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.

The Phantom Yucca.

There’s something slightly odd going on either in my bedroom, my mind, or my ocular faculty. When I go to bed at night I switch the light off, turn onto my right side, close my eyes, and go to sleep. Sleep usually comes very quickly, but not always. Occasionally I lie awake for a few minutes and feel constrained to open my eyes again, and that’s when I see it: the large yucca plant standing to the right of my bed, clearly, though dimly, visible in silhouette against the wall beyond. It stands exactly where my bedside table – on which there is an alarm clock, a lamp, and a few things I’ve taken out of my pockets – stands at all other times. The last time it happened I didn’t see a yucca, though. Instead I saw a large quantity of little black insects rising and falling like a swarm of midges backlit by the sun on a summers evening. 

Needless to say I find these sightings intriguing, and I put some thought into what the phenomena might be. I’ve come up with lots of possibilities ranging from the deeply mystical to the boringly mundane, and maybe there are other possibilities which I haven’t identified or are beyond the scope of my knowledge in such matters. And since there are so many of them I always decide on the simple solution: ignore them and go to sleep. So that’s what I do.

Noting a Hint of Duplicity.

One of the few sound bites I like is the one – paraphrased here after a song by Bob Dylan – which says: ‘steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you King.’

It’s the same with killing, isn’t it? If somebody with a disordered brain goes on a spree and murders 3, 4, 5 people, we call that person a serial killer and regard them as the foremost of evil villains. If they’re caught they get locked up for life or executed by the state and everybody cries ‘Good riddance.’ And understandably so, obviously.

Yet Presidents and potentates the world over routinely kill hundreds of thousands of people – sometimes even millions – in furtherance of their political agendas and call it ‘collateral damage.’ They carry on sitting safely behind their big desks, wearing their expensive suits, getting up safely every morning to the approbation of their native supporters, being seen as important, and maybe even becoming major historical figures.

There’s something wrong with our sense of balance and justice, isn’t there? It’s one of several reasons why I have little liking for the human race and frequently question whether I really want to be a part of it.

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?’