Yesterday I deleted my blog because someone said something that offended me. Today I think I will hide my profile; possibly reinstating it tomorrow but without a profile pic. Tomorrow I will probably write a blog about another blogger who said something to me in one of my blogs that I didn’t like. I won’t actually mention their name but I will leave enough clues to make it very clear who I am having a tantrum over. After a day or two, if I’m feeling up to it, I might put my picture back on my profile. But then, out of the blue, will come my announcement that I am leaving the site forever, due to my total disillusionment with the human race, particularly its representatives who are members of this site.
But what I will never, ever, ever do, is take this place too seriously.
The building firm I used to be with did a lot of work for a country estate. There is a village attached to the estate and its old stone buildings are in constant need of repair or renovation, between tenants. One such property was No. 1 Main Street. This large stone cottage had been occupied by a retired couple, but, after her husband’s death, the wife had been asked to move into a smaller property.
The cottage needed a lot of work. We replaced all the plumbing, wiring and central heating, renewed most of the woodwork and replastered here, there and everywhere. We were on that job for two or three months.
On such long term jobs we would set aside a room for lunch breaks, where we would all sit at “snap time”, eating our snap. One lunchtime, while snapping in the winter gloom of that room, I had a sudden awareness of movement out on the landing, but by the time I had turned my head to look, all was still. There was an almost identical occurrence the next day.
On the afternoon of the second incident I was working outside when one of the locals came walking down the road. Bob was one of several villagers who I was on speaking terms with, after having worked in the village for a few years. When Bob got to the garden gate he stopped and shouted something like, “they’re keeping you busy, then”; I replied with a witty comment that didn’t come out quite right and left me feeling like a knob, but Bob was kind enough not to notice.
While we were chatting, I asked Bob what he knew about the history of the cottage; it turned out he could tell me quite a lot about it. Most of what he told me was just of passing interest but when he started to talk about an incident that happened there in the 1930s my interest became heightened.
Back then the cottage was home to the estate head gamekeeper and his wife. Two or three times a week the gamekeeper would go out in the middle of the night and lay in wait, on the lookout for poachers after his pheasant. He shared this duty with his two assistant gamekeepers, each taking different nights. He also, unknowingly, shared his wife with one of them, who would nip round to his place on the nights he was on watch.
It was on such a night that the head keeper cut his watch short, owing to not feeling well. His early return gave rise to much alarm, and the panic stricken assistant bolted like a scared rabbit, only to come face to face with the last man on Earth he wanted to come face to face with, standing at the top of the stairs. In his frenzied eagerness to be somewhere else, he made a lunge for the stairs, only to go headlong down them and arrive at the bottom with a broken neck and dead.
Some animals can do amazing things, but no matter what an animal’s speciality, there is usually something else that is almost as good at it. A cheetah can leave most other animals standing but a gazelle can give it a run for its money. With humans and their brainpower, though, nothing even comes close. Because of this huge gulf between us and all other living creatures we tend to think of ourselves as being very special. And we are very special; our immensely superior intelligence has enabled us to dominate our world unchallenged. Does our position at the top of the pecking order entitle us to think that nature, the Universe or God -if you must- has marked us out for a singular destiny?
In reality we seem just as subject to natural phenomena as everything else. We are no less susceptible to illness and disease than any other living thing; we are affected by gravity and every other law of physics just like anything else is. We die and decompose just like any other organism. Yet, many of us believe we have an exclusive union with some sort of spiritual dimension, and think that after death something wonderful is in store for us.
But why do we believe these things when the logical faculties we rely on every day to survive, and on which we are completely dependent, have to be suspended in order to do it? Besides intelligence, we also have imagination to tempt us into promoting hope over experience; perhaps that’s why some of us prefer not to settle for the more mundane reality.
The beliefs of some are fantastic and varied, and, no doubt, can be life enriching. I’m not at all spiritual, that’s probably why I don’t get it when people talk about souls and cosmic energies that need to be resonated with. Besides, I think our world and nature is already fantastic without projecting a mystical dimension onto it.
I was reading how trees communicate with each other; not by some sort of mystical telepathy, but through the mycelia of fungi and the intricate networks they create in the soil. Not only is that fantastic, it’s real and can be empirically verified. That’s just one of countless amazing discoveries, and we are learning more all the time. Who needs mythology? There’s nothing wrong with revering nature, but why the need to credit it with supernatural qualities to make being in harmony with it feel worthwhile. It’s good to love nature, to be in awe of it and strive to be in tune with it; after all, we are part of it and no more or less important than any other part of it.
Just my perspective.
The view from my window is uninteresting; in fact, after three years of looking at the scene with absolutely nothing happening It had become almost unbearably boring. As with so many things that have to be put up with in this life, my mind’s response was to adjust its tolerance threshold; it did a recalibration of the point where things start seeming to be interesting.
Now I set an alarm on my phone to make sure I don’t miss the man across the square taking his dog for its early evening walkabout. I’ve invented a little game where I try to guess which houses the postman will visit and which ones he’ll miss. The postman usually wins the game; I suspect he has the answers written down somewhere.
