On Spring and Dr. Spooner.

I don’t have much to say today because I’ve been busy with garden and household jobs. (Garden jobs leave me feeling wrecked these days because I’m wearing out faster than a second hand pair of jeans – and I should know because lots of my jeans were bought second hand.)

Still, it was good to see the first leaves open on the horse chestnut trees in Church Lane. They’re always the first of the standards to leaf up, usually beating the later oaks and ashes by six or seven weeks. And they’re such fine, big leaves too, so they attract your attention better than most.

But that’s about it for today, apart from it being a bad day on the technology front. So many things irritating me with glitches on all sides. I expect it’s all due to one of my ruling planets going backwards or something.

The only matter of any consequence today was the discovery of a new spoonerism. My current listening in the car consists of an album of 1930s popular music from the 1980s TV serial Pennies from Heaven, and the last song I heard was Roll Along Prairie Moon. It’s been stuck in my head all day and driving me nuts until I realised that the spoonerism of prairie moon is Mary Prune. I thought it quite wonderful because new spoonerisms are nearly as hard to find as gold dust in an old canal.

Four Weddings and a Reminder.

I should like to announce that tonight I did my duty to the British cinema by undertaking to watch the remainder of the film Four Weddings and a Funeral. And having made such an undertaking, I felt further duty-bound to find something funny (because you’re supposed to find something funny in a comedy, be it romantic or any other sort.) And I did find something funny. In fact, I found two things funny.

The first was when the dippy girl – whose connection to the MC I never managed to work out – walked into church as a bridesmaid without having fastened her dress at the back, so her blue knickers were showing. I found that moderately funny because my sense of humour can be nothing if not childlike at times.

What I found funnier, however, was the scene in which the MC goes into a posh shop to buy a wedding present and asks the starchy assistant for suggestions at around £50. The assistant replies: ‘Our plastic carrier bags are £1.50 each. Maybe you could get thirty three of those.’ I found it so funny in fact that I made the effort work out that he would have had 50p change. The scriptwriter missed it.

All in all I’m ashamed to say that I quite enjoyed it.

During the credits at the end I even sang the harmony to accompany the play-out song: Love is All Around. Do you realise it’s twenty seven years since I sang that to somebody? And I still remember the lyrics. And it occurred to me that the greatest legacy my high school bestowed on me was the ability to harmonise tunes. I played the trombone in the school orchestra, you see, and a natural sense of harmony came with the job. I have to say that it’s rarely proved useful, but a gift is a gift when all’s said and done.

On a more serious note, the film did reflect back to me some of my own history, and reminded me – if I needed any reminding – how short of the mark I always was in the matter of romantic relationships.

Four Weddings and a Woe.

Back in the 1990s the British film industry made a trilogy of Brit Pack movies – Notting Hill, Love Actually, and Four Weddings and a Funeral. I didn’t see any of them at the time, but a few years ago I got hold of a copy of Love Actually and quite liked it, so when Notting Hill turned up in a charity shop I gave it a try. I lasted twenty minutes before my terminal boredom became almost literally terminal and I switched it off. Determined to see the exercise through, however, tonight I started watching the third offering, Four Weddings and a Funeral.

The first substantive scene showed a traditional church wedding, and you know what? I found the sight of a white-bedecked bride walking up the aisle on the arm of her father quite moving for some reason. I tried to work it out, but could only speculate that it might have had something to do with an event in May 2017 when one of the very few bright lights in my firmament went out, leaving the gloomy shadows in my world growing even more dominant and engendering an inexcusable sense of devastation.

Maybe that was it. I don’t know. But to continue…

Once the bride and groom were standing together and the ceremony began in earnest, the only thing which moved in me were the contents of my stomach reminding me – as though I needed any reminding – of the reason for my severe dislike of weddings. Normal service was thus restored.

When it got to the thirty minute mark and I still hadn’t found anything funny (it was, after all, billed as a ‘romantic comedy’ so I suppose I shouldn’t have expected to find anything funny, but ever the optimist you know…) I turned it off – for now. Maybe I’ll give it a second chance tomorrow or whenever my mood improves.

(My mood is somewhat subdued tonight courtesy of the corporate world in the guise of E.ON, my energy supplier. Not content with pestering me mercilessly with their attempt to bend me to their will, they even stoop to insulting my intelligence with claims which would only convince those boasting an IQ in single figures. Such is the way of things in a culture increasingly controlled by bureaucrats, the corporate world, and arguably the most inept government I think I’ve ever known.)

On Spring and Feather Fights.

