Politics or the Garden?

I do like to write in the mornings, but what to write today, the day that our lying, cheating and arrogant prime minister received yet another kick to his bollocks. That he doesn't have any can be the only explanation for the unnatural way he survives law-breaking, abuse of privilege and support for the proven bullies in his cabinet.

Meanwhile, I look out over the garden, not a mass of colour as Spring has ended and Summer not quite arrived, but a garden stocked so full that weeds have little chance to thrive. From acanthus to lemon balm, from flomis and verbena to digitalis, iris, geum and all those acers. Trouble is the garden can be work and I'd prefer to abuse Johnson and his cronies here indoors and out of the wind. Read one post this morning where the Charity Commission has required the chief executive of ....... to stand down as his charity is leasing him a thirty-roomed castle for £2k a month and paying his partner £150k per annum to act as his personal assistant; I wonder what services she provides for that? Clearly charity!

All this writing today is because I'm not focused on any one issue. Been to The Christie early, haemoglobin count is normal, kidney a little low, drink more water, now know who my surgeon will be, David D........, sounds like a comedian from TV but extremely well reviewed.

Nothing flows today, no creative thoughts, no stories; maybe i could focus on distant cousin Ann whose funeral is next week and the time she spent travelling Europe in her youth (St Petersburg in the late 40s, wow!), better still her aunt who was interned in Austria as an enemy alien during WW1. Maybe, maybe not? Time to end this drivel and drive Patsy to Decathlon; now there's an worthwhile task!

The Philosophy of a Pill!

Rosie offered me two pieces of advice, love your chemo and make sure you have a fuckit list! As I try to make sense of my world, I'm really not sure what Aristotle would have made of this, after all, there is a logic and a sequential order to his thinking and writing, an order which has determined the function of Western and Christian philosophy for two thousand years. Even Marx's philosophy observed the same strict discipline of action, reaction and consequence, often ending in the exploitation of some by others, and the consequent violence that endures before a new and still mis-equilibrium is seen by many as a resolution of the issue.  Is it hell a resolution!

As I wander through my chaotic musings this morning, I'm less Aristotelian than ever. His focus on balance in nature, on the inter-connectivity of thought and action, of ethics and politics, of classification and the need for order does not match my current mood in which disorder reigns. There can be no plan for a future when the forces of nature have a mind of their own, unregulated or is it deregulated by the consequences of a lifetime of dietary excesses.

To divert for a moment!  The Roman church, anxious to confine and destroy the 19th Century Marxist materialist philosophy, used this very same model to critique the social and political order of Europe. The Church was (and is?) trapped in the very analysis it opposes. So it is for me, trapped in a mortal body which is not as I have always believed, indestructable! This revelation demonstrates just how much up my own arse I have been, not accepting or realising the frailty of my confident claims about fitness and visits to the gym.

This seems a long way from poor dead Aristotle! Would he have put his faith in those orange pills? Would he have trusted the medics of his day? What they tell me at The Christie on every visit is that the treatment is always evidence-based, informed by observation of action, reaction and consequence. And while Marx's dialectic throws up the violence necessary to resolve disorder, Aristotle's search for order in the universe is mine too.  I love those little orange pills!

Day Five!

 The day dawned blue, still and warm, spoilt only by the cooing of those awful pigeons in the beech tree; being generous, I guess they are grieving their failure to incubate the eggs they have brooded in past weeks, the nest now deserted and slowly disintegrating when the wind blows.

Tuesday, being Day five, I wondered what the day held in store; the grace, good manners, refinement and elegance promised in the nursery rhyme, or something unconnected with the myths of the past. Thank the Lord it's not woeful Wednesday, I conjectured. But Day five. has other connotations; it's the day we are or were released from Covid isolation after infection just a few months ago. It's the title of the apocalyptic series on US television which I never really took to. Day five is the last day of a red-ball test match, and what a game and day it was against the Kiwis last week!

For me Day five is different; I now know what to expect. The steroids of the first three days of each cycle having faded, I'm left with that orange poison coursing through my body, I guess but don't really know whether it's the circulation of blood that takes this poison through atria, ventricles, arteries, lungs, veins and out to that orange-sized tumour hidden somewhere below my waist. I can't see it or feel it but it lurks, desperate to spread its evil to liver and any other organ it takes a fancy to!  The consultant advised that it was "stage three" ....... "and three-quarters" as an afterthought! Just in time, and it's not spread, yet!

