Two Astronomical Notes.

I've often thought it must be interesting to live on the equator and have only two seasons -- summer and spring/autumn -- instead of four as the rest of us get. Although I suppose you could argue that they do have a short summer and a short autumn but they would be effectively identical.

 

And only tonight I became aware of the fact that the point of sunrise at the summer solstice is diametrically opposite the point of sunset at the winter solstice. And now I'm trying to work out a reason to find such knowledge useful.

What's In a Given Name?

As a boy I never liked my forename. I always thought the name Jeffrey -- or even its more traditional form, Geoffrey -- sounded weak. When a nurse at the hospital asked for my preferred name so she could write it on the white board behind my bed, I suggested Buggerlugs. She declined and wrote nothing in the end, which is how I became a nameless bed dweller which did little for my ego. But to continue:

I don't see why I should regard Jeffrey as weak because it has perfectly reasonable antecedents. According to my research it's a branch of the German name Gottfried, which became Godfrey in England and Geoffroi in France. And the father of the English king Henry II -- the first king of the Angevin dynasty -- was a French nobleman called Geoffroi d'Anjou, which is how I've always assumed it came to England as Geoffrey. So if the name came from a nobleman, and considering the fact that mediaeval noblemen were generally violent thugs, there seems little reason to consider it weak. But I still do.

And incidentally, my full name at birth was Jeffrey Godwin, which is interesting because both names translate roughly to something like 'friend of God.' I suspect some mischievous influencer up in the rarefied realm was having a joke.

In any event, tonight I decided -- for the first time in my life -- that I would like to be called Stig.

A New Experience.

I just had a strange and unnerving experience, but to begin at the beginning:

I was woken early this morning by the builder racketing about on the roof. I had transport booked to do the grocery shop so I got up and started the day. Tonight the lack of sleep made me tired, and so I laid my head on the desk and fell asleep.

When I woke up my mood had taken a journey to an unfamiliar depth which is difficult to describe but I'll give it a go. I felt alone, cold, and depressed. Nothing new there -- I'm quite familiar with that one -- but there was something else which I can only describe as feeling as though I was on the edge of literal lifelessness. I don't remember ever having gone quite that far down before, and the word 'wretched' does it scant justice.

And so I sat at my desk with the thermometer falling for about an hour until I decided something had to be done. I loaded YouTube and watched a video made by a Norwegian explorer in which he goes into the Paris catacombs with a guide. It was surprisingly scary because the catacombs are unlit, labyrinthine, flooded in parts, and much of it is un-mapped. The scariness was enough to banish the feeling of near-lifelessness and I made a cup of hot coffee.  Salvation of sorts, I suppose.

No doubt somebody will know just what chemical which should be plentiful in my brain is sadly lacking, and probably tell me that I must eat a guava fruit every day. Or maybe give up the scotch and eat lemons instead. Fine, but I think I'd rather be alone, cold, and depressed. And I'm only making this post because my new-found vigour told me I should DO something. So now I have. Bye for now.

Feeling Unwelcome.

I mentioned in a recent post that my bedroom doesn't feel welcoming any more. I noticed tonight that the house itself doesn't feel welcoming either. I get the impression that I'm living in an alien space which is sentient and doesn't want me here. In short, it doesn't feel like home. Why should that be, I ask myself?

Well, the simple and rational explanation is that at this time of year my house feels cold and damp. The fact that it feels cold is because it is cold, and that's because heat is expensive and I'm not rich. But it isn't actually damp. The humidity indicator in my office is giving me 40% which is nicely in the middle of the acceptable range for a domestic dwelling. I think the damp feeling is purely psychological because the sensation of dampness naturally holds court in the mind with the feeling of coldness.

So is it all a product of my imagination? Maybe, probably, but who knows? All I know is that I feel unwanted here, and the feeling is the main thing, isn't it? At least it is to me. At the same time, I mentioned in an earlier post that I suspect that this house has some darkness in its history, so maybe there's some residual energy thing going on.

 

And by the way, I am aware that I'm privileged to have a roof over my head at all in this imperfect world. And so I am.

Am I boring you?

Gloom and Other Thoughts.

The Shire wasn't it's usual self today. I expect it was feeling poorly due to a turn in the weather. After weeks of cool, but dry and bright, conditions following the long warm summer, today brought a change from major to minor. The sky was unremittingly dark and heavy, suffocating the land and all who moved upon it. Showers of light rain dampened the roads and left the trees and hedgerows dripping with unaccustomed wetness, and my shuddering thoughts went back to that favourite line of mine from Tennyson: The wan day went glooming down in wet and weariness. The lunchtime walk usually lifts my spirits, but not today.

 

*  *  *

I was pleased to read that the citizens of Alberta have voted not to secede from Canada. Canadians are generally a pretty canny crowd, so it was no surprise. And it reminded me of being asked a question on a TV quiz show once: 'What is the capital of the Canadian province of Alberta?' Although it must have been around thirty years since I'd learned about the geography of Canada in high school, my memory did me proud. 'Edmonton,' I replied. Correct. I searched the eyes of my fellow competitors for signs of reluctant admiration, but sadly found none.

