Dreaming of the Priestesss and Other Bits.

I had a rare dream about the priestess two nights ago. Remember her? I do, but then I suppose I would. I went to visit her in Australia, even though she doesn’t live in Australia as far as I know.

I was nervous at first, but she was friendly enough and smiled a lot. She even kissed me briefly on the lips which I assumed to have been a contrived device to make me feel a little less ugly and shambolic than I naturally would feel in the presence of an attractive 32-year-old Chinese lady. I accepted the kind thought with gratitude.

And then she sent me to a shop down the hill and around a corner to buy some drugs. The dream ended before I returned and no attempt at interpretation was made.

Meanwhile, I might remark that 22 posts in June is the most I’ve made in one month all year. Is there something afoot, I wonder?

And my newly converted – analogue to digital – computer set-up does not get on at all well with YouTube. The technological age is proving troublesome.

Auntie Beeb's Exciting News.

One of today’s exciting features on the BBC News website is the incidence of tonight’s strawberry moon. Being possessed of some little interest in the moon and its moods, I read it. It contained two facts of real significance:

1. The moon won’t be pink, but just the usual moon colour. The term ‘strawberry moon’ is simply the nickname given to the full moon which happens to occur in June. (Remember my post a few months ago about the blue moon which wasn’t going to be blue? ‘Blue moon’ is the nickname given to the second of two full moons which happen to occur in the same month. They’re never blue.)

2. The only notable feature of tonight’s moon is the mildly interesting fact that it will be very low in the sky, almost on the horizon, and so will appear slightly larger than usual. It happens every year.

So there we have it: a full page feature giving we lucky mortals forewarning of tonight’s big celestial event – a full moon which will look no different than all the other dozen full moons throughout the year apart from the fact that it will look slightly bigger (which is really thrilling, isn’t it!?)

So I returned to the top of the page to look again at the banner pic which introduced this exciting event and first piqued my interest. It showed a cityscape at night, and bestowing its beauty on the lucky inhabitants is a glorious, cerise pink moon hanging high in the sky. Can anybody tell me what the point of all this is?

This is modern journalism. This is modern times.

The Lure of Ladies in Boats.

I sometimes used to watch a YouTube video in which a French string orchestra played an abridged version of Ravel’s Bolero on a pontoon moored on the River Seine. The director used several tracking shots which included some overhead footage of young women rowers (French presumably) powering their way along the same river in competition.

Last night I watched a British cop drama which began with the discovery of a man’s body in the River Tyne in North East England. The discovery was preceded by tracking shots of young women in two racing boats powering their way along the same river.

I soon realised that the shots of the women rowers were my favourite parts of both films, and so I naturally fell to wondering why. Why am I so in thrall to young women rowers?

I decided it was down to the coordination of legs, arms, shoulders, and torso working in concert to achieve a desired end. But that wasn’t all of it, naturally. It was also about a small band of attractive, nubile women confined in a narrow space casting vital feminine energy into the lively air above a body of water. Put the two together and you have my definition of sexy.

Attractive young women have always been one of my greatest narcotics, you know; possibly the greatest of all (and I do include tobacco and good whisky in the list). I put it down to the thread of Irish ancestry in my lineage (pretty colleens are God’s compensation for a life spent on an imperfect planet) because I gather my father was just the same. My mother said so once: ‘Just like your bloody father! I saw how you looked at those girls in…’ My own addiction started, as far as I can remember, when I was twelve and hasn’t relinquished its hold yet.

There was one young woman who didn’t quite fit the profile, though. My feelings for her went much deeper into realms previously unknown to me and never sank further to the level of the libidinous. I won’t say who it was because she just might read this one day and feel ill. I wouldn’t like that.

A Little Moth Mystery.

A couple of nights ago I was sitting at my desk idly contemplating the advanced gibbous moon. It was holding station in a clear southern sky beyond the un-curtained window, and a thought occurred to me. Where are the moths?

Moths are attracted to light, are they not? If you leave a window open in a lighted room in the summer, your living space soon plays host to a bevy of lepidopteran visitors dancing around the bulb and tapping against the light shade. And if the window’s closed, the same dancers flit desperately hither and thither banging into the glass.