This is why I love and hate those orange tablets, relentlessly, day by day, morning and evening, twelve hours apart, scuttled down after the savoury course and then iced like a cake usually with a banana, something to sandwich them in my stomach, to compress them and reduce my awareness of their presence!

Day five, the day I spend exhausted in bed, sweating without end, mind detached from body, disorientated, detached from reality, seeking refuge in a sleep that never really arrives, but today, day six, gives me hope that again the worst may have passed as I write this post almost effortlessly. Of physical energy, I may have little, but at least my brain has reconnected and there is some logic again to life.

Surrounded by reality!

Sitting here with seven never-before seen adults around me, I note the absence of conversation but an abundance of eye-catching looks. Words may be absent but communication is clear and mutually understood and agreed.

And the nature of this communication? Simply the realisation that we are all fucked, at least for the moment, by cancer of one type or another. There’s the woman in stomach pain, the guy, old before his years, whose silence indicates little hope, the woman (I think) wearing the scrum cap which is the evidence an already removed brain tumour, the diabetic whose cancer drugs constantly conflict with her condition, the young man the location of whose tumour is known only to him and the medics, and two others who seem so secure and positive in their demeanour that one wonders why they are here.

What of the staff, all nurses? One French, another Irish,  three locals and one of possibly Malaysian heritage.  All aged under thirty by their looks, but who can really tell, they prove to be a proven team of professionals and all with the same positivity and support for each of us. We really are in good hands, or should I say "positive surroundings" as the tone and manner of each professional is exemplary, and they have read my notes! That really was impressive; as I arrived, Clare, for that was her name, was familiar with a detail which might not be relevant for another month, or maybe never.  Really reassuring!

And what of me now, three days after beginning this post, infusion completed, two and a half days of tablets consumed (that's twenty-six in total!), but now, steroids no longer active, I feel just mentally half empty as though my mind is detached from body, not exactly listless but certainly disjointed. Time to end, to post and to sleep.

Oh Joy: Alone at last!

I have another ninety minutes of total freedom before my minder returns! Ninety minutes which I can waste surfing the net, sleeping in front of the telly, thinking about the meaning of life, catching up on admin, watching the cricket, cutting the lawns (too strenuous), or just doing what I enjoy most, writing down my thoughts.  This is an activity I have rediscovered in the last week, ever since the grim reaper was dissuaded to stay away a while longer.  Haha! Who will have the last laugh? Inevitably the GR, but I hope to dodge him, or is it her, for some years yet; after all I am indestructible, and until I split my head open on some unseen steel structure, I'm safe. That is the way it will be. Sober as a judge, I will walk into some unseen object and end my days in a pool of blood!

I'm sitting looking at our garden, loved and highly manicured by both of us and soon to be in the Didsbury Open Gardens for 2022. I can barely name six of the dozens of plants we have, almost all perennials, but my favourites have to be Verbena and Acanthus. Both are green as you would expect, the first tall, thinnish with small blue flowers, the other architectural with huge leaves and buds which break out into bland and palish heads of indeterminate colour. But this is not about my or our garden now; it is rather the question of how we eacg manipulate nature to our personal choice.  What will 109's garden look like in ten years time? will it have developed or declined. Will I have survived or died? Questions only time can answer, and fortunately Father time is miles away on the clock or it it a wind direction indicator at Lords cricket ground? A what? That's gross; maybe it's a weather vane, or an anemometer?

Enough of this verbiage! I have again proved my way with words, pity I don't get the opportunity to use this skill any longer. Standing in front of the Lord Mayor and officers of the education department with most hanging on my every word motivated me for years; reading the lessons in church with my vaguely Welsh accent always led to affirmation; even a rendition of "Mae hen wlad fy nhadau" usually raises some Saxon heckles, how i love that!

So time to reflect, think on, consider and inwardly digest the confident, even arrogant pose I strut, and enjoy a moment of quiet sounds, the birds in the hedges, the barking dog, the gentle breeze, and the ping of that bloody mobile.

Relax, breathe in, close eyes, even sleep!

Reflections: one week in!

It's Thursday 9th June and how much have I learnt in a week? Probably not much but so much more than I knew last Thursday. It's bin day, blue bin day when I put out all the paper and card from life this week, a bin full to the brim!

