Christmas, Cardiff and Impotence

Christmas Day was lovely, the boys were co-operative and we all had nice presents and everyone behaved beautifully.  Our neighbour came in in the midst of present opening which was a bit awkward, as the boys continued opening regardless, so I didn't get to read their excited little faces...Then we went to the beach for a drink and a chat, and mostly chatted with people who'd come around for drinks two nights before - but that was all right!

Then it was home for frantic cooking.  I'd invited A for 2 but he didn't turn up, rather than repeat last year's pointless hanging around, waiting dinner for him, to be polite, I thought we'd have the meal as soon as the turkey was cooked.  So we were sitting down, enjoying our first mouthful at about 2.50 when A arrived.  He claimed he'd thought we were eating at 3.  He had not been paying attention, but no harm there.  So we ate, and enjoyed a reasonably sociable time and A was very smiley and pleasant.  The boys were tolerant.  The huge crackers contained exiguous items... we missed the Queen.  A gave us some very nice pressies, and we gave him something similar back.   He and I had a long talk about Wahabism and Islamophobia etc.  very Christmassy!  He insisted that he would take us out to dinner on 29th to compensate for the long-promised dinner he'd offered to compensate for not turning up at all last year.

On Boxing Day we trekked to Cardiff, getting stuck in terrible traffic only getting as far as Slough by lunch time.  We went to the Palmers' Arms - and sat outside, under an awning.  Unusual in December, but the place was heaving. When we returned to the car we discovered the wing mirror had been smashed and had flown into the road.  M began a rage, I tried to calm him down.  He was pleased because it was my fault. Fortunately I remembered there was a Halfords on the Bath Road and we bought the right mirror and all was well.  We reached Cardiff at nightfall - missing the scenery as we crossed the Severn bridge.

The Campanile hotel had some "sketchy" characters according to Ned and Finn.  The following day at breakfast I realised that the presence of so many, mostly young, men, speaking Arabic couldn't be a coincidence.  Clearly this was also providing emergency housing for refugees.  It was in all other respects a regular Campanile.  Apart from a rabbit warren in the grounds.

We had a good time at Flora's, and went to Cardiff Bay - did a boat trip around the bay in the rain - I nearly died of diesel poisoning - then lunch at Carluccio's, then to Stella and a trip to Cardiff Castle, which was spectacular.  Another nice meal at Flora's, then off to bed, and up again to head for my father's. Feeling sad and trying to make eye contact with the poor droopy refugees, who were suffering 4 days of public holidays with nothing much to do except use their mobiles.

At CP another huge meal, more presents, and total exhaustion.  I would have liked to have a quiet, restful day to recover from all this, but A had insisted on 29th as the day - so we got our togs on and went out. Our lateness was commented on, but I didn't rise to this, he's been late for meals etc at our place so often, that I admit I didn't rush to be punctual on this occasion.  Also, I was v. tired.  All started affably, but after a delay in going to the restaurant, because he'd met a new chap who was clearly more interesting than us, we eventually got to sit down.   He began to speak, he was slagging off various things dear to our hearts, eg "liberal teachers" and museums, subjects on which he is not well informed (although he's an absolute compendium on world news).  Occasionally when his views consisted of massive generalisations, we tried to put a different case.  He began to be irritable, and then accused of Mark being "aggressive" of "raising his voice" although he was in fact the only person doing that.  Eventually he became extremely angry, and after paying the bill and treating us to a final tirade which concluded with the words "It's the white liberals who are the real racists!" he stormed out.   We received sympathetic looks from other diners, I gave them a jokey wave and said "Hi, we're the white liberals!"   They smiled, and order was restored.  We sat there, drinking coffee, mystified by it all.  The way the whole thing had erupted was quite irrational, we had been disagreeing with him, yes, and he'd picked on Mark, rather than me - I frequently disagree with him, but perhaps because I'm a woman my views don't count.

Strangely, the evening confirmed what I'd recently begun to suspect. i.e. that A is suffering from our favourite personality disorder.,  Of course reading about a personality disorder, one immediately begins to see it everywhere, but this one has some very classic symptoms, all of which he manifests to a high degree.  It was remarkably similar to another spat with a friend, who has some similar traits (they affect one percent of the population).

 Our relationship has changed over the last few years, when I first met him I thought he was interesting and a bit lonely, and he asked me to introduce him to nice people.  I did my best to supply nice people, but that didn't seem to take.  He came to endless events at our house, usually late, and often virtually insisted that I visit him. If we went out to a public event, a concert or a play, he would disappear for a fag and never come back.  I found his friendship increasingly oppressive.  While I was occasionally allowed to give advice on some matters, the whole conversation was always about him and his experiences.  I doubt whether the phrases "What have you been up to? Or how is your work/writing going?" have ever been uttered by him in the last 5 years.  I am a polite product of the bourgeoisie, and as a woman I still know what people like A think my place should be... however, I had become tired of it in the last year or so, of having to play a role that has never fitted me.  Why should all our conversations consist of me drawing him out?  I once actually insisted on telling him what I'd been doing... he didn't take the hint.  He used to call me "The most intelligent woman in Ramsgate" - deeply irritating and untrue... one of a group of  bright people, although in my case somewhat fogging up at times.  I certainly didn't let him steamroller me, I would query his statements and get him to revise his generalisations, but somehow, the reality of M and I both doing it was too much for him.   I would like to make it clear that I've never felt any sexual interest in him, and I am quite clear that he only likes young women with "beautiful bosoms" so I would be languishing in vain if I had.. I don't think sexual jealousy is involved, he just didn't like his opinions being questioned, and when he began a rant about Nicholas Serota, I was painfully reminded of the other rant, which focused on another well known public character.  Is jealousy of public figures another symptom?   I need a good book on the subject.

Why did I use the word impotence in the title?  I suppose it's because for some years I thought I could cheer this guy up (he is often depressed and unwell, and this elicited some sympathy) and help him towards the more sociable time he claimed to want.  I realise  now in the face of his condition, that nothing can be done.  Sitting and attempting to converse with him has resulted in mounting frustration, and now, perhaps with some relief, dissolution.  I am angry with myself for not having used the time more constructively.   However, I can certainly sublimate him into a book, so all is not lost!  I almost know where he will fit in, there is definitely something Balzacian about him!

Thanksgiving

I don't do Thanksgiving - being a Brit - and I have tried to keep a gratitude diary (I think on here) but it ran out of steam.  It was a bit repetitive and I got bored:, health, nice house, influx of money, by having these things as a given and not feeling the lack of them, it tended to shift the focus onto the things I wanted, that I hadn't got, such as a publishing contract, and a clear brain every day!  So it stopped being very thanksgiving. Today I saw one of my cousin's blog about Thanksgiving
https://sophiecaldecott.wordpress.com/2015/11/27/how-to-feel-grateful-when-you-dont-think-you-can/

I think her idea about a "beauty blog" is a good one. It reminded me of when I was depressed, and I finally realised that I was coming out of it when I started to notice small things, like a sparrow hopping along a station platform, spring flowers etc.  It is those small things that recall one to life, and make one spontaneously grateful for beauty and small happinesses and the wonder of things such as loosestrife. 

Cultural diary

I have been out a bit recently.   I am not going to go into detail, but I have seen the following.

The film "Suffragette" which I liked more than the critics, because - hello? - it's not a history, it's the film equivalent of an historical novel, so is allowed to appeal to our emotions and depict misery and injustice and get us worked up about it.

The film "The Lobster" which is not to be recommended if your marriage is less than robust.  It is funny and also horrifying.   Worth seeing.

The operatorio "Saul" about which I have been almost incandescent.  The singing and music were glorious, but the production, by Glyndeborne is totally absurd and bore little relation to the music, the words, or the intentions of the composer.  Handel would have been gobsmacked (even if delighted to see it still being performed).