So why in the summer don’t we see countless moths heading off in the direction of the moon? Could it be that they have sufficient sentience to realise that the moon is a little beyond their flying range?

Growls and Gratitude.

I had a falling out with several shop assistants in Sainsbury’s today, so they don’t like me now. It was all to do with their practice of covering the chiller cabinets with screens ‘to keep them from becoming too warm in the present hot weather.’ I pointed out why it was unnecessary in the circumstances, why it couldn’t work anyway because the management clearly don’t understand the simplest basics of heat transfer, and that its only achievement was to cause inconvenience to their customers. One of my antagonists was a supervisor who tried to give me some irrelevant guff about lorries, and when I put her on the right track she declined to speak to me again. (And I never raised my voice or used a swear word. Honestly I didn’t.) Maybe they’ll accuse me of being abusive and refuse me entry next week. It’s that kind of world now.

This afternoon I rang BT (again) to point out that they still have a wrong address on my file. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve told them this, but as I said, it’s that kind of world now.

But I did get a welcome smile from a young woman when I told her I wouldn’t light a cigarette while she was downwind of me, and so I didn’t. And when she left to catch her lift I was treated to another smile and a wave. That was today’s treat. (Unfortunately, Sainsbury’s came next.)

On Meeting a Legend.

Guess what I met today: a Ghurkha! (I don’t often use exclamation marks but meeting a Ghurkha justifies it.) So, the story is this:

I mentioned recently that I was forced into an internet provision change. I used to get the signal from my BT phone line, but my broadband came from a company called Plusnet. The change to digital from analogue meant that I had to have both from the same supplier, and the easiest option was to use BT.

And so I made the phone call, all fifty four minutes of it because there was a lot to change and set up. One of the things the customer service advisor asked me was whether I wanted an engineer’s visit to help set up the new equipment. I knew what was involved and that it was fairly simple, but it occurred to me that if there was any unforeseen problem, having an engineer to hand would be useful. I said as much to the advisor, she agreed, and so I accepted her offer.

My email inbox and phone began to be inundated with emails and texts about this, that, the other, and the price of baked beans at Sainsbury’s. One thing they didn’t mention was the date and time of the engineer’s visit, and so I called again (and began to mentally consider how easy it would be to change my name by deed poll to Job. I expect half the population have done so by now, courtesy of modern communication systems.) The woman I eventually spoke to said that no such arrangement had been made. ‘You have to do it yourself,’ she said, and resistance was evidently useless.

And so the equipment was delivered and I made the attempt to steel myself for the big day, which was today. I told myself that it would all be very easy and there was nothing to worry about. Most of it I’d done before when my old router went wonky and I had to have a new, more complex, one. I re-acquainted myself with which bits went where in the old router and whether the newly added phone port was clearly defined, and opened the box containing the new one.

There was something missing! (Have another exclamation mark.) The box contained the hub (which black where the old one had been white, but I coped with that shock with remarkable ease), a power cable and transformer, and a broadband cable. But there was no Ethernet cable. ‘So how does the hub communicate with the computer?’ I asked myself. ‘Could I use the one I’ve already got, or will it be different as other things are?’ A mild sense of panic set in and so I called BT. Just as the recorded voice was saying ‘current wait times are around seven minutes’ there was a knock at the door.

I assumed it was a contractor I’ve been awaiting for ages to fix an issue on the roof and I was all set to send him on his merry way. ‘I’m on the bloody phone and I can’t waste time with you at the moment, so bog off.’ Or something along those lines. I looked through the window to see a man looking vaguely Chinese and wearing a grey baseball cap, on which was printed in large letters: BT.

I opened the door. ‘I’m from BT,’ he began, ‘come to help you set up your new router.’ ‘But they told me I couldn’t have an engineer,’ I protested. ‘Well, I was in the area so I thought I’d call and make sure everything’s OK.’ I cordially invited him in – no, not cordially; enthusiastically. (I rarely invite people in, and almost never enthusiastically. I like my private space to stay that way.)

