A Little Germ of an Idea.

Something I just imagined I saw in my living room (and it was only a trick of the light) suggested a neat little scene for a horror movie.

A person alone in the house at night walks into their living room to see a huge white cat reclining on the sofa and looking back at them with a less than friendly look. The cat gets up, jumps over the side of the sofa and disappears from view. The human stares in disbelief while the music augments the atmosphere, then takes tentative steps to examine the floor beyond the end of the sofa. It’s empty, of course.

Just a thought before showering.

An Aussie Tycoon's Moment of Confusion.

I gather there’s something of a furore going on in Australia over the fact that the University of New South Wales is encouraging its students to take a less conservative view of Australia’s origins. Their argument has many angles, some of which might be seen as amounting to undue political correctness, but as I understand it the main thrust of their position is that the establishment of modern Australia should be seen as a process of invasion and colonisation, not discovery and settlement.

Unsurprisingly I suppose, one of Rupert Murdoch’s rags is taking umbrage, accusing the university academics of ‘trying to re-write history.’ This is clearly false logic, and I hope our Aussie pals will have the good sense to see that it is clearly false logic. The only way to re-write history is to seek to change the facts of history, and UNSW are not taking issue with historical fact, but with the interpretation of that fact. That isn’t re-writing history.

And I suppose I shouldn’t take sides since I’m not Australian, but I can’t avoid the sneaking feeling (if I might be permitted a sneaking feeling) that if you walk into a foreign land, declare ownership over it, then force the indigenous people under your control and subjugate them to your will and self-interest, it would seem entirely rational to interpret the process as one of invasion and colonisation.

Spirits, Spirits, and Spooky Butlers.

I was taking some fresh clothes out of a drawer in my bedroom earlier when I heard a prolonged, rasping grunt coming from somewhere close by. This is becoming a repeating pattern. Several times recently I’ve been sitting in my armchair in the living room when I’ve heard a loud exhale of breath to my left. I wonder what it is (or who.) It’s quite spooky when it happens, but what can I do except use it as an excuse for getting more than a little inebriated before going to bed?

So, being in the mood, I watched about fifteen minutes of a third rate Hammer-style horror film on YouTube. I switched it off because: a) it was getting too silly, and b) the horses were upstaging the people. They were white and very beautiful (the horses, that is.) But fifteen minutes was enough to whet my appetite for becoming one of those butlers who serve an ancient (and tragically cursed) family in an old dark house, and who frown a lot while doing the I-know-a-lot-more-about-what’s-really-going-on-here-than-you-think-I-do look. Maybe I could learn to grunt unseen from behind the arras and spook the virgin (there’s always a virgin who’s terribly innocent and easily spooked.)

The HSP in War.

I’ve mentioned the HSP phenomenon several times on this blog. To recap: the HSP type is cursed with unusually keen awareness of everything in his or her environment and a concomitantly strong emotional reaction to incoming signals. To put it simply, everything to which an HSP’s sensory faculties are subjected appears far bigger than it does to a normal person. And since perception is the whole of the life experience, if it appears bigger, it is bigger. I’ve heard it said that the HSP’s major problem in life is being overwhelmed by the weight of sensory input, and in this context ‘overwhelmed’ is no exaggeration. Let me offer two personal examples:

During my time in the navy I spent a session on the gun direction platform during a live firing exercise by the 4.5” guns. The GDP is where you get the full force of the noise, and the noise from old fashioned artillery is a lot louder than anything most people are ever likely to hear. As the exercise progressed I found myself getting ever closer to panic and physical collapse, even though there was no danger and nothing to fear except the loss of face if the collapse had happened. The condition was entirely due to the excessive assault on my perceptual faculty by hideously loud explosions in the shell cases. Fortunately I held on long enough to avoid a collapse, but it was a damn close run thing and taught a salutary lesson.

