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 A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
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Ten years ago I was writing several blogs on various subjects - F1 motor racing, Music, Classic Cars, Great Romances and, most crushingly, a personal journal that included my thoughts on America, memories of England and Africa, opinion, humour, writing and anything else that occurred. It all became too much (I was attempting to update the journal every day) and I collapsed, exhausted and thoroughly disillusioned in the end. So this blog is indeed a Toe in the Water, a place to document my thoughts in and on WdC but with a determination not to get sucked into the blog whirlpool ever again. Here's hoping.     |
| I must admit that I have a good feeling about 2024. This is in sharp contrast to my feelings about the early years of the 2020s - and I turned out to be right about them. Add that to the fact that I'm rarely optimistic in my view of the future, and I think it's entirely possible that we'll see an improvement in the coming year. If nothing else, it'll make a change. |
| An Uplifting Vision One of the greatest blessings in life is to be happy in one’s work. Far too many of us toil away at jobs we tolerate so that we can survive to work another day, and few indeed are those lucky enough to be paid for what they enjoy doing. Just occasionally, however, we get to see someone involved in work they love and this gives us encouragement to know that it’s possible at least. There is one instance of this that I remember with perfect clarity, a sight so unexpected and heartwarming that it still makes me smile to remember it. It was set in a time long ago when trucks were starting to acquire those audible warnings broadcast whenever they reversed. The designers of this addition to modern conveniences had not yet decided upon an acceptable standard for the thing, and so we were subjected to a range of truck announcements, some in words (“Caution! I am reversing”) or musical sounds. There were even those that used a simple tune to alert the unwary pedestrian. It was one of these that created the circumstances of the vignette that I remember so well. It was in the town of Bedworth, just north of my ancestral city of Coventry, that I observed this little demonstration of pure joy. Beduff, as the locals pronounced it, was a solidly working class place, a dormitory town that supplied much of the muscle and labour for its neighbouring city. Its inhabitants were well known for their no-nonsense and down-to-earth character and attitude to life. At the time, I was working as a painter and decorator and had a large clientele amongst Bedworthians. I was taking a smoke break outside the house I was working on when I heard the musical jingle of a garbage truck reversing some way down the street. It was a considerable distance from where I stood but, being the only activity going on in that quiet morning, my eye was attracted to the scene. Sure enough, there was a large, dirty and disreputable truck reversing slowly and producing its merry little warning of danger. In the middle of the street there was a garbage man. He was dressed as a garbage man should be, in steel-toed, heavy boots, thick clothing against the cold and a weighty black jacket, and he was dancing to the music of the vehicle behind him. His arms akimbo, he leapt and twirled with complete abandonment as he proceeded to the next bin to be collected. In that moment, he was a visible expression of sheer joy in life, an unembarrassed explosion of happiness and carefree existence, an unfettered spirit released into freedom in spite of his apparent servitude in a mean and unenviable task. He made my day. I know, of course, that he was performing for the amusement of his workmates, the driver and the other garbageman, that he was making a mockery of the silly alarm music of the truck. It was, in fact, typical of the humour of the English working class, a silent rebellion against the drudgery of everyday. But that does not negate the wonder of his innocent outburst of joy. Without an awareness of and disdain for the limitations of his world, he would never have thought of entertaining his mates with so hilarious a display. It’s the existence amongst us of those that can rise above circumstances that gives us the ability to carry on. Life is never as bad as it may seem to be at times, and it’s the jokers among us that can lift us beyond despair. Word count: 601 |
| Of Water Many years ago I worked in the High Court of Zimbabwe. It was a very large and rambling building, constructed in the 1920s I'd guess, and contained several courts and many large offices. Wandering corridors connected the various parts and in some areas the building became a maze in which it was easy to get lost. Walls were thick and strong, ceilings very high and the floors were that polished, wear-resistant concrete that seems the norm for government buildings everywhere. I was employed in the deceased estates and company liquidations section and, because there was so much space within the building, for most of my seven years there I had an office to myself. In those days I had dreams of becoming a great artist or a great writer (I had not yet decided which) and it became my habit to speed through the work so that I could have plenty of time for writing poetry or drawing afterwards. In time I could guarantee having a clear desk by about 11:00 am and would spend the rest of my day scribbling on the backs of old court reports or merely pondering and dreaming. The powers that be eventually discovered that they could give me any amount of work and it would be done in a morning; they steadily increased my workload, perhaps to see whether I had any limits. And, not wishing to give up my free time, I accelerated to stay ahead. I worked there for seven years and, by the time I left, I must have been doing everyone else's