On Spring and Dr. Spooner.

I don’t have much to say today because I’ve been busy with garden and household jobs. (Garden jobs leave me feeling wrecked these days because I’m wearing out faster than a second hand pair of jeans – and I should know because lots of my jeans were bought second hand.)

Still, it was good to see the first leaves open on the horse chestnut trees in Church Lane. They’re always the first of the standards to leaf up, usually beating the later oaks and ashes by six or seven weeks. And they’re such fine, big leaves too, so they attract your attention better than most.

But that’s about it for today, apart from it being a bad day on the technology front. So many things irritating me with glitches on all sides. I expect it’s all due to one of my ruling planets going backwards or something.

The only matter of any consequence today was the discovery of a new spoonerism. My current listening in the car consists of an album of 1930s popular music from the 1980s TV serial Pennies from Heaven, and the last song I heard was Roll Along Prairie Moon. It’s been stuck in my head all day and driving me nuts until I realised that the spoonerism of prairie moon is Mary Prune. I thought it quite wonderful because new spoonerisms are nearly as hard to find as gold dust in an old canal.

Four Weddings and a Reminder.

I should like to announce that tonight I did my duty to the British cinema by undertaking to watch the remainder of the film Four Weddings and a Funeral. And having made such an undertaking, I felt further duty-bound to find something funny (because you’re supposed to find something funny in a comedy, be it romantic or any other sort.) And I did find something funny. In fact, I found two things funny.

The first was when the dippy girl – whose connection to the MC I never managed to work out – walked into church as a bridesmaid without having fastened her dress at the back, so her blue knickers were showing. I found that moderately funny because my sense of humour can be nothing if not childlike at times.

What I found funnier, however, was the scene in which the MC goes into a posh shop to buy a wedding present and asks the starchy assistant for suggestions at around £50. The assistant replies: ‘Our plastic carrier bags are £1.50 each. Maybe you could get thirty three of those.’ I found it so funny in fact that I made the effort work out that he would have had 50p change. The scriptwriter missed it.

All in all I’m ashamed to say that I quite enjoyed it.

During the credits at the end I even sang the harmony to accompany the play-out song: Love is All Around. Do you realise it’s twenty seven years since I sang that to somebody? And I still remember the lyrics. And it occurred to me that the greatest legacy my high school bestowed on me was the ability to harmonise tunes. I played the trombone in the school orchestra, you see, and a natural sense of harmony came with the job. I have to say that it’s rarely proved useful, but a gift is a gift when all’s said and done.

On a more serious note, the film did reflect back to me some of my own history, and reminded me – if I needed any reminding – how short of the mark I always was in the matter of romantic relationships.

Four Weddings and a Woe.

Back in the 1990s the British film industry made a trilogy of Brit Pack movies – Notting Hill, Love Actually, and Four Weddings and a Funeral. I didn’t see any of them at the time, but a few years ago I got hold of a copy of Love Actually and quite liked it, so when Notting Hill turned up in a charity shop I gave it a try. I lasted twenty minutes before my terminal boredom became almost literally terminal and I switched it off. Determined to see the exercise through, however, tonight I started watching the third offering, Four Weddings and a Funeral.

The first substantive scene showed a traditional church wedding, and you know what? I found the sight of a white-bedecked bride walking up the aisle on the arm of her father quite moving for some reason. I tried to work it out, but could only speculate that it might have had something to do with an event in May 2017 when one of the very few bright lights in my firmament went out, leaving the gloomy shadows in my world growing even more dominant and engendering an inexcusable sense of devastation.

Maybe that was it. I don’t know. But to continue…

Once the bride and groom were standing together and the ceremony began in earnest, the only thing which moved in me were the contents of my stomach reminding me – as though I needed any reminding – of the reason for my severe dislike of weddings. Normal service was thus restored.

When it got to the thirty minute mark and I still hadn’t found anything funny (it was, after all, billed as a ‘romantic comedy’ so I suppose I shouldn’t have expected to find anything funny, but ever the optimist you know…) I turned it off – for now. Maybe I’ll give it a second chance tomorrow or whenever my mood improves.

(My mood is somewhat subdued tonight courtesy of the corporate world in the guise of E.ON, my energy supplier. Not content with pestering me mercilessly with their attempt to bend me to their will, they even stoop to insulting my intelligence with claims which would only convince those boasting an IQ in single figures. Such is the way of things in a culture increasingly controlled by bureaucrats, the corporate world, and arguably the most inept government I think I’ve ever known.)

