Care vs Control, and Unrelated Bits.

Tomorrow I intend to scratch my name off my dentist’s panel. As far as I know there isn’t another NHS dentist in Ashbourne, so my future dental prospects will lie at the feet of my good friend, Lady Luck. The cost of private dentistry is so excruciatingly high that availing myself of such a ‘service’ stands not within the prospect of belief. (The greed of good old American-style capitalism, eh? Good old Mrs Thatcher.)

So why have I taken this decision? Well, it’s like this: Over the weekend I’ve received two text messages from the practice, and unlike written communications from other NHS bodies which speak the language of care, the ones from the dentist now speak the language of control: ‘You will!’ Acceptance of control is not in my nature, and though some might find my attitude excessive, I don’t. There’s a principle involved, and principles are very important to me.

This has been coming on ever since the incomparable Ms Medeea left a year or two ago (I suspect for similar reasons.) I felt it with the first appointment I had there after the fateful day. I felt the decline in the atmosphere. They also changed their name from the friendly ‘TLC For Smiles’ to the rather grey ‘Ashbourne Dentistry.’ I mean to suggest that they should have called it ‘The Vogon Spaceship’ or even ‘Resistance is Useless.’

*  *  *

And another, strictly irrelevant, point occurs to me: History is full of wise people using wise words to offer wise advice. Modern civilisation seems to be mostly run by unwise people telling us that the wise ones were wrong. And most people believe them.

*  *  *

So where do I go from there? Well, I’m often tempted to wonder why so many people allow themselves to be locked in cages of belief, rather than striding freely across the airy headland of an open mind.

A Nature Boy's Dichotomy.

I used to think of myself as a true nature boy; a lover of all things natural in the natural world. Now I detect a certain dichotomy in my attitude 

I love the wealth of expression in the natural world; I love the bounty and the beauty; and I love the sense that I feel the subtle energies of nature because that would seem to be the power behind the form of existence to which we are tied at this level. I’m even accepting of death because death is an integral part of the cyclical process on which all things biological function.

But being an idealist I detest the suffering in nature. And I’m not referring to cruelty. Cruelty is a matter of intent which seems wholly confined to the human animal. I’m referring to the suffering consequent upon predation, accident, and disease.

It came home to me last night when I watched a baby bird suffering, presumably through having fallen from a nest or having made a premature attempt to fly. There was nothing I could do to help, you see, and that added an element of guilt to my horror. I suppose I could have done an Agnes Gray and dropped a large stone on it, but how could I have known that my aim would be perfect, or the instrument of execution sufficiently powerful to despatch the little creature instantaneously? I couldn’t, and so I locked the door and hoped that the suffering would be short-lived.

And that’s why my attitude to nature is dichotomous.

Something Crooked Somewhere.

A few simple questions which might suggest a few obvious answers:

Why has the Jeffrey Epstein affair disappeared from public view? Why is there no high level investigation at work? Why are the world’s media not clamouring to re-open their own investigations? Why have I seen nothing on YouTube amid the pile of supremely unimportant tat that seems to prevail there? (I’m sure a serious video on Jeffrey Epstein would get so many hits that even the ne’er-do-wells in the advertising industry would be slavering uncontrollably. One video I saw questioned the veracity and cause of Epstein’s alleged death, but that’s hardly the point.) Who is keeping the lid tightly closed on this business, and why? And why am I the only person who seems to be asking these questions? I doubt that I am.

Maybe Trump’s juvenile antics and the football world cup are considered more important and there’s no air time or page space left to tackle more mundane matters. Is that it?

Looking For America.

I first heard Simon and Garfunkel’s America when I was in my teens. It remains a favourite, and the line which most piqued my curiosity was ‘… walked off to look for America.’ I wondered what exactly it meant at the time, but I was young then. Much water has flowed the length of the mighty Mississippi-Missouri since my days of callow youth, and now I have a better idea, so please allow me to offer it.

My YouTube recommendations page is loaded with videos which relate, one way or another, to the USA. Being the British version, many of them follow the line: ‘Brits roast American ignorance’ or the more general ‘Britain – or Europe as a whole – is a much better place than America.’ I expect American YouTube followers get fed the opposite story. I think a lot about this, and so I thought I’d write a post about the way the USA tends to be seen by Europeans. It’s a view based on a generalised impression gleaned from conversations, news reports, high profile American activities, and the experiences of a few ex-pat Americans living in Europe.

Let’s start with the recent 250^th anniversary razzmatazz (which was slightly premature given that The Treaty of Paris wasn’t signed until 1783, but let’s not split hairs.) Europeans were naturally unimpressed by this, since most of us can trace our national roots back over a thousand years of unbroken cultural development (and some countries in the Middle East and Asia generally – including Iran – can go much further back than that.) We in England, for example, are more likely to commemorate the Battle of Hastings in 1066 than the generally agreed origin of the English state a century earlier.

And so, notwithstanding its remarkable development over such a short time period, the USA is still a young child in international terms. It might have grown big, rich, and powerful, but it’s still the world’s baby. And let’s be honest and admit that it has often behaved in a manner entirely commensurate with the fact. Trump’s presidency is probably the most obvious example, but there have been others. This means that there is a tendency among Europeans, and probably an even a greater one among Asians, to view the USA as being still a work in progress, and that it will probably remain so for a long time to come. This is why Europeans get slightly miffed when US Presidents swagger around the globe in the arrogant belief that they have ultimate authority on all issues worldwide, from nuclear development in Iran to a referee’s decision on a football pitch.

And then there’s another point which might best be illustrated by comparing the USA with China. They’re approximately the same size geographically, but China has a much bigger population and is far more diverse in terms of languages and ethnic groups. And yet China is still unquestionably China, with all the perception of homogeneity due to a single state. And it’s very ancient.

The federal system in the USA, on the other hand, leads to a vague sense that homogeneity is at least partially absent. Each state operates within many of its own rules, guards its boundaries assiduously, and sometimes comes into conflict with the central power in DC. There’s a fractured feel about it, as though the mortar in the walls of the country hasn’t quite set firm yet and is still moving around. And maybe this is the cause of one of my long-held suspicions – that there is a hidden undercurrent of insecurity lurking in the American mindset, which is possibly the reason for the almost manic emphasis on patriotism, the requirement for children to take the oath of allegiance every day, the flying of flags on every street corner, and the slightly absurd notion of ‘un-American activities.’

So is it all bad? Is this just me sounding off against the damn Yankees? No, of course not. I repeat what I’ve said before on this blog: Some of the finest people I have ever known – people of intelligence, principle, erudition, compassion, good sense, generosity, and wholesome friendliness – have been Americans. And I might add that much of the anti-American sentiment doing the rounds of the globe at the moment is directed mainly at Trump and what he’s made of America and its reputation, not a wholesale condemnation of individual Americans.

And yet, you know, I’m tempted to think – and this might be wholly speculative and based on false impressions – that the high spot of American culture came at the end of the 19^th century and the first half of the 20^th. I imagine a time based on the homesteader mentality, the understanding that there were things of value bigger than the individual, the resilience and energy, the development of new musical forms with the coming of jazz and blues, the creation of a new art form with the emergence of cinema, and maybe even a noticeable level of self-deprecation. It’s an inspirational picture.

But that was before the oligarchs of Big Capitalism persuaded the nation to install consumption and lifestyle obsession as the new king, to worship money as the only true god, and to brag loudly about their wealth-conferred status. And yet it’s clear that there are still plenty of Americans who understand that there are principles and ideals bigger than the individual or their personal fortune. That’s why this post is about America, not Americans.

I hope it doesn’t cause offence. It wasn’t meant to.

Early Morning School Work.

I was standing by my bathroom window in the early hours of this morning regarding the third quarter moon hanging bright in the clear eastern sky. I saw the winking wing lights of a commercial aircraft encroaching into my view from the right, evidently outbound from East Midlands Airport and flying north-west, probably to Belfast. The plane approached the moon, crossed it, and then continued its flight to Northern Ireland.

My first thought was that the passengers would have watched the moon coming towards them until it was alongside, and then slipping away behind as the plane continued its journey. I quickly realised that I was wrong; the moon would have appeared more or less perpendicular to their view through the window all the way from the airport to their destination. So then I set about working out why, and realised that it’s a simple matter of the function of arc.

The distance between East Midlands Airport and Belfast is a tiny fraction of the distance between the moon and the plane, which means that the arc described on the line of travel would be extremely slim. The angle between the two, therefore, would hardly change in such a short distance, and so the moon would appear to the passengers to be in more or less the same place. It’s simply a matter of geometrical relativity.

And so, having demonstrated to myself that my mind still functions moderately well after two double scotches and in a state of fatigue, I continued to bed with an almost satisfied air.

A Rarity Among the Habits of JJ.

I spoke to another Shire resident this evening for something like an hour. (My lack of association with Shire residents must surely be the stuff of legend by now. Ten minutes is usually the maximum I can tolerate, and even then only if it serves the cause of politeness.) And what’s really odd is that I initiated the conversation for reasons which would be improper to reveal. Rest assured, however, that they were entirely pure, proper, and in accordance with my INFJ personality type.