 

*  *  *

The Lady B said to me in a blog comment many years ago: 'I thought you had forgotten about me.' Well, I'm often struck by the thought that I would like to talk to said Lady at least once more before I take the big leap, just so that I can tell her, in all honesty, that never does a day go by but that think of her. Never. She has no reason to care one way or the other now, of course, but I occasionally listen to Loreena McKennitt's song The Never Ending Road -- as I did today -- and it always reminds me of her. Sometimes it even encourages a mysterious attack of dampness to gather around my eyeballs. I've no idea what it is.

Dealing With Weeks.

The builders turned up as promised this morning. They're replacing the roof over the kitchens of our two houses, and there were three vehicles filling most of the space at the bottom of my garden. Then another contractor turned up to check my my CO and smoke detectors. That made four vehicles. 

I have a historic reason for being very touchy about having vehicles at the bottom of my garden, and having been woken up early, the presence of four of them didn't exactly improve my mood. The builder said it should take a week and a half or maybe two weeks to complete the roofing job, but the forecast for the next week is for the weather to turn colder, wetter, and windier, so maybe my dolour will be extended further. 

The man who came to check the detectors kept referring to 'your CO2 detectors.' I had to correct him, didn't I.

'It's just CO.'

'What do you mean?'

'It's a CO detector, not CO2. CO2 is carbon dioxide. The air is full of the stuff. The bad gas is carbon monoxide -- CO.'

'Oh. Well it says CO2 on the box.'

I'll bet it doesn't. But by then I'd realised that I was being one of those jerks we all hate, so I changed the subject.

 

*  *  *

It struck me this morning that the local school has now started its half term holiday week. It gave me a minor shock actually, because I would have sworn they went back after the long summer break only last week. How time does fly when you're ancient as a dodo but not yet quite extinct.

Trump's Brothers Up North.

I was just reading the BBC article about the upcoming independence referendum in Alberta, Canada. It prompted me to say this:

The oil and gas reserves in Alberta belong to Albertans, but only legally. Ethically, oil and gas reserves are planetary resources and don't actually 'belong' to anybody. So when I hear Albertans saying, effectively: 'These reserves belong to us. Never mind the degradation of the environment and the deleterious effect it could have on our children and grandchildren, we want to be richer,' I hear the selfish, money-dominated attitude of a Donald Trump. And that disappoints me.

I also wonder whether Trump would take a personal interest in Alberta seceding from Canada. He might seek to influence the vote should it get that far. And who knows, he might even get that 51st state he's been slavering over since his Greenland failure.

This Band of Brothers.

We've recently been treated to the odd phenomenon of Trump bowing the knee to Putin, and only a week or so earlier he was sucking up to Xi, and now a curious suspicion has entered my head:

 

Given the combined military power of China, Russia, and the USA, could it be that the Big Three are planning to carve up the world between them -- Xi gets South and East Asia, Putin gets Eastern Europe and West Asia, Trump gets Western Europe and South America? Just think: Trump could have all the European historic buildings bulldozed to make way for parking lots, and the Oxbridge universities could become luxury hotels for rich golfers and paedophiles. Such fun.

I think I'm being fanciful, but it would solve Trump's 2028 problem. And maybe there's a shadow puppet master pulling all three strings, the existence of which player has long been forecast by those into dystopian conspiracy theories. Somebody should write a book, don't you think? Only not me because I couldn't be bothered.

Down and Whingey.

I'm having disturbed nights at the moment -- quiet but suspicious noises, unscheduled awakenings, and a feeling that the dark, cold bedroom is now alien territory. The bedroom is no longer the welcoming space that it used to be. 

 

Having risen much earlier than usual this morning, I spent the afternoon doing some quite strenuous gardening work which left me feeling very tired. I still feel very tired, which isn't ideal when the bedroom is no longer the welcoming space that it used to be.

Tomorrow the pestering begins from two separate sources. The first is likely to persist for two weeks, the other I don't know yet.

The latest casualties of my technology breakdowns saga are my grass trimmer and my landline phone. Not many things in my orbit work properly these days, and I do so like things to work properly. When you live out in the countryside and don't have the use of a car, replacing things is rather more difficult than it is if you're mobile. And to add insult to injury, the UK's main retailer of general household goods and equipment -- Argos -- won't allow my computer to access their website to order online. I don't know why and they can't tell me. And I wouldn't have anything to do with Amazon even if everything packed up altogether. Ethical trading is important to me and I doubt Amazon could even spell the word.

I'm giving more thought to discovering the undiscovered country when the time comes for me to turn permanently cold and increasingly smelly (I still retain some semblance of vanity, you see) and become even more useless than I am now. I think I might cope as long as there are plenty of happy dogs, no technology, no East Asian ghosts with long black hair and empty eye sockets, and the Japanese girls all speak English and look like Yui Hasegawa with a pony tail.

So now I'm going to see whether I can stay awake while I read a few pages of Mrs Woolf's writing.

(Might I break the mold and mention that I pleased a YouTuber with a complimentary comment last night? Apparently, I made her day.)

The One Good Result.

I take very little interest in male elite sport these days. It's too dominated by big money, big egos, and a win-at-all costs attitude. It lacks something of the honourable rivalry that it used to have.

