Something Missing.

It’s Beltane Eve and I have nothing to report. I had a fire as usual, but decided to have it in the afternoon because there were heavy showers about and I thought it better to pick a dry interlude than risk a deluge after dark.

Beltane Eve fires aren’t the same during daylight. There’s no magic around and no sight of verdant growth being illuminated by firelight. Maybe that’s why I got burned when I forgot that one of the fingers in my old gardening gloves has a hole at the tip. It still hurts.

And it’s not the only thing that has been hurting today. I’ve had toothache, backache, sore sinuses, several other minor twinges, and a feeling of being utterly washed out and in the throes of extreme fatigue. I suppose it serves me right for lighting the Beltane Eve fire before sunset. Maybe the gods or spirits or little people are exacting a fitting punishment. Or maybe I’m just getting old.

I remember earlier fires in my younger, fitter days, when the only ache I suffered was for the company of a certain exalted person. Her very presence among the green growth and the sight of her face lit by firelight would have made the occasion complete. It’s too late now; she no longer qualifies. And neither do I.

Bad Timing.

Yesterday and today were the first wet days we’ve had for about six weeks. The sun disappeared until late this afternoon and the temperature plummeted. And yet today saw three spring firsts.

There was the baby robin I mentioned earlier, the first flower on my clematis plant, and this evening I saw the first of the house martins which migrate up here from Africa. I asked them why they bothered, but they were too busy trying to catch something to eat and ignored me.

*  *  *

Just to interrupt the mood and aim for something completely different, I thought I’d post a picture of my mother and me feeding the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. I suspect they’ve been banned now, but it’s a long time since I went to London so I can’t be sure. When I look at it I wonder how many of the people in the background are still alive. My mother isn’t, and the pigeons certainly won’t be, so I wonder whether I’m the last one standing.

Precocious Bird.

The first of this season’s new robins appeared on one of my bird tables today, just in time to catch the colder weather and rain that’s moved in (the temperature today is 11°C lower than it was this time last week.)

 

The fledglings usually arrive with their parents and are still asking to be fed, but not this little guy. He’s fully independent, feeding himself like an old hand, feisty with the other birds, and is even giving me the long stare that robins are wont to do. I hope he’s as good at watching out for sparrow hawks, though, because there’s one around.

Comparisons.

It seems that the days of sitting in the sunshine in a warm garden with a cold beer will have to be put on hold. The gloomy skies, the rain and the general chill which was the hallmark of February are back. And of course, we didn’t have lockdown sitting on our shoulders in February. Now we do, and the sense of restriction is becoming tedious.

But Mel keeps on reminding me of what it must have been like during the war, when nearly all the young men were being sent off to be shot at, blown apart or drowned at sea. When the cacophony of exploding bombs filled the night air in the bigger cities, and people cowered in expectation of the next bomb reducing their homes and their bodies to so much lifeless, or at least useless, rubble. And then there was the rationing. People ate a lot less then than people do now, and during the war they were only allowed an even more meagre diet of carefully controlled morsels. There was very little snacking on chocolate and cheese nibbles during WWII. And it lasted for nearly six years.

And yet people are now talking of the British bulldog spirit again. Well, maybe; but it isn’t quite the same thing, is it?

A Reluctant Trump Note.

I’ve been trying to keep off the subject of Trump lately because I find him tedious and of little consequence, even though I admit that he does provide the occasional laugh, as with his advice to ingest or inject disinfectant. But he does seem to be plumbing new depths at the moment. Given what has been coming over the water in the past few days, it appears that he’s:

Ignorant of even the simpler aspects of human biology.

Unaware of the difference between bleach and disinfectant.

Unwilling to take personal responsibility for his actions.

Unaware of what the word ‘sarcasm’ means.

Reluctant to seek the advice of those who do know a subject before shooting his mouth off.

But there’s something else which should be of concern to Americans and all those who are in any way influenced by America. He’s never been particularly lucid – much less sophisticated – in his speech, but he seems to be becoming even less so.  One of his pronouncements which I read today was so badly constructed that it was almost indecipherable. I’m guessing that at the moment he would fail even a primary school English exam.

And this is the man who is going to try to get re-elected in November. If he’s successful it will be a serious indictment of America and Americans because the Coronavirus crisis is just the latest test he’s taken and been found wanting. But maybe I should consider what a neighbour of mine said the other day:

‘I can never decide whether Trump is a complete idiot or actually very clever.’

Indeed. Maybe Trump simply knows how to keep his fan base happy.

False Claims.

I suppose we all know that there’s no such thing as ‘free delivery,’ but I still get irritated when suppliers claim it.

I was browsing an online liquor store recently and came across a well established, but rarely seen, blended scotch at £16 a bottle. That’s pretty reasonable, but when I added it to my basket I found that the price had increased to £34 a bottle with free delivery.

Well, there’s a lie here somewhere, isn’t there? Either the product should have been listed as £34 on the product listings page, or delivery was a hell of a long way from being free.

More Reasons to Yawn.

1. This is what my apple tree is currently full of. (Non-native English speakers please note: ending a sentence with a preposition is still considered clumsy by the purists. I know that, but I’m lazy. I could have written ‘This is a picture of the flowers currently adorning my apple tree.’ And having said as much, I don’t know why I didn’t just say it in the first place.)