Nature is being precocious this year. It’s been apparent for a while in the garden and hedgerows where leaf growth and flowering has been substantially earlier than usual, and now it’s the turn of the birds and their nest building. They’re 2-3 weeks ahead of the game, probably because of the relatively mild winter. Or maybe they take their cue from the leaves and flowers. I wouldn’t know.

I was in Uttoxeter a few days ago and saw a crow fly down to pick up a twig from the pavement. When it saw me approaching it flew to the top of a high fence and glared at me with aggressive intent. ‘This twig is mine,’ screeched the message in its beady eye. ‘If you come any closer I’ll bite your bum so hard you won’t sit down for a week.’ At least, that’s what it sounded like to me. ‘No worries,’ I replied with a smile. ‘I have no need of a twig at the moment. Of course, you could always just fly away since you can fly and I can’t.’ ‘Don’t try to be clever with me, you wingless freak’ replied the crow. ‘Think you’re so bloody clever, don’t you? Get off with you. Be gone.’ So get off was what I did.

Today there was more aggression in the air. I saw a blue tit approach the nest box behind my kitchen bearing a beakful of soft moss to line the base. And guess what was in the way: a male house sparrow perched disrespectfully on the little round entrance hole. Fisticuffs ensued as the two combatants fell to the ground on the embankment beneath the box. House sparrows are twice the size of blue tits, but it was only a matter of seconds before the bigger bird gave in and flew away. I imagine blue tits could even relieve crows of their twigs if they had any use for them.

So that’s nature in the spring for you, and it’s all very entertaining.

Worrying Trends.

I just read about the latest school shooting in Nashville, and assumed that it will lead to another demand from the more liberal sector of the American population for swingeing reforms in the matter of gun ownership. There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s a logical response. And yet I can’t help feeling that there’s something so rotten in the American consciousness that it can produce a seemingly endless conveyor belt of people prepared to do that kind of thing.

And then I thought a little further and realised that we have a similar problem in the UK, although on a rather smaller scale. We currently have what is growing into an apparent epidemic of teenagers killing each other with knives. I sense a connection of some kind, although what it is hasn’t yet come into sharp focus.

A Note on the Matter of Israel.

It’s long been a source of irritation to me that people so easily confuse the terms anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Anti-Semitism is the practice of extending prejudice and discrimination towards Jewish people just because they’re Jews. Anti-Zionism is a little vaguer, but in present political circumstances may be said to relate to the Israeli state – for which read Israeli government – extending prejudice and discrimination (and concomitant abuse and injustice) towards their non-Jewish neighbours. The two concepts are not quite diametrically opposed, but they’re not far off. And yet people fail to see the difference.

And this issue is, of course, central to the problem of the Israeli government treating the Palestinians abysmally. Any arm of any of the more influential western governments which steps over the line in criticising Israeli policies is immediately met by howls of ‘this is anti-Semitic!’ and everybody backs off. And so the Israeli government can do whatever it wants because they know they’re effectively immune to criticism. As far as I’m aware, Israel is the only country in the world which enjoys that dubious privilege.

So let’s look at what’s happening in Israel at the moment. Mr Netanyahu and his monstrous regiment of right wing hardliners are proposing to change the judicial system so as to place the Israeli government effectively above the law. Israel pretends to be a democratic state, and being above the law is hardly what a democratic state is supposed to be and the people of Israel don’t like it. Their mass protests have been so massive as to paralyse the workings of the country to such an extent that even the ultra-intractable Mr Netanyahu has been forced to delay his plans. So what interests me is this:

If the Israeli protesters – who may be presumed to consist almost entirely of Jews – can be allowed to oppose the Israeli state in a just cause without being accused of anti-Semitism, why can’t the rest of us?

A Painful Echo.

Today is the 5^th anniversary of my operation to remove a cancerous kidney, and now I have a sharp muscular pain in my lower abdomen which I suspect might be connected. (It’s preventing me doing sit-ups and leg lifts which is a bit of a nuisance.) I remember reading once that traumatic experiences have a habit of echoing around the anniversary of the event, so I’m hoping that’s all it is.

The Fascinating Case of Donald's Little Menagerie.

I’m about to run the risk of offending those Americans for whom I have enormous respect, but a blogger has to do what a blogger has to do so here goes.

I was just reading about Trump’s little hooley in Wako, and becoming swamped with such a combination of disbelief and amusement as the day would quake to look on. His theatrical entry to the strains of Top Gun music was risible enough, but then there was the image of countless mentally challenged baboons running around shrieking ‘God! Guns! Trump!’ (and wearing T shirts and waving banners carrying the same mantra of simian aspiration.)

