A Malfunctioning Machine and Losing Ms M.

Today was my six monthly dentist visit and it proved to be a bit of a trial.

Problem number 1: The first thing that happens when I go to my dentist is that the receptionist gives me a form to fill in. It’s all to do with having a record of health issues, medications, allergies, and so on. And until now it’s always been a paper form. Today I was given a tablet (the computer variety, as you’ve probably guessed.)

I’ve never used a tablet in my life because my entire computer experience has been limited to a desktop with a mouse. I’ve only ever seen tablets at short distances across the aisles of railway carriages or on adjoining tables in coffee shops. (‘Oh look: must be one of those tablet things. I wonder how you make things move without a mouse and a pointer.’ You get the picture.) Furthermore, the dear old tablet was mildly deficient in its functionality. (Modern times, modern technology, you know?)

The upshot of all this was that I had to make several visits to reception in order to find out which bit I should poke or stroke next to move the exercise forward or to circumvent the device’s latest minor malfunction. (Having said which I have to admit that this was not as onerous a task as you might imagine, since the receptionist is new and bears an uncanny resemblance to the Lady B. I did, therefore, receive brief bursts of weak sunshine coming back over the desk, especially when she smiled at me as she did frequently with commendable tolerance. I think my fairy godmother, the Lady Fu, must have come along for the ride and I did proffer my thanks. And I might add that I managed to work out a few solutions for myself and gave congratulations to a brain which appears to be still operating slightly more reliably than most modern technology.) And the final upshot to all this was that an exercise which normally takes ten minutes took half an hour today. Fortunately, Ms Medeea was running late (probably due to a large number of people my age having to fill in a form on a bloody tablet!)

Problem number 2: The big one. After being subject to the usual Dr Mengele stuff with grinder, sucky tube, and scraping tool, it was time to say ‘see you in six months’ to the incomparable Ms Medeea. ‘No you won't,’ she replied, ‘I’m leaving. I might stay around this area or I might go home.’

Shock-horror in abundance! Medeea leaving my orbit? This cannot be. I know I’ve waxed eloquent about her attributes before, but now I can add a little extra. I think she is the only adult I’ve ever completely trusted (at least since my parents’ separation when I was five.) I inclined to trust too easily, you know, and so my compensation for the flaw is probably a little overstretched.

I did, nevertheless, make an appointment for next January, and can only hope that Ms M’s replacement is a woman. The fact of the matter is, you see, I don’t mind women sticking their fingers in my mouth – there’s something vaguely motherly and natural about it – but I’ve never been too keen on men doing it. Besides, male dentists are prone to the delusion that they have the right to boss you around, and that inevitably produces unwanted conflict.

Then again, I’m currently awaiting an appointment for my annual CT scans at the hospital. If they should prove unfavourable, maybe my disembodied spirit will be able to accompany Ms Medeea on her way home to the Carpathians. I doubt she’d mind.

A Bevy of Blackbirds.

My orbit has suddenly become inundated with female blackbirds – feeding on both bird tables and often watching me through the window, sitting on the lawn when I have reason to go down the garden, standing at the edge of the lane when I go for a walk and waiting for me to get very close before flying away… And yet nearly all the other garden birds have virtually disappeared (just as the butterflies and bees have virtually disappeared.) My world is replete with female blackbirds and very little else. And I ask again: why have the blackbirds not been singing this year?

Are we into omen territory here? Does the preponderance of female blackbirds denote something of substantial import? Maybe I should look it up (or maybe I shouldn’t because sometimes they’re right and that can be stressful.)

You know, I sometimes have the impression that birds are constantly bringing me messages from the universe (there are those who claim it to be a natural function of the universe’s patterns.) If that is the case, the local avians must be getting pretty frustrated with me because I never know what they mean. I don’t speak the language, you see. I’m not yet attuned to that sort of thing. But maybe there’s only one message I should be taking:

When you’ve shuffled off your current mortal coil and returned with a new one, be a shaman. You’ll learn a lot.

