The Mystery of Ms Rachel.

I had another email from Rachel tonight. Remember Rachel? She was the friendly customer service assistant at my energy supplier who picked up my last few email enquiries.

I don’t know how she’s always the one to pick up my messages, or how I can be so lucky as to keep picking her out of the bran tub. She always responds so quickly, and talks to me like you would an old pal from high school.

You must admit, that’s most unusual for a representative of the corporate world. They usually connect you to a robot schooled in the list of FAQs and possessed of a minimal range of stock replies such as ‘I am unable to answer your query’, ‘resistance is useless’, and ‘you will be exterminated’ if the FAQs won't do. If you’re really lucky and get a friendly one, you might get a simple GOODBYE in big red letters.

So where did Rachel come from? If she’s a robot, she’s certainly a very advanced one from some superior civilisation far from planet earth. My growing conviction, however, is that she was my mother in a previous life and hasn’t moved on to a higher plane yet.

A Birthday Non-Post.

I was going to write a post tonight but I’ve been busy answering emails (and watching an episode of Doctor Who.) It’s my birthday, you see, and three people remembered. Getting three emails in one day is very rare.

It snowed heavily this afternoon to augment the cold, stormy winds we had over Friday and Saturday. I’ve been going frantic trying to provide the birds with food, while they’ve been trying frantically to get at it before the cruel snow covered it over. Did I say I hate snow? I do, with a passion.

Maybe I’ll think of something to say tomorrow.  

Arriving Early at the Underworld.

We had the first snow of the winter today and tomorrow is my birthday. The significance of the coincidence is simply that it’s most unusual to have snow in the UK before my birthday. The last time it happened it was followed by a miserable 5-month winter and most of my bat friends failed to reappear the following spring.

The sub-zero wind continues to bellow around my house and find access by unidentified means, which isn’t conducive to a comfortable evening. I decline to don a coat just to leave the confines of my office because such an action would merely accentuate the psychological impact of living in a fridge.

The supplementary heating I have in said office is struggling to make much of an impression on the temperature tonight. Unfortunately, it still costs the same amount to run.

The priestess has written me a number of deep and meaningful emails recently, but my replies have been taciturn and a little sharp in consequence of a sombre mood. It occurred to me that she might now be reluctant to write to me at all, and so I considered initiating an email back to say: ‘Please don’t be reluctant to write to me if such be your wish. Though my replies be disappointingly brief, I do still enjoy receiving them and take full note of everything you say.’ But it seemed like begging, so I didn’t.

OK, now I’ve got that off my chest I can return to the business of waiting patiently for bed time. I’m constrained from going to bed when the fancy takes me because I have a panel heater in the bedroom which is timed to work between 1am and 8am when the electricity is cheaper. I’m not a rich man, you see, and if the only point of being rich is to have a warm house in the winter, I see little reason to aspire to the condition. There isn’t really anything else I want for myself which requires money.

Mind Matters.

The wind is howling with great gusto around the house tonight, the mysterious creature which inhabits the roof space above my kitchen is knocking and scraping around, and I just watched a Doctor Who episode about a werewolf. It’s all making me feel curiously unsettled, as though the enemy is at the gates and I can hear them digging a tunnel under the walls. Did you know that fear and loathing of invasion is at the root of most of my neuroses? I suspect it’s a past life thing.

*  *  *

There’s a motivational video which occasionally shows up on my YouTube recommendations. It says something like: As soon as you stop wanting something, you will get it. What kind of motivation is that? If you’ve stopped wanting something, what’s the point of getting it? The question here, of course, is whether wisdom is all the wiser for being irrational.

Emma and the Banana.

Having typed a short blog post and watched an episode of Inside Number 9 on DVD, I found myself at a loose end and becoming bored. I decided it would be interesting to get hold of Wiki, type in ‘Emma Watson’ to discover when she was born, and then try to work out where I was and what I was doing at that most propitious of moments.

Why Emma Watson, you may ask. Well, I always think of her every time I write anything about the Liberal Alter-Establishment, especially since I have fond recollections of the time when she was effectively indistinguishable from Hermione Granger. That was before she became a professional actor, caught the popularity bug, and decided to prove to the world that she really did have breasts just in case any of us were wondering. And there was also the fact that, for all her fabled beauty – and I would be the last to deny that she was and still is extremely physically attractive – I always found her nose slightly irritating and wished they would avoid photographing her in profile.

But then I decided that my present needs would be better served by having a banana, so that’s what I did instead. (It had a black bit at the bottom, you know. I swear bananas never had black bits at the bottom when I was a lad.)

So here I am, having eased back the habitual depression a notch or two, having come a little closer to accommodation with sitting in a cold old house on a frigid November night, and having managed, in consequence, to make a silly and utterly pointless blog post. Hoorah for that, I say. I expect I’ll still be scared to get out of bed tomorrow morning because I always am, but that’s in the future.