I have to admit here that the number of baboons present was minuscule compared with the population of the US as a whole, but they are the image of America the world sees, and so they are the image – unfairly or not – that Trump presents to the world. What sort of impression do Americans think it makes? Then again, I don’t suppose baboons care much about reputation so let’s broaden it out a little.

If the best the Republican Party can offer as a candidate in the next presidential election is a choice between Dunderhead Donald and nasty Mr DeSantis, doesn’t that rather compound the issue? And if DeSantis gets the nomination I expect the baboons will go on the rampage and a measure of carnage will ensue. And if Trump wins the nomination but loses the election to a Democrat, I expect the baboons will still go on the rampage. And if Trump wins the election the baboons will triumph and America will go even further down the hole of resembling a troubled, third world backwater. What price leadership, power, and influence then?

November 2024 is going to be interesting, isn’t it? I wonder whether I’ll be around to see it.

I Did Not Say Anything.

(The title is lifted from Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. Her heroine says it countless times in one section of the novel, and I became increasingly irritated by it with each tedious use. I do realise that it was intended to reinforce the perception of her shy and retiring character, but it still irritated me. Nevertheless, it will do nicely for an insubstantial little recollection which has absolutely nothing to do with landed gentry, big old houses, murdered wives, evil housekeepers, or simple-minded old beachcombers who don’t want to go to an asylum.)

So, when I was in Sainsbury’s last week I found myself sharing the space in front of one of the freezer cabinets with a woman who looked to be around late thirties or fortyish. I found her appearance (or let’s call it her ‘presence’, which would probably be more accurate) intriguing.

She was wearing the most un-stylish jeans which I think I have ever seen – faded blue corduroy which was clean but looked well worn, and which were too wide to suit the modern taste in jeans designed for alternative use as drainpipes. Above that was an equally dowdy brown coat which would probably be borderline rejection in a charity shop or an Oxfam clothing bank. Her face was entirely devoid of make-up, her hair clean but unstyled. The most notable feature of her dress, however, lay with the matter of her shoes – old and battered trainers (sneakers if you prefer) which were heavily caked in dried mud. This is not a normal sight in Sainsbury’s, Ashbourne.

‘Aha,’ I thought. ‘Here is my kind of woman. No artifice, no pretence, no attempt to be “presentable.” This is an attitude of which I soundly approve.’

She saw me studying her (because that’s what INFJs do without realising the deleterious inferences which might be taken in consequence) and smiled in my direction. Her teeth were strong, perfectly formed, and a little on the yellow side.

I was suddenly possessed of the urge to say to her:

‘You’ve got a lot of dirt on your shoes, by the way. Did you know? Just there.’

And then it occurred to me that such a statement might give cause for concern or indignation on her part, and I might have to explain that it was a direct quotation from young Hermione Granger in the first Harry Potter film; and further, that it was merely intended to inject a little harmless levity into an otherwise dull day.

I thought again and imagined the various responses which such a verbal onslaught might provoke. My favourite guess was a long, silent, challenging stare, at which point I grew bored with the experience and moved off to join the checkout queue. She took the one next to mine and got through first. I suppose justice was suitably served.

Dripping Towards Dystopia.

I hear the government is putting forward a proposal that couples who wish to separate should be required to engage with officially approved guidance counselling first. Only if they do that and satisfy certain requirements will they be able to avoid a substantial fine.

Proponents of the idea argue that it will better protect children from the trauma consequent upon the break up of family homes (even though the proposals extend to couples without children.) Opponents counter that it will be likely to force some women (and possibly even men) to remain in abusive relationships. Both positions are naturally matters of concern, but my personal concern is more far-reaching.

This would be another example of yet more bureaucrats being given yet more free rein to adopt a constabulary function in the lives of individuals on pain of pecuniary punishment. It’s another drip on the way to an Orwellian view of dystopia. When, I’m inclined to ask, will politicians realise that more than enough is more than enough?

A Match Made in Heaven.

Following on from my previous post about listening to female singers, this is one of the videos I watched:

 

 

Now, I’m not remotely religious, and this song does have a whiff of colonial backwoods Pennsylvanian Baptists about it, and yet I find it surprisingly emotionally charged. I do know why I find it emotionally charged actually, but it would be so difficult to explain that I don’t think I’ll bother.

What I can say is that dear, lovely Cara took an honoured place in a corner of my heart many years ago and she’s still there. I saw her once on a BBC TV series called Transatlantic Sessions being accompanied on the piano by a man called Sam Lakeman. I was very taken with his playing and judged him to be the best pianist I’d ever heard in that kind of musical context. The subtlety of his timing, phrasing, and touch were sublime. And guess what; I was delighted to discover only recently that the two of them are married. Yay? If that isn’t a success story by proxy, I don’t know what is.

