Is yours under-used?

This is a tapeworm. It may have meaning

When all other diversions – telly-watching, advanced cakery, tree pruning, over-the-garden-wall conversation, drinking oneself into oblivion, reading novels that are beyond us, being cruel to our nearest and dearest, pretending to understand quantum theory – have turned into dusty, dried-up riverbeds we are left with that final and most  private resource: thought.

Most times it begins accidentally. We are reminded of a single fact, although, without the faintest idea of its meaning, I am tempted to say factoid. Sounds more profound, doesn’t it? It could, if I let it, be the starting-pistol signal to a line of thought. But I won’t. I’ve half a mind to be philosophical. Or do I mean philological?

Whatever.

The fact (-oid) may take any form. It could be a person, a word that grabbed our sense of rhythm, a sensation within the gut, a foreign incomprehension, the taste of a passion fruit, an event in history (Yeah. This is a great opportunity to explore The Don Pacifico Incident. But somehow…). Rejection by a member of the opposite sex who should have been grateful for the opportunity. Dadaism. A sin committed in youth. A conviction we are uglier than ever we thought.

Anything. And the process of thought may take us in any direction. Like as not, though, the first response will probably be propelled by one of Kipling’s “six honest serving men”:

… they taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When.
And How and Where and Who.'

The cliché stepping stone would now be to provide an example but that’s the easy way out. What’s fascinating about thought is the process itself. The fact that each move along the way presents us with the same infinity of possibilities. Thus Susan Sarandon may metamorphose into the instincts of a tapeworm. In the blink of an eye.

This would be the result of uncontrolled thought, day-dreaming. The alternative would be controlled thought, whereby we try to profit from our ability to think, forcing it into useful revelations. Understand we’re talking about thought, as opposed to mere problem-solving. Being driven by the belief (hope?) that – ahead – there are flattish stones waiting to be turned over leading us to a miraculous understanding, say, of why the scale of C-major seems inevitable. Even pretty. And which could explain why our head occupies a space at the top of our spine.

There’s lots more to say but if I could be granted a wish I’m hoping you'll break off from Tone Deaf and try out this process yourself. As to some extent I did when I first arranged the words: “When all other diversions – “

 

Why blogging still counts

Just read a review of a book analysing friendship. Why, out of all the book reviews that slide into oblivion, unread, did I slow down the avalanche and start concentrating on a subject potentially woffly? The answer lies at the heart of blogging and I’ll get to that… perhaps.

More truthfully I was propelled backward in time, to my salad days when I got paid for doing journalism. More precisely still, I’d been visited by a journalist’s golden benison, a solid kick-off line; here goes:

It’s important to say what friendship isn’t. Sloppy writers may equate it with love; they shouldn’t. Lovers often spend time at each others’ throats, friends less so. Love is passion, friendship is fun, forgiveness and felicity; and, on the whole, friends aren’t linked by that other f-word. Lovers tend to operate in the present tense, friends reflect a lot. Lovers hate gaps between meetings, friends may actually profit from year-long absences. The differences between love and friendship are most notable when friendship happens between different genders. I could go on.

I don’t have too many friends: as a presence I’m inclined to get on others’ wicks. I favour unpromising subjects for conversation, ask too many probing questions, punctuate long periods of showing-off with startling – though happily brief – bouts of unexpected shyness, am bad on social etiquette, pedantic about language and am probably unjustifiably confident with regard to science.

All these failings and more are evident in what I write but then reading allows more control than being part of conversation. As a result the majority of my friends (It’s no great sum, I assure you.) are from those who have commented, and still do, on my blog. Most of whom I have never met but whose qualities I treasure.

In fact friends may often be regarded as distant to each other when observed by an impartial observer. In my case distance is reality and not mere judgement. Foreigners in fact. For me Brexit is a wound that still bleeds.

Why I'm in profit

No, it's not mine; I have a much
better developed hippocampus

That familiar noun – the brain – has at least two meanings: 1. The squishy entity that resembles baking dough based on suet. 2. A location in the human body where unparalleled feats of inter-communication occur even among the most inert of Trump voters. But did you know that the brain also underwent its own evolution just as far-reaching as the process whereby our ancestors crawled laboriously up the beach and shed their flippers for pairs of arms and legs? But not exactly in the blink of an eye.

