On August and Wheels Turning.

The end of another August; the end of another summer. The harvest is mostly gathered in, the willowherb is white with woolly seeds, and the dry detritus of early fallen leaves is becoming more evident almost by the day. And so I could go on about the world turning, and the wheel of life turning, and the husks of humanity’s fallen turning into clay. But it’s all old stuff which only seems to matter to the old anyway.

But what of the bigger picture of another turning wheel – the turning of the planet into something less hospitable to frail and mortal mankind? It seems oddly ironic that it’s only the old who don’t have to worry about it. But then another question arises: do we all live on a further wheel still – the wheel of life, death and rebirth? And if we do, how long will it take to come back here? Will we make landfall into a hotter, crazier, less certain world of struggle and shortage and the tedium of migration?

‘I’m glad I’m at this end of my life,’ say the older people when they read of fires and floods and frantic storms becoming ever more frequent. But maybe they’re not at the end of their personal story, but only taking a break before climbing onto another wheel to do it all over again. Nobody can tell us, can they? If they could, maybe we would do things differently.

I woke up feeling cold in bed last night. It seemed an odd thing to be doing in August.

Explaining Midsummer.

 Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania

~ A Midsummer Night’s Dream

It always struck me as absurd that we in the west call the summer solstice Midsummer’s Day while also defining it as the start of summer. How can it be both, especially when you consider that the summer solstice is the point at which the sun begins to sink in the sky and the days start growing shorter?

But then I had a thought…

In the pre-Christian Celtic calendar, summer was defined as the months of May, June and July. That’s what Beltane – 1^st May – is all about: the start of summer. So then it makes sense because 21^st June, or thereabouts, is the fulcrum point in the solar cycle which is closest to the middle of summer.

I’m now choosing to assume, therefore, that the term ‘Midsummer’s Day’ was donated to us modern ne’er-do-wells by the pre-Christian Celts. Please don’t tell me if I’m wrong because I don’t care.

Lord, what fools these mortals be.

  ~ A Midsummer Night’s Dream

*  *  *

I consider it notable that this is my 33^rd post of the month, which is the highest number of posts of any month this year. That seems odd considering that I’ve been feeling ill and depressed for most of August, but maybe it isn’t. Maybe I’m just getting used to feeling ill and depressed. I was talking to a woman this morning who believes that Covid is nature’s way of reducing the surplus population. And it isn’t even Christmas yet.

The Substitute Post.

I was talking to Mel earlier and she gave me the perfect cue as to what I should write a post about tonight. And now I’ve completely forgotten what it was. That’s usual for me these days.

So instead I’ll mention in passing that my walk route this morning took me along Church Lane so that I could see whether the wheat crop had been harvested yet. (I get oddly concerned about that sort of thing. No idea why.) Most of it had; two or three fields to go and then the harvest will be safely gathered in. (Ah, maybe that’s where my concern comes from – being a churchgoing Christian as a kid and singing hymns at harvest festival time. Certain things stay with you, don’t they, whether you want them to or not? Or maybe I was a dormouse in a previous life. Who can tell?)

So I stood for a while watching a tractor towing a roll baling machine in one of the mown fields. It’s curiously compelling to watch the chaff being taken up into the machine while clouds of dust are expelled through vents at the side. And it’s nothing less than mildly exciting when every so often the vehicle stops and a perfectly circular, tightly bound bale of straw is ejected from the rear.

I imagined a little boy standing with his mother and watching the spectacle with a mild sense of awe. Eventually he looked up at her and said ‘Mummy, that machine just did a poo.’ Because that’s how my mind works and I’m so very ashamed of the fact.

Meanwhile, I’ve moved on from listening to Julie Fowlis. Tonight it’s Sheila Chandra. Listening to Sheila Chandra’s gloriously rich, dark, Indian voice is like eating a piece of the best Belgian 85% cocoa chocolate flavoured with just a hint of passion fruit. And some of the songs are a bit weird, which suits me.

Nothing Much.

Today was one of those days when you get lots of jobs done but none significant enough to be worth mentioning. (I did try to find something amusing to say about laundering the current bed linen, drying it on the line in the sunshine, and then ironing it, but it was a hopeless cause.) Consequently, I’m struggling to find something to write about.

I suppose I could mention an album of music I’m listening to at the moment. It’s entitled The Definitive Irish Folk Selection. One of the tracks included is Dirty Old Town which is set in Salford, Lancashire, England, and which was written by Ewan MacColl who was born and raised there. I feel a murmuring of doubt coming on as to whether it can be counted as definitively Irish. It also has The Furies’ version of the Eric Bogle anti-war classic No Man’s Land. Eric Bogle is an ex-pat Scot who has spent most of his life domiciled in Australia, and the song is a damning indictment of the horrors and futility of The Great War, a war in which Ireland remained neutral. It’s a splendidly moving song, one of my favourites, and I’ve heard several versions of it, but The Furies’ rendition is the one I like least.

And then there was the noisy bunch of ragamuffins who rudely disturbed my twilight communion with the natural denizens of the Shire. (I think I might have mentioned that nearly everything of note that happens to me… OK; already done that one.) I gather there was a ‘communal walk’ arranged for the locals today and I assume these were of it. I retired to the bottom of my garden and scowled at them while they passed, whereupon I swear I heard one of the women call ‘Hello, Jeff.’ I’ve no idea who it was, but I was glad to see that they weren’t bearing pitchforks and burning brands. They seemed like the sort who would be in the van of the ravening mob when the time comes.

My bed linen was plain and pale blue, by the way. I do hope somebody noticed.

On Catherines, Names and Sundry Rubbish.

I was thinking earlier about the woman who stopped my way on the blasted heath yesterday evening (at twilight, note, although I doubt she was a witch because she didn’t have a beard and therefore bore no resemblance to Macbeth’s little crew of horrors, bent as they were upon persuading him onto the road to perdition’s flame. The burning mill is but a bagatelle in comparison. Don’t I talk rubbish sometimes?)