Woman as Teacher.

I spent several hours last night listening to the music of the female voice singing many and varied songs in many and varied styles. And my, how it took me back through the hour glass of my life, there to remember and reflect on my principles, my standards, my values, my passions, my primal drives. And how sadly wanting I so often found myself to have been.

This was going to be a long post about the monkey from the Id and the angel from the Super Ego working reluctantly in tandem to set me down onto a road leading from the thrilling heat of addiction to the searing heat of perdition’s flame. But then I decided it would be a step too far on a public platform, so I’ll leave it there.

But here’s something interesting which I am prepared to reveal:

All my life I’ve held promises to be sacrosanct. I once subjected myself to the direst torment rather than renege on a promise I’d made in a rash moment some weeks earlier. I’ve always believed, you see, that promises are pointless unless you honour them. I still do, but here’s what’s odd.

One day I got married, and then six years later I succumbed to the charms and advances of an attractive young female colleague in the office where I worked. And do you know what? It never occurred to me that my marriage vows amounted to a promise. I thought of them as being merely a formality through which you had to pass in order to get the certificate. I really don’t know whether that was evidence of a blind spot in my perceptions or an unconscious hiding from standards in pursuit of adventure. But isn’t it also interesting that when another woman, a little further down the line, asked to be released from her promise, I agreed readily?

So here’s a health to the women who taught me so much. And for what it’s worth, I offer my sincere apologies for any grief I caused them. I do feel pretty bad about it sometimes.

Renko: Fact or Fantasy?

Reading Gorky Park has raised an interesting question:

The main protagonist is one Arkady Renko, a Chief Investigator in Moscow’s militia. The militia handle all police matters of an entirely internal nature. If any foreign national is involved, however, it becomes the business of the KGB.

Renko is an intelligent man – a little cold perhaps, analytical as one would expect of a police detective, sometimes on the taciturn side, but fundamentally honest and humanitarian in nature and possessed of an ironic sense of humour. He tolerates the prosecution of life under Soviet politics, but has no love for it. He’s not a party man and regards the KGB as a de facto enemy. So is he at least partially representative of an intelligent Russian’s attitude towards life in the Soviet Union?

It would be interesting to know, but it has to be remembered that the novel was written by an American during the height of the Cold War. Is Renko, therefore, more the merely imagined product of an intelligent American’s fantasy? Whatever the truth of the matter, I doubt Mr Putin would be a fan because it carries an uncomfortable echo of present circumstances.

Differences.

I’ve spent 3½-4 hours today trying to get my new mobile phone working and set up to my requirements. Well, it’s working, but only up to a point. I’m still utterly bemused – and therefore stressed – because certain facilities refuse to play ball. And none of this is really surprising because I’m not a gadget person. I relate perfectly well to trees, birds, animals, existential musing, and mysterious things which have no rational reason to be there but are anyway, but gadgets are not my thing.

(I’m a good people person, but only when it comes to that rarefied 1% of the population whose presence in my orbit I can tolerate for more than ten minutes. I soon become intolerant (and a little bemused) with the rest.)

My ex, Mel, is quite good with gadgets (and I can tolerate her for more than ten minutes, incidentally.) The main difference between her and me comes with the matter of memory. (And I’m not talking computers here; I’m talking the human capacity to retain knowledge.) Mel is the sort who can remember the names and characteristics of every character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer three years after she’s watched the last episode. I’ve forgotten most of them within three weeks.

My faculty of memory resides in a different sphere. I came across references to ‘the taiga’ twice recently and realised that I didn’t know what it was, so I did a bit of research. Now I know where it is and what its natural characteristics are, and the knowledge is firmly fixed for the duration. When I mentioned this to Mel she admitted that she would be a little bemused (there’s that word again) by it all, and even those bits she did understand would be forgotten in about the same length of time it takes me to forget the characters in Buffy.

Vive la différence, eh? Yes indeed.

Mostly Today's Whinges

1. More hassle from the corporate world again today. I’m growing sick and tired of their self-serving demands and their attempts to scare me into bowing to their will. I’m capable of seeing through the fraud, but it doesn’t help with the stress levels.

2. And today brought more evidence of physical degradation. I do so fear losing my mobility and independence. I honestly think I would prefer a terminal diagnosis to that, but maybe it’s all just stress-induced fatigue.

3. I’ve developed the habit of spending money on things which turn out to be unsuitable when I get them home. Today it was only £1.50, but sometimes it’s a lot more and the cost is rising.

4. I still wonder why I bother to write blog posts which amount to nothing more than additions to the catalogue of whinges. If only I could re-discover my sense of humour I might develop the worthy capacity to become a second Karl Pilkington, but it’s gone into hibernation again.