Sometimes the parked cars might be in a more interesting configuration than normal, or the bin men may have left the emptied bins cluttering up the pavement more untidily than usual. The unpredictability of such events makes them all the more entertaining when they occur.
A fascinating cloud drifted by the other day, and here’s me complaining that nothing ever happens.
The man at the check out next to mine at the supermarket last Saturday had a funny turn recently; I know that because I heard his wife telling someone. I was glad she wasn’t my wife; I wouldn’t like my funny turns to become public knowledge. For an habitual eavesdropper like me, supermarkets are good places to indulge the habit. Many is the time I have taken longer than necessary to come to a decision about which washing up liquid I most like the look of in order not to miss vital information being exchanged between chatting shoppers, mistakenly thinking they are having a private conversation.
I find women's conversations are the most interesting. Men usually just talk about work or sport, whereas women seem to be more interested in things of a personal nature. It can be quite an eye opener. I often wonder how many thousands of husbands there must be up and down the country under the delusion that their embarrassing medical conditions are family secrets.
If I see someone I know when I am shopping, I usually dodge down the next aisle in order to avoid them. I can’t see the attraction of prolonging my shopping trip by wasting time nattering, but I appreciate those who can.
With quickly advancing robotics technology and artificial intelligence coming on in leaps and bounds, it seems likely that in the foreseeable future most human employment will disappear. It isn’t difficult to envisage a world where the only human role in industry and commerce is that of decision making. It sounds great; no more will anyone have to work for a living, just leisure from the cradle to the grave. But when we no longer have to work for a living, what exactly will ‘a living’ consist of? Or perhaps more to the point, who will provide us with it?
If the technology is in private hands, one has to wonder what incentive those hands have to share its benefits with the masses. What reason would the elite controllers have for not creating a new aristocracy among themselves, and consigning the rest of us back to peasantry? Because peasantry would be of no use to them, that’s the reason. They wouldn’t even need us for the hard labour and menial work that used to be the lot of the peasant. Far more likely they would just exclude us altogether and leave us to fend for ourselves. Back to the Stone Age for us, I fear.
If, however, governments had the foresight to take control of the development and application of all super technology before the opportunity is lost to them, we might be in with a chance of being its beneficiaries after all, because then it would belong to us all. Of course, it would depend on the complexion of any particular government how and what benefits actually were allowed to be enjoyed by the general public. A political philosophy based on the individual and his ability to get on in life wouldn’t really work for anybody in this scenario; after all, no matter how enterprising you were, there would simply be no opportunity to express it. Your talents, no matter how profitable they might once have been, would be required by no one now. In a social sense, we all really would be equal.
It is probably no exaggeration to say that the political decisions we make now will have a bigger impact on our future than has ever before been the case. We need to be putting politicians with a strong social conscience in place now.
Vote Socialist, before it’s too late.
At first, I was daunted at the thought of living on my own. For the previous sixty years of my life I had no need of the rocket science necessary to operate a washing machine, nor the skilful dexterity necessary to neatly fold a fitted bed sheet. When it came to it, I was relieved to find that what I required of myself wasn’t nearly as challenging as I had feared.
The trick is to not be a perfectionist. I learnt that lesson early on and have stuck to the principle rigorously. Another thing I’ve realised is that lots of chores I always assumed to be essential aren’t always even necessary, and can be dispensed with completely. Ironing is one such mystic art that I do not concern myself with; I find that wrinkled clothes not only match my complexion, they also suit my personality.
Regular cleaning is another concept I have debunked. Working out the frequency at which it should be performed confused me to begin with, but I have refined a strategy whereby I can tell when it needs doing by the prominence of the patterns my daily activities have left in the dust on my furniture. My rule is to do something about it within one month of it starting to bother me. My wall calendar enables me to keep track of how long I have exceeded my deadline by.
Cooking seems to be my biggest problem area. Co-ordinating varying cooking times so that everything crosses the finishing line simultaneously can only be coped with when the variants are no more than two in number. Having no one else here to vent my temper on means I need to avoid losing it, so I try to keep things as simple as possible. This makes maintaining an interesting diet difficult, but thanks to patient advice from a much appreciated source, I feel I am making steady progress. Seldom in my life have I felt more proud than when I achieved my first edible risotto.
All in all I don’t think I’m doing too badly. My daughter was amazed; she expected me to be living in squalor and popping out to McDonald’s every night. I think she’s impressed.
It's a great feeling on Friday night, knowing I don't have to get up on Saturday at the same time as I do in the week; yet I always do get up at the same time.
If Doctor Who were on TV, all would be well and good, but if I were watching him, he wouldn’t suddenly become Doctor Whom. The word ‘whom’ is nothing but trouble. Even though the rules governing its use are not complicated, many people continue to use it inappropriately. Even when you know the rules there is still the occasional sentence where it isn’t clear whether a who or a whom belongs in it. Sometimes whom looks wrong even when it’s right, but never, ever, ever looks right when it’s wrong.
I always resist using the word and only give in on the few occasions when its right to be there seems too obvious to deny. I only do it then out of cowardice, not wanting to appear ignorant of correct grammar. Let’s do ourselves a favour and get rid of the clumsy word once and for all; no one would miss it and many would be spared the anxiety of misusing it.