I have a particular fondness for apple blossom and write about it every April. I promised myself that this year I wouldn’t, but I made no resolution not to publish yet another picture of it. So there you go.

2. I seem to be assuming the role of Guardian of the Bees of This Parish. I rescued three more today, all struggling upside down in the birds’ bathing bowl. They will insist on sitting on my finger while they preen themselves, which I consider a little presumptuous of them but I do my best to be tolerant and accommodate their needs. I imagine they’re in shock and I wouldn’t want to be responsible for subjecting them to whatever the bee equivalent of PTSD is.

3. I had a conversation with a neighbour today, at a distance of around 50ft so we had to shout. We talked of many things Covid-related, but what really intrigued me was that his hair was very short. I wondered how he’d managed to get a haircut while I’m consigned to looking more like a scarecrow with every passing day. I should have asked him, but I was growing bored with the conversation before I got around to it. Growing bored with conversations is a problem I’ve always had, and I often wonder how much more I would have learned about life and people if only I’d been more patient.

Admitting the Bad.

It seems that over 90% of the people who have died of Covid-19 here in Britain have been over 60. I wonder how much the government is saving in pension payments.

Does that sound callous? I suppose it probably is, but I’m constantly seeing videos on YouTube referring to the fact that INFJs have an evil side. I certainly have, and I’ve always known it. I suppose it’s why I so appreciate people who haven’t. They’re fairly rare and usually make me feel inadequate.

Today in the Garden.

I rescued a bee (I like bees.) It was floating upside down in the birds’ bathing bowl, kicking its little legs around and looking only minutes from an inglorious end. So I put my finger up close and it crawled onto the safe haven of a helping hand (or digit if you want to be precise.) And then it sat on my finger for several alternative minutes in the warm sunshine, rubbing its legs together and buzzing its wings and generally exuding an air of ‘Phew! Thought my number was on that one.’ And then it took off and climbed happily into the azure sky. Such reward there is to be had from so small an endeavour.

It struck me that in several million years time, when bees have evolved to the point at which they’re wrecking the environment with rampant consumption, there will exist a major religion with countless millions of faithful acolytes. And its god shall be called Jeffrey.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, I recognised that there is at least one pleasurable side effect of lockdown. Every day while I’m in my garden I see attractive young ladies (for which read ‘girls’ if you don’t mind me being politically incorrect) riding their horses sedately on the lane outside my house. Sometimes they’re alone and sometimes they’re in pairs, but they’re always wearing neat little sporty, sleeveless tops, and they have their hair arranged in ponytails sticking out of the back of their riding hats. And why bother with the landscape when you can look at the view?

*  *  *

(p.s. Did Trump really advise Americans to inject themselves with disinfectant, or is that fake nooz?)

OCD Conflict.

You wouldn’t believe how much time I spend adjusting my office curtains every night, trying to get the black border which runs down the middle exactly half way between the two sides.

I get quite cross with myself, but when I say ‘that’ll do’ my INFJ tendency jumps up and says ‘Oh no it won’t. It isn’t perfect.’

The winner is determined by my prevailing mood, at which point half of me sulks.

Today's Tepid Trivia.

In the garden:

At least one of the pairs of robins in my garden is now feeding a nest somewhere.

There are definitely more planes flying overhead to East Midlands Airport than there have been for several weeks.

The cock pheasant which thinks it has every right to steal the garden birds’ seed and rolled oats has learned what the word ‘no’ means.

The delinquent squirrels, on the other hand, continue to risk being hung by the scrotum from a tree in Rutland. I suspect their many crimes include digging the mysterious holes in my one and only vegetable patch.

Another nuisance is the lad who’s taken to riding a noisy quad bike around the field adjoining my garden several times a day. I assume he’s bored.

A cold beer still tastes splendid in a warm garden (as long as it’s quiet.)

Beyond the garden:

There’s a gang of unsavoury-looking men prowling the lanes of the Shire, filling bits of road with bits of tarmac. Their temporary traffic lights are a bloody nuisance.

My car keeps asking when he can go and be parked in Sainsbury’s car park again. He says there’s a neat little number who occasionally parks there and he fancies her a bit. I tell him I really don't know, and besides, he’s too old for that sort of thing. He says he doesn’t feel old so **** off!

The Lady B’s erstwhile abode now has a fancy wooden porch-roof-type thingy over the kitchen door. I have no idea why.

A Pleasant Diversion.

I just gave myself a rare treat – put a packed lunch together and took it to the churchyard of the old mediaeval church to eat. It was a splendidly warm, sunny day, and the car needed its twice weekly run out anyway, so it seemed a good idea to go in that direction and combine pleasure with practicality. (And there’s no way my left leg could walk that far at the moment.) There was nobody else in there and the sense of peace was as sublime as ever.

  

I haven’t been into those hallowed grounds for more than three years, and it was good to visit the grave of the ladies Isabella again and view the grooves in the stonework where the mediaeval archers sharpened their arrows. I also found the graves of my late landlord and his twin brother looking almost pristine in the family plot. I paid my guarded respects.

