Two Vaguely Harry Potterish Notes.

Those who watched the Harry Potter films carefully will have noticed that the whomping willow tree drops its leaves suddenly and in one fell swoop to denote the turning of the season. Today I was approaching one end of Meadow Lane when I saw a tree in yellow leaf dropping those leaves constantly and consistently like a heavy snow shower. The lane surfaces in all directions were the standard asphalt black, except beneath this tree. There it was a carpet of unbroken gold. There was no wind or other disturbing factor to explain it, so I must assume we have a whomping willow in the Shire. I never knew that.

*  *  *

Talking of Harry Potter, it was a little sad to read that Anthony Robert McMillan died today. AKA Robbie Coltrane. AKA Rubeus Hagrid. I read up on him and discovered we had quite a lot in common. For those who give some credence to astrology, I might mention that he was a Pisces which I’m not, but I gather my moon is in Pisces. I’m told it’s why I always tended to be drawn to Pisces women. I can honestly say, however, that I never felt the slightest inclination to be drawn to Pisces men, but maybe that’s the connection.

I tried to find out what killed him but was only pointed to newspaper websites which I never visit – too irritatingly slow and polluted with excessive advertising. I wonder whether he felt the same way.

Abdicating Responsibility.

For those not familiar with UK politics, I should first explain that a few weeks ago a woman called Liz Truss became the new Prime Minister following the abdication resignation of Boris Johnson. She immediately appointed one of her closest allies, Kwasi Kwarteng, as Chancellor of the Exchequer (that’s the post which has control of the nation’s finances, and is very senior.)

Together they formulated a plan to get Britain out of the mess it’s in consequent upon various factors (one of which is often said to be twelve years of Tory misrule, but that’s a matter of opinion.) Together they decided to reduce taxation in various ways, all of which would entirely – or at least mostly – benefit the rich. They said it would revitalise the economy and would be ‘better for everyone.’

It brought howls of derision, disbelief, disgust and desperation, mostly from the Bank of England, fellow Tory MPs, and the poorer 90% of the British population. (The Bank of England was concerned about financial stability and public borrowing, the Tory MPs feared it would lose them the next general election, and the nation’s poor were concerned that they would no longer be able to afford all those things which the capitalist overlords tell them they must have in order to belong. They were also concerned about their ability to heat their homes and feed themselves or their children because there happens to be an inflation crisis going on at the same time.)

But Liz and Kwasi persisted with their cunning plan, Liz being particularly insistent that it was the right thing to do and effectively implying that she was the prime architect of it.  Until today…

Today, in the face of increasing and persistent disquiet on all fronts, Liz took out the long knives and sacked her lieutenant, Kwasi, thereby throwing him out of the government. She says she’s staying.

And that’s politics.

Troubled.

My stress levels are threatening to blow the lid off at the moment because I can’t help critically observing the state of my three levels of reality. (I have no ‘off’ switch, you see.)

1. My personal affairs. I’m having trouble with several large corporations this week because their systems are broken. It’s quite maddening. The health issues continue to cause difficulty. So does getting older.

2. I look beyond that to the state of the country I live in. I see political and economic turmoil which threatens to cause an awful lot of confusion and hardship in the foreseeable future. It could even lead to blood on the streets of Hemel Hempstead.

3. I look further out again to the state of the world and see wars, abuses of power, and people protesting because they’ve had enough of being beaten down and trodden on. Ukraine, Haiti, Hong Kong, Iran, China, and more. I even wonder what that funny little man from North Korea who likes to fire missiles all around the western Pacific is going to do next. (Although I suspect that North Korea is actually the world’s paper tiger, but if you told the funny little man that he’d probably shoot off a few nuclear warheads in the direction of Tokyo, which wouldn’t be very nice.) And then there’s climate change…

Is any of this real, I ask myself. (Now we’re back to whether or not we’re just a simulation in a very big computer.) What does ‘real’ actually mean, I go on to ask myself further. (Because questions like that always come back to semantics and lead to further questions, like ‘why can’t I just have an off switch like everybody else?’)

This is why I never want to get up in the morning. This is why I’m tired of living and scared of dying. This is why I continue to long for that communication which will put a spring back into my step. Ironically, it’s also why I’m quite convinced it will never arrive.

(And I’m only giving vent to this rant because nothing worth reporting happened today, and even the birds in the garden are scared of me. I think I must be projecting bad energies.)

Ashbourne Ups and Downs.

I had to call into my GP surgery today on the way to Ashbourne. I was hoping to get a particularly important piece of paper and expected to have to argue strongly for it. (I’d even practiced a few run-throughs and was all prepared to be calmly assertive rather than aggressive.) All I got was the piece of paper, so that was a relief.

