The Matter of the Reflective Posts.

A little way down the lane from my gate stand two curved metal posts hammered into the shallow grass verge. They’re reflective and coloured red, white, yellow, and black, and were put there a couple of years ago to warn drivers at night away from the drainage ditch which lies the other side of the verge.

The problem is that the red, white, yellow, and black had been completely obscured by road dust, leaving them a dirty dark grey and anything but reflective. Today I went out and cleaned them, and also hammered one of the posts further into the ground because it had worked loose and was in danger of falling over. Several cars passed me while I was so engaged because it was school run time. Two people and a dog also passed me on foot, and none of them stopped to ask ‘what’ya doing?’

And so I fully expect that one day someone will be driving along that part of the lane at night and say: ‘Oh look, somebody’s cleaned those reflective posts. I wonder who it was.’ And any generally uninterested passenger will probably reply: ‘The council, I expect.’ And they’ll be wrong, but I won’t mind a bit because I will tell myself that virtue is its own reward. Yeah.

A couple of hours before that I was taking my walk when a young Cocker Spaniel gleefully made my acquaintance. He then proceeded to wrap his paws around my arm and chew my thumb. My, how it took me back to happier times when another Cocker Spaniel and I got on famously. (This is the point at which ‘hey ho’ would come in useful if it weren’t such a cliché.)

And then I got the ladder out and trimmed the ivy festooning the side wall of my house, so now it looks all smarty pants.

I’d say that today might be described as ‘productive.’ Do you know how rare that is?

Coincidence and a Dark Suspicion.

I came across a second hand book in a charity shop today, a glossary of mainly archaic, but with some new, words which have fallen out of use or not yet become common. One of the archaic terms is the verb ‘to betrump’ which means to deceive, to cheat, to evade by guile, and the example of usage is given as ‘he betrumped her out of winning the election.’ (And the book was published long before Kamala Harris entered the presidential lists, just in case you’re wondering.)

It seemed to me that this is the good old universe showing us connections again, so I bought the book.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Starmer is apparently going ahead with his plan to give tax breaks to the American tech giants – huge, soulless multi-billion dollar organisations – in the hope of gaining favourable terms in the matter of Trump and his trade war. He also still declines to extract a little more tax from the multi-millionaires in this country, but remains committed to reducing welfare payments to the sick and disabled. Methinks there is something rotten in the state of Albion.

And it isn’t just dear old Albion under the microscope. I’m beginning to sense the spreading of an aggressive cancer across the politics of the whole western world. I read today that Putin’s little lackey, Mr Orban of Hungary, is to allow a visit from the genocidal and land-grabbing Netanyahu without arresting him, in spite of an arrest warrant being issued by the International Criminal Court to which Hungary is a signatory. And I gather that the new German Chancellor is likely to do the same.

So am I right with my cancer analogy? And if so, has it reached stage 3 yet?

*  *  *

While I was eating my dinner tonight I took to thinking of all the things I’d done today. And then I thought about the things I did yesterday and the things I’m likely to do tomorrow. A sinking feeling began to take over as the realisation set in that it’s all completely bloody pointless. And then I remembered that there were lots of dogs in Ashbourne today and they all seemed happy, and as long as the world has happy dogs in it there’s reason to carry on.

Open Wounds and the Baby Moon.

A week or so ago I was doing a small job at the top of the stairs using a piece of hollow metal tubing from an old vacuum cleaner. I dropped it and one end of the tube scraped along the white-painted lining paper on the opposite wall, scraping off a small piece of about 2”x½”. I carried on with the job meaning to repair it later.

But then I looked at it more closely and noticed something. Behind the paper is a thin layer of polystyrene sheeting which is meant to provide a little insulation between the paper and the plastered wall. It’s normally smooth, but the sharp metal had dragged across it and broken the surface into small polystyrene granules. At that point a sense of horror and disgust came over me, so profound as to be genuinely enervating, and it lasted for about ten minutes. Every time I went up or down the stairs my eye was drawn to this scar and the same thing happened. Eventually I had to make a point of not looking at it until I got around to repairing it.

