May: Harbinger of the Apocalypse.

At twilight tonight the sky was an unbroken mess of multitudinous greys, ranging from light smoke to dark gun metal. Some of the clouds were rushing northwards, while others – presumably at different altitudes – were heading west. There was a sudden, arresting flash followed almost immediately by a cacophony of banging fit to have its origin in the forges of hell. The cold, cutting wind rose spitefully and suddenly, scattering the garden with fresh new leaves torn prematurely from their hosts. And then I heard the knocking on my coat hood when the hail started. It was a fitting finale to a capricious day in which the sun and cloud vied for supremacy, the cold wind rose and fell with maddening indecision, and the clouds unloaded their cargo in the form of sleet.

This is not fit weather for the middle of merry old May in merry middle England. This had the feel of the rent temple curtain, or the omens on the night of King Duncan’s murder. And so one has to wonder whether this is a minor and temporary tear in the fabric of normality or an early sign of the promised environmental apocalypse. I don’t suppose we can know for some time yet, but if I were young I think I might be a little fearful of the future.

Things of No Interest.

I’ve been very busy today. I generally dislike being busy because I’m not the busy sort; I’m the observing and musing sort. My place is either deep in the countryside observing nature, or sitting quietly on the dock of the bay wasting time and observing the oddities apparent in the human condition.

Must admit, though, today’s busy-ness did include spending a couple of hours or so deep cleaning both my living room and my bedroom, in consequence of which I felt really, really pleased with myself. But now I wonder why I bother saying things to people they couldn’t possibly have any reason to be interested in.

And today was one of those awful ones in which mishaps and frustrations keep pouring out of the ether not as single spies but in battalions. Such days can be quite maddening, and I spent much of my time today feeling quite maddened. A little dog did come over to its garden gate at one point to say hello to me, which was rather nice but didn’t help very much. And another dog wanted to say hello to me but I’m not allowed to reciprocate its advances because its human is scared of being pulled off her feet. The dog is big and powerful, you see, and she isn’t. I know the feeling.

I had home-made pea and potato soup for dinner tonight, accompanied by an olive oil roll with a Japanese name. That’s about as close as I ever get to being an epicure. And I haven’t caught sight of the Lady B since the day before Methuselah was born.

This Week's Firsts.

1. I saw a hare hopping up the lane which goes past my garden. In all my life I’ve never seen a hare on a road before. They’re usually in a field and some distance away, but this one was only a few yards from my gate and at one point started hopping towards me. Being cursed with a neurotic tendency, the singularity of the event worried me because hares are said to be harbingers of bad fortune. I thought of writing a post on the question of whether harbingers exist and whether superstition in general has any merit. I didn’t because I was in a bad mood from seeing a hare hopping towards me.

2. I saw the first swallow of the year at the top of the lane this morning, and then I saw two more. And I thought, as I always do when the first swallow graces the sky and my sight line, ‘One swallow does not a summer make.’ I don’t suppose three do, either.

3. The first leaves appeared in the potato patch, and now there are seven new plants and climbing. The last of the broad beans also appeared, which means I now have a whole regiment of broad bean plants growing strongly. That’s only a first because it’s rare for all the seeds in the first sowing to germinate. The peas, however, are being disappointingly reluctant at the moment. Too cold, I expect.

4. I saw the first parent bird feeding one of its chicks at the bird table – a male blackbird and a plump young female. Now I’m waiting to see how long it will be before he tells her to go away and get a life. They usually do eventually.

And now I’m asking myself why anybody should be remotely interested in my little life in the Shire, and whether I care.

On Clocks, Socks, and the May Delusion.

Remember last night’s post? Well, I didn’t wake up when the alarm went off this morning; I woke up when it went off a second time ten minutes later. The loss of ten minutes was the first of many minor stresses, but there’s only an hour left before today will be tomorrow (or yesterday depending on which way you look at it) and I’ve survived so far. But now I’m tired because I’ve been dragged out of wholesome slumber by a demented beeping tone emanating from a mobile phone two days in succession, and that’s an intrusion on my personal liberty.

I called in at Tesco on my way back from the city and bought some new socks. That was the most exciting thing I did today, and also the least stressful.

Meanwhile, the month of May continues to exhibit an identity crisis. It seems to be convinced that it’s early March, and I wish it would wake up like I was forced to do this morning. We had hail two days ago, sleet yesterday, and snow today. There’s nothing merry about snow unless you happen to be a skier, and who on earth would want to be one of those?

On Smoke and Contrast.

This is a picture of the Manhattan skyline, taken, I should think, some time during my lifetime.