5. But to jump off the whinge wagon for a moment, I read something today which indicated how the world has changed during my lifetime. A survey of young people from the UK, France, and Germany indicates that there’s a growing suspicion of the US and China. When I was a young person our only enemy was Russia, but that’s all changed since the great Slavic Bear gave up the USSR which provided both a cash cow and a defensive perimeter. It doesn’t have quite the capacity to instil fear these days as it used to have during the Cold War. Interestingly, one of the things the young people said was that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made them more aware of the Taiwan situation. It’s good that they can make such connections. And perhaps even more interestingly, they also said that much of their suspicion about America stemmed from Trump being President during their formative years. I always said that Trump would be the ruination of America’s reputation, didn’t I? I did.

Putting the Cart Before the Horse.

You see, here’s the problem with seeing a film first and then reading the book on which it’s based.

I saw the film Gorky Park many years ago. I liked it, and that’s why I bought the book when I saw a second hand copy in a charity shop. As far as I recall, the film concentrated almost exclusively on the crime and subsequent investigation, whereas the book goes deeply into characterisation and is very much richer. At least I think it is because I remember very little detail from the film, but it’s what you’d expect anyway. So here’s the rub:

I’ve arrived at the point where a black sable hat begins to have significance, and now I remember the end of the story quite clearly. Well, you don’t want to know the end of a story until you get there, do you? That’s what spoiler alerts are all about. My only hope now is that, since the book has a richer and more detailed plot, so will the ending.

This is, of course, less of a problem than reading a book first and subsequently discovering that the film adaptation misses the point completely, as happens with every adaptation of Wuthering Heights ever attempted. (At least according to Emily they do. And since it was her ghost which told me to write an essay on the matter, I rest my case.)

Out With the Winter Brown.

The mild temperatures, light but persistent rain, and occasional sunny periods we’re having at the moment seem to have persuaded Lady Spring to start donning her finery. The Shire is awash with yellow and white daffodils, and down on the green space by the post box somebody has planted a patch of purple crocuses next to a stand of golden daffodils.

The roadside verges and the path through the wood at the top of my lane now have yellow celandines and white wood anemones blooming in close harmony, and the hedgerows, composed mostly of hawthorn, are showing flashes of fresh green at regular intervals. And if you like the colour white (when it isn’t laid on thickly by winter snow) the blackthorn bushes and trees are now coming into full bloom.

What a pity then that my enjoyment of it all is clouded by fatigue when I walk among it – aching legs, sore feet, tight chest, mild dizziness, and shortness of breath. The walks are an uncomfortable chore at the moment, taken out of a sense of duty to my body and mind. But if I can’t fully enjoy the vigour of a new spring, at least I can still appreciate it.

Two Late Brief Notes.

I think I’ve said before that I regard the nose as probably the least attractive attribute of the human face. (I wonder why we even have to have them, but we do so there you are.) Anyway, tonight I watched Sinead Lohan in concert on YouTube, and came to the opinion that her nose is probably the closest I’ve ever seen to being acceptable.

Sorry Americans, but tonight I saw some video footage of Mongolia in the fall. It’s even more spectacular than New England.

Seems I Wasn't the First to Notice.

I’ve noticed a number of times over recent decades that the British police are occasionally wont to forget that they are the servants of the people, not the brutal guard dogs of whichever government is ruling the Establishment in ways designed to further its ideological shibboleths. Their behaviour during the miners’ strikes in the Thatcherite 80s was a prime example, and we’ve seen some more of it recently.

So what do I now read in Gorky Park?

Our intrepid Chief Investigator Renko is reading a book entitled Political Oppression in the United States, 1929-1941. He comes across an account of the 1930 Union Square Rally in New York City – a mass protest against rampant unemployment – during which the NY Police Commissioner used every foul means possible to break up the rally and punish the ‘guilty.’ The final lines report the Commissioner’s bigoted justification for his actions, and finishes with an observation:

His statement typified the contradictory roles of police in a capitalist society: one role as keeper of the peace conflicting with its paramount role as headbreaking watchdog of the exploiter class.

Things don’t change much, do they?

Bureaucrats: Big, Bad, and Bullying.

The news item which most caught my attention today was the death through suicide of a primary school head teacher. Her school had been subjected to an Ofsted inspection and given a low grading. It appears that the inspection itself and the poor grade had driven her to such a depth of depression that she couldn’t bear to live any longer.