And now the easy bit: He set everything up and it worked fine, and he did use the old Ethernet cable without a second thought. So that was that.

‘Are you Chinese?’ I asked him. ‘No, from Nepal.’ ‘Nepal? How interesting. Were ever a Ghurkha?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘One of those invited to move over here in recognition of your services to the British?’ ‘Yes.’

Well now, I shook his hand (enthusiastically.) You see, notwithstanding my anti-war sensibilities, the Ghurkhas are legendary over here in Britain. I was told as a kid: ‘Great friends of ours, the Ghurkhas. Best soldiers on earth and always faithful to we British.’ And here I am meeting one for the first time in my life, and who turns up to solve my problem literally in the nick of time and at his own volition. If ever one of the goddesses of South Asia was smiling on me, today was the day.

And that’s today’s story. And it’s all true.

Added Later: 

I forgot to mention that when the man from Nepal was leaving I had one final question to ask him:

'Have you ever seen a Yeti?'

He frowned, moved his head around a little, mumbled something incomprehensible. and then walked away. I shall forever wonder whether that was a yes, a no, or a 'why did I ever knock on this door?'

On Hypotheses and Hairy Things.

Remember the post I made recently about having become apparently invisible to the Shire’s top family? I suggested that perhaps I’d wandered through a portal into another dimension. It was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, and so is this:

Today I read an old post of mine from back in 2013 in which I related having had a bad dose of flu. I found it odd because I have no recollection whatsoever of having had flu since I moved to this house twenty years ago, even though I remember having been struck down badly by it 1994. I remember that one in every gruesome detail, so why not remember having it a mere thirteen yeas ago?

I wondered whether it was another example of dimension tripping, but then realised it was more like an example of the Mandela Effect. Then again, some people insist that the Mandela Effect is explainable by dimension tripping, so who knows. I’m not yet convinced by the parallel universes hypothesis, you see; too many questions crop up which I find hard to answer, and the examples presented on YouTube don’t address them either.

For now I feel more inclined to make a post about cryptids, the existence of which I find more convincing. I don’t have sufficient information though, so that one can wait until I have. I might say, however, that I’m reasonably convinced of the existence of one cryptid: the Sasquatch. There was an apparent sighting of one a mere thirty or so miles from here quite recently, and from the reports I’ve read I have a sense that Bigfoot is a peace-loving creature which just wants to live a quiet life away from noisy and aggressive humans. And I suspect they have an uncommon fondness for apples.

Admitting a Fault.

I had cause to ask myself a question tonight: ‘How do you respond to people who laugh easily?’ The response was simple: I like people who laugh easily, or at least I like the fact that they do. Experiencing someone’s honest laughter is pleasant. I watched an American woman called Erica something-or-other do it tonight, which was what prompted the question.

But then I thought of those people on YouTube who comment on some mildly amusing video along the lines of: ‘This was absolutely hilarious. I couldn’t stop laughing for hours.’ This is obviously a wild exaggeration and patently fake. It irritates me a lot because anybody who has to exaggerate to the point of lying in order to feel they matter is revealing a kind of weakness that I find nauseatingly unpalatable.

I’m being unreasonably judgemental in saying this, aren’t I? Judgemental is what the J stands for in INFJ, which demonstrates that for all we’re generally lauded as bringers of light and empathy, we also have a bad side like everybody else. (I have several.) Unfortunately, what I don’t have are any vestments made of sackcloth, and such ashes that remain in my fire grate are very old and dusty.

An Issue of Smell and Practicality.

It’s 1940 and you’re a bomber pilot in the Luftwaffe. One night after a raid you’re making the return trip in the dawn’s early light when you get spotted by a Hurricane and badly shot up. You’re uninjured so you bail out, land in a field somewhere near Dover, get picked up by some sort of patrol, and two days later you find yourself incarcerated in a POW camp. Still wearing the same clothes. And because it’s 1940 you’re destined to spend the next five years living a restricted life at His Majesty’s Pleasure along with a few dozen of your compatriots. Still wearing the same clothes?