(Oh well, there go my hopes of being a deep space astronaut hopping onto the asteroid belt singing Benson, Arizona.)

Recognising a Worthy Cause.

It’s my daughter’s birthday today, which means that it’s also the anniversary of my becoming somebody’s dad. I hardly ever celebrate anything, but I think this one is worth a double tot of Bushmills Irish whiskey. Sláinte.

Questioning the Source of Knowledge.

I just read a quotation attributed to Abraham Lincoln. It says:

All I have learned, I learned from books

I find it a little odd that the quoting of it should be considered an indicator of great wisdom (as indicated by the quoting of the statement.) I mean no denigration of books – they have, after all, been a primary source of learning for a very long time – when I say that you can’t claim to truly know anything just because somebody said it, whether in a book or by any other means. I would be more comfortable with the statement:

All I know, I have learned from personal experience

Maybe I’m being pedantic again, but I might just mention that I found the quotation on a bookmark given away free by a book retailer.

Of Mice and Men and Women and Things.

The weekly visit to Uttoxeter was a little odd this morning. Women of various ages kept smiling at me, and several young men on bikes nodded to me. One even said ‘hello.’ Have I somehow become a local celebrity, do you think? And then there was the matter of the woman store assistant in B&Q for whom I’ve held a bit of a candle for something like twenty years. But maybe that can be left for another post a little further down the line (when I’ve stuck my courage to the sticking place and have something – probably humorous – to report.)

But of course, today’s real madness was going on over the big water. I saw the headline about Trump claiming that he had ‘taken a bullet for democracy.’ Well now, I said recently that he had uttered the first sensible words I’d ever heard from him when he said ‘I shouldn’t be here’ (even though he’d intended something quite different from the meaning I’d chosen to take.) But of all the dumb things I have heard him say over the years, this latest claim is the dumbest of all. How can it be that a man can say something so transparently misconceived and so gloriously stupid, and yet still people cheer? This is America?

And then we got the big news: old Joe is pulling out of the race and handing the baton to his female assistant. I said to Mel a few weeks ago that I didn’t think America was ready yet for a woman President, and I still hold to that opinion. But who knows? Could it be that there are enough people strategically placed in the swing states who are so desperate to keep the dunderhead out of the White House that they’d vote for a wombat with rabies to achieve that end? You never know, do you? After all, this is America.

(And I decided this evening that I’m no longer fit to engage with human company, but I decline to say why.)

Pondering Perception Again.

I had two encounters with the Lady B today, one passive (meaning she didn’t notice me as I stood a mere twenty feet away for five minutes) and one active (she spoke two words as she drove past me in the car.) I cast no hint of aspersion towards the said dear lady when I say it appeared to be a message from the universe, one rather more transparent than they usually are: ‘You are now an object of faded regard. Get used to it.’ (Thanks to Zoe Mintz for that excellent phrase, by the way. I wonder what she’s doing now. She was quite a star in my life for a couple of years.) Anyway, no problem: I already am used to it.

But I did make friends with a little girl making her way home from the kiddies’ party with her bike. She seemed a little wary of me at first, but I kept the contact on very low burn and eventually received the grace of a smile. And then all was well with the world again.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, my current preoccupation is with one of my old hobby horses – that the more you examine the meaningful things in life, the more you realise that they all eventually distil down to the abstract. It appears that perception really is the whole of the life experience (and I sometimes wish that one day I might hear somebody repeat that phrase back to me so that I might have reason to believe that it has entered the lexicon of Well Known Phrases and Sayings. This is, of course, a bad thing to wish since it demonstrates that my ego still has life in it. But why should Zoe Mintz, bless her, get all the plaudits?)