The film "Straight out of Compton" which we took Finn to, a rare opportunity to go to the cinema en famille.  I enjoyed it a lot, and found Dr Dre a particularly appealing character.  Mercifully, a friend explained that Dr Dre has a lot of form as a wife beater, and isn't that nice really, thus ensuring that the best biopic traditions of airbrushing inconvenient truths are being upheld.  The film was a little overlong, but enjoyable.

The film "The Lady in the Van" which was simply enjoyable, great cast and acting, lovely familiar scenes of North London, and Broadstairs - what's not to like?  Specially enjoyed the overheard comment (at another screening) "I didn't know Alan Bennet had a twin brother".

The exhbition "Goya: The Portraits" which includes this picture of "The Dowager Marchioness di Villafranca" - a beautiful picture, this is from a reproduction on a board outside the National Gallery.  The 24 year olds who compile the catalogue notes describe it as "A moving demonstration of his ability to portray old age with respect and sympathy."   To me this looks like a fabulous portrait of an intelligent, interesting woman.  What's with the old age?  She's probably only in her 50s and looks better than sprightly!  

Islam and Christianity not quite the same - shock!

Devastating and loathesome though the Paris shootings were, with implications that will extend far into the future I fear (just as their roots lie some way in the past), the aspect that has struck me is the one which effects me personally.

My chief sources of news and opinion are Radio 4 and Facebook.  Facebook has been full of (a) pious quotes from the Quran, and people saying, yet again, that Islam is a religion of peace  and (b) The posts saying all religions are equally wicked and the cause of all human misery, and the #PrayforParis thing is rubbish because prayers are just nonsense.

I agree with the (a) because belief systems were created, inter alia, to ensure stable societies and promote harmonious co-existence. All religions would probably make that claim.  Sometimes they did this by excluding dangerous elements (foreigners, infidels, homosexuals, adulterous women for example) which they felt would disrupt their societies.   I disagree with (b) the "Christianity is just as bad" idea that often accompanies these posts. I don't recall organised Christian terrorists massacring lots of people (no, the crusades don't count, they were 800 years ago, I'm talking about now).   A lot of the people who are promoting the "Islam is a religion of peace" idea on FB are not themselves Muslim, but actually secularists.    It seems that no one on the left in the UK either likes, or, more significantly, knows much about, Christianity, especially its history and development.

My politics are informed by my Christianity and vice versa.  Religions are formed by cultures and cultures are shaped by religions, they are interdependent, and I am sure there has been plenty of better-informed stuff written on this topic.

I personally believe we would not have had the Enlightenment without the teaching of Jesus and St Paul saying "In Christ there is neither slave nor free, neither male nor female" or words to that effect - i.e. that we were all equal, indistinguishable in value and significance.  The much derided and seldom read Bible, provided a great deal of the intellectual underpinning of the beginnings of the Enlightenment.  Its translation into the vernacular brought about immense intellectual changes for ordinary people.

Christianity was about 16-1700 years old when its Enlightenment began.  We had to do it ourselves, intellectually, creating new thinking about human relationships, economics, religion etc.  We did not have anyone else's ideas to work on (obviously erratic classical philosophers had come up with one or two ideas that were recognised anew during this period).   Nevertheless, we created a Europe (and, subsequently, to a lesser extent, a "Western World") where these values became dominant as we gradually trudged towards where we are now.  It was not, and is not, all onwards and upwards.  In the UK for example we have had a terrible regression in the last 30 years (which is nothing to do with religion!).

Islam - which like Christianity - is made up of diverse sects with differing beliefs, is only about 1300 years old now.  If it were starting from scratch we  might not expect an Enlightenment in the immediate future.   However, the example of Western Enlightenment could offer some pointers, even if a lot of Islam doesn't want to accept the whole package. Unfortunately, in many Muslim countries, a wholehearted desire for liberal democracy is something of a minority interest.  In addition, there is the fundamentalism of certain groups such as the Wahabi, which is encouraging people to stay in their boxes, not to get out and look around and see what the world has to offer, to see how their religion could be enriched and enhanced by adopting more liberal attitudes.   The phrase "live and let live" doesn't seem to be widespread in this worldview.   This form of intolerant Islam is spreading through Africa and Asia.  It is a form only supported by tiny minorities in Western Europe, but like all extreme forms of thinking it is often seen as having more integrity or authenticity by idealistic young people.  It seems to me that not enough commentary has focused on the very recognisable tendency of some young people to search for "truth" - to want something to believe in that is pure and uncompromising, and that just as some of us find it on the far left/anarchism/evangelical or charismatic religious practice/far right-racial purity etc. others will find it in extreme Islamism . It is probably not going to stand the test of time.  Any young Islamist who doesn't die for the cause will probably grow up have a family and settle down... just as most "teenage delinquents" turn into good citizens.  A lot of the moral panic about British teenagers fighting for Daesh is exaggerated.  At the same time, elsewhere there is definite evidence of an Islamic Enlightenment getting underway - and perhaps this is why the extremists are fighting so hard, they need to win before the whole thing slips out of their fingers

I have written elsewhere about the idea of a caliphate, as a Golden Age, a utopian world where people lived according to the Quran.   But it seems that Daesh are not just wanting to bring in this Golden Age, but also to ensure the destruction of everyone else in the process.  In fact some of them are behaving like a Doomsday cult.  Like the Jonestown people, they kill themselves when they are in danger of capture.  A good many of them are not even devout Muslims - any more than the UVF were probably keen churchgoers either.  It is chilling because a lot of this stuff is happening in the area where the Book of Revelation prophesied Armageddon (well, a couple of 100 miles away). I do not take that seriously as a prophecy... nevertheless, it is hard to escape from the resonance.

For all sorts of reasons it looks as if there will be some sort of war with Daesh.  It will not be easy to pick them off, the collateral damage will be appalling, so many innocent people will be killed, and yet, part of me wants us to go and duff them up as quickly and effectively as possible.  Not because I support the idea of war, but simply out of desperation, they are so appalling, they are intellectually enslaving and imprisoning people, denying them any sort of free will (a theological concept!), that most Europeans feel "they must be stopped!".  It's hard to see what else we can do, yes, arm the Kurds, get in more training, advice and whatever else will help.  Bombing probably not the best thing, but let's find what works.  In the words of the archetypal taxi driver "it's the only language these people understand!"




Transgender  equiv to transnational stuff - if you are brought up French but live in England all your adult life - what are you?

Moribund cat

On Hsllowe'en an old, manky, black and white cat came and sat outside the kitchen door in the little area next to the kitchen loo.  Finn gave her some food and said she looked ill.   The next morning she was still there, food untouched.  I noticed she was breathing strangely, and was sure she was dying. She had a worn red plaited collar with a bell on it, but no address (well, cats don't do they).  I looked at her sadly, but had no idea what to do.  She wasn't ours, so what could we do?  It was clearly to late for the vet.  A bit later she shifted, and I thought perhaps she was feeling better.   Then she went, but only into the darkness of the outside loo.  Later she disappeared, and I was rather glad, that she had clearly gone off somewhere else to die.
There just was something rather depressing about it, that a creature will come to your house to die.  I know cats do this, Aphra went off somewhere else to die, so someone else must have found her and disposed of her body.  It is also the fact that you can't offer any comfort apart from a little stroke or scratch.  I didn't want to pick her up, because of the way she was breathing, I though it might cause pain.  I also feel sad for her owners, who probably realise what's happened, but would still have liked, perhaps, to tend her through the last hours.  So now she is in the great catnip fields where she may frolic at will.... I have never really thought animals had an afterlife - but dog owners in particular are vehement on this topic.  .  

ASDA be improved!

