Hail Glorious America.

The BBC World News leads today with a picture of Mr Hegseth looking determined (or should that be maniacal? Difficult to tell.) He's now engaged in providing a further boost to America's reputation as the world's foremost civilisation. 'I order that this execution be live streamed. We Americans know how to dispense justice.

(Forget 'dispense' and replace it with 'do.' 'Dispense' has two syllables which might be too challenging.)

Or then again, his decision might have some sense behind it. History has shown over and over again that human beings like nothing more than watching someone die violently -- the crowds around the Tyburn gallows and the infamous French tricoteurs, for example. No doubt a lot of Americans will be licking their lips while the ratings soar, and maybe Mr H hopes that his image will be augmented and provide him with a route to the presidency when Trump heads off to meet the Inquisition.

 

Or -- third possibility -- maybe he just wants something relaxing to watch while he's knitting.

Damn!

I just watched a video on YouTube in which a young blonde woman with a Nordic-sounding name plays a hurdy-gurdy and sings a Nordic-sounding song in the woods. Why doesn't that sort of thing ever happen in real life? (Not that I'd have a clue what to do with a hurdy-gurdy at my age, but still...)

A Little Astronomical Mystery.

All my life I've been led to the belief that in order to see the aurora borealis it is necessary to travel to somewhere close to or north of the Arctic circle. And yet over the past few years there have been several features in the BBC news telling us where and when is best to view the aurora from the UK, even in southern parts of the country.

This naturally leads to the suspicion that something has changed. Is that true? If it is, why have I seen nothing to explain what has changed, why it has changed, and whether further implications might be involved.

Meanwhile, it appears that I must be settled and bend up each corporal agent to the fact that, given the few years I presume are left to me, the chances of seeing the aurora are greater than the likelihood of ever tasting baked Alaska. (And there goes dear Will having something to say about nearly everything as usual.)

An Interesting Source of Perception.

I find it surprising that something as functional and impersonal as YouTube should teach me something about the way I perceive people.

There's an American woman whose reaction videos I occasionally watch. At first I saw her as being merely plain. Certainly not ugly, but a face which, in itself, didn't draw my attention. What caught my attention the most was her voice. There was a huskiness about it, and her accent was intriguing because the speech pattern was slightly slower than most American accents and the diction a little more drawn out. And yet I soon realised that it was definitely not full southern. 

In one of her latest videos she mentioned her native state: West Virginia. 'Ah,' I thought, 'so that's the sound of north Appalachia.' By then, however, the sound of her voice had already caused me to shift my perception of her face and I'd begun to find her physically attractive. Now I think she's quite lovely and want to know whether she's called Abigail, because that really would be the icing on the cake. I'm also curious to know whether she plays the banjo, but asking her would seem a little too intrusive and she probably wouldn't get the joke anyway.

Keeping Score.

I became a little restive with my computer this morning when it was having more difficulty waking up and functioning normally even than I was.

 

I had arguments with two men at the recycling facility in Ashbourne since they were incapable of understanding that in unusual circumstances it is both acceptable and preferable to exercise flexibility and discretion than stand on the letter of some misbegotten rule.

 

When I was in the town I passed a couple walking their black Labrador dog. The dog looked up at me and I smiled back, at which point he wagged his tail and they moved on. When I saw them later on the other side of town, the dog dragged his humans towards me until he was close enough to put his head on my foot. That was rather moving and much fuss was exchanged. 

The leader of the Conservative party, Kimi Badenoch, has laid her cards on the table. She says that if she becomes Prime Minister at the next election, the rich will be protected and the poor punished. I suspect she's a fan of Donald Trump.

It's turned substantially colder here in Blighty, and I was told today that snow is forecast for parts of the UK next week. I hate snow.

 

I make that 4-1 to the dark side.

Braving the Bug Army.

On a warm, sunny October day like today it's normal to see the south wall of my house liberally populated by ladybirds (ladybugs.) They sit there taking the last warmth of the sun before crawling into the tiny spaces between the casements and window frames where they stay in hibernation for the winter.

Not so today. Today they were running (and sometimes flying) rampant inside and outside the house. Inside they were on various surfaces, the floors, the stairs, the banister rail, and the insides of the windows. Outside they were on the plants, the path, the outside of the windows, and even on me. There was one on my hair, another on my sweater, and yet another crawling around my ear. Doing anything today required stepping carefully across a minefield of ladybirds.

I know ladybirds are just bugs like any other bugs, but their red and black markings make them the very epitome of bug niceness. I remember when there was a range of children's clothing called Ladybird for that very reason. And I hate hurting anything, much less killing a living creature. But the constant need to look out for rampant ladybirds gets a bit tiresome, and I don't know why they're behaving that way this year.

A Striking Contrast.

I'm currently listening to an Irish slow air called Amhran Mhuinse (excuse the lack of fadas but I'm writing this in blogger's own compose facility. And blogger is American, so...)

 

As usual I'm being struck by the difference between the Irish ballad a la Daniel O'Donnell, and the Irish slow air. The first has me running to the toilet in hopes of getting there before I spill the beans, while the second is so hauntingly beautiful and other-worldly that time seems to stop. Fortunately, Amhran Mhuinse is an example of the latter.

