A Very Rare Connection.

I’ve said often enough on this blog that there are very few people with whom I can feel a connection sufficient to warrant extended discussion. Most people just get on my nerves.

Well, I met one day. Her name was Alisha and she was minding the store in the pet shop on Uttoxeter’s retail park. She had all the qualifications to be a JJ sort of person – authentic affability, easy and fluent use of language, intelligence, a permanent and genuine smile, and the admission that she does voluntary work at a rescue centre for injured hedgehogs. She was absolutely lovely (as several of them are in that shop, actually. It’s why I wouldn’t buy my wild bird seed anywhere else.)

During the course of the conversation she mentioned that she was from southern England originally. ‘That’s unusual,’ I said. ‘You’re remarkably friendly for a southerner.’ After that we got on famously.

Not One for the Squeamish

Earlier this evening I was walking down Bag Lane en route to the post box when my foot slipped on something. I looked down to identify the cause and found that I had stepped on the flattened and disembodied head of a squirrel, and what had caused me to slip was the mess of brains spreading out behind it. And one of its legs was lying a foot or two away (if you’ll excuse the unintentional pun.)

That’s not very nice, is it?

And now I can’t think of a way to end this mini – and rather unpleasant – post except to say that my subsequent dinner was vegetarian as always.

All Three?

Regular readers might very well remember (though some might very well not) that a few weeks ago I reported having been apparently ghosted by the Lady B in Sainsbury’s car park. Since she had her youngest daughter with her I chose to speculate that the dear lady might have been distracted by the more pressing consideration of whether to give little pip squeak beans on toast or spaghetti on toast for lunch, and therefore being temporarily blind to the sight of some old reprobate staring back at her from a mere 30-40 feet. That would be understandable, but the matter of being ghosted didn’t end there.

A week or two ago I was walking down my lane when Dear Mama passed me in her motor car. Whenever she does that she always slows, waves, and smiles. Not this time. No slowing, no wave, no smile, no hoot of a horn. That’s most unusual, and the matter still doesn’t end there.

Two evenings ago I was doing some work at the bottom of my garden close to the gap which leads onto the lane. A movement caught the corner of my eye and I turned to see Honourable Sister, accompanied by Oscar the Sprocker Spaniel, walking past me and down the lane without so much as a turn of the head and a ‘Hi Jeff’, which is the usual minimal greeting bestowed by said lady.

I speculated on the many possible reasons why I should have become suddenly persona non grata to the eminent members of the Shire’s top family. I won’t bother to relate the full list because most of them are probably wrong, but I did settle on one outstanding favourite: I suspect I might have inadvertently slipped through a veil and into a parallel dimension, one in which I’ve never polluted the airspace around the vaunted family and they have never noticed my presence in their demesne. And the reason for considering this the most likely explanation is that Honourable Sister’s hair was a different colour than it usually is.

Clueless, Characterless, and Clownish.

I passed one of the pub/bistro bars in Ashbourne today and saw that it was dark inside. And then I saw a hand-written notice on the window which said:

PLEASE YOUSE (sic) THE BEER GARDEN AT THE SIDE

Need I comment further?

And then I went along the high street and saw that my old favourite coffee shop, Costa Coffee, was thoroughly topsy-turvy and full of contractors. The notice on their window said that it was closed for ten days for a ‘makeover.’

I wonder what a ‘makeover’ means exactly. Does it mean that they’re going to make it a brightly lit, smarty-pants modern place like the others in Ashbourne? That would be an issue to me because my idea of a proper coffee shop is one which is clean and tidy, but a little beaten up almost to the point of being slightly seedy. It needs to be the right sort of environment for enjoying the heady, old socks aroma of French and Turkish cigarettes (even though it’s illegal to actually smoke anything – French, Turkish, Indonesian or whatever – indoors these days.)

I do hope not because I’m growing tired of the smarty-pants, sanitizing trend now infecting modern times in all sorts of ways. The big casualty is character, and I’m a big fan of character.

*  *  *

Finally, it might have been noted that I haven’t strayed much into the political arena lately. It’s because I’m becoming thoroughly disenchanted with politics and politicians everywhere, especially in America it has to be said. I do sympathise with good Americans who have to tolerate the lamentable state of their politics and politicians. It seems to me that the only difference between a circus and American politics is that in politics the clowns wear business suits.

Alternative Interpretation.

The field behind my house has quite a steep slope on it, and running up the middle at an angle is a track worn by the wheels of the farmer’s quad bike. The field is home to forty heifers and a smaller number of ewes with lambs.

Yesterday I saw one of the ewes with her two lambs resting half way up the hill on the track. The heifers were on the ridge at the top, and one of them decided to come down the field on the higher part of the track. I watched with interest to see what would happen when the lone cow reached the three sheep. Would she go around them, trample on them, or would the sheep move?

Ms Cow began to take a detour to pass the still resting sheep at a distance of a few yards, but when she came level with them she stopped and turned her head to look at them. I fancied I could hear her thoughts which went something like:

Bloody sheep. Who do they think they are making me go out of my way so as not to tread on them? I’ll show them, just see if I don’t.