My only error was that I failed to ask the lady’s name (and she mine), but maybe that won’t matter. Maybe I will never speak to her again. It will all depend on whether my gut instinct convinces me that it will be to her benefit. (I have been known to be wrong in such matters.)

A Poetic Note on the Pronoun Divide.

I’m not even an occasional reader of poetry, much less an avid one, and yet I do respond strongly to the power and richness of words. And sometimes a particular line from a poem strikes me as having a quality of subtle but profound knowing wrapped up in a few brief, perfectly chosen words (which I suppose is what good poetry is all about.) Such a one is Emily Dickinson’s

 

Because I could not stop for Death

He kindly stopped for me

I think about it often, and it struck me recently that the line might be frowned upon these days by those who regard the recognition of gender as a sure and certain ticket to perdition’s flame. They would insist that it must be:

Because I could not stop for Death

They kindly stopped for me

It doesn’t take much poetic nous – nor even recognition of the power and richness of words – to know what dreadful carnage the use of the plural pronoun would wreak upon such a notable creation.

Celebrity and Armageddon.

I’ve said this before but it bears repeating: I think it reasonable that the BBC World News front page should lead with a subject which intelligent consensus would agree as being of reasonable magnitude. So what did the BBC World News lead with today?

The wedding of Taylor Swift.

I think I’m right in presuming that Taylor Swift is some kind of celebrity, and that’s my point. No intelligent consensus regards celebrities as being of any greater importance than the rest of us; they just happen to be watched by a lot of people when they’re doing their job.

And so today’s headline gave a further boost to my increasing conviction that the world really is growing dumber and dumber (as do a lot of people, it seems). A sense is growing in me that in the not-too-distant future, the mass of humanity will shrink like the big bang going backwards and result in a takeover by more intelligent robots, or expand with irresistible force as several billion people suddenly wake up.

A Wordsmith's Concerns.

I was walking through Ashbourne last Wednesday when a sudden thought entered my head. It ran: ‘The prim young girls in pretty clothes (and not so very much of those…)

Aha, I thought, a new ditty is offering itself for an airing on my blog. But then I realised that ‘much’ should be ‘many’ which ruined the metre, and so fearing for my reputation as a competent user of words I consigned the fledgling ditty to the gutter in close proximity to a discarded coke can. I think it might have been the close proximity of the town library which influenced my decision.

Cryptid Imagination.

Sometimes when look out of my bathroom window at the rising field beyond my garden hedge, I see a humanoid shape striding along the ridge from left to right. I can tell from the height of the tree branches, the hedgerows, and my occasional sightings of dog walkers tracing the same route, that the figure is around 8ft tall. And its appearance is fuzzy as though its body is covered in dense brown hair.

I have no doubt that it’s a sasquatch, and that pleases me because I like sasquatches. I even leave an apple in the wood at the top of the lane sometimes, just in case there’s one keeping itself carefully hidden up there. I’ve heard they have a fondness for apples.

And I suspect that the various chemicals to which the bathroom plays host combine to cause the mind to see favoured pictures where there are none.

Too Tired to Think of a Title.

This was Zoe’s song back in those distant days when she still thought me worthy of a few sparkler showers:

You’ll remember me when the west wind moves

Among the fields of barley.

~ Sting. Fields of Barley

And so I thought about the phrase ‘west wind’ and naturally wondered – as is my wont – why that wind and not another. It didn’t take long to come up with a reason.

We recognise four cardinal winds and each of them is imbued with its own reputation. The south wind represents heat; the north wind is associated with frigidity; the east wind we think of as sharp and unfriendly; the west wind, however, says ‘mellow.’ This is not always true because it depends on the position of the weather system and other considerations, but as a generalisation it’s what we’ve got. And so the west wind is the least likely to be threatening and also has the benefit of alliteration to commend it to the lyrical mindset.

*  *  *

Talking of words, I sometimes watch a YouTube channel by a woman called Hilary Layne. She’s a writer who uses a simple ‘talking heads’ approach and covers notable literary works and their relevance to modern culture. Last night’s offering took what she considers the three primary works which most describe the causes and effects which produce a move towards dystopia: The Napoleon of Notting Hill, Brave New World, and 1984.

She suggested that modern societies – at least those which follow the ‘western’ model – are becoming so replete with bland conformity to the exclusion of higher values that an increasing number of people are blind to anything which is bigger than them. It caused me to think seriously about the assertion, which very few YouTube channels do. But then I decided that I’m more interested in a different scale of things. My main preoccupation now is not to look for things which are bigger than me, but levels of reality which are bigger than the one in which my mortal body functions. So I decided that dystopia probably doesn’t matter very much after all.

Dreaming of the Priestesss and Other Bits.

I had a rare dream about the priestess two nights ago. Remember her? I do, but then I suppose I would. I went to visit her in Australia, even though she doesn’t live in Australia as far as I know.

I was nervous at first, but she was friendly enough and smiled a lot. She even kissed me briefly on the lips which I assumed to have been a contrived device to make me feel a little less ugly and shambolic than I naturally would feel in the presence of an attractive 32-year-old Chinese lady. I accepted the kind thought with gratitude.

And then she sent me to a shop down the hill and around a corner to buy some drugs. The dream ended before I returned and no attempt at interpretation was made.

Meanwhile, I might remark that 22 posts in June is the most I’ve made in one month all year. Is there something afoot, I wonder?

And my newly converted – analogue to digital – computer set-up does not get on at all well with YouTube. The technological age is proving troublesome.

Auntie Beeb's Exciting News.

One of today’s exciting features on the BBC News website is the incidence of tonight’s strawberry moon. Being possessed of some little interest in the moon and its moods, I read it. It contained two facts of real significance:

1. The moon won’t be pink, but just the usual moon colour. The term ‘strawberry moon’ is simply the nickname given to the full moon which happens to occur in June. (Remember my post a few months ago about the blue moon which wasn’t going to be blue? ‘Blue moon’ is the nickname given to the second of two full moons which happen to occur in the same month. They’re never blue.)

2. The only notable feature of tonight’s moon is the mildly interesting fact that it will be very low in the sky, almost on the horizon, and so will appear slightly larger than usual. It happens every year.

So there we have it: a full page feature giving we lucky mortals forewarning of tonight’s big celestial event – a full moon which will look no different than all the other dozen full moons throughout the year apart from the fact that it will look slightly bigger (which is really thrilling, isn’t it!?)

So I returned to the top of the page to look again at the banner pic which introduced this exciting event and first piqued my interest. It showed a cityscape at night, and bestowing its beauty on the lucky inhabitants is a glorious, cerise pink moon hanging high in the sky. Can anybody tell me what the point of all this is?

This is modern journalism. This is modern times.

The Lure of Ladies in Boats.

I sometimes used to watch a YouTube video in which a French string orchestra played an abridged version of Ravel’s Bolero on a pontoon moored on the River Seine. The director used several tracking shots which included some overhead footage of young women rowers (French presumably) powering their way along the same river in competition.

Last night I watched a British cop drama which began with the discovery of a man’s body in the River Tyne in North East England. The discovery was preceded by tracking shots of young women in two racing boats powering their way along the same river.

I soon realised that the shots of the women rowers were my favourite parts of both films, and so I naturally fell to wondering why. Why am I so in thrall to young women rowers?

I decided it was down to the coordination of legs, arms, shoulders, and torso working in concert to achieve a desired end. But that wasn’t all of it, naturally. It was also about a small band of attractive, nubile women confined in a narrow space casting vital feminine energy into the lively air above a body of water. Put the two together and you have my definition of sexy.

Attractive young women have always been one of my greatest narcotics, you know; possibly the greatest of all (and I do include tobacco and good whisky in the list). I put it down to the thread of Irish ancestry in my lineage (pretty colleens are God’s compensation for a life spent on an imperfect planet) because I gather my father was just the same. My mother said so once: ‘Just like your bloody father! I saw how you looked at those girls in…’ My own addiction started, as far as I can remember, when I was twelve and hasn’t relinquished its hold yet.

There was one young woman who didn’t quite fit the profile, though. My feelings for her went much deeper into realms previously unknown to me and never sank further to the level of the libidinous. I won’t say who it was because she just might read this one day and feel ill. I wouldn’t like that.

A Little Moth Mystery.

A couple of nights ago I was sitting at my desk idly contemplating the advanced gibbous moon. It was holding station in a clear southern sky beyond the un-curtained window, and a thought occurred to me. Where are the moths?

Moths are attracted to light, are they not? If you leave a window open in a lighted room in the summer, your living space soon plays host to a bevy of lepidopteran visitors dancing around the bulb and tapping against the light shade. And if the window’s closed, the same dancers flit desperately hither and thither banging into the glass.

So why in the summer don’t we see countless moths heading off in the direction of the moon? Could it be that they have sufficient sentience to realise that the moon is a little beyond their flying range?