In a two-part series which started yesterday on BBC2 Professor Jim Al-Khalil summarised the 600m years during which the cerebral equipment of an average mud-hopper eventually manifested itself, much improved,  in 2025 in the person of, let us say, J. D. Vance. Not only that but there were show-and-tells.

We saw a tiny living worm blessed with the most primitive brain presently extant. This Model T brain not only existed way back but actually worked; lab experiments demonstrated it could differentiate between left and right, making it superior to a large percentage of the folk in the county where I currently live.

It only took another 100m years – give or take – for another milestone to be reached: the faculty of imagination, notably to envisage possible future events. Allowing the user to plan to his/her own advantage.

And it’s here that I leave the prof. and become personal. BTW those Brits who have a smart TV may watch both episodes on I-Player, one of the rare advantages of living in these embattled islands.

Imagination! (And yes, the screamer is justified.) It’s presently active in the shreds of tissue I call my mind. After a hiatus lasting several years I’ve managed to resume writing my novel Rictangular Lenses (Misspelling intentional.) The word count, an auto-feature of Microsoft Word for those who asked if I used my fingers to help me arrive at this total, has risen from 65,000 to 70,000.

And I'm presently working on this bit: X (a woman) has put information in front of Y (a guy) wondering if he’ll arrive at what would be a desirable conclusion; Y (a typical guy) is struggling but won’t admit it. For me it’s not just a question of laying out the facts and the deliberations, I have to make them entertaining. It’s a hard ask but I love it. 

It’s what I was put on earth to do.

Yeah, The Man With The Scythe may be just round the corner but XXXX him (count the letters); I’m happy imagining. And I'm thinking thank goodness the worm, the mud-hopper, various lizards plus one which learnt to climb trees, a whole slew of gibbons plus a figure in the fog that may be The Missing Link all took up the options they did. Retrospectively they deserve my gratitude and my hope is that they - like me – also experienced the sheer joy of creation. In the words of William Faulkner: bringing to light that which never previously existed.

Oh ye millions I embrace you (Quote: LvB)

Something to hide behind?

A stream of personable, competent and energetic women known as carers help me look after VR, my wife. At least half of them carry tattoos. "Is it mandatory for carers?" I ask. They shake their heads. I'd like to ask "Why?" but I fear pursuing a true answer might be thought intrusive. The halfway-house answer would be tattoos  are presently popular  (among men and women) and tattoo parlours have sprung up in the High Streets; fashion is being followed.

Tattoos are, I suppose, decorative but I'm not similarly inclined to discover the rationale behind, say, necklaces. The difference being that tattoos are more or less permanent, True, they can be removed, but the process is said to be far more painful than the original needlework. 

Are they meant to be seen? Given that some tattoos are imprinted on faces, I'd say yes. Only the need for a broader canvas had led to their appearance on arms and chests, thereby spending most of their existence covered up by clothing. Yesterday, my regular hair-dresser, S - source of many interesting revelations - obligingly pulled down the back of her blouse collar to reveal a religious symbol between her shoulder blades, to which an unexplained mandela had been  recently added. In blue. Obviously for private viewing.

But I return to the permanence of tattoos. Might one justification be that the wearer was dissatisfied with mere bare skin? 

And there's the the risk about tattoos being invalidated by the passage of time. During one's impulsive youth one might wish to celebrate falling in love with X, then later marrying Y. And being forced to wear pyjamas even on very hot nights.

Tastes change. In my teens I admired the pop singer Guy Mitchell; remember him? But  I'm glad my admiration didn't run to submitting my flesh to the needle.

Once, under the influence of my High Tory Dad, I thought Conservatism was the way to go. Had I recorded this on my right arm amputation wouldn't have been too high a price to pay in 2025.

And yet I am no nearer to finding a plausible answer: Why tattoo? Please help.

The corpse speaks

Our recent celebrations were muted, what mattered were the family groupings. I found myself taking a back seat, reflecting rather than yapping. Thinking about the way things had turned out over the years, when bad times had evolved into good times and then into unexpectedly even better times. With flaws of course.