In all the years I’ve been alive the airways and bookshelves have been liberally splattered with dramas and documentaries about WWII, and yet I’ve never heard the need of a change of clothing being mentioned.

Good Associations and Grrrs.

Standing in my garden at twilight put me in mind of the orchestral work In a Summer Garden, by Frederick Delius. I don’t know why that never struck me before since I’m something of a fan of Delius’s music. This evening I could have imagined myself transported to his house and garden at Grez-sur-Loing in France. In fact, I did imagine it. I also discovered this evening that Delius was born on the same date as my mother.

*  *  *

The good experience I had with a contact at BT recently proved to be short-lived. It’s back to normal now with bucketfuls of stress, anxiety, and serious irritation. And a new pattern has emerged in my life: I go to bed at 3am, wake briefly just after 6, and again just after 9. It’s happened the past four nights in succession. I wonder what that’s all about.

Today's Two Notes.

A few nights ago I posted about having had a harsh email from my phone line provider regarding broadband provision and computer connections. It threw me into a bit of a funk, me not being a techno type, but today I stuck my courage to the sticking place and made the call to find out what it was about and what needed to be done.

I was connected with a Lancashire lass (middle aged I would say) from Manchester who was an absolute star. She took me through the whole thing clearly and methodically, explained all the reasoning behind it in words even I could understand, and offered to send an engineer to make the connections just in case there are any problems. Now I just have to await delivery of the new router. And to add icing on the cake, it appears that if all goes well I will be paying much less than I currently am and will have a very much faster internet connection.

When have you ever heard me say something good about BT? You have now.

*  *  *

Seasonal Shire news: The scented meadowsweet is blooming in Church Lane, the elder flowers are well advanced to promise a bumper harvest of berries for those who want to prove that elderberry wine is the equal of anything Bordeaux might offer, the golden barley is coming close to ripeness, and the wheat is still green but plumping nicely.

*  *  *

In fact, apart from a problem with arranging my transport to Ashbourne next week, it was a half decent day for a change. (My only regret is that I didn’t ask the BT lady’s name, because then I could have told you what it was.)

On the Kayak and the Cold Water.

For some reason today I was reminded of an amusing little incident during my school days. I might have told the story before in the early days of the blog, but I don’t remember and can’t be bothered search for it, so you can have it again.

Once upon a time when I was a teenager (I really was, you know, once upon a time), the boys in my high school class were taken off for the weekend to an outdoor pursuits centre. It had wooden shacks, ropes for abseiling, kayaks for canoeing, and various other oddments deemed necessary for the provision of  a fun-filled weekend risking life and limb. It also had a sizeable lake and lots of trees.

The first morning was put aside for giving each of us a kayak to sit in so we could happily paddle from one end of the lake to the other and back again. We had no idea what it was supposed to teach us or how it might add to our manly mettle, but that was the plan. And so we set off with me near the back of the group.

About 100 yds into this great adventure I was suddenly gripped by excruciating pain from cramp in both calf muscles. We’d been warned that kayaks take a bit of getting used to because they’re notoriously unstable and the trick is to keep the body in such a position in the cockpit (or whatever it’s called) to keep the little craft upright. It occurred to me that this might be difficult with both calves in the grip of excruciating pain, and so I called to the lead schoolmaster, explained my difficulty, and asked whether I should turn around and paddle back to shore. He said I should, so I dipped the port  paddle (left to the landlubbers) and began to make a 180° turn.

At that point the dear little red and white kayak grinned mischievously, overturned, and threw me unceremoniously into the lake. Fortunately, Dame Fortune was having none of it and came to my aid by dismissing both cramps completely as soon as my legs hit the cold water. Feeling somewhat relieved, I was easily able to swim to the nearest bank with the kayak in tow, and then walk back to the centre through the trees (which were rather nice I expect, although I don’t actually remember.)

Can you imagine such a situation being allowed today with our manic emphasis on risk avoidance? I expect they’d have to have a patrol boat now with lifesaving equipment bringing up the rear. Back then we just dealt with it (well, I did anyway because there was no alternative.) Maybe it was to ingratiate into us the notion that we were ‘the bulldog breed.’ Bulldogs are extinct now, although I gather kayaks aren’t.