I had forewarning of this problem when I was around eight and was brought to a state of utter panic by a persistent and increasingly loud peal of thunder. I knew even at that age that there was no danger, but the panic happened anyway. Much later in life I fought a fire in warehouse full of butane gas. There was a clear and imminent danger of explosion and death, but I felt no such symptoms on that occasion. Danger doesn’t affect me that way because it isn’t a sensory experience. Noise does because it is.

So what of the HSP who is conscripted into the armed services during time of war and sent into battle? Imagine the nature and intensity of the sensory input which he or she will have to endure – the noise, the smoke, the dust, the destruction, the smells, the sense of confusion, the blood, the sight of broken bodies, the suffering of the wounded… Is it any wonder that the recipient of such an experience, given their extended awareness of all sensory input, will be likely to suffer trembling, physical immobility, wholesale collapse, or the uncontrollable urge to run away out of sheer panic?

And what will the system do to them in this eventuality? The system will presume that they are failing to control their fear, and will court martial them using the time honoured charge: ‘cowardice in the face of the enemy.’ But it isn’t fear as ordinarily perceived; it isn’t cowardice; it’s simply a matter of being crushed by the unbearable weight of sensory input.

There was a time when such people were executed for their ‘crime’, and probably still are in some people’s armies, but it seems to me that the real crime lies in assuming the right to punish people – even to the extent of depriving them of their lives – because the normal ones don’t understand that a few of us have brains that are wired differently from theirs. It further seems to me that the issue needs to be understood and addressed. How you do so I don’t know, but that in itself is no reason not to at least acknowledge it.

Be Advised...

There was a time when public notices had something useful to say. That was why they were there, but times seem to be a-changing. I saw two today in Derby.

The first was on the wall of a block of newly-completed apartments. It must have been about 10ft square and said:

If you lived here you would be home now.

The logic is, of course, impeccable – so impeccable that my only comment can be ‘Every front door should have one.’

The second was on the wall of Derby station and contained Useful Advice for Travellers. I only read the first item on the list as I was walking past, and it said:

Make sure you arrive at the station in good time to catch your train.

I’m glad I didn’t read the rest. Good advice is best taken in small doses to make sure you’ve fully taken it in before moving onto more difficult stuff.

Dem Bones, Dem Bones...

There was something I didn’t understand in that documentary I watched about Shakespeare’s head being possibly missing from his tomb. The historian/presenter went waffling on about how terrifying people found the prospect of having their bones removed to a charnel house because they feared being trapped. Trapped how? Did I miss something? (I admit that I might have done because the sound on my TV is crap.) It’s just that I don’t see how spending your post mortem existence in the convivial company of the hamlet’s rude forefathers is any more ‘trapped’ than lying alone in a box – or even just a winding sheet – under a ton of earth. In fact, it strikes me that a charnel house is a veritable social club in comparison. And if it's the Second Coming they're worried about, I'm sure Jesus will have the presence of mind to give them a knock.

On a more positive note, I’m now consumed with a desire to find out whether my local church has a charnel house. It should do; there’s been a church on that ground since before the Norman Conquest (and possibly even before the Danish Great Army came a-rampaging and demanding protection money) but the oldest gravestone is 17^th century, so they must have done something with the bones to make way for fresh bodies (insofar as a body might be described as ‘fresh’ you understand.) All of which means that if it doesn’t have a charnel house, what did they do with bones? (And did the owners feel untrapped or merely re-located?)

 My local church and some of its freshers

When Being Called Mad Won't Do.

For those who don’t know what I’m talking about when I mention the white-horse-called-Kevin joke, let me repeat it:

A white horse walked into a bar and ordered a drink. ‘Blimey,’ said the barman, ‘a talking horse. Do you know they named a whisky after you?’ ‘What,’ said the horse, ‘Kevin?’

I told that joke to the woman in the pet shop last week. She didn’t laugh, she just said: ‘I had a hamster called Kevin.’ ‘OK,’ I said, ‘a hamster walked into a bar…’ Only it couldn’t work, of course, because – as far as I know – there isn’t a whisky called Hamster.

