On Smiles and the American Connection.

I was sitting on one of the benches outside Sainsbury’s today (it being a fine and pleasant day, you understand) when I spotted coming towards me a pit bill terrier with a woman in tow. I watched with amusement as the dog insisted on taking his human companion for a ramble among the bank of shrubs lining the walkway at the front of the store. I’m fairly sure she had no choice in the matter, and eventually they both emerged seemingly none the worse for their adventure in the wild woods.

As they came past me I smiled at the dog and the dog smiled back. And then I looked at the human companion and she was smiling at me, too. I pondered the question: ‘should I compare thee to … to… to… a toad with acne?’ It seemed a little unjust since I’m not exactly a Brad Pitt lookalike myself, and a smile is a smile when all’s said and done, and so I smiled back. And I’m only relating this story in this form to attempt some revival of my old blogging habits, and to offer incontrovertible evidence that I really am a most high functioning depressive.

And then the American arrived and sat on the bench next to mine. He, too, had a dog – an overweight beagle. How did I know he was American? I didn’t, but let’s describe him: overweight, baseball cap, shades, and a ZZ Top beard. I considered that he might have been one of that rare breed of Europeans who thinks Trump might be human after all, but there aren’t many of those about and I don’t suppose I shall ever know. His wife came out of the store and she was overweight, too. They walked past me and none of them smiled, not even the dog.

*  *  *

On the subject of the big T, I found this week’s cover of Private Eye magazine even more apt than usual. It showed a photograph of Keir Starmer talking to King Charles, apparently about the upcoming state visit of the leader of the free world (about which there has been much grumbling and petitioning, I might add.) Starmer is saying ‘You should treat him with the courtesy and respect due to a President’ and Charles replies ‘In that case I’ll shout at him and then boot him out.’

And now I’m wondering what precautions the police will take if the Trump drives through London in a motorcade. Will they move among the throng of onlookers suitably equipped with egg detectors?

The Matter of What Matters and Some Firsts.

I was walking around the lanes this morning seeing the occasional individual or couple cheerily going about their business with an evident sense of purpose, and down dropped the same question that such a sight always evokes: does any of it matter? At that point my mind split, as it always splits, into the two conflicting factions: one insisting that none of it matters while the other insists that all of it does. The war goes on.

Ironically, my own sense of purpose raised its profile after lunch when I decided to weed and dig one of the vegetable plots at the bottom of the garden. The ageing body with a heart issue finds such activity both tiresome and tiring these days, especially since I don’t even know whether any of it matters or not. But irony will be irony and convention will be convention, so get on with it I did. It was the first of this year’s crop of heavier garden jobs, and I’m not looking forward to any of them.

The big thrill of today, however, was seeing two bats hunting around the house at twilight. My love of the twilight bats has been remarked many times on the blog down the years, and although I’ve never kept a diary of firsts, I’m fairly sure that I’ve never seen them come out of hibernation as early as 5^th March before. And it was particularly noteworthy that there were two of them because it meant that the summer will probably bestow the added pleasure of seeing little kiddie bats following their parents to learn the game. 

Whether that matters in the greater scheme of things I don’t know, but it matters to me and that will do.

Mixed Up March and an Odd Thought.

The Great British climate is known for its capricious nature, and March is probably the most capricious month of them all. This year she’s wearing her spring outfit so far. The end of February was mild, and the beginning of March is even milder. We’re forecast temperatures rising to 15°C (59°F) this week, which we’d be reasonably content with in early May.

And so the blue tits are paying a lot of attention to their regular nest box behind the kitchen.  The white snowdrops on the fringes of lane, field, and garden are more prolific than usual. The hares are seen in pairs (there I go finding rhymes again.) The wild garlic leaves are well advanced on the high embankments of The Hollow, and the first celandines, daffodils, and even dandelions are casting splashes of golden yellow among the new wild grasses everywhere. And next week winter might re-assert its grip.

*  *  *

Next week I have to go to my home-from-home, the Royal Derby Hospital, for a cardiac MRI scan. Apparently they take longer than most MRI scans, and the pre-procedure dietary disciplines are a little draconian. Every time I go there I look at the bulk of the massive monobloc building and imagine that it’s probably where I’ll take my last breath one day. And do you know what saddens me every time I think that? The fact that the Lady B never visited the inside of my house. She came up the garden path with her mother once, but that was as far as she ever got.