The church itself was locked, of course. Nearly everything is these days. And I wasn’t planning to go in there anyway, splendid as the interior is with its Saxon crosses and alabaster tombs of the local mediaeval gentry. It occurred to me that I might hear a ghost whisper ‘I do’, a ghost which is now well laid I think but I was happy to be spared the opportunity of finding out.

There was only one aspect of the visit which troubled me. There was a notice on the gate explaining that the church building was closed due to the present crisis, but that I was welcome to sit in the churchyard 'for purposes of prayer or peaceful contemplation.' It said nothing about the eating of cheese and tomato sandwiches.

Desperately Seeking a Ramble.

I think it’s self-evident that the only thing we can be absolutely sure of in this life is that one day we will die. But something else which comes very close on the certainty scale is that as we go through life we will change. We all do, and it’s normal and right that we should. And so it seems to me that telling somebody ‘I will always love you’ is not only an empty promise, but also potentially a cruel thing to say.

I’m growing tired of petty philosophising, but it’s difficult to find something to say in the dreamlike state that is lockdown.

*  *  *

A Japanese man keeps writing to me on YouTube. He keeps telling me to be careful of Covid because it’s dangerous. He also tells me I should go to Japan, there to luxuriate (my word) in the proliferation (also my word) of cherry blossom, and join in with the celebratory parties. Seems like Japan is also dreaming at the moment.

*  *  *

I was in my bathroom tonight and thought how creepy it would be to see a shadow move across the floor, thrown there by the spill light from the next room. And yet when it actually happened – twice – in my last house, I found it only mildly creepy. ‘Present fears are less than horrible imaginings,’ said Macbeth. Well, there you go.

*  *  *

Am I coming close to saying anything worth saying yet?

An Angle on Covid.

It struck me today that for most of human history, human beings have had two things the other animals don’t – art and philosophy. And then we created a third, and employed our by now very complex and very clever communication skills and called it technology.

Maybe that’s where we went wrong, because it encouraged the growing – albeit unspoken – delusion that we are capable of controlling everything.

Meanwhile, good old Mother Nature stayed at home, quietly humming in that self-satisfied way she has, finding new ways to kill us.

Uncertainties.

When I see my recommendations on YouTube I’m both interested and a little disturbed to realise how many self-styled gurus there are in the world, all sitting smug and secure on their soap boxes, all claiming to have the answers, all pontificating from positions of certainty.

Am I being unduly negative and cynical in taking the view that there are no certainties, there are only perceptions? We come into this world and walk a road replete with experiences, some of which are pleasurable, some of which are painful, and some of which are merely of passing interest. We have the choice to make of them what we will according to our natures. And at the end we die, from which position we might move on to something else or we might not. Nobody really knows.

And then I read the responses and am both interested and a little disturbed to realise how many dependent people there are in the world, all prepared to consign their personal perceptions to the self-righteous rhetoric of self-styled gurus.

Idiots and Maniacs.

It appears George Carlin and I had a curiously exact parallel thought:

Have you ever noticed that everybody driving slower than you is an idiot, while everybody driving faster than you is a maniac?

(He probably said it first, but I swear I didn’t copy. I expect a few other people have thought precisely the same thing down the years, which doesn’t necessarily prove the existence of universal consciousness. But it might.)

I remember that winter night about ten years ago. I’d been to work in the city but had to take a detour to Ashbourne on the way back. Heavy snow had been falling most of the day and was still falling as I approached the steep hill coming back out of the town. It was dark, the snow was thick on the road, and visibility was restricted by the blizzard.

I always took a run at that hill (and still do) because the old cars I drove (and still do) lost around 15mph on the climb, and the night in question was no exception. I began the ascent at about 70mph.

Problem: there was an idiot going slower than me a little way ahead, and I didn’t want to settle in behind him for fear that the car might start slipping and sliding and I wouldn’t make it home. So what could I do but keep my foot on the gas, move out into the middle lane and overtake him? And that’s what I did.

I’ve little doubt that the idiot regarded the term ‘maniac’ an understatement in the circumstances, but I made it home.

Quoting Carlin.

After all these years I suddenly discovered George Carlin today. I disagree quite strongly with a few of the things he said, but most of them sit well with me and his mind seemed to work rather like mine* so I must forgive the few that don’t.

* Israeli murderers are called commandos. Palestinian commandos are called terrorists. Me to a T.

And I approved of his view on feminist political correctness going too far. ‘Chairperson’ and ‘humankind’ he’s happy with, but asks whether a lady’s man must now be called ‘a person’s person.’ And I found this particularly amusing:

If you take five white guys and put 'em with five black guys, and let 'em hang around together for about a month, and at the end of the month, you'll notice that the white guys are walking and talking and standing like the black guys do. You'll never see the black guys going, "Oh, golly! We won the big game today, yes sir!" But you'll see guys with red hair named Duffy going, "What's happenin'?"

*  *  *

And do you know what? I made a perfectly reasonable comment on a YouTube video last night, and somebody replied: ‘Shut up jew (sic.)’ There was nothing remotely suggestive of Jewish ethnicity or Judaic religious sentiment in my comment, so I must reply back and ask him what sort of childhood he had.