ASDA: I bought a case of wine on Thursday - it was to be delivered on Friday - Yodel didn't deliver, so I had to check their website.  Yodel said it had been "damaged" (is that delivery-speak for redistributed and drunk?).  The explanation said ASDA would contact me. They hadn't by Saturday morning, so  I emailed ASDA - no reply. 

Today they call, saying that they cannot let me collect a replacement case from the shop, as I had suggested. 

Why not?

 " We can't change a delivery to click and collect".

 Oh, so I have to cancel my order and do it again? 

"Yes, we can offer you a refund and the money will be in your account in 3-5 days." 

I pointed out that if I went into the supermarket and paid them £52 I would not expect to wait 4 days for my groceries, and then another 5 days while they organised the refund, so why was this different? 

Apparently they have refunded me, but if I could buy that wine anywhere else, I wouldn't be using ASDA - and I will certainly avoid Yodel again at all costs - last time they were involved in a delivery it was the M&S Mother's day snarl-up.

 

THIS AFTERNOON's EPISODE OF "YOU & YOURS" WAS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE LETTER A. 

Here endeth the rant!.

Measure for Measure at the Globe - Shakespeare & Dante

It's so long since I saw a Shakespeare play. I realise I've probably seen more Mozart operas in the last 20 years than I've seen Shakespeare plays - in fact, I can only remember seeing one - a delightful outdoor production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in the grounds of a castle in the Lot in France.  Most of the audience were ex pat Brits and Hollanders.   I never managed to go to the Globe before, and it was a pretty good experience.  We sat in a box beside the stage, so saw the performance from the rear, but it was excellent acoustically and we didn't really miss much.

MfM is a play I've never studied, but I saw it in the 80s at the NT in an all black production, with lots of then famous black actors like Norman Beaton and Rudolph Walker in it, and Bertice Redding as well as Frank Singuineau, who was my special friend when I worked there.  I began to read it on the train and I realised how dense the language in the first scene is - it was a bit like reading Latin, I got the gist of it, but I had to pay great attention to actually "translate" it.  Later on it's easier, but the first scene is off-putting for a child like Finn (18 next week) who has only read one Shakespeare play before.   I find this hard, he is at a grammar school, I was at a grammar school, but we used to read  one or 2 Shakespeare plays a year, I can almost remember what they all were.  Roughly, from Y7 onwards we read: MSND, Julius C, Macbeth, Merchant of Venice, Richard III, Twelfth Night, something else and Romeo & Juliet.  This meant by the time we approached public exams we had a great deal of Shakespeare under our belts, and were familiar with the language.   Poor Finn finds this very difficult, but then again, because he doesn't read he doesn't know words like "rebuttal" and "exonorate", which at his stage in the Upper 6th I was probably using regularly in essays.  What can I say?  He's just not that interested.  It's not his thing, I was under the illusion that because his intellectual mechanism worked like mine, that he would want to use it to create a vast world view, but he doesn't.

So, back to MfM - it is full of good things, like all Shakespeare.  The text was a bit chopped about, and it isn't as full of familiar phrases as some of them are.  One thing I particularly noticed was in Claudio's speech to Isabella when he tells her how much he fears the afterlife.  (Act 111, Sc. 1)

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible!

These images seem to have been whipped from Dante - some at least of the punishments of the variously damned in the Inferno.   Which led me to ask, did Shakespeare know Dante?  He presumably knew Boccacio, because I think some of his plays are based on stories from the Decameron, and perhaps knew Petrarch because of his influence on the sonnet, but Dante?  If one even asks if Shakespeare knew Italian, 1000s of people will start hurling aspersions and claims around, so I won't think of that.   I also suppose that Dante's images of hell probably weren't entirely original (in fact that idea of an icy hell is meant to be some kind of racial memory of the last Ice Age).  A lot of them may have been derived from theological writers.  It does suggest though, how well entrenched Catholic theology still was in the culture.   And if makes one think tantalisingly about that theory that WS was in fact a secret Catholic.  

MfM is set in Vienna, which has a Duke.  I am not totally sure, but I associate 16thC Vienna with being the centre of the Holy Roman Empire in this period, it has certainly always been a very Catholic city, and remains so.  Therefore Catholicism is suggested throughout the play - Friars etc. of course.  The issues of damnation and punishment in the afterlife are very present, and one is reminded forcibly, how people lived in greater fear of eternal punishment than anything that could be inflicted on earth.  

Another thought occurs, WS uses friars a good deal in the comedies, but less often does he use regular clergy.  Of course there are lot of political clerics (bishops, etc.) in his history plays, and I think there may be a priest in one of the comedies, but in fact he steers well away from the regular clergy.  This is just slightly interesting in an era when Catholic clergy had to hide in England, and where the Anglican clergy were perhaps not as firmly established as the State would have liked.  If it is true that WS was a secret Catholic, you can see that tension in there - "don't mention the priests!"... but friars are a different matter.  While they later developed a terrible reputation for lechery (even I have once had my hand over-squeezed by a Capuchin), they were, despite their commitment to the poor and the marginalised (the prison visiting in the play) also, to some extent, figures of fun.  It is quite a clever thing, turning the Duke into a friar.  He subverts the secular power of the Duke, reducing him to insignificance and poverty, while at the same time, by taking on the role of a religious, the Duke is able to bless people, and his wisdom is somehow divinely sanctioned.  There is thus a sense that he is almost a theocratic ruler.  This could have been conveyed better, had Dominic Dromgoole (the director) not decided to camp the Duke up quite a lot.  But there's a lot of that.  

Because I am an insanely humourless old trout I rather wished for less vulgarity.  There is plenty in the play - but it was very much played for laughs.  Yes, it is a comedy - but... I had tears in my eyes during the final scene when Isabella pleads for Angelo... this is divine forgiveness in human form.  It was wonderful. 

Leon Brittan - choose a belief.

I guess one has a vested interest in believing what one believes.  I've been thinking about the Leon Brittan issue for years.  I always believed that he was a paedophile, because someone trustworthy told me.  One hears a lot of things, particularly if you are, or mix with, journalists.  Some of them are clearly rubbish, conspiracy theories etc.  Some of them are feasible, but one questions them.  Somethings have the "ping" of truth about them.  That was certainly what I got when I heard about Jimmy Savile, even though the man who told me was in PR.  He worked for charities and had to know who to steer clear of, who was too risky, who might besmirch his clients' good names.  I think he also told me about Leon Brittan - or was  it someone else?  For whatever reason, I always believed it was true about Leon Brittan, whereas I never believed the same story about Gordon Brown.

Tonight Panorama broadcast a programme discussing how LB was probably gravely maligned by a terminally confused lad, and that chap Chris, the former social worker, who has been on the trail of this Establishment vice ring for years.  Chris always seemed very plausible when I've seen him interviewed, but now it is revealed that he's done time for fraud.  So, while this doesn't mean he isn't telling the truth, it certainly casts a lot of doubt.  Various former victims' evidence was found to be suspect ranging to fantasy.  It all becomes a question of belief.  They have come to believe this, even though people like Harvey Proctor stoutly deny it happened.  HP had a terrible reputation in the past, and Private Eye made various comments about him; some gay man I worked with also told me something about him which I cannot remember, but the gist of which was that he was not a strictly vanilla person - it was probably some S&M thing - which in those days was frowned on but now seems to be every other modern person's quirky habit.

Children in homes, traumatised and obviously being given unpleasant times, often by staff, are probably liable to create false memories.  The worst thing was a  man who had been interrogated by the police about his miserable past, and who said that it had destroyed all his defences against his bad memories, and left him more vulnerable.  He was a very credible, sensible witness, who seemed to lack a lot of the (not unreasonable) self-pity of a lot of these former child victims.