That’s a little strange, isn’t it, and it reminded me of how I’d felt as a boy when I read a horror story which I think was called Lukundo, or something similar. It was about a man camping out in a remote area who develops a nasty condition: every so often a small, human-like being breaks out of his skin and talks to him in a foreign language. I felt the same sense of horror and disgust then. I also remembered that there was a time in my young life when the sight of a tree troubled me because it was growing out of the ‘skin’ of the earth, and anything coming out of the skin from beneath it produced a sense of loathing. Seeing the skin broken, and that which is normally hidden become visible, appears to have a strangely disturbing effect on me.

So where does this odd sensibility come from? Is it a form of neurosis which has it origin in some long forgotten trauma? And could my adverse reaction to very loud noises spring from the same source?

*  *  *

Meanwhile, the nice news this week is that the first bluebells are flowering. They’re early, as are the flowers on the wild garlic and the blossom now growing heavy on my plum tree. But we need rain because we’ve hardly had any for about two months. Unusually dry springs are becoming the norm in this little outpost of Europe.

*  *  *

And yesterday evening I noticed something unusual about the super thin crescent of the new moon. Its height in the sky relative to the position of the sun below the horizon put it a certain angle, which caused me to see a new-born baby lying back in the crook of its new mother’s arm. Such is the potential for imagination in this little outpost of the human condition.

Redaction and Recovery.

I was just reading about Trump’s latest foray into absurdity with his attacks on the Smithsonian and other institutions. He says they’re giving a false view of American history, and what needs to be shouted from the rooftops is everything which can be presented as glorious or grandiose by those with a conservative mindset (or maybe that should be mind(less)set.) Oh, and run by white men of course. Everything dark or dubious must be airbrushed out so as to give a true picture.

You know, we British had a very big empire at one time, and some people still regard it as a glorious achievement. But we don’t pretend that the Amritsar massacre didn’t happen, or that the forced labour camps in India didn’t exist, or that the Croke Park massacre in Ireland is just an urban legend. If history is to be worth anything it must be on a warts-and-all basis, otherwise it isn’t worth a hill ’o beans.

I’m beginning to have a vague, so far unformed suspicion that there’s more to Donald Trump than appears on the surface. He’s too far out, too extreme, too volatile, too bird brained to be just another Republican President. He looks more like a conspiracy theory beginning to take shape, and it looks to me as though America – and maybe the world at large – could be heading for something bad and irreversible if he isn’t stopped sooner rather than later.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, a shout-out for Mark the technician at Plusnet (my ISP.) I spent an hour this afternoon wallowing in techno devices, many twisted and unruly yards of various cables, the litter of cardboard boxes, and much of it spent balancing awkward things on my lap or crouched uncomfortably under the desk where my computer lives. And at the end of it all the new device didn’t work. A further hour was then spent with Mark the technician on the phone. It was hard going but he got me there, and there was even an element of serendipity thrown in for good measure. That little story is a rare one these days.

On Judgment, Ventricles, and Wasted Days.

When I think of my earlier rant about Musk and Starmer I find myself feeling guilty, or at least feeling a sense of failure. It’s because I feel sure that I’m not here to judge; I’m here to observe. It’s a Buddhist teaching, you know – ‘non-judgemental observation’ they call it (unsurprisingly.) But cruelty, injustice, and disregarding the needs and rights of others make me angry. And then anger transposes into judgementalism and I feel it shouldn’t. I feel it lays down a barrier to the process of becoming closer to the universal consciousness, which I suspect is what we’re all supposed to be doing if only we weren’t so blinded by such a narrow perception of reality. And I might be wrong.

*  *  *

I feel nauseous and have a slight pounding in my chest tonight. It’s probably due to my gardening exertions today – digging and raking and sowing the mangetout and potatoes. I think it’s probably my underperforming left ventricle judging me and getting angry for subjecting it to the sort of exertions to which it is not kindly given these days. (I wonder whether a left ventricle can learn to be Buddhist.)

*  *  *

Yesterday was the seventh anniversary of my kidney operation and all the attendant fallout which followed. Doesn’t time fly when you’re getting closer to the terminus?

*  *  *

And I’m getting those inclinations of inevitable mortality again when I realise that my life as a human being called JJ is finite and has only so many days in it, and every evening it occurs to me that I’ve used up another one and ask whether I did anything worthwhile with it. Usually I haven’t.

America's Ebeneezer.

