Winter

The varicose, twisted, arthritic fingers of winter are with us again. This is fabulous news because it signifies that we are still alive. At least, I'm fairly sure I'm still alive given that all the pain and biological secretions are oozing from me like resin from a tree.

Someone in a jumper

I am pixilated. But the countryside around here is not. In fact if you can manage to get away from urban desecration, the monstrous violation of the natural landscape to which Galicia has been subjected over the previous decades then you might actually find some quite pretty places.

The lighthouse walk

Everything is changing speed for Christmas. Things are slowing down in my head but speeding up just beneath my skin. Jacob seems to be very happy and curious and sensitive and relatively well adjusted. Despite his mother. She wanted him to have a party with plastic balls and another 25 four-year old children. I said I didn't agree for a plethora of reasons:

1. It would have cost about 250 euros- 125 euros each
2. For some reason each child's parents then pays 10
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   euros which Loreto would then of course keep
3. The child whose birthday it is has to sit upon a throne for about two hours opening presents which he forgets about as soon as they are open
4. I would of course attend, providing Loreto with an opportunity to cause any combination of scenes, outbursts, explosions, stresses etc.
5. This would almost certainly be traumatic beyond belief for Jacob.

He had his standard party in school in his classroom with his classmates and teacher and a cake and sweets all paid for by me.

So, voilà. 

Rather than drone on about how his mum burst in on his class lambasting and screaming at his teacher, a veritable scandal, I will simply conclude with a poem.

I DREAMED that one had died in a strange place
Near no accustomed hand,
And they had nailed the boards above her face,
The peasants of that land,
Wondering to lay her in that solitude,
And raised above her mound
A cross they had made out of two bits of wood,
And planted cypress round;
And left her to the indifferent stars above
Until I carved these words:
i{She was more beautiful than thy first love,}
i{But now lies under boards.} 

Football

As I said in the last blog, you can use anything at all as a metaphor for life. For instance, a banana. A banana is like life. The inner curve, the sweep of time from youth to death, the skin mottling from green to black, full of vitality (potassium and selenium), but destined, as are we all for the compost heap. Amen.

I am trying to bring together my class notes, laughingly known in the trade as "preparation". This I am doing in order to print a book to be able to give to the students and their parents.

So far, I have finished the cover and a bit more.

English speaking countries

  Any road up, football is the metaphor for today. Conceivably you might be able to play football on your own if you pretended to be 22 people and you could run backwards and forwards without getting too exhausted. But, let´s face it, life is pretty much a team game unless you are happy being a miserable old git railing against anything and everything. Not much fun.

Buddleia

An old Rocker

Another old Rocker

A young swinger

Today's metaphor

Next to the gym where I do kung fu

Life is treating me well. Today has been a stunningly beautiful day. The sun has blasted down pretending to be mid-August and the birds have been conscientiously doing their choir practice. The garden is forgiving but rampant.

If life is a game of football that doesn't depend solely on yourself then it would be wise to adopt your strategy accordingly. It seems to me that in football, as in all sports, there is one skill that serves well. The ability to move from a state of relaxation to one of tension, both muscular and mental, in an instant. The sudden change throws one's opponents into panic. In football it is the manager's job to inculcate this strategy in the team. In practice this is too difficult and it is the players themselves that instinctively weave between the extremes of tension.

A selfy

Sluice

To the mill

We lost 3-2 yesterday, after winning for about 70 minutes 1-0. I don't care too much given that middle-aged blokes like me don't usually play football.

It would be nice to stay fit and take Jacky skiing though!!

The loveliest footballer in the whole world

A view from the garden this morning

Today's poem:

Now, God be thanked Who has watched us with His hour, 
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping, 
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power, 
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping, 
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary, 
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move, 
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary, 
And all the little emptiness of love! 

Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,
Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending, 
Naught broken save this body, lost but breath; 
Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there 
But only agony, and that has ending; 
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death. 

Horty; Rhymes with sporty

There must be a million metaphors for life. The two best ones are gardens and boats. The garden is looking luscious but I haven't got a boat. So, when somebody says, "Get a life!" what they mean is, get a boat.

A Spanish oak In the Corner of the Garden

Just bought a Barbecue

Shaping up

Fig Tree

 At the moment the figs are falling off the tree because they are so engorged with sugar. They are simply delicious. Plucking a fruity caramel cream off the branches gives pause for thought.

Grape vines

Cranberry

The Merits of Radical Pruning

Let's stretch the metaphor! Roses are pretty, some of them even smell delicious but you have to be careful with those thorns as Rachel Ward once told Richard Chamberlain. What they benefit from is a good hacking and plenty of well-worked, weed free soil. Just like people.

Cut my arms and legs off and then cover me in mud!

Christmas is coming early

Not Sure What this is; Any Ideas?

Grape

When reading about Waterloo writers are not referring to the fruit when they talk about grape. What they mean is buckshot, hundreds of tiny lead projectiles. I prefer the fermentable variety.

A view of the house from the garden

Gradually getting lusher

In fact, I would rather like to be a lush.

Marta looking confused

Pumpkins on the porch

A wooden tardis

Florid

I am slightly deflated. It is Thursday the second of October and I have been back to work for two days. And I'm not as old as I used to be.

All is well.

Today's poem:

Now as the train bears west,
Its rhythm rocks the earth,
And from my Pullman berth
I stare into the night
While others take their rest.
Bridges of iron lace,
A suddenness of trees,
A lap of mountain mist
All cross my line of sight,
Then a bleak wasted place,
And a lake below my knees.
Full on my neck I feel
The straining at a curve;
My muscles move with steel,
I wake in every nerve.
I watch a beacon swing
From dark to blazing bright;
We thunder through ravines
And gullies washed with light.
Beyond the mountain pass
Mist deepens on the pane;
We rush into a rain
That rattles double glass.
Wheels shake the roadbed stone,
The pistons jerk and shove,
I stay up half the night
To see the land I love. 

