The Ultimate in Good Karma.

When I was leaving Sainsbury’s earlier, weighed down by three heavy bags of shopping, my backpack, and a bundle of garden canes, I got stuck in a narrow part of the lane behind an old man walking very, very slowly with a walking frame. I had two options: ask him to move out of the way or walk very, very slowly behind him until the way was clear. I chose the latter.

And then I noticed several middle aged women watching him and smiling. And then they looked at me and smiled in my direction, presumably in appreciation of my patience. It’s interesting how humans function, isn’t it? I wasn’t feeling patient at all, I just didn’t look it. And the reward for my reticence was smiles from several middle aged women. Oh joy.

Upon Seeing Early Swallows.

This is one of my special days of the year, but not because it happens to be 12^th May. This special day has no regular date; rather it is the day on which I first see a flock of swallows hunting at speed over the fields, the lanes, and above the woodland canopy. Today was that day.

I saw them at the top of the lane on which I live, which is one of the two places where I usually get my first sighting. I’m told they always nest at the first farmhouse around the corner on the main road. Unfortunately their aerial habitat offered a grim aspect. There was rain falling and a cold north-westerly wind blowing, but the birds seemed undeterred.

And there was a certain poignancy involved because my first thought on seeing them was to wonder whether it would be the last time that I would be treated to the first sight of the early swallows. I am rather given to such thoughts these days – have been for a few years now – and this morning I’d been woken by a worrying pain that I’d never had before. (It’s gone now so maybe it was nothing to be concerned about.)

No doubt I would be accused of unnecessarily morbid musing if I were to say this to anybody face-to-face, but that’s unlikely because I hardly ever speak to anybody face-to-face. And it has to happen one day, doesn’t it, so why not wonder about it?

My New View.

For the first seventeen years of living in this house, the large field which covers the land to the back and side was used as summer pasture for a herd of beef cattle. And then the farmer effectively retired and the field was taken over by a smallholder who grazed a few sheep and Dexter cows there. For the past several months the Dexters have been absent and only five ewes have been grazing an area of land sufficient for ten times their number.

But now everything has changed. A much larger flock of sheep has been moved in, and they have lambs with them. Do you realise what that means? It means that if I want to watch the lambs playing and interacting with their mothers I no longer have to walk nearly a mile to the top of the lane; all I have to do now is look out of my bathroom or bedroom windows. (And four of the lambs are black, which is unusual and rather splendid.)

I don’t suppose anyone will be remotely interested in this news, but the sun is still up, the dinner dishes are washed, and I felt like writing something.

(Oh, and I had a vivid dream about the Lady B a couple of nights ago and it was quite unpleasant. She was constantly cross with me for some reason. I’m not entirely over it yet, but I will be eventually.)

Revery and Semantics.

Some years ago I jotted a blog post about one of my favourite reveries. Today I was walking up my lane in the sunshine when I was reminded of it, so I’m going to tell it again but with a little addition at the end.

*  *  *

I’m walking along a quiet country lane on a sunny day in June. The trees, hedgerows, and pastures are heavily dressed in the fresh bright green of early summer growth. No traffic passes me, the breeze is but a mild zephyr, and no place of habitation is evident.

And then I spy a lone cottage a little way ahead and hear the first hint of sound. As I come closer I make out the tinkling of a piano being played gently, and as I draw level with the cottage I note that one window on the ground floor is standing wide open. Beyond it sits a young woman evidently lost in her rendition of Debussy’s La fille aux cheveux de lin. I watch and listen until she finishes, at which point she turns to me and smiles demurely. I smile back and walk on.

And so it was that this morning it ran through my head again as I passed the small wood and approached the five old ash trees at the top of the lane. But as has become common these days, my mind didn’t stop there. It asked the question as it always does now: ‘Is this any more or less real than the woman, the piano, and one of the loveliest pieces of music I’ve ever heard? Is any of it, anywhere, real? Does any of it have any meaning?’ And then I came to the final question, the one that brings me to edge of that continental shelf beyond which I am not yet equipped to go:

‘What does “meaning” mean?’

On Maidens and the Middle Aged Man.

I said in the previous post that I was going to mention a brief thought on the subject of maidens and middle aged men, didn’t I? And I also said it was going to be short. OK then, here it is.

I’ve observed during my longish sojourn in this human body that maidens – by which I mean young women approximately in the 18-23 age group – are quite often romantically attracted to middle aged men in their forties. It happened to me, you know, when I was in my forties. It was a constant source of delight to get so much attention clearly beyond the bounds of mere friendship from young women half my age and even less.

I suppose it’s because men in their forties are, for the most part, still fit, strong, active, and possessed of a healthy libido, but with an overlay of experience not yet evident in callow youth. And they look lived in. Young women of that age are probably the most open and searching of the various age/gender demographics, and so the added benefit of experience matters I suppose.

How pleased I am – or at least should be – that I am now genuinely old and therefore none of the above. Maidens, however delightful, can be a mightily mixed blessing, you see. They still smile at me, but it’s a very different smile than the one they used to bestow.

On a Dangerous Road.

I was on edge all day yesterday because of things I read in the news. Today has been the same for the same reason, so here are a few pointers:

Both the US and UK seem to be quietly abandoning democracy in favour of a move towards more autocratic control which might well grow naturally into fascism. Trump seems to think that the US military is his personal box of toy soldiers, there to keep him amused while he’s feeling tired between tantrums.

Over on this side of the pond, Starmer and the media are jumping about like a box of firecrackers over the fact that two Jewish men were attacked in London recently. Starmer’s response is to threaten the banning of protests against hard line Israeli brutality. He seems to be ignorant of the fact that the horse is supposed to be in front of the cart, not behind it.