On Fighting Bears and Following Ms Woolf.

I'm currently struggling with my computer. Actually, I've been struggling with it for several years now, but whereas the struggle used to be akin to persuading the dog to stop stealing the cat's dinner, now it's more like fighting off a polar which is  trying to convert me to his. It isn't easy. I've seen the polite little notice Gah! Your tab just crashed at least thirty times this evening and probably more, and I've restarted it three times in the hope of persuading the polar bear to clear off back to Svalbard.

But it is fourteen years old, and I don't suppose there's another person in the whole world who is using a fourteen-year-old computer. It's also still running on Windows 7 because it's always run on Windows 7 and Windows 7 is familiar to me. 'Oh, come on,' I hear you say, 'why don't you just get a new computer with an updated operating system?' 'Well now,' I would reply, 'there's actually a blog post in my head explaining why I haven't bought a new computer with an updated operating system. You wouldn't believe just how much there is to say on the matter. You probably wouldn't even believe some of the things I would say on the matter either. I'm a bit strange in some ways, as you might have noticed.' So let's change the subject to something simple and familiar.'

 

While I was waiting for my hungry polar bear to consider its options tonight I had lots of time to fill, and so I read another of Virginia Woolf's short stories. I'm not going to give a synopsis this time, just explain an issue because the contrast between struggling with a polar bear and struggling with Virginia's writing style is most marked and very wearing.

I've never read anything like Virginia Woolf (except when I read her novel To the Lighthouse, of course, when, for some reason or other, I failed to notice the difficulty. Maybe I was in a strange mood at the time. It has been known.) But the point I'm trying to make is simple enough. 'Normal' fiction generally gives you three main elements: facts, description, and dialogue, all couched in familiar, real world terms which the majority of us comprehend without too much effort (apart from Gen Z, apparently, who only want the conversations so they skip everything else. Or so it is said.) 

 

But Virginia's writing isn't like that. You can't swim easily through the flow of a sentence and then step effortlessly into the next one. You have to concentrate carefully on every word, even the prepositions, and you also have to concentrate on her choice of punctuation because even a minor decision can make all the difference to the meaning. (I read a comment from one critic somewhere which said she made an art of the semi colon.) I'll give you an example. At one point in the story she uses the word 'was' where I felt it should have been the subjunctive 'were.' It just sounded more right that way. So I stopped reading for a few minutes and thought about it. No, she was right after all and it was my understanding of the statement that was wrong. And it's almost crippling at times, yet strangely enjoyable.

But you know what? I'm almost looking forward to the day when I can saunter off to discover the undiscovered country, as long as it has no polar bears in it, the literature is clever but straightforward, and nobody ever upgrades computers.

The Peasants Are Back.

The House Sparrow (Passer Domesticus) has long been regarded as the humble runt of the bird world. It was also the most numerous, at least in Britain and possibly the rest of Europe too, and maybe its sheer ubiquity was the reason for its peasant status. It suffered a decline some years ago but is now, as far as I'm aware, back up to something like full numbers. 

In the twenty years I've lived in this house I've always had a resident population of between twelve and twenty birds. One shrub in the garden was their regular perching place during the day, and another was where they retired to roost at twilight. My garden was never without sparrows for the whole of that time and I was very fond of the little guys. I couldn't care less for their peasant status. Most of my ancestors were peasants, and what's wrong with peasants anyway? And there were several sections of hedgerow lining the lanes and fields where I'd see a small flock them every time I went for a walk, especially in the late autumn, winter, and through the spring while the hedges were neatly trimmed with flat tops. They usually twittered as I walked past, and it was nice to think they were offering a greeting even though they probably weren't.

But this year they disappeared. Completely. No sparrows in the garden, and no sparrows on any of the lanes. Not a single one. It went on for months while the hot, dry summer lasted, and I was obviously curious to know what had happened to them. I missed them, you know? I really did. My best guess was that they'd relocated to spots near the river a mile away where there was water to be had because bird numbers were low generally during the summer. But I still saw the odd robin, blackbird, dunnock, blue tit, and so on. So why no sparrows? Could the whole population have died out for some reason? I hoped not.

Today was a day for celebration because the were two of them on the bird table, one male and one female. I watched them for some time to make sure I wasn't mistaking them for the similar looking dunnocks, but no. They were unquestionably sparrows, and hopefully more will arrive soon and the peasant status quo will be re-established. If I see them tomorrow I'll ask them where they've been. And if I get a reply I'll be sure to report it here.

Latecomers.

Every year at around this time I report on the appearance of one or more skeins of geese flying overhead, honking loudly, and evidently heading for some place with a milder climate before the winter arrives. Tonight was the night. There were eighteen of them and they were headed ESE.

But then, a few minutes later, I saw another pair of birds coming from, and heading in, the same direction, and the sound they made was less of a honk and more of a quack. So what's that about? And why were they late.

(And they were definitely geese, by the way, just in case anyone thinks my eyesight or my judgement is fading with my mood.)