 

Not so the women's versions of football and rugby union. They haven't quite got there yet, and so I still have something to watch. And watch I did last night when the England rugby team played Canada in Toronto. Kick off time was 12 midnight British Summer Time, so it suited me to watch the game and go to bed immediately afterwards.

At the start of the match England had gone forty one games unbeaten, with forty wins and one draw. Understandably, they were (and remain) the top ranked team in the world. But last night they lost to the Canadians who scored a try in the last three minutes. I went to bed in a surprisingly grouchy mood and the result was the first thing I thought of when I woke up this morning.

So what's the one good result? Well, it means that when we watch an England team play a rugby match now, we can do so with a sense of jeopardy. And that seems to me to be a good thing.

A Little Folk Song Mystery.

For two days now I've had the aeons-old Devonshire folk song Widecombe Fair going through my head on a never-ending loop. It's one of the best known of British folk songs; I'm fairly sure I was first exposed to it in primary school. 

 

Has nobody noticed that it ends with the death of a horse through callous mistreatment? So why is it so popular? Why is it taught to school children? Do people think that working a horse to death is funny or something? And why has it been going round and round in my head for two days?

The Virginia Obsession.

I wish I could get out of this daily need to say something new about Virginia Woolf's writing, but the problem is this:

It took me quite some time to get used to her. Virginia Woolf writes differently than any other of the notable writers I've read, so much so that it's a bit like learning to comprehend a different dialect of your native language. It takes a while for the fog to slowly dissipate, but when the dialect crystalizes into intelligible speech, the effect is captivating. At least to me it is.

It's her mind, you see. It's so vast that it seems almost as if the world simply isn't big enough to accommodate it. The world of bishops and barristers, builders and bus drivers, Bentleys and Bugattis, festering hovels and fine houses, farmers' fields and flash floods (where am I supposed to stop?) is inadequate for a massively perceptive intellect which spots every nuance in the world of an urbane woman and leaves you with the feeling that there's plenty more but the story had to end somewhere. And her endings, when she finally releases the tether, are unbearably perfect. As someone who once thought himself a passable writer, I'm truly envious. I've enjoyed and appreciated the skill of plenty of writers, but I've never envied one before.

I'm even tempted to wonder whether she wasn't human at all, but a member of some superior species spending a mere fifty years of life observing reality at the base level and describing it to those capable of understanding. And just in case I'm giving a false impression here, let me say that she is often dismissive of base reality, but never arrogant. In fact, arrogance seems to be one of the states of mind she most derided.

There might be more to come.

Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man.

I found a photograph of mine on eBay last night. It had been used for a postcard, was second hand, and was priced at £5.99. Underneath it said by Beazley. How on earth did I get to be that valuable?

 

*  *  *

I met an attractive young lady in the village this morning. As far as I know she's lived here all her life, but the last time I saw her was several years ago and she was but a teenager and therefore of no consequence. She's still of no consequence, and shall I tell you why? It's like this:

Imagine you're hungry but there's no food anywhere except a tray of doughy bread waiting to be baked. Only there's no fuel to start a fire to heat the oven to bake the bread. That's what it's like.

 

*  *  *

I have an invader in the house and it's troubling me a lot because a hatred of anything or anyone invading my private space is one of my most potent neuroses. I was first made aware of it when I was about eight and it's never eased.

The Magic of the Yelp.

I was just listening to a Mediaeval Babes track on YouTube, and at the end of every verse the company of young women did a yelp in concert.

What is it about the yelp that is so invigorating? I suspect it's a sensual thing, but maybe I shouldn't go further. It's just that men can't do it.

On History and Frustration.

All my life I've had a keen interest in history, mainly English history simply because I happen to be English. And there are several people who stand out in the annals of England and particularly dominate my interest. One of the foremost is Aetheflaed, Lady of the Mercians, and here's the problem.

 

We know her heritage; she was the daughter of Alfred the Great of Wessex. We know she married the King (or possibly overlord) of Mercia, and we know that together they re-conquered a great deal of the land which had been captured by the Danish Great Army. We know that after her husband became incapacitated for some reason and eventually died, Aethelflaed carried on alone and became the great warrior queen of the early Middle Ages. We know that the Danes who still controlled Jorvik -- roughly the modern county of Yorkshire -- submitted to her without a fight. And we know that by the time she died aged 48, two thirds of the land we now call England was back under English control and the base was established for the final conquest and establishment of the England we know today.

But it's no enough. It tells us where she came from and what she did, but it doesn't tell us who she was. I want to see her and look into her eyes. I want to hear her voice and watch her bearing as she walks. I want to know what moved her, what angered her, what comforted her. I want to get a sense of her dedication, her intelligence, her courage, her inner strength. I want to know whether she was ever afraid. I want know how she reacted to, and dealt with, the powerful people in her own circle who objected to her leadership simply because she was a woman. I even want to know where she thought the dead go.

And I can't know any of this because nobody wrote objective biographies of strong women in those days. Such accounts as were written were written entirely by and about prominent men, and concentrated on deeds, not character. That gives me a frustrating gap that I can never fill.

Today's Profile.

Today had a distinct pattern to it. It started with rain and then dried up early to leave a fine and sunny day, and the same could be said of my personal fortunes.