(And it’s worth mentioning that one of the criticisms levelled at the school concerned the case of a young boy who performed a dance in which he simulated flossing his teeth. The inspector said this indicated that the school was ‘encouraging the sexualisation of children.’ Children are encouraged to floss their teeth in furtherance of dental health. Please tell me, if you can, how this translates into the sexualisation of children.)

This all paints a tragic picture, but let’s look at the bigger one.

Ofsted is the government’s school inspectorate in the UK. It represents one phalanx of a burgeoning army of bureaucrats who are – along with the corporate world – growing into an ever greater controlling factor in British culture. And I don’t think I’m being overly fanciful in suggesting that politicians of all the major parties are conniving in this process. I’ve been saying it for some years now, and the tragic death of a committed educational professional has brought it to head.

The public needs to be aware of this, and they need to push strongly against it. If we don’t, it will only get worse until we’re struggling through life under the cosh of something approaching the SS, the Stasi, and the KGB.

And now I really am being fanciful. Am I? Maybe a little, but only a little.

Praising Mr Smith.

I’m currently reading Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith and being highly impressed by his skill as a writer. The novel has one foot placed in the populist detective drama genre, and the other planted firmly in the more rarefied field of genuine literary fiction.

It’s because around half the writing builds a most intriguing tale of triple murder and the subsequent investigation, but the other half is full of characterisation so expertly presented in all its various guises that the characters spring vividly to life. So when, for example, Chief Investigator Renko goes home for the night hoping to save his ailing marriage only to find that his wife has left him, the subsequent – and delightfully understated – phone call telling him that his suspect/informant Golodkin and junior investigator Pasha have been found dead from gunshot wounds, it’s a real shock. Of course it was a shock; I knew these people almost as well as I know my neighbours, and I felt for poor old Renko because the chap was having such a bad time already.

And that’s a skill I never had as a writer, but at least my first response was to appreciate and applaud Smith’s skill. My shame at being personally below par came later.

(My only difficulty with the text is the question of all the Russian names of people and places. If I try to fathom how to pronounce them from the – albeit non-Cyrillic – spelling, I’m be wasting time and possibly losing track of the plot. If I don’t, how will I recognise them when they crop up again? So far I'm choosing the lazy option. Why isn’t life ever easy?)

An Unusual Visitation.

I am conscious of the fact that I sometimes rely too heavily on the content of unusual dreams to provide blogging material, but I’m going to do so again because last night’s dream was unusually odd even by my standards.

I was sitting in the living room of a house in which I lived for nearly ten years before moving to Derbyshire in 2002. I was aware that my mother, who died three years after I moved to that house, also lived there but had gone to bed. She never lived there with me in life.

I looked out of the window to see my father (my natural father who separated from my mother when I was five) approaching the house dressed in a long white smock. He came in, sat on the sofa, and we talked, but I remember nothing of the conversation. My father died in 1991, a little over a year before I moved there.

At some point my mother came downstairs also dressed in a white smock, and engaged my father in conversation. Again, I remember nothing of what was said and eventually they went upstairs together and that was the end of the dream.

When I woke up after 8½ hours of unbroken sleep (which is, in itself, most uncharacteristic of me these days) I began to wonder what such a dream could mean. I don’t recall ever having dreamt about either parent before, so why now? I thought it likely that the white smocks – which I never saw either of them wear in life – represented the fact that they are both deceased. I further assumed that my mother was inside the house because she was alive when I moved there, but my father had to approach from the outside because he was dead by then. That much seemed rational.

But why were they there at all? Was my unconscious mind trying to tell me something (rather like the black dog which leapt out of the wall shortly before I received the cancer diagnosis)? Was the universe trying to tell me something? Were my parents trying to pass on some message from over there in the undiscovered country? Or was it all the product of a fertile imagination which likes to construct odd stories?

That’s the problem, isn’t it? We never know.

*  *  *

Incidentally, I encountered the angel in the shoe shop again today. I told her that she was now a celebrated person on account of having been the subject of a blog post. She seemed amused but unimpressed. And that’s life.

Trust and the American Way.

I was reading earlier about Trump inciting his supporters to engage in mass protests in the event of him being tried for the many aspects of skulduggery of which he is being accused. (I wonder whose side the National Guard will be on when the violence breaks out. Does the National Guard still exist? I’m curious.) Anyway, the point is that Trumpism is obviously a cult of sorts and Donald is their leader. And this brings up an interesting question.

It appears that cults are almost exclusively an American phenomenon, a fundamental feature of which is that followers implicitly believe everything the leader tells them. And isn’t the same true of Southern Baptists? Don’t their followers also implicitly believe everything the preacher tells them?