Anyway, the purpose of the post is simply to say that Catherine is a good name. It’s one of those names that are so much better than their diminutives. (I could go on to talk about dear Zoe’s insistence on calling me Jeffrey at this point, but I won’t.) Cathy is pleasant and girlish enough, but it lacks the substance, strength and gravitas of its parent. Cath is, in my opinion, simply unpleasant.

Catherine is elegant and enduring. It speaks of equanimity, intelligence, candour, reliability and good sense. If you were experiencing a crisis, you would expect a Catherine to calmly pull you through it. And Henry VIII must have liked the name because he married three of them and only executed one.

I’m listening to Julie Fowlis again, only a different album this time. And I’m feeling slightly nauseous on account of having just eaten an overripe banana. I thought it would be a healthier alternative to a pack of Jacob’s Mini Cheddars (Ploughman’s Cheshire Cheese flavour.) I’ll know better next time.

But back to the name game. I have to repeat something I’ve said several times on this blog: no woman’s name quite approaches Abigail for sheer pulling power. I don’t know what it is about that name, but it gets to me, you know? It does. Maybe it was Abigail who pulled me from a burning mill just in the nick of time during the course of a past life. Or maybe she was the only one who didn’t hit me when I was in the asylum.

And now I’m talking rubbish again, so I’m going to re-boot the computer because it gets cranky if I give it too much to do. But not before finishing Julie’s song set (I’d prefer it if she were called Aisling, but you can’t have everything, can you?)

Seeing a Small Bit of the Big Picture.

I had to walk down to the post box in Bag Lane today, and on the way back I saw a boy of around fifteen walking towards me. He held his head down and looked surly, so I watched him as he approached and continued looking at him as the distance closed. He half turned his head at one point, but didn’t make eye contact. And so I continued to watch him, and at the last minute he looked sideways back at me. I said ‘hello’, whereupon he uttered two vaguely nasal sounds which defied any attempt at translation into intelligible English.

This might provide one small paragraph in a social novel of 100,000 words, and it struck me that while the big events of the day make the headlines and create the noise, the intrigue, the horror, the anger, the indignation, the fear, the hope, and even occasionally the pleasure, it’s little episodes like this that weave the multifarious threads of life’s tapestry for most of us. It’s what the god of small things trades in, and most writers do so admire the god of small things.

Meeting Little Nell.

I had a most remarkable encounter this evening (at twilight, of course; nearly everything of note that happens to me these days happens at twilight. I suspect the universe is trying to tell me something.) Actually it would be more accurate to say that I had two remarkable encounters, so let’s deal with the more substantial one first (the mysterious one can take its place in some low-lit recess wherein family heirlooms stand impassively and mysteries generally belong.)

I met little Nell. She leapt at me lovingly, lolloping with great gusto and licking whichever bit of me was closest like I was the best ice cream to be had in this world or any other. At a mere seven months old, she was the very essence of what every young lady has the right to be: uninhibited, unwary of the stranger, possessed of boundless affection and trust, and unrestrained in her determination to bestow upon any grateful recipient the loveliness of her presence. I was the grateful recipient, and the reader will no doubt already have surmised that little Nell was a dog.

And so she was, a chocolate brown Cocker/Springer Spaniel cross, longer in body than a typical Cocker but not as heavily built as a Springer. It occurred to me that she will grow a little bigger than a Cocker, and that the day might come when I shall no longer occupy the role of the neighbourhood ice cream, but instead be seen as a fit subject to be carried like a juicy bone and buried in whatever spot happens to be available in the garden. Would I mind that? Erm… probably. For the time being, however, I’m more than happy to be lovingly accosted and licked half to death.

So what of the mysterious half of this twilit encounter?

Well, little Nell was accompanied by a second young lady – of the human variety this time – called Catherine. No mystery there, you might say, but…

Readers of longstanding will be aware that I do not have the nature of a little Nell. I don’t connect with strangers at all, let alone freely, unless they feel right. Catherine felt right; that’s the mystery. And so I opened up almost without constraint, knowing full well – and being quite unconcerned – that yet another resident of the Shire will now be aware of the Nutcase Who Lives Near the School. It occurs to me to wonder whether she has a pitchfork, and so will be suitably equipped to join the madding crowd when they drive me to the burning mill.

I expect the event will take place at twilight, since nearly everything of note that happens to me happens at twilight. (Yes, I know I already said that. It’s a literary device.) It’s a fact, you see, that burning brands look more dramatic and decorous in the darkening air, and gleaming tines on pitchforks look all the more theatrical when raised against a grey and glowering sky. If you’re destined to be a manufactured monster, you might as well be an entertaining one. And I wonder whether little Nell will trot along for the fun and wag her tail enthusiastically when the floorboards collapse.

Charm.

I just read a comment on an old post of mine. It came from a woman of whom I grew unaccountably fond, even though I never met her. It said ‘You could charm the horns off a rampaging rhino, Jeff.’

Well now, what is one to make of that? It seems to me that there are two kinds of charm: there’s the honest, natural, candid sort which slips out without artifice. And then there’s the other kind: the manufactured, disingenuous, slimy sort consciously designed to achieve some sort of nefarious end.

So if I am, or was, charming, to which sort may I honestly lay claim? How would I know? Could my Irish ancestry provide a clue? And does it matter anyway, since whatever charm I might or might not have possessed hitched a ride with the poor old diseased kidney three years ago and disappeared into whatever receptacle is the last resting place of diseased kidneys.

And a few too many birthdays haven’t helped… Bye for now.

The Power of Music.

Now that the days are growing shorter I need more indoor evening diversions than I did during the long, light days of May, June and July. Unfortunately, I have little to keep me occupied. No DVDs, nothing on the TV, no emails to write, and YouTube doesn’t get its slot until after midnight for reasons already explained. So tonight I decided to listen to an old favourite album of music from Julie Fowlis, Uam, which I gather is Scots Gaelic and means ‘from me to you.’