They began badly with a crotchety and confused computer and a pestering text message from a contractor. I was in a bad mood when I went to Ashbourne to be skewered with needles in preparation for the flu and Covid season, but matters improved as the weather did. For a start, I learned something interesting: flu jabs are painful but Covid jabs aren't. I questioned the nurse about it and she confirmed that it's a well known fact.

And then the young woman in the coffee shop was friendly towards me which she usually isn't, and a delightful lady dog was desperate to be my friend while she was pining for her human who'd gone into Sainsbury's, and then I helped another delightful dog find her tennis ball when it had rolled away and she couldn't find it. On the way back I chatted to the Pakistani taxi driver and discovered that he has good qualities above and beyond the average. Four positive things in one day, eh? How often does that happen?

But tonight produced a mystery. I had a little something to send to the priestess, even though we're no longer engaged in correspondence, and had bought a proper little parcel box from the stationers to do the deed. I searched out her company's address in London since I have no other address for her, and had to do a little digging in order to get it. The search of company records indicated that she has now moved to the USA, California to be precise. What a strange thing for a priestess to do. Maybe she isn't a priestess any more. Is she not aware that the black cloud of Trump is still oppressing the nation? How sad.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Media Technology.

Every day when I load YouTube I'm presented with a very large number of channels making obviously false claims, offering obviously fake facts, or indulging in clickbait tasters which are ludicrously sensationalised through the use of outrageous exaggeration. And although I don't use social media platforms myself, I gather it to be a known fact that such platforms are the main route by which disinformation and misinformation are circulated to a gullible public.

And so I wonder whether any academic has yet conducted a formal study and produced concrete evidence to show the extent to which modern technology has made the world a more dishonest place. I've no idea how the methodology of such a study could be structured, but it seems like an interesting challenge.

The Eternal Panacea,

I'm depressed every morning when I wake up, but last night I had a disturbing dream about my ex-wife and woke up with an extra bucketful. The result was that I felt a little more than depressed; I felt crushed.

And then I went for my late morning walk and saw a middle aged woman coming up the lane with a cocker spaniel on a lead. I've seen them a few times in recent weeks and have always exchanged a one-word greeting as we passed. I did the same today, but on the way back I passed them again. Twice in one day suggested a message from the universe that I should request the pleasure of meeting the cocker spaniel. The woman concurred, and the little lady dog looked very eager, and so make friends we did.

Subsequent conversation revealed that the woman was the mother of one of the people who have moved into a house at the bottom of the lane, and she said that she was perfectly willing to let the dog make friends with people but warned that she was very active and therefore likely to jump up and dirty people's clothes.

'I don't mind as long as you don't jump up,' I replied. No I didn't. That was a lie. What I actually said was: 'I'll wipe off.' I mean, where does a bit of mud on your raincoat stand in comparison with the good offices of a dog? No comparison, is there? And then I felt considerably lighter.

Because that's what dogs do, isn't it? They add energy and light to your spirit so that being alive on this benighted planet doesn't seem so bad after all. At least, that's the effect they have on me.

The Stranger at the Front.

I've always had difficulty accepting that the face I see in the mirror and in photographs is actually my face. It doesn't look like the face I see when I imagine myself (which I do quite a lot because I'm always standing apart and watching myself, but always from behind or above so I don't get a direct look at my face.) There's something wrong with it and I've never worked out what it is, although I do sometimes I wonder whether it's a real human face at all.

Leaving such extreme speculation apart, however, it leads to the uncomfortable feeling that whoever sculpted my face was but a learner in the matter of sculpting faces, and either accepted that a poor result was better than no result at all and gave up, or threw away his attempt and replaced it with one he'd found on somebody else's reject pile. Whichever it was, the face I was given doesn't look like me. And it looks ever less like me the older I get.

Nobody ever mentioned the fact.

Another Hole in My Knowledge.

There was a rather horrifying report in the news this morning. It seems there's a wildlife park in Yorkshire where, according to witnesses, a man wearing earphones (though why that fact should be considered significant I don't know) was seen pacing around the tiger enclosure. He then managed to reach the top of the barrier, jumped in, lay down in front of a tiger, and was promptly killed by said animal.

There's something about me which can't take this story -- horrifying though it undoubtedly is -- at face value. I want to know all about this man. I want to know about his childhood, his habits and recreations, whether or not he was a habitual taker of hard drugs, his employment history, his family environment, his current circumstances, and whatever else there is to know.

I need to understand him, you see. I need to find the reason why he did it because his mind was clearly working along lines I haven't encountered before. There are gaps in my understanding of human nature, and this is a big one.

Another Note on the Persephone Effect.

The professionals who make their living from gardeners and gardening are wont to encourage the setting of late-blooming flowers which 'add autumn colour' to the garden. I was looking at some sedums and anemones in my own garden today and realised why I'm uncomfortable seeing flowers in the autumn. It comes down to what belongs and what doesn't. 

 

For me, flowers belong in the spring and summer when the temperature is rising, the days are lengthening, and the sun is reaching full power. It's the 'up' half of the year when optimism is in the air, and flowers are a delightful part of the picture.