That being the case, it would appear that an aspect of American culture is that there are an awful lot of people over there prepared to unflinchingly engage with personalities in positions of power, and trust their pronouncements absolutely. This seems odd to us Europeans because most of us regard the implicit trusting of preachers and politicians as a sure sign of abject gullibility. We’re not very much inclined to tolerate cults, you see, and we know that lies, evasion, and obfuscation are routine elements of the politicians’ modus operandi. And as for preachers, well...

This is, to some extent, a generalisation and not intended to be a criticism of America per se. But it has me wondering whether I’m right, and I’ll be quite happy to be told that I’m wrong.

On Changeling and Springing.

Two weeks ago, when the basement in which I was languishing was becoming unusually cold, dark, and damp even by the standards of basements to which I’m normally accustomed, I started watching a film called Changeling.

I didn’t get very far. At the 23 minute point it was becoming blatantly obvious that the film was going to be about corrupt cops in the LAPD doing their level best to put a poor grieving mother through mental hell, at which point my brain rebelled and refused to have any further darkness heaped upon its already beleaguered self. So I turned it off.

But tonight, since the clouds were a little lighter and I had nothing better to do, I decided to gird up the old loins (and my God, don’t they know they’re old these days) and make a valiant attempt to watch the whole thing through. In a way I was glad I did because, for all the harrowing horror contained therein, it was a powerful and well made piece of cinema. Until the end, or more precisely the final three lines of script:

‘Now I have something I didn’t have before.’

‘What’s that, Mrs Collins?’

‘Hope.’

You’d have to know the context to understand why I think it was possibly the dumbest line of any I’ve ever heard in any film at any time in my life, but I can’t be bothered to explain. Suffice it say that films are a bit like musical compositions: get the beginning and end right and you can get away with the odd lapse in the middle. This one failed the test. What on earth was Clint Eastwood thinking that he should have allowed such a travesty? Or maybe he just wasn’t thinking.

*  *  *

But on a brighter note, today was The Day. I’ve mentioned this phenomenon before, but I do feel that it bears reprising once a year. (It’s only once a year, Mr Scrooge. Humbug.)

There’s a day around this time every year which is quite magical. It’s the first day on which you can go out to do something in the garden without putting a coat on first. The air is mild and calm, the sun is shining its beneficence from a mixed sky of azure and light cloud, and the feeling of spring in the air puts a delightful spring in the step (although the latter is not quite true in my case because any spring I used to have in my step has now gone the way of the dodo.) But no matter; today was The Day and grateful I surely was.

On Cares, Click Bait, and Creepy Stuff.

So there I was, thinking that the storm clouds from which my mind has been trying to shelter over the past few weeks were beginning to lift, when I had a dream. Two people, a man and wife of unknown provenance, had chosen to come and lodge with me. This made me uneasy because not only were they invading my world – which, by default, and given my general dislike of close company, meant that they were polluting it – but they were also interfering with my routines and causing all manner of distressing inconvenience. Eventually I became very angry and told them to leave. And then I woke up.

I woke not to a sunny sky and the prospect of a pleasant day engaged in pleasurable activity, but to a sense that my days on earth were now drastically numbered and pleasant days had been consigned to the historical record. I had breakfast as usual anyway, just in case I made it to lunchtime.

And then this afternoon I did the first of the spring garden jobs – trimming the two evergreen bushes and the big sage plant at the bottom of the garden. The whole business took no more than an hour, but it took more out of me physically than can reasonably be attributed to advancing age. I’m not old enough yet to be brought so low by such a relatively innocuous task. There must be something else involved. I have several theories.

But let’s move on.

*  *  *

I’m becoming increasingly aware that the means of communication in the modern world are growing ever more tainted by the need to exaggerate in order to gain our attention. Headlines in the news are falling prey to greater and sillier sensationalism. Advertising, which has always employed overly inflated claims to ensnare the gullible, is soiling its own pitch with claims which even the gullible should be able to see through in an instant. And now I’m finding that YouTube channels which I’ve long since come to regard as reliable and relatively trustworthy are marketed with titles and thumbnail pictures which are some way removed from their actual content. Time after time I’m downloading videos and then switching them off prematurely because what I’m seeing isn’t what it said on the can.

This is becoming irritating, and I’m tempted to trace the phenomenon back to a time when young Americans introduced the world to the habit of referring to facts which were merely laudable as ‘awesome.’ But I might be wrong. I might be recklessly presuming a causal relationship based on the fact that America appears to judge worth more on size than quality. Shame on me. I know nothing.

(Did you know that there was a sitcom on British TV in the 1960s centred around a Jewish tailor in the East End of London? It was called Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width. I wonder where that came from. Curioser and curioser.)