America and a Matter of Balance.

Ever since the end of WWII America has strutted its stuff across the western world, boasting of its power and wealth and influence. It has even promoted the notion that it is ‘the leader of the free world.’

Sounds very paternalistic, doesn’t it? And what do parents do when their ‘children’ are in trouble? They nurture and protect them, because with parental benefits come the concomitant parental responsibilities. It appears Mr Trump doesn’t see things that way. He would prefer to take all the food on the table for himself and elevate a couple of assisting acolytes to the status of wicked uncle.

Just a random thought (which is a little more specific than a ‘random country’) while I’m bored and waiting for dinner time.

(And if I'm to continue pondering the question of balance, I must acknowledge that imperial powers have been wont to take all the goodies for themselves throughout history. That being the case, Mr Trump might be seen as no more than a traditionalist. Humans are what humans do.)

Reminiscing and an Unconnected Question.

Every night, usually starting at around midnight, I set a YouTube mix of favourite music playing and read a bunch of old blog posts. And every time I do, I feel nostalgic for the person I was back then. I miss the humour, the reasoned arguments, the sometimes petty and sometimes profound observations, the reminiscences on old adventures, the tales of girlfriends past, the visits from my quirky friend the llama, the ditties of variable quality, the film and book reviews, and the conversations with so many valued people in the comments section. I want it all back again, but life doesn’t seem to work that way and maybe it’s right that it shouldn’t. And then I go to bed.

*  *  *

I said I was going to cease offering opinions now that the cold water brought on the slowly rising tide of incipient senility is beginning to make its presence felt around my ankles. I did, didn’t I? But maybe I can still ask a question concerning one of the feverish messes that humans are making around the world. It goes like this:

Let’s suppose that the Russians and the Chinese decide to join forces and sweep across the Pacific with a mighty armada of military power. Soon they have complete control of part of America’s western seaboard. Let’s say they’ve taken Washington in the north and California in the south, and America’s own relatively inferior military is unable to move them off it. And then they make an offer:

‘We’ll take a rest for a while as long as you accept that Washington and California now belong to us. If you fail to agree these terms the war will be all your fault because you declined to make peace.’

I wonder how Trump would respond to that.

A Day of Two Halves.

Oh, America! What have you done? The chameleon known as Trump is throwing firecrackers all over the place, isn’t he? I’m sure he’s more than a little deranged, you know. But since I performed badly on my own cognition tests my opinion is no longer valid, so I’ll leave it at that.

His spat with Mr Valensky did give me pause for thought though. I imagined various scenarios growing out of the fact that the fate of the world is currently determined by four major power blocs, and it struck me that if any two of them joined forces an interesting situation might ensue. The possibility of a novel began to take shape, written in retrospect from some sort of dystopian future. It won’t be me who writes it, of course. Too old and mentally challenged, and I expect it’s already been done.

At the other end of the scale, I think the invisible presence of my lovely Lady Fu might have been tagging along on my walk this morning. Who else could have conspired to place three young ladies in my path at different points – one with a cute little girl, one training a ‘bad boy’ horse on a lead rein, and one with a brand new car with no door handles? I learned something interesting from all of them. That was nice.

The Glumness of the Nordics.

I’ve started watching a Norwegian cop drama called Wisting, thinking it would be interesting to compare it with the Swedish Wallander. Well now, if you think the Swedes are the world champions in the glumness stakes, think again. Norwegians, it seems, are even glummer (though a little less self-absorbed.) No wonder the Vikings spent all their time risking life, limb, and sanity desperately trying to be somewhere else. (But at least the Danish Vikings had the good sense to settle in Britain and France.) And it appears that both Swedish and Norwegian detectives are similarly saddled with troublesome daughters.

I do have to add, however, that they’re all so very decent and earnest. I like that.

And I’m only kidding anyway…

Oh, and another difference: Norwegian detectives drive big, meaty vehicles. Swedish detectives drive posh ones. There's generalisation for you.

On Falling Below the Mark.