Growls and Gratitude.

I had a falling out with several shop assistants in Sainsbury’s today, so they don’t like me now. It was all to do with their practice of covering the chiller cabinets with screens ‘to keep them from becoming too warm in the present hot weather.’ I pointed out why it was unnecessary in the circumstances, why it couldn’t work anyway because the management clearly don’t understand the simplest basics of heat transfer, and that its only achievement was to cause inconvenience to their customers. One of my antagonists was a supervisor who tried to give me some irrelevant guff about lorries, and when I put her on the right track she declined to speak to me again. (And I never raised my voice or used a swear word. Honestly I didn’t.) Maybe they’ll accuse me of being abusive and refuse me entry next week. It’s that kind of world now.

This afternoon I rang BT (again) to point out that they still have a wrong address on my file. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve told them this, but as I said, it’s that kind of world now.

But I did get a welcome smile from a young woman when I told her I wouldn’t light a cigarette while she was downwind of me, and so I didn’t. And when she left to catch her lift I was treated to another smile and a wave. That was today’s treat. (Unfortunately, Sainsbury’s came next.)

On Meeting a Legend.

Guess what I met today: a Ghurkha! (I don’t often use exclamation marks but meeting a Ghurkha justifies it.) So, the story is this:

I mentioned recently that I was forced into an internet provision change. I used to get the signal from my BT phone line, but my broadband came from a company called Plusnet. The change to digital from analogue meant that I had to have both from the same supplier, and the easiest option was to use BT.

And so I made the phone call, all fifty four minutes of it because there was a lot to change and set up. One of the things the customer service advisor asked me was whether I wanted an engineer’s visit to help set up the new equipment. I knew what was involved and that it was fairly simple, but it occurred to me that if there was any unforeseen problem, having an engineer to hand would be useful. I said as much to the advisor, she agreed, and so I accepted her offer.

My email inbox and phone began to be inundated with emails and texts about this, that, the other, and the price of baked beans at Sainsbury’s. One thing they didn’t mention was the date and time of the engineer’s visit, and so I called again (and began to mentally consider how easy it would be to change my name by deed poll to Job. I expect half the population have done so by now, courtesy of modern communication systems.) The woman I eventually spoke to said that no such arrangement had been made. ‘You have to do it yourself,’ she said, and resistance was evidently useless.

And so the equipment was delivered and I made the attempt to steel myself for the big day, which was today. I told myself that it would all be very easy and there was nothing to worry about. Most of it I’d done before when my old router went wonky and I had to have a new, more complex, one. I re-acquainted myself with which bits went where in the old router and whether the newly added phone port was clearly defined, and opened the box containing the new one.

There was something missing! (Have another exclamation mark.) The box contained the hub (which black where the old one had been white, but I coped with that shock with remarkable ease), a power cable and transformer, and a broadband cable. But there was no Ethernet cable. ‘So how does the hub communicate with the computer?’ I asked myself. ‘Could I use the one I’ve already got, or will it be different as other things are?’ A mild sense of panic set in and so I called BT. Just as the recorded voice was saying ‘current wait times are around seven minutes’ there was a knock at the door.

I assumed it was a contractor I’ve been awaiting for ages to fix an issue on the roof and I was all set to send him on his merry way. ‘I’m on the bloody phone and I can’t waste time with you at the moment, so bog off.’ Or something along those lines. I looked through the window to see a man looking vaguely Chinese and wearing a grey baseball cap, on which was printed in large letters: BT.

I opened the door. ‘I’m from BT,’ he began, ‘come to help you set up your new router.’ ‘But they told me I couldn’t have an engineer,’ I protested. ‘Well, I was in the area so I thought I’d call and make sure everything’s OK.’ I cordially invited him in – no, not cordially; enthusiastically. (I rarely invite people in, and almost never enthusiastically. I like my private space to stay that way.)

And now the easy bit: He set everything up and it worked fine, and he did use the old Ethernet cable without a second thought. So that was that.

‘Are you Chinese?’ I asked him. ‘No, from Nepal.’ ‘Nepal? How interesting. Were ever a Ghurkha?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘One of those invited to move over here in recognition of your services to the British?’ ‘Yes.’

Well now, I shook his hand (enthusiastically.) You see, notwithstanding my anti-war sensibilities, the Ghurkhas are legendary over here in Britain. I was told as a kid: ‘Great friends of ours, the Ghurkhas. Best soldiers on earth and always faithful to we British.’ And here I am meeting one for the first time in my life, and who turns up to solve my problem literally in the nick of time and at his own volition. If ever one of the goddesses of South Asia was smiling on me, today was the day.

And that’s today’s story. And it’s all true.

Added Later: 

I forgot to mention that when the man from Nepal was leaving I had one final question to ask him:

'Have you ever seen a Yeti?'

He frowned, moved his head around a little, mumbled something incomprehensible. and then walked away. I shall forever wonder whether that was a yes, a no, or a 'why did I ever knock on this door?'

On Hypotheses and Hairy Things.

Remember the post I made recently about having become apparently invisible to the Shire’s top family? I suggested that perhaps I’d wandered through a portal into another dimension. It was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, and so is this:

Today I read an old post of mine from back in 2013 in which I related having had a bad dose of flu. I found it odd because I have no recollection whatsoever of having had flu since I moved to this house twenty years ago, even though I remember having been struck down badly by it 1994. I remember that one in every gruesome detail, so why not remember having it a mere thirteen yeas ago?

I wondered whether it was another example of dimension tripping, but then realised it was more like an example of the Mandela Effect. Then again, some people insist that the Mandela Effect is explainable by dimension tripping, so who knows. I’m not yet convinced by the parallel universes hypothesis, you see; too many questions crop up which I find hard to answer, and the examples presented on YouTube don’t address them either.

For now I feel more inclined to make a post about cryptids, the existence of which I find more convincing. I don’t have sufficient information though, so that one can wait until I have. I might say, however, that I’m reasonably convinced of the existence of one cryptid: the Sasquatch. There was an apparent sighting of one a mere thirty or so miles from here quite recently, and from the reports I’ve read I have a sense that Bigfoot is a peace-loving creature which just wants to live a quiet life away from noisy and aggressive humans. And I suspect they have an uncommon fondness for apples.

Admitting a Fault.

I had cause to ask myself a question tonight: ‘How do you respond to people who laugh easily?’ The response was simple: I like people who laugh easily, or at least I like the fact that they do. Experiencing someone’s honest laughter is pleasant. I watched an American woman called Erica something-or-other do it tonight, which was what prompted the question.

But then I thought of those people on YouTube who comment on some mildly amusing video along the lines of: ‘This was absolutely hilarious. I couldn’t stop laughing for hours.’ This is obviously a wild exaggeration and patently fake. It irritates me a lot because anybody who has to exaggerate to the point of lying in order to feel they matter is revealing a kind of weakness that I find nauseatingly unpalatable.

I’m being unreasonably judgemental in saying this, aren’t I? Judgemental is what the J stands for in INFJ, which demonstrates that for all we’re generally lauded as bringers of light and empathy, we also have a bad side like everybody else. (I have several.) Unfortunately, what I don’t have are any vestments made of sackcloth, and such ashes that remain in my fire grate are very old and dusty.

An Issue of Smell and Practicality.

It’s 1940 and you’re a bomber pilot in the Luftwaffe. One night after a raid you’re making the return trip in the dawn’s early light when you get spotted by a Hurricane and badly shot up. You’re uninjured so you bail out, land in a field somewhere near Dover, get picked up by some sort of patrol, and two days later you find yourself incarcerated in a POW camp. Still wearing the same clothes. And because it’s 1940 you’re destined to spend the next five years living a restricted life at His Majesty’s Pleasure along with a few dozen of your compatriots. Still wearing the same clothes?

In all the years I’ve been alive the airways and bookshelves have been liberally splattered with dramas and documentaries about WWII, and yet I’ve never heard the need of a change of clothing being mentioned.

Good Associations and Grrrs.

Standing in my garden at twilight put me in mind of the orchestral work In a Summer Garden, by Frederick Delius. I don’t know why that never struck me before since I’m something of a fan of Delius’s music. This evening I could have imagined myself transported to his house and garden at Grez-sur-Loing in France. In fact, I did imagine it. I also discovered this evening that Delius was born on the same date as my mother.

*  *  *

The good experience I had with a contact at BT recently proved to be short-lived. It’s back to normal now with bucketfuls of stress, anxiety, and serious irritation. And a new pattern has emerged in my life: I go to bed at 3am, wake briefly just after 6, and again just after 9. It’s happened the past four nights in succession. I wonder what that’s all about.

Today's Two Notes.

A few nights ago I posted about having had a harsh email from my phone line provider regarding broadband provision and computer connections. It threw me into a bit of a funk, me not being a techno type, but today I stuck my courage to the sticking place and made the call to find out what it was about and what needed to be done.

