Tea on the Terrace.

I was walking along Mill Lane today when I spied the Lady Bella’s mother working in her garden. We had a brief conversation, and then she said ‘I was just about to make some tea. Would you care to join me?’

I was naturally put on my guard immediately. I know of the gravitas which people of the more elevated class attach to the ritual of afternoon tea, and I was aware of the fact that my dress was hardly up to the occasion. I said so.

‘Why should that be a problem?’ she asked.

‘Well,’ I began, feeling slightly discomfited, ‘you are a bit posh, and I am aware that posh people attach some importance to such matters.’

‘What on earth makes you see me as posh?’

‘Your big house, your bearing, your mode of dress, your dulcet tones, and most of all your public school accent.’

‘I see. I think perhaps your perceptions are a little awry, Jeff. Or perhaps you’re joking. In either event, you’re welcome to take tea in your present attire.’

‘Do you have any muffins?’

‘No.’

‘Very well, then. I think the lack of muffins on your part might excuse the lack of a cravat on mine. I went to Dartmouth, you know. I understand these things.’

‘Very good. Come on, then.’

And then she smiled and led the way. She has a very nice smile, the Lady B’s mother. I think it’s the main reason I like her, in spite of the fact that I always feel guilty for no longer having a forelock long enough to tug in meaningful manner.

And none of this happened, of course. I haven’t walked along Mill Lane in over a year, and my left leg wouldn’t allow me to venture that far at the moment even if I wanted to. The little tale related above is a mere example of the untrodden tracks along which my mind wanders when it isn’t busy worrying about something. It’s why I began a career in writing seventeen years ago when all else had failed. And it gives my fingers good exercise when I’m unable to exercise much else.

Avoiding the Great Taboo.

Here’s a question to consider: what do you do if you find that there are some perforations missing from the toilet roll? It happens, you know. It does. It’s one of life’s little imperfections. So here’s the thing:

When you bought that pack of four you took them to the self-service till to pay for them, right? You didn’t take them through a regular checkout where some pretty young thing is sitting pertly and giving you her undivided attention. That would be like wearing a tee shirt printed with…

I use toilet rolls and I don’t care who knows it

… because you do care who knows it. You don’t want anybody to know it, least of all a pretty young thing giving you her undivided attention. Even the more hardened members of society who dare to buy packs of twelve (imagine what that must do for your reputation) and who do take them through the regular checkouts look the other way and whistle while they’re being scanned. Or at least they should if they have even a modicum of decorum. They’re one of life’s great hidden things, one of the very few things about which it is right and proper to be in denial. It’s even occurred to me that very old ladies who no longer care about their image could make quite a business out of standing by supermarket entrances offering to acquire the offensive commodity for people who are still young enough to care.

And then you find yourself holding a toilet roll with missing perforations. All that care and effort gone to waste because now you’re faced with the prospect of brazenly approaching the woman on the service desk and saying ‘Excuse me. This toilet roll has some perforations missing. May I have a replacement please?’ It would be one of those moments which occasionally happen in life, moments when the air turns dark and the nerve ends freeze. You’re straining all appropriate muscles to avoid wetting yourself while the poor woman the other side of the counter is so scandalised that she loses the ability to speak. You consider claiming that you’re doing this on behalf of your bedridden granddad, but you know she won’t believe it because that’s what everybody says. And you’ve already tried to find a wizened old lady to whom you could offer a week’s pension to do the job for you, but there aren’t any around just when you need one.

And so you don’t return it. You curse your cowardice and pull further paper off the roll until you find some perforations a little further along. And all you want it for is to blow your nose before going to bed. No wonder I have bad dreams and wake up stressed.

Support Your Local Ambassador.

It was great fun hearing that the British Ambassador to the US called Trump’s administration inept and dysfunctional. And it was even more fun reading the British government’s official response which tried to tread a careful, diplomatic line while indicating beyond reasonable doubt that they agreed with him. Best of all, though, we’ve been treated to Trump’s juvenile and histrionic mindset becoming ever more desperate as the days pass:

Day 1: We don’t like this man

Day 2: We’re not speaking to him any more

Day 3: He is a very stupid guy

And now even the doubters out there in the wider world can see Trump for what he is. Nice one, Sir Kim.

Shame About Egypt.

This blog is suddenly getting a rash of visits from Egypt by somebody using an iPhone. My first thought on noticing this was to be surprised that people in Egypt have iPhones

That’s quite absurd, obviously. Of course people in Egypt have iPhones. I’ve never been there but I have no doubt that Egypt is a modern country possessed of all the paraphernalia of life in the modern world. It’s just that we don’t think of it that way.