As soon as the first bar came through the headphones I was transported back ten years, back to the winter of 2011 when I spent every night sitting by the fireside with this album while reading The Mists of Avalon. It was a book I lived rather than merely read, and Uam is so indelibly associated with it that they might be conjoined twins.

And so the memory of those days sweeps over me like the incoming tide, but the experience doesn’t stop at mere simpering and ultimately pointless nostalgia. It promotes reflection on the intervening years. I question the similarities and differences between who I was then and who I am now. Am I better or worse or just different? How do my respective circumstances compare? And what of the people who were in my orbit back then, and who have now nearly all gone without the benefit of replacement? How did my life path guide me onto that ‘quiet street where old ghosts meet’ to quote Mr Kavanagh? And there was the blissful ignorance of the dam of health issues that was to break over me exactly seven years later and which are now dominating my life.

These and more reflections full of sound and feeling, signifying nothing. And all from a few bars of Julie Fowlis’s music. And will any of it inform or affect what length of road I still have to walk? Almost certainly not.

Unusually for me, I’m posting this raw – no editing – while I’m still listening to the music.

A Haunting Issue.

It might have been noted that I’m becoming increasingly interested in the possibility of being a ghost after I die and engaging in a bit of haunting here and there. But, as with all high minded ideals, I foresee a problem: I’m basically a well-meaning and sentimental old soul who would be most reluctant to frighten or otherwise distress the kind of person I would be likely to want to haunt. So how do I get over the objection?

The problem is, you see, that you don’t have to appear at the foot of somebody’s bed looking wan, waxy and wasted in the darkness of the early hours, intoning in a wavering or gravelly voice: ‘I’m so, so cold; may I stand beside you for a moment to feel again the warmth of a living body?’ to be frightening. You could sit in the corner of the garden in the sunshine, waving and smiling in a friendly manner, and you’d still be frightening. It’s a sad, and maybe even irrational, fact that the evident presence – whether visual, aural or even olfactory – of someone you know to be deceased is frightening by default.

The Lady B once said to me, a very long time ago before she acquired a husband and children and stopped acknowledging my earthly presence (except with a wave or a smile if circumstances happened to be favourable): ‘Please don’t haunt me, Jeff. That would creep me out.’ I did attempt to reassure her that I would do so in a friendly and non-frightening way, to which she might have replied: ‘There’s no such thing as a friendly and non-frightening way, Jeff. The evident presence of someone I know to be deceased is frightening by default.’ (Only Lady Bs don’t say that kind of thing. They say ‘Please don’t haunt me anyway. That would creep me out.’) But, whatever… In the event, I never got a reply so I can only assume that her objection remained intact. I suppose I could sit unseen in the kitchen, tapping my fingers silently on the table while observing such domestic pleasantries as happened to be available, but it wouldn’t do. There would be something unsatisfactorily unilateral about it and I think I would find it most frustrating. There’s really no point in haunting somebody unless you can be sure they know they’re being haunted. So back we go to square one.

This remains an unresolved problem, and I suspect that so it will always remain as long as I continue to wake up in the morning to drag my corporeal form through yet another day. I can only hope that somebody with more experience in that kind of thing will be around to give me a few tips when the time comes, but how can I know? Is anybody listening? Is there anybody there? One knock for yes and two for no.

This brain of mine is in a wandering mood. Soon be time for bed.

Rising Above the Affliction.

The health issues are dominating my days even more than usual at the moment, leading to discomfort, dysfunction and a modicum of dismay. They were but one part of today’s troubles.

But I did order another Shirley Jackson book this evening (when I’d finished closing all those irritating little boxes which eBay keeps throwing at you to try and get you to join their club.) I’m becoming quite the fan of Shirley Jackson. She’s most perceptive in a weird sort of way, and that suits me nicely.

But now I’m tired of writing blog posts, munching on various comestibles, and trying to find a comfortable position in my computer chair because parts of me hurt. Soon be time for my nightly scotch and YouTube. I’ve started putting deliberately provocative comments on YouTube videos just to see whether the new, improved me handles being trolled in a more equanimous way than it used to.

A Note on Honourable Sister.

I encountered several members of the D clan today, that’s the clan of which the Lady B is the most notable member. (Actually it’s complicated because she has her own clan now in addition to her hereditary one, but let’s not split hairs.)

She wasn’t in attendance today, but Honourable Sister and her canine companion were, and Honourable Sister smiled at me as she usually does. (I think I might have scowled in return. I can’t help it, you know, I really can’t.) But here’s the thing about HS: she gives of her smiles freely, but not her words. She’s never shown the slightest inclination to engage with me in conversation, and that’s a shame because she’s mysterious; and mysteries are both fascinating and frustrating; and if that’s how life has to be, that’s how life has to be.

There’s no reason to doubt that I shall go to my grave without ever having had a conversation with Honourable Sister, and so the question arises: should I haunt her by invisibly playing catch with her dog on summer days when the thunder is rolling around the heavens and a storm is in the air? Maybe not. How fortunate it is that I don’t bear grudges. (But I might just whisper a quiet ‘hello’ when she’s alone and reading a book by the fireside one cold winter’s night. I’ll be curious to see whether she smiles at that.)

Replacing Religion.

Today has been a bad day in so many ways. It seems I must have offended the gods today, so multifarious have been the misfortunes, and I’m led to wonder whether it all stemmed from a thought I had this morning. It wasn’t an entirely new thought, but it seemed to crystallise more than usual. At the risk of offending the gods further, I’ll spell it out.

It seemed to me that there is a pressing need for the human race to divest itself of religion. All religions are effectively speculative, and they do so lend themselves to a fractured mess of traditions and sects and traditions within sects. In consequence, they are one of the most potently divisive influences on the human race. They produce conflict; and conflict produces a host of evils including abuse, cruelty, power mania, enslavement, the letting of blood and the taking of lives. The situation in Afghanistan is the latest sad example, but it’s been going on for thousands of years.