I was connected with a Lancashire lass (middle aged I would say) from Manchester who was an absolute star. She took me through the whole thing clearly and methodically, explained all the reasoning behind it in words even I could understand, and offered to send an engineer to make the connections just in case there are any problems. Now I just have to await delivery of the new router. And to add icing on the cake, it appears that if all goes well I will be paying much less than I currently am and will have a very much faster internet connection.

When have you ever heard me say something good about BT? You have now.

*  *  *

Seasonal Shire news: The scented meadowsweet is blooming in Church Lane, the elder flowers are well advanced to promise a bumper harvest of berries for those who want to prove that elderberry wine is the equal of anything Bordeaux might offer, the golden barley is coming close to ripeness, and the wheat is still green but plumping nicely.

*  *  *

In fact, apart from a problem with arranging my transport to Ashbourne next week, it was a half decent day for a change. (My only regret is that I didn’t ask the BT lady’s name, because then I could have told you what it was.)

On the Kayak and the Cold Water.

For some reason today I was reminded of an amusing little incident during my school days. I might have told the story before in the early days of the blog, but I don’t remember and can’t be bothered search for it, so you can have it again.

Once upon a time when I was a teenager (I really was, you know, once upon a time), the boys in my high school class were taken off for the weekend to an outdoor pursuits centre. It had wooden shacks, ropes for abseiling, kayaks for canoeing, and various other oddments deemed necessary for the provision of  a fun-filled weekend risking life and limb. It also had a sizeable lake and lots of trees.

The first morning was put aside for giving each of us a kayak to sit in so we could happily paddle from one end of the lake to the other and back again. We had no idea what it was supposed to teach us or how it might add to our manly mettle, but that was the plan. And so we set off with me near the back of the group.

About 100 yds into this great adventure I was suddenly gripped by excruciating pain from cramp in both calf muscles. We’d been warned that kayaks take a bit of getting used to because they’re notoriously unstable and the trick is to keep the body in such a position in the cockpit (or whatever it’s called) to keep the little craft upright. It occurred to me that this might be difficult with both calves in the grip of excruciating pain, and so I called to the lead schoolmaster, explained my difficulty, and asked whether I should turn around and paddle back to shore. He said I should, so I dipped the port  paddle (left to the landlubbers) and began to make a 180° turn.

At that point the dear little red and white kayak grinned mischievously, overturned, and threw me unceremoniously into the lake. Fortunately, Dame Fortune was having none of it and came to my aid by dismissing both cramps completely as soon as my legs hit the cold water. Feeling somewhat relieved, I was easily able to swim to the nearest bank with the kayak in tow, and then walk back to the centre through the trees (which were rather nice I expect, although I don’t actually remember.)

Can you imagine such a situation being allowed today with our manic emphasis on risk avoidance? I expect they’d have to have a patrol boat now with lifesaving equipment bringing up the rear. Back then we just dealt with it (well, I did anyway because there was no alternative.) Maybe it was to ingratiate into us the notion that we were ‘the bulldog breed.’ Bulldogs are extinct now, although I gather kayaks aren’t.

YouTube and the Registration Obsession.

YouTube has suddenly started to throw a cocktail of new requirements and restrictions at me. One of them says: Register to like and leave comments on videos.

Where did that one come from? Why should I have to register to like and leave a comment on a YouTube video? YouTubers are constantly begging for likes and comments on their uploads.

I imagine it’s just the latest example of a pandemic sweeping so-called developed cultures in the 21^st century: registration for this, that, the other, and soon to be nearly everything else. Is it, perhaps, merely a matter of bureaucratic overkill which is something else infecting modern life in a more general sense? Or is it, as I suspect, another example of the corporate world and its insanely rich minions seeking yet another way to watch and control us so they can make more money?

Oh well, if I have to give up YouTube by way of objecting to their silly and intrusive little rules, then so be it. It would cause me some difficulty because the only time I relax these days is the final two hours before going to bed. (I set an appropriate music mix to play while I read old blog posts and the comments my old blogger pals used to leave. I have several from the Lady B, you know. They’re very precious.) But to a sad old idealist like me, principles are supremely important.

The Big Event.

My landlord has invited us all to ‘tea in the garden’ tomorrow afternoon. How very Virginia Woolf of him. I would have thought it more appropriate to have styled the event ‘tea on the terrace’, he being a kind of lord of the manor and all. Maybe he was concerned that one of the great unwashed might soil the hallowed flagstones somehow, and be too close to the interior of the mansion anyway. The odd one might even smell bad.

Will I be attending, you might ask. No. Saturday afternoon is the busiest time of the week for me, and I’m not really the type to go hobnobbing with the landed gentry anyway. Not that I have anything against him. I’ve only met him once, and then only briefly. For all I know he might be thoroughly likeable. He might be so distanced from any antiquated notion of social hierarchy that he sings ‘keep the red flag flying here’ while playing with his rubber duck in the bath.

And that brings me to an odd and unconnected thought. Why does the Republican Party in the USA use red as their colour of allegiance? Red is the colour of Russian communism. The communist Chinese flag is red. Red is universally recognised as the colour of people power, whereas the Republicans are known for the opposite proclivity. Could it have something to do with the traditional colour of British telephone boxes, I wonder. Must ask an American if ever I meet one. I should imagine Americans would be the first to accept an invitation to tea in the garden with the lord of the manor (sort of), but I don’t think we have any in these parts.

On Strange Lights and the Silicon Supremacy.

A few nights ago I saw something unusual in the eastern sky. It was around two o’clock in the morning and I was on my way to bed. The window in my bathroom faces east and the first thing I noticed was usual enough – the blinking wing light of a passenger plane heading north-west out of East Midlands Airport. And then my eye was caught by a most unusual pattern of lights just above the horizon at the top of the hill.

It consisted of nine orange lights arranged in three vertical rows of three forming a vertical rectangular shape. It moved slowly across the sky – rather slower than the aircraft lights heading in the opposite direction – and then stopped. The lights were much bigger than those on the plane suggesting that the whole pattern was bigger than a commercial aircraft or maybe much closer. It stayed still for a short while before descending and disappearing behind the hilltop.

I hope my description is accurate enough to evoke a visual image because I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. My usual presumption when I see a stationery light in the sky rests on the almost certain likelihood of it being a helicopter, but I’ve never seen such a craft showing a pattern of lights like that. If anyone has a suggestion I would be glad to hear it.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, my state of mind is not at its best. Over the past ten years my world has contracted to a point where it amounts to little more than tedious chores, troubled sleep, and trawling the internet for something to interest me, usually with little success. This morning I woke up disturbingly late and booted up my computer to find an email from my phone line provider. It was titled ‘You will soon lose your broadband’ and advised me that I was to make substantial changes to both my service provision and computer connections if I was to avoid being confined to the cyber wasteland.

Well now, being confined to the cyber wasteland amounts to being also confined to the functional wasteland these days, and so I rang my broadband provider and asked ‘what the bloody hell is going on?’ A long and fairly complex explanation was provided by a man with a strong Yorkshire accent (I think he said his name was John.)

I won’t bore you with the details; suffice it to say this: My proclivities lie in such areas as music, quality literature, philosophy, psychology, the state of the human condition, the beauty of landscape, and the meaning of life and reality. I’m not a techno type. I have to accept that the days when our functions were largely run by cables, physical switches, and electricity are gone because that’s the way it is. But the microchip leaves me cold and confused. And that’s how I felt after spending around half an hour talking – or mostly listening – to John (or whatever.)

The one heartening thing he said was that these changes might not have to be made until the end of the year. I wondered whether I might be able to conspire to expire before then, because that would save me the trouble, wouldn’t it? Maybe I’ll feel different tomorrow (if I have a tomorrow.)

A Special Day and a Nice Note on Sweden.

Today is something of a landmark in my life because today I exceeded my mother’s lifespan by one day. (Well, part of a day at least. It isn’t over yet, is it?) That’s an odd thing to work out, wouldn’t you say? I wonder how many other people have done the same calculation. I still have nearly two years to go to match my father, but I can’t work that one out precisely because I don’t know the date of his death. I hadn’t seen him for twenty six years.

I’m a bit glum these days, which is something of a coincidence because I seem to be suddenly getting a lot of visits from Sweden, and you might remember all those posts I made about the glumness of the Swede. Maybe there’s a connection. It was a joke, of course, because I feel a certain fondness for the Swedes. They seem to be as intolerant of egomania as I am so I always favour their football teams as long as they’re not playing England, and even then my attitude is dichotomous. I wonder what they think of Trump.

A Very Rare Connection.

I’ve said often enough on this blog that there are very few people with whom I can feel a connection sufficient to warrant extended discussion. Most people just get on my nerves.

Well, I met one today. Her name was Alisha and she was minding the store in the pet shop on Uttoxeter’s retail park. She had all the qualifications to be a JJ sort of person – authentic affability, easy and fluent use of language, intelligence, a permanent and genuine smile, and the admission that she does voluntary work at a rescue centre for injured hedgehogs. She was absolutely lovely (as several of them are in that shop, actually. It’s why I wouldn’t buy my wild bird seed anywhere else.)