Would that I could so easily dispose of my tumour, that great lump invading my stomach! "It doesn't look good," said the surgeon. "What we plan is ........., "said the consultant as he detailed life for the next few months, and reassured with his professional and calm voice that this evidence-based medication would work and the cancer would be beaten.  I see surgeons as engineers not medics, ever since they rebuilt Jake's heart. Let's hope my judgement works out.

So, a week in and having a reasonable day when I can at least type, how do I feel?  Yesterday, the worst day of my life, looking at those pink pills and asking, "Really, are you going to save my life? WTF is in that pill? I don't do pills ever, so these are life-changing moments for me; anyway let's hope so! Rosie says that Chemo is my best friend, so embrace it ...... after what it did to me yesterday? yes!  I couldn't even pick up and read messages on my mobile.  Energy? what is energy? I didn't have any, and I felt like shit all over.

Today is better. Alternating between bed and up but not about, I've been able to read and write comfortably, even welcomed a visitor or two, and they didn't stay too long. Remember Rosie's missive ..... use your fuckit list!

Time now to rest before tea and more of the pink pills, so signing off in the hope that I can stay awake for the BBC news which I have slept through for each of the last three days! The world might have ended without me noticing!

The End of the Line

(A tribute to my friend Dalva whose poem this is. Poignant, sad, even a little depressing, this dark destination we all pass through!) 

Ah! when I arrived at the vortex of life, 

When nothing more, nothing around me, was ascending, 

When at last I arrived at the end of the line 

It makes no difference whether I go or come. 

When the loves and passions and friendships, 

And their range of inescapable emotions 

No longer sound like drums inside my chest, 

Being just sad, poor and sultry echoes, 

 When my bodily properties, if all regathered, 

Again in these clothes, 

My hat, one or two books, some poems 

And a feeling of not winning what I wanted, 

 Ah! when I stopped, at last, at the end of the road 

And I considered the evil that I had within me, (and what I did not have) 

I was silent, like a rock, 

Like a tree in the edge of an abyss, 

Like an arrow that was loose in the bow, 

Like an idea that would never come to fruition, 

Like a shadow, or like a rough draft, 

Of everything I dreamed, and did not have. 

This is the end of the line ……..

Dalva Maria Ferreira

Sao Paolo

My New Best Friend: Chemotherapy!

Over seventeen years ago, I started blogging, and last blogged eleven years ago.  Is it time to start again?

What would have been my Dad's107th birthday (17/05/22) is significant here, the day the medics confirmed my colon cancer! Sure I'd had a bit of discomfort in my gut for three months, and thinking it was a muscle strain from the gym, it took that time to get to the GP who did the stool test which proved the need for further investigation.  

It's really impressive watching live video of one's colon and intestine on a screen which would do credit to de Bruyne and the Etihad; wow such clarity and the location of the trouble was easily identified even by me, the indestructible amateur. An hour later, the surgeon proffered, "It's not looking good!" Little else!  A CT scan a few days later confirmed the diagnosis of colon cancer with a tumour inconveniently located bang up against the liver and about the size of an orange! Everyone says, "Great they caught it early!" No they didn't; when I asked about the stage, I was told, "Stage 3 (pause) and three-quarters!" The good news, no spread can be seen, no xxxxxxx!

So Friday, 3rd June, saw me a little apprehensive as i entered The Christie alone to have the first infusion through a canula in the back of my hand. Lots of chat with the nurse first and then two and a half hours of inactivity while the chemicals followed through my veins with no apparent effect. Now, four days later, Its much the same. I've been to the gym each day and done my usual  workout with no real reduction of energy; in fact yesterday I felt really pumped up.

As for the expected side effects, very little to date; pins and needles in finger ends when handing cold metal, flatulence (is that posh for farting?), some gut ache but little else. Over the weekend I took steroids alongside the chemo tablets, apparently to ease me in to the impact of the medication. I guess I can now expect a more challenging time as from today I'm down from twenty tablets a day to just ten.

Still Waters Run Deep

I walked the River Hodder earlier today; not the whole length you understand, just about two miles of narrow, twisting pebble-banked stream and deep, slow, murky pools hiding their secrets from the damp world above. The Hodder has run its course through villages such as Slaidburn, Tosside, Newton, Dunsop Bridge and Lane Ends for centuries, bringing fresh water from the North Lancashire Moors down to the Trough or Forest of Bowland, one of those well-kept, remote, attractive but hardly unspoilt areas of our green and pleasant land. Unspoilt is a misnomer! Of course it is spoilt, by the higgledy-piggledy stone-built houses locked together over time in each village, by the long and low farmhouses which litter the valley, by the stark and unwelcoming halls owned by the nouveau-riche who bought them from the families of deceased cotton and wool barons of the 19th century, and by the chain-link fenced sewage plant, all but astride the Hodder in the centre of the valley; this brick built monstrosity, ageing, rusting and weedy leaking its residue of filtrate into these ice-cold waters. 