And then I met a dog called Wilson. He was a six month-old German Shepherd, and my word was he just the handsomest German Shepherd you could ever have the pleasure of encountering. He seemed to like me, too, and came over for much stroking and commendation. ‘He’s very friendly,’ said the female half of his two human companions. They always do this, you know. Whenever a dog is friendly, the accompanying humans always like to tell you that you’re nothing special. ‘He’s friendly with everybody,’ they say dismissively. Maybe they think you’re going to try to make away with their treasured pet, or maybe they’re jealous. I wouldn’t know. Humans have some pretty strange and disturbing quirks, which is why I mostly prefer to commune with dogs.

And talking of quirks, there’s a woman who works in one of the charity shops who always stares at me when I walk in, especially if she happens to be holding the door open at the time. She used to do it when she worked in a different charity shop, and I wonder whether it’s the small keratosis on my cheek which so fascinates her. (I could have it removed very easily, of course, but the dear old NHS is under enough financial pressure as it is without my adding to it on a matter which is purely cosmetic. I mean, who’s looking?)

OK, the woman in the charity shop is looking, and I harbour the suspicion that she’s thinking: ‘That man still hasn’t washed his face since the last time he had brown sauce on his chips and missed his mouth by about two inches.’ But she probably isn’t.

And I found that plaque I mentioned recently, the one which say that Charles Edward Stuart addressed the crowd there in 1745. It was on the wall of the town hall, next to another plaque commemorating the fact that a man was killed there when an iron bar fell down and hit him on the head in 1930. Such history we have on the doorstep.

But Sainsbury’s had no Staffordshire oatcakes today; that was the real bummer. I do so look forward to my Staffordshire oatcakes with grilled cheese and hot tomatoes rolled into them. In fact, there were several things I couldn’t get in Sainsbury’s today. It was a day of empty spaces on the shopping front. I’m tempted to think that Sainsbury’s – along with much of modern society – is going to the dogs, but I’m not that optimistic.

When Lionesses Aren't Hungry.

I was in a bit of a quandary earlier this evening. I knew that our summer heroines, the Lionesses (i.e. the English women’s football team) were due to play a friendly match against one of Europe’s less favoured teams, the Czech Republic (who didn’t even qualify for the European Championships.) And I knew that the game would be covered by free-to-air terrestrial TV (which is the only sort of TV I’ve got because I’m an INFJ and the vast majority of what the TV offers is of no interest to me and therefore not worth paying for.)

Now, all through the summer our brilliant girls in white brought the nation to its feet. They were unstoppable. They won the competition and scored a bagful of goals (several bags full actually.) I really wanted to watch them so as to relive those glorious summer evenings when the sublime combination of ladies’ legs and sporting success were my only reason to smile.

So what was the quandary? Simple: it’s cold in my living room because the heating is inadequate, and I didn’t really fancy sitting in it for two hours. But then I came to my senses:

‘If you were sitting in a plastic seat at the ground it would be even colder, you dummy,’ I told myself, ‘so don’t be such a wimp. Stick your bobbly woollen jacket on, pretend you’re under the stars in Brighton with a load of other hardy people who don’t even notice the temperature when the Lionesses are on the rampage. Watch the bloody football!’

And so I did. And it was a 0-0 draw. And I’m inconsolable.

(And that’s why I didn’t make the more earnest post about an interesting fact I learned today concerning the conflict between private and socialised healthcare. I expect I will when I’ve lifted myself out of the ditch of despond.)

A Note on a Personal Flaw.

One of the flaws in my nature is causing me some disquiet. It goes like this:

When I witness the suffering caused by the likes of Putin, and other powers and potentates in other parts of the world, I feel the suffering of the victims. It hurts and depresses me. I’m quite unable to take the view: ‘Why should I worry? It isn’t happening to me so why bother?’ because the universe in its wisdom endowed me with the curse of empathy, and so I can’t help feeling the pain and injustice visited on others. And when I’m hurting, my first instinct is to hurt back. I can’t help that either, at least not yet.

That’s the problem; that’s what’s troubling me. The better part of me doesn’t want to hurt back. It wants me to follow the Buddhist doctrine of non-judgemental observation. It wants me to see even Putin as yet another victim of an imperfect world.

So my question to myself is this: Do I have sufficient time left to achieve the goal of exercising non-judgemental observation? It contains a sublime irony because the more I see of a world being run by rabid dogs, the more urgently I feel the need to be getting the hell out of here.

Maybe the universe will choose to teach me in time, or maybe the increasingly popular simulation theory will do the job. If I can look at a glorious landscape and question its right to be regarded as real, maybe I can learn to apply the same process to suffering.

Time will tell. Walking on.

On Russia and the Legacy of Putin.