 

And this is a picture of the Stoke on Trent (my home town) skyline, painted, I’m fairly sure, a little before I was born. 

 

Not so very different really, are they?

I like to think that my home town skyline is better looking because it has more character. But then I would, not because it’s my home town but because I’m a little strange. And appreciation of character is as personal as appreciation of both beauty and humour.

And for those who don’t know, the bottle shaped structures are bottle kilns which were used for commercial pottery manufacture before the ceramics industry embraced electricity. Imagine what the air of Stoke on Trent must have felt and smelled like when row upon row of terraced houses occupied most of what space was left in the landscape, and burned standard house coal almost constantly between October and May.

Grumpy.

I’ve mentioned several times on this blog that my body – especially my upper body – is sensitive to changes in the weather. Well, it’s also becoming increasingly sensitive to household chemicals, and now I have a problem.

I have an old fashioned enamel bathtub in my bathroom which functions as both bath and shower, and for several years the lime scale has been building up and depositing an unpleasant brown stain on the surface of most parts of it. This week I decided to tackle the issue and set to with a squirty thing containing a proprietary lime scale remover and a scrubbing brush. Now I feel ill, and I’ve little doubt that the Dettol Lime Scale Remover is the offending agent. It wouldn’t be such a catastrophe if all the stain was removed, but it isn’t. Much of it is, but at least a second application will be needed if the poor old bathtub is ever to be properly shining white again.

And on the subject of health issues – of which I have an enviable cocktail since the kidney cancer started the ball rolling – I watched a YouTube video presentation last night in which some American doctor told me what I mustn’t eat if I’m to ease one of them. No sugar, no soya (which he called soy because he’s American), no dairy products of any kind… I switched off at that point because I was becoming depressed.

It would mean no chocolate, no sugar on my breakfast cereal, no jam or marmalade on my toast, no grilled cheese and oatcakes, no spread containing buttermilk, no potatoes and vegetables tossed in butter and herbs, nothing containing caramel (which I very much like), no vegetarian chilli or Bolognese… And even the instant gravy I have with my vege pie dinners contains milk powder. That’s most of my diet gone. I decided to be a masochist and pick up the video again, just to see what the doctor from America would tell me I can eat to improve the issue: tomatoes.

I do actually like tomatoes. I buy Sainsbury’s most expensive little plum tomatoes and occasionally snack on them, but can you live on tomatoes? Would I want to live on them? Hardly, so it appears I still have to live with the deleterious consequences of an unsuitable diet.

And tomorrow I have to get up early in order to something I don’t want to do. I have a number of pet hates, two of the most hated being:

1. Getting up early with the alarm.

2. Doing things I don’t want to do.

So I’m in a bad mood. 

On the Missing Word and the Big House.

The month of May is being a little remiss in upholding its reputation so far this year. It appears that the word ‘merry’ was inadvertently dropped in March, and nobody has yet noticed its absence and gone back to retrieve it. 

 

One of the mature sycamore trees had a portion of its bulk removed last night by the heavy rain and a wind gusting to storm force, and my twilight perambulation this evening was accompanied by an icy blast and stinging hail. No singing robin tonight, or any other creature for that matter. Even the rats at the bottom of the garden were keeping their heads down. (I tell a lie. There was a single male blackbird on a nearby branch, not singing but guarding his territory as male blackbirds are wont to do at twilight irrespective of climatic conditions or my close presence.)

 

*  *  *

 

When I went out for a walk this morning, Mr A was out with his chain saw dealing with the fallen bulk of the sycamore tree. Mr A is retired and lives in my favourite house in all of the Shire. It’s big and rambling, built of old red brick, with lots of angles and unusually tall chimneys. I imagine it’s probably late Georgian and is graced with 3-4 acres of garden consisting mainly of lawns and a wood. And the back of the house has the writer's dream - French windows leading onto a terrace with a lawn beyond. The only dichotomous element stems from my indecision as to whether it’s redolent of a set for an Agatha Christie murder mystery, or one of MR James’s ghost stories.

I mentioned to Mrs A once that her house reminded me of MR James. She said she’d never heard of MR James, and I’ve noticed that life can sometimes be a bit unfair like that.

Simon and Sarah: Stanley's Response.

Simon, Sarah and little Stanley were sitting separately in the room which doubled as both living room and dining room. Stanley was sitting at the table, busily engaged in building a property of indeterminate function with Lego bricks, Sarah was reclining on the sofa reading her Woodland Trust newsletter, and Simon was gripping the TV remote in both hands, surfing the channels.

‘What do you fancy?’ he asked, directing his query at Sarah without actually looking at her.

