Oct 1st 2014

Sorry it’s been a while but life has been full of ‘nothing much’ again. This is handy as it gives me time to dwell on what really matters. As a younger man, I was in a headlong rush to do everything, try every new experience, sip every drop of nectar that was offered. My leaving gift from Portugal from Caroline, my girlfriend at that time, was a crystal butterfly. She knew me well. I flitted. If you knew me then, you’d have known a shallow, ego-centric person with little time for anything not hedonistic or requiring in-depth application of self. While I’m not proud of that, I had a good time so – Swings and Roundabouts, eh? Was it really so bad to live Life so fully?

Now, limited by health and age, those sugar rushes are less appealing and things of a lesser magnitude that I’d have previously missed, have grown in importance. This was captured wonderfully by a line from Mr. Pink the PE teacher in Doctor Who. Wise before his years, he said, “I don’t want to see more things - but to see the things that are already there, more clearly”. It is easy to be in too much of a rush to move on to the next high. If you can’t see the wisdom in this, I can’t explain it. Nonetheless, give it some thought and you too may experience an epiphany.

Do you watch Doctor Who? I love it! The storylines are no longer for kids. They haven’t been for years. They’re far too complex and require abstract thought – an ability to see what’s below the surface as well as the obvious, plus, the dialogue is clever and lyrical. So, not for kids or people who watch ITV.

Clara had just betrayed the Doctor by trying to blackmail him. She threatened to throw away all the keys to the TARDIS. As they were special keys that could only be destroyed by the lava of a volcano, she got him to take her to the edge of a volcano and then demanded that he went back in time to fix a big problem. He wouldn’t so she threw the keys into the volcano achieveing nothing but a lose-lose outcome. By destroying them, it meant he could never enter the TARDIS again. She did this because the man she loved had died and she wanted the Doctor to make it right with some time travel. Sadly, her approach was to demand this - with menaces. She didn’t simply ask it as a favour from a friend.

He outwitted her (you’ll have to see the episode to find out how), then helped her anyway. Ashamed, she asked why he was helping her after she had betrayed him, to which he looked her straight in the eye and replied -  “Do you think I care for you so little, that betraying me would make any difference?” Wow! What writing!

Talking of clever words, I heard in a song on the radio … “Where’s the ‘good’ in goodbye, where’s the ‘nice’ in nice try, where’s the ‘us’ in trust gone, where’s the ‘soul’ in soldier on?” This was by the Script from their album ‘No Sound Without Silence’ –a clever thought in itself. How do people come up with these lines? As an aspiring writer, I am hopelessly envious of this much lyrical talent and originality all around me.

You all know me pretty well so will know that I speak to anyone – in the street, in a shop, in a queue etc. In the queue in Morrison’s last week, I was waiting for the couple ahead to pay and was vaguely aware of a young lad behind me unloading his dad’s trolley onto the conveyor behind my shopping. He was using one hand, which I casually dismissed as a young guy, being cool and unhurried. In this exercise though, he dropped one of the tins.

In such moments to ease embarrassment, it is my way to quip merrily “How’re those juggling lessons going?”  Don’t know why but this time, I didn’t. Just as well. When I looked, the kid only had one hand. Phew! Got away with that one. It was lucky I didn’t offer to give him a hand. We must consider the possibility of Guardian Angels being more than a fanciful notion. Note to self, Listen to your mum. Don’t talk to strangers.

The end of September brought the annual golf tour, this time to Ayr on the West coast of Scotland. The local Wetherspoons – the West Kirk brought a surprise - a converted church, an ingenious accommodation of a trend where the two pound pint is the new object of worship.

 

Ayr is a small unimposing town where people go about their business muttering in Jock tones that are beyond incomprehensible. I nearly got a slap from a young girl having a ciggie outside a nightclub. We were looking for a hostelry more suited to our age than theirs and asked directions. She was clearly trying to be helpful with animated dialogue that was beyond my capacity for understanding although I think I detected “See you Jimmy” and “Stitch that!” By way of a response I had to confess sheepishly “I didn’t understand a wuurr-rd.” She gave up but her mate frustrated at my denseness, wanted to punch my lights out. I believe this is a normal greeting for stupid, deaf Sassenachs when we venture North of the Border to display our natural talent for being dense. I think I could have placated her if I’d had a deep-fried Mars Bar about my person but I had come out in a hurry so was unarmed.

In other conversations in that week following their failed Independence Vote, the “YES” brigade were clearly angry about their betrayal by the “NO” voters with much nebulous accusations of them “Having let down our youngsters.”

It seems to me to be an admission of failure in an argument when the losing party resorts to emotive language. When you can no longer present an argument which lets the audience form its own opinion(s) but have to tell them what their conclusion is to be by stating it as if it were a fact, that’s a scheming politician’s approach. You can see this at every Prime Minister’s Question Time. Labour will tell you that the Tories are incompetent - and vice versa. Neither party will show you why the other is at fault by presenting an argument free of emotive language to let the listener decide on its merits.