On Murdoch, Oz, and Mind Control

I’ve noticed of late that YouTube is being infiltrated by scurrilous articles from Sky News peddling its usual puerile and putrid propaganda. (Do excuse the excessive use of alliteration; my mind just seems to work that way.) They include blaming the Chinese for the existence of coronavirus and claiming that socialism is ruining the Australian way of life.

It should be noted here, of course, that Sky News is owned by that great champion of right wing nastiness, Rupert Murdoch. And it’s interesting that Rupert Murdoch is effectively Australian whatever his present passport says. Interesting because I gather that racist attitudes in Australia are aimed more at the Chinese these days than they are at the traditional aboriginal targets (or so I’m led to believe.) They seem to think that the Chinese are about to invade the Land Down Under and build a Forbidden City next to Sydney Harbour Bridge, from which edifice all right-thinking Australians will be governed by a process of mind control exerted by Chairman Xi and his cohorts. (They don’t seem to have noticed that Mr Murdoch is already performing that dubious undertaking from his office somewhere in Manhattan. He owns Fox News as well, don’t forget.)

But what of the claim that socialism is ruining the Australian way of life? What is the Australian way of life, exactly? I don’t know because I’ve never been there. I know what image it projects: It projects an image of a culture obsessed with sun, sea and surf; beaches, barbies, beer and bunk ups; and then back to seemingly endless suburban jungles where a sophisticated lifestyle might be defined as gorging on junk food while watching junk programmes on an expensive TV.

Now, I’m sure that isn’t correct. There’s also the backpacking tradition, Sydney Opera House and Cate Blanchett to give the lie to it. And probably plenty more besides. But it does raise the question of how Australian children are conditioned to view the subject of social justice, which is the basis of socialism after all.

You see, we common British folk suffered many centuries of abuse and exploitation at the hands of the Norman-derived landed gentry, followed by another couple of centuries of abuse and exploitation handed down by the industrial elite (or ‘noveau riche,’ as the dispossessed landed gentry liked to style them because it sounded French and therefore properly posh. Sounding properly posh was the one thing the poor old landed gentry could still claim for their own after the new money took over.)

British kids are taught from an early age about the Luddites, the Chartists, the Highland Clearances, the match girls with their phossy jaw, the inevitable rise of the trades unions, and so on. The selfish excesses of the landowners, the mill owners and the mine owners are entrenched in our history and still circulating in our blood (well championed by Mr Dickens but in a somewhat diluted form since Mrs Thatcher tagged us to America’s free market coat tails.) And so Socialism is not such a dirty word in Britain as it seems to be in Australia. We’re pretty much with the French on that one.

I think it reasonable to suggest that this is because Britain has a much longer history than Australia. In fact, Australia has very little history at all. A penal colony projected itself with indecent haste into a 20th century, western-style democracy without an intervening period of anything very much. I have to wonder, therefore, whether the concept of social justice is simply missing from the Australian mindset. It would seem to make sense, and would further seem to explain the strange claim made by Murdoch’s little brainwashing tool, Sky News.

So am I right or not? Maybe some Australian person will enlighten me. I do so like to be enlightened.

Suffering Woodstock.

There’s a bird in my garden whose song is all but identical to the ring tone on my mobile. He always sings it just when my hands are occupied, and I’ve little doubt that he and his cronies watch me put down the potato I was peeling, or dry my hands because I was in the middle of washing the dishes, and then fly away tittering or tweeting or whatever it is birds do to celebrate the successful duping of a dumb human.

Fresh Out of Words.

It’s becoming more and more difficult to write blog posts as we get deeper into the Coronavirus crisis. I’m thoroughly tired of talking about the crisis itself, Trump continues to irritate me but I’ve become used to that, my old friend the llama is conspicuous by his absence, I’m not moving among people and their dogs so there’s nothing to observe on that front, I’m missing my Costa ladies but there’s no more to be said on that issue, the weather has turned dull and much colder so there’s no sitting in the garden with a cold beer at the moment, no lovely ladies have appeared at the bottom of my garden to ask ‘How are you, Jeff? I’ve been worried about you’, and I still can’t perambulate the lanes, woods and footpaths so there are no spring-in-the-Shire posts to be made.

So what should I talk about? Me? Not much to say about me either, except that I’m faring as well as a person might expect in the circumstances. My ex, Mel, has serious difficulties and worries both in terms of her own welfare and the health of a close family member, so I won’t be seeing her for a while and she can no longer do my shopping. (And there’s not much I can do about it except sympathise and wish her well.) Meanwhile, the occasionally-mentioned Woman from the Walsage is proving a gem with the getting in of supplies. To put it simply, therefore, I have nothing much to complain about, but nothing much to write about either. Sorry.

If I do think of something to say, I’ll try my best to commit it to the blog before I forget what it was.

Inadequate Information.

Here in the UK the BBC News website gives daily figures for known deaths and infections related to Corvid-19. The problem is that it only gives actual numbers; it doesn’t publicise the rate of deaths and infections, which would be more useful because it would give a better picture of relative risk.

An example of this has been the large number of deaths in the USA. It’s been headlined on the news page because of the high number, but has made no mention of relative population sizes. America currently has approximately twice as many deaths as the UK, but is also around 5x the size in terms of population. It doesn’t require a calculator to work out, therefore, that the mortality rate in Britain – and France, Italy and Spain – is substantially higher than it is in America. (And I do realise that New York is an exception. Plague pits aren't nice.)