(So should I now consider writing that post I’ve had in mind for a while, about the notion that time doesn’t exist, and if it doesn’t exist does it mean that there’s no such thing as past and future, and if that’s the case does it indicate that life is a matter of each individual’s fragment of consciousness travelling through a fixed tableau? Erm…)

Questioning the Gagging Orders.

I gather that in some conservative Islamic cultures a person can be sentenced to death for using words which are deemed to be insulting to the Prophet, even if unintentionally.

Meanwhile, the liberals in Australia are up in arms over a new law which allows members of religious faiths to offer a derogatory opinion of homosexuality based on the teaching of their holy book.

Does this amount to a sublime irony, or just another example of the world becoming sillier and sillier?

(And at this juncture I have to say that I view with extreme disquiet the notion that an honest expression of opinion can ever be deemed a ‘crime’. Are we not all free to simply disagree?)

Re-Writing the Folk Tale.

I think I’ve mentioned that I did some damage to my right arm during the autumn clearance work in the garden. After two months it continues to be painful, and in the interim I’ve been transferring as much duty as possible to my left hand. Now I seem to have overdone it because my left hand and wrist have started hurting as much as my right arm. It seems the story of Rapunzel need re-writing:

‘I say, beautiful lady, your singing has brought enchantment to my heart. May we meet?’

‘Yes, yes, we may, fair princely being. I will let my long, luxuriant hair down so you may climb up it and we can be together.’

‘Well, actually, I can’t.’

 

'Can't what?'

 

'Climb up it.'

‘Why not?’

‘My right arm and left hand both hurt. Can’t you come down?’

‘Of course I can’t, you idiot. The witch has locked me in up here. That’s the point.’

‘Oh I see. Oh well, can’t be helped I suppose. Bye, then.’

Standing Back.

Someone I know is currently being driven by the powerful winds of passion onto a course which I fear will drive her onto the rocks. So should I advise caution? No, for several reasons.

Firstly, I don’t give advice because I consider it presumptuous. Secondly, it isn’t really any of my business. Thirdly, I might be wrong. But the main reason is the fact that I know her to be an experience junkie, and experiences come in all forms, some good and some bad. That’s life and it’s her right to experience it warts and all.

If I’m right, perhaps I will still be around to help her patch up the ship. Or maybe I won’t.

*  *  *

I’m currently being wowed by Shirley Jackson’s masterful skill at drawing a character by the classic expedient of showing, not telling. I’m actually quite pleased that I never discovered this woman before. I think she would have slipped by unnoticed, and that would have been a shame.

Down But Not Quite Out.

So, what does a writer write about when the will to write is weak and there’s nothing to write about anyway?

That sentence jumped into my head two nights ago after I wrote the post about not being as good a writer as I used to think I was. And still there isn’t much to write about, although I suppose I could mention a couple of things in passing:

I read two reports this morning which left a strong feeling that I no longer wish to be a member of the human species. The first pushed my depression to an even deeper state, and the second opened the tap for a few minutes. It’s just that the dark magma which lies at the base of the human psyche, and which threatens to erupt only too readily and too often, is not to my taste. Reclusiveness seems to be the only way forward.

I discovered yesterday that John Fowles (author of The French Lieutenant’s Woman among other works) and I have certain notable character traits in common. If only I had an Elena van Lieshout to keep me company as winter approaches. Maybe I would if I’d begun to write earlier in life and taken it more seriously, but who knows where the road not travelled would have led?

Talking of winter, my house has now developed its characteristic winter chill. It’s probably no coincidence that my angina has also become more uncomfortable. The taking of walks around the Shire is now just another chore.

I wonder how long it will be before I think of something else to give me an excuse to exercise my fingers at the keyboard.

(I don’t much like being as self-indulgent as this, but I haven’t much else to do during the long, dark evenings. The priestess said to me last night: ‘I know we’re worlds apart at the moment.’ She was right.)

Re-Appraisal.

I’ve just started reading one of Shirley Jackson’s earlier novels, The Bird’s Nest, and it’s teaching me something important:

I was never as good a writer as I thought I was.

Not that I ever had a particularly high opinion of my writing you understand, but I did have a vague notion of occupying a certain – albeit undefined – position on the spectrum of Very Good to Very Bad. That’s changed and so I’ve demoted myself.

I am in awe of this woman’s skill and mental energy. And if that means my self-perception pales further in comparison, I consider it a good thing because knowing myself is one the two biggest preoccupations I have. (The other is knowing the answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything, but that line of enquiry never fails to offer many disparate paths in a fog-shrouded wilderness. Knowing how good or bad I am at something is much easier.)