Chaos-Storms-War in Europe

February/March Blog

The last few weeks have been a tumultuous time. We’ve seen severe storms, freezing cold weather, days of endless rain. And against a background of shifting political scenarios. Covid rules have relaxed and all but disappeared, except people do insist on wearing face coverings, even though they don’t need to and it is doubtful that it does much good. Boris Johnson has been teetering on the edge of being ousted because of parties held at number 10 during lockdown and even the police have been called in to conduct a thorough investigation - and then hey presto, all that seems forgotten by the media. No talk of Covid, of parties and police investigations. We now have nothing but the war in Ukraine on the news and Boris has escaped by the skin of his teeth, as everyone has bigger fish to fry.

It is difficult in these troubled times, faced with Russian aggression, not to cast our minds back to the cold war days of the Seventies and Eighties. Sometimes, with the mounting tensions that are going on, one can feel that the minutiae of every day life has become inconsequential. These thoughts makes me think of that poem by Auden, Musee des beaux arts, where he comments about the painting by Bruegel, where the white legs of Icarus can be seen disappearing into the green ocean whilst all about life is blithely going on. . .

What choice have we, but to go on doing the small things of life that need to be done: cooking our food/cleaning our houses/weeding our gardens, etc., while another madman is flying too close to the sun again?

New Beginnings

January

New Beginnings. That’s what January means to many of us. Time to make new resolutions, new goals, firm up our values, get our life on a more positive track. Or so we hope. Later we wobble off the track again, break the resolutions, forget the new goals and values. Revert to old ways.

Old habits die hard. I read somewhere in a book that oft repeated actions or negative thoughts form neural pathways in the brain, particularly when we are young and the brain is still a developing and plastic organ. This is why addiction is such a difficult thing to overcome. No matter how many New Years come along to aid us . . .

I’m addicted to surfing the net and YouTube videos. I used to be addicted to reading (yes, even ‘good’ things like reading can be an addiction - take workaholism or addiction to sport), but now YouTube has supplanted my reading addiction. I’m also addicted to smoking - although I have it reasonably controlled, in that I binge smoke for two days every fortnight - approximately 20 cigs - rather than smoke every day. I find it surprising easy to pick it up and put it down again, with the help of my vape. Sometimes, I best path is that of compromise, of whittling on the edges of our addictions rather than trying to give them up completely.

And so this New Year I would wish for more kindness to myself, more tolerance for my faults and shortcomings, more patience with my lack of resolution. If I watch too many YouTube videos let me pick up a good book and read it for half an hour. If I eat too many sweets or biscuits today let me go for a long walk with the dog tomorrow.

My novel, Blink, and I’m gone . . . , although available on line since end of September last year, has now officially had its launch party at the Alice Cross, along with my new collection of poetry. Let me congratulate myself for work well done, and New Beginnings . . .

The darkest time of the year.

December

I always have the strangest feeling, as the year winds down to the shortest day of the year, that the world is coming to a standstill, is standing still, that everything is slowing and waiting. That the world is possibly dying, even. That this is it; the end-times. Life will never move on again.

It always makes me think back to what it was like for primitive people. In the Stone Age, for instance. Before information was recorded in almost any form at all - except perhaps, rough indentations on boulders. Before people were taught to read and the printed word handed to them to tell them not to fear this standing-still time of the year - the year will move on, the sun will come back, it is all only part of a natural rhythm, a cycle. Before all the things we take for granted: radio waves, television broadcasts, and this massive ethereal thing called ‘The web’ that now supplies us, instantly, at the touch of the button, all the information we could ever need or want. (Of course, some of it is not to relied upon - but that’s another matter…)

Back then, experience could teach them the sun would come back, and knowledge handed down orally, from generation to generation - Don’t despair - it’s not the end of the world - the sun will start coming back, the days growing longer . . . But such reasurrances, without any science behind them, could not completely quell the feeling of panic when those days grew shorter and shorter, when the sun seemed in danger of disappearing for good. Even for me, being acquainted with the science of the passage of the sun and the tilting of the earth’s axis, that makes seasons such as we experience them in our hemisphere an explainable phenomena, there is something at that Winter Solstice time of the year that threatens to overwhelm me. A primitive fear of darkness. A primitive fear of the sun’s disappearance for ever.

No wonder so called primitive societies first made a God of the sun. No wonder they worshipped this great fiery ball in the sky that makes light return to the earth and causes things to grow and ripen. At this darkest time, I could easily worship the sun, as well. Build a bonfire on a high hill and dance around it and call out to the sun to return. Beg it to return. Beseech it. Promise it all manner of renunciations if only it would come back again . . .