During the course of the conversation she mentioned that she came from the south of England originally. ‘That’s unusual,’ I said. ‘You’re remarkably friendly for a southerner.’ After that we got on famously.

Not One for the Squeamish

Earlier this evening I was walking down Bag Lane en route to the post box when my foot slipped on something. I looked down to identify the cause and found that I had stepped on the flattened and disembodied head of a squirrel, and what had caused me to slip was the mess of brains spreading out behind it. And one of its legs was lying a foot or two away (if you’ll excuse the unintentional pun.)

That’s not very nice, is it?

And now I can’t think of a way to end this mini – and rather unpleasant – post except to say that my subsequent dinner was vegetarian as always.

All Three?

Regular readers might very well remember (though some might very well not) that a few weeks ago I reported having been apparently ghosted by the Lady B in Sainsbury’s car park. Since she had her youngest daughter with her I chose to speculate that the dear lady might have been distracted by the more pressing consideration of whether to give little pip squeak beans on toast or spaghetti on toast for lunch, and therefore being temporarily blind to the sight of some old reprobate staring back at her from a mere 30-40 feet. That would be understandable, but the matter of being ghosted didn’t end there.

A week or two ago I was walking down my lane when Dear Mama passed me in her motor car. Whenever she does that she always slows, waves, and smiles. Not this time. No slowing, no wave, no smile, no hoot of a horn. That’s most unusual, and the matter still doesn’t end there.

Two evenings ago I was doing some work at the bottom of my garden close to the gap which leads onto the lane. A movement caught the corner of my eye and I turned to see Honourable Sister, accompanied by Oscar the Sprocker Spaniel, walking past me and down the lane without so much as a turn of the head and a ‘Hi Jeff’, which is the usual minimal greeting bestowed by said lady.

I speculated on the many possible reasons why I should have become suddenly persona non grata to the eminent members of the Shire’s top family. I won’t bother to relate the full list because most of them are probably wrong, but I did settle on one outstanding favourite: I suspect I might have inadvertently slipped through a veil and into a parallel dimension, one in which I’ve never polluted the airspace around the vaunted family and they have never noticed my presence in their demesne. And the reason for considering this the most likely explanation is that Honourable Sister’s hair was a different colour than it usually is.

Clueless, Characterless, and Clownish.

I passed one of the pub/bistro bars in Ashbourne today and saw that it was dark inside. And then I saw a hand-written notice on the window which said:

PLEASE YOUSE (sic) THE BEER GARDEN AT THE SIDE

Need I comment further?

And then I went along the high street and saw that my old favourite coffee shop, Costa Coffee, was thoroughly topsy-turvy and full of contractors. The notice on their window said that it was closed for ten days for a ‘makeover.’

I wonder what a ‘makeover’ means exactly. Does it mean that they’re going to make it a brightly lit, smarty-pants modern place like the others in Ashbourne? That would be an issue to me because my idea of a proper coffee shop is one which is clean and tidy, but a little beaten up almost to the point of being slightly seedy. It needs to be the right sort of environment for enjoying the heady, old socks aroma of French and Turkish cigarettes (even though it’s illegal to actually smoke anything – French, Turkish, Indonesian or whatever – indoors these days.)

I do hope not because I’m growing tired of the smarty-pants, sanitizing trend now infecting modern times in all sorts of ways. The big casualty is character, and I’m a big fan of character.

*  *  *

Finally, it might have been noted that I haven’t strayed much into the political arena lately. It’s because I’m becoming thoroughly disenchanted with politics and politicians everywhere, especially in America it has to be said. I do sympathise with good Americans who have to tolerate the lamentable state of their politics and politicians. It seems to me that the only difference between a circus and American politics is that in politics the clowns wear business suits.

Alternative Interpretation.

The field behind my house has quite a steep slope on it, and running up the middle at an angle is a track worn by the wheels of the farmer’s quad bike. The field is home to forty heifers and a smaller number of ewes with lambs.

Yesterday I saw one of the ewes with her two lambs resting half way up the hill on the track. The heifers were on the ridge at the top, and one of them decided to come down the field on the higher part of the track. I watched with interest to see what would happen when the lone cow reached the three sheep. Would she go around them, trample on them, or would the sheep move?

Ms Cow began to take a detour to pass the still resting sheep at a distance of a few yards, but when she came level with them she stopped and turned her head to look at them. I fancied I could hear her thoughts which went something like:

Bloody sheep. Who do they think they are making me go out of my way so as not to tread on them? I’ll show them, just see if I don’t.

And then she walked over and nudged the sheep which dutifully stood up and moved away. But then Mrs Cow continued to walk down the field without using the track, which made me wonder whether I’d mistranslated and what she was actually thinking was:

Poor sheep. Not very bright, are they? Haven’t they noticed that the big noisy thing goes up that track, and if the farmer doesn’t notice them he might run them over? Better go and move them I suppose, and that can be my good deed for the day.

Either way it would seem to be further indication that cows are smarter than people think they are. I well remember Ermintrude from The Magic Roundabout. She was pretty smart in a neurodivergent sort of way.

Questionable Comparison.

Today my thoughts fell to musing on the late conservationist, Dr Jane Goodall, who died aged 91 last October.

Being the incomplete spirit that I am, I fell to comparing people like Dr Goodall with the people who run this world of ours – those weak, seemingly soulless creatures who value nothing but money and power, however impoverished their claim to value might be.

I’m quite sure Dr Goodall would not have wanted me to say this, but I’m going to anyway: my thoughts proceeded to the matter of winning and losing, and a certainty soon settled that the true winners in this world are the Janes, and the real losers the likes of Trump and his fellow little failures.

And then came the usual question: why does the world have to be like this? Is it, perhaps to demonstrate the true nature of worth and worthlessness to those capable of seeing through the darkness to something worthier beyond? I wish I knew.

Not Quite My Way.

Sometimes when I hear a song – or even get one stuck in my head for some reason, as I have today – which was popular when I was a boy, it doesn’t only evoke memories of circumstances and environments prevalent at the time. Occasionally it connects me with my old sense of self and perception of life back then. I literally, though briefly, feel like the child I was.

It always takes me aback a little, and is usually followed by a feeling of disappointment that life didn’t turn out the way I expected it to. There have been thrills and spills and the occasional grand adventure along the way, but never any overall sense that life met my vague childhood expectations. It all feels a little too rhapsodic; there’s no architectural edifice on which to look back with satisfaction. And so, of course, it always takes me one step further into the old question: ‘what on earth was it all for?’

I’m the same with food, you know. I can have some favourite dish and enjoy it until it’s finished, but once the last piece has been swallowed there’s no rubbing of tummy and exclamations of yum, yum. Once it’s gone the pleasure disappears completely.

And do you want to know what prompted this little outburst? It was seeing a video on YouTube about the surprisingly high number of deaths connected with the playing of Sinatra’s My Way in Malaysian karaoke bars.

At Day's End.

I sat out in the garden this evening through a calm but cloudy twilight. I watched two bumblebees taking their last feed of the day from the foxglove flowers. And then I noticed several small groups of jackdaws, two or three at a time, flying home to roost. A single raindrop fell on my head. Just one.

Was that meaningful? I no longer presume to pass judgement on the matter, but at least none of it was polluted by any connection to money. And it made a pleasant change from doing strenuous jobs in the garden and feeling physically wrecked for five days, or reading the news and experiencing severe disappointment in my fellow humans and their priorities.

For the Sake of Making it 10.

I briefly held the hand of a Filipina yesterday. There was a group of Filipinos shopping in Ashbourne Sainsbury’s and the hand contact happened by way of me welcoming them to our neat little town in our neat little country. (I doubt that a shopping trip to Ashbourne Sainsbury’s was the main purpose of their visit, but never mind.) The last time I held the hand of a young Filipina was in hospital 5½ years ago after I’d undergone a painful procedure. She was a nurse, and I have to say that it’s a delightful experience.

I had other encounters this week which might have been worth reporting, but I can’t for the life of me remember what they were so I’ll save us both the trouble.

And I’m only making this post because I like seeing double figures in the side bar.

I was also going to make a post around the question: ‘Do you ever miss anybody who is no longer in your life?’ It became horribly long and convoluted, so you may be pleased that I chickened out of that one too.

I might just mention that I spent the last four days doing the toughest of the spring jobs in the garden. In consequence, I’ve felt a wreck for the last four days.

Mounted Maidens.

Today I met a maiden come a-riding on a horse (of course.)

(A ditty beckons but my ditty muse has been absent for some time and I haven’t a clue where she is. She’s not the only woman to have given up on me in recent years, just the latest.)

Anyway, the fact is that I’ve been curiously attracted to maidens riding horses for as long as I can remember, and I don’t know why. It isn’t libidinous, strange as that might seem. I think it must have its origins somewhere in a past life or something buried deep in some aspect of universal mythology.

Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that I never knew any equine maidens when I was growing up. Coming as I did from an industrial area, all the maidens I knew occupied themselves with gainful employment in factories, shops, or offices where they sat typing all day or operated switchboards in those blessed years before automation took over and treated us to the joy of recorded announcements and menu options. (Deep breath) And they were all – or nearly all – impatient to arrive at the point when they could give up gainful employment and begin adding to the surplus population. None of them rode horses. I was in my late twenties before I met a maiden who even knew how to ride a horse, and she probably only did so because her father was a Tory.

The salient point is, however, that both maiden and horse of today’s encounter were supremely amicable and a good time was had by all. Hallelujah.

The Phantom Yucca.

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

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

Noting a Hint of Duplicity.

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

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

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

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

The Ultimate in Good Karma.

When I was leaving Sainsbury’s earlier, weighed down by three heavy bags of shopping, my backpack, and a bundle of garden canes, I got stuck in a narrow part of the lane behind an old man walking very, very slowly with a walking frame. I had two options: ask him to move out of the way or walk very, very slowly behind him until the way was clear. I chose the latter.

And then I noticed several middle aged women watching him and smiling. And then they looked at me and smiled in my direction, presumably in appreciation of my patience. It’s interesting how humans function, isn’t it? I wasn’t feeling patient at all, I just didn’t look it. And the reward for my reticence was smiles from several middle aged women. Oh joy.

Upon Seeing Early Swallows.

This is one of my special days of the year, but not because it happens to be 12^th May. This special day has no regular date; rather it is the day on which I first see a flock of swallows hunting at speed over the fields, the lanes, and above the woodland canopy. Today was that day.

I saw them at the top of the lane on which I live, which is one of the two places where I usually get my first sighting. I’m told they always nest at the first farmhouse around the corner on the main road. Unfortunately their aerial habitat offered a grim aspect. There was rain falling and a cold north-westerly wind blowing, but the birds seemed undeterred.

And there was a certain poignancy involved because my first thought on seeing them was to wonder whether it would be the last time that I would be treated to the first sight of the early swallows. I am rather given to such thoughts these days – have been for a few years now – and this morning I’d been woken by a worrying pain that I’d never had before. (It’s gone now so maybe it was nothing to be concerned about.)

No doubt I would be accused of unnecessarily morbid musing if I were to say this to anybody face-to-face, but that’s unlikely because I hardly ever speak to anybody face-to-face. And it has to happen one day, doesn’t it, so why not wonder about it?

My New View.

For the first seventeen years of living in this house, the large field which covers the land to the back and side was used as summer pasture for a herd of beef cattle. And then the farmer effectively retired and the field was taken over by a smallholder who grazed a few sheep and Dexter cows there. For the past several months the Dexters have been absent and only five ewes have been grazing an area of land sufficient for ten times their number.

But now everything has changed. A much larger flock of sheep has been moved in, and they have lambs with them. Do you realise what that means? It means that if I want to watch the lambs playing and interacting with their mothers I no longer have to walk nearly a mile to the top of the lane; all I have to do now is look out of my bathroom or bedroom windows. (And four of the lambs are black, which is unusual and rather splendid.)

I don’t suppose anyone will be remotely interested in this news, but the sun is still up, the dinner dishes are washed, and I felt like writing something.

(Oh, and I had a vivid dream about the Lady B a couple of nights ago and it was quite unpleasant. She was constantly cross with me for some reason. I’m not entirely over it yet, but I will be eventually.)

Revery and Semantics.

Some years ago I jotted a blog post about one of my favourite reveries. Today I was walking up my lane in the sunshine when I was reminded of it, so I’m going to tell it again but with a little addition at the end.

*  *  *

I’m walking along a quiet country lane on a sunny day in June. The trees, hedgerows, and pastures are heavily dressed in the fresh bright green of early summer growth. No traffic passes me, the breeze is but a mild zephyr, and no place of habitation is evident.

And then I spy a lone cottage a little way ahead and hear the first hint of sound. As I come closer I make out the tinkling of a piano being played gently, and as I draw level with the cottage I note that one window on the ground floor is standing wide open. Beyond it sits a young woman evidently lost in her rendition of Debussy’s La fille aux cheveux de lin. I watch and listen until she finishes, at which point she turns to me and smiles demurely. I smile back and walk on.

And so it was that this morning it ran through my head again as I passed the small wood and approached the five old ash trees at the top of the lane. But as has become common these days, my mind didn’t stop there. It asked the question as it always does now: ‘Is this any more or less real than the woman, the piano, and one of the loveliest pieces of music I’ve ever heard? Is any of it, anywhere, real? Does any of it have any meaning?’ And then I came to the final question, the one that brings me to edge of that continental shelf beyond which I am not yet equipped to go:

‘What does “meaning” mean?’

On Maidens and the Middle Aged Man.

I said in the previous post that I was going to mention a brief thought on the subject of maidens and middle aged men, didn’t I? And I also said it was going to be short. OK then, here it is.

I’ve observed during my longish sojourn in this human body that maidens – by which I mean young women approximately in the 18-23 age group – are quite often romantically attracted to middle aged men in their forties. It happened to me, you know, when I was in my forties. It was a constant source of delight to get so much attention clearly beyond the bounds of mere friendship from young women half my age and even less.

I suppose it’s because men in their forties are, for the most part, still fit, strong, active, and possessed of a healthy libido, but with an overlay of experience not yet evident in callow youth. And they look lived in. Young women of that age are probably the most open and searching of the various age/gender demographics, and so the added benefit of experience matters I suppose.

How pleased I am – or at least should be – that I am now genuinely old and so none of the attributes listed above apply. Maidens, however delightful, can be a mightily mixed blessing, you see. They still smile at me, but it’s a very different smile than the one they used to bestow.

On a Dangerous Road.

I was on edge all day yesterday because of things I read in the news. Today has been the same for the same reason, so here are a few pointers:

Both the US and UK seem to be quietly abandoning democracy in favour of a move towards more autocratic control which might well grow naturally into fascism. Trump seems to think that the US military is his personal box of toy soldiers, there to keep him amused while he’s feeling tired between tantrums.

Over on this side of the pond, Starmer and the media are jumping about like a box of firecrackers over the fact that two Jewish men were attacked in London recently. Starmer’s response is to threaten the banning of protests against hard line Israeli brutality. He seems to be ignorant of the fact that the horse is supposed to be in front of the cart, not behind it.

Britain's Chief Rabbi is complaining that ‘anti-Semitism is growing and becoming normalised.’ Well, of course it is. It was obvious that such would happen when the carnage in Gaza began to unfold. But let’s not forget that there are two forms of anti-Semitism. The first is the bigoted kind and is simply a form of racism. Few people in the modern world fall into that category. The second arises from an instinctive sense of outrage when decent people read of IDF soldiers killing the innocent just because they can. (Or perhaps it’s all justified by that convenient American phrase, ‘collateral damage.’ Students of European history might consider what happened to the Cathars during the Albigensian Crusade, and consider why it happened, and see that there is a striking parallel at work.) In any event, maybe the Chief Rabbi has difficulty with the operation of cause and effect, and I still maintain that most of what is deemed ‘anti-Semitism’ is, in fact, anti-Zionism. I can explain the difference if you like, but should I need to?

(And yes, I do realise that there are good people in Israel. If only they could remove the brutes running their country the rest of the world could know it too, and Israel could cast off the shadow of being probably the world’s foremost pariah state.)

I think we’re at a crossroads again and still haven’t learned the lessons of history. It seems to me that the time is right for the military and the populace to come together and say ‘Oh no you don’t,’ but it’s unlikely to happen because a system created and run by powerful interests is very good at keeping somnambulists asleep.

*  *  *

Meanwhile, back at the Shire, the May blossom is now coming on strong but the weather is set to turn colder. Shame. And today is the 20^th anniversary of my moving to this house. My, how times have changed. And that reminds me of the post I have running through my head about Maidens and Middle Aged Men. I might even write it one day if my old man’s mind can settle sufficiently. It will be quite short.

Being Nobody.

I’ve just come in from having my Beltane Eve fire. It was a good one this year, fanned by a gentle wind and still smouldering as I write. I thought that maybe I should grace the old blog with one more post before spring bows out in a little over two hours time (according to my Celtic ancestors on my dad’s side, that is.)

So…

I was walking up The Hollow at lunchtime today, mesmerised almost by the vast swathes of wild white garlic flowers, when I was taken in hand by a strong fit of nostalgia for my teenage years. I remembered the fishing trips, and the rugby games, and the girlfriends, and the not-too-wild parties, and the building of a bonfire on Berry Hill on which to roast potatoes and discuss those matters which preoccupy the teenage mind. I remembered the school field study trip to Swaledale in Yorkshire, and the playing of the trombone (at which I excelled of course…) in the school orchestra on speech nights and Christmas carol concerts. And plenty more as well.

I knew who I was then, but I don’t any more because one day, some way beyond the teen years, I heard the hum of mother culture. And so began the first hints of profound musing. Life became more of a struggle when I began seriously to deliberate on, and search for answers to, the meaning of life and the nature of reality. I haven’t found a satisfactory answer to either yet, at least none on which I can definitely rely.