The fact is, like the police, I know nothing - I believe what I was told years ago, and now wonder about it.  I could say "it's all a conspiracy"  - the Establishment are undermining the credibility of these victims and their spokesman to protect themselves - but why protect them?  Half of them are dead anyway - why shouldn't these individuals be prosecuted?  It's certainly convenient for them that these questions are being asked.  I do find the police modus operandi in these cases very odd.  But it was so long ago, a lot of people are dead now, it's hard to find evidence.  It is never going to be proved one way or another.  It remains a matter of belief.

Not exactly Quotidian...

--- not even hebdomadal just at present.  I don't know why the blog has slacked off, probably spending too many hours dulling my senses with computer games.  Sigh.  Last week felt like a week of achievement, since I started by taking up the gauntlet with The Ash Grove/Conscience  and worked very hard on beginning the edit/re-write of that. Mark went off to Cambridge on Tuesday and I did a lot of washing and cleaning and housework, and sorting things out during the rest of the week.  I also continued to work on the book, but have only got as far as p.60.  I had quite a social time too, the evening occasional book group, and then the day time book group both gathered here, so there has been a lot of literary chit-chat.  We were reading Maugham's Cakes and Ale, which I enjoyed enormously.  A new member of the group had heard (through Whitstable grapevine) that Maugham "hated women".  I told them how he had visited Elfie and Arthur (M's grandparents) in Malaysia and had been pretty unpleasant.  Someone commented that the Graham Sutherland portrait told you all you needed to know about him.

The other thing that happened, on Wednesday, was, having struggled to do something serious about weight loss since about April, I finally arrived in the "zone".  I joined WW online and bought some new superior scales.  I then set about dieting.  I am trying to keep this reasonable, but weirdly, I must have clicked, since I am barely eating my allocation of food, let alone all the extras you are allowed.  This was a struggle last time - but as I am drinking far less now, it's all become a lot easier.  Finn and I ate simple meals and chatted a bit.  Must sort out his driving lessons.  I went shopping and bought food for the Salvation Army food bank.  What else?  Dunno - there was Labour Party stuff and Facebook stuff.  It was not an especially exciting week, but it felt like I was "getting somewhere".

Spent the weekend catching up with Tara at the Vinyl Head cafe, where I saw they were selling one of my Miles Davis LPs for £35 - I suppose eventually I will have to sell these, perhaps should do this now while it's still fashionable.  We had a good chat mostly about work, and what our plans were. We are both trying to work in a more structured way.  Not quite 9-5, but I think to work solidly in the mornings, say 8.30 to 1.30 would get things going.  The trouble is, I really ought to be working on a lot of different projects, rather than just one at a time.  I will start a script version of TMOF.  I have also been putting the finishing touches to the spare room, which now - repainted and re carpeted looks absolutely fab.  Sod's law we won't have any visitors for 4 months!    We have now, finally, begun to sort out the "lobby".  This is effectively a doorless cupboard that occurs just before the kitchen.  It was once a narrow passage that led to the "conservatory" and I suspect if I ever get housebound and have the money, it will become my loo/wetroom... but for the last 12 years it has been a sort of broom cupboard.  It is tongue and grooved,but in varnished red pine, not original.  The ceiling was crumbly plasterboard.  I suggested we just brush it down and stick up lining paper.  It looks wonderful already.

 Mark did all this, I was in the garden struggling with this year's crop of perennial weeds.   Jack by the hedge and nasty little geums are taking a hold, and the vinca alba is a nightmare.  I moved around the cephalaria gigantea, which is getting a bit overwhelmed by the rose Mme Alfred Carriere.  I was wearing a tight skirt, and had to take frequent breaks from bending.  It was beautiful warm day, sunny, and very, very still.  We were going to go for a walk at Reculver, but things took too long.  I failed to defrost the supper in time (our microwave went phut a while back and we haven't been keen to replace it) so we had evil fish and chips, and watched telly where a "self-taught archaeologist" was searching for Cleopatra's tomb.  Underwhelming evidence for it.  Or rather, a lot of circumstantial evidence that would have been equally true of any Isidaeum in Egypt at that period.  There may well be something there, but probably not Cleopatra.

I should have gone out to see some avant-garde films, but I didn't.  Not in the mood.

There, that's a brief review of my everyday life - thrilling isn't it?  Housewife dilettante just about sums it up.

Jeremy Corbyn is a Quaker

This is my conclusion since he will not wear formal or expensive clothes, but enjoys simplicity in dress; he is a pacifist and the child of pacifists; and he will not bend the knee to anyone - not the Queen for example.  This sounds suspiciously like a secret Quaker.

Not that being a "Quaker" in this sense, implies religious belief or anything like that.  It's more a state of mind that certain people adopt.  A non-conformity to the Establishment and its values.  This gets up the Establishment's nose more than anything.  They don't mind satirists sneering at them, because when people are slagging them off, it means they matter. But these "quakers" are just ignoring them, and going their own way.  Establishment values clearly do not matter in the least to JC.

What not to wear to the Cenotaph.

Chris Mullin described him as being "rather saintly".  I think that's going a bit far, probably, what JC is, is unworldly.  The world laughs at the unworldly, and not kindly.  He is in trouble with the media, with the formerly important members of the party, with the terminally stuffy who, sadly, still seem to be in charge of a lot of things.   I would never want him to change his beliefs (unless he was convinced of the truth of another position), but I think for his own sake, it might be best to do some superficial conformity.  We don't want endless media nit-picking about unimportant matters, like what he wears to the Cenotaph.  Let him get a nice dark Crombie style overcoat - nothing flamboyant about that - and a dark suit and a "sensible" tie - not one covered with teddy bears or golf balls - and let him wear that at the Cenotaph.  Perhaps he could wear a red and a white poppy.  I don't think a red poppy means you are an active militarist does it? I hope he's got some good advice somewhere.  I hope he isn't stubborn about small, unecessary things.

What we admire about Quakers is the commitment to speak truth to power.  If he's cut down before he gets a chance, it won't be much good.  I suppose the reason why ordinary people laugh at the beard and sandals simplicity of people like JC is that they are slightly incredulous.  Why does a man who apparently had a private education (only to a prep school, than a state grammar school) and has been to university (for a year!) wander round on a bike, spend time on his allotment and generally appear to have that sort of old hippy lifestyle (in his spare time at least).  Surely a man with his advantages ought to be out running industry or working in a merchant bank or rolling in money.  People who have been brought up unhappily poor find it hard to understand this elective simplicity.  Many people have been taught that only money will make them happy, and what's the point of having money if you aren't flaunting it?   I don't suppose JC has a great deal of money.  If he lives in London his house must be worth a bit, but he's got his MP's salary, and his earnings for the odd bit of speaking and consultancy - that's more than probably your average Sun or Daily Mail reader.  If they had his money they would have a new car, a new kitchen, flash holidays.  Why isn't he like that?  What's wrong with him?  Couldn't he at least get a new bike?

He's a dissenter, a non-conformist (he said that his beard was "a form of dissent" against New Labour) - and there are a lot of us like that, who, for whatever reasons, don't like the idea that we must behave in a certain way.  That's who he represents, he probably isn't going to lure the Daily Mail readers away from their sense of security.  Those of us who want to feel we are doing the "right thing" socially will not really "get" him.  The question is, are the dissenters in the majority?  Or will a combination of the conformists and the apathetic defeat Labour again next time?  Time will tell, but for a while, we dissenters can bask in the happiness of having a quakerish, Ghandian, pacifist with integrity and socialist values leading the Labour party.