And so I ask myself whether this is an example of the BBC being stupid, the BBC assuming that Britons are too stupid to understand the difference, a deliberate ploy to massage perceptions, or something else entirely.

Living in Quarantine.

Living under lockdown is proving to be a strange experience. There’s a sense of unreality about it, a sense of having pressed the pause button, a sense of living in a world shifted onto a subtly different plane.

I miss doing the things I usually do – moving unregarded among the myriad of people walking their petty and personal paths, observing their little ways and watching how they respond when some sort of contact is effected. I miss being out there making my own choices and engaging with the petty and personal things which mean something to me.

But living under lockdown is a relatively peaceful experience by and large, even though accommodations have frequently to be made to the unfamiliar, certain sacrifices grudgingly accepted, and the principle of flexibility paid more than lip service. Never have I seen so many people riding horses and bikes on the lane outside my house, while motor vehicles are relatively few in number and the sky overhead is almost devoid of the usual commercial aircraft making their way to and from East Midlands airport. It’s all so much quieter and slower.

And in the midst of all this I find myself thinking often of the Lady B. It’s hard to know why now that she’s so very far away and a million miles behind. But then so is the beautiful young dog I lost to illness thirty six years ago and whose death I still mourn. They both brought a rare light into my life, so why should I think of one but not the other? And wouldn’t it be reasonable to suggest that a life held on hiatus should naturally attract unproductive thoughts.

A Brief Word on Today's Big Issue.

Would there be any point in me adding to the torrent of words currently pouring forth over the issue of Trump and the cessation of funding to the WHO? Probably not, since I have no influence in the matter whatsoever. If Trump needs votes from the more mentally challenged sector of the American population, then how better to achieve his aim than by persuading them that he is acting in their best interests? Isn’t that what ‘America First’ is all about? And how light do weigh the interests of humanity when placed in the balance against one man’s need of votes? If it further trashes America’s reputation in the world, so what? Why should Americans care about their reputation in the world?

It would massage my ego very slightly, however, to quote something I wrote in a recent post:

It seems that when the cultural train jumps the rails and weaves an erratic and unfamiliar course, part of the thin veneer of controlled and civilised behaviour gets stripped away. Some people exhibit a tendency to be stupid, selfish and greedy, while others show themselves to be sensible, humane and even courageous.

I think that will do.

A Nicer Post.

This video lightens my life most nights. If only the world was full of dogs and pretty girls in woolly hats, I swear I would be happy at last.

The Dark Prowler.

I was sitting in the garden today when I heard a muffled thump somewhere nearby. I turned to see that a sparrow hawk had landed heavily on the path, and it was clutching a small bird in its talons. It flew away taking its catch with it.

I love the birds in my garden and I find it hard to have to witness one of my friends being slaughtered. I could only wish this one a speedy end, and do my very best not to blame the sparrow hawk.

And Mel, my ex, learned today that the brother with whom she lives has cancer. The big guy with the scythe seems to be hanging around a lot at the moment. Sorry the sound of his shuffling through the undergrowth is insinuating itself onto this blog rather a lot lately.

I really would very much like to find something cheerful and funny to write about instead. It just isn’t happening. Tomorrow, maybe.

In Praise of the Frown.

I watched a film tonight about a young cabaret dancer who discovers he’s got a serious heart condition and might die with or without a transplant. At first we see him dancing and doing all that sickly smiley stuff. Frankly, he looked like a pile of sugar coated donkey’s droppings. For the rest of the film he frowned a lot and looked much better.

When my wife started a model agency I had the job of doing the test shots for the applicants, and the first thing I said to all of them was ‘whatever you do, don’t smile.’ The better ones didn’t.

I’ve noticed, you see, that smiley people are generally nicer people, but the frowners are the more interesting. They have bad memories, livid scars, and reasons to be suspicious. They have a history, usually convoluted.

And I’m only saying this to vindicate to myself the fact that I began to frown early, and now I wouldn’t know how to be any other way except with children and animals.

The wind is singing a song about shipwrecks tonight.

Falling Short.

I was thinking the other day that somewhere in this world is a living, breathing individual who is mercifully unaware that he or she will be the last person to die before the coronavirus finally gives up its own ghost. That person will be the soldier returning home from the war who gets knocked down and killed by a runaway vehicle at the end of his own street. In such a situation, the word ‘nearly’ must surely be the cruellest in the English language.

But how do we know when the virus will bite the dust? Maybe it will hang around for seven years as the Black Death did in the fourteenth century. Or maybe it’s now a permanent fixture and the remedies currently being prepared won’t always work, in which case the last to die won’t have been born yet.

I wonder why such things occur to me. Maybe I’m just waiting for the world to change.

The Wrath of Karma.

Over the past two days I’ve rediscovered an old and almost forgotten pleasure: having a cold beer sitting in the garden on a warm, sunny and calm afternoon while birdsong bedecks the silence and traffic noise doesn’t.

I’ve been a fan of beer all my adult life, but I lost my taste for it after the operation for some reason. I carried on drinking it for a while out of habit, but eventually gave it up because I came to accept that I wasn’t enjoying it. In consequence of this I’ve had nine bottles or cans of beer sitting idly around my house looking superfluous for quite a long time, two in the fridge and the rest in my office.