Ab Imo Pectore

From the bottom of my heart. Not to be confused with, "from the heart of my bottom".

I have just been reading about the battles of Agincourt and Waterloo. What stands out/to attention/the test of time, is that, in the past, there was a huge amount of physical courage. Perhaps today that courage still exists but, if it does, it is rarely put to the test where we live.

Invading pumpkins

Absolute Proof of God's Existence

 This, as you know, is one of my dogs. Gilty. He is a small beautiful animal; attentive, kind, sensitive and constant. Of course, we all fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing the animals we care about. But to dismiss the ministrations of  a being so utterly perfect as something trivial is to forget the essence of life itself.

When I got divorced I was severely depressed. I was ill and physically weak, I didn't sleep, I ate little - to the extent that I lost 15 kilos and weighed 70. On arriving home in the evening, Gilty followed me everywhere. I would sit on the stairs and he would sit next to me, sometimes for 20 minutes or more, resting his nose on my lap. I didn't allow the dogs to sleep in the house but at that time I let them sleep in the kitchen. As soon as I went to bed I would shut the door waiting for the wave of insomnia to envelop, like sleep but the wrong way round. As soon as I had closed the door Gilty would be scratching at it. When that didn't work he would hurl himself at it making a noise, a violent thudding. I would let him into the room and he would jump onto the bed spreading himself generously over the canopy of the bed. I never saw him leave but, when I awoke he was always gone.  

 

Dogged

 I think what I want to say is that I feel very lucky and very protected. I have done very little to deserve my beautiful sons, house, dogs, girlfriend, my parents, my job-which I adore, and my friends.

Today's poem:

DRINKING SONG

You're always right, I'm always wrong

By rote I know you just how strong

By wrote I writ you letters long

Signed; yores before, ewer always wright,

Drinking myself into the night.

You're always right, I'm always wrong

Forgive this trite pathetic song

Forgive this spiteful ink-filled prong

Signed; flaws afore, you're almost right,

Drinking myself into the night

You're always right, I'm always wrong

But who's to say for just how long

This heinous torture must go on?

Signed; buy fore goods, you're never right,

Drinking myself into the night

And

Where am I? When am I? Who am I? All of these questions are absurd. So it is somewhat paradoxical that human beings habitually try and answer them. Where am I? (in my life, my metaphysical stage of development, - or may be I'm just blitzed and I might as well be in Rawtenstall). When am I? (in the present, mindful of what's happening, in the past thinking about how seductive youth is. (!!!!!!! I think not.), in the future, that is, living only in the imagination?

Every morning when Jacky wakes up he says, "snuggle daddy!". We might be sleeping in the same bed or not; it doesn't matter. "Snuggle daddy!". Then, I am the richest man in the whole world. Rockefeller, Branson, Midas, Croesus; they are poor desolate souls bereft of cuddles from their vivacious, imaginative gorgeous son.

Let's get rid of July.

4th Right

5th right

View from the bar to my favourite beach (End of July) 

Hello Granny (That church looks familiar)

I am Scottish

  All this nationalism. Catalonia, Scotland, Mars. I am an immigrant. My home is here, by definition- by definition because it's where I live. Why do people feel a kind of entitlement just because of what it says on their passport? I might be able to understand it if the interested parties were people who had saved the world from fascism. But, in general, they are just people who want to believe in something. They generally appeal to history even when their connection to the machinery of the past is patently tenuous. It's just a football fan mentality. Everybody wants something for free. I'm American and proud of it! I'm a Republican and proud of it! I'm a woman and proud of it! I always say what I think!  What these people are really saying is that, by belonging to a certain group they have rights that have accrued to them historically in spite of the fact they might have done nothing to deserve preferential treatment through their own personal endeavour. Give me a freebie!

Work hard, try your best, be generous and shut up!!

Here endeth the lesson.

Today's poem:

There must be a wound! 
No one can be this hurt 
and not bleed. 

How could she injure me so? 
No marks 
No bruise 

Worse! 
People say 'My, you're looking well' 
.....God help me! 
She's mummified me - 
ALIVE! 

'Land

Here I am vacillating like a rusty slinky that has just waterfallen down a steep staircase. This is the longest period of labour inactivity I have had in 30 years. The garden and the dogs are feeling the benefit.

I am starting a few private classes this week and I hope I will be able to flesh-out my timetable by mid-October.

In the Nature Reserve Quite Near Blackburn

I have those shoes at home now. They didn't last two minutes. In the two months since that photo was taken Jacob now takes 2 to 3 sizes of bigger shoe!! It shouldn't be surprising should it? By the time he's ten he will be bigger than me.

Silver birches

Bring back the birch? Not good enough for them, that's what I say! Why don't they bring back the oak or the Giant Redwood.

White Pine

Knotty too. We like Knotty.  I am making a cupboard for the porch at the moment, out of white pine. One of the knotts broke the drill-bit.

Which park is this?

And this?

Local symbol of Manhood

Quasi-Local symbol of Boyhood 

The local climate spitting water rather than fire

Have just read Neville Shute's A Town like Alice, for the first time. What a fabulous book! Makes me feel better about people even though it's just a story.

Today's poem:

Tease ... (Parody Joyce Kilmer Trees)

I think that I will never free
The joy that lives inside of me.
The me that hears the jeers of jest
Still takes a stand and still protests.
That hips weren’t made to swing and sway
While lips and eyes attract their prey.
And all things that those ladies wear
Are just a ploy ~ so men beware!
That bosom where your head has lain
May often bring you grief and pain.
So God made girls like me, the seed
From which can grow the friend you need.