I know I’m not the first person to say this, but I’ve noticed that most proponents of the idea are engaged in promoting atheism. I’m not. It’s apparent that we in the ‘developed’ world have largely consigned religion to a peripheral accessory, but what we’ve replaced it with won’t do. The new quasi religion has only brought us more insubstantial, less mysterious, more readily accessible gods like money, status, the promotion of ego, and lifestyle obsession. It’s all too plastic, too superficial; it struts its stuff loudly in the empty environs of the lower mind, but totally fails to recognise and nurture the inner being.

So while I advocate the dismissal of religion, I feel that we need to replace it with a more universal and inclusive form of spirituality, beginning with an acknowledgement of our connectedness to nature, and then proceeding to an individual search for the meaning of life and the nature of what lies beyond material existence.

Many people are now doing this – me included – but the movement is shackled by the religious zealots who are working hard to keep the human race bound in the chains of one tradition or another. ‘You must do as we say,’ they intone gravely. ‘We are right and everyone else is wrong. If you stray from our path you will eventually go to our version of God and be punished horribly. We might even hasten the process by dispatching your physical body.’

And so, while I have the deepest, most heartfelt sympathy for the poor people of Afghanistan, I suggest that the bigger picture – the real war, if you like – is with the religions which promote the divisions for dark-hearted people to use to their advantage. It’s a sad aspect of human nature that people will always seek reasons to come into conflict, but remove religion and a major window of opportunity will be closed.

Changing Horses.

I just had a reply to one of my YouTube comments. It was the sort of reply which causes my Gregory House side to leap frantically up and down begging for permission to fire off an apposite response. These days I can’t allow it, of course, because while dear old Greg will wander around in the fog after he’s dead, wondering why he can still think even when he can’t see anything, I’ll be basking in the divine light where wood nymphs frolic and the dietary cholesterol in ice cream doesn’t matter any more.

Unresponsive.

I went for a blood test today and the nurse didn’t find my joke funny. I’ve seen her before and she never does, so I tried my back-up technique: the compliment. I told her that I grade nurses by the amount of pain I don’t experience when they stick needles into me, and that she was top drawer. She didn’t respond to that either.

 

The thing is, you see, when your face has reached that point where even a female orang utan wouldn’t give you a second glance (except to laugh, maybe), all you’ve got left is your sense of humour and your capacity to extend honest compliments. If neither elicits a response, the only course left is to say ‘thank you’ and leave. So that’s what I did. She didn’t turn around or say ‘have a nice day’ or anything. I hope the blood didn’t curdle or I might have to go back. On the way out I saw one of these in the waiting area:

 

 

You know, there really are times when I wonder why I’m still here.

Entering My Third Age.

The situation in Afghanistan is awakening something in me. Though it might be only one of many examples of the weakness inherent in mankind, it seems to be giving genesis to my third age. The first, as a young man, was relatively unmoved by disaster, abuse and injustice. The second was the ability to weep through heightened awareness of it. The third is the capacity to feel physically ill in response.

I feel the need of a companion, but it must be someone who is as lost as I am on the staircase to heaven-knows-where.

Another Little Encounters Post.

I was talking to a woman in Ashbourne today. I felt that my face mask was making communication difficult, so I stood a little further away and removed it. She removed hers, too. I realised later that, at my age, that’s as close as I’m ever going to get to intimacy.

*  *  *

Today I saw:

The local barn owl briefly at twilight, and a pair of willow warblers scratting about for food on the kitchen roof. I haven’t seen the barn owl since last winter, nor the willow warblers for several years.

An old dog standing outside a butcher’s shop, looking eagerly through the open door and wagging his tail. I asked him whether it smelt good in there, but he declined to acknowledge my presence.

Two young girls standing behind me waiting to go into Sainsbury’s. I was busy sanitizing my hands at the time, so I stood aside and said ‘there you go, ladies.’ They both giggled and walked past me. I love moments like that.

A big, burly tyre fitter in the tyre depot (I was having a new one fitted. £54. Jesus!) being nice to an old lady customer. That’s heartening, too, and he was wearing a beanie hat which makes it even more so.

My favourite dentist ever – the splendid Ms Medeea, late of Transylvania. I bumped into her while walking through Ashbourne, and asked whether she’s still working at the practice (I last visited the practice a year and a half ago because the pandemic played havoc with dental appointments, emergencies excepted.) She said she was, but she wasn’t sure for how much longer because certain issues are getting on her nerves. Well, if ever she sets up a practice of her own I want to be the first to know. Being second in the queue would be unconscionable in the matter of remaining under Ms Medeea’s tender ministrations.

*  *  *

Tonight’s twilight was cold and gloomy again. When you’re prey to a depressive tendency, cold and gloomy twilights don’t help.

Seeing the Whole Jigsaw.

At times today the combination of personal woes, world affairs, and the darkness inherent in the human condition produced such a level of intense desperation that all I wanted to do was go to sleep and not wake up again.

I tried to take refuge in the notion that I’m not here to connect, and maybe not even to contribute, but only to observe. I tried to take the Buddhist view that observation must be non-judgemental. I reprised an earlier position of mine that we’re all fundamentally alone, and that our ultimate responsibility is only to our own spiritual evolution.

And then I read several news reports from Afghanistan and my empathic side was brought to its knees with sadness and impotence.

I heard somebody say recently that coming into this life is like being given only a few pieces of a 500 piece jigsaw, and then being expected to know what the whole picture represents. So who will tell me?

Certainly not the diehard atheists; they’re just taking the easy option. Certainly not the religionists; they have too much of the scent of delusion and dependency about them. Certainly not the people who run the world; they’re too driven by ego and the pursuit of self-interest. But I’ve said all this before and the mystery of the finished picture remains elusive.

Maybe one of these days the personal woes will magically disappear, world affairs will take on an optimistic note, and the good people will come to the fore at last. And if I spot a flock of pigs flying westward into the sunset, I might take a break from the jigsaw and start to re-engage with writing silly ditties, flights of amused imagination, and tongue-in-cheek observations of things that don’t matter. Until the next life.