But yesterday I decided that the warm weather and the garden work was causing some degree of dehydration, and thought a beer might solve the problem. And so I had one, and was surprised at how well it had stood the test of time. It was most enjoyable, so today I had another one.

What I’d forgotten, however, was that drinking beer in the afternoon on a warm day tends to give me a headache. I got a headache, and wondered why karma has to be so bloody-minded as to make you pay for something as simple and innocent as having a beer in a quiet country garden on a warm afternoon. I suspect it’s preparing me to be a Buddhist monk in my next life, when what I really want to be is a deep space astronaut.

A Small Matter of Relative Perception.

I was sitting in the garden yesterday evening watching the sun sink gradually towards the western horizon, when it suddenly struck me that the sun wasn’t sinking at all. Rather it was I who was moving backwards. I did some quick research and discovered that, given the latitude at which I live, the speed of my retrograde progression was approximately 650mph. I chose not to panic.

Becoming Wurzel Gummidge.

I was due to have my hair cut during the week when lockdown was announced, so the day before the appointment the hairdresser rang to cancel. It’s now becoming uncomfortably long. Long hair doesn’t suit people who are thinning unevenly on the top, and I imagine one day there will be a couple walking up the lane while I’m taking the sun and watching the butterflies.

‘Why does that man have a scarecrow sitting in a chair at the top his lawn?’ one will ask the other.

‘Because he’s very strange,’ the companion will answer. ‘Rumour has it that he voted Labour at the last election. If only we could prove it we could justifiably chase him to the burning mill with pitchforks, but we can’t. That’s the trouble with secret ballots.’

And then the scarecrow will wave to them.

Mouse Encounters.

There’s an embankment behind my house, held back by a dry stone wall. And being a dry stone wall, there are gaps between the stones. They’re much favoured by bees which build hives in the earth behind, and it’s a regular sight in the summer to see the workers going in and out.

I saw a bee approach one of these gaps last night while I was washing the dishes in the kitchen. I saw it get close and then pull back and hover. A mouse appeared in the hole and leapt down to the ground beneath, at which point the bee continued its entrance. I wondered whether it was an example of creature protocol, or whether bees are naturally polite.

And I’ve got used to seeing another, smaller, mouse emerge from the undergrowth beneath my living room window as twilight is approaching. It runs around the path gleefully (assuming the concept of glee is present in the brain of a mouse) before heading off to forage for bits of food beneath the bird table. Last night it took up a position on a kerb close to my leg and watched me replenishing the food. And then it did a bit more gleeful running about before scouring the ground for bits of seed and rolled oats.

I’ve become quite fond of these two mice, but one I wasn’t so fond of was the one that took up residence in my house a month or so ago. Its particular claim to infamy was the stealing of some medications in tablet form which I kept on my bedside table, and it further settled its fate when it started leaving a stock of food under my pillow – first crushed tablets, and then bird seed which it must have brought in from the outside. I caught it in a humane trap eventually and turned it out by some trees down the lane. And then I felt horribly mean and guilty because that’s what I’m like.

On Crisis and Revelation.

I’ve noticed that one of the side effects of the present crisis has been to polarise people into two broad camps. I gather the same thing happened during the war when the bombs were falling and the young men were mostly absent. It seems that when the cultural train jumps the rails and weaves an erratic and unfamiliar course, part of the thin veneer of controlled and civilised behaviour gets stripped away. Some people exhibit a tendency to be stupid, selfish and greedy, while others show themselves to be sensible, humane and even courageous.

It’s a generalisation, I know, because life is never painted black and white. But I do feel confident in suggesting that the two shades of grey are distinctly different.

Lugholes.

I’m becoming obsessed with ears. Every time I watch an orchestra in performance on YouTube, it’s the ears of the players I pay most attention to.

It’s probably because I consider ears to be the most imperfectly designed part of the human body (noses come a close second.) Let’s face it, ears are ugly things and were obviously designed by somebody with a jaded sense of humour.

But it’s also because I have good ears. As ears go, mine are about as good as they get. In fact, my ears are the only part of my body I’ve ever been proud of and felt happy to display in public. They have a couple of wrinkles now where they didn’t used to have them, but they still pass muster on dull days and under artificial lighting.

A Tear in the Fabric.

Things keep going wrong at the moment – with my body, the technology, my relationships, and the world in general. There’s pain and fatigue and inconvenience and frustration and confusion and a general sense of malaise in the air.

It’s like having a dream in which you find yourself in the familiar surroundings of your home town, only the details are wrong and things are crumbling. The shops and offices and banks and tea rooms and hairdressers are in unfamiliar places. One shop has a door missing, another has a broken window, a third has its sign hanging loose. The statue of the local hero has fallen over and the town hall clock has stopped, while the wind blows dry and fallen leaves along the high street even though there are no trees in sight. And you don’t know why. How did matters come to this, and is there anything you can do about it?

It’s all to be observed, I suppose, as everything always is. But what am I observing exactly? The passage of a troubled time in my life and the ongoing history of the world, or a rent in the illusory nature of what we call reality?

Bringing Out the Introvert.

