The Matter of Heels and a Hat.

There’s a man I often see tripping up and down the High Street in Uttoxeter. He’s middle aged, short, crowned with a mop of grey hair, and always neatly dressed in a black suit which suggests he’s something in the funeral trade. What I find most noticeable about him, however, is that he wears shoes with a raised heel.

Raised heels on men’s shoes went out of fashion over twenty years ago, and so, given his evident sense of sartorial correctness, I wonder why he does it. I assume it’s because he wants to appear taller than he is, but that raises a question:

If I find his heels the most noticeable feature about him, I expect other people must notice them, too. So is it not likely that people will think: ‘That man is wearing raised heels. He must be even shorter than he looks.’ In which case the wearing of the heels is counter productive, isn’t it?

It’s none of my business, of course. I’m only making the post because it’s the last day of the month and I thought 40 would look better than 39. I could go on to talk about another man who is also short, but he happens to be very wide and wears a broad-brimmed Homburg hat. It gives him the appearance of being square. He’s always accompanied by an aged and rather corpulent, short haired Corgi dog, and together they look like they’ve escaped from a Pixar movie. And then there’s the woman in the coffee shop with one eye much bigger than the other, and who appears to be trying to eat the glass mug when she’s drinking her cappuccino.

But I can’t be bothered. The next hospital visit is looming and my nerves are strained.

Fullsome Signs or False Dawns?

I seem to have lost the ability to write again. It happens occasionally. I know what I want to say but the words decline to flow smoothly. All tonight’s efforts proved fruitless.

But at least the butterflies were back filling my garden today, and the House Martins were back to their old numbers filling the summer sky, and the house plants that have been ailing for a couple of years are back to growing strongly again. Meanwhile, that wonderfully inspirational section called Nimrod from Elgar’s Enigma Variations is blasting out of my headset.

Does this mean something? I never jump to conclusions.

Being Idle.

The garden is celebrating today. Rain has been falling steadily for several hours, so not only is it getting a welcome drink, it’s also being spared my probably unwelcome attention.

Being kept out of the garden is a bit of a problem to me at the moment. I’ve cleaned up all the house, I have nobody to call and there’s no prospect of anybody calling me until tomorrow, I’ve long been deficient in the matter of attention span so reading is of no interest, I have DVDs to watch but that’s uncomfortable because my eyes get sore if I focus them on one plane for any length of time, I can’t go for a walk because my leg won’t permit it, and I have no accounts work to do until somebody brings me some. I’m at a loose end, and so I think.

The priestess said something to me in her last email which gave me pause for some difficult thought. It made me realise that I’m a fraud, or at least a chameleon which amounts to the same thing. In consequence, I feel that I’m now honour bound to stop corresponding with her. Whether I will or not, I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet. Losing the priestess would open up yet another hole in my life, but I’m getting used to holes so it doesn’t bother me as much as it would have done at one time.

And it occurs to me that we are all chameleons, and therefore frauds, to some extent. It seems to be part of the human condition, and it doesn’t take much of a leap in imagination to suggest that the human being is the most fraudulent creature on earth. Maybe that’s why I like animals and children. I like authenticity.

And Boris the Mouth continues to cause me consternation. The unholy alliance of Trump and Johnson appears to be setting Britain on course to become America’s poodle again, which is what Noam Chomsky forecast would happen if we left the EU.

So I decided to make a blog post. This is it. I could go on but I won’t.

There are lots of young robins around this year. They’re cute.

On Ladies, Legs and Heart Malfunctions.

I was leaning on a lamp post at the corner of the street today in case a certain little lady came by.

Actually, that isn’t true. What I was actually doing was standing on a ladder trimming the top of a tall, broad hedge with a pole hedge trimmer – in case a certain lady came by. She didn’t, of course. Certain little ladies never come by when you’re up a ladder trimming a hedge (or even leaning on a lamp post for that matter.) The prospect is but a fantasy, and who could ever accuse me of being a fantasist?

Somebody did stop her car to talk to me, though. I had to climb down the ladder to talk back. She was little, but not exactly a lady. She said:

‘I haven’t seen you walking around the lanes for a long time.’

‘I know,’ I replied with suitably wan expression. ‘My left leg won’t let me.’