Britain's Chief Rabbi is complaining that ‘anti-Semitism is growing and becoming normalised.’ Well, of course it is. It was obvious that such would happen when the carnage in Gaza began to unfold. But let’s not forget that there are two forms of anti-Semitism. The first is the bigoted kind and is simply a form of racism. Few people in the modern world fall into that category. The second arises from an instinctive sense of outrage when decent people read of IDF soldiers killing the innocent just because they can. (Or perhaps it’s all justified by that convenient American phrase, ‘collateral damage.’ Students of European history might consider what happened to the Cathars during the Albigensian Crusade, and consider why it happened, and see that there is a striking parallel at work.) In any event, maybe the Chief Rabbi has difficulty with the operation of cause and effect, and I still maintain that most of what is deemed ‘anti-Semitism’ is, in fact, anti-Zionism. I can explain the difference if you like, but should I need to?

(And yes, I do realise that there are good people in Israel. If only they could remove the brutes running their country, the rest of the world could know it too, and Israel could cast off the shadow of being probably the world’s foremost pariah state.)

I think we’re at a crossroads again and still haven’t learned the lessons of history. It seems to me that the time is right for the military and the populace to come together and say ‘Oh no you don’t,’ but it’s unlikely to happen because a system created and run by powerful interests is very good at keeping somnambulists asleep.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, back at the Shire, the May blossom is now coming on strong but the weather is set to turn colder. Shame. And today is the 20^th anniversary of my moving to this house. My, how times have changed. And that reminds me of the post I have running through my head about Maidens and Middle Aged Men. I might even write it one day if my old man’s mind can settle sufficiently. It will be quite short.

Being Nobody.

I’ve just come in from having my Beltane Eve fire. It was a good one this year, fanned by a gentle wind and still smouldering as I write. I thought that maybe I should grace the old blog with one more post before spring bows out in a little over two hours time (according to my Celtic ancestors on my dad’s side, that is.)

So…

I was walking up The Hollow at lunchtime today, mesmerised almost by the vast swathes of wild white garlic flowers, when I was taken in hand by a strong fit of nostalgia for my teenage years. I remembered the fishing trips, and the rugby games, and the girlfriends, and the not-too-wild parties, and the building of a bonfire on Berry Hill on which to roast potatoes and discuss those matters which preoccupy the teenage mind. I remembered the school field study trip to Swaledale in Yorkshire, and the playing of the trombone (at which I excelled of course…) in the school orchestra on speech nights and Christmas carol concerts. And plenty more as well.

I knew who I was then, but I don’t any more because one day, some way beyond the teen years, I heard the hum of mother culture. And so began the first hints of profound musing. Life became more of a struggle when I began seriously to deliberate on, and search for answers to, the meaning of life and the nature of reality. I haven’t found a satisfactory answer to either yet, at least none on which I can definitely rely.

And now I think I’m really nobody at all, and maybe that’s a good thing. The one aspiration left to me is to engage in a long conversation with the Lady B before I die, but it’s not likely to happen because aspirations don’t usually bear fruit for people who are nobody. Do they? Probably not.

The Unsinkable Donald Trump.

It’s interesting to note, isn’t it, that American assassins of old made short work of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, while Trump escapes over and over again with nothing more serious than a scratched earlobe (allegedly.) No doubt his supporters are revelling in the certainty that divine intervention is at work. I expect the titular line of Dylan’s With God on Our Side is being played on a constant loop down in the darkness of conservative evangelical rat holes everywhere.

Well, maybe God is on Donald’s side. Or maybe American assassins ain’t what they used to be. Or maybe there’s something a bit rum going on.

I know nothing.

Musicians From Another Planet.

I've asked this question before but I'm going to ask it again: How do pianists play two different - and often disparate - strings of notes at the same time, one with the right hand and the other with the left? I'm led to the serious suspicion that they must have two brains, one for each hand. What other explanation could there be?

And then there's the other question that occurs to me when I hear a piano being played: How do they always contrive to have at least one finger free to play the next note no matter the speed and complexity of the ink blots? That's not as simple as it might sound on the surface, and I suspect there's something of the metaphysical going on.

So are pianists all undercover aliens walking furtively among us? If so, what is their purpose? Are pianists not what they seem (like owls), and what should we do about it?

The Room Behind the Rock Face.

During one of my return trips from Ashbourne in the community transport bus recently, we had an extra passenger – an elderly lady who lived in a village about seven miles from here. We dropped her off first, and the house she lived in was one of a run of stone-built terraces fronting onto the main road. Access to the house, however, was gained by way of a dark, narrow passage at the back, and on the other side of the passage was a rock face which I estimated to be around fifty feet high. Apart from the physical discomfort of feeling hemmed in, the house must have received very little light through the windows at the rear.

But it got better…

The rock face continued beyond the terraced houses to be in full view of the road, and what a forbidding aspect it presented: damp, dark brown sandstone which appeared to have water constantly running down the face from the land above. And then I noticed something extraordinary. It had a door and two windows in it. I wondered whether they might have been some kind of whimsical curio because surely there was nothing behind them, or so I thought.

The following week I asked a different driver whether he was familiar with this oddity. He was, he said, and told me that there is indeed a room behind the door, and that somebody once lived in it.

Lived? Lived how? Did this room have gas or electricity? Did it have running water (apart from what was running down the outside walls)? Did it have a fireplace to provide heat in the winter, and if so, was there a chimney driven up through fifty feet of rock to let the smoke out? He didn’t know, but in all my life I’ve never seen such a ‘dwelling’ and had no idea that such a thing might exist.

But then it’s a well attested fact that during the Middle Ages and a little beyond, there were people living in caves dotted around the various dales in this area. To people such as those, I expect having a room in a rock face complete with a door and two windows would have been quite the height of luxury.