Beware Greeks Bearing Similarities.

I just took the Oxford Dictionaries Online quiz to find out which classical hero my personality type most resembles. Apparently I’m Odysseus. Never heard of him.

Well, actually I have, but I can’t say I’m at all familiar with his exploits. That’s because I’m not the biggest fan of Greek myths. I read up on them once when I was due to take part in a TV quiz show and they depressed me to Hades. They’re too full of male characters who assume the god-given right to abuse women, but if the woman strikes back she’s consigned to posterity with the reputation of an evil stereotype. It occurred to me that the human animal hasn’t grown much in 3,000 years, and that the Judaic tradition isn’t the only source of male-centric arrogance. Let’s say I found them discouraging.

So, sorry Odysseus. For all I know you might have been one of the good guys, but I have no intention of looking further to find out.

Trivial Bits.

To accompany the Staffordshire Hoard display (see recent post,) the City Museum and Art Gallery commissioned a local sculptor to create a 9ft statue of a Saxon warrior which now stands in the museum foyer. I have to say that it is pretty powerful, but I have a doubt:

Our 6th century soldier is equipped with an array of weapons, including a long bow slung across his back. I was led to believe that the longbow was introduced to the English by the Welsh somewhere around the 14^th century. Enlightenment would be welcomed.

And another thing…

Staffordshire was in Mercia, and Mercia was an Anglian kingdom, and yet they will insist on referring to the people of the area as Saxons. Whatever justification might be made on the basis of generic convention, it’s still the sort of thing that drives a pedant like me to a state of moderate irritation. It shouldn't.

*  *  *

There was a hover fly today taking a strangely persistent interest in my electric drill.

‘It’s an electric drill,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

Having been so informed, it flew away.

*  *  *

I saw a comment left on a YouTube track tonight, referring to the fact that a model must have been used for the face of some fantasy character. ‘They must have used somebody’s continence,’ it said.

Did I have to post a reply which said ‘Thank God they didn’t use her incontinence?’

I did.

Priestesses and Principles.

I promised myself that I wouldn’t contact the priestess ever again. She has a life to lead in which I have no part to play, so it seemed sensible to leave quietly and stay gone. (And I always keep my promises because if you don’t there’s no point in making them, not even to yourself.)

But she contacted me unexpectedly a few days ago and it was evident that I would have to write back because failure to do so would have been less than respectful. (And I have to be honest and admit that it also gave me quite a lift at an appropriate moment.) So that’s what I did, feeling duly entitled because it was a reply and not something I’d initiated.

I re-read the reply the next day and decided it was hopelessly inadequate, which persuaded me of the need to write again and say ‘My reply was hopelessly inadequate. Sorry.’ But I couldn’t because I’d promised not to contact her.

There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza…

Doesn’t life get ridiculously complicated when you have standards?

Propaganda.

I'm not suggesting anybody listens to this (I haven't.) I'm posting it only for the picture.

I would find it hard to imagine anything more disturbing than having a naked man with wings sit on my bed and play the violin. It might just be enough to push me over the edge at the last minute and ask Jesus to absolve me of my original sin. I suppose that was the point.

On Ducks and Dusk.

This evening I was reminded to wonder yet again why the sight of a pair of mallards flying across a sunset sky has such a special appeal. It does, you know. Painters have painted it countless times. More to the point, I’ve felt it countless times.

So can this be analysed? Should it be analysed? Should anything abstract ever be analysed? Not for me to say, but unfortunately I’m the sort who is cursed with the impulse to try to analyse pretty much everything. So far I’ve failed with the mallards.

It’s easy to understand the appeal of owls and bats flying at twilight. It’s all about energy and function, overlaid with a touch of the mysterious and macabre because nocturnal creatures naturally operate at a time when we generally don’t. And it’s easy to understand the appeal of a skein of geese in spring and autumn. That’s all about the noise they make, and the fact that a big chevron moving across the sky is dramatic, and the further fact that it’s a seasonal marker. But a pair of ducks? All I’ve come up with so far is the tentative notion that it has something to do with the shift from diurnal to nocturnal energies. It’s about transition in the daily cycle. Probably. (But that doesn't explain why ducks are special but wood pigeons aren't.)

