice, and unlike written communications from other NHS bodies which speak the language of care, the ones from the dentist now speak the language of control: ‘You will!’ Acceptance of control is not in my nature, and though some might find my attitude excessive, I don’t. There’s a principle involved, and principles are very important to me.

This has been coming on ever since the incomparable Ms Medeea left a year or two ago (I suspect for similar reasons.) I felt it with the first appointment I had there after the fateful day. I felt the decline in the atmosphere. They also changed their name from the friendly ‘TLC For Smiles’ to the rather grey ‘Derbyshire Dental.’ I mean to suggest that they should have called it ‘The Vogon Spaceship’ or even ‘Resistance is Useless.’

*  *  *

And another, strictly irrelevant, point occurs to me: History is full of wise people using wise words to offer wise advice. Modern civilisation seems to be mostly run by unwise people telling us that the wise ones were wrong. And most people believe them.

*  *  *

So where do I go from there? Well, I’m often tempted to wonder why so many people allow themselves to be locked into cages of belief rather than striding freely across the airy headland of an open mind.

A Nature Boy's Dichotomy.

I used to think of myself as a true nature boy; a lover of all things natural in the natural world. Now I detect a certain dichotomy in my attitude 

I love the wealth of expression in the natural world; I love the bounty and the beauty; and I love the sense that I feel of the subtle energies of nature because that would seem to be the power behind the form of existence to which we are tied at this level. I’m even accepting of death because death is an integral part of the cyclical process on which all things biological function.

But being an idealist I detest the suffering in nature. And I’m not referring to cruelty. Cruelty is a matter of intent which seems wholly confined to the human animal. I’m referring to the suffering consequent upon predation, accident, and disease.

It came home to me last night when I watched a baby bird suffering, presumably through having fallen from a nest or having made a premature attempt to fly. There was nothing I could do to help, you see, and that added an element of guilt to my horror. I suppose I could have done an Agnes Gray and dropped a large stone on it, but how could I have known that my aim would be perfect, or the instrument of execution sufficiently powerful to despatch the little creature instantaneously? I couldn’t, and so I locked the door and hoped that the suffering would be short-lived.

And that’s why my attitude to nature is dichotomous.

Something Crooked Somewhere.

A few simple questions which might suggest a few obvious answers:

Why has the Jeffrey Epstein affair disappeared from public view? Why is there no high level investigation at work? Why are the world’s media not clamouring to re-open their own investigations? Why have I seen nothing on YouTube amid the pile of supremely unimportant tat that seems to prevail there? (I’m sure a serious video on Jeffrey Epstein would get so many hits that even the ne’er-do-wells in the advertising industry would be slavering uncontrollably. One video I saw questioned the veracity and cause of Epstein’s alleged death, but that’s hardly the point.) Who is keeping the lid tightly closed on this business, and why? And why am I the only person who seems to be asking these questions? I doubt that I am.

Maybe Trump’s juvenile antics and the football world cup are considered more important and there’s no air time or page space left to tackle more mundane matters. Is that it?

Looking For America.

I first heard Simon and Garfunkel’s America when I was in my teens. It remains a favourite, and the line which most piqued my curiosity was ‘… walked off to look for America.’ I wondered what exactly it meant at the time, but I was young then. Much water has flowed the length of the mighty Mississippi-Missouri since my days of callow youth, and now I have a better idea, so please allow me to offer it.

My YouTube recommendations page is loaded with videos which relate, one way or another, to the USA. Being the British version, many of them follow the line: ‘Brits roast American ignorance’ or the more general ‘Britain – or Europe as a whole – is a much better place than America.’ I expect American YouTube followers get fed the opposite story. I think a lot about this, and so I thought I’d write a post about the way the USA tends to be seen by Europeans. It’s a view based on a generalised impression gleaned from conversations, news reports, high profile American activities, and the experiences of a few ex-pat Americans living in Europe.

Let’s start with the recent 250^th anniversary razzmatazz (which was slightly premature given that The Treaty of Paris wasn’t signed until 1783, but let’s not split hairs.) Europeans were naturally unimpressed by this, since most of us can trace our national roots back over a thousand years of unbroken cultural development (and some countries in the Middle East and Asia generally – including Iran – can go much further back than that.) We in England, for example, are more likely to commemorate the Battle of Hastings in 1066 than the generally agreed origin of the English state a century earlier.

And so, notwithstanding its remarkable development over such a short time period, the USA is still a young child in international terms. It might have grown big, rich, and powerful, but it’s still the world’s baby. And let’s be honest and admit that it has often behaved in a manner entirely commensurate with the fact. Trump’s presidency is probably the most obvious example, but there have been others. This means that there is a tendency among Europeans, and probably an even a greater one among Asians, to view the USA as being still a work in progress, and that it will probably remain so for a long time to come. This is why Europeans get slightly miffed when US Presidents swagger around the globe in the arrogant belief that they have ultimate authority on all issues worldwide, from nuclear development in Iran to a referee’s decision on a football pitch.