Autumn, on the other hand, is the early part of the 'down' half of the year. The temperature is falling, the days are shortening, and the sun is losing its potency. Optimism is being replaced by pessimism as we layer up our clothing for the time when cold will be the new normal, the trees will become skeletal, and darkness will fill two thirds of the diurnal round. At east that's how the seasons and senses work for me. Flowers seem incongruous in that scenario, and that's why I'm uncomfortable with seeing them at this time of year.

This principle doesn't apply, of course, to the warm colours in the natural landscape. The masses of red and gold to be seen in the retiring tree canopies is the colour of decay, and that's perfectly appropriate in the down half of the year.

('You're strange,' I hear heading my way. So should I now consider the difference between being strange and being unconventional? Don't thinks so. Don't care.)

Seeing My Reflection in a Woman Long Dead.

I regret that I'm going to allow myself to become irritatingly repetitive by returning yet again to my current idee fixe: the personality of Virginia Woolf as evidenced by her writing. I crave pardon for that, but I wish I could persuade every reader of this blog (and I suspect there are a few) to read her short story The Introduction. I can't, of course, but let me begin at the beginning.

Some Buddhist traditions offer a simple account of the nature of humankind. They say we humans are a mixture of the angel and the monkey. Some err on one side and some the other, to varying degrees of course. I agree with it wholeheartedly, and when I express my dissatisfaction with the human condition I'm frequently told: 'You have to take the good with the bad. See one and ignore the other.' I find it a shallow viewpoint and my reply is always the same: 'If someone laced your cocktail with a spoonful of engine oil, could you taste the liquor and ignore the oil?'

This is the essence of The Introduction, expressed and explained through the meeting of Lily Everit and Mr Brinsley. She wishes to engage with him until she sees him callously pull the wings off a fly. He becomes the oil in the cocktail and her faith in the greatness of human endeavour falls in an instant. 

She is writing my nature for me, but more passionately, more painfully, more skillfully, and more completely. I found her writing hard to negotiate initially, but persevered because I felt I should. Now I respect and adore the woman. I feel at the moment that she and I might be identical twins because most of what she writes echoes my own nature.

 

Maybe one day I will encounter something which questions that adoration. If so, I'll deal with it when I get there.

Trump's Fantasy World.

OK, so let's see whether I've got this right:

 

Mr Super Ego, Donald Trump, sets his sights on his birthright. He wants to be Grand Emperor of the whole western world. The western world, with the sole exception of the USA, isn't too keen on the idea and resists, so Trump gets a bit miffed as usual, bellows a lot, and starts his tariff war. So let's look at tariffs.

Import tariffs punish the exporters because they make imported products more expensive. But they also make those which do come in more expensive for the exporter's customers. That means Americans have to be asked to do one of two things: either pay the higher price where comparable goods are not home produced which increases inflation, or buy less -- which is an odd thing to ask of consumers in the world's most consumption-obsessed country. Either way, American inflation increases. 

 

But then we get the big one: gasoline prices.

Trump starts what is essentially a fake 'war' with Iran. The reason he gives is dubious in several respects and so we can't be entirely sure what his real reason is, but that's what he does. Iran responds by strangling the oil supply from the Middle East and gas prices begin to rise. Trump then does what bullies always do which is to attack, and take a ruling stake in, relatively weak little Venezuela which has lots of lovely oil on the doorstep.

But it isn't enough, so next he comes whinging to Europe and tells us to release oil reserves to help him out of a mess. And, as usual again, he gets petulant when Europe doesn't just bow the knee immediately. This is unthinkable to the Emperor and he's still in a pickle, so where does he turn next?

He turns to World Public Enemy number 1, Vladimir Putin. He makes a deal to buy Russian oil, thus distilling the very measures which are aimed at keeping the brakes on Putin's unjustified aggression against somebody else's sovereign country,

And let's just put the biggest laugh of all into this epic of absurdity: He bad mouths the Norwegians for failing in their duty to award him the Nobel Peace Prize. He's used military force against Venezuela, attacked Iran killing lots of civilians, reduced the pressure on warmongering Russia, and connived in the deaths of thousands of innocents in Gaza. And he wants the Nobel Peace Prize.

This is not just absurd but positively surreal, so much so that I can't believe I'm not missing something somewhere. If anybody can tell me what it is I'd be pleased to hear it.

Virginia Being Familiar.

I'm going to cheat and post somebody else's words for a change. The following is an extract from tonight's reading of Virginia Woolf. The essence of stream of consciousness style is still there, but the narrative flows more directly, more simply, than I've found in most of her writing so far. It's almost like reading a regular story. It still needs to be read carefully, though, because the balance of phrasing as dictated by the punctuation is a little unconventional. Just a little effort, and I think it's worth it.

...to run and hurry and ponder on long solitary walks, climbing gates, stepping through the mud, and through the blur, the dream, the ecstasy of loneliness, to see the plover's wheel and surprise the rabbits, and come in the hearts of woods or wide lonely moors upon little ceremonies which had no audience, private rites, pure beauty offered by beetles and lilies of the valley and dead leaves and still pools, without any care whatever what human beings thought of them...

 

Does that remind you of anybody you know, only more keenly observed and much better written?

Hail Glorious America.

The BBC World News leads today with a picture of Mr Hegseth looking determined (or should that be maniacal? Difficult to tell.) He's now engaged in providing a further boost to America's reputation as the world's foremost civilisation. 'I order that this execution be live streamed. We Americans know how to dispense justice.