‘Nothing,’ she replied. ‘You watch what you want. I’d rather read.’

Simon glanced at the clock and realised that Strictly was about start. He liked Strictly, so he clicked button 2 and caught the beginning of the announcement:

We are interrupting the next programme to bring you a special report from the border between India and China, where conflict between Indian and Chinese troops is threatening to escalate into serious violence. Strictly Come Dancing will follow at 6.15, and subsequent programmes will run fifteen minutes later than advertised.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ shouted Simon petulantly. ‘Shut up, you stupid git. Who the bloody hell cares if Chinese and Indian soldiers shoot each other.’

Sarah continued to read, but said quietly:

‘There’s no point in shouting at the TV set.’

‘I’m not shouting at the TV set. I’m shouting at the stupid announcer.’

‘That’s a bit unreasonable,’ countered Sarah. ‘It’s like blaming the weather forecaster for the weather.’

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘Of course it is.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ repeated Simon. ‘Everybody blames the weather forecaster. Even you do it when they tell you it’s going to be sunny, but it rains instead so you can’t put the washing out.’

‘But I’m blaming the weather forecaster for the forecast, not the weather.’

‘Same thing.’

Sarah shook her head and declined to be drawn into a pointless conversation. Simon huffed a little, before turning to watch little Stanley walk out of the room. He soon returned carrying his child’s watering can, the contents of which he poured over the completed Lego construction standing on the table.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ shrieked his father.

‘Making it rain,’ answered the diminutive son, whose precocious grasp of irony was matched only by his amused toleration of marital disharmony.

Defining the Gentleman.

I’m currently engaged in a little bit of banter with somebody on YouTube, and the question has arisen: ‘what is a gentleman?’ (This is all to do with the differences between American and UK conventions with regard to certain words and expressions, and the term ‘gentleman’ has come up in conversation.) Since most of the readers of this blog are either Americans or non-native speakers of English, I thought I might explain that there are at least three definitions in the UK, depending on the situation and the person using it. They are:

1. The formal term for any male personage over the age of majority. I am, for example, always referred to as ‘a gentleman’ (rather than ‘a male’) in reports sent to my doctor from the hospital after investigations or treatment.

2. Any male adult (loosely speaking) who is notably polite, courteous – especially to women – and helpful.

3. (This is the interesting one, the traditional definition): Any male – whatever his temper, habits or predilections – born into an upper class family, preferably one of great longevity and possessed of aristocratic, or at least landed, credentials. And this one brings up the issue of classism.

At the time of WWI, officers in the British army were almost exclusively ‘gentlemen’ of this type. They were seen as the natural leaders, and were often referred to as ‘the officer class.’ They would have gone to a public school, which I should explain is not what Americans call a public school. We call those ‘state schools.’ A British public school is one of a small number of private, select, and very expensive schools which only very rich people can afford, and so anyone who attended Eton, Harrow, Winchester and so on, was marked out as being elevated above the level of ordinary people.

But it also meant that they were relatively few in number, and this became a problem during WWI. So many of them were getting killed in the trenches or no man’s land that the ‘officer class’ was becoming an inadequate source of officers, and the authorities were obliged to lower the goal posts. Young, well educated men from the proletariat were drafted in to fill the dwindling ranks and the officer class didn’t like it. The classic attitude of a traditional ‘gentleman’ to one of the new upstarts is exemplified in the oft-quoted retort:

‘You may be an officer, sir, but you’re certainly no gentleman.’

The Singer at the Close of Day.

I was out in the garden at twilight tonight being treated to the most delightful of company. A little robin was sitting on a nearby branch singing his little heart out. Although other members of the thrush family also sing wonderfully, only the robin sings quite like that. And in my experience, they only do so in the spring and summer. (Others say differently.) Allow me to reprise a ditty I published to this blog some years ago: 

 

When I have given up the ghost

And gone to take my final rest

Please lay me where the robin sings

For robin’s song is quite the best

 

And here’s a sampler from YouTube to offer some vindication of my belief: 

 

All we need now is for the twilight hours to feel more like May and less like February.

 

Footnote:

 

I sometimes wonder whether the robin is a bird at all. I'm very fond of birds generally, but the robin is more just than a favourite; there's a singularity about it that seems to place it into a category of life all its own, as though it's only pretending to be a bird. I remember the robin which used to follow me around the garden, taking the private little piles of oats I gave it to feed its nest. I remember the day it flew from the ground and hovered in front of my face, making the kind of eye contact which is its most compelling characteristic. It disappeared a few days later and I never saw it again.