Have You Eyes?

The eagle-eyed among you will have spotted that in yesterday’s sign-off I said it was Tuesday when it was in fact Monday.  All day.  For some reason yesterday seemed like a long day.  Maybe it was because I felt tired – the close, thundery weather that never seems to break can be quite oppressive – or maybe it was because of the sheer Bank-holidayness of it all, but whatever the reason I became a day ahead of myself.

I also wondered if I’d get comments about the title.  Why Jason?  Then again maybe you’re all far more educated than I give you credit for and had sussed straight away the connection between Argos and the story of Jason and the Argonauts:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?client=opera&q=jason+and+the+argonauts&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Argos (the store) is of course named after the hundred-eyed monster of Greek myth:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?client=opera&q=argos+greek+mythology&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Eyes also feature strongly (and disturbingly) in King Lear, the latest production of which was broadcast last night.  More on this later as I have yet to catch up with it since we were catching up with The Handmaid’s Tale having watched A Very English Scandal on Sunday night:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-44259959/jeremy-thorpe-the-true-story-of-a-very-english-scandal

It’s all go.

Happy Tuesday.

Kirk out

Call me Jason

I’m not generally a great fan of Argos: I know it’s common practice nowadays especially with internet shopping but the idea of looking at stuff in a catalogue and filling in a form and going to the counter and having the stuff magically appear a few minutes later down a conveyor belt seems to me slightly dislocated experience; somewhere between a self-checkout and ‘The Generation Game’ but much less fun than either.  If I’m shopping for stuff I like to look at the stuff.  I like to pick it up and feel the width, the heft of it in my hand; I like to read the instructions and see if it really is what I want.  Yes, I know that all this information is there if you look for it – but that’s the thing; it’s information in the abstract, not experience in the concrete.  I can read about a strimmer weighing 2.2 kg but unless I pick it up in my hot and sticky hand I don’t know if it’s going to work for me.

But one mustn’t look a gift card in the mouth; and when a voucher for Argos comes your way, to Argos we will go – or at least to the website – to see what we can buy.  And so far I’ve purchased a push-along mower (slightly better than the electric on our lumpy lawn) a water-butt (terrific: I’ve wanted one for ages) and now a lawn edging implement and a permanent mug (or whatever those things are called that you’re supposed to use for drinks in order to avoid plastic.)  My thinking is that if I neaten the edges of the lawn it’ll be easier to maintain.  We’ll see.  The only things I’m lacking in order to make my gardening experience complete are a good hoe and a decent pair of wellies (and none of your pink flowery monstrosities, thank you very much: retailers seem to think that only men wear green wellies as they start at size seven.  Grrr.)

I am determined to cut down drastically on plastic, especially single-use plastic: I will reuse wherever possible and find alternatives whenever I can.

And that’s Tuesday.

Kirk out

It’s Your Funeral: the D-Word

We seem to be undergoing something which I am resisting calling a sea-change – let’s call it a land-change – on how to mark death.  Death as a subject is almost as taboo as sex used to be when I was young: it’s considered in poor taste to bring it up in polite conversation.  You can talk about illness all you like, but don’t mention the d-word.  On the other hand there is an explosion of public grief at events like the anniversary of the Manchester bombing.

Let me say this at once: the Manchester bombing and other similar events are terrible.  It could easily have been our daughter had she been a few years younger, and the targeting of young people is particularly horrible.  That those directly affected should show grief in public is entirely understandable.  But as Matthew Parris pointed out yesterday:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b39v43

(it’s about 21 minutes in)

the stiff upper lip has gone and is replaced by almost compulsory public grief.  I can’t summon up much grief for the passing of the SUL, and yet I think somehow things have got a little out of control.  Private grief is probably best expressed privately, by which I don’t mean on your own with a box of tissues (unless that is genuinely best for you) but shared with friends, family members or counsellors.  However that is entirely different from feeling compelled to express emotion at events which don’t affect us in the slightest (Tony Blair comes irresistibly to mind here.)  It’s not enough to care; you must show that you care, and the best way to do that is by shedding a tear.  If you’re being interviewed about some crisis in your life, better cry a little – that way people will take it more seriously.  They will ‘feel your pain.’

On the other hand, there’s the whole funeral phenomenon.  Funerals used to be a time for wearing black and looking solemn; for walking or driving very slowly behind a big black hearse; for wearing veils and looking at the ground.  But nowadays you’re as likely to be asked to ‘wear bright colours’ and ‘celebrate someone’s life’ – and I can’t help feeling there’s an imbalance in all this.  I dislike enforced cheerfulness even more than I dislike enforced misery: at least when wearing black you could look sad; but now we’re all supposed to be joyful.  I’ve even seen a blue hearse – and don’t even get me started on the speed of the average cortege as it nips down the road.  It’s like the one in ‘A Fish Called Wanda’ (I can’t find a clip but you know what I mean.)