While we’re at it, let’s also outlaw the word ‘genre’, unless French is being spoken, and ‘fora’ as the plural of forum. Sometimes avoiding pretentiousness should take priority over grammar.
I don’t know what they call it these days, but when I was at school, if a boy and girl got together it was called ‘going out with’, as in, Dave is going out with Shirley. I don’t think Dave and Shirley actually did go out with each other; if I remember correctly, Shirley was more interested in Dave’s mate, Phil. People would never ask directly if someone would go out with them, they always did it through a third party. I can’t be sure, but I seem to think it was more usual for the girl to ask the boy, rather than the other way round. I say I can’t be sure because it was never a ritual I was very much involved in. Lack of both self confidence and eligibility saw to that.
The only time I remember joining in the ‘going out with’ game was at the weekly school dance, when one girl decided her friend needed a boyfriend and went prowling round the dance floor asking boys, at random, until one said yes. I’m afraid I was the first idiot to say yes, completely unaware that I was probably the fourth or fifth to be asked.
The next hour had me in a state of bewildered anxiety. To draw an analogy with the old football league table, this girl was probably upper second division, whereas I was middle of the fourth. This mismatch left me feeling completely out of my depth; you don’t jump in at the deep end when you can’t swim.
News travels fast when you would rather it just sit down and stay put. It wasn’t long before someone came and congratulated me; I think he found the situation harder to believe than I did. Someone even gave me advice; a division one boy, actually. These interventions only left me feeling even more out of place, and as the end of the dance got nearer the fear grew stronger.
As I was standing there thinking I would obviously be expected to do something about something when the dance ended, but having no idea what, there, out of nowhere, the girl was standing right in front of me. She looked me straight in the face and said, ‘I don’t want to go out with you,’ and then just walked away. I can still remember the hot tingling sensation that started in my face and then spread to the rest of my body.
Perhaps it was considerate of her to say anything to me at all: she could have just gone straight home after the dance, leaving me to wonder what had happened. All I can say is that it didn’t feel considerate at the time. I suppose we were both victims of her friend’s thoughtless stupidity, although I can’t help feeling I was the most injured casualty of it.
While the incident was devastating at the time, I don’t imagine it had a long lasting effect on me, I was probably over it in a few days. On the other hand, all our experiences go into the mix as our character is forming, although I can’t say how much influence this particular experience had on what was to become the adult me. I still don’t have much self confidence in social situations but I like to think I’m a bit wiser than I used to be. Now, if a woman asked me if I would go out with her friend, I would be a lot more cautious with my answer.
I am subscribed to a website called “indeed”, it’s a jobs website; I’m always on the lookout for employment closer to where I live. I get daily emails from them listing jobs that fit my criteria. In among today's vacancies was this specification:
“You must have first hand experience with 4 point webbing and be able to push and pull heavy wheelchairs and lift heavy meal boxes.”
I don’t remember listing any of this among my skill sets.
The preceding event aren’t important, but after 40 years of having to compromise on so many of the smaller, yet significant, preferences of daily life, I suddenly found myself in a position to indulge my inclinations unimpeded. I could have gone for wine women and song, but, staying faithful to my nature, I was content to merely be free to have both the radio in my car and domestic residence permanently tuned to BBC Radio 4. Along with toast and marmalade, tea, and cricket on the village green, Radio 4 is an indispensable thread in the weave of the fabric of civilisation, or at least my kind of civilisation. I should just mention that even though I don’t have any interest in cricket, it matters to me that it’s there.
But what is it about Radio 4 that I can’t imagine living without?
Radio 4, it seems to me, is predominantly intended to appeal to an educated middle class audience; I am uneducated and working class, so, given my contrary nature, I was bound to like it. Lets take a look at the daily schedule:
06:00. The Today Programme:
The three hour flagship daily news programme. This is my window onto what is happening in the world. Unbiased, accurate and up to the minute reporting. Human prejudice can never be totally eliminated but the BBC news comes as close to impartial as it gets. They don’t always give me as much detail as I would like but I have complete confidence in what they do tell me, except when I haven’t.
10:00. Woman’s Hour
I’ve learnt some interesting stuff on Woman’s Hour. For one thing, I now know that it’s okay to talk about the clitoris at 10:00 a.m. Not that I ever have, but it’s good to know that I could if I wanted to. It can be provocative too. Many is the time I’ve found myself getting worked up at the presenter’s blatant attempts at getting somebody to blame men for something that isn’t exclusively their fault, and then found myself wearing a smirk when the interviewee won’t go along with it.
12:15. You and Yours
Daily consumer rights programme. Usually about electricity prices or pension pot scams. They sometimes have a phone in, when idiots from the general public can tell their stories of how con-men have taken advantage of their stupidity.
14:00. The Archers
Daily soap about a farming community based around the West Midlands village of Ambridge. Absolute crap, yet I still listen.
18:30. Comedy
Half hour comedy slot. Although sometimes second rate, it is more often third rate or drops of the scale altogether.
19:00. Another dose of The Archers.
I can see how Radio 4 might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I love it, it’s so bloody British.
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