We don’t associate Egypt with iPhones; we associate it with pyramids, pharaohs, Queen Cleopatra and vengeful mummies. Of all the civilisations in all the world, none has quite the enduring sense of mystery and romance as ancient Egypt, at least to the western mind. Which leads me to suggest that maybe Egypt’s history is jut too good for its own good.

Touching the Mystic's Mind.

I stood for a while in my garden at twilight tonight. The air was mild and there was no sound of traffic on the lane to pollute the peace, the pleasure and the sense of wonderment.

Such a cocktail of awareness there was in that little spot deep in the heartland of an English shire. The taller plants and the smaller tree branches were dancing dreamily in a gentle breeze. The multi-hued flowers were settling slowly through the gathering gloom into a colourless sleep. Intermittent grey clouds drifted languidly across a sky of darkening blue. The moths and bats were taking eagerly to the wing, while the land and all things inorganic remained resolutely still. And the waxing crescent moon hung proud and remote above the old sycamore tree.

I stood and questioned, as I have many times, what I should make of this sense of wonderment. How should I explain it to myself in rational fashion?

I don’t think there is any rational explanation to be found, and maybe it’s right that there isn’t. This is something which can only be felt, not reasoned. I assume it has something to do with the relationship between consciousness and perceived reality at this level of existence, and maybe it tugs the mind towards some deep yet unresolved knowledge to which only the heart has imperfect access. Maybe this is the beginning of the answer to the great existential question, and maybe it’s why the concept of God is so misunderstood and misrepresented by mortal man.

What would I know? I’m not qualified to be a mystic yet, merely a mortal man entranced by the mystery of an unidentified scent.

On Legs and Being Laughed At.

I’ve been doing some jobs in the garden today and it’s set off my aching left leg. I don’t even have to walk now; it aches when I’m sitting down.

I thought of getting a walking stick, you know. They have adjustable black ones in a shop in Uttoxeter for £10. I rather liked the look of them and wondered whether I could get…

Property of Princeton-Plainsboro. Please return.

… printed on the side. It occurred to me that if I held it close to my hip and wore my shirt outside my jeans, which I often do, I might get mistaken for the great man and asked for my autograph. Then again, my admirers might be a group of women, and the ones in the background might start whispering things like ‘I thought he was a lot taller than that’ and ‘I suppose he was wearing a wig when he was on the telly’ and ‘hasn’t his beard gone pale?’ And then I’d get very embarrassed and have to admit that I’m a fraud. So I think I’ll wait to see whether the hospital has any suggestions regarding the cause and possible remedy first. Meanwhile, it continues to make me miserable.

And I’m waiting for the day when some denizens of the Shire spot me at the bottom of the garden, and come over to say:

We haven’t seen you walking around the lanes lately.

‘No. My bad leg won’t let me.’

What’s wrong with your leg?

‘I don’t know.’

So how do you know it’s bad?

‘It hurts when I walk.’

Have you been to the doctor?

‘Yes.’

And what did he say?

‘He thinks my veins are silted up with tobacco residue and cholesterol.’

OOH… Sounds nasty. Can they be un-silted?

‘I’ve no idea. He’s referred me to the vascular surgery clinic at the hospital, but the waiting list is a long one.’

Oh well, we just wanted to tell you that we miss you. There’s nothing to laugh at any more.

And then they’ll run away tittering, and their little dogs will bounce after them with wagging tails because running away with tittering humans is such fun. And dogs and denizens alike will be confident in the knowledge that I’m quite unable to chase them waving the walking stick which I haven’t got yet.

And it really isn’t funny, you know.

Rapinhoe and Respect.

Congratulations to the US team on winning the Women’s Football World Cup (or soccer if you’re American.) It was hardly a surprise. From what I saw of the tournament, it was evident that the US women were in a league of their own.

But now the serious bit of the post – a message to Megan Rapinhoe. Now that you’ve won the highest honour in the women’s game, you have to respect the flag, OK? And the best way to do that is to keep your promise – stay well clear of the White House and kick Trump’s ass. Let standards win the day off the field as well as on.

An English Lesson.

Here’s an interesting little note on the subtlety of the English language:

Take the question posed by the prisoner in the last post:

‘We don’t have to eat here, do we?’

By slightly changing the relative stresses in the phrase ‘eat here’, you change the meaning of the question completely. One means ‘Now that we’re here, we no longer have to eat.’ The other means ‘We don’t have to eat in this place; we can eat somewhere else.’

And this is important because it reveals why the written form of English can be such a minefield of misconception. What I should now do is go back and edit that question, removing the ambiguous one and replacing it with one that leaves no doubt. That's what I would do if it were intended for publication. In this case, however, I'll leave it as it is because it demonstrates a point nicely to anyone learning my language.

Just Desserts.