So I tried to explain to myself why the white-horse-called-Kevin joke is my favourite, and attempted a variation:

The Duke of Wellington walked into a bar and ordered a drink. ‘Blimey,’ said the barman, a talking duke. Do you know they named a style of gumboot after you?’ ‘What,’ said the Duke, ‘Arthur?’

It isn’t quite the same, is it? So I decided to get clever and came up with:

A girl called Madeline walked into a café and ordered a scone. ‘Blimey,’ said the proprietor, ‘a talking Madeline. Do you know they named a confection after you?’ ‘What,’ said the Madeline, ‘fruit cake?’

But only Madelines who know they’re mad would get it, so I suppose the original will have to remain unchallenged.

Katie's Little Surprise.

We’ve had an unusually wet winter this year, but the past two or three weeks have been dry and the soggy landscape put back to its normal state. The temporary pools that formed in woodland dells and field depressions dried up, the sloping path in my favourite wood lost its greasiness and became comfortable again, and the meadow ground was once more firm to the tread.

Last night we had rain, courtesy of Storm Katie, and I knew nothing about until I walked the bounds of the Shire today. There’s debris all over the roads, areas of tarmac have been lifted and broken up, and the temporary pools are back and more extensive than at any time during the winter. Best of all, though: a large stretch of the river valley is flooded. Never in the ten years I’ve lived here – through the record wet summer of 2012, several wet winters, and periods of high snow melt during the cold winters – have I seen that piece of landscape under water. And all the result of one night’s rain that I wasn’t even aware of.

Another Hollywood Post.

I just caught another bit of an historical epic movie – The Fall of the Roman Empire this time.

A Roman column is moving through a dense forest in what is evidently hostile territory, only the forest isn’t so dense. The trees are neatly placed, of generally even thickness, and there’s not a sign of undergrowth on the forest floor – just a pretty green base that looks like a well manicured lawn. OK, let’s be kind to Hollywood for once and assume that the locals graze their sheep there. It looks like a public park somewhere just beyond the outskirts of Los Angeles, but maybe it isn’t.

But then the column is set upon by club-wielding, extremely hirsute men in woolly bear costumes who look terribly unrefined as befits their status as non-Roman extras. The Romans, on the other hand, are commendably smart. Their officers are clean shaven and wear well fitting uniforms with rather fetching helmets in various sophisticated designs. Even the rank-and-file carry pristine designer shields with a rather fetching embossed pattern in purple and green. And that’s why the Romans win the battle.

This is, of course, as it should be. The Romans were indeed a civilised and upright bunch of people who knew the importance of being properly kitted out, whereas the Britons, Gauls et al were just a bunch of ne’er-do-well, cave-dwelling rebels who needed to be brought to heel for their own sake. Historical veracity is well served yet again, and my only disappointment was that a family of dinosaurs didn’t turn up to make a meal of the fallen.

Today's Fun.

I’ve been suffering the most curious condition all day today. It started with a sore eye that got more and more painful until I could hardly keep it open. In the evening it progressed to disorientation, lack of balance, sneezing, sore sinuses, a sore throat, abdominal cramps, muscle stiffness and advanced fatigue. I was quite incapable of doing anything – even using the computer or reading was out of the question because it hurt my sore eye so much. But then it eased a little shortly before midnight, so I dragged myself into the shower and subsequently felt better. That’s a new one on me.

So then I wrote to the priestess and explained how we will found the Pong Dynasty in post-apocalyptic China in our future lives, and how it will be known as ‘the Great Pong’ to subsequent generations. I hope she agrees. She did say it sounded like a fun idea.

Meanwhile, the eye is still a little sore. I think it might be the work of some local witch who takes exception to me lowering the standard of the Shire by walking the lanes dressed in a 28-year-old coat with open seams and a generally soiled appearance. (And a woolly hat.)