The Dispiriting Nature of Days.

I’ve adopted the habit of taking breakfast in bed a lot lately – just a bowl of cereal and a mug of tea, nothing extravagant. It’s to put off the moment when I have to leave my bed, get dressed, and open the door of my private little cell in order to face the world and another tedious day.

So why are the days so tedious? Well, because they rarely contain anything which isn’t either a chore, a maddening inconvenience, or something about which to be anxious. There’s so little to offer a spark of encouragement because most of what my culture has to offer by way of distraction is, to me, superficial, inconsequential and generally uninteresting. I can be sure now that I’m never likely to meet the person who could make me a baked Alaska, I’m never going to make that trip up the Yangtze because Mr Xi’s policies are making China thoroughly alien territory, and I’m never going to see the aurora because it would be too expensive and too bloody cold.

And yet there is still one thing I would like to do. Do you want to know what it is? It’s to sit down with the Lady B, having no previously prescribed time limit, and ask her some questions. But this is something I cannot look to have for a number of reasons, not least the fact that she has not the slightest desire to accommodate such an event. And there’s an even bigger impediment:

The questions I would like to ask are ones which I have no right to ask, and the answers – whatever they might be – are ones which I have no right to hear. And such an impediment has attained the level of the sacrosanct now. So that’s that.

 

Meanwhile, my growing faculty for empathy is causing me to be very worried about the plight of the poor people of Afghanistan.

The Role of the Seasons.

I came around the corner of my house at 5 o’clock this afternoon and was surprised to see how long my shadow was on the path. I noticed that the heat of the sun on my back was milder, less intimidating, than I’d grown used to of late. And then I felt the cold breeze in my hair and on my ears which picked up the occasional whistle in the trees when the wind strengthened for a moment. It seemed to whisper stridently and insistently: ‘Not long to go now. Autumn is almost here.’

And that’s how life is, of course, pulling you through the seasons year after year, each one startling you slightly because you were just getting used to the previous one. It encourages recollections of a few earlier seasons which were notable enough to remember. There was the long, hot, dry summer in my twenties when standpipes were being erected in the streets in readiness for the cessation of piped water supplies. There was the bitterly cold and snowy winter in my thirties when I had 2ft snowdrifts in the loft, and the water in the bathroom toilet had a layer of ice on it. And there was that spring only fourteen years ago when April was replete with warm sunshine and butterflies, but the summer which followed was largely cold and wet.

But most of the seasons over a lifetime meld into a generality of minor memories. Fishing and snorkelling on holiday, sliding down the browning grass of Tanner’s Bank on the shiny side of a piece of hardboard, waking up one Sunday morning with no school to go to but a snow-buried landscape in which to play, the thrilling sight of a bluebell wood on a school nature walk one sunny April day many faded moons ago.

Now the seasons fly by at a seemingly dizzying speed. They are the means by which we measure the year, and a reminder that the sum of the years is finite for each and every one of us. They are the most potent agents of time which has always lighted we fools the way to dusty death. And however they might change as the reckless, ignorant and selfish human animal unthinkingly abuses nature’s imperatives, they always will be.

Updates.

Two little updates on recent blog posts:

It’s odd, isn’t it, that you can go six months without seeing a familiar number plate, and then you see it twice in the space of two days. It’s that old universe conveying messages again, and I think I know what it means this time. I feel the last verse of Raglan Road coming on. But it’s pleasing that I’m making an enigmatic blog post, having not done so for quite a while. I’ve missed it. It used to be a speciality of mine during the blog’s middle period.

And today I told Mel about the dark haired woman, the all black clothes, the paintbrush and the black Labrador dog. She was quite intrigued, and said she wondered whether this was the person going around painting the black patches on the Friesian cows. I wish I’d thought of that.

In other news, I spent some time today writing quite a long post about a Hopi Indian chief and the subject of spirituality. I felt strongly moved to write it because it seemed important. I got so far and then left it, meaning to finish and post it tonight. When tonight came I’d completely lost interest. Happens all the time.

Black is the Colour.

I’ve lived in the Shire for more than fifteen years now, and yet today I encountered a woman I’ve never seen before. She was rather attractive, too, probably around forty and possessed of dark hair and a youthful figure. I said ‘good morning’ (even though it was actually afternoon) and she said ‘hi’ before smiling at me rather nicely. (She couldn’t have been much over forty because women over forty, especially those who live in posh houses, generally don’t say ‘hi’. They say ‘hello’ or ‘good afternoon’ or ‘how do you do’ if a reasonable probability of social intercourse appears to be in the offing.) The point is, though, that it seems such a long time since an attractive, dark haired woman said ‘hi’ to me and smiled nicely. Attractive, dark haired women hardly ever speak to me these days, or even acknowledge my presence.

And do you know what this mysterious woman was wearing? All black. And do you know what she was doing? Standing in her garden painting her gate – black. (Which seems rather unusual to a person of my generation. When I was growing up, men generally had sole rights to the paint brushes, while the women prepared dinner and told the children that they mustn’t go anywhere near daddy because they might get black paint on their nice clean clothes and mummy wouldn’t be best pleased at having to get it off again.)

So then I moved onward and upward to the village proper, where I further encountered another woman standing in her garden. No mystery there, though; I’ve had plenty of conversations with her over the years. She’s the one I’ve mentioned before, the one with the big yellow Labrador dog whose desire to befriend me was discouraged on the grounds that it might leap in my direction and pull her over. And there was a Labrador dog standing next to her, only it wasn’t yellow. It was black, which caused me to wonder whether the mystery woman had made the journey onward and upward earlier in order to practice her painting skills on the dog. I didn’t ask.

The Matter of a Car and Personal Evolution.

The most interesting thing that happened today was seeing an unfamiliar car with a familiar number plate. Why is that interesting, you might ask? Well, because the number plate told me who is associated with that car, but the nature of the car itself seemed quite inappropriate to what I thought was the nature of the person I assumed was driving it.