(Forget 'dispense' and replace it with 'do.' 'Dispense' has two syllables which might be too challenging.)

Or then again, his decision might have some sense behind it. History has shown over and over again that human beings like nothing more than watching someone die violently -- the crowds around the Tyburn gallows and the infamous French tricoteurs, for example. No doubt a lot of Americans will be licking their lips while the ratings soar, and maybe Mr H hopes that his image will be augmented and provide him with a route to the presidency when Trump heads off to meet the Inquisition.

 

Or -- third possibility -- maybe he just wants something relaxing to watch while he's knitting.

Damn!

I just watched a video on YouTube in which a young blonde woman with a Nordic-sounding name plays a hurdy-gurdy and sings a Nordic-sounding song in the woods. Why doesn't that sort of thing ever happen in real life? (Not that I'd have a clue what to do with a hurdy-gurdy at my age, but still...)

A Little Astronomical Mystery.

All my life I've been led to the belief that in order to see the aurora borealis it is necessary to travel to somewhere close to or north of the Arctic circle. And yet over the past few years there have been several features in the BBC news telling us where and when is best to view the aurora from the UK, even in southern parts of the country.

This naturally leads to the suspicion that something has changed. Is that true? If it is, why have I seen nothing to explain what has changed, why it has changed, and whether further implications might be involved.

Meanwhile, it appears that I must be settled and bend up each corporal agent to the fact that, given the few years I presume are left to me, the chances of seeing the aurora are greater than the likelihood of ever tasting baked Alaska. (And there goes dear Will having something to say about nearly everything as usual.)

An Interesting Source of Perception.

I find it surprising that something as functional and impersonal as YouTube should teach me something about the way I perceive people.

There's an American woman whose reaction videos I occasionally watch. At first I saw her as being merely plain. Certainly not ugly, but a face which, in itself, didn't draw my attention. What caught my attention the most was her voice. There was a huskiness about it, and her accent was intriguing because the speech pattern was slightly slower than most American accents and the diction a little more drawn out. And yet I soon realised that it was definitely not full southern. 

In one of her latest videos she mentioned her native state: West Virginia. 'Ah,' I thought, 'so that's the sound of north Appalachia.' By then, however, the sound of her voice had already caused me to shift my perception of her face and I'd begun to find her physically attractive. Now I think she's quite lovely and want to know whether she's called Abigail, because that really would be the icing on the cake. I'm also curious to know whether she plays the banjo, but asking her would seem a little too intrusive and she probably wouldn't get the joke anyway.

Keeping Score.

I became a little restive with my computer this morning when it was having more difficulty waking up and functioning normally even than I was.

 

I had arguments with two men at the recycling facility in Ashbourne since they were incapable of understanding that in unusual circumstances it is both acceptable and preferable to exercise flexibility and discretion than stand on the letter of some misbegotten rule.

 

When I was in the town I passed a couple walking their black Labrador dog. The dog looked up at me and I smiled back, at which point he wagged his tail and they moved on. When I saw them later on the other side of town, the dog dragged his humans towards me until he was close enough to put his head on my foot. That was rather moving and much fuss was exchanged. 

The leader of the Conservative party, Kimi Badenoch, has laid her cards on the table. She says that if she becomes Prime Minister at the next election, the rich will be protected and the poor punished. I suspect she's a fan of Donald Trump.

It's turned substantially colder here in Blighty, and I was told today that snow is forecast for parts of the UK next week. I hate snow.

 

I make that 4-1 to the dark side.

Braving the Bug Army.

On a warm, sunny October day like today it's normal to see the south wall of my house liberally populated by ladybirds (ladybugs.) They sit there taking the last warmth of the sun before crawling into the tiny spaces between the casements and window frames where they stay in hibernation for the winter.

Not so today. Today they were running (and sometimes flying) rampant inside and outside the house. Inside they were on various surfaces, the floors, the stairs, the banister rail, and the insides of the windows. Outside they were on the plants, the path, the outside of the windows, and even on me. There was one on my hair, another on my sweater, and yet another crawling around my ear. Doing anything today required stepping carefully across a minefield of ladybirds.

I know ladybirds are just bugs like any other bugs, but their red and black markings make them the very epitome of bug niceness. I remember when there was a range of children's clothing called Ladybird for that very reason. And I hate hurting anything, much less killing a living creature. But the constant need to look out for rampant ladybirds gets a bit tiresome, and I don't know why they're behaving that way this year.

A Striking Contrast.

I'm currently listening to an Irish slow air called Amhran Mhuinse (excuse the lack of fadas but I'm writing this in blogger's own compose facility. And blogger is American, so...)

 

As usual I'm being struck by the difference between the Irish ballad a la Daniel O'Donnell, and the Irish slow air. The first has me running to the toilet in hopes of getting there before I spill the beans, while the second is so hauntingly beautiful and other-worldly that time seems to stop. Fortunately, Amhran Mhuinse is an example of the latter.

On Fighting Bears and Following Ms Woolf.