YouTube and the Registration Obsession.

YouTube has suddenly started to throw a cocktail of new requirements and restrictions at me. One of them says: Register to like and leave comments on videos.

Where did that one come from? Why should I have to register to like and leave a comment on a YouTube video? YouTubers are constantly begging for likes and comments on their uploads.

I imagine it’s just the latest example of a pandemic sweeping so-called developed cultures in the 21^st century: registration for this, that, the other, and soon to be nearly everything else. Is it, perhaps, merely a matter of bureaucratic overkill which is something else infecting modern life in a more general sense? Or is it, as I suspect, another example of the corporate world and its insanely rich minions seeking yet another way to watch and control us so they can make more money?

Oh well, if I have to give up YouTube by way of objecting to their silly and intrusive little rules, then so be it. It would cause me some difficulty because the only time I relax these days is the final two hours before going to bed. (I set an appropriate music mix to play while I read old blog posts and the comments my old blogger pals used to leave. I have several from the Lady B, you know. They’re very precious.) But to a sad old idealist like me, principles are supremely important.

The Big Event.

My landlord has invited us all to ‘tea in the garden’ tomorrow afternoon. How very Virginia Woolf of him. I would have thought it more appropriate to have styled the event ‘tea on the terrace’, he being a kind of lord of the manor and all. Maybe he was concerned that one of the great unwashed might soil the hallowed flagstones somehow, and be too close to the interior of the mansion anyway. The odd one might even smell bad.

Will I be attending, you might ask. No. Saturday afternoon is the busiest time of the week for me, and I’m not really the type to go hobnobbing with the landed gentry anyway. Not that I have anything against him. I’ve only met him once, and then only briefly. For all I know he might be thoroughly likeable. He might be so distanced from any antiquated notion of social hierarchy that he sings ‘keep the red flag flying here’ while playing with his rubber duck in the bath.

And that brings me to an odd and unconnected thought. Why does the Republican Party in the USA use red as their colour of allegiance? Red is the colour of Russian communism. The communist Chinese flag is red. Red is universally recognised as the colour of people power, whereas the Republicans are known for the opposite proclivity. Could it have something to do with the traditional colour of British telephone boxes, I wonder. Must ask an American if ever I meet one. I should imagine Americans would be the first to accept an invitation to tea in the garden with the lord of the manor (sort of), but I don’t think we have any in these parts.

On Strange Lights and the Silicon Supremacy.

A few nights ago I saw something unusual in the eastern sky. It was around two o’clock in the morning and I was on my way to bed. The window in my bathroom faces east and the first thing I noticed was usual enough – the blinking wing light of a passenger plane heading north-west out of East Midlands Airport. And then my eye was caught by a most unusual pattern of lights just above the horizon at the top of the hill.

It consisted of nine orange lights arranged in three vertical rows of three forming a vertical rectangular shape. It moved slowly across the sky – rather slower than the aircraft lights heading in the opposite direction – and then stopped. The lights were much bigger than those on the plane suggesting that the whole pattern was bigger than a commercial aircraft or maybe much closer. It stayed still for a short while before descending and disappearing behind the hilltop.

I hope my description is accurate enough to evoke a visual image because I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. My usual presumption when I see a stationery light in the sky rests on the almost certain likelihood of it being a helicopter, but I’ve never seen such a craft showing a pattern of lights like that. If anyone has a suggestion I would be glad to hear it.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, my state of mind is not at its best. Over the past ten years my world has contracted to a point where it amounts to little more than tedious chores, troubled sleep, and trawling the internet for something to interest me, usually with little success. This morning I woke up disturbingly late and booted up my computer to find an email from my phone line provider. It was titled ‘You will soon lose your broadband’ and advised me that I was to make substantial changes to both my service provision and computer connections if I was to avoid being confined to the cyber wasteland.