But it didn’t stop there. It never does with me because it raises a question in my mind, and my mind is the sort which has to formulate a theory or argument to address that question. (It’s a curse, I know, but that’s a different subject.) In this case it caused me to ponder the process of personal evolution. My reasoning went as follows:

We all evolve as we go through life, and that evolution is influenced to some extent by factors which are present in our environment, particularly our closest environment which is our home. And one of the major influences comes from the people with whom we share that environment. A process comes into play which we might call the dynamic of consensus, which is constantly questioning and suggesting adjustments to our attitudes, opinions, and general view of life.

It seems to me, therefore, that those of us who live alone have only ourselves as the primary reference point, whereas those who live with others – especially in a strong and intimate relationship like marriage – have other reference points interacting with their own. It’s reasonable to postulate that if we marry a certain person we will evolve differently than if we had married a different person. Such might very well explain the seeming incongruity between the car and the presumed driver, who is a married woman with children. She is probably a very different person now from the one I knew who was unattached. And I might be completely wrong, but I’ll settle with it until a better explanation comes along.

And since the person in question used to be the brightest star in my firmament, it explains why the spotting of the car was today’s most interesting occurrence.(I suppose it shouldn't surprise me that I hardly ever want to get up in the morning.)

An Owl at Twilight.

Today’s twilight treat was the unfamiliar call of an apparently unfamiliar owl. I knew it wasn’t a Barn Owl or a Tawny Owl and curiosity was the order of the moment. 

 

So I looked it up

In my book of birds

 

And the sound

I found 

 

Was precisely what

I’d heard

 

It was, apparently, a Little Owl, which chalks up yet another first to this Year of Firsts.

Another first happened yesterday afternoon when I saw countless sparrows flying over my head en route to the big sycamore tree at the bottom of the garden. It’s common enough to see small groups of sparrows flying together from one hedgerow to another, but this was something completely different. This had the appearance of a mass migration on the scale of the biblical exodus. Where had they come from, I wondered, and where were they going?

Well, actually, I could see where they were going. I’ve already said so, haven’t I? There being no Red Sea in the vicinity, they were heading for the big sycamore tree at the bottom of the garden. By an odd coincidence, it was the very same tree from which I was to hear an unfamiliar owl calling a little over twenty four hours later. I’ve long suspected that there is magic in that tree, and I’m content to admit that I’m ever more given to improbable and unprovable speculations the older I get.

 

*  *  *

I’ve been feeling grouchy and unsettled all day today. I was called out of bed prematurely by the desire to visit the bathroom early this morning. And then I was awoken again a little later, but also prematurely, by noise from the neighbours who rise much earlier than I do. I got up at that point, but still felt the same condition of weariness, depression and general dysfunction as I always feel for about an hour after getting out of bed. Today it lasted all day. It probably explains the mood swings and the writing of poor and pointless blog posts.

And I just ate two rice cakes because one wasn’t enough.

Nature Boy or Nutcase?

This is going to be a difficult post to make, but I’ll give it a go and see whether I can put the essence of what I want to say into intelligible form.

The area at the bottom of my garden – the space surrounding a gap through which you have to pass to get onto the lane – has always been a bit special to me. There’s a low embankment which I allow to grow wild during the summer months, before trimming it back in the autumn. There’s a section of field boundary hedge which has probably been there for around two hundred years. There’s a piece of land which is always left wild because there’s no use to be made of it. And there are three mature sycamore trees which shade the spot from the high noon sun in June and July. When the air is still and warm enough to allow for contemplation of the subtler aspects of life, I feel something there. Tonight I felt it stronger than ever, so strongly in fact that it almost startled me. So how should I describe this thing to which I cannot put a name?

A palpable sense of warmth, but not as we usually perceive it in terms of temperature. A notion that energy is running through my body, but not physical or electrical energy. A mildly euphoric mental state that has no recognisable source. These three and something else besides which I have no means to describe because there is nothing to which it can be compared.

And so I ask the question: Am I really sensing the subtle energy of natural growth, because that’s what it feels like? Have I gained a faculty of perception to which the majority of my fellow humans are complete strangers, surrounded as they mostly are by inert material and countless unnatural diversions? Or is this a mental aberration given genesis by the loner gene and encouraged by increasing reclusiveness?

My human mind doesn’t know the answer to that one; but a still, small voice inside suggests that maybe – just maybe – I’m privileged to have a faculty known to the animals and the ancients, but lost to the modern human. And delusional or not, it’s a pleasurable and immensely valuable experience.

The BBC Does Tortology.

There was a report in yesterday’s BBC News website regarding the heavy rain and subsequent flooding problems they’ve been getting in Scotland. It showed a picture of what looked like a canal, but was actually – as the caption informed us – a rail line submerged under water. No doubt the extended description was intended to offer some little relief at the knowledge that the rail line was not submerged above water, nor submerged under something more nefarious like beer, chocolate milkshake or tomato ketchup.

And if anybody reading this blog even begins to comprehend my oblique sense of humour, please do let me know. It’s been suggested by a fairly authoritative source – albeit obliquely – that I should make some attempt to feel less insignificant.

Reading the Robin's Mind.

I was doing a little work in the garden today when a baby robin flew past me and settled close to my foot. He or she began to peck things from the ground – disturbed insects I assume – while I stood enthralled by this adorable little bird looking resplendent in his (or her) still-speckled plumage.

The robin looked sideways at me often, but I couldn’t tell whether the expression on its face meant ‘thank you, human; I needed a change from those rolled oats on the table at the top of your garden’, ‘what a strange creature you are; I wonder how you manage to fly since you don’t have any wings’ or ‘please don’t make any sudden movement or I’ll get spooked and then you’ll have to feel guilty.’

But it was all rather nice anyway.

On Shame, Slovenia and Synchronicity.

I suppose I’d better write some sort of a blog post. Indonesia is looking impatient.

So what should I write about, since nothing much happened today? Well, there was hint of synchronicity in the mail this morning. It’s not exactly ground-breaking stuff, but it will have to do for now. I had a postcard from Slovenia.