I'm currently struggling with my computer. Actually, I've been struggling with it for several years now, but whereas the struggle used to be akin to persuading the dog to stop stealing the cat's dinner, now it's more like fighting off a polar which is  trying to convert me to his. It isn't easy. I've seen the polite little notice Gah! Your tab just crashed at least thirty times this evening and probably more, and I've restarted it three times in the hope of persuading the polar bear to clear off back to Svalbard.

But it is fourteen years old, and I don't suppose there's another person in the whole world who is using a fourteen-year-old computer. It's also still running on Windows 7 because it's always run on Windows 7 and Windows 7 is familiar to me. 'Oh, come on,' I hear you say, 'why don't you just get a new computer with an updated operating system?' 'Well now,' I would reply, 'there's actually a blog post in my head explaining why I haven't bought a new computer with an updated operating system. You wouldn't believe just how much there is to say on the matter. You probably wouldn't even believe some of the things I would say on the matter either. I'm a bit strange in some ways, as you might have noticed.' So let's change the subject to something simple and familiar.'

 

While I was waiting for my hungry polar bear to consider its options tonight I had lots of time to fill, and so I read another of Virginia Woolf's short stories. I'm not going to give a synopsis this time, just explain an issue because the contrast between struggling with a polar bear and struggling with Virginia's writing style is most marked and very wearing.

I've never read anything like Virginia Woolf (except when I read her novel To the Lighthouse, of course, when, for some reason or other, I failed to notice the difficulty. Maybe I was in a strange mood at the time. It has been known.) But the point I'm trying to make is simple enough. 'Normal' fiction generally gives you three main elements: facts, description, and dialogue, all couched in familiar, real world terms which the majority of us comprehend without too much effort (apart from Gen Z, apparently, who only want the conversations so they skip everything else. Or so it is said.) 

 

But Virginia's writing isn't like that. You can't swim easily through the flow of a sentence and then step effortlessly into the next one. You have to concentrate carefully on every word, even the prepositions, and you also have to concentrate on her choice of punctuation because even a minor decision can make all the difference to the meaning. (I read a comment from one critic somewhere which said she made an art of the semi colon.) I'll give you an example. At one point in the story she uses the word 'was' where I felt it should have been the subjunctive 'were.' It just sounded more right that way. So I stopped reading for a few minutes and thought about it. No, she was right after all and it was my understanding of the statement that was wrong. And it's almost crippling at times, yet strangely enjoyable.

But you know what? I'm almost looking forward to the day when I can saunter off to discover the undiscovered country, as long as it has no polar bears in it, the literature is clever but straightforward, and nobody ever upgrades computers.

The Peasants Are Back.

The House Sparrow (Passer Domesticus) has long been regarded as the humble runt of the bird world. It was also the most numerous, at least in Britain and possibly the rest of Europe too, and maybe its sheer ubiquity was the reason for its peasant status. It suffered a decline some years ago but is now, as far as I'm aware, back up to something like full numbers. 

In the twenty years I've lived in this house I've always had a resident population of between twelve and twenty birds. One shrub in the garden was their regular perching place during the day, and another was where they retired to roost at twilight. My garden was never without sparrows for the whole of that time and I was very fond of the little guys. I couldn't care less for their peasant status. Most of my ancestors were peasants, and what's wrong with peasants anyway? And there were several sections of hedgerow lining the lanes and fields where I'd see a small flock them every time I went for a walk, especially in the late autumn, winter, and through the spring while the hedges were neatly trimmed with flat tops. They usually twittered as I walked past, and it was nice to think they were offering a greeting even though they probably weren't.

But this year they disappeared. Completely. No sparrows in the garden, and no sparrows on any of the lanes. Not a single one. It went on for months while the hot, dry summer lasted, and I was obviously curious to know what had happened to them. I missed them, you know? I really did. My best guess was that they'd relocated to spots near the river a mile away where there was water to be had because bird numbers were low generally during the summer. But I still saw the odd robin, blackbird, dunnock, blue tit, and so on. So why no sparrows? Could the whole population have died out for some reason? I hoped not.

Today was a day for celebration because the were two of them on the bird table, one male and one female. I watched them for some time to make sure I wasn't mistaking them for the similar looking dunnocks, but no. They were unquestionably sparrows, and hopefully more will arrive soon and the peasant status quo will be re-established. If I see them tomorrow I'll ask them where they've been. And if I get a reply I'll be sure to report it here.

Latecomers.

Every year at around this time I report on the appearance of one or more skeins of geese flying overhead, honking loudly, and evidently heading for some place with a milder climate before the winter arrives. Tonight was the night. There were eighteen of them and they were headed ESE.

But then, a few minutes later, I saw another pair of birds coming from, and heading in, the same direction, and the sound they made was less of a honk and more of a quack. So what's that about? And why were they late.

(And they were definitely geese, by the way, just in case anyone thinks my eyesight or my judgement is fading with my mood.)

Virginia's Gift.

I'm warming to the writing of Virginia Woolf. 

 

Tonight I read one of her short stories called The New Dress. It's about a woman with a new yellow dress which she wears to attend a soiree at the house of Mrs Dalloway (the eponymous MC of a novel which I must read one day.) But she has a problem. She's utterly lacking any trace of self-esteem, and the whole work is a ramble on the issue. Over the course of eight pages she lays down her train of thoughts as she mingles dutifully with the other attendees, using metaphor, simile, memories, general allusions, and even logic. And she isn't truly mingling at all, of course, but seeing her shortcomings reflected back to her in every conversation and situation. A recurring theme in these rambles is that she isn't actually depressed, just flat, and the yellow dress is the fulcrum on which these many sided musings pivot.