I took a cognition test tonight devised by Professor Something-or-other from Imperial College, London. I did badly – below average in nearly everything except crystallised intelligence, whatever that is. Sad, isn’t it, but it did at least validate my decision to tell the priestess in my last email: ‘I’m not worth knowing any more.’ And also why I terminated my connections with everyone except my immediate family and my ex. I like to know myself and make rational decisions, you see.

So is there any point in continuing this blog if my opinions no longer count? I think so. It uses up a bit of time when I’m bored but still feel inclined to exercise my fingers, so I might still make the odd jotting now and then.

In other news:

I kept getting hijacked by random encounters while taking my walk this morning. I ended up talking to one dog, one postman, one French woman, and the man who came to fix a problem at my house. (The latter was causing me quite some concern; it was even leading to the suspicion that I might be prey to some condition related to cholera, however unlikely that might sound. Put it down to loss of cognisant ability if you like. The reason for such a suspicion is rather long and not very palatable, so I won’t bother to expound further.)

A Worrying Political Muse.

Would I be guilty of a silly flight of fancy if I look at the recent German election results and wonder whether one in five Germans want to welcome Adolf Hitler home? I suppose I probably would because I’m sure that it’s not so simple and not so extreme – yet.

And now we have indisputable signs that Trump wants to put distance between the US and Europe (he wants to do lots of other unsavoury things as well, but let’s keep it simple for now.) The old post-1945 security connection between the two is seriously under threat and might soon be a thing of the past.

One result of this is that the British Prime Minister has now undertaken to increase defence spending and says that it will be funded by a reduction in international aid. Just when the world seems to have entered a phase in which the common humanity of people everywhere is recognised – and the rich and powerful undertake to help the poor and vulnerable – it is being thrown out of the window. Mr Starmer justifies this – and it does have logic to commend it – by saying ‘the British people must come first.’ But isn’t there an unholy whiff here of ‘America first’ and ‘Germany first’ and ‘Italy first’? It seems that the fires of dangerous nationalism are being stoked in the whole western world by Trump’s complete disregard for humanitarian values.

But let’s accept for the moment that this is simply a major shift in the prevailing political wind. Increasing defence spending to build up and train an increased military profile will take several years to make a substantial difference. So what happens if Trump’s new best buddy Putin decides to start reviving the Soviet bloc by invading one or all of the Baltic States next week and Trump says ‘Tough’? That would certainly test America’s commitment to NATO, wouldn’t it? Might we then witness what would effectively be the start of WWIII, and might it lead to America (and presumably China) remaining aloof and picking the best bones off the battlefield? (That’s as long as the losers don’t unleash the N word, of course.)

Is this Trump’s big stratagem? Is Trump capable of thinking that far ahead? Or is it all just me giving vent to wild fantasies again? I certainly hope so.

The Blog as Travelogue.

If somebody were to ask me: ‘What is your blog about?’ I suppose the easiest answer would be to categorise it as a sort of travelogue. It’s a running commentary on the myriad things I see, experience, and comment upon as I walk the road of my life. In short, it’s a description of the scenery that I walk through.

But now there’s a problem; my life has become a wasteland of late and so there’s no scenery to describe. About the only thing which catches my eye at the moment is the incomprehensible behaviour of Trump and his fairy godfather, the mega-rich South African, and I’ve become a little weary of that so I shut it out. Otherwise, there’s nothing to observe, experience, and comment upon (unless you count the ever-present depression and I’ve done that one to death.) So what should I do about it?

I began countering this state of affairs by searching for alternate worlds to briefly inhabit, and found a most engaging BBC series based on a well known trilogy of books here in the UK. Watching one hour-long episode a night for the last two weeks kept me well engaged, until last night when a bombshell exploded. I suddenly developed a profound dislike for the main protagonist, and accompanying her was my principle reason for being there. I no longer find her company acceptable, you see, so that’s one alternate reality gone. Maybe I’ll find another one soon.

(I suppose I might mention that I feel ill tonight – sore chest, light headedness, fatigue, and an odd taste in my mouth. I expect it’s down to the changeable weather we’re having at the moment. It usually is.)

So now I ask myself whether this is worth posting. Why not? It’ll keep the little counter ticking over and I doubt I shall die of it. Sorry about the tedium.