And then there’s another point which might best be illustrated by comparing the USA with China. They’re approximately the same size geographically, but China has a much bigger population and is far more diverse in terms of languages and ethnic groups. And yet China is still unquestionably China, with all the perception of homogeneity due to a single state. And it’s very ancient.

The federal system in the USA, on the other hand, leads to a vague sense that homogeneity is at least partially absent. Each state operates within many of its own rules, guards its boundaries assiduously, and sometimes comes into conflict with the central power in DC. There’s a fractured feel about it, as though the mortar in the walls of the country hasn’t quite set firm yet and is still moving around. And maybe this is the cause of one of my long-held suspicions – that there is a hidden undercurrent of insecurity lurking in the American mindset, which is possibly the reason for the almost manic emphasis on patriotism, the requirement for children to take the oath of allegiance every day, the flying of flags on every street corner, and the slightly absurd notion of ‘un-American activities.’

So is it all bad? Is this just me sounding off against the damn Yankees? No, of course not. I repeat what I’ve said before on this blog: Some of the finest people I have ever known – people of intelligence, principle, erudition, compassion, good sense, generosity, and wholesome friendliness – have been Americans. And I might add that much of the anti-American sentiment doing the rounds of the globe at the moment is directed mainly at Trump and what he’s made of America and its reputation, not a wholesale condemnation of individual Americans.

And yet, you know, I’m tempted to think – and this might be wholly speculative and based on false impressions – that the high spot of American culture came at the end of the 19^th century and the first half of the 20^th. I imagine a time based on the homesteader mentality, the understanding that there were things of value bigger than the individual, the resilience and energy, the development of new musical forms with the coming of jazz and blues, the creation of a new art form with the emergence of cinema, and maybe even a noticeable level of self-deprecation. It’s an inspirational picture.

But that was before the oligarchs of Big Capitalism persuaded the nation to install consumption and lifestyle obsession as the new king, to worship money as the only true god, and to brag loudly about their wealth-conferred status. And yet it’s clear that there are still plenty of Americans who understand that there are principles and ideals bigger than the individual or their personal fortune. That’s why this post is about America, not Americans.

I hope it doesn’t cause offence. It wasn’t meant to.

Early Morning School Work.

I was standing by my bathroom window in the early hours of this morning regarding the third quarter moon hanging bright in the clear eastern sky. I saw the winking wing lights of a commercial aircraft encroaching into my view from the right, evidently outbound from East Midlands Airport and flying north-west, probably to Belfast. The plane approached the moon, crossed it, and then continued its flight to Northern Ireland.

My first thought was that the passengers would have watched the moon coming towards them until it was alongside, and then slipping away behind as the plane continued its journey. I quickly realised that I was wrong; the moon would have appeared more or less perpendicular to their view through the window all the way from the airport to their destination. So then I set about working out why, and realised that it’s a simple matter of the function of arc.

The distance between East Midlands Airport and Belfast is a tiny fraction of the distance between the moon and the plane, which means that the arc described on the line of travel would be extremely slim. The angle between the two, therefore, would hardly change in such a short distance, and so the moon would appear to the passengers to be in more or less the same place. It’s simply a matter of geometrical relativity.

And so, having demonstrated to myself that my mind still functions moderately well after two double scotches and in a state of fatigue, I continued to bed with an almost satisfied air.

A Rarity Among the Habits of JJ.

I spoke to another Shire resident this evening for something like an hour. (My lack of association with Shire residents must surely be the stuff of legend by now. Ten minutes is usually the maximum I can tolerate, and even then only if it serves the cause of politeness.) And what’s really odd is that I initiated the conversation for reasons which would be improper to reveal. Rest assured, however, that they were entirely pure, proper, and in accordance with my INFJ personality type.

My only error was that I failed to ask the lady’s name (and she mine), but maybe that won’t matter. Maybe I will never speak to her again. It will all depend on whether my gut instinct convinces me that it will be to her benefit. (I have been known to be wrong in such matters.)

A Poetic Note on the Pronoun Divide.

I’m not even an occasional reader of poetry, much less an avid one, and yet I do respond strongly to the power and richness of words. And sometimes a particular line from a poem strikes me as having a quality of subtle but profound knowing wrapped up in a few brief, perfectly chosen words (which I suppose is what good poetry is all about.) Such a one is Emily Dickinson’s

 

Because I could not stop for Death

He kindly stopped for me

I think about it often, and it struck me recently that the line might be frowned upon these days by those who regard the recognition of gender as a sure and certain ticket to perdition’s flame. They would insist that it must be:

Because I could not stop for Death

They kindly stopped for me

It doesn’t take much poetic nous – nor even recognition of the power and richness of words – to know what dreadful carnage the use of the plural pronoun would wreak upon such a notable creation.