I'm beginning to get the impression that all of Virginia's writings are effectively one long string of autobiographical fragments, strung together through a brilliantly perceptive mind and a penchant for prose which is perfect for the endeavour. Eight pages of self-absorption or not, I found it most compelling.

 

(I was meaning to write a post today about the growing sense that my own connection with this mortal life is fading -- not physically, but mentally. Hardly anything attracts my interest nowadays. When I'm not depressed, I feel flat. But maybe we've had enough self-absorption for one day, so I'll leave my own ramblings for another.)

The Eating Dilemma.

We think of eating as one of life's great pleasures, don't we? It's wired into us, presumably because a body has to eat in order to live and function normally. But I have a problem with it. 

One of the INFJ personality type's leading characteristics, or so the experts in such matters tell us, is the unconscious need to dive deeply into every subject and assess it from all angles (it's why we tend to be slow at making decisions) and if you do that, the practice of eating shows its dubious side. I wrote a long post about it in my head last night, but it was getting close to bed time and so I decided to leave writing it until today. Today I changed my mind because the main thrust of the piece was, should we say, unacceptably unsavoury. Instead, I'll just mention the way I was brought up with regard to the matter of eating.

My mother was raised in poor circumstances where social niceties held little sway, if any at all. It was also an unhappy upbringing, and I always had the impression that she wanted to adopt the mindset and -- where possible -- the mannerisms of the more genteel folks (and all without ever being snobbish, I might add.) She had spent time as a young woman working in service for a posh family somewhere in the more refined suburbs and had observed their habits with regard to meal times. And these she passed onto me in case I ever graduated to a more rarefied level so that I wouldn't let myself down. Eating came with strict rules which I took to heart in childhood and have never relinquished. They are:

1.Know the right table settings for cutlery, glasses, side plates etc so that you are always sure to use the correct implement.

2. Be diligent with regard to the rules of using such implements. They are immutable. Any careless descent into using your knife like a pencil or a skinning tool, or your fork like a coal shovel, will consign your reputation in the minds of the genteel to the grubbiest of gutters. And never allow your elbows to extend more than two inches from your waist whilst eating.

3. Only put small amounts of food in your mouth, so the fact that you are engaged in masticating is hardly visible on the outside. This even applies to casual eating of things like biscuits, cake, and pastries.

4. Keep your mouth tightly closed as long as there's even a small amount of food in it.

5. Never open your mouth to talk until you've swallowed everything.

6. Never take a drink while there's food in your mouth (because few working class habits are quite as disgusting as that one.)

7. Avoid picking things up with your hands. If there is a spoon or fork available, use it.

8. Never grunt while eating (as my step father did every meal time.)

 

So there you have it. Those genteel folks managed to devise a code with which to balance the necessity of the act with the unsavoury nature of the process. Clever, weren't they? And all this is one of the reasons why I would never go into a fast food joint even if I wanted to.

Confused By the Darkness.

I've been wondering all day how to make a post about the Christa Pike story, and I'm uncommonly confused as to what my feelings on the matter really are. I don't even know why it's bothering me so much. I suppose it's the layers of tragedy, the smell of injustice, the abject nature of capital punishment, the surreal denouement and presumed incompetence, the question of what will happen next... and probably more than I can think of at the moment. There's almost something of the blackest of comedy about it if only it weren't real

The one thing I can be sure of is that the whole affair will do no favour to the reputation of the USA justice system and the state of Louisiana in the minds of compassionate people everywhere.

No more. Too late.

Ronnie and the Reluctant Horses.

I encountered my first ever robotic lawn mower today. It went by the name of Ronnie, or so a small voice in my head suggested with not a little conviction. And it was quite small -- maybe 30 inches by 15 or thereabouts, and looking for all the world like a vacuum cleaner with a mind of its own -- and was wandering up and down a patch of grass on one side of somebody's boundary wall. I watched it for some time to assess how it knew when to go straight, when to turn, where to go next, and so on. There was an appendage at the front with a glass panel which I assumed read the height and spread of the grass in front of it in order to make an informed decision. My attention paid off because I was eventually afforded the opportunity to say 'you missed a bit' because it had. Modern technology isn't all it's cracked up to be, you know.

The real problem, however, was evident a little way along the lane. Two handsome palomino horses were standing by a farm gate looking a bit tetchy, while their two women riders had dismounted and were holding onto the bridles looking irritated.

'They won't go past that robot thing,' said one of them. I had the impression she was blaming me in the absence of easier alternative.

It's hardly surprising, though, is it? A vacuum cleaner wandering about on its own, apparently aimlessly to a horse's perception no doubt, and making a funny buzzing noise to boot. Maybe I should have gone back to the machine and said 'Morning Ronnie, and how are you today?' And maybe Ronnie, bless his mindless modernity, would have performed something approximating to an Irish jig and squeaked happily. And then the horses would have strolled past in all their haughtiness and everything would have been well with the world. Never thought of that.