The priestess is in Slovenia at the moment, and yesterday she sent me an email from there. I’m awash with shame at having to admit that I wasn’t exactly sure where Slovenia was and had to Google it. I knew it was somewhere in central Europe, and I knew it was south of Slovakia, but I didn’t know that it had a coastline on the Mediterranean or a border with Italy. Well, I do now so I can stop being ashamed, can’t I? I can.

The thing is, though, there was a postcard in my mailbox this morning from somebody entirely unconnected with the priestess. She was my manager when I was still doing some work at the theatre. She lives in the Czech Republic, where she came from before I knew her, and travels all over Europe with her family. She sends me postcards from everywhere she goes, and the latest one was from Slovenia. And here’s the best bit:

In her email, the priestess referred to the fact that she was currently sitting on a grassy bank ‘very like the one in the photograph’, only she’d omitted to attach said photograph. Blow me if one of the thumbnail pictures on the postcard wasn’t a picture of a grassy bank. I can’t say that this added greatly to my knowledge of world geography, but at least it kept the synchronicity smouldering nicely. I have to admit that one grassy bank looks very much like another, but at least I can now say that Slovenian grassy banks follow the trend most admirably.

The Nuptial Kiss.

‘I now pronounce you man and wife,’ said the vicar. ‘You may kiss the bride.’

‘Kiss the bride?’ questioned the groom.

‘Yes, you may kiss the bride,’ repeated the vicar.

‘Why would I want to do that?’

‘Why wouldn’t you want to do that?’

‘Don’t see the point. I’ve kissed her a zillion times already. What’s so special about now?’

‘Because it’s symbolic of Almighty God granting you licence to engage in physical union. It’s traditional.’

‘But suppose she doesn’t want to be kissed?’ queried the groom, warming to the occasion and the knowledge of an audience to his rear.

‘Of course she wants to be kissed.’

‘Why’

‘Because she is now your wife.’

‘Oh, I see. Now she’s my wife she’s supposed to want whatever I want to give her?’

‘Within reason, yes. We’re not talking about bad thing like cruelty or abuse here, we’re talking about love.’

‘What’s love got to do with it?’

‘Why, kissing is an expression of love.’

‘Oh, come off it. People kiss for all sorts of reasons. It’s generally an act of affection, but love has to be a whole lot more than that if it’s to have any validity.’

‘That may well be,’ replied the vicar, putting his nose in the air for the first time, wholly possessed of the illusion that he had gained the high moral ground from which there could be no question of losing the argument, ‘but what you must understand, young man, is that the purest form of love is the only quality which sanctions any form of physical union. God decrees it, and so God permits it.’

‘Oh right,’ replied the groom, suppressing a snigger so as not to embarrass the young woman standing next to him. ‘Seems to me it’s more about libido than love, but let’s turn this argument around the other way. Why do you not say to the bride “You may now kiss the groom?” Why does God only give permission to the male half of the double act?’

The vicar’s mouth remained closed, but made a brief movement not dissimilar to that of a cow’s when chewing the cud. His nose dropped to its more familiar position, and then he said:

‘That’s far too complex a matter to be discussed here. The service needs to be wound up so that the day might continue as planned. Are you going to kiss the bride or not?’

‘Well, you’re right there, vicar. I suppose we’d better get on with using up all that money that’s been spent on cars, and caterers, and photographers, and licences, and poncy clothes, and bands that play music nobody wants to listen to because they can’t hear themselves think, and all the rest of the hangers on. You do realise that it could probably have provided a rare good meal for every homeless person in the country?’

He turned to the young woman standing next to him and asked:

‘Do you want me to kiss you?’

‘Of course,’ she said, ‘as long as you have no objection to me kissing you back. There’s something kind of… well… cute about it. It seals the bargain, as it were; puts a nice full stop at the bottom of the agreement.’

And so the bride and groom kissed, and the organ began its traditional dirge, and everybody was happy at last. The groom’s mother stopped squirming in her seat, and the bride’s mother – who was a lawyer by profession – lost what mild sense of discomfort she had been feeling and realised that the whole thing had been rather interesting after all.

Soon the radiant May sun shone benevolently on the assembled collection of couple, family and guests, the men languishing in the delusion that they were as smart as smart can be, and a whole monstrous regiment of women looking absurd in even more monstrous hats, all applauding and throwing bits of paper around for somebody else to pick up later. And a good day was had by all.

(And this whole episode arose entirely out of my having looked at a photograph which had been languishing in my inbox for four years, two months and ten days. Amen.)

Phones and the Wider Picture.

There were two teenage girls walking up my lane at twilight yesterday. They kept stopping and walking on, and stopping again and walking on again. They seemed rapt in deep and close conversation, and I was intrigued. When they finally arrived at a spot close to my gate, I saw what they were doing. One was poking and stroking a smart phone and the other was taking a lively interest in whatever was on the screen.

At that point I felt the urge to engage them in conversation. I wanted to say to them: ‘If you’re going to take a walk on a country lane, surely you should be observing the landscape around you. You should be noticing the way in which the natural world operates. You should be considering the relationship between nature and the human species. Further, you should be asking whether this view of reality in which you are presently functioning – or think you are – is all there is, and even whether it is real at all. You should be striving to make sense of it in the context of consciousness, and asking whether consciousness is rooted in material existence, or independent of it and capable of functioning separately. You should even be asking whether existence itself is an objective concept or part of some illusion incomprehensible to the limited faculty of human mind. For heaven’s sake, girls, you can poke and stroke a smart phone sitting on the lavatory. Isn’t it (like golf) a waste of a good walk?’

I didn’t say anything of the sort; in fact, I didn’t say anything at all. I don’t suppose I need to explain why.