PMQs are just kids in the playground having tantrums; a totally worthless exercise other than to show how the Mother of Parliaments has descended into nothing more than an arena for childish squabbles deserving contempt and ridicule. Surely these Muppets can see that we are laughing at them? Perhaps not - as it continues in the same vein, week in week out, with each speaker puffing grandly and pretentiously in (predictable) ignorance of the derision they attract like a magnet strutting through a sea of iron filings.

But, back to the Jocks… The complainants didn’t explain why the youngsters had been let down by the older voters who were more experienced in life, economics and lying politicians, it was enough for this vague assertion to be presented as if it were true.

The fact that the older voters could see that the intensely-disliked Salmond NEVER ONCE explained what Plan B was for how he would organise a National Bank that could support a currency that was not Sterling, or that the country’s income could not sustain its wonderfully generous socialist policies without its subsidy from the rest of Britain, or that taxes would go up once they were independent; all realities to be ignored in favour of rampant patriotism.

Naturally, the Jocks were angry. But then have you ever know one that is anything else? It seems it is their duty to be angry. In explaining the word ‘oxymoron’ it is usual to give examples via phrases such as ‘Honest Politician’. ‘Caring Psychopath’ wouldn’t be far behind  - and ‘Contented Scot’ would serve equally well.

Apart from my scrape with the young ladies, Ayr was generally a peaceful place. This is a sunset that greeted me on the way to another pub that the guys had chosen to investigate.

Those of you who have seen me in that last few years will know that I have the shakes (Essential Tremors). They only trouble me when I am at rest and are absent when walking around a golf course or doing anything that requires the tensioning of muscles. It is also particularly prevalent when I am anxious about anything - at which time I am like the Duracell Bunny.

A few weeks back, a consultant examined me and concluded that this is Parkinson’s. Before you fret and get alarmed, it is at an early stage and shouldn’t bother me for some years, in which time, there may be advances in medical science so perhaps it’s not as bad as our imaginations would have us believe. Before we worry unduly, let’s wait till it becomes a problem. For now, it is little more than annoying, especially when drinking tea. What a messy business that can turn out to be! Most blokes are proud to say “I need both hands to hold it” - but not when talking about a tea cup.

There is a drug that minimises the shakes but it comes with a side-effect which is to exaggerate compulsions. If drinking or gambling is a problem, this drug will make that worse. Luckily, since the diabetes, I drink nearly nothing and gambling has never been of interest. There are other compulsions and the consultant listed some worth considering, hoarding being the one that caught my attention.

I still have a lot of Mum & Dad’s things laying around. Mum’s been gone for eight years and Dad for 22. The intrinsic value of these souvenirs is of no significance but their sentimental value is a powerful draw. Or is it? Am I being sentimental or just lazy about clearing things out? How do you decide if something is retained out of sentimental memory or through being a magpie in a previous life? At any rate, when I got home from that visit to the consultant, armed with a self-awareness of this tendency, I set about my study with a vengeance.

You will have seen in previous Letters that the tidying of this study of is a job that (a) will take ages and (b) never really gets started; now it has. In the first two days I ditched five bags of paper, which included calendars. Years of travel around Europe between 1980 and 2000 saw me buy calendars in the major European capital cities to frame their pictures and capture their art, views and culture. Additionally, there were more old bank statements and various jokes from before the days of emails when these were passed around on photocopies. Luckily, my PC played up at the same time so went for repair for a couple of weeks. Being thus deprived of electronic temptation, it allowed me the time to devote to study tidying. The reward is - I can now reach bookcases without having to move things first.

Most importantly, in rummaging through old files, I discovered songs I had written at various stages of my life - plus lots and lots of poetry from the early 90s when I was churning it out like ticker tape. That creative vein faded by the mid-90s but for a few years it was a natural part of me. Surprisingly, while it was clearly my poetry because of the style and the handwriting, I was seeing much of it for the first time and I remembered fondly the people for whom it had been written. It was a wonderful trip down Memory Lane to a very happy and emotional time of my life. Poetry comes from joy, sadness and experience of life. You don’t live life by sitting on a rock watching the tide go in and out. You have to get  your feet wet – and take the consequences.

My poetry and songs are now filed safely, as are the poems that were written to me by one friend in particular. In the year we were together we wrote each other enough of our thoughts in rhyme to fill a book. I have now created a file and organised it thoroughly. Although, in the true spirit of this room, while only weeks have passed since this renaissance, I now have no idea where it is.

I went to Cologne last week to visit Marie-Paule, a friend I worked with in Portugal. She showed me around Cologne and also Hasselt, her home town in Belgium.

 

As you see, the travel continues, as does the tendency to photograph anything and everything. I’ll be in Essex again in Dec and seeing some of you, which means I’ll be here in Lincs for Nov. Give me a call if you fancy a chat - or send me an email. Time and an inclination to ramble on without direction or purpose, are in plentiful supply. Ever the flitting butterfly, B.