‘That’s a shame,’ she continued with the merest hint of concern. ‘Walking is what you like doing.’

‘I know. I think my body is finally breaking down. I’ve smoked all my adult life and drunk far more alcohol than I’m supposed to.’

‘Oh well, at least you’re blaming yourself. That’s good.’

And then she drove away.

Several people have said ‘but walking is what you like doing’ and I always reply ‘I know’, but my leg never takes the hint.

But I suppose I should be grateful for one thing. It was when I last trimmed that hedge back in June that I had the disturbing episode which might have been a heart attack. I had no heart attack today, and who needs little ladies when you can avoid having heart attacks instead?

Being No Harry Potter.

We all ask the question, don’t we? Well, we boys do:

‘Was I the Harry Potter of my school?’

I wasn’t. I’d say I was cleverer than Harry Potter, but I didn’t have his sort of throw-caution-to-the-wind courage. My courage was always of the defensive variety – standing my ground when the Mongol horde was charging with snowballs or the fire was burning out of control in a warehouse full of butane. You know, the sort of courage which saves face and the day. When it came to the matter of courage I was much more of a Ron Weasley than a Harry Potter. As such, I was more inclined to exercise discretion most of the time.

Maybe that was where I went wrong in life, but I think there might be a more telling reason:

We had no Hermione Granger at my school. If we had, who knows…

Seems the scotch is kicking in at last, just before bed time as usual. I think it’s too warm for bed time tonight.

Childhood Then and Now.

It’s turned exceedingly warm in our little corner of north western Europe. Today was the warmest so far (note: I’m not using the term ‘hot’, as the media and weather forecasters are, because this blog gets read by people from places like Egypt and India where hot really means hot) and there were no cooling breezes to take the edge off it. When I went outside at lunchtime the breeze was startlingly warm. (In fact, it was almost startlingly hot.)

And it brought me to thinking of childhood holidays, mostly in Devon because we went there four years in succession when I was aged 10-13. According to my infallible memory, it was always warm and sunny in Devon at the end of June.

I remember snorkelling in the sea, fishing off the breakwater at Brixham, watching from cliff tops as ships passed in the Western Approaches, taking Devon cream teas of fresh scones, fresh strawberries, and lashings of clotted cream (with apologies to those who shudder at the very thought of Enid Blyton.) I remember settling on a favourite cold drink as a theme for that year’s holiday – Coca Cola one year, Cidrax the next, and something else the year after that. I remember exploring ancient ruins and marvelling at the grandeur of stately homes and Exeter Cathedral. I remember the trips around junk shops, and I remember us driving our car through fords in quaint villages where I swear the men still had string tied around their trouser legs and pieces of straw sticking out of their mouths. (And maybe they did; maybe they were that old fashioned, or maybe they were put there to attract the tourists. I wasn’t cynical enough to think of such a thing at that age.) I remember sitting at wooden tables outside characterful country pubs through balmy twilights – my stepfather with his pint of beer, my mother with her gin and tonic, and me with my glass of lemonade and packet of crisps. And then it was back to the digs for a last cup of tea and a chat with the landlady before bed. And that brings me to the following morning. That’s what I remember most about childhood holidays.

I woke up early with a joyful heart and an eagerness to start the day, whatever it might bring. I got dressed quickly and skipped off along the back lane to the newsagent’s shop to get my stepfather’s daily paper. And then it was up to the table for a full English breakfast. Could any day start better than that? There was a spring in my step and a bagful of promise in my breast.

Compare that with how I wake up these days – mostly depressed, physically weak, often dizzy, frequently anxious, and always dysfunctional. How times do change as a life turns.

And how sad it makes me feel when I hear of children being mistreated, or being in families too poor to take holidays in sunny Devon, and maybe being even too poor to have breakfast at all, let alone a full English one. (You see, times have changed in Britain. When I was a kid even the poor families took an annual holiday because being poor in those days wasn’t the same as being poor has become since we embraced the free market economy. In all ways that matter, today’s poor are poorer than they were then, and the rich are considerably richer. And the poor kids often live in areas approximating to ghettos, which we also didn’t have in Britain back then. I suppose it’s all for the best in the best of all possible post-Thatcher worlds.)

