An Odd Thought.

I’ve said before that I tend to be moved more by deliverance than suffering. And maybe that’s why I had an odd thought while listening to Karl Jenkins’s Benedictus tonight.

It struck me that if I could come to the end of my life feeling that I had done all I came here to do, and done it to the best of my ability, what a day for celebration that would be.

A Sort of Retraction.

I just read that there’s some fake rubbish about the coronavirus doing the rounds of WhatsApp (whatever that is) and I gather it’s generating the occasional example of prejudice against Chinese people. So, just in case there is anybody of like mind reading this blog – which I very much doubt – I think I should point out that what I said about hanging them in cages above the market place was JUST A JOKE.

Anybody who has been reading this blog for a few years should be well aware that I like Chinese people in general, I have a lot of respect for aspects of their traditional culture, and I lay no blame at their door for the coronavirus.

And if any Chinese person feels moved to have me hung in a cage above the market place, please don’t forget to provide a sackcloth smock and a bucket of ashes. I do so like to do things properly.

Ice Cold in Derbyshire.

I’ve never been so adversely affected by the cold as I have this winter. This is interesting because winter has been relatively mild so far. The point about cold, of course, is that it’s a two edged sword. There’s the physical reaction to the temperature, and then there’s the psychological reaction to feeling it.

I’ve never been particularly good with cold because I don’t seem to produce body heat quite as readily as most people unless I’m doing manual work. I suppose it’s something to do with metabolic rate. But I’ve always been resilient to feeling cold. I’ve always been able to grit my teeth and convince myself that I don’t mind.

This winter has been different on both counts. I’ve felt the cold much more keenly this year. I’ve woken up on several nights feeling chilled, despite wearing two layers, being under a 17 tog duvet and wrapped in good quality flannel sheets, and having a 2kw convector heater running in the room. In such circumstances I have no right to feel cold, but I do. I wonder whether it has something to do with the fact that the medics now have me taking an aspirin a day to thin my blood to ameliorate the arterial problem. Could that be it? I don’t know.

As for the psychological reaction, that’s easily explained. My emotional baseline is the lowest it’s ever been in my life. I suffer an awful lot of anxiety and depression now, so the discomfort of feeling cold just adds more weight to an already heavy bag of woes. And what makes it worse is the fact that my immediate future is shrouded in thick fog at the moment, so I can’t even permit myself the luxury of looking forward to the summer.

So there you have it: JJ’s latest whinge. Thank you for reading. Come back soon. I might still be here.

A Note on Mr Putin and God.

I see Mr Putin wants to make it illegal for Russians to get married unless they believe in God (or at least be prepared to go into a church and lie.) This all seems very strange to somebody like me who was brought up during the Cold War when Russia was an avowedly God-less place (and also had no homosexuals, according to the Party line.)

So now I wonder whether Mr Putin himself believes in God.  And I’m also mildly intrigued by his support for the Orthodox Church. Is this because it’s politically expedient to have a powerful ally, or is it because he’s conservative by nature and the Orthodox Church is comfortably old fashioned? I imagine it’s probably both.

I’m also tempted to wonder whether dear Mr P is labouring under the delusion that he is God. I suppose he probably is in a manner of speaking.

Taking the Uncertain Line.

I’ve probably said before that hard-line atheists irritate me just as much as hard-line religionists do. They’re so settled in their certainties and soon become dismissive and patronising if anybody mentions God or heaven.

I upset two of them on YouTube this week. I seem to recall saying something like ‘Please don’t be so arrogant as to preach what you cannot demonstrate.’ I said lots more as well, and one of their replies referred to my ‘faith.’ I’d already explained that I don’t do belief, but I doubt they understood.

I remember my old friend Inspector Morse once saying of some conservative, hard-line male clerics who were trying stop their female counterparts being elected to positions of authority in an Oxford college:

‘It isn’t their faith that troubles me, it’s their certainty.’

The Costa Girl and a Chinese Thing.

The Costa girl doesn’t come into the shop to intrigue me any more. Haven’t seen her for weeks. But I do now have a theory as to why she used to stare at me. I’m reliably informed that INFJ types are noted for their habit of staring at people. It’s something I used to do all the time, but I’m making every effort to desist now because I’m trying to be a better person. So maybe she was an INFJ. She certainly had the look of an introvert about her.

But there was a Chinese woman in there today. I saw her again in the town later and made a point of smiling at her, just to see what would happen. She smiled back and looked mildly embarrassed.

It surprises me that we allow Chinese people to walk the streets these days, what with the coronavirus thing and all. I wonder why we don’t put them into cages and hang them above the market place where they can’t do any harm. If the BBC can milk coronavirus for all it’s worth in order to fill lots of airtime spots, why shouldn’t the rest of us have fun poking Chinese people with sticks while they’re hanging in cages above the market place?

And that little piece of homespun wisdom reminds me of a conversation I once had with Ms Wong, who I also haven’t seen for ages nor mentioned on the blog. I asked her:

‘Are you Han Chinese, Sam?’

‘Oh I don’t know, Jeff.’

‘You look Han Chinese.’

‘Do I?’