There was once a state ruled over by a cruel, megolomanic President who had devised an unusual and vicious way of executing those he considered undesirable. The prisoner would be placed in a cell separated into two compartments with retractable iron bars between them. The prisoner would occupy one half, and in the other was a tiger which was never fed.

The two of them were left there for three days. The prisoner was fed a meagre ration of meat and a few potatoes once a day, but the tiger received nothing. When the three days were up, the iron bars would be lifted and the tiger would be free to kill the prisoner and get a meal. And so for three days the tiger would pace back and forth becoming hungrier and more desperate, while the prisoner became ever more terrified of the fate that awaited him.

But one prisoner was different than most. He felt sorry for the tiger, and so he ate the potatoes but gave the meat to the animal. When the appointed time arrived and the bars were lifted, the tiger walked over to the prisoner, lay down beside him and rested his head on the man’s lap. The prison guards were watching this unexpected turn of events through the grill in the door, and when they saw what was happening they hurried to tell the President.

The President was furious with both the man and the animal, and ordered that toxic gas should be pumped into the cell to kill both of them. This was done and the two innocent creatures died side by side.

When the prisoner woke up, he found himself lying beneath the broad canopy of leafy trees in the dappled sunshine. He sat up to see the tiger reclining nearby and looking at him with a peaceful expression.

‘We don’t have to eat here, do we?’ said the prisoner.

‘No,’ said the tiger.

‘And so there’s no reason to kill me.’

‘No.’

And then they walked together to a placid lake a little way beyond the wood and swam in the cool water, knowing that in their next lives they would be born as brothers.

The fate of the President was rather different, and entirely of his own making.

The Pigeon, the Jewel, and the Money Mystery.

Uttoxeter is not a prosperous town. It shows in the predominating demeanour of its inhabitants, the almost total lack of anything you might call ‘stylish’, and the growing paucity of sustainable businesses. There’s a small parade of two-storey shop units which leads from the town’s main car park to the high street, in which only seven of the twenty five units are occupied.

And yet facing the top of this denuded and crumbling edifice to the free market principle is one of the town’s smartest buildings, a three storey Georgian house in near-impeccable condition. On the front of it, in big letters, it says:

RBA Wealth Management

In all the years I’ve been making regular shopping trips to Uttoxeter I’ve only ever seen one person go in there, and she looked like a member of staff. And so I’ve often been tempted to go in and ask just what it is they manage exactly. Maybe I will one day, but I doubt the place would have the sort of atmosphere I would be comfortable breathing.

*  *  *

I was sitting opposite it today when I spotted a group of three people crossing the high street. One was an old man who had so little control over his bodily movements that I imagined he was in the final stage of Parkinson’s. The walking stick he was carrying in his right hand was of no use at all, since he couldn’t hold it still for long enough to provide the necessary support. His support came from a young woman walking alongside him holding his hand, and I assumed she was his granddaughter or even his great-granddaughter. She was probably around twenty and unprepossessing to the casual observer, being devoid of make-up or any sense of style in hair or dress. And yet she was naturally attractive enough, and it occurred to me that she could have been surfing the mall with her friends in the city centres of Stoke or Derby instead of helping poor old granddad get about in little Uttoxeter.

I wanted to go over to her and say ‘Do you realise you’re something of a jewel?’ I didn’t because she was engaged in conversation with a middle aged woman on her other side, and my intervention would probably have embarrassed her. It seemed a shame because she probably didn’t realise that she had a laudable quality which had been noticed by at least one stranger. It’s been my experience in life that jewels rarely recognise their own glister. It’s mostly slithering invertebrates like Trump who think they’re something special.

*  *  *

Shortly afterwards I met Uttoxeter’s second pigeon. I’d seen two of them together earlier, and the one hanging around the benches clearly wasn’t Millie. No yellow leg ring.

‘Hello,’ I said. She strutted a few paces and then gave me a suspicious sideways glance. ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘Dolores,’ said the pigeon.

‘That’s a nice name. Would you mind if I called you Dolly?’

Well, of course, we all know that birds are incapable of frowning, but she certainly sounded as though she was frowning when she replied:

‘What’s wrong with Dolores?’

‘Nothing at all. It’s just that we humans are lazy and prefer to cut out a syllable if at all possible. And it sounds friendlier, less formal. And it matches your friend Millie, with whom I saw you perambulating earlier.’

‘Oh, OK then. Have you got any food?’

‘Sorry, you’re too late. I ate it all earlier. But watch out for me next week and you’ll be welcome to share my lunch.’

‘OK.’ And then she wandered off down the high street.

‘Bye,’ I called after her. She didn’t reply.

And it’s all true. I don’t make any of this up, you know. And I never tell lies on my blog unless they’re sufficiently transparent as to be obvious.