More bad things

After the first 3 bad things, there were 3 more - Ned missed his plane back from LA - an extra £350 required - and then our hot water failed (not good for our AirBnB visitors), then finally - on 24th August, Ned had a terrible accident.  He was jet-lagged, had had 2 beers and a bit of weed, and felt light headed - he says he passed out - and fell over face forward onto a window which smashed, lacerating his nose, his upper lip, two places on his cheek and forehead and losing teeth (debateable how many).   Once I had recovered from the shock of seeing flesh hanging off his face (again - his eyebrow, when he was 7), and the whole trauma of going to A&E in Ashford, we began to recover slowly.,   He had about 50-60 stitches - as well as a load of soluble ones inside his nose and lips.  He spent two nights in hospital.

It was a night mare.  I am pleased to report that he is healing, and it could have been much, much worse.  He is going back to UEA for his final year this Thursday and life will begin to return to normal.

I think the horror of the accident may have put things into perspective for him a bit.  Anyway, he seems calmer now that the pain is over, the stitches are out and the healing is beginning.  He has two lymph filled pouches on his face and forehead - but these will go eventually.  Just hoping that things will carry on improving.  He's getting serious about his work again, and his music - so I am just praying that he, and Finn will knuckle down to work this year, and perhaps next summer we will have something to celebrate!

Mme de Sevigny and the nuclear powered wine

In Britain when there is an accident at a power station, we re-name the power stations, in France they do things differently.

Last Christmas we got a lovely case of wine from Polly & James and last week we were drinking a bottle of it.  It was a very nice fruity, southern number called Grignan les Adhemar .  I was particularly taken with it, because many of Mme de Sevigny's letters were addressed to her beloved daughter Mme La Marquise de Grignan.  I don't recall whether Adhemar was part of her title, it does ring a bell, so perhaps it was.  The Grignans, rather unusually, did not live at Versailles in the great rookery with the rest of the French aristocracy.  They lived on their estates in Southern France, much toMme de S's distress.  I did not know they had vineyards, or whether this wine came from their estate, but I thought I would order some more, if it wasn't too expensive, and went online.

I soon found that Grignan les Adhemar was a bit too expensive for ordinary drinking - but then I saw that ASDA has it on offer - half price, so I promptly bought half a dozen, thinking if it was only terribly ordinaire it wouldn't be bad at that price.  Actually, it was very good and so I've just bought another half dozen bottles, a snip at £4.37!

Then I saw another Google entry about the wine and discovered that it was not a new wine, or an undiscovered zone - "they" had decided to rename the area called "Coteaux de Tricastin".  So actually I was just drinking good old C d T under another name.   Why had they changed the name?  Why the urgent need to re-brand a perfectly respectable wine area.   Tricastin - true, I hadn't seen any for ages... and why did that name ring such a bell?.

I suddenly recalled when we were on holiday in the Lot in 2008, reading in one of the local papers all about a power station accident which had resulted in an undiscovered leak in the waste system for some months.  This was all the more distressing since the power station (or centre nucleaire) was on a river, in the South, in a wine-growing and agricultural area (yes, that could be almost anywhere in southern France) but this power station was called Tricastin.  Suddenly one just never saw the wine any more.  A NY Times article in 2011 (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/dining/26iht-wine26.html?_r=0) pointed out that Tricastin was not the only wine area affected, the power station was on the Rhone after all.  However, Tricastin was the only wine area that shared the power station name.   Sales crashed, and in 2011 the wine growers applied to change the name of their appellation (an appellation that had only existed since 1973 apparently) and after that, the rest was history.

I am assuming that all the wine has a geiger counter passed over it - and that the warm glow I feel when I drink it, doesn't owe too much to the plutonium.

And so, adiieu to Coteaux du Tricastin!  We shall not see its label again.

  

Bad things in 3s...

Several bad things have happened recently, so I want to know when they will stop.  The first one was the car failing its MoT test, since this is almost an annual event, it passed almost without comment, we sighed, and paid for it to be repaired (rust on the sill).   Then Finn got poor AS levels - which requires a re-think of the next year or so.  And I was ill - and continue to be.  So not all was hunky dory despite the very good news from Ireland (which is the topic of a post in another blog).  In fact it was all pretty shit, but I was coping - when the guest room ceiling collapsed.

We do not make an enormous amount out of AirBnB - but it does provide our "summer pocket money" i.e. enough so that we can go out and relax and drink and eat and enjoy ourselves at the many fabulous bars and restaurants of Ramsgate...now our most profitable room is out of use. Nevertheless, we still have someone coming tonight, for another room, and next week the other two rooms will be in use.  I thought of using Ned's room tonight, but the state of it was too much to bear.  Mark heroically cleared up the bulk of the plaster etc. but the whole place is such a mess!  I didn't get around to calling about the insurance, but I'm not sure if this sort of thing is covered by it.   Anyway, we will have to have it plastered and then have at least the ceiling decorated and we have also decided it is time to finally remove the reasonably disgusting carpet in there....we should be able to remove that fairly inexpensively I think.

Our house has had a lot of work and money lavished on it recently, but it continues to punish us!  And now we have the "haunted wardrobe" in our room - from which noises keep issuing.  There is nothing there - as far as I can tell, unless some entity has taken up residence in it (we had a haunted wardrobe in my childhood home which actually levitated once - yes, really.  No, I didn't - but 3 of my siblings did.  It was a 17thC French wardrobe, so no doubt it had plenty of history).   Last week the wardrobe door opened of its own accord, and then closed a little.  This wardrobe is a respectable Maples linen press c. 1920? Inlaid mahogany, and formerly owned by the Our Lady of Peace parochial house where it was used to store priestly vestments.   Clearly whatever spiritual protection it was under then has worn off after 12 years with us.

Bees and bonnets

My bonnet is fairly buzzing with bees at the moment - the most annoying one is the one that is disturbing me about my health...However there is a another one - I keep forgetting that this blog is not my diary, and I too frequently  allow myself to express personal frustrations here.  This has resulted on at least one occasion in a friendship being broken off, and I fear I may have done it again.  I am very sorry about this, but I doubt whether there is anything I can do, having previously blotted my copybook by having expressed my views on a topic too trenchantly.   I suppose I forget about other people's sensibilities, I expect greater resilience, which is clearly stupid of me.  My only defence I suppose, is that there is no criticism of others that I wouldn't make of myself.  Half the things that annoy me in others, are the classic projections: people who have the same bad habits as me, one's own "dark side" made uncomfortably visible, in Jungian terms.  It is difficult to bite one's lips and remain silent when one disagrees about something so as not to upset a friend, but when one manages it, it is clearly rather stupid to boast about it in one's blog.

Because the Google stats show an audience that is all over the world, I probably tend to forget that my most ardent and interested readership is probably in Ramsgate!  I managed a couple of years ago to stop writing about the LO, and clearly I should take a similar strategic decision to stop writing about Ramsgate... or perhaps just satisfy myself with telling you that we have an excellent Japanese restaurant here!

Cat days

I know they are called Dog Days because of the prominence of the Dog star in the night sky (presently I am too knackered to go out and admire Sirius, Lyra and Aquila and other summer stars), but when I see Bernard, our cat stretched out on the lawn, often on his back with his paws above his head, eyes closed, and just a glimpse of his tooth between his little black lips, I think cats are the real high summer animal.

I am having a jolly nice time just now.  Apart from a couple of mildly important domestic matters, I am largely free of any major tasks (I want to revise The Ash Grove, but that isn't urgent), so I have been seeing friends, which is always agreeable.  Actually, that isn't true - it can be exceptionally disagreeable to see a friend who has an idee fixe that one doesn't agree with - and I spent about 20 minutes this arvo remaining resolutely silent about a certain matter.  That aside, life has been very agreeable - I noticed today a Facebook post about "people interested in discussing political ideas" and realised that at present the last thing I want to do is discuss political ideas - maybe in September - but not now.   It's just over a year since I joined the LP and attended the first local SUTU meeting - I confess I haven't been doing much since the election, because I've been writing and it has been a blessed relief.