And now I think I’m really nobody at all, and maybe that’s a good thing. The one aspiration left to me is to engage in a long conversation with the Lady B before I die, but it’s not likely to happen because aspirations don’t usually bear fruit for people who are nobody. Do they? Probably not.

The Unsinkable Donald Trump.

It’s interesting to note, isn’t it, that American assassins of old made short work of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, while Trump escapes over and over again with nothing more serious than a scratched earlobe (allegedly.) No doubt his supporters are revelling in the certainty that divine intervention is at work. I expect the titular line of Dylan’s With God on Our Side is being played on a constant loop down in the darkness of conservative evangelical rat holes everywhere.

Well, maybe God is on Donald’s side. Or maybe American assassins ain’t what they used to be. Or maybe there’s something a bit rum going on.

I know nothing.

Musicians From Another Planet.

I've asked this question before but I'm going to ask it again: How do pianists play two different - and often disparate - strings of notes at the same time, one with the right hand and the other with the left? I'm led to the serious suspicion that they must have two brains, one for each hand. What other explanation could there be?

And then there's the other question that occurs to me when I hear a piano being played: How do they always contrive to have at least one finger free to play the next note no matter the speed and complexity of the ink blots? That's not as simple as it might sound on the surface, and I suspect there's something of the metaphysical going on.

So are pianists all undercover aliens walking furtively among us? If so, what is their purpose? Are pianists not what they seem (like owls), and what should we do about it?

The Room Behind the Rock Face.

During one of my return trips from Ashbourne in the community transport bus recently, we had an extra passenger – an elderly lady who lived in a village about seven miles from here. We dropped her off first, and the house she lived in was one of a run of stone-built terraces fronting onto the main road. Access to the house, however, was gained by way of a dark, narrow passage at the back, and on the other side of the passage was a rock face which I estimated to be around fifty feet high. Apart from the physical discomfort of feeling hemmed in, the house must have received very little light through the windows at the rear.

But it got better…

The rock face continued beyond the terraced houses to be in full view of the road, and what a forbidding aspect it presented: damp, dark brown sandstone which appeared to have water constantly running down the face from the land above. And then I noticed something extraordinary. It had a door and two windows in it. I wondered whether they might have been some kind of whimsical curio because surely there was nothing behind them, or so I thought.

The following week I asked a different driver whether he was familiar with this oddity. He was, he said, and told me that there is indeed a room behind the door, and that somebody once lived in it.

Lived? Lived how? Did this room have gas or electricity? Did it have running water (apart from what was running down the outside walls)? Did it have a fireplace to provide heat in the winter, and if so, was there a chimney driven up through fifty feet of rock to let the smoke out? He didn’t know, but in all my life I’ve never seen such a ‘dwelling’ and had no idea that such a thing might exist.

But then it’s a well attested fact that during the Middle Ages and a little beyond, there were people living in caves dotted around the various dales in this area. To people such as those, I expect having a room in a rock face complete with a door and two windows would have been quite the height of luxury.

Ups and Downs in England.

This morning I went for my customary Thursday walk which takes me up the tree-lined Hollow en route to the fairy glen above the village. As always at this time of year I was reminded of Robert Browning’s immortal and evocative line:

Oh to be in England now that April’s here.

The day matched the sentiment, being mild, calm, and sunny, and the whole Shire being awash with the whites, the yellows, the blues, and the pinks of wild spring flowers and well trained cherry trees in many a cottage garden. And on the way I met a comely young woman and her boisterously friendly young dog, and was the beneficiary of much enthusiastic fussing and evident delight in my company (by the dog, you understand, not the comely young woman. Heaven forbid at my age.)

Life in an English April felt worth having after all.

This afternoon I needed to contact Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to get a simple answer to a simple question. After half an hour of frustration and primal inner screaming I was no nearer to reaching the object of my simple quest. And then the phone signal failed anyway, so I gave up.

And life returned to normal.

A Few Rare Notes.

The Shire is a picture at the moment, especially when the grey clouds move away and the wind stops taking the edge off the temperature. So much of the wild growth is not only precocious, but rampant as well. Such is true of the bluebells – my favourite wild flower – and the wild garlic, both of which are not only prolific but springing up in places where I’ve never seen them before. Most notable of all, though, has been the abundance of blossom on the blackthorn trees and bushes. Thick blocks of white everywhere in hedgerow, field, and at the margins of wood and copse. Hawthorn next, hopefully.

Elsewhere…

I answered a woman’s question recently with disarmingly simple honesty. She called me ‘a beautiful soul.’ Well now, fine opinions are very much a rarity these days so I chose to bask briefly in the light – lime or otherwise – and decline to mention the rust gnawing away at the chassis.

And a man said ‘nice to see you’ today. My immediate response to any man who says ‘nice to see you’ is suspicion, and the same would hold true for many women. There is, however, one woman from whom I would like to hear ‘nice to see you’, but the likelihood is exceedingly remote and so I choose not to dwell on the matter. Oddly enough I saw her today for all of around two seconds. She was driving a passing car, but she evidently didn’t see me. She hardly ever does. Maybe I’ve developed that skill which some spies and secret agents are said to have – the ability to remain invisible in plain sight.

On Sub-Standard Humans and Sudden Epiphanies.

On my way out yesterday I saw my neighbour and mentioned my suspicion that Donald Trump might be genuinely mentally ill. Her reply was unequivocal: ‘Of course he is. He’s got Alzheimers.’ I was in a hurry and therefore unable to ascertain whether she was expressing an opinion or stating a known fact, although all the current talk about the 25^th Amendment makes me wonder.

So should we now feel sorry for poor old Donald because he can’t help being an utter jerk? Well, a lot of his incomprehensible statements and behaviour found their expression in the most extreme egomania and nastiness, and I suspect I’m right in saying that those character traits must have existed long before any possible dementia took hold. Awaiting developments.

And this morning I saw a photograph of Itamar Ben-Gvir celebrating the new capital law relating to Palestinians, while no doubt cheering those Israeli settlers who commit murder the other way round. I wonder whether anybody has ever mentioned karma to him, or reminded him that even his own holy book mentions the whirlwind which awaits those sowing the wind.

*  *  *

Two entirely unrelated notes:

I was standing outside Sainsbury’s yesterday and saw a vision: a young woman in her late teens, around 5ft 8” tall, slim and perfectly formed, sporting long blonde hair, and skimpily dressed. I had an epiphany. I realised that my interest was no longer libidinous but merely aesthetic. It was a proud moment.

I also realised last night that Japanese culture is uncommonly awash with paranormal incidents and awareness, and that led to a theory that the less a culture is dominated by religion, the more attuned it is to spirituality. Am I right? You tell me.

Little and Late.

My little friend, Bear, has left the Shire and gone to live in another town in the Dales. He wrote me a letter in his child's hand to say he'd miss seeing me in the lane. It's a bit sad because I don't like many people, but I liked him. He had character. Tomorrow I'll get him a 'Good Luck' card.

Still awaiting that email which never comes. The years continue to turn.

Currently listening to old Enya tracks. A host of memories stare silently at me from a fading screen.

I haven't jotted a post like this in a long time. Here goes...

Trump and the Wacky Baccy.

I gather D Trump has promised to destroy a whole civilisation in one night if the Iranians don’t do as he tells them. Should we take that seriously, or should we remember his earlier claim to be able to end the war in Ukraine in one day? (And it’s interesting to also remember that Putin said he could ‘take Kyiv in one day’ at the start of those shenanigans.) Certain types of people just can’t help dribbling foolish babble, can they? Sometimes they don’t seem to be in control of their own mouths.

So here’s the point. Does Trump’s incessant blathering constitute evidence of mental instability? I’m no qualified psychologist but I do seriously wonder whether there’s any machinery in the US establishment or constitution which could force Trump to undergo psychiatric assessment. It strikes me as being an urgent imperative now.

(And wouldn’t it be a refreshing change to have sympathy for a poor ex-President when we see him strapped into a straightjacket and confined to a secure facility. Maybe Alcatraz could be reopened just for him and his acolytes. That would be nicely ironic.)

Failing that, we’re back to the military having the balls to say: ‘Democracy is to be temporarily suspended while we remove Mr Trump and his entourage to a small rock in the Atlantic approximately a thousand miles south of the Azores with no means of escape. Americans are advised to carry on as usual and normal service will be resumed in about six months.’

It’s unlikely though, isn’t it? As I understand it, Americans are brainwashed from the cradle to believe that patriotism – which includes unthinking and unstinting allegiance to the President – is the one absolute and inviolate requirement for claiming American citizenship. And so that might give the military personnel a bit of a dilemma:

‘If I remove my Commander-in-Chief from office – even if he is an utter loony about to set the hay barn on fire – wouldn’t that be unpatriotic and consign me to the centre of perdition’s flame for all eternity?’

‘That depends,’ I offer.

‘On what?’