work for them; certainly, they seemed to spend most of their days in sitting around and chatting. Perhaps that is just normal for any government department, however. I remember a day when I was sitting back in my chair, musing, when I noticed a drop of water hanging from the ceiling just above me. There was no sign of how it had come to be there; it could have been condensation for the thick walls, narrow windows and large rooms kept the place pretty cool, or it may have been a leakage from some part of the plumbing in the floor above. But, whatever the reason for its appearance, it did not seem to grow or change. It just hung from the ceiling, being a water drop. I watched that drop for a long time, expecting it to fall, but it did not. It seemed to have found its place in the world and have resolved to stay there forever. I pondered its existence and what it meant. After a time it dawned on me that there was much to be learned from this one drop of water and I wrote a poem about it. This was in about 1972 and is entirely reproduced from memory, so you will understand that it may have the odd word or two not quite as it was in the original; but it is as close as I can get: O Water Surface tension Inner calm Like a woman The water drop In grasping the holdless ceiling Defies the sight and mind of man Denies the fact of river Lake and stream Proposes cloudbed rivers borne By windy banks To seas and oceans Of the sky Your human laws Of gravity and surface Do not describe the natural fact But only lend it reason I do not subscribe to the idea that any artist should explain his work; it should stand alone for so it will have to do after his death. On this one occasion, however, I must mention that the word "describe" is not meant in its narrow sense of telling what something looks like. This is rather in the sense of "giving the complete story of" and comes very close in meaning to the word "circumscribe". And that's all I'm saying. Line Count for the Poem: 16 Word Count for the whole essay: 643 |
| Polly Theism was a girl so fickle she lost count of her boyfriends. |
| The Lightness of Being Right Even when Andrea and I argue, it turns out we're both right. I used the word "obfusticate" and she said, "Don't you mean 'obfuscate'?" Google says they're both valid. |
| What Did You Say? I am in constant muttered conversation with an imaginary audience. If I had a part in a play, its name would be Aside. |
| On the Tip of my Tongue Have you ever had one of those times when everything you read or watch has massive inspiration for you? You enter a period where the whole environment seems loaded with impulse to get you writing and you desperately want to get busy because you know that what’s inside you is so ready that it will just spill out on the page and be brilliant. An interview with someone you admire has produced certain things that you’ve always thought but now frames it so clearly in your understanding that you have to include it in something that you write, or a flash of insight gives you a perspective that is so different you must produce a vehicle for it right now while it’s still hot. And then you reach for something to hang it all on, to contain the wonderful feeling that threatens to be completely fleeting, and you realise you haven’t got a story to accommodate it. Just something simple and unchallenging, but you’re left with nothing. You try to construct something, a basic framework that can run with all you want to say, but it won’t come. Everything dissolves into banality and you’re left in a corner with grinding frustration and urge to create but no means to do so. You’ve been there? Welcome to my world. Word count: 218 |
| An Apology I decided that the blog was the best place to announce my cringing apology for my absence over the last four days. The blog has not had a post for a while and, if people miss my apology because they don’t read my blog, that seems fair retribution to me. My craven excuse for absence is that I have been ill. Not quite at death’s door but it felt like it for a while. Like most things, it could be described as a bad cold or the flu, but I blame covid and its annoying habit of returning every now and again to annoy. Anyway, the gist is that, when I feel like that, writing is beyond me. It’s hard to concentrate the mind when your body is leaking fluids at every orifice (love that word) and your belly is yelling in pain. I gave up without a fight and slept whenever I could. So there you have it and now you know how easily WDC is abandoned by me when in the depths of debilitating illness. No sympathies required - I am recovered (mainly) now and have already written a poem of sorts for Express It In Eight this morning. And this little piece counts too, I guess. Word count: 206 |
| It is my contention that the inventor of velcro had a cat. Think about it. |
| Staffies are Tough In the Newsfeed today, Joey's Ready for the Fall  mentions the saying, “Leashes are made to be broken.” This reminded me immediately of the greatest dog I have ever had the honour of owning (though it pains me to describe it as that since she was a Staffordshire Bull Terrier and, therefore, our relationship had more to do with partnership than any owning - Staffie owners will know what I mean).She came to us at the age of 8 weeks, the recommended age for a pup ready to leave its mother, and took up her role in the household immediately and with total confidence. This little cube of muscle and bone with a tail at one end and a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth at the other, assumed, with complete understanding, her position of guardian of the family. She was already house-trained so there were no little pools to be attended to, and she set about training us in the appropriate manner. We named her Josie. With me, she was rough and boisterous, my hands fast becoming ragged maps of little red tooth marks and scratches, the evidence of our training matches