‘Yes. Han Chinese are the best looking Chinese. Those Manchu types all have faces which look like a dog’s bum with a hat on.’

‘giggle’

Actually, only the first two lines of that conversation happened. I made the rest up because it seemed oddly appropriate in the circumstances.

 

Edited to add later.

 

All that stuff about hanging Chinese people in cages because of the coronavirus was written before it became apparent that certain bozos with brains the size of bed lice were harassing and abusing Chinese people for real. My comment was just a bit of standard British humour. Please be clear: my brain is rather larger than a bed louse and I have never for one moment considered blaming an individual Chinese person for the generation of Covid-19. I do hope the people who read this blog would know that anyway.

The Cost of Getting Rid.

There has been some concern expressed over the past few years that British undertakers have been hiking their prices way beyond the level of inflation. It seems they have been taking advantage of the fact that they have a captive market ready and waiting to be exploited. Bodies do, after all, have to be disposed of, and the bereaved need a ceremony to help them say goodbye.

But what of the poorer members of society to whom the cost of a funeral is massive and which comes at a time when they are most emotionally vulnerable? While the undertakers assume the right to join the free market melee, what of those who can’t afford their inflated prices and do not fit the tight criteria for state help?

I walked past an undertaker’s shop today. It had three windows, the middle of which had a marketing slogan writ in big gold letters. It said:

When

Caring

Really

Counts

‘So care,’ I thought. ‘The poor don’t mind not having luxuries, but disposing of a loved one’s remains is hardly that.’

Peter Pan and My Oddnesses.

I just watched the 2003 version of Peter Pan. It’s a slightly odd fact that I never read it as a kid; I finally got around to doing so about ten years ago, sitting at my garden table in the summer sunshine as I recall.

I remember being surprised by the supposedly covert sexuality contained within it, but which was made glaringly obvious – rather salaciously so, I thought – at one point. I don’t remember which point it was, but I do remember discussing it with somebody by email at the time. She agreed.

I also remember thinking that Tinkerbell was probably the sexiest character in all of literature, a fact which I can now blame on my new-found status as an INFJ. It seems there are few oddnesses which can’t be explained and summarily excused if you’re an INFJ.

The Age of Buttons.

I’m becoming increasingly concerned at the extent to which technology is taking over the affairs of modern life – often with maddening inadequacy and frequent dysfunction – and in so doing, usurping the human touch which is the lifeblood of the human experience. I’ve had several experiences of this in the past week alone, and it seems to be getting worse.

Take Outlook email, for example. When you get an email now, it comes with a selection of three buttons which you can use to send a stock reply. Mel sent me one recently which said ‘I’ve paid that £100 back into your account.’ My first inclination was to reply ‘OK, thanks,’ and do you know what? There was a button which said OK, thanks. Did I use it? Most certainly I didn’t. I clicked the reply arrow and typed ‘OK, thanks.’ If I have something to say to somebody, I’ll say it myself. I find it nothing less than offensive to allow some damn machine to say it for me.

But then I wondered how their algorithm comes up with the stock replies. Let’s suppose I get an email from some young woman acquaintance which says:

Oh Jeffrey; dearest, dearest Jeffrey. Oh my oh my. Oh my God. Oh my giddy aunt.

 I had to write to thank you for the magical time we spent together last night. You are a prince among men, my dear. Did I say prince? Nay, a king… an emperor even. A wingèd angel clothed in gold samite. To call you an avatar would do you scant justice.

Never in my life has my womanhood been kindled to such blazing passion. Never has the most stringently guarded part of my inner self been rent asunder by a presence of such velvet-clad power. Never has my very soul been so massaged and taken to heavenly realms by the lord of all there is to survey there.

Please be mine forever, my darling J. If you deny me this, I fear I cannot live. Reply to me upon the instant while my poor heart still beats fretfully in expectation.

Your Abigail, alive or not as you command.

Would I still get a button which says ‘OK, thanks’?

Addressing the Simple Questions.

Three of the commonest questions people ask with regard to the more speculative aspects of life are:

Do you believe in God?

Do you believe in life after death?

Do you believe in fairies?

I groan inwardly when people ask these questions of me, not least because I don’t generally subscribe to the process of ‘belief’ in principle. But there’s another reason.

The vast majority of people who ask them – in my experience at least – take as their starting point a culturally-conditioned presumption as to the fundamental nature of the phenomenon in question. They’re tram line questions to which the questioner has applied no thought to either deeper spiritual possibilities or the complexities of existential enquiry. To put it simply, therefore, there can be no possibility of giving either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as an answer (even if I did subscribe to belief, which I don’t.)

So what do I do? Well, being the sort who doesn’t like to walk away from a question, I try to answer it giving due regard to the various aspects of possibility and speculation appropriate to the subject, and using as much logic as can be managed in the circumstances. And my final word is nearly always ‘I don’t know.’ Or it might be ‘And so I suspect that…’

And then I walk away and wonder why I bothered. Mostly.

*  *  *

If the current crop of truly scary and depression-inducing prospects works out well, and if I can then re-train my mind to start living in the light again, I might do a more comprehensive mini-series on the questions raised above. (Just for the sake of getting it on the record, you understand.) But we’ll see.