The writing has reached the unpleasant point where the euphoria of having finished the first draft has finished, and while feeling pleasantly undaunted by the prospect of revising and re-writing - one begins to wonder what will happen if it meets the same enthusiastic lack of interest the others have experienced, if it will ever get published, and all the fond hopes that one had had on completion of the work seem to be nothing but egotistical fantasy.  But this time I did feel I was beginning to get the hang of it all, the writing lark I mean.  It is far from being a work of "extraordinary genius" - it may be more commercial than literary - although I hope it has enough resonances to last a little longer than some of the books I've read recently.  I was introduced to the concept of "alterity" last night - or rather the word for it - I was aware of the idea, I just don't know what the current academic/theoretical names for things are.  Anyway, in literature it was described as being "magical realism lite" - which I rather liked.  I would hesitate to describe The Malice of Fairies as magical realism exactly. M has always snorted that there is too much "magical" stuff in my other works.  This is monstrously unfair - I wish it were so.

Anyway, on the whole I have been having a more interesting conversations than usual, and I have also been reading proper books: I just finished Station Eleven by Emily St John Mendel, and now I'm reading Half a Yellow Sun by Chimananda Og something - it's a slightly unusual Nigerian name which I didn't catch easily.  I am terribly tempted to just go and tear books out of the shelves and read them all day.  I wish I had an intellectual project to research - this often a good time of year to study something, but I don't.  So I will just continue this brief period of self-indulgence before the wrath of autumn falls on us.  That will be time enough to get started on something else - maybe time to start researching the non-fiction project.  It would make a nice change, and there is no real urge to write any more fiction at present - although I have plenty of ideas.
  

I've finished the novel!

Just in time for the school holidays - so tonight we can relax and go out and enjoy ourselves and possibly even celebrate...

Next on the agenda - re-write of the Ash Grove.... a bit of a slog, but I guess I've learned a lot now.

We aren't going away - Greece is still filling my mind, and we have yet to earn significant amounts of money - but we can relax.Maybe have a few outings and day trips somewhere.  Most of the short term work on the house is finished too - so things are looking up.

A strange incident

I've been reading a memoir by my cousin Moyra Caldecott,  Her book Multi-Dimensional Life is a fascinating account of how a great many unexplained phenomena have helped and inspired her writing and given her a deeper spiritual awareness.  In particular when she was writing about the Egyptians, notably Akhenaten, all sorts of weird events occurred - not least her trip to Egypt with Tina Turner - as well as others of a rather more terrifying nature.

Cover by Olly Caldecott

I veer and struggle between a fairly rational approach to things, and a belief in the psychic/spiritual which some people would laugh at.  I take most accounts of irrational phenomena with a big spadeful of salt - but I am always open to hear personal experiences which don't rely too much on coincidence and credulity.

As I re-read the book, I recognised a lot of things I had in common with her (well, I knew this anyway), telepathy, a sense of the eerie, occasionally a sense of evil presences and I have also experienced those sequences of significant events occurring in a short time (Jung's Synchronicity) which seemed to have a meaning (although I am wary of attaching meaning to something which may just be coincidental).

The sort of events Moyra described are also familiar to Christians who "live by faith": phone calls from strangers who have to give you important news, a cheque arriving for exactly the right money at the right time, healing, finding exactly the right book you need for your research, a book falling open at a significant passage.  All these were things that occurred to progress her writing, deepen her sense of the interconnectedness of things.

Since I've been writing The Malice of Fairies I have had one or two similar experiences - one friend has brought me almost magically relevant books, and I have had moments of wild inspiration - common to most writers I think - when the book just writes itself.   Two of these moments came while I was in Cardiff visiting my mother in law (I write better when I'm angry).  Since May I've been wondering what the hell has happened to what I wrote then - two scenes from the last third of the novel. I have been looking in all my notebooks but none of them contained the pages I'd written.   A lost notebook that I'd pinned my hopes on, proved not to have them when I found it.  These few hundred words began to seem crucial to the successful completion of TMOF .  I was really annoyed as I had invented a whole group of new characters and felt re-constructing them would be stiff and stilted.  Also I have now reached the point in the novel where I needed to incorporate them.

Last night, sitting at my desk I saw a small ring-bound A6 notebook to the right of my laptop.  It wasn't there before - I don't know how it got there.  It was folded open and I flipped through it to see what was in it. There were the scribbled pages I'd written on a Welsh bridge on Easter Sunday, and in the Cardiff Museum the following day. There is probably a rational explanation for its sudden appearance, but the fact that it was sitting next to my laptop, just where it was needed, the night before it was needed, having been lost for 3 months, does seem like a miracle. The fact that I'd been feeling such a connection with Moyra through re-reading her book (available on Kindle) encouraged me feel (as she might have) that I was getting help from some greater power - perhaps via Thoth, Hermes or one of the Muses, or maybe Moyra's already found a new role in the Life Beyond.

Bucket Lists

The temple of Poseidon at Sounion - ought to be on everyone's bucket list!

I suppose that 1,000000000 things to do before you die meme has been going for a while, in fact it's so popular it's endlessly referred to as "my bucket list".  I just heard a woman on the radio saying "well, I wanted to do it - it was on my bucket list."   She was talking about the fact that she had stood outside the Sandringham parish church to see the latest princess go to be christened, as a result she got to see the nation's favourite nuclear family all together.  The reverential treatment suggested that this was a rare and cherishable opportunity which would seldom be repeated since the royal parents wanted to guard their children's privacy.  Which leads me to a detour - whatever happened to the Wessex children?  I don't read the celebrity press, but one never hears them mentioned - which has always made me wonder if there's something wrong with them - but, enough of this prurient speculation.

 I was thinking about to what extent I have a bucket list.   Mostly I think it would consist of places I would like to visit.  But I'm also aware that it's a shrinking list, there are plenty of places I don't think I really want to visit...I have slightly gone off the Amazon and Machu Picu, and I've never been bothered about going to Australia.   I have seen the Taj Mahal and Venice and the Acropolis and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
I would still like to go to Granada, to Egypt of course, and impossible North African and Near Eastern places like Petra, Damascus and Leptis Magna... and an awful lot more of Greece.  I'd like to go back to some of the Greek cities in Turkey too.  And see more of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and I still haven't had that honeymoon on the houseboat in Kashmir yet  - I wouldn't mind seeing the Hyrcanian forest either.

The Hyrcanian forest - temperate rain forest - rather like Glengariff - once had its own tiger species.  Sadly became extinct in 20thC (?).











Not a terribly unfeasible bucket list - and a lot of this can be done by train too.  Then there are experiences I might like: I would like to go up in a hot air balloon - but then again, what if I got vertigo?  Humiliating.   More rail journeys would be nice - across Europe I think.  And I would like to see more architecture and more art galleries.  And?  Er, well, I can't think of anything else really, which shows what a predictable person I am.  What else is there?  I don't want to take up extreme sports and do adrenalin surging activities.   I would like to try scuba diving though... that's quite appealing... although a bit of a risk of claustrophobia in the mask.  Never got on with snorkelling. I'd quite like to have a short visit to a desert - and well, perhaps I'd like to have a little project - something like 27 things to do before I die, rather than 1,000.

I have always remembered the man I met who was travelling around to see all the sites where English Kings and Queens were buried - I thought that was a good idea (I've seen quite a few without trying,Windsor and Westminster Abbey provide a good range for a start, add in Fontrevault and the Roman tombs of the Stuarts and I must be halfway there).  I could create a little project like that - perhaps visiting all the museums that own paintings by Bosch or Giorgione.  But that probably wouldn't take long.  Is there any real problem about travelling aimlessly?  If you have an agenda doesn't it make it more stressful?  Doesn't it just become box ticking?