together. The wife however had different treatment - Josie would bite but never with enough power to break the skin. And for our three-year old son, Matthew, the rule was no teeth allowed. Such forbearance in a pup so young was almost unbelievable. The most important thing a Staffie requires of its human is exercise. They are so over-supplied with energy, exuberance and the joy of life that they must have an outlet at least once a day to run and sniff and jump and career about as wide an area as possible. So my walks with her began at a very early stage in her development. And the way to the veld* (did I mention that this was In Africa?) lay along a few short streets that separated our house from the countryside. I had to buy a leash to rein her in for this short walk, releasing her once we reached the open. I have yet to discover the formula for decreasing a Staffie’s enthusiasm for the daily walk. Put on a leash and the Staffie will immediately proceed to the end of its length and begin to tug the reluctant owner along behind. Josie was no exception and she broke that first leash within a few days. I bought another, stronger one. She broke that too, in perhaps a day more. And so I proceeded up the ladder from strong leash to seriously oversize for the size of dog. She broke them all. In the end I laid out some serious cash and bought a strip of horse’s harness, about half an inch thick. It had a loop at one end, useful as a handle for myself, then a long, long strip of leather, ending in a sort of bulldog clip that could be attached to the metal hoop in her collar. This, she never broke, although she never stopped trying. The great length of this leash meant that it was a bit cumbersome to carry after letting Josie loose to run in the veld. This problem I solved by passing it around my waist, threading it through the loops of my jeans. I liked leaving a length of it to swing from my waist. It was kinda cool and cool mattered at my age back then. And so the two of us would go for a walk in the bush. For me, that amounted to a stroll for a few miles but, for Josie, this was a chance to run and run for mile upon mile, covering probably five times the ground that I managed and at a much greater pace. She developed several games that she played in these walks, one with the plovers that used to nest in hidden patches in the ground. They would keep Josie from discovering the nest by dive bombing her from on high, swooping over her, and then pretending to have a problem and fluttering to earth. She would race for them and they would take off at the last moment, Josie’s snapping teeth narrowly missing their tails as they rose into the air. She never caught one but they made her the fittest dog in southern Africa, I think. And then there was the game she played with me. She called it “Chicken.” As I was walking along, minding my own business, she would approach from behind at tremendous speed. I could hear her coming, the pounding feet and panting breath getting ever closer as my nerves stretched further and further with the inevitability of collision. This was where the chicken came in. I was not allowed to turn around to see her coming. No, my job was to keep going, never deviating from the path and trusting that she knew what she was doing. It was not an easy thing to do when you can hear thirty pounds of very solid dog bearing down on you at full speed. Only once did I break. It had been raining and the ground was wet. I thought she might not be able to make the last minute jink to get around me on the slick surface. At the last moment, I stepped sideways. Unfortunately, that was the side she had chosen to come past. She cannoned into my legs like the shell from a naval gun and I went flying to come back to earth with a thump on my rear end in the mud. She stopped her mad career a few yards farther on and turned to look at me. “Never, ever deviate,” she said and then was off again. But I must return to the matter of the leash. It was, after all, the instrument of my learning just a little more about the incredible character of the Stafford. This was on the occasion of just one more of the hundreds of chicken games we played in the open veld. There was no variation in the approach nor the execution. But it changed the way I dealt with that leash forever after. Josie approached from the rear at full speed as usual. I held true to my course, awaiting that moment when she would blast by within inches of me, a wild hurricane on the way to whatever distant object she’d decided upon. But this time, the swinging bulldog clip caught in the skin at the corner of her eye. Her mad dash was instantly halted, she was thrown into the air and came crashing back to earth. The impact forced a brief grunt from her but no other sound did she make. I hurried forward to attend to her but already she was struggling to her feet. I caught her and removed the clip from her eye. Unbelievably, there was no sign of damage. The skin must have stretched like a bungee cord to have arrested her progress so suddenly, but there was no tear, no blood, nothing to indicate the forces that had been at work only seconds before. And Josie was embarrassed only that somehow she had at last been bested. She wanted only to go running again, for her speed to dismiss the memory of that abrupt comeuppance. Staffies are tough beyond belief. There are tales of them from their early days that I will never tell because I know people will not understand. But they are tough as old boots and then some. And Josie showed me that day just how tough they are. But I never left a length of leash swinging from my belt ever again. Word count: 1,270 * Note: Veld is pronounced “felt.” It comes to us from the Afrikaans and, in that language, a V is always pronounced F and a D at the end of a word is always said as a T. There is no such thing as a “veld,” as the uninformed English would pronounce it. |
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