*  *  *

And here’s an interesting fact. When I go into my bedroom at night it’s obviously dark, but there’s enough spill light coming from the open door to the landing to have a reasonable view of the contents. I’ve started to imagine that one night I will see something large and black sitting on the bed, something so far unidentifiable in the low light. I wonder whether I’d have the courage to switch the light on to see what it is. I think I should prefer not to find out.

*  *  *

Given the current lamentable state of my mind and body, writing this post took some effort. I’m awash with self-congratulation.

Looking Forward and Back.

As I trudged uncomfortably across the cold, grey little market town this morning, it occurred to me that I really should try to keep this blog going. After all, what else is there to enliven me now that the sparklers are all spent, aspiration has faded into the mist of distant memory, all sense of optimism is lying comatose, and the gradual but inexorable decline in physical capability is putting much of that which requires muscle power and lung capacity increasingly out of reach? But where do I start?

Well, over the past few weeks of blogging hiatus, several posts of customary type suggested themselves. But each one had its own little cocktail of angles, and they’ve become jumbled in a mind still only slightly raised from the desolate state in which it’s been languishing. Imagine taking, say, four boxes each containing a complete jigsaw puzzle. Open the boxes and pour all the pieces into a bag, shake them all up, and then try to make four accurate pictures from the melee. It’s a bit like that.

I thought of starting with the crisis in the NHS, and the tracing of the issue back to Mrs Thatcher’s infatuation with monetarism and free market economics. But it was too big, had too many angles, and was too painful for someone who’s spent his life taking the jewel in the crown of British culture for granted. Sad though it is to say, I couldn’t face the mental effort of organising it all. Better to start with something small and preferably humorous, but all suitable candidates were buried in plain graves and I hadn’t the means of disinterring them.

I decided instead to take a trip down memory lane and seek the start of the whole blogging business. I found the first proper post (the actual first post was a bio of sorts) made on January 15^th 2010 and thought I might as well post it again, since the people who were reading the blog then have long since given up on me and my ramblings and decamped to greener pastures. It was titled ‘Values’ and said:

Several days on from the appalling earthquake in Haiti, I read today that the international community has pledged £200 million in aid. Another news report I read recently said that British banks alone give £50 billion to their executives in bonuses. The Duke of York says we shouldn't be concerned about the size of bankers' bonuses because, in the world of international finance, it is a paltry sum. So what does that make the international aid effort?

It wouldn’t quite pass muster now and would require some editing, but it did set the tone for much of what was to follow. (And look what happened to the Duke of York a decade later.) I found it interesting that, for all the changes I’ve undergone over the past thirteen years, my distaste for the greed, crushing inequality, and gross dereliction of humanitarian values so apparent in the human condition lives on

That’s my only excuse for re-posting it and it will have to suffice.

(It just occurred to me that I could have re-told the story of what I was experiencing exactly twenty eight years ago to the very hour, but I think I’ve already told it at least three times on various Ides of March and a further reprise would have been unconscionable.) 

Writing and the State of Mind.

I saw a YouTube video recently in which it was said that INFJs – of which august club I appear to be a member – are often driven to write because their odd way of seeing the world attracts too much derision in routine conversation with the mass of normal people. Well, whether you give credence to the MBTI system or not, it maybe explains why writing has been so important to me over the last twenty years or so. But there’s a problem:

Over the past few weeks the old depressive tendency has dipped to a new low wherein the more apposite term might be ‘desolation.’ By that I mean the unpleasant sensation of feeling like an empty vessel which has nothing to offer to itself or life in general, and the fallout from this has been the seeming loss of connection with the blog.

I could, of course, have knuckled manfully down and written a few posts on various subjects which I would normally write about, but there would have been a vital ingredient missing. I’ve always strongly believed that in order to have any worth, a blog of this kind must be more than merely the relaying of facts; it needs to factor in other elements such as humour, irony, sarcasm, deep reflection, outrage, and even the occasional foray into the enigmatic and the absurd. I need to do that for my own sake, but such elements arrive instinctively off the top of my head, and the feeling of desolation raised a firm barrier against them. Somebody once told me that it wasn’t so much what I said that she found appealing, but the way in which I said it. Quite so, and that’s why the connection seemed to have been lost.

So will it come back? I don’t know yet, but I hope so. Times change and the mood of the moment is ever in a state of flux, so maybe or maybe not. And I do realise that while my writing might be of substantial importance to me, it matters not a jot to anybody else. Nevertheless, it seemed only fair and considerate to offer this little explanation to those few who have done me the honour of checking in now and then. I hope they understand that I do appreciate and value their interest. Here’s looking at you, kids. (See what I mean?)