Well now, being confined to the cyber wasteland amounts to being also confined to the functional wasteland these days, and so I rang my broadband provider and asked ‘what the bloody hell is going on?’ A long and fairly complex explanation was provided by a man with a strong Yorkshire accent (I think he said his name was John.)

I won’t bore you with the details; suffice it to say this: My proclivities lie in such areas as music, quality literature, philosophy, psychology, the state of the human condition, the beauty of landscape, and the meaning of life and reality. I’m not a techno type. I have to accept that the days when our functions were largely run by cables, physical switches, and electricity are gone because that’s the way it is. But the microchip leaves me cold and confused. And that’s how I felt after spending around half an hour talking – or mostly listening – to John (or whatever.)

The one heartening thing he said was that these changes might not have to be made until the end of the year. I wondered whether I might be able to conspire to expire before then, because that would save me the trouble, wouldn’t it? Maybe I’ll feel different tomorrow (if I have a tomorrow.)

A Special Day and a Nice Note on Sweden.

Today is something of a landmark in my life because today I exceeded my mother’s lifespan by one day. (Well, part of a day at least. It isn’t over yet, is it?) That’s an odd thing to work out, wouldn’t you say? I wonder how many other people have done the same calculation. I still have nearly two years to go to match my father, but I can’t work that one out precisely because I don’t know the date of his death. I hadn’t seen him for twenty six years.

I’m a bit glum these days, which is something of a coincidence because I seem to be suddenly getting a lot of visits from Sweden, and you might remember all those posts I made about the glumness of the Swede. Maybe there’s a connection. It was a joke, of course, because I feel a certain fondness for the Swedes. They seem to be as intolerant of egomania as I am so I always favour their football teams as long as they’re not playing England, and even then my attitude is dichotomous. I wonder what they think of Trump.

A Very Rare Connection.

I’ve said often enough on this blog that there are very few people with whom I can feel a connection sufficient to warrant extended discussion. Most people just get on my nerves.

Well, I met one today. Her name was Alisha and she was minding the store in the pet shop on Uttoxeter’s retail park. She had all the qualifications to be a JJ sort of person – authentic affability, easy and fluent use of language, intelligence, a permanent and genuine smile, and the admission that she does voluntary work at a rescue centre for injured hedgehogs. She was absolutely lovely (as several of them are in that shop, actually. It’s why I wouldn’t buy my wild bird seed anywhere else.)

During the course of the conversation she mentioned that she came from the south of England originally. ‘That’s unusual,’ I said. ‘You’re remarkably friendly for a southerner.’ After that we got on famously.

Not One for the Squeamish

Earlier this evening I was walking down Bag Lane en route to the post box when my foot slipped on something. I looked down to identify the cause and found that I had stepped on the flattened and disembodied head of a squirrel, and what had caused me to slip was the mess of brains spreading out behind it. And one of its legs was lying a foot or two away (if you’ll excuse the unintentional pun.)

That’s not very nice, is it?

And now I can’t think of a way to end this mini – and rather unpleasant – post except to say that my subsequent dinner was vegetarian as always.

All Three?

Regular readers might very well remember (though some might very well not) that a few weeks ago I reported having been apparently ghosted by the Lady B in Sainsbury’s car park. Since she had her youngest daughter with her I chose to speculate that the dear lady might have been distracted by the more pressing consideration of whether to give little pip squeak beans on toast or spaghetti on toast for lunch, and therefore being temporarily blind to the sight of some old reprobate staring back at her from a mere 30-40 feet. That would be understandable, but the matter of being ghosted didn’t end there.

A week or two ago I was walking down my lane when Dear Mama passed me in her motor car. Whenever she does that she always slows, waves, and smiles. Not this time. No slowing, no wave, no smile, no hoot of a horn. That’s most unusual, and the matter still doesn’t end there.

Two evenings ago I was doing some work at the bottom of my garden close to the gap which leads onto the lane. A movement caught the corner of my eye and I turned to see Honourable Sister, accompanied by Oscar the Sprocker Spaniel, walking past me and down the lane without so much as a turn of the head and a ‘Hi Jeff’, which is the usual minimal greeting bestowed by said lady.