And then she walked over and nudged the sheep which dutifully stood up and moved away. But then Mrs Cow continued to walk down the field without using the track, which made me wonder whether I’d mistranslated and what she was actually thinking was:

Poor sheep. Not very bright, are they? Haven’t they noticed that the big noisy thing goes up that track, and if the farmer doesn’t notice them he might run them over? Better go and move them I suppose, and that can be my good deed for the day.

Either way it would seem to be further indication that cows are smarter than people think they are. I well remember Ermintrude from The Magic Roundabout. She was pretty smart in a neurodivergent sort of way.

Questionable Comparison.

Today my thoughts fell to musing on the late conservationist, Dr Jane Goodall, who died aged 91 last October.

Being the incomplete spirit that I am, I fell to comparing people like Dr Goodall with the people who run this world of ours – those weak, seemingly soulless creatures who value nothing but money and power, however impoverished their claim to value might be.

I’m quite sure Dr Goodall would not have wanted me to say this, but I’m going to anyway: my thoughts proceeded to the matter of winning and losing, and a certainty soon settled that the true winners in this world are the Janes, and the real losers the likes of Trump and his fellow little failures.

And then came the usual question: why does the world have to be like this? Is it, perhaps to demonstrate the true nature of worth and worthlessness to those capable of seeing through the darkness to something worthier beyond? I wish I knew.

Not Quite My Way.

Sometimes when I hear a song – or even get one stuck in my head for some reason, as I have today – which was popular when I was a boy, it doesn’t only evoke memories of circumstances and environments prevalent at the time. Occasionally it connects me with my old sense of self and perception of life back then. I literally, though briefly, feel like the child I was.

It always takes me aback a little, and is usually followed by a feeling of disappointment that life didn’t turn out the way I expected it to. There have been thrills and spills and the occasional grand adventure along the way, but never any overall sense that life met my vague childhood expectations. It all feels a little too rhapsodic; there’s no architectural edifice on which to look back with satisfaction. And so, of course, it always takes me one step further into the old question: ‘what on earth was it all for?’

I’m the same with food, you know. I can have some favourite dish and enjoy it until it’s finished, but once the last piece has been swallowed there’s no rubbing of tummy and exclamations of yum, yum. Once it’s gone the pleasure disappears completely.

And do you want to know what prompted this little outburst? It was seeing a video on YouTube about the surprisingly high number of deaths connected with the playing of Sinatra’s My Way in Malaysian karaoke bars.

At Day's End.

I sat out in the garden this evening through a calm but cloudy twilight. I watched two bumblebees taking their last feed of the day from the foxglove flowers. And then I noticed several small groups of jackdaws, two or three at a time, flying home to roost. A single raindrop fell on my head. Just one.

Was that meaningful? I no longer presume to pass judgement on the matter, but at least none of it was polluted by any connection to money. And it made a pleasant change from doing strenuous jobs in the garden and feeling physically wrecked for five days, or reading the news and experiencing severe disappointment in my fellow humans and their priorities.

For the Sake of Making it 10.

I briefly held the hand of a Filipina yesterday. There was a group of Filipinos shopping in Ashbourne Sainsbury’s and the hand contact happened by way of me welcoming them to our neat little town in our neat little country. (I doubt that a shopping trip to Ashbourne Sainsbury’s was the main purpose of their visit, but never mind.) The last time I held the hand of a young Filipina was in hospital 5½ years ago after I’d undergone a painful procedure. She was a nurse, and I have to say that it’s a delightful experience.

I had other encounters this week which might have been worth reporting, but I can’t for the life of me remember what they were so I’ll save us both the trouble.

And I’m only making this post because I like seeing double figures in the side bar.

I was also going to make a post around the question: ‘Do you ever miss anybody who is no longer in your life?’ It became horribly long and convoluted, so you may be pleased that I chickened out of that one too.

I might just mention that I spent the last four days doing the toughest of the spring jobs in the garden. In consequence, I’ve felt a wreck for the last four days.

Mounted Maidens.

Today I met a maiden come a-riding on a horse (of course.)

(A ditty beckons but my ditty muse has been absent for some time and I haven’t a clue where she is. She’s not the only woman to have given up on me in recent years, just the latest.)

Anyway, the fact is that I’ve been curiously attracted to maidens riding horses for as long as I can remember, and I don’t know why. It isn’t libidinous, strange as that might seem. I think it must have its origins somewhere in a past life or something buried deep in some aspect of universal mythology.

Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that I never knew any equine maidens when I was growing up. Coming as I did from an industrial area, all the maidens I knew occupied themselves with gainful employment in factories, shops, or offices where they sat typing all day or operated switchboards in those blessed years before automation took over and treated us to the joy of recorded announcements and menu options. (Deep breath) And they were all – or nearly all – impatient to arrive at the point when they could give up gainful employment and begin adding to the surplus population. None of them rode horses. I was in my late twenties before I met a maiden who even knew how to ride a horse, and she probably only did so because her father was a Tory.

The salient point is, however, that both maiden and horse of today’s encounter were supremely amicable and a good time was had by all. Hallelujah.