I walked up to the counter in my favourite coffee shop (back in the good old days when coffee shops were still open and had counters up to which you could walk) and said to my favourite serving wench, who can be quite moody and is the most confirmed introvert I ever met:

‘I’ve been invited to Niagara by a girl from Santa Fe. Better take some strong Viagra so she doesn’t think I’m gay.’

It was the only time I ever saw her laugh.

Missing the Old Days.

Blog posts are difficult to come by these days. No inspiration, you see. It’s two weeks today since I was out and about among people, and nearly a year since I last perambulated the Shire. The news continues be full of doom, gloom and dire warnings, the Lady B is so far away that I’ll probably never talk to her again so there seems little point in talking about her, the priestess has become a woman of the world, the llama is conspicuous by his absence, and philosophy seems about as much use as Donald Trump on a good day. No bad dreams, no disembodied female voices calling my name in the early hours, and no black dogs leaping at me out of the wall. If this is sanity, I think I’ll give it a miss.

But the twilights have livened up a little. The bats are on the wing again and there are lots of little voles and wood mice scurrying around my garden now that there are no cats living next door. I wonder where the owls are.

And I’m watching lots of DVDs when it’s too dark to work in the garden. Last night I watched a film called My Life Without Me. It was quite the bundle of laughs and a good advert for trailer park living and making a list of things to say to people after you’re dead.

A Persistent Failing.

I’ve always been inclined to associate voices with faces. If I hear a voice repeatedly over the phone or on the radio, I develop an image of what that person looks like. And it becomes strongly entrenched. And then when I see them in the flesh or in a photograph I find that I’m completely wrong.

Two Reasons to be Curious.

It’s a curious fact that if you’re subjected to a noise while you’re asleep, you still hear it in a way that’s quite different from a dream. That was how the woman’s voice I heard early this morning sounded. I didn’t recognise the voice, but it called my name clearly. I half woke and then heard it again. The second time it woke me up completely. I looked at the clock: 6.30. And then I went back to sleep.

At twilight this evening a dark coloured bird appeared out of the gloom and flew past me so swiftly that I only managed the briefest glance at it. I didn’t recognise the bird either. And two things about it were odd. Firstly, its wing beats were silent, unlike the usual garden birds whose wings make a rapid fluttering noise when they fly. Secondly, it flew a straight course to within inches of my arm. None of the garden birds ever do that.

The thought struck me that the two occurrences might have been connected in some way. Whether they were or not, I don’t know. And whether I shall ever find out remains to be seen.

Headline Priorities.

The daily news headline is supposed to reflect the most newsworthy fact of the day, isn’t it? That’s what I’ve always believed. Today’s banner headline on the BBC website is all about President Trump declining to wear a mask.

So tell me, why should I, an Englishman living in a quiet rural backwater of the English countryside, be remotely interested in whether Trump wears a mask or not? What I’d be more interested to know is what effect the Covid-19 pandemic is going to have on this year’s presidential election, and whether the world is going to have to put up with Trump longer than it thought it would.

A Stranger in New York.

I just watched New York, I Love You again. I liked it better this time around. I liked it a lot.

Despite the fact that I’ve always been a bit of a dyed-in-the-wool Englishman, I still have a soft spot for New York City. (I only ever went there once and I was seventeen at the time. I expect it’s changed a bit since then.) I like the energy, the characters, the plain speaking, the accents, the mix of humanity in all its hues.

That’s what I like about New York, said one character. Everybody came from somewhere else.

Not quite literally true, but who needs pedantry when you can have poetry. New York is an oddly poetic sort of place, even though I can’t for the life of me explain why. And it seems to me to be probably the least American of any place in America. That’s because it seems to me that New York doesn’t belong anywhere in particular. It has no affiliations, or at least that's how it looks to an outsider.

And so I like New York, but…

There was one scene in the film which lasted a mere two seconds. It was a shot of a huge neon sign – or whatever passes for neon these days – which obviously belonged to some big and self-important financial institution. I don’t remember what it said because the actual words weren’t important. What was important was the sense it evoked of the modern world and the direction we’re taking. New York suddenly became the fo'c'sle of some massive ship operated by a blind and deaf captain and crew, heading on an unwavering course for the maelstrom.

The feeling only lasted a few seconds. The rest of the film was fine.

Two Sides to the Story.

The big headline on today’s BBC News website is the fact that the USA now has 25% of the world’s covid infections. I would say that’s hardly surprising given the size of America’s population and the fact that it’s probably the most socially mobile country in the world (courtesy of crazily cheap gas which makes us Europeans highly envious and encourages climate scientists to tear their hair out.) But the point I want to make is this:

Every day the media concentrates almost exclusively on the scare stories. It’s all about today’s increase in infections and deaths. It proclaims in big letters that America now has a quarter of the world’s infections. Sounds huge, doesn’t it? And if such a wealthy place as America can suffer so badly, what hope is there for the rest of us? It carries images of people in masks, and newly built, sanitised treatment centres which look like the starting point for that long-predicted dystopian future. It’s all guaranteed to sow the seeds of depression, anxiety, and even panic.

So I took a look at the statistics for the county I live in and the neighbouring one. I multiplied the number of known cases by four to take account of the fact that not all cases are recorded. (It’s an arbitrary figure, but one which will probably suffice for the sake of argument.) I took out the calculator and worked out what percentage of the population has contracted the condition. It came to 0.5%.