*  *  *

But here’s something a little more interesting: Four years, two months and ten days ago, somebody sent me a photograph as an attachment to an email. Tonight I looked at it for the first time. Part of me thought it was verging on the hideous, while another part thought it rather lovely. It’s another example of my favourite maxim: perception is the whole of the life experience. And I shouldn’t divulge the subject of said photograph since I don’t know the identity of the person who occasionally drops onto the blog from somewhere in the UK. I might become incriminated.

All I’ll add is that today was not a good day (very few are these days.) That evocative phrase ‘went down in wan and weariness’ was perfectly apposite to the twilight again, and ‘wet’ might be added to complete the alliterative trio. Now it reminds me of Poe’s ‘and Darkness, and Decay, and the Red Death…’

When a Thing Is More Than a Thing.

At around two o’clock this morning I was in my bedroom preparing to go to bed when I heard a loud noise somewhere in the house. It was both metallic and hollow and accompanied by a scraping sound. I investigated and discovered the source.

My Spanish guitar, which normally rests against the wall next to the TV in my living room, was lying on its face with the saddle (that’s the wooden piece behind the sound hole to which the bottom ends of the strings are attached) disconnected from the body of the instrument. Evidently age had taken its toll, and the powerful glue which holds the saddle in place had finally weakened and given up the ghost. I’m sure it could be repaired, but it would have to be done by an expert and would cost far more than the guitar is worth. It is now destined for the council tip.

In a way it matters little since I haven’t played it for some years (not, I think, since the time when I sat out in the summer garden and serenaded a young rabbit with my version of Mr Tambourine Man, a fact I recall mentioning on this blog.) And ever since I moved away from the teenage gang and adopted a regular domestic lifestyle, I’ve only ever played it for my own amusement anyway (the rabbit didn’t seem particularly amused; in fact, the rabbit didn’t even seem to notice.)

But it was an old friend which had been with me since my twenties, through all the ups and downs which the vicissitudes of life saw fit to throw at me. It was the third guitar I’d had since I began learning to strum and ripple pick at around the age of 15. I was a million miles from being an accomplished guitarist, but what little I could do I did well. And here’s the point:

Over the past few years, two phenomena seem to have dominated my life:

1. Losing things that were important to me (like a kidney for example.)

2. Experiencing things for the first time. In this case, it’s the first time I haven’t had a guitar since I was a callow youth sitting aimlessly in my bedroom listening to Bob Dylan songs and Irish folk music. The me I was then bore little or no comparison with the person who was soon to begin the big search for meaning and the Holy Grail.

I can’t honestly say that I’m going to miss it because I probably won’t, but I do feel a sense of loss out of all proportion to the material reality of a hollow piece of wood with some bits of wire attached. And it won’t be easy to cast an old friend into a large skip on its way to being crushed and discarded with countless other bits of inconsequential detritus.

A Few Notes for 5th August.

I noticed yesterday that the quality of the daylight is changing now that we’ve moved into August. It’s moving perceptibly towards the mellow light of autumn before sinking further into the cold light of winter. Being no longer a schoolboy revelling in the long summer holiday (August was the only month of the year when you never had to go to school), I’m not particularly enamoured of August. August is the month when the leaves start hissing at you.

So what did today offer that is worth mentioning?

The barley I’ve mentioned a few times is mown at last. I’d say that the wheat still has a week or two to go. The maize plants, on the other hand, have adopted the delusion that they’re rehearsing to be extras in Jack and the Beanstalk, courtesy of all the rain we’ve had lately. They’re already more than tall enough to hide hobbits, and the view of the Lady B’s erstwhile abode from Church Lane is almost totally obliterated by a forest of them.

I saw a tractor doing something I’ve never seen a tractor do before, but since I couldn’t work out what it was I won’t bother trying to describe it.

This morning’s depression was one of the worst ever. I don’t know the source of my habitual morning depressions, but I do have a few suspicions. None of them are particularly sensible.

There was a sparrow hawk perching on one of the bird tables, which struck me as an odd sort of thing for a sparrow hawk to do since no small bird would dream of coming within a five second flying distance while it was there. I’ve never seen a sparrow hawk do that before. My oh my, hasn’t this year been full of firsts?

On Memory Lapses and Dessicated Humour.

I was sitting in the garden with a cup of tea this evening while the sun was still up, when a blog post on the subject of it being August ran through my mind. It was a very good blog post, so lyrical it might have been a poem, or at least a few lines of Shakespeare written all on one line. I remember that it mentioned elderberries and rosebay willowherb, but that’s all the detail I do remember. I recall it going onto a different tack entirely, which pleased me because it would have meant adding at least the benefit of variation to an otherwise one dimensional post, but I’ve completely forgotten what the tack was. Such is life, I suppose, when the muses no longer consider you worthy of their extended company, but simply call to you briefly on the way to somewhere else and are never seen again. Or maybe my brain is becoming deficient in some way. Who can tell?

(But in typing this I suddenly remembered the nurse at the Royal Derby Hospital who asked me the oddest question I’ve ever been asked in a hospital: I think it was during the course of a pre-op examination, and she asked: ‘Has anybody ever told you that you have mad cow disease?’ As far as I recall, she had no reason whatsoever to be joking.)

And that little recollection reminds me of something I must say (possibly by way of repeating myself, but I honestly don’t remember) about Shirley Jackson. She had the driest of dry senses of humour. I just read a short story of hers called All She Said Was Yes, and it’s full of little phrases and asides cast to the ether like all insignificant little phrases and asides, only they’re not insignificant. To a mind attuned to very dry humour, they’re actually very funny. I think I would have liked her.

The Minor Matter of the Dancing Midges.

I just looked out of my living room window and saw a host of midges dancing frantically in the light of the westering sun. I wondered, as I always do when greeted with such a sight, whether the midges I can see are the only midges in that location, or whether there are countless other midges – either dancing or not – which I can’t see simply because they’re not being caught in a shaft of sunlight. In other words, do midges only dance when the sun is shining on them?

 

Maybe someone who knows about midges and their mindset might enlighten me. This is the kind of thing which matters to me when I can put aside issues like health problems and the parlous state of the human condition for a moment.