On Spring and Feather Fights.

Nature is being precocious this year. It’s been apparent for a while in the garden and hedgerows where leaf growth and flowering has been substantially earlier than usual, and now it’s the turn of the birds and their nest building. They’re 2-3 weeks ahead of the game, probably because of the relatively mild winter. Or maybe they take their cue from the leaves and flowers. I wouldn’t know.

I was in Uttoxeter a few days ago and saw a crow fly down to pick up a twig from the pavement. When it saw me approaching it flew to the top of a high fence and glared at me with aggressive intent. ‘This twig is mine,’ screeched the message in its beady eye. ‘If you come any closer I’ll bite your bum so hard you won’t sit down for a week.’ At least, that’s what it sounded like to me. ‘No worries,’ I replied with a smile. ‘I have no need of a twig at the moment. Of course, you could always just fly away since you can fly and I can’t.’ ‘Don’t try to be clever with me, you wingless freak’ replied the crow. ‘Think you’re so bloody clever, don’t you? Get off with you. Be gone.’ So get off was what I did.

Today there was more aggression in the air. I saw a blue tit approach the nest box behind my kitchen bearing a beakful of soft moss to line the base. And guess what was in the way: a male house sparrow perched disrespectfully on the little round entrance hole. Fisticuffs ensued as the two combatants fell to the ground on the embankment beneath the box. House sparrows are twice the size of blue tits, but it was only a matter of seconds before the bigger bird gave in and flew away. I imagine blue tits could even relieve crows of their twigs if they had any use for them.

So that’s nature in the spring for you, and it’s all very entertaining.

Worrying Trends.

I just read about the latest school shooting in Nashville, and assumed that it will lead to another demand from the more liberal sector of the American population for swingeing reforms in the matter of gun ownership. There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s a logical response. And yet I can’t help feeling that there’s something so rotten in the American consciousness that it can produce a seemingly endless conveyor belt of people prepared to do that kind of thing.

And then I thought a little further and realised that we have a similar problem in the UK, although on a rather smaller scale. We currently have what is growing into an apparent epidemic of teenagers killing each other with knives. I sense a connection of some kind, although what it is hasn’t yet come into sharp focus.

A Note on the Matter of Israel.

It’s long been a source of irritation to me that people so easily confuse the terms anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Anti-Semitism is the practice of extending prejudice and discrimination towards Jewish people just because they’re Jews. Anti-Zionism is a little vaguer, but in present political circumstances may be said to relate to the Israeli state – for which read Israeli government – extending prejudice and discrimination (and concomitant abuse and injustice) towards their non-Jewish neighbours. The two concepts are not quite diametrically opposed, but they’re not far off. And yet people fail to see the difference.

And this issue is, of course, central to the problem of the Israeli government treating the Palestinians abysmally. Any arm of any of the more influential western governments which steps over the line in criticising Israeli policies is immediately met by howls of ‘this is anti-Semitic!’ and everybody backs off. And so the Israeli government can do whatever it wants because they know they’re effectively immune to criticism. As far as I’m aware, Israel is the only country in the world which enjoys that dubious privilege.

So let’s look at what’s happening in Israel at the moment. Mr Netanyahu and his monstrous regiment of right wing hardliners are proposing to change the judicial system so as to place the Israeli government effectively above the law. Israel pretends to be a democratic state, and being above the law is hardly what a democratic state is supposed to be and the people of Israel don’t like it. Their mass protests have been so massive as to paralyse the workings of the country to such an extent that even the ultra-intractable Mr Netanyahu has been forced to delay his plans. So what interests me is this:

If the Israeli protesters – who may be presumed to consist almost entirely of Jews – can be allowed to oppose the Israeli state in a just cause without being accused of anti-Semitism, why can’t the rest of us?

A Painful Echo.

Today is the 5^th anniversary of my operation to remove a cancerous kidney, and now I have a sharp muscular pain in my lower abdomen which I suspect might be connected. (It’s preventing me doing sit-ups and leg lifts which is a bit of a nuisance.) I remember reading once that traumatic experiences have a habit of echoing around the anniversary of the event, so I’m hoping that’s all it is.

The Fascinating Case of Donald's Little Menagerie.

