Ashbourne Not Excelling Itself.

I was walking past a clothes shop in Ashbourne today, and for some reason chose to look at the window display. I don’t usually look in their window, partly because I rarely buy clothes (except odd essentials like socks, underwear and woolly hats,) and partly because there are no price labels on the merchandise. Such stores are generally suited only to those who are rich enough not care that 98% of the retail price is represented by clear profit because their sole criteria of worth is measured by the extent to which they can impress others of like persuasion. I’ve never belonged to that particular club, and there would be no point in me trying even if I could afford to.

The clothes, however, piqued my curiosity. The female mannequin was wearing a small, cream-coloured skirt of some insubstantial material with little aubergine flowers on it, overtopped by lots of flouncy woolly things. The male counterpart was decked out in red corduroy jeans with a heavily ornate sweater in glorious technicolor.

I had an Aha! moment. Could this be an example of the elusive preppy style so beloved of savvy young things from New York State? I decided to go in and ask.

‘I haven’t come in to buy anything,’ I began.

‘That’s OK,’ said the starchy woman who looked to be in charge.

*Thinks* Is it? How odd. I expect what she really means is ‘I can tell you’re not in here to buy anything from the way you’re dressed.’ But anyway…

‘I was just wondering,’ I continued, ‘whether the stuff you sell is what Americans call preppy.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Ivy League?’

She called an assistant, who said she’d heard it called ‘college.’

‘That’s it,’ said Mrs Starchy, ‘it’s the college look. You know, rugby shirts and things.’

‘Oh right, it probably is preppy then,’ I said by way of closure, even though I still hadn’t a clue. (It’s just that I don’t like ending a conversation without proper closure, even if it is fraudulent.)

The true fact of the matter, or so it appears, is that Ashburnians are no more aware of the preppy style than they are of cronuts. I sometimes wonder whether I’m the only man of the world who lives here. But at least the dear old place got two blog posts today. I don’t think that’s happened before.

Ashbourne Excelling Itself.

Ashbourne was more eventful than usual today: today was a day for men to do double takes at me. Three of them. It’s usually women, but today it was men, and one of them was smiling suspiciously. I asked myself some searching questions:

‘Am I talking to myself?’ No.

‘Do I have a large excrescence on the end of my nose?’ No.

‘Are my eyes rotating rapidly in opposite directions?’ No.

‘Do I look gay?’ I don’t think so.

Three of them. Why?

And then I came to within an inch of clashing trolleys twice with the same woman in Sainsbury’s. She’s the one who used to watch me a lot – I remember reporting the fact on this very blog – but doesn’t any more.

‘Nearly gotcha that time,’ she said.

‘You’re in my way, too,’ I replied, with just the right vocal tone to give the impression I might have been half joking. We’re good at that, we Saggis. She cackled.

No dog fixes though, unfortunately.

But I did get the DVD of the film Mel recommended: The Devil’s Backbone. I expect I’ll have something to say about it some time over the next week. And I got a new woolly hat with a fleece lining. It’s black.

Oh, and I also picked up a second hand copy of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. The film didn't impress me much (apart from Audrey Tautou, whose every eye movement impresses me greatly) so I'm hoping the book will be better and discourage the propensity for falling asleep in front of the fire every evening. No doubt it's my body's way of compensating for the five hours I routinely get in bed these days, but I find it irritating.

Time for my tranquilisers. That's a joke.

Short of Expectation.

The night walks are proving to be a bit tedious so far.

No stars, no wind, no fog, no snow. (The only time I like snow is when I’m walking on it at night. I think it might have something to do with a teenage memory of giving my coat to Pauline McNicol when we were walking to the pub one cold, snowy night in December. I just wasn’t made for this century, you know. Come to think of it, it was the last century, but you know what I mean.)

No strange noises the other side of the hedgerow, no mysterious shadows that have no right be there, no pulsating lights in the stark branches of winter trees, no Rottweilers with steaming breath playing Killer Dogs from The Omen.

And I still haven’t found an instant hot chocolate I really like.

The Me Blog.

Blogs come in many different forms, and one of the commonest is the ‘This is Me’ blog. Post after post, almost without exception, is composed of ‘I think this’ ‘I do that’ ‘What I really hate is…’ ‘I’ve always been the sort to…’

I used to think they were just the outpourings of a heavy ego, but not all of them are. Some such bloggers are highly intelligent, reflective people who are trying to understand how they function, and talking about it helps. Their blogs can make compelling reading, and they serve a useful purpose because it seems to me that the more you understand how your various angles function, the more you’re likely to understand how other people function.