And no, it doesn’t really matter why the sight is so special. It just is.

The Meal Ticket.

Way back in the halcyon days of the mid-nineties, this was my first ever choice for the song I wanted playing at my funeral.

Although it’s sung by Karen Matheson in Scots Gaelic, it’s actually about a man being driven to distraction by his obsession with a special woman. I’ve been through many changes of mind since then, but I encountered the old album the other day and found myself coming round full circle. It’s just that if the person waiting to welcome me to the other side is the one I think most likely, she might appreciate the sentiment and buy me dinner.

Coming Third.

My brother’s greatest claim to distinction was in being the one to take on the school bully and win, thus ensuring that said bully was henceforth more circumspect in his behaviour.

I now learn that my daughter’s 11-year-old daughter (I decline to use the G word; it doesn’t sit naturally with me yet) has a similar claim. She’s mixed race, her dad being Jamaican, and a boy at school recently referred to her using the N word. She let it go – the first time. When he did it again she explained to him why it isn’t a nice word to use. When he did it a third time she punched him on the nose, wrestled him to the ground and rubbed his face in the dirt. I gather the boy now tells his friends that the N word isn’t a nice word to use.

I have to make do with being the runt of such an august litter. I never cured anybody of anything.

When People Come and Go.

I’ll tell you what I’ve experienced a lot in life: people who come to me for help or advice or companionship when they need it, and then remove themselves and ignore or reject me when they don’t. It used to bother me; I used to take the view that it was manipulative and selfish, but I don’t any more.

Now I’m more likely to put it down to that old principle I keep harping on about – that each of us lives in our own version of reality, and that it can change by the day, the hour, or even the minute. What’s more, it seems that a lot of the more complex personality types effectively have several different people living in the same body (which is certainly true of me) so that when one persona living in one current version of reality is drawn to me, it’s perfectly genuine, and when a different persona living in another version isn’t, that’s perfectly genuine, too.

The difficulty comes when you’re the sort who tends to attract the more complex personality type, as I seem to be. It means you’re likely to get picked up and dropped a lot, but allowances have to be made.

Of course, there are those to whom this doesn’t apply. Some people are just manipulative and selfish. The trick is in learning to spot the difference.

Getting Away Lightly.

I spent a little time in the City Museum and Art Gallery today, poring over some glass cases in which were exhibited artefacts from the much-vaunted Staffordshire Hoard. They were mostly divided into two sections:

a. These are sword decorations.

b. We haven’t worked out what these are yet.

The exhibit I found most interesting was an apparently human skull. The info card even said ‘Human Skull,’ but I had my suspicions. No mention was made of whether the object had been found with the Staffordshire Hoard or somewhere else, like the nearby theatre for example. It seemed to me that the mouth contained rather too many teeth for a modern human, and the jawline looked suspiciously simian. And I never trust anything I read on cards these days…

And then it occurred to me how disastrous it would have been to have a DPhil archaeology student along for the ride. I would never have got her out of the bloody place, would I? I would have been trapped in the black hole that is the city of my birth for ever and ever, my brain developing warts and my lips becoming encrusted with dried froth, while she valiantly attempted to work out what the things that haven’t been worked out yet were. Fortunately, I was alone (as usual.)

Edited to Add.

It’s taken me over a week, but I finally got the answer to the problem experienced by the beggar at the bottom of the previous post. Here’s what he does:

He takes the money from the little girl and asks ‘Can I spend this on anything I like?’ The little girl nods enthusiastically, so he takes her by the hand and goes to the nearest purveyor of ice cream. He buys her one and says ‘You earned it, kid. You just gave me a whole lot more than a pound.’ She skips away and everybody’s happy.

‘Hey kid,’ he calls after her. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Dorothy.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Nope.’

And so it was that the beggar realised that life was worth living after all, and his little dog companion wagged its tail.

If only life could be as real as fantasy.