And while I’m on the subject of perception, I want to make a point about all those times when politicians react to difficult behaviours exhibited by the homeless, the poor, the unemployed, and others in situations of disadvantage. They sit on their high horses and rain down the vilest curses on the transgressors. They use language like ‘audacious criminality’ and ‘they will be subject to the full force of the law.’ Do they not realise that the way people behave stems mostly from their perceptions, and that perceptions are largely generated by experiences, and so the homeless, the poor, the unemployed, and the disadvantaged see concepts like right and wrong, fair and unfair, acceptable and unacceptable, just and unjust, and so on and so forth, differently than the well-heeled politicians and others living in relative comfort. But they never take that fact into account when they’re passing arbitrary judgement.

A Few Titbits and Trump's True Words.

Lately I keep trying to think of something to write to this blog in order to keep it going but I keep drawing a blank - largely, I think, because my frustration with the human animal is reaching the point where I’m almost welcoming the prospect of being able to say ‘stop the world, I want to get off.’

I could write about the disturbing, almost total, dearth of bees and butterflies in the garden this summer, even on warm, dry, sunny days when their favourite nectar-bearing flowers are in full bloom. I could write about meeting little Nell in the lane yesterday evening, and of talking at length to the male half of her human hosts. He told me that a friend of his has moved to the US and prefers it there. (I didn’t argue.) I could recount how I washed and polished the Lady Clio (my latest wheels) this afternoon. It took me 2½ hours and wore me out, but she’s now spick and sparkly and a credit to the world of motor cars. I could mention the fact that I still haven’t heard the song of a blackbird or robin this year, and the belief in some quarters that birds act as messengers from the universe.

But why bother making the effort to write more than a short paragraph to cover all such minor matters when you’re tired and waiting for the world to stop?

One thing that did amuse me briefly this morning, however, was reading something Trump said to his tribe of admiring simians at some gathering or other. He referred to the shooting incident and said ‘I shouldn’t be here.’ I do believe it’s the first intelligent comment he’s probably ever uttered. Yes, I do realise he was merely milking the martyrdom cow, but it was pleasant to appreciate the irony for a few minutes.

The Lone Gunman Rides Again.

Whoopee! I see Donald Trump is now appearing in public sporting a white bandage on his ear which endows him with a hint of the sweet odour of near-martyrdom for all good Americans to smell. He is now the truest of all-American heroes and deservedly riding the wave of popular hysteria. I wonder how many other good Americans detect the rank odour of a rat mixed in with it. Or is that just an illusion? How is it possible to know (yet)?

The Matter of Trump's Bloody Ear.

I read some of the British media’s report of the Trump shooting this morning. I had questions because the facts presented didn’t quite add up to a wholly credible story. 

But I’ll keep my questions to myself. None of my business. No doubt in the days and weeks to come (at least), social media will be awash with claims and conspiracy theories. And maybe some of them will be right. This is America after all, where it appears very little can be taken at face value. And frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.

I Wonder...

I wonder why certain flowers in the garden have bloomed more profusely than ever this year, while other plants have failed miserably.

I wonder why I’ve seen hardly any bees, butterflies, or house martins this year. By this time in July the garden is usually full of birds and butterflies, and the sky above used to be heavily populated by flocks of house martins hunting for airborne food. Where have they all gone?

I wonder why I haven't heard a single blackbird or robin sing so far this year. I still have plenty of both  birds gracing the garden, but not a single beautiful note from either. Allow me to reprise a little ditty I recorded quite a few years ago when their singing was a regular pleasure:

When I have given up the ghost

And gone to take my final rest

Please lay me where the robin sings

For robin's song is quite the best 

I wonder why I’m suddenly beset by existentialist uncertainty again. I can’t stop the flow of thought which tells me that the past no longer exists, and the future hasn’t arrived yet, and the unceasing flow of time precludes the existence of a moment. So how do I reconcile that with the perception that I – and everything else for that matter – exist. It would appear that there is some deficiency in either my perception or my logic. Of all the things I feel I need in the time that’s left to me, maybe the most pressing is the advice of a logician.

I wonder whether I’m the only person on the planet who doesn’t know what a podcast is.