WEEK'S READING

• Northamptonshire Life
• Sunday Express Crossword
• Diesel engine maintenance and repair
• Totto Chan
• Heraclitus
• Ottolenghi
• The Story of Pain
• A Bright Moon for Fools
• Retail Week
• Kenwood Stereo Manual
• Sutton on Derwent School Newsletter
• Force 4 Chandlery catalogue
• Charles Trwhyitt shirt flyer
• Country Life
• Email Inbox
• Roger Deakin's diary

I goggle at geese and at goshawks

And marvel at merlin and mice.

But show me a gaggle of humans

And I struggle to see them as nice.

PRIVILEGED

I met someone the other day who was critical of those with a privileged upbringing.

By privileged, he meant moneyed.

It set me wondering about privilege.

Who is the more privileged?

The child from a wealthy family who has materialism thrust on them to fill an absence of  genuine love and affection? The rich kid bundled off unwillingly to boarding school at eleven? An infant given toys, so parents don't have to engage fully with this person here and now?

Or the child brought up in a poor, but loving, attentive environment?

Likewise, underprivileged. One of the most striking things in rural India, where people have very few material possessions, is how self evidently happy and joyful they are day to day.

I wonder if, when, as some do, you set out to reduce or eradicate privilege, with this monetary definition, you are attacking one economy, when, perhaps, the real target should be another entirely?

SKYWARDS

A spitfire. A very characteristic engine growl.

A Chinook. Unmistakeable whup of double rotors.

Five buzzards, jinxing and jiving at a thousand feet. Mewing. Functional behaviour? Aerobatic territorialism? Or just play?

An aerobatic pilot doing falling leaves.

A squadron of racing pigeons, low over the lane. Necks out. Competitive spirit. Neck and neck.

I think "strange". Wood pigeons, their cousins, are the antithesis of speed in their flight. They remind me of Buzz Lightyear. Not exactly flying. More, falling, with style. As though they forget to fly, start to plummet then remember they are after all birds and ought (no matter how reluctantly) act the part.

We cycle to Aughton church. I'm surprised to find it open. We go in. It's laid out as a café, replacing rear pews, never used. I pray. In the churchyard there is a headstone to Conan Aske, Baronet of Aughton. A direct descendant of Robert Aske, of the Pilgrimage of Grace.

As we pass Breighton airfield, a light aircraft takes off and it seems like only inches above our heads.

Swallows massing. It must be close to debating time - stay or go.

It's warm, still. Black and red butterflies are attracted to the apple trees in the vegetable garden.

I take plums and apples around the village and learn that Simon and Diane, our near neighbours, are moving. "We want a village where we can get more involved. And we can't stay another winter in that house."

Their need is exactly what I'd hate. One of the best things about Laytham for me is that there is nothing to get involved with, indeed seeing people is a rarity. And when you do they are pleasant, kind people. Perfect.

Meanwhile there is sky. Ever fascinating. Ever changing. Ever calming.

FOUR SEASONS

Into September, and at Laytham nature's waitress brings the full three courses ordered by Mr Keats, right on time. Mists. Fruitfulness. Ripeness to the core.

A time to turn in on one's own core. The start of hibernation.

We catch mice, wanting to colonize our house for just that purpose.

With another inward gaze I wonder about emotions. There is a good case for strict limits to be placed on their number. Glad, mad, scared, sad. Four seasons of emotion.

Ask people how they feel and they will invariably tell you what they think. Different.

The next recourse is often to a past participle. Suspect. When there is an e and a d at the end of a description of feelings, it's often just blame.

I'm not alone in finding blame difficult. But I heard the other day someone referring to blame as a cry of pain. Very wise, that. Very wise, and very hard to remember, when it is an unexpected harvest, when the fruit you thought would be wholesome rotted before you got to eat it.

Very hard not to feel............................... disappointed!

"Never put your but into the face of an angry person."

Marshall Rosenberg

COBBLERS

If a Cobbler by trade, I'll make it my pride
The best of all Cobblers to be;
And if only a Tinker, no Tinker in earth
Shall mend an old Kettle like me.


Walter Law

GRRR

In a fit of rage I have just thrown a laptop in the bin.

Very therapeutic.

CAMPING

It was to be a grand adventure - the Mini Madam and her friends camping in the paddock.

The kids were given a free run (within fiscal limits) round Sainsbury's, purchasing sausages, burgers, chocolate brownies and other goodies. After a meal which featured Chocolate Orange segments as its starter, followed by burgers and ketchup, they settled into their campsite for the duration.

The Mini Madam lasted till about seven, then appeared indoors, complaining that the wind made a horrible noise.

Her tent mates were more intrepid, lasting another twenty minutes, before emerging to spend the night indoors.

I lay long awake, listening to the wind's song, a cold north easterly lullaby.

LANYARD

I have a lanyard on my boat which I pull for luck, every time I return from the sea safely.

 

I do it in remembrance of a friend of mine who sadly died, prematurely young, and in honour of the joy and urgency of living, brought forcefully and poignantly home to me at his requiem, and which was the immediate call to me to get on with it and  buy my scruffy old boat.

COMPLIMENT

Dying with you would be a good laugh.

THE MEANING OF LIFF

I get a letter asking me to advise on life's purpose.

Here's my reply.

You’re asking ME the purpose of life???????

 

You’re having a laugh.

 

I’m just a fellow traveller as baffled as anyone. All I have learned is that happiness is inside one’s own noodle. But as to putting it into practice. That’s a whole different ball game. I wish it were different, but I reckon I’m as prey to circumstance as anyone I know.

 

If you want a view, I see happiness as nirvana. Nir va na. Never blown off. That’s what the three words mean (as I understand it).  It makes sense to me. A state of mind, entirely capable of joyous appreciation of what is, even when what is seems to consist of what is negative. The infallible, immovable ability to take delight in what there is to delight in, rather than concentrate on what apparently preoccupies as harm, hurt, pain, dislike or other negatives.

 

Easy to say.

 

Very, very hard to do.

 

If I have a life quest, having moved my mind from depressive to merely aberrant but without the depression (itself a proud boast), achieving that unshakeable equilibrium is it. And this is where zen and its paradoxes come in. Seeking it can’t get it. Trying at it defeats it. Attaining it is by letting it be. “It” doesn’t exist anyway. Preferring it self defeats. Puzzled? Me too, brother.

 

I keep living, finding kindness a help to me more than others, finding silence a comfort, finding that the more I think to define myself the harder it is, and finding the state of happy being as bloody elusive as ever.

 

And then....................

 

In the field of grass a single flower.

 

The copper beech everyone said would not grow, grows.

 

Shit stinks gloriously.

 

A pigeon emphasizes ridiculously its third syllable of five, over and over.

 

Swallows consort about the season on a wire. Time to stay? Time to go?

 

I see mice, a rarity, but a symbol of the season.

 

The beech hedge smells of nothing but beech.

 

This wine tastes great.

 

My legs carry me - a miracle.

 

I am joyful. I am sad. I am angry. I am tired. I sleep. I wake. I sleep again. I wake. Miraculous, when you think about it.

 

My thoughts come. My thoughts go. Some stay. Some go quick. Trains of thought in an endlessly open station.

 

But just look at how much better off I am than the man screaming in the agony of dying. Ta, life.

 

And for the man screaming in agony before death - not yet dead.

 

Life. It just bloody goes on all around no matter what silly fuckers like you, or me do. What we really ever control is zilch.

 

In short, I’m as puzzled about life's meaning as you.