And how angry it makes me feel when I hear of children as young as 6 and 7 being exposed to needless pressures forced on them by an insensitive educational system devised by politicians with hopelessly misguided notions of need. How dare those who rule our lives, and the vicissitudes of life itself, steal childhood from the children? What sort of a crime is that?

Now I find myself wondering how a fond ramble on the joys of childhood became an acidic rant on social injustice. I’m not quite sure; it just happened. Maybe I’m suffering from heatstroke, but I still might be right.

Another Failure.

I was just listening to Bob Dylan’s Girl from the North Country, and fell to musing again on the nature of the Romantic – he who is forever driven to search for that which he knows does not exist, and who is condemned never to find true consummation save oblivion. It got really complicated and eventually disappeared into a dark mist as the deepest musings always do, so I gave up and listened to something simple instead.

Democracy in the Doldrums.

Britain has a new Prime Minister. His name is Boris Johnson and there are serious doubts over whether he is qualified to be the most senior figure in British politics and the leader of the country.

He’s a clown, a chancer, an egoist and incorrigible self-publicist, and the sort of man who will make claims and promises which are quite untenable in order to further his interests. He’s also an Old Etonian, an elevated and outdated background which suited the job well two hundred years ago but which hardly accords with modern times. I have referred to him on this blog as ‘the British Donald Trump’, and sections of the media have recently done the same. He even looks a bit like Donald Trump.

So how did he become Prime Minister? Let me explain for those who are not fully au fait with the British political system.

Britain does not have a President. We’re a constitutional monarchy with the Queen as effectively the non-executive head of state, which means that the Prime Minister is not elected by a ballot of the British people. A General Election determines which political party has the greatest number of seats in Parliament and that party forms the Government. The leader of that party automatically becomes Prime Minister. At the moment the Tories are in power and the job of Tory Party Leader was recently vacated by Theresa May. Somebody had to fill the position and Boris got the job.

So if the British people did not elect Boris Johnson, who did? The rank-and-file members of the Tory Party did. They form a very tiny percentage of the British electorate, and I gather they are predominately male, ageing, highly conservative in their attitudes, and wealthy. In effect, therefore, Britain has been saddled with a leader chosen mostly by a bunch of rich old men with right wing values. And Boris has expressed his support for suspending Parliament so that those elected by the people can’t stop him taking Britain out of the EU without a deal. It all promotes the sense that democracy is dead in the water here in Britain at the moment.

I thought of including a picture of Boris at the head of this post, but chose not to because I have a strong aversion to pollution.

Millie Playing Cupid.

… well, not Cupid exactly. I came across a young woman (young by my standards) in Uttoxeter today, sitting where I usually take my lunch, and Millie the pigeon was wandering around close by picking up crumbs. And so I introduced them.

‘Hello, Millie,’ said the woman. Millie was too busy crumb-picking to do the decent thing and reply.

I then spent about twenty minutes with the young(ish) woman, talking largely of matters avian, while dear Millie picked crumbs contentedly in the sunshine. Eventually I said ‘it was nice talking to you’ and she said ‘you too’ and then I left. And this is a good thing because I’ve never been able to do long term relationships. Twenty minutes is quite something by my standards. But Millie brought us together, for what it was worth. And I never asked the young(ish) woman’s name, but she didn’t look like an Abigail so it didn’t matter.

Oh, and I saw the Tea and Toast Lady in Costa Coffee again. She glanced at me and her eyes carried something approximating to interest. That was a little frightening, so I took my coffee outside and drank it there.

Beware the Itching Time.

A few days ago I got an insect bite on my arm when I was gardening. I didn’t notice it at the time and felt nothing all day, but then it started itching madly shortly after one o’clock in the morning. The following day I felt nothing again – until shortly after one o’clock in the morning. And the same thing happened on the next two successive days.

So why do insect bites only start itching after 1am? Is this something to do with the spirit of the wee small hours? And did Shakespeare commit a typo when he wrote Tis now the very witching time of night. Did he get bitten by an insect that day and intend to write Tis now the very itching time of night?

I have a theory. There is always a little alcohol in my bloodstream by one o’clock in the morning, whereas it’s very unusual for there to be alcohol in my bloodstream at any other time of day. In fact, Christmas is virtually the only time when I drink alcohol during the day, and biting insects are notable by their absence at Christmas.

I suspect the rationalists might hold their ground on this one.