I’m about to run the risk of offending those Americans for whom I have enormous respect, but a blogger has to do what a blogger has to do so here goes.

I was just reading about Trump’s little hooley in Wako, and becoming swamped with such a combination of disbelief and amusement as the day would quake to look on. His theatrical entry to the strains of Top Gun music was risible enough, but then there was the image of countless mentally challenged baboons running around shrieking ‘God! Guns! Trump!’ (and wearing T shirts and waving banners carrying the same mantra of simian aspiration.)

I have to admit here that the number of baboons present was minuscule compared with the population of the US as a whole, but they are the image of America the world sees, and so they are the image – unfairly or not – that Trump presents to the world. What sort of impression do Americans think it makes? Then again, I don’t suppose baboons care much about reputation so let’s broaden it out a little.

If the best the Republican Party can offer as a candidate in the next presidential election is a choice between Dunderhead Donald and nasty Mr DeSantis, doesn’t that rather compound the issue? And if DeSantis gets the nomination I expect the baboons will go on the rampage and a measure of carnage will ensue. And if Trump wins the nomination but loses the election to a Democrat, I expect the baboons will still go on the rampage. And if Trump wins the election the baboons will triumph and America will go even further down the hole of resembling a troubled, third world backwater. What price leadership, power, and influence then?

November 2024 is going to be interesting, isn’t it? I wonder whether I’ll be around to see it.

I Did Not Say Anything.

(The title is lifted from Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. Her heroine says it countless times in one section of the novel, and I became increasingly irritated by it with each tedious use. I do realise that it was intended to reinforce the perception of her shy and retiring character, but it still irritated me. Nevertheless, it will do nicely for an insubstantial little recollection which has absolutely nothing to do with landed gentry, big old houses, murdered wives, evil housekeepers, or simple-minded old beachcombers who don’t want to go to an asylum.)

So, when I was in Sainsbury’s last week I found myself sharing the space in front of one of the freezer cabinets with a woman who looked to be around late thirties or fortyish. I found her appearance (or let’s call it her ‘presence’, which would probably be more accurate) intriguing.

She was wearing the most un-stylish jeans which I think I have ever seen – faded blue corduroy which was clean but looked well worn, and which were too wide to suit the modern taste in jeans designed for alternative use as drainpipes. Above that was an equally dowdy brown coat which would probably be borderline rejection in a charity shop or an Oxfam clothing bank. Her face was entirely devoid of make-up, her hair clean but unstyled. The most notable feature of her dress, however, lay with the matter of her shoes – old and battered trainers (sneakers if you prefer) which were heavily caked in dried mud. This is not a normal sight in Sainsbury’s, Ashbourne.

‘Aha,’ I thought. ‘Here is my kind of woman. No artifice, no pretence, no attempt to be “presentable.” This is an attitude of which I soundly approve.’

She saw me studying her (because that’s what INFJs do without realising the deleterious inferences which might be taken in consequence) and smiled in my direction. Her teeth were strong, perfectly formed, and a little on the yellow side.

I was suddenly possessed of the urge to say to her:

‘You’ve got a lot of dirt on your shoes, by the way. Did you know? Just there.’

And then it occurred to me that such a statement might give cause for concern or indignation on her part, and I might have to explain that it was a direct quotation from young Hermione Granger in the first Harry Potter film; and further, that it was merely intended to inject a little harmless levity into an otherwise dull day.

I thought again and imagined the various responses which such a verbal onslaught might provoke. My favourite guess was a long, silent, challenging stare, at which point I grew bored with the experience and moved off to join the checkout queue. She took the one next to mine and got through first. I suppose justice was suitably served.

Dripping Towards Dystopia.

I hear the government is putting forward a proposal that couples who wish to separate should be required to engage with officially approved guidance counselling first. Only if they do that and satisfy certain requirements will they be able to avoid a substantial fine.

Proponents of the idea argue that it will better protect children from the trauma consequent upon the break up of family homes (even though the proposals extend to couples without children.) Opponents counter that it will be likely to force some women (and possibly even men) to remain in abusive relationships. Both positions are naturally matters of concern, but my personal concern is more far-reaching.

This would be another example of yet more bureaucrats being given yet more free rein to adopt a constabulary function in the lives of individuals on pain of pecuniary punishment. It’s another drip on the way to an Orwellian view of dystopia. When, I’m inclined to ask, will politicians realise that more than enough is more than enough?