‘On the single question: for whose benefit you are performing the act, yours or the American people. The latter, surely.’

‘Oh I see. In that case…’

Still not going to happen, though, is it?

And I’m concerned that this post might be guilty of trivialising what might turn out to be a very serious situation. It’s just that Trump has become such a comic book character now that it’s difficult to know how to react to statements and actions so absurd that they feel like drug-induced illusions.

American Cowardice and Middle Eastern Madness.

The BBC world news this morning was all about the rescue of the American airman in Iran. (As well as Trump’s childish invective about his intent to rain down – or even ‘reign down’ as the BBC journalist spelled it – the horrors of hell if the Iranians don’t do as they’re ordered immediately.) So let’s ask what this means:

The conflict in Iran is constantly being referred to as a ‘war.’ Clearly it isn’t. A war is a competition in which thousands, or even tens of thousands, of combatants on both sides are blown to pieces or at least simply killed, nearly every day. There is no place for a news headline on the rescue of one man in a real war.

This goes back to what I said at the start of it all; this is shooting fish in a barrel. This is the action of the big bully in the school yard beating up the little kid just because he can. And what do we say about bullies? We say they’re cowards. So where is America’s worldwide reputation going while trump bombs and blusters the hell out of a small nation? America is being seen as the world’s biggest bully and therefore its greatest coward. Do Americans, I wonder, revel in such a reputation? Somehow, I don’t think so. The bravest thing the America military could do at the moment is what gives rise to my current favourite, and hopelessly unrealistic, dream: It is to read the headline:

Military Coup in USA

Trump and Minions Arrested

Free Elections Promised in Six Months

*  *  *

So now let’s turn our attention to the bully’s sidekick, Mr Netanyahu and the Israelis:

It appears that antisemitism has been on the rise around the world ever since the terrible situation in Gaza. I predicted it would happen and so did plenty of other people. Antisemitism is a feature that’s been buried in the gene pool for many generations, just awaiting the trigger to bring it back to the surface. Gaza was that trigger, and excessively violent activity in Iran and Lebanon is feeding the trend. And so its rise is unsurprising.

But I doubt that most of the anti-Israeli sentiment is actually antisemitism, but rather anti-Zionism which is not the same thing. (And I’m constantly infuriated by supposedly intelligent people in establishments everywhere failing to see the difference despite it being plainly obvious to anybody with a measurable IQ.)

Zionism is the inviolable presumption that some mythical being called Yahweh, who was regarded as chief among gods, granted the descendents of Abraham all the land between the eastern Mediterranean and the River Jordan in perpetuity – theirs to take as a right no matter how much death, suffering, and destruction was caused in so doing.

(Let’s just add a rider here and question the very existence of Yahweh. Many see him as a mere myth. Some other religions claim that Yahweh exists but is actually a lower god at the base of a higher pantheon. Those of Gnostic persuasion call him the Demiurge and regard him as a flawed being, part good and part evil, and urge their congregation to bypass him in order to reach spiritual maturity. And let’s add another rider and point to those genealogists who claim that modern Jews are not actually the descendants of Abraham's people. These factors are all part of other arguments.)

OK, parenthesis over. I and most other reasonable people have no problem with the fact that Jews should have a homeland just like everybody else. Israel should exist and Israelis are welcome to be a member tribe of the human race just like all the other tribes. We don’t want another Holocaust, for heaven’s sake. We don’t even want another Diaspora, just some proper and reasonable balance. We want the whole of the human family to exist in peace and harmony. Instead we get tears, suffering, death, and wholesale destruction. And that’s why anti-Zionism is on the rise and often misconstrued as antisemitism.

And I suppose I’d better get off my rickety soap box now.

Just a Thought.

I see Donald is having a tantrum and sulking again with his ‘get your own oil.’  He’s showing yet again what a sociopathic, spoiled little brat he is. It would be quite amusing if it didn’t affect the rest of us, but it does.

You know, I really can’t imagine what some Americans have for brains when they put somebody like Trump into the White House. They did the same with Reagan and GW. Trump has no political experience, no diplomatic experience, no military experience… Being a businessman, I daresay he knows a little about low level math(s), but that’s hardly sufficient for running a powerful and complex country.

And I seem to recall that when he first started mouthing off about Iran, it was all to do with saving the poor Iranians from a cruel and dictatorial regime. Now he’s using his military might (and American taxpayer’s dollars) to kill thousands of them – along with his pal Benjamin, of course, who’s well practiced in killing innocents in large numbers.

But enough of the infamous Blood Brothers in DC and Jerusalem. We’ve had a fine day in the Shire and that was nice. And the new horses on Mill Lane came to say hello. It would be good to say ‘all’s well that ends well’, but heaven knows what this world might sink into before long.

The Footnote.

I made a post last night around the quandary over whether or not to get another car. After the decision was made I reasoned (if that be quite the right word) that choosing not to get one was a victory for instinct, and perhaps some deeper spiritual need, over logic, a practice which has gained some currency in recent decades. But then I had another thought and said I might add a footnote. This is it:

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m subject to a lot of depression. It’s been with me since I was a child and has grown worse with advancing age. And I’ve noticed a strange feature attaching to depression which I don’t suppose non-depressives realise.

Depression usually has no obvious trigger; it just happens. That’s part of the difference between being truly depressed and merely being in a bad mood. And our brains are wired in such a way as to function on the basis of cause and effect. So if there is no obvious cause, it makes a certain kind of perverse sense to seek or even create a cause for the depression. And so we tend to find the means to do ourselves down, to deny ourselves something we need in order to make life easier or more pleasurable. The depression is now vindicated and has a right to exist.

It follows a practice common in parental attitudes when I was a boy. If a child was crying for no apparent reason, a parent – usually the father for he was expected to be the disciplinarian – would utter the firm threat: ‘Stop that crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.’ Whether it was common in British culture generally, or only in the grimy, industrial environment in which I was brought up (an environment in which the grim existence among factories, coal mines, steelworks, and slum habitation had instilled an essential mentality of stoicism) I wouldn’t know.

And whether that was the reason for my declining to buy the car, I also wouldn’t know. But maybe some of my odd ideas do, after all, have some basis in fact.

Walking the Wasteland.

I don’t understand why, according to Blogger stats, this blog has received over 14,000 page views in less than twenty four hours. They come, apparently, from more than twenty countries scattered around the world. And yet no one is speaking to me either to react, agree, disagree, or discuss. Nobody ever does, and frankly I’m glad they don’t because I know nothing. I’m no kind of influencer and wouldn’t want to be. That sort of thing is better left dangling from the pallid fingers of celebrities and presidents who delude themselves with the notion that fame and power endow them with the mind of a genius and the wisdom of the ancients. About the feeble minded who follow them no more need be said.

But I do have strong suspicions. I suspect that what we are conditioned to regard as the only true reality is actually just the final frigid 10ft at the summit of Everest, and that it’s enveloped in a dense mist hiding the variety of riches running rampant on the lower slopes. And that leads me to wonder on a daily basis whether the death of the body is not so much an ending as an awakening.

So how do I find out whether I’m right or not except by dying? I can read everything from the Bardo Thodol to the peevish pronouncements of the Catholic Church to the pointless and probably fraudulent NDE experiences presented as ‘proof’ on YouTube. Why believe any of it? How can they know? (And what is their motivation for making the claims?)

And I’m becoming ever more disenchanted with this mortal realm, this icy summit littered with the detritus of disinformation and general dishonesty. Fakery is everywhere, usually driven by pecuniary or bigoted self-interest. It’s a realm in which the hum of mother culture draws the Line of Axiom – an invisible but highly potent barrier between that which may be discussed and that which must be accepted without question because it’s set in extra-reinforced concrete. Such is a major mainstay of political, commercial, societal, religious, and media practice everywhere.

The result of these suspicions is that they leave me wandering under flat grey skies in a featureless no man’s land. I used to relate to the culture which reared me, and to the people who mostly occupy it, but I can’t do most of that any longer. The culture seems to have too much wrong with it and the people speak a different language from me. Daniel Quinn did warn that once you’ve heard the hum of mother culture you can’t un-hear it, and he was right. To me, the hum is growing louder and so there’s no way back. Equally, I can’t walk forward with confidence either because a landscape without reference points offers few satisfactory clues as to what direction I should be taking.

I mentioned recently that I’m currently without a car. Well, I was offered one – just an elderly but reliable runner – at a knock down price, and I’ve been agonising over the decision for a couple of weeks. One part of me recognised that the motor car is probably the most visible icon of modern, developed society. Indeed, some cultures – most notably the US – have gone so far as to build their infrastructure around it. Its identification with a culture from which I now feel largely remote was the reason for deciding against. On the other hand, I still have to operate within the culture to some extent for practical reasons, and a car would provide me with more opportunity, convenience, and freedom. That was appealing, and yet I still rejected the offer.

But I’m tired of typing now, so maybe I’ll make the post about the epiphany which this brought about (regarding its relevance to the depressive tendency) another time.