Then there are the books - I have been slightly influenced by Alan Bloom's The Western Canon but I've hardly been systematically reading through his list.  I just try not to read really dim books, unless I'm ill. There are a limited number of books I can read, so they might as well be good ones.  I should try and read the rest of Dostoievsky and Proust before I go, and perhaps go to the opera more often. And perhaps more live classical music - although that is tremendously difficult if one doesn't live in a city.  Perhaps "get a flat in London" should be on the list... I doubt whether that is remotely feasible - but I do love the idea of having a teeny bolt hole so I could go and do things.  But that isn't exactly bucket list - that's wildest dreams/aspirations territory.

The other problem with bucket lists, is that everyone else is racing around to fulfill their lists - so when you do get to the Taj Mahal or wherever you find 10,000 other people there.  I have been lucky that I managed to travel a reasonable amount before mass global travel was so intense.  I saw lions and elephants in the wild before one had to line up along with a dozen other jeeps to photograph them - and I've wandered around the Roman forum when it was almost as empty and atmospheric as it was in Gibbon's time.  Now, or at least last time we were there, there were elements of the moronic inferno about it.  Would I really be happier watching it all on tv?  Perhaps the solution is to go to quieter, less over-hyped places - those small towns that have wonderful atmosphere, even if they don't have the greatest "sights" - places like Brescia or Toledo or Vezelay...no, Vezelay is v.v. touristique... At the moment the desire is to go to more of Greece, now that I have conquered the work kolokothukeftedes it is essential that we return to use it as often as possible.

Courgette fritters - sigh!

356 days of food

Due to my lack of interest in blogging at the moment, I am forcing myself into regular habits with a food blog - over at Food Odyssey http://thanetfoododyssey.blogspot.co.uk/  I have begun posting 365 days of food.  This is largely for my own amusement and information, and to encourage myself to cook a wider variety of things.   I tend to cook my regular 25 dishes and get a bit annoyed with myself.  On the other hand, due to the limited preferences of the household I am a bit stymied - plus it's quite difficult to get good fresh red mullet around here.

Anyway, the idea is to provide a record of what we're eating and to see if we really do exist on meat balls and spag bol.  Actually, we don't, but it sometimes feels like it.  There is a lot of stuffed pasta kept in the fridge for emergencies, and in real times of crisis the husboid is capable of making French toast and spaghetti carbonara.   So all is well.


I tend to eat differently from them when I can get away with it.  So it's also a record of what I'm eating, versus what they're having.   But if you fancy some decent, basic recipies - head over there!

Dementia - already?

I suppose everyone my age worries about dementia - and I have tried to ignore the possibility, however, in the light of the recent death of my cousin, the writer Moyra Caldecott, and her experiences, it has been on my mind more than ever.

Moyra had a form of dementia called progressive aphasia - perhaps not strictly dementia - but technically a definite diminution in intellectual capacity - as far as one could tell.  After all, once a person has stoppedi talking, who knows what is going on.intellectually.

Of course, famously, as soon as we read about the symptoms of a disease, we begin to feel that we could be suffering it too.  I immediately related to the stories of how she lost her vocabulary - and it really struck home.  Most stories about dementia begin with people forgetting things more often.  I forget things occasionally - but this isn't a new phenomenon, I had the first "what did I come up here for?" experience when I was 8 or 9 - because we were still living in Bayswater when that happened.  So, I've always gone with positive view that as one gets older one expects to be more absent minded etc., and so one notices it more.   I haven't actually noticed it more - but I have noticed two or three things.  They may be the signs of dementia - or they may just be coincidental - connected with tiredness, or having drink taken the previous day.




1.  Losing words, more frequently - little - temporary - gaps, opening up in the vocabulary.  I usually retrieve these words subsequently.
2.   Mis typing - I am not a perfect typist - who is, but occasionally recently I have noticed the occasional gibberish word appearing in front of me - which cannot be explained.  Or I type a completely wrong word, sometimes these are normal mistakes like confusing "their" and "there", but yesterday I typed "cake" when I meant "gate".  Perhaps that was a Freudian slip - highlighting my subconscious desire for the forbidden -  cake.
3.  General fuzziness.   I don't feel as alert some days as I used to.  I attribute this, to some extent, to spending a lot of time on the intuitve/creative side - and perhaps the elastic between this and the intellectual side is a bit slacker than it was,  making it harder to adjust my focus.  I do notice though that my sudoku completion rates (they are timed on the phone) are slower on average.  And I have less will to try an "extreme" one in case I feel too stumped by it.   The fuzziness is very annoying - I will have a burst of clarity and write an effortless email/letter/passage - and then I'm back to having to make a great effort.   I am hoping it is tiredness.

"A waiter at my own party"

Yesterday was my eldest son's 21st birthday - it was a lovely sunny day and the garden was crammed with 20 odd friends and relations - all people who had known him as a small scrap and there were presents, fizz, goodwill, bonhomie and all sorts of nice things.  Here he is cutting his birthday cake and being toasted.

Before the party I asked if he would help pour drinks and see that people had what they needed.  "So I have to be a waiter at my own party?" he asked angrily.   Later it made me think that that was a very useful metaphor for life - and as my sister P said "particularly so if you are an H---- woman" - "Except of course, you don't get your own party" I pointed out: we laughed.  Like drains.    I am not being martyrish I hope, but this party took a lot of planning, hard work and money, I did a lot of work, his father did a lot of work and even his brother worked on the house and helping out with the preps.  24 hours later, after a successful party - and then having to have the house open for his mates in the evening - I have yet to hear the Thank You...I mildly suggested he could take a plastic box full of chili back to Norwich with him to share with his housemates - and you would have thought I'd suggested he'd taken a route march home via Cardiff, carrying a 48lb pack.

However, today - with few duties except continued tidying up and wondering how to dispose of the leftovers - is absolutely beautiful.  The countryside is beautiful - seeing the wheat ripening in the fields, and the black pigs snoozing in the sun on our way to and from Minster was lovely.   We spent most of the morning sitting in the garden with The Observer and Ned did make us a tray of tea and we ate some of the second birthday cake.  Then we went out to the Corner House in Minster for a late Sunday lunch - and I hoped a jolly mood would prevail - but it didn't.  There are so many topics we aren't allowed to mention... I really don't know what to do.  Usually I find having a scream-up clears the air - but the hostility has been palpable since he returned on Friday evening and stood rigid when I gave him a welcoming  hug....and he's here for such a short time it doesn't seem worth having a row.   He did indicate to his godfather J that he realised it had been a lot of work for me....but honestly the only time he's been really sincere and friendly was when he told me that his new Fender Stratocaster was "just the right colour".... well, let us be grateful for that.  Do all eldest children feel so entitled?  I certainly didn't, but I was a girl of course...

The Garden

The garden has peaked this weekend - we have a wall of jasmine - it smells gorgeous - there are some Compassion rose amongst it.  In the main bed are a huge Mme Alfred Carriere, a libertia grandiflora, nigella, orange perennial poppies, centanthrus ruber, a geranium, and the yellow scabious, as well as a bright blue one.... it looks utterly gorgeous.  The Lady Hillingdon rose looks fantastic - a clematis tangutica is growing into it - so the bright yellow roses  arch against the blue sky, while green yellow buds of the clematis swell below.... it is perfect.  Apart from all the blank bits, where the cat sits...

Friendship - rightness - Afghanistan

A rather random number of items, based on the fact that I met some Dari Afghans last week - they spent the night here in fact - and were fascinating to talk to....It was exciting to hear about Afghanistan from a non-Taliban perspective - they were devout Muslims - but very liberal - disliked burqas and were shocked to see them when they arrived in London!

The Panjir valley - home of my visitors. 