A slow process which cannot be caught in the brevity of a celebration. Worse still is how the language of celebration undermines the good that is being celebrated. Ah, that tired vocabulary, unimaginative syntax and vain attempts to emphasise phrases that have long since lost their ability to connect with people. The pathetically dried-out husk known as cliché, in short: dead language.

Theoretically dead language is no threat. “But we knew what he was trying to say,” is the cry of those who see no harm in the cliché. Arguing that the speaker had tried to articulate no doubt genuine feelings, had failed and was simply “making do”. But if those feelings were truly genuine shouldn’t we be ashamed of under-selling them? After all this might be the only occasion we will have to express an important sentiment. And yet we’ve sent our listener away with the echoes of a fifty-year-old ad slogan.

No doubt the first person to say he was “over the moon” got a laugh. These days not an eyebrow rises. Unsurprising since the phrase dates back to the 1700s. Unlike cheese and decent Bordeaux jokes don’t mature with age.

But clichés may hide another grievous shortcoming: laziness. People who believe themselves to be reasonably literate often resort to their equivalent of the bovine lunar leap. It is, of course, difficult to put words to feelings of sorrow or joy. Fact is, many don’t try. Or only as far as coming up with a single word, usually an adjective, less desirably an adverb, most abominably the catch-all “very”. Take heed: all the single-word solutions were used up at about the time we went from BC to AD.

Significant happenings deserve effort, especially when addressing, say, a recently bereaved widow or a five-year-old who has come last in the sack race. Internally we may want to gush but gushing doesn’t parse well. You could always try the initially unexpected:

To the widow: Jack was hopelessly wrong saying no one would mourn. I, for one, am completely gutted.

To the five-year-old: I’m not at all surprised. Billy may have won but I overheard his parents say he has a third leg. Hides it up his bum.

At my post-mortem piss-up: That should shut him up.  

Cleanliness is next to godliness, I'm told

Extreme old age, post-triple-surgery and a blindspot regarding domestic skills have conspired to prove I cannot - alone - attend to VR, my unwell wife of 65 years. Carers are filling in the gaps.

Virtually all are women, working long long hours for (I suspect) low pay. They are uniformed, brisk, adaptable to the peculiarities of our house and -  despite regulations to prevent coercion - expert at getting VR to do what she believes she cannot do. And won't do for me.

Did I say "brisk"?

Carer: You going out?
RR: Just to pick up The Guardian.
Carer: In that shirt?
RR: Wha...?
Carer: It's not clean.

Meekly I changed the shirt I'd worn for no more than a week. And laughed delightedly all the way to the filling station. VR's the patient and is treated with sympathy. I'm the inefficient dogsbody with impossibly low standards of personal hygiene. But I believe  commitment to a cause outweighs politeness.

Ou sont les neiges d'antan?

The photo was taken by daughter Occasional Speeder. She captioned it: "What a place."

I seem at peace with the world, ignorant of the ill-health that lay ahead for V and me. There are hints I am in France; the village of Montypeyroux to be exact, sitting outside a restaurant which we reserved for occasions when we felt deserved a treat. 

At the time the prospect of a last visit to France was far from my mind. It has now occcurred (actually, a year ago) and I am left to ponder. What was it that took me back year after year?

I'd like to say it was the language but that's not strictly true. Rather it was the use of language and to that end I took weekly lessons continuously from mid-1973 to late 2017. Read about fifty French novels. Followed radio transmissions from France Inter. Wrestled with the ultra-demanding slangy prose of L'Equipe, a daily newspaper devoted to sport. Some people say they loved French but I'm not among them. It's a real bastard of a language and there were great holes in my knowledge of everyday conversation.

But what I did know endowed me with the enormous gift of confidence. I relished all opportunities to wade in and grab French attention. The point being I overcame my lack of idiom by planning what I had to say and coming up with the unexpected. The punchline reserved for the final sentence. My rewards consisted of watching facial  reactions change: at first alarm, then attention, then the suppression of laughter. For to have laughed out loud would have been to admit that I had shown dominion over them. A Brit? Jamais.

One other thing: the huge middle of France is high level, under-populated and known as the Massif Central. It tickles my fancy turning an adjective into a noun. Also, the two words call out to you