Do you realise what that means? It means that something like 99.5% of the population – or 199 in every 200 – are probably free of covid. I do realise that this is little comfort to those who do have it, and considerably less to those who’ve lost a loved one. I further realise that if we become complacent the figure won’t stay at 0.5%. And so I’m not suggesting that restrictions should be relaxed; all I’m saying is that it made me feel less threatened.

So should the politicians and the media be putting both sides of the picture to the people? It’s a difficult one. I assume the politicians don’t trust the people to understand the relationship between the need for extreme caution and the actual risk. And maybe they’re right. Maybe people do need to keep having the scare stories and the negative statistics thrust at them in order to keep them in line.

But maybe there’s another question to be asked: can the people trust the politicians and media to strike the right balance between guarding against physical threat on the one hand, and preserving emotional wellbeing on the other? Probably not.

In the meantime, life goes on for nearly all of us.

*  *  *

And while I’m at it, I was reminded again today of the shabby and self-interested way in which the banks and large corporations are conducting their business during the crisis. I could wax eloquent about the disingenuous nature of their messages of ‘support’ to their customers. But I think I’ve rambled long enough about covid for one day. I do wish I could find something silly to ramble about.

The Recluse in Time of Crisis.

One of the things which tend to happen to people who live alone and have little social contact is that they cultivate routines. Routines add structure to a life lived in a relative void, and they can become surprisingly important.

So what happens when circumstances like the present crisis deny them some of those routines? They have to find alternatives; they have to learn to be more flexible, and being flexible is a practice to which they have become strangers. And so they’re forced at least a little way – and sometimes a long way – outside their comfort zone. That’s what’s happening to me at the moment.

Being forced outside your comfort zone isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and for me it isn’t too difficult. I happen to be lucky enough to have a decent sized mind which has always been reasonably good at solving problems, but even for me the resultant difficulties can become more than irksome. And suppose I didn’t have that faculty. What then?

And let’s not forget that routines can easily cross the line and become essential behaviour when subjected to the OCD tendency. Being denied the ability to operate under the thumb of OCD can also be a good thing for certain people, but for others it can be very stressful.

And quite apart from all that, there are other issues at stake here such as the reasonable presumption that extroverts must suffer more than introverts from the denial of social intercourse. I wonder whether the government realises just what a complex set of psychological issues are being raised in the present climate. I’ve even wondered whether they have a team of psychologists on hand to advise them in policy making.

I very much doubt it. I expect a team of psychologists would spend most of their time arguing with each other. Psychology is not an exact science, and I suspect that western-style culture has probably become too multi-faceted and decadent to take psychology into account anyway. A complex environment requires complex solutions if everybody is to be satisfied, and I doubt there’s the will, the time or the resources to do that. And so we have one rule for all, and I suppose that’s how it has to be.

*  *  *

I cleaned the inside of my fridge and one of the kitchen cupboards today. I also paid my credit card account, ordered some bird food online, ran around like a scalded chicken keeping the bird tables stocked, went for a little drive around the lanes, and swept a lot of arboreal debris off the road when a surprisingly strong gale hit. Am I happy?

A Muse for April.

So now it’s April. April has usually been a good month for me.

It was when I first moved to the countryside that I began to feel that there was something in the air in April. It was a subtle, beguiling sort of feeling that I could never describe and still can’t. I assumed then, and still assume, that it had something to do with the energies of nature growing so strongly that they became palpable. I feel them falling dormant again in September.

Some years later I was doing a college course during a period of unemployment, and remember how I used to like walking through the city’s main cemetery on my way home during April. The mild, damp air and the fresh lightness of the greening trees evoked a similar feeling.

When I was working as a landscape photographer I nearly always began my summer season’s commissioned work in April because April usually provided the earliest opportunities to find the right combination of light quality and colour.

And the end of the month brings us to Beltane Eve, and how can I forget the sight of burgeoning growth illuminated by firelight, or the strange lights and flickerings that I reported here one year? In summation, April can be occasionally harsh, but usually it’s a time when we can truly believe that spring is definitely springing.

This April is going to be a strange one. It remains to be seen whether the subtle energies of nature’s resurgence will be masked by the oppressive sense engendered by lockdown. Movement is restricted, contact is restricted, busy thoroughfares are eerily quiet, and even the grocery shopping is a lottery because so many shelves are empty of important items. The magnolia bush in next door’s garden and the cherry trees lining the bottom of the school playing field are all clothed in white blossom as usual, but the view in that direction is missing the children who normally grace it.

This April will have the feel of a dream about it, and not a wholly comfortable dream. The restrictions, the shortages, and the ever present sense of anxiety will suffuse it all. It will be the sort you want to wake from, and who knows how the world might have changed when it’s all over. Some hope that the world will change for the better, while others fear the uncertainty. For my part, the end of the pandemic – if and when it comes – will bring the re-surfacing of other personal issues to feel anxious about.

And time, life’s most powerful tyrant, will tell. If we survive the crisis, something else will kill us sooner or later. And still I wonder whether any of it matters in the end. Meanwhile, maybe we should be grateful that we still have the fleeting gifts of April to distract us.