I speculated on the many possible reasons why I should have become suddenly persona non grata to the eminent members of the Shire’s top family. I won’t bother to relate the full list because most of them are probably wrong, but I did settle on one outstanding favourite: I suspect I might have inadvertently slipped through a veil and into a parallel dimension, one in which I’ve never polluted the airspace around the vaunted family and they have never noticed my presence in their demesne. And the reason for considering this the most likely explanation is that Honourable Sister’s hair was a different colour than it usually is.

Clueless, Characterless, and Clownish.

I passed one of the pub/bistro bars in Ashbourne today and saw that it was dark inside. And then I saw a hand-written notice on the window which said:

PLEASE YOUSE (sic) THE BEER GARDEN AT THE SIDE

Need I comment further?

And then I went along the high street and saw that my old favourite coffee shop, Costa Coffee, was thoroughly topsy-turvy and full of contractors. The notice on their window said that it was closed for ten days for a ‘makeover.’

I wonder what a ‘makeover’ means exactly. Does it mean that they’re going to make it a brightly lit, smarty-pants modern place like the others in Ashbourne? That would be an issue to me because my idea of a proper coffee shop is one which is clean and tidy, but a little beaten up almost to the point of being slightly seedy. It needs to be the right sort of environment for enjoying the heady, old socks aroma of French and Turkish cigarettes (even though it’s illegal to actually smoke anything – French, Turkish, Indonesian or whatever – indoors these days.)

I do hope not because I’m growing tired of the smarty-pants, sanitizing trend now infecting modern times in all sorts of ways. The big casualty is character, and I’m a big fan of character.

*  *  *

Finally, it might have been noted that I haven’t strayed much into the political arena lately. It’s because I’m becoming thoroughly disenchanted with politics and politicians everywhere, especially in America it has to be said. I do sympathise with good Americans who have to tolerate the lamentable state of their politics and politicians. It seems to me that the only difference between a circus and American politics is that in politics the clowns wear business suits.

Alternative Interpretation.

The field behind my house has quite a steep slope on it, and running up the middle at an angle is a track worn by the wheels of the farmer’s quad bike. The field is home to forty heifers and a smaller number of ewes with lambs.

Yesterday I saw one of the ewes with her two lambs resting half way up the hill on the track. The heifers were on the ridge at the top, and one of them decided to come down the field on the higher part of the track. I watched with interest to see what would happen when the lone cow reached the three sheep. Would she go around them, trample on them, or would the sheep move?

Ms Cow began to take a detour to pass the still resting sheep at a distance of a few yards, but when she came level with them she stopped and turned her head to look at them. I fancied I could hear her thoughts which went something like:

Bloody sheep. Who do they think they are making me go out of my way so as not to tread on them? I’ll show them, just see if I don’t.

And then she walked over and nudged the sheep which dutifully stood up and moved away. But then Mrs Cow continued to walk down the field without using the track, which made me wonder whether I’d mistranslated and what she was actually thinking was:

Poor sheep. Not very bright, are they? Haven’t they noticed that the big noisy thing goes up that track, and if the farmer doesn’t notice them he might run them over? Better go and move them I suppose, and that can be my good deed for the day.

Either way it would seem to be further indication that cows are smarter than people think they are. I well remember Ermintrude from The Magic Roundabout. She was pretty smart in a neurodivergent sort of way.

Questionable Comparison.

Today my thoughts fell to musing on the late conservationist, Dr Jane Goodall, who died aged 91 last October.

Being the incomplete spirit that I am, I fell to comparing people like Dr Goodall with the people who run this world of ours – those weak, seemingly soulless creatures who value nothing but money and power, however impoverished their claim to value might be.

I’m quite sure Dr Goodall would not have wanted me to say this, but I’m going to anyway: my thoughts proceeded to the matter of winning and losing, and a certainty soon settled that the true winners in this world are the Janes, and the real losers the likes of Trump and his fellow little failures.

And then came the usual question: why does the world have to be like this? Is it, perhaps to demonstrate the true nature of worth and worthlessness to those capable of seeing through the darkness to something worthier beyond? I wish I knew.