A lot of what they said explained things to me - especially the role of Pakistan in Afghan politics and how they resented it.  I told them how we had had a Saudi student here and what he had said - this made them laugh a lot!   They are not fond of the Saudis, the Taliban or any other manifestations of unhelpful Islam.  They were also exceptionally courteous - I can't say how much I liked them - I felt I was getting the story of Afghanistan from "the horse's mouth" except that this horse looked like the kind of man you would see on a 3,000 year old bas-relief from Persia.  It made me happy to meet them - because what they were saying felt right.  They were justifiably annoyed at the way the West portrayed Afghanistan as an "ungovernable, primitive" country - Z pointed out reasonably, that Afghanistan had been well governed by a peaceful monarchy for centuries - and it was generally incursions by Russians, British etc. that caused the trouble.  Of course I know little of Afghan history but this certainly chimes in with what I understand.   Rather like medieval Scotland - once there's a power vaccuum, lots of great lords come out to try their hand... and there've been appalling power vacuums.      They also said that Khasi (spelling?) was NOT a good thing - and very personally corrupt.

I was able to run these ideas past my friend A tonight - and he agreed with that they had said (he's an "old Pakistan hand" i..e. BBC Correspondent there for a while) and that the Dari were Persians and that Persia/Iran held the key to everything in the ME now.... this could be confirmed, because one of their complaints was that the US was obsessed with Iran and keeping it down, while the Paks rampaged freely in Afghanistan, spreading nasty versions of Islam.

Friendships
A was of course fascinated to hear of my latest friend bust up...he crowed "I told you - first about the witch and then about....".... "You are not as good at spotting these baddies as me!".   I said that basically I gave people more slack than he did, I tolerated lots of things more.  I suppose my dislike of conflict means I don't respond so much to provocation, I pull my punches - and sometimes I have a slightly arrogant feeling that it doesn't matter what they think, because it doesn't in any way begin to challenge what I think. Obviously, these people are not fools - they know they are not getting the full version of what I think...and they feel snubbed by it.  So they react.   At the risk of sounding like that Randy Newman song - "My life is good!", even though I have fewer people to dally with, I don't find my life is terribly impoverished by the fact that I've shed a few friends in the last year (it's been far more impoverished by deaths: Strat, Paul C, Marion).   One can't get everyone to agree - one hopes that friends will accept that, and change the subject, but if they insist.... the fact is, however much I value and enjoy someone's support and interest, if they cannot accept that I'm different from them, then fundamentally there's no real friendship there: there may be kindness, affection and all sorts of things - but to me friendship is about support, and maybe occasionally a bit of critique, but fundamentally about mutual acceptance, warts and all.  Once one person stops accepting the other's warts - there's an end to it!

Maytime

The main flowerbed in late May - a few years ago.

I was trying to think about why May is so utterly gorgeous - already the blossoms on the fruit trees are over, and the roses are just beginning.   What is so beautiful about it is that while one watches the blossoms fade and fruit beginning to set, one can also clusters of buds, roses, honeysuckle, pinks preparind to flower in the next few weeks.  Still lots of potential even while things are already looking wonderful.  

 In the last few days I have just about begun to shake off the post-election disappointment, although one friend who voted Tory rang up today because she fancied a political discussion, ended up so annoyed with me that she has de-friended me on FB.... I suggested we agree to differ three times and tried to change the subject, but she wasn't having it.    Over many years of political life I have heard all the arguments - I can't see myself having a Damascene conversion to the Tories at this stage.      Meanwhile, between bouts of gardening, drinking and socialising I am getting on with the book - I have nearly 50,000 words on The Malice of Fairies - and that is really encouraging.  I don't want it to be much longer than about 80-85,000 words.  I've got most of the plot sketched out - so it should be straightforward to write it.  I guess I could do it at a gallop by the end of June - but I think I will do it in a slightly more leisurely way.

What else is new?  We have bought a lovely painting from out neighbour Steve Lobb - and we are about to have works done on the house.  I do hope my father can be persuaded to give us the rest of the money he promised us.  Or, even better that we can earn some - our lives are very full without earning money - which isn't much fun.  Still we had some lovely visitors this weekend and earned a massive £161...

Resisting UKIP

Some of my comrades in the Stand up to UKIP group want to write a pamphlet - with the working title of "How we beat UKIP".  Although we have agreed that this will not be the title - I feel this highlights a fundamental issue.   My analysis of what happened in the general election in Thanet South is very different from theirs, and I don't think there is much chance of an honest discussion within the group of "what really happened" or the "truth" as the more philosophically inclined of us like to call it.

SUTU did a wonderful job in encouraging people to realise that they were not alone... and that we should try to resist the Purple Menace with all our might.  Despite my occasional suggestions that we should do something to undermine UKIP's attempts to seize the council, this was contradicted saying "Farage is our focus".  He didn't win the seat, but both Thanet District Council and Ramsgate Town Council are now dominated by UKIP.   Last night - at our post election meeting - it was said by several speakers that having a UKIP Council (the only one in the country) was somehow "a good thing" because it gave us a focus to continue the struggle.   It may well be - but I cannot see it being objectively a "good thing" for the people of Thanet.   It is "a good thing" perhaps that more people have been politicised and engaged than for a long time - but at what cost?

Personally I would rather not be continuing the struggle - personally I would like to be cultivating my own garden and not attending meetings etc.  I would like to do something useful, but I don't want to continue doing it this way, in this style, and I'm not sure whether the Labour party will be the place for me now either, as some people begin to salivate at the prospect of a return to Blairite values.

How did we "beat" UKIP?

I would love to believe that our relentless campaigning, leafletting, stall running, stickering, etc. had beaten UKIP.  I don't want to take any glory from the people who worked so hard (harder than me probably), but this is why I think we beat UKIP - or rather, why Farage was not elected.   I don't have statistics and so on to back me up - but this is how I analyse the election result here.

In 2010 the Conservatives won 48% of the votes and had a 6,600 approx majority over Labour; UKIP came 4th. with 2,500 approx.  This was after a boundary change had made the constituency a far safer Tory seat than it had been previously.  Labour won it in the 1997 landslide - and Ladyman held on to it, with tiny majorities, partly due to the benefit of being the incumbent.

I have no doubt that Laura Sandys would have comfortably won it if she had run this year.  It is a Conservative seat.  In this election a large number of Tories defected to UKIP as did a roughly similar number of Labour voters, and apparently most of the Lib Dems....The Tories held onto their seat - the polls were wrong, Will Scobie (Labour) didn't in fact have a realistic chance, and we were lucky we didn't have to vote Tory to defeat Nigel.   Many Tories dislike UKIP even more than we do.  Laura Sandys' Hate not Hope letter to the constituency may have been helpful - or it may have been too late to make any difference.   Perhaps SUTU prevented even more Labour people from defecting to UKIP, and perhaps dislike of Farage galvanized more people to come out and vote against him, or perhaps love of Farage encouraged traditional non-voters to come out and vote for him.

People love novelty.  They  don't like change when it's thrust upon them - but they like feeling that they can bring about change.  By getting the only UKIP council in the UK they have got a change of their own making.  We are hoping the council will screw up big time, indeed we are expecting it.  However, our definition of screwing up and the voters' definition are two different things.   Local Kippers may be emboldened by their success and delighted by what the council does (privatised litter fines for example).

No more glad, confident [Friday] morning...

For all these reasons I couldn't share the delight in the great moment when Farage lost on Friday morning.  Of course I was relieved and pleased, but not triumphant: because frankly, with a Tory government, and now a UKIP council there's not much to rejoice about, and the combined evil of these forces rather overwhelms my pleasure at seeing Farage depart from Fannet South in a puff of purple smoke never to be seen again - oh, until Monday, when he returned as the newly-re-elected Party Leader.  But at least he won't be coming here for his next crack at Parliament - which is why I say: Long life and Good Health to our Tory MP  vivat McKinlay!