Did I read it right this morning? Did Elon Musk really say this week: ‘The biggest weakness in the western world is empathy’? If I did, I’m curious to know whether he has ever been known to utter Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? or maybe let them die and reduce the surplus population. (I think he was also a little lacking in the matter of vocabulary. What I’m sure he probably meant was ‘sympathy’, not ‘empathy.’ They’re different. But that’s a minor point and his meaning is well taken. And if there’s one thing we don’t expect of people in the higher echelons of power in the US these days, it’s precise English. It’s even becoming almost a rarity in the UK.)

*  *  *

Meanwhile, back on home ground, Mr Starmer and his Chancellor are pushing forward with their war on welfare. The main victims are the sick and disabled, but Starmer continues to decline the option of taxing the very rich a bit more which I’m told could produce comparable pecuniary benefit. What he is considering is giving special tax breaks to American tech giants in order to appease Donald Trump in the hope that Mr President will be kind to Britain in the matter of trade tariffs. The word ‘blackmail’ springs easily to mind. And the concomitant phrase ‘giving in to blackmail’ follows close behind.

This is a strange affair. End of rant.

A Lesson to Suit a Loner.

Young Sarah passed me in Sainsbury’s today. She’s the young barista in the Costa coffee shop whose working style I so admire and to whom I recited one of my ditties recently.

I watched her as she walked by, intending to say nothing more than ‘hello Sarah’ but she sidled past without giving me so much as half a glance. In fact, her demeanour suggested a thought process along the lines of: ‘I know I’ve noticed you, but I don’t want you to know I’ve noticed you.’

I wonder whether she interprets my frank and forthright manner as indicating creepiness. Or maybe she’s just shy. Or maybe I really am creepy and never noticed.

I hardly ever talk to anybody, you know, but if I’m going to be thought creepy I think it would be better if I stopped talking to anybody at all. I have only so many breaths allotted to me for this lifetime so why not be greedy and keep them all to myself?

Leaving With the Dolphins.

The statements of certain senior political figures in the US have made one thing quite clear over the past few weeks: America is no longer interested in watching Europe’s back. It has to stop, they say, because it’s ‘pathetic.’ They’ve shifted now to describing Putin in glowing terms. He’s being described as a good man, honest and trustworthy. ‘I like Putin,’ said one senior member of Trump’s team ‘and the President was very moved by the portrait.’

(I’m all for politeness and even conviviality in matters diplomatic, but the relationship between the Putin and Trump teams is becoming a little too close, methinks. It’s more than strange, more even than creepy. It looks menacing for the cause of world peace.)

And so we have portraits and palliness, and all annotated with infantile language and emojis on official documents. So are we now heading for the biggest diplomatic divorce case in world history? Has the time come to say ‘So long, America, and thanks for all the candyfloss.’ In the case of the UK, is the ‘special relationship’ now dead and come to dust?

I can’t know the answer to that one because I don’t know the complexities of macro economics, and there are those will say ‘don’t worry, it’s only for anther 3½ years and then we can become adults again.’ But is it, or will Trump somehow contrive to change the system? He’s already reminding me of the little guy who runs North Korea, and in so doing suggesting a whiff of a third world dictatorship about the USA, so who knows?

Given the state of my body these days, I think there’s a good chance I’ll be watching with interest from the other side.

The Starting Gun.

The snowdrops which have proliferated in the Shire this year have faded into a well earned rest now. The narrow strip of woodland at the top of my lane, which played host to a regiment of snowdrops, is now being washed with the creamier white of the wood anemones. A forest of heavy bluebell growth promises to turn the woodland floor blue before very long. The blackthorn trees have donned their all-encompassing white cloaks, and the hawthorn bushes in the hedgerows are garlanded with the green of fresh new leaves. Yesterday I saw the first pink blossom on a cherry tree, and today it was the slightly darker pink on a flowering currant in my neighbour’s garden.

And so the race begins. We will now rush with indecent haste past the ever-changing exposition of nature’s colourful bounty of flowers and leaves and berries and fruit until the wool appears on the willowherb and it will all be over for another year. It all seems to happen so quickly.

Remaining Circumspect.

We were treated to the first of the summer-style sunsets this evening. A vast swathe of the western sky was awash with salmon pink mackerel clouds set among a background of pale grey and pale blue sky. Very summery, I thought, but then asked myself whether this was an example of nature smiling to deceive because that’s what I always think. Tomorrow is the vernal equinox.