So on the one hand we have ubiquitous grief on the media; on the other we have bright colours and fast hearses.  What is going on?

Kirk out

Please Do Try This At Home

I’ve no idea what this post is going to be about but the title came to me and so I put it in.  But I’ve started so I’ll finish, as Magnus Magnusson used to say, and tell you all about easing.  Not quantitative easing (not that I know what that is, though I seem to think it’s about easing the economy by putting a bit more money into it; a sort of Keynsianism lite) nor dressmaking ‘easing’ (which means sewing together two pieces of fabric of different lengths so they end up at the same place) but the normal everyday kind of easing that comes after a period away from work.  Of course, not all of us have that luxury; in today’s exploitative work environment holidays are a luxury, not a right and you are expected not only to hit the ground running but also to make up for lost time.  Bastards.

But since I am my own boss and only crack the whip when I deem it necessary, I am easing myself back into work.  This involves a morning of cutting the hedge (hardly a relaxing activity) followed by a nice cup of tea and a sit-down.

http://www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com/book/

This is of course a British institution and needs serious conservation work in the age of people having ‘a latte to go’ or some such nonsense.  I mean, most places don’t do proper pots of leaf tea – and when do you EVER get extra hot water?  It’s an outrage.

Anyway, that’s my morning of easing.  Nice’n’easy – and yes, maybe you should try this at home.

Kirk out

Time in Wales

This may look more like ‘What are you?’ than ‘What ho!’ but this furry brown alpaca is in fact none other than Bertie Wooster.  He and his companion Jeeves lead a peaceful, snack-filled existence on an orchard in Wales accompanied by fierce geese (George and Mildred) a cockerel named Cromwell, some anonymous ducks and a host of unnamed fruit trees.  And lo! there we were just the other day, in brilliant sunshine with a terrific view of the hills and enjoying all the usual concomitant benefits of a Grosmont holiday.

We did all the usual things: Daniel took photos of the castle and orchard; I took the dogs for a walk ending up in the pub where I escaped the Royal Wedding by slipping out to the beer garden, only to come in again at the point where the fearful words ‘If any of you know any reason in law why these persons may not marry each other…’ were being uttered.  I sampled the local beer, caught up with the local gossip, had a drink with a friend and heard in detail the frightful story of how my brother-in-law’s boat went down to the briny deep, thankfully without him or my nephew on board (more on that story later.)  Daniel discovered the piano in the church and played for a while; it’s amazing how the fingers remember tunes they haven’t played for years.  He was trying to recall Fur Elise and I was able to play it from memory precisely.

We had whizzy journeys there and back with no hold-ups (though I imagine the M42 round Brum will get a bit cloggy at rush hour.)  On the way we stopped at a peaceful service station in the middle of nowhere; you could actually hear the birds singing.  Daniel rigged up a navigation system (not that you really need it, except for the last bit which goes along country lanes with high hedges indistinguishable from one another and all in mobile and internet black spots so Google can’t help if you get lost.  Which you do) whereby he connected his mobile to a speaker and hey presto! who needs satnav?  In general I prefer to use my own nous when navigating but lately with memory lapses that doesn’t always work so well.

And so to bed, as Pepys was wont to say.

Here are some more pics:

 

Kirk out

Oh Wow. A Whole Decade

I had a little notification in the corner of my page this morning.   ‘That’s odd,’ I thought, as I’m usually told of comments and followers via email and I had just checked my inbox.  I clicked on it and it informed me that it was TEN YEARS AGO TODAY!!! that I started this blog.  I won’t bore you with the details as regular readers have heard it all many times before, suffice it to say that Hanif Kureishi was partly responsible for setting me off on this path.  I suppose I really ought to do something deep and retrospective, like picking out my favourite posts or summarising my journey or selecting the best comments, but the very idea fills me with a reluctance so deep that I can barely move my fingers across the keyboard; so I shall just say Happy Anniversary to lizardyoga’s weblog and a particular shout-out to those readers who have been with me since the beginning.

Thinking about it, the last decade has seen my transition from teacher/part time writer to full-time author and performing poet, which is quite a big deal.  I was updating my CV the other week and it was quite startling how many things I’ve done, from the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square to Leicester Riverside Festival to Left Unity’s national conference and Quaker Yearly Meeting to Sing for Water at Leicester Riverside Festival.  Publications include poems in Mslexia, blogging for the same and short stories in Everyday Fiction.

Maybe soon I’ll get it together and find some retrospective links.  But right now I’m getting ready to go to Wales which includes checking the car tyres (am I the only one who hates doing this?  I think I have a subconscious fear of blowing up one of the tyres.)

So if you’ve been a reader of this blog since May 2008, please drop me a comment and let me know how the last ten years have been for you.

Kirk out

This Week Unintentionally Left Blank

Sorry folks, I’m busy painting