In last night’s Putin post I asked the question: ‘just how bonkers is he capable of becoming?’ This morning came the hint of an answer. Riled by the damage to one of his favourite bridges (possibly through the action of an enemy he created) he gave vent to his tantrum by murdering yet more Ukrainian civilians and leaving even more innocent people suffering the pain of bereavement.

This sort of thing was not unusual during the Middle Ages, the European Dark Ages, and for centuries before that. It still happens in more backward parts of the world today, but the rest of us feel we have gone beyond it. We don’t do that sort of thing any more. At the end of WWII we brought the United Nations into being in the hope that it would ensure a more peaceful future in which states could co-exist in an atmosphere of mutual respect. And we gave the power of veto to five countries which made up the Security Council, which, by a supreme irony, included Russia.

So where does the present situation leave Russia? It leaves it mired in the dark detritus of Putin’s mindset. Let’s not forget that the capital of Russia is geographically in the continent of Europe, and after the fall of the USSR the rest of us Europeans gradually learned to accept and embrace Russians as fellow beings. Russia became seen as a modern, sophisticated state where we could finally feel safe and welcome if we wanted to visit the grandeur of St Petersburg or the curiosities of Moscow. Putin is now taking it backwards to a state where it is once again reviled as place of darkness and aggression, dominated by the bestial instinct to grab territory through violence and cruelty.

Is that fair to Russians? Probably not. It seems there are plenty of them who oppose – mentally at least – Putin’s mediaeval machinations. But there are also others who back him, either through their own inner darkness or a blind belief in the propaganda he spews out, much of which is simply irrational. What I’d like to know is: Which side predominates.

And what of Putin himself? Who knows? His latest action suggests he is sinking into something no better than a rabid dog, and what do we do with rabid dogs?

On Putin and His Reputation.

Let’s look at a couple of simple, undeniable facts. Vladimir Putin orders the invasion of another country which has not threatened him in any way. In the mayhem which follows, he allows – and probably encourages – attacks on civilian targets which cause a large number of deaths and life-changing injuries among the civilian population of Ukraine. And yet when one of his prized bridges gets blown up (possibly by the opposition), he calls it ‘an act of terrorism.’

Well, let him. What he’s doing here is burying himself under a growing weight of absurd irrationality for all the world to see. If he wasn’t completely bonkers at the start of it all, he’s well on the way to getting there.

The problem for the rest of the world, of course, is just how bonkers he’s capable of becoming.

Suffering Simulation Blues.

I’ve been taking further interest in the proposal – credited by many scientists, apparently, especially the quantum variety – that the reality in which we think we’re living is actually a computer-generated simulation. And the more evidence I’m presented with, the more inclined I am to think it might be right. And the more inclined I am to think it might be right, the flatter and more depressed it makes me feel because every prospect, however pleasurable or exciting it may be, deflates in the face of a growing  sense that it isn’t real.

I tell myself that we have to carry on as though it is real because there’s no escaping it, but life then becomes a falsehood and I hate falsehoods. I’m working on the problem and taking solace from the fact that when I get engrossed in a film or a book, it’s no different than being engrossed in life. It’s just engaging with a different simulation. It puts a whole new slant on the Walter Mitty phenomenon.

A Rare Lady B Post and Bits.

So, what am I going to talk about tonight since life for a reclusive Shire dweller has been dull in every way today?

How about I make a rare Lady B post? OK, I’ll make a rare Lady B post.

I think I saw her yesterday, but I can’t be sure because the view was hindered by a companion, several hedges, random other growth, and a distance of around 100ft. But if it was her, I feel a little troubled.

It was mainly the hair that did it. It looked like phase III hair suggestive of a phase III situation. Such a curious statement will be pure gobbledegook to anybody reading it, of course, but that’s how I like it because I’m in the mood to be enigmatic to the point of being irritatingly opaque. And there were a couple of other factors, too, which I won’t bother to mention because they’re too vague.

The point is, you see, I’m so damnably fond of that young woman that if I thought she was hurting, I would hurt as well. Fortunately, I’m much given to speculative fancies that often prove wrong, so she probably isn’t hurting at all. That’s the view I’m going with.

*  *  *

I watched the film St Vincent last night. Naomi Watts was brilliant as the Russian prostitute, and my favourite line came from the Irish priest who tells his class of school kids: ‘We respect all religions in this class, but Catholicism is best because we wear the smartest clothes.’

*  *  *

I had no apple or carrot to take with me on my twilight stroll this evening, so would you credit the fact that the two geldings in the field down the lane just happened to be there watching me expectantly as I walked past? They’re never there when I have apple and carrot in my pocket. Seems the simulation isn’t playing ball. More on simulations later.