Unless, of course, you’re just heavily into ego, in which case you probably won’t care enough to make the connections. Personally, I’ve always been inclined to observe everybody anyway, especially me.

Rhiannon's Birds.

I was just reading a little article about Rhiannon (only because Stevie Nicks wrote and sang a song called Rhiannon, you understand.)

It seems that Rhiannon was the Welsh goddess of horses. (You wouldn’t think horses would have their very own goddess, would you? I mean, how far down the scale does it go? Is there, for example, a goddess of slugs?) Anyway, Welsh horses have a goddess and she’s called Rhiannon.

So, the story in the Mabinogion is about how, when you’re down and in dire difficulty, and irrespective of whether or not your problem has anything to do with horses, Rhiannon sends three birds flying towards you along the path. One bird is pure white, another is emerald green, and the third is gold. The three beautiful birds put you to sleep, and when you wake up, all your troubles are over.

What, like, you’re dead?

Believing Yahoo.

According to my Yahoo horoscope, I have to stand up to an abrasive authority figure today. He’s been getting everybody down, apparently, but I’m the only one brave enough to confront him. In so doing, I will expose his limitations and usurp his position to become top dog myself. Well, you can’t get any more precise than that, can you? Better believe it, then.

And also according to Yahoo, twerking is the thing that’s been ‘obsessing us all’ through 2013. Erm…

The Stevie Nicks Post.

I’ve been looking for something to interest me on this most doleful of days, and I just found it:

Stevie Nicks is older than me. Well I never.

I developed a crush on Stevie Nicks back in my photography days when I used to play Fleetwood Mac albums on the car stereo. She sat in the passenger seat all the way from Devon to the north of Scotland and back, and she’s been in my pocket ever since. I used to think of her as the sexy kid with the gravelly voice, and all the time I never knew she was older than me. Jeez.

It’s hard to believe that the photography days were over twenty years ago.

I also discovered that she’s a Gemini, which is an odd coincidence because I’d just been listening to some Aussie bloke going on about the pleasures and pitfalls of Saggi-Gemini relationships. He said that while Saggis fire arrows unerringly at the heart, Geminis are more inclined to use sarcasm. ‘Saggis don’t do sarcasm,’ he said, ‘it’s too intellectual for them.’

Nope, not intellectual: just cheap.

Life Today

What do you do when your last grain of sustenance is gone and your stomach’s filling up with bile? Get drunk, I suppose, and foster the view that loving life isn’t about being happy or fulfilled, but being grateful for the fact that you still have a seat on the rollercoaster of material illusion. It continues to be of interest.

My landlord’s three dogs attacked me today, but they were only kidding. They just wanted an excuse to wag their tails and lollop when I declined to be intimidated.

And the only point of interest on tonight’s walk was that I was glad the pink dressing gown had gone the way of all flesh. Pink is my second least favourite colour after brown.

And on the subject of going the way of all flesh, I found a grave in the churchyard today that was nearly nine feet long. It dated from the mid 1890’s, and was the final resting place of the rector, his wife, and his sister. They must have been uncommonly tall.

I’m in a very strange mood tonight, courtesy of stars going out. Stars have a curious way of making you disoriented when they go out, but it’s good for the whisky trade.

A Notable Gap in my Experience.

Do you know what I’ve always really, really fancied, but never had? Baked Alaska. I can think of few things more appealing than rich vanilla ice cream coated in sweet, crispy meringue, but I never associated with anybody who knew how to make it, or at  least admitted to the fact.

I reckon I’ll get to my dying day, and somebody will say:

‘Hey, JJ. Want some Baked Alaska?’

And I’ll reply:

‘Hallelujah! At last! Yes pl…’

Something Rotten in the State of Scotland?

Eight people were killed and many others seriously injured in Glasgow last night when a police helicopter crashed onto a crowded pub. Alex Salmond, the Scottish First Minister, made a speech in which he talked of it being St Andrew’s Day, of how wonderful the Scottish people are, of how they would stand together in adversity, etc.

This is most unusual. It’s usual for national leaders to cite national icons and praise national qualities when they’re facing a foreign enemy, but not in a situation like this. Mr Salmond is the prime proponent of Scottish independence, which is a view I fully respect. I can’t help feeling, however, that his speech smells disturbingly of an attempt to make political capital out of a human tragedy. It seems to me that he’s using the event to sell Scottishness in furtherance of his cause.

I’ve always had more time for the Scottish political machine than the British one because it’s always seemed more people-focussed, but I’m led to question whether Mr Salmond’s motivation is more about seeking enhanced personal power than doing what’s best for the Scottish people. I would like to be wrong.