We describe the valley as unspoilt because it is so well maintained, manicured by locals who take pride in their trusteeship. The natural Trough would be forested and unfarmed, a home for small mammals and birds as well as the ghosts of history, those travellers spirited away by accident and evil and buried in the rich and fertile soil. Unspoilt, no, but beautiful and impressive, with sober and unpretentious colours which welcome rather than challenge both residents and visitors. This is why I sat, stood and leaned alongside the Hodder, peering into the deep and slowly circling pools, searching for trout first but failing that, wondering what secrets these eddies hid. 

Time does not fly here; change is slow. No reminders of the speed of modern culture, just the bleat of sheep, the chirp of birds, the rustle of wind in the trees and the ripple of water over rock and pebble. Humans may well have changed the look of the Trough with their ploughs and cows, but no motorways or planes, few roads and cars left me to think, dream, ponder and reflect. Still waters do run deep, as deep as my thoughts, as hidden as my soul, as profound as the blood running through my veins.

A Society at Peace!

The story of Freddie is sad indeed, the son of a dysfunctional family with father in prison, mother on the game, sisters in poverty caring for themselves, getting themselves to school most days, but always in trouble! Trouble with parents, with neighbours, with teachers, with just anybody. Freddie is one of those who might well have rioted last week, little sense of responsibility, little understanding of community, little to excite him but much to frustrate, to limit, to depress. Who got it wrong, who caused this division, disaffection and distress? 

Does it matter anyway? Some say that society is broken; others that social unrest is the consequence of a disaffected generation of young people; others that policing needs to be stronger, more assertive with punishments that deter. Fewer believe that policing is by consent of the community and that justice and jail must be restorative. 

Does it matter what we say, think or believe? Not for Freddie. He fell or was pushed from a third floor window and was impaled on the railings below a long time before these riots. Unlike our community today, Freddie is at peace!

I can't converse!

I've tried to write conversation, dialogue and discussion but without success. I cannot get it right! My characters seem unconvincing, their speech fatuous despite scenarios which should be arresting and make for compulsive listening. But no! I cannot write conversation.

The first day in the rest of my life?

The inspection had ended at 1300 on Friday and I had spent the weekend in the garden and with the family. Monday morning now, and where am I? On a train to the big smoke for two days of assessment and report writing ..... and thought I had retired .... again!! The train carriage is half empty, but also half full of slightly overweight middle-aged businessmen and smart young women making their way in the world. It looks and sounds like a two-way ladder with seriously boring guys pompously and pretentiously working with laptops and piles of paper, while aspiring and assertive (largely) women, clearly better organised, listen to their ipods and read the financial pages. Quite a contrast! 

And in this melee, where am I? With a foot on both sides of the ladder? Who can tell? Certainly not me! I tried to think this through but we are in Rugby already, more than halfway to London in just over the hour; the speed of life today! And here I am musing yet again! What would my favourite poet Donne make of this dilemma? Or tycoon, Alan Sugar? Or Paul of Tarsus? I sometimes think that I am thoughtful like Paul, but he was never confused; maybe he was like me? Reading him, I do believe that he was trapped with a personal issue he never describes; his theology may be sound, but his life seems to indicate a tension he never details. Alan Sugar would not be where I am; no tensions for him, no train either! he is the exemplification of clarity, direction and judgement, underpinned with confidence in his own abilities. He really is the consummate professional, having faults but being wrong not being one of them.

So I am left with Jonne Donne, that sensitive and jesuitical poet with a resolution to every quandary, even if he does not share it, an answer to every tension, a solution to every problem! Whether his poem is compromise or conclusion, the outcome is always final, secure and unquestioned. At the "mingling of bloods" nothing stays the same, nor can the old world return; it changes everything ... for ever! 

Marke but this flea, and marke in this, 

 How little that which thou deny'st me is; 

 Me it suck'd first, and now sucks thee, 

 And in this flea our two bloods mingled bee; 

 Confesse it, this cannot be said 

 A sinne, or shame, or losse of maidenhead, 

 Yet this enjoyes before it wooe, 

 And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two, 

 And this, alas, is more than wee would doe. 

 Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare, 

 When we almost, nay more than maryed are. 

 This flea is you and I, and this 

 Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is; 

 Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met, 

 And cloysterd in these living walls of Jet. 

 Though use make thee apt to kill me, 

 Let not to this, selfe murder added bee, 

 And sacrilege, three sinnes in killing three. 

 Cruell and sodaine, has thou since 

 Purpled thy naile, in blood of innocence? 

 In what could this flea guilty bee, 

 Except in that drop which it suckt from thee? 

 Yet thou triumph'st, and saist that thou 

 Find'st not thyself, nor mee the weaker now; 

 'Tis true, then learne how false, feares bee; 

 Just so much honor, when thou yeeld'st to mee, 

 Will wast, as this flea's death tooke life from thee. 

John Donne

Conversation, compliance or mask?

"Who is she?" she asked. "Who?" he replied. "Stop kidding; you know what I mean. Who is she?" These opening words of a radio play that I heard today made me think ..... made me think that this conversation (soon to be an argument) must have been repeated in so many homes, and made me think too that at home we sometimes pretend to be the people we are not! A mask can be a wonderful gift, enabling me, or you, or us, to be both the person we are and the person we are not. What we think and feel and believe may be there, just under the surface, the real me, warts and all. The mask is there for all to see, a shell or peel which can be so attractive, warm, inclusive or loving, a comfortable skin, acceptable to family and to friends, and believed by all except our intimates to be REAL!! 

Meanwhile, underneath the mask, a personality inhibited by events is just wasted or wasting, festering, infected with the germs of hurt, anger or isolation. Just as flesh softens, hardens and heats up, hiding the puss just under the skin until the boil bursts in a thick, grey, putrid flow, so our hurts fester behind the mask until it is torn away in a realisation for one partner that truth is health, and for the other a realisation that the truth is (or is not) welcome; living with a mask is tolerable. Living with truth is heaven or hell! 

Schizophrenia, that frightening term for those with split personality is often misused by amateurs like me. So few of us suffer from this maladie, but we seek comfort in the divisions we hide. Having two sides may provide comfort and security, and with practice may even become almost perfect. How many partnerships follow this model? At work or at home, so many crave an audience, needing appreciation, gaining satisfaction to sustain a mask. So many others see themselves as misunderstood. For others, the mask slowly becomes reality and one side of the split personality disengages as the other comes to dominate. 

What does all this mean? Which is our true self? If the cap fits, wear it! If not, be grateful for peace of mind and heart!

The Green Agenda

Fukushima may yet be a name we all learn to speak, not because it is the surname of a Japanese politician, the current chair of the Social Democratic Party of Japan, but because of its impact on the green agenda here in the UK! 

Fukushima, an atomic power electricity generating station on the east coast of Japan, is built on bedrock, just as such complexes are in the UK. There the similarity ends as the UK does not have the range of active tectonic plates off and around Japan but this will not be relevant in the debate on government proposals to expand the UK's nuclear generating capacity. Bedrock, intended to be the factor which makes the nuclear facility "safe", has proved a liability in an earthquake zone just as other factors, maybe remoteness of location or sophisticated technology will prove ultimately to be the failings of the UK model. Everything man-made is fallible; everything natural has its day. Harmony between the two is possible, even likely, but never eternal. 

As we say, every dog has its day, and nature has a way of proving its omnipotence …… it always bites back .... in the end!

Nature strikes back?

I guess Aborigine, Maori or other indigenous peoples of "under-developed" regions would make the connection between natural disaster and dramatic changes in the equilibrium of the world's resources? I have to ask if there is a connection between today's earthquake and tsunami and the speed of the North's consumption and abuse of our finite world. Maybe this question is conceived in my belief that blame for the world's failings can be mostly laid at the feet of capitalism (there are instances of the combination of nationalism and socialism having similar failings!) However the unity of nature, the Earth at peace with itself, the sort of allegory which the film Avatar portrayed, these are long-held traditions of animist belief ... that the gods must be assuaged if pestilence and disaster are to be minimised. 

So where do BP and the supranational companies stand? What of the increasing influence of the political right? How about the domination of the media by Murdoch and his friends? Will these groups question our trusteeship of this world? Or will they continue to spout ideological platitudes about trickle down, ending poverty, the development cycle and the morality of the market? 

Meanwhile nature confirms its ambivalence about when and where it challenges humankind; and the West has been asked the question more in the last year or so than for some time ...... from New Orleans to New Zealand, from Queensland to Japan. Like the gentle breeze, my words are lost in the ether, but we have to answer the question, not simply ask it!

An Empty Tube?

Vauxhall to Waterloo takes just eleven minutes on a good day but to look at my fellow travellers during the rush hour this evening, few had had a good day! From their silence, the lack of conversation, the total absence of eye contact, the unhelpfulness of those with no regard for fellow travellers looking for a space to stand not sit, or somewhere to place a bag, it's clear that Cameron's "big society" has little chance in the south-east where the prevailing isolation and apparent self-reliance of my colleagues on the Tube is a foundation of quicksand for his brave new world! 

I'm told that the human race is gregarious; not much evidence of this on the London tube. In fact, the very opposite may be true, a race of isolates, maybe the consequence of generations of inbreeding influenced by the political bigotry of the right wing media? Yes, I do that see that link as logical, that years of living on a diet of the abuse of society, selfishness, and intolerance of the less fortunate leaves communities bereft of spirit, afraid of teamwork and prisoners of intolerance. We reap what we sow said the prophet.

Well, it will take more than eleven years of reflection to begin to challenge my eleven minute judgement on those who travel by tube. By then I will be seventy-nine years young and I Hope still taking an alternative view!

The Graveyard of Ambition

Ambition is a young person's game; it fills their minds, hearts and days with dreams of what might be and how to change the world. For the middle-aged, ambition is reality, success or failure! Where am I? In what job? At what level? Living with whom? And the kids!! Wow! What have I done ..... or should it be what I have done? And what did I not do, what omissions, what pain inflicted, how many hurtful words uttered on the plank of ambition? Such questions become increasingly pointless with advancing age. And so it was that .......... today I bought a grave, mine, my home to be! 

A grave is a refuge, a hiding place in which a body resides, slowly and securely decomposing and returning to whence it came, a painless process requiring no energy, no activity and no ambition. A grave is also a retreat for and from those who love you, somewhere where they can keep you safely while their emotions cool. My grave was sunny and warm today with the noise of a motorway just a short distance away. Just 900mm wide and 2500mm deep, there will be no escape, just the certainty, not of eternal rest, but just seventy-five years before anyone is allowed to disturb me. 

So what ambition is this, to lie comfortably in my grave? Ah, think on reader; this is the ambition of someone who cares, who dares to have a view about life at and after death. I want to be buried; it is a safe departure, a comforting transition from death to memory. I want family and friends to enjoy the cartharsis of burial rather than the avoidance of reality in the escapism of cremation. Not only should I be lowered gently into my grave but those who mourn me and even the inquisitive must each must take a spade and backfill that grave, enjoying the resonance of clay on coffin, the echo of an empty box. 

And those who are there to check that I really am dead, they too can turn a sod or two and get their satisfaction. I do not care! So my ambition on this Ash Wednesday is not to penance and wish misery on those around me; my ambition is to live life to the full so that when my day comes and the grim reaper grips me by the shoulder, I will simply say, "Peace friend, I'm ready to say hello to my future."

I write therefore I am!

Nearly two years since I published on my blog and so much wasted time! My thoughts on so many issues lost forever into that empty abyss which swallows creativity, ambition, reflection and analysis. What shame! Lost opportunities are the stuff of life for so many, me especially! Here I am, sixty-eight years old and with so little time left compared with my life to date. I feel about thirty-five but one day soon, my body will begin to fail even if my mind continues; vice-versa would be even worse ..... an empty brain rattling around in a declining body .... ugh! I keep meeting people from my past .... how much have I lost .... or remembering events from long ago .... a bit like my life passing before my eyes ..... a warning that the grim reaper is waiting in the wings. Let's hope he (or is it a she?) stays in the green room rather than coming on stage! 

Watching The King's Speech this evening, I thought back to that day (02/02/52?) when the headteacher came into class, made us stand and announced "The King is dead!" First we prayed, and then we had to say "Long live the Queen!" The world continues and so do we .... most of the time, while one by one we fall off the edge of this flat earth and into an abyss, forever lost in a dark and spiritless void. Shall I write each day? Will my thoughts continue to litter this failing world, yet another environmental disaster .... words wasted, useless words, pointless words, hurtful words which cause offence, kind and loving words which miss their target, words lost on the wind, words misunderstood and words not heard. 

The world does not listen to me. Having no audience should tell me that I have nothing to say!

The first day in the rest of my life?

The inspection had ended at 1300 on Friday and I had spent the weekend in the garden and with the family. Monday morning now, and where am I? On a train to the big smoke for two days of assessment and report writing ..... and thought I had retired .... again!!

The train carriage is half empty, but also half full of slightly overweight middle-aged businessmen and smart young women making their way in the world. It looks and sounds like a two-way ladder with seriously boring guys pompously and pretentiously working with laptops and piles of paper, while aspiring and assertive (largely) women, clearly better organised, listen to their ipods and read the financial pages. Quite a contrast!

And in this melee, where am I? With a foot on both sides of the ladder? Who can tell? Certainly not me!

I tried to think this through but we are in Rugby already, more than halfway to London in just over the hour; the speed of life today! And here I am musing yet again! What would my favourite poet Donne make of this dilemma? Or tycoon, Alan Sugar? Or Paul of Tarsus? I sometimes think that I am thoughtful like Paul, but he was never confused; maybe he was like me? Reading him, I do believe that he was trapped with a personal issue he never describes; his theology may be sound, but his life seems to indicate a tension he never details.

Alan Sugar would not be where I am; no tensions for him, no train either! he is the exemplification of clarity, direction and judgement, underpinned with confidence in his own abilities. He really is the consummate professional, having faults but being wrong not being one of them.

So I am left with Jonne Donne, that sensitive and jesuitical poet with a resolution to every quandary, even if he does not share it, an answer to every tension, a solution to every problem! Whether his poem is compromise or conclusion, the outcome is always final, secure and unquestioned. At the "mingling of bloods" nothing stays the same, nor can the old world return; it changes everything ... for ever!


Marke but this flea, and marke in this,
How little that which thou deny'st me is;
Me it suck'd first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled bee;
Confesse it, this cannot be said
A sinne, or shame, or losse of maidenhead,

Yet this enjoyes before it wooe,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than wee would doe.


Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
When we almost, nay more than maryed are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,
And cloysterd in these living walls of Jet.

Though use make thee apt to kill me,
Let not to this, selfe murder added bee,
And sacrilege, three sinnes in killing three.


Cruell and sodaine, has thou since
Purpled thy naile, in blood of innocence?
In what could this flea guilty bee,
Except in that drop which it suckt from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and saist that thou
Find'st not thyself, nor mee the weaker now;

'Tis true, then learne how false, feares bee;
Just so much honor, when thou yeeld'st to mee,
Will wast, as this flea's death tooke life from thee.

John Donne

Of Posties, Politics and the letter P

I should look in the dictionary at words beginning with the letter P. How many there are I don’t know, nor whether P words are more numerous than those with different initial letters. What I do know is that it’s possible to reflect on the world in which we live by using definitions of P words as indicators of the state of our planet. The Postie was completing his walk the other day, an introspective man committed to his job of delivering letters parcels and junk mail with relentless efficiency but not at great speed; the sort of man who clearly avoids conversation and is happy with his lot. No great pretensions, just the bustle of a job needing to be done. The Postie oozes confidence and determination; he is focused, never raising his eyes nor looking left or right, he will not catch your eye and hates responding to those who greet him, but a man with a mission. Would that more were like him! 

So what of this Postie (“le facteur” for my French readers)? He made me think about the Press and Politics, of Pride and Poverty, of Paranoia, of Protest. An odd world in which we live, where the life-blood of the Press is the destruction of Politicians and the reduction of the Public to consumers of cynicism. An odd world in which we live where Politicians are and are seen as the Purveyors of greed. An odd world in which we live, where Pride in personal achievement is so often ridiculed while celebrities are made famous only for their fame. An odd world too where the Poverty of the South and East is largely ignored by the West. A world in which Paranoia is a defence for crime, where Protest is a cover for brutality by police officer and anarchist alike. 

I may be doing my postie a disservice, but I half envy him his abstraction from the world, his introspection. Content with his own thoughts, he has no need for or interest in the Vox Populi; independent and autonomous, he seems unaffected by the burdens of the economy, debt and the need to be nihilistic. Or maybe I have misread my postie; maybe it is these very burdens which make him the man he is. I will never know as intrude into his private hell I never will!