The Woman.

I have to post this. I've been meaning to for a long time and haven't got around to it. I'm listening to it as I type. It's just that this woman is my idea of the ultimate in... erm... strong femininity. That'll do. And the way she walks off the stage at the end is pure magic. All down to my convoluted taste in women I suppose.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpiFmZLICgM&list=RD1pK02USyU8M&index=12

What I'm hoping is that some kind Norwegian (at least, I think she's Norwegian) will tell me how her name is pronounced.

A New Worry.

I had a text message this morning advising me that last week's blood test was satisfactory and no further action is required. But this morning I had a missed call from a Derby number, and the only telephonic communication I've ever had with anybody in Derby has been with the hospital.

 

So could this be connected with the other half of last week's proceedings - the urine test 'to check on the condition of your kidneys' (which should have been kidney, singular)? Now I wait with trepidation for a letter. I really don't want any more dealings with the hospital after the experiences I've had over the last eight years.

And a new concern has developed in my mind over the matter of mortality. Death is a pretty scary prospect, isn't it? It's the ultimate 'drop everything you've ever known or possessed and walk into the darkness, not knowing whether you're going to fall off a cliff into complete oblivion or have to get used to existing in a totally different environment with totally different rules' experience. 

But now there's something else bothering me. When a body dies it begins to decompose, and in very little time it begins to smell bad and gets worse as the days progress. What a horrible thought. I hate bad smells.

A Sudden Shift.

I just relinquished my undertaking -- reported a couple of days ago -- and picked up my book of Virginia Woolf 'short stories' again. (I had some time to fill while attempting to re-boot my ailing computer, and it was too early to make my night time cup of coffee.) 

 

Well, what a revelation. Everything I said about dear V's style went completely out of the window. I thought I'd just try to struggle through the first paragraph, but instead read two pages and didn't want to put it down when my computer needed assistance.

It's a pretty straightforward narrative, you see, about a group of bored young women deciding that they must get out and discover the world run by men before they so much as contemplate bearing a child. They've become suspicious, you see, of the notion that the women populate the world while the men civilise it. And it's full of Virginia's keen observation, lively intelligence, capacious imagination, and subtle wit.

I am now persuaded to open a new label down below, a Virginia Woolf label. And that means I have to scroll through the last week or two's posts to find suitable players to enter the new team. It won't be a trial, and it's nearly time for my late coffee anyway.

Forget the Stereotypes.

I was looking down the women's rugby WXV results earlier and saw that there was a game between Hong Kong and Brazil yesterday. Intriguing, eh? I thought so. And tonight YouTube was showing highlights of the match, so I watched them.

It was notable -- to one of my sensibilities -- that none of the Brazil team looked like a beach volleyball player, and few of the Hong Kong side looked Chinese. You just can't trust your expectations, can you?

(And for those Americans of the MAGA persuasion who don't know that the Romans and Arabs used different numerals, 'WXV' is shorthand for Women's 15.)

On Me and Virginia's Style.

Reading Virginia Woolf can be quite challenging. I'm currently working through an anthology of her short stories, only they're mostly not stories at all, but observations and flights of imagination.

She had the kind of mind which, it seems obvious to assume, never stopped observing, and she observed every little detail of people, places, atmospheres, social situations, and whatever else which I can't be bothered to think of. Nothing, it seemed, missed her gaze which decanted into a mental world in which every nuance that could be caught on the radar of her five senses was dissected and described in minute, often lyrical detail. (No wonder she got depressed, poor woman.)

The difficulty comes from the fact that she tells it all in rapid, staccato fashion, which first leaves you a little breathless and then increasingly confused as you try to hold the pieces together into something resembling a narrative. At least, that's the effect it has on me. Virginia's perception of a narrative is not what most of regard as a narrative: a string of connected facts leading logically from one step to another to form a mental journey.

I have to admit at this stage that part of the problem lies with my habits. Living alone and having little contact with people and the outside world apart from observing the landscape and the animals, my life has become organised into a series of routines. (I suppose it's because they provide structure in an unstructured, personal existence.) And my routines are such that reading is naturally done at night. That can be a problem because at this time of year my house is cold at night, since I decline to switch on expensive electric heating until at least October. Being cold can make you tired; and being tired can make you colder. It's a vicious circle which works against the appreciation of complex wordsmithing, which is why tonight I considered giving up the attempt to make sense of Virginia's 'short stories.'

But is that reasonable? Virginia Woolf was clearly highly intelligent, blessed with a keen observational faculty, and possessed of a complex imagination. No doubt it's why she is considered a leading pioneer in the development of stream of consciousness writing. My paltry routines surely provide a poor excuse to give up on a writer of much substance. It's interesting, too, that I had little problem when I read her novel To the Lighthouse a few years ago;

And so I think I'll put the book aside until the storage heaters go on in October and the office is warmer. And perhaps the near daily hassles which life has been throwing at me for the past few months will also have eased. (Hassle is something else which makes me tired.)

Lay on Macduff.

All this evening I've wanted to make some sort of a blog post, just to prove to myself that I'm still alive, but I've been too tired and too drained by the business of struggling through the daily round. Today has been another difficult one. Usual things -- transport hiccups, nurses' appointments running late, no morning coffee, no lunchtime food, lots of time spent sitting or standing around like a lemon. And then there were the daily glitches, the most irritating of which was the fact that tonight my computer refused to play YouTube videos. It got half way through one and then stopped and said 'hold; enough.' You wouldn't think a computer would be able to quote Macbeth, would you? Mine can, even though it can't play YouTube videos.

And I've got a post sitting in 'draft' waiting to be finished and posted. I started writing it last night but stopped when it began to hurt my brain. It was a commentary on Virginia Woolf's writing and was becoming almost as convoluted. Maybe I'll finish it tomorrow.

 

But I did finally provide a phial of blood for medications-related analysis this afternoon, only this time they also wanted a urine sample. The nurse gave me a little bag containing the newfangled apparatus which is more complex than the simple old specimen bottle. She spent approximately three seconds explaining what to do, and then left it to my befuddled brain to get it right. I think I did. I was also concerned, however, that the examination and analysis of bodily fluids might occasion the accrual of consequences, and that brought the dark mist back down on the matter of future prospects.

But for now I'm going to call it a wrap. I'm feeling unusually oppressed by the metaphorical cow dung being thrown at me nearly every day, and I'm feeling bereft of company now that all the people with whom I used to commune in cyberspace have gone. Sorry this is a miserable post. Miserable people are such a pain, aren't they?

A Good Surprise and a Mind Aghast.

Well, what d'ya know. I mentioned recently that I'd written a letter of complaint to the infamous BT, and also that previous letters of complaint had gone unanswered. Today I had a phone call from a personable young chap in BT's complaints department, wanting to discuss the nature of my current issue. He listened, he understood, he agreed, and he said he would raise the matter with the relevant people. (And he apologised, in writing, for the previous lack of response.) We even had a chat about certain technological issues I've been experiencing. So let's hear it for Ashley from Tyneside. Good chap, Ashley.

 

*  *  *

So what about Trump offering every adult American $5,000 if the Republicans win the midterms? This is quite astonishing even by Trump's bargain basement standards, so I'll offer my thoughts as they occur to me (if you don't mind.)

1. It seems that Trump is becoming rather more desperate than he would care to admit.

2. I think this is the kind of thing you must expect if you put a big businessman in charge of a country. Big businessmen tend to go through life wearing polarising glasses, which see dollar signs clearly but very little else. They're also prone to the certainty that every individual has his or her price, and every situation is solvable by simply throwing money at it.

3. Trump's statement amounts to a naked attempt to buy votes. Apart from striking at the very roots of democracy, it insults all Americans by casting them as latter day Esaus by presuming they will be willing to sell their birthright for a mess of pottage.

4. Given the above, I don't see how a serious legal challenge can fail to be made.

5. Even if Trump is allowed to maintain his outlandish proposal, he has failed -- as usual -- to say how the expenditure of several trillion dollars would be financed.

6. When he made his proposal to some Republican gathering or other, the BBC reported that it was met with 'rapturous applause.' It should have been met with stunned silence. This suggests to me that the delegates at Republican gatherings come from the same litter of swivel-eyed loons as the UK's Tory faithful.

Apart from that, I don't really care. Why should I?

A Whinge and a Wasted Joke.

This being the thirteenth post of the month, what should I write about? Another whinge? OK, another whinge. Today I added two more members of the corporate world to the gathering number who now decline to speak to me. 

 

First we'll  have an update on the local delivery office of Royal Mail. It was confirmed by a post lady I met in the town that her depot no longer takes telephone calls from the general public, in spite of the fact that it exists to serve ... the general public. I already suspected that.

The query I wanted to address concerned the non-delivery of this month's credit card statement from HSBC bank, so I set about trying to contact them. I called the number given on page 2 of last month's statement and set about the task. I was faced with very many hurdles and had to start again very many times, either because their instructions were unclear, or maybe I'd pressed the 8 key on the phone instead of the 9 key and my phone has no backspace to delete it. (It's easily done when you're more than a little stressed.) 

 

The pressing of number keys went on longer than I care to remember. Eventually, however, I reached the final hurdle which promised the prospect of being able to speak to a real human being (although it would probably have been a machine pretending to be human) about the nature of the problem. I was asked by the current machine (probably operating under a John the Baptist delusion) to state the nature of the query, which I did several times in as many different ways as I could think of.  The machine, however, was evidently unacquainted with my all-too-human logic. In the ended I simply said 'I would like to speak to someone.' Ah, now we have a response. I was told to press 1 for this type of query, 2 for that type, or 3 for the third type. None of them was remotely connected with my actual query, and that was the end of the matter. I gave up because there was no other option.

Maybe this accelerating decline in the ability to communicate in the time honoured manner with those who effectively run the cultures of the 'developed' world is happening everywhere. Maybe one day somebody in a position of power and influence will wake up and address the problem. Maybe Excalibur will rise again and King Arthur will return to rid the land of the techno bandits, but I doubt it.

And they weren't quite the end of today's glitches. The transport I had booked to bring me back from the grocery shopping was late turning up and I had frozen stuff in my bag. Hopefully it won't have defrosted enough to make me ill when I come to eat it.

But on a happier note, there's this:

I was going through Sainsbury's checkout when I saw a woman using a self-service till nearby turn and stare at me most pointedly. I questioned whether I recognised her; I didn't. And then she looked away. But then she repeated the long, pointed stare twice more, and my only guess to explain her strange degree of attention was that maybe she'd heard the opening conversation between me and the checkout operator and didn't like it.

'Are you all right for bags,' the operator asked. 'Yes, thanks,' I replied. 'I have two. I'm very well organised. I used to have a third but we got divorced.'

A Matter of Flexibility.

I was reading a short article earlier about a 78-year-old British woman who has lived in Sweden for the past twenty two years. She moved there with her husband, who has since died, and settled there, but now the bureaucrats and the government say she is no longer welcome because the UK is not a member of the European Union. I found my good opinion of Sweden and the Swedes fracturing a little when I read the piece, but I don't suppose I should. Rules are rules, after all, and bureaucrats will be bureaucrats wherever they may be unearthed.

And I think it likely that most Swedes would sympathise with her predicament and want her to be allowed to stay. She has friends there, and activities, and her husband's grave to visit and tend. Even some government ministers are given to expressions of understanding and sympathy, apparently, and are seeking to find a solution in the woman's favour. I have developed the impression that the Swedes are a caring and compassionate people, so maybe they will.

But of course, there remains the the primary argument. How can the the rules be applied to make an exception for one person and not the rest? Where should the line be drawn? The tyranny of the line is, after all, the bureaucrats' principle guide post. How can any system be properly managed without a line to lead the way or place the barrier in the correct position? I occasionally came up against this problem when I was a bureaucrat, and had to rely on ingenuity to make exceptions -- under the radar so to speak -- in deserving cases. (Surprisingly, I always got away with it.)

But maybe the answer in this case is simpler and above board. Why not simply enact a law which states something along the lines of:

If any person has made Sweden their main place of residence and one of their loved ones has died and been buried there, they may be allowed to remain for the purpose of tending their loved one's grave.

 

No doubt they would argue almost interminably about the definition of 'loved one', but with a little goodwill I expect they could manage it.

The Story Not Written.

I was listening to a Loreena McKennitt song on YouTube earlier when a most bittersweet fable began to play before me in realistic detail. It was truly 'bittersweet', being both intensely bitter and intensely sweet at the same time. It seemed to me that I should write it as a short story, but within seconds I decided that I absolutely must not. 

 

I've long suspected that giving expression to stories -- or other creative works -- can have the power to turn fable into fact, and such a fact as this I could not countenance. It would affect others as well as myself, you see. Those who know the great tragedy in the life of Gustav Mahler will know what I mean.

But then the opportunist in me asked: 'How about quoting just the last line in your blog?' That, too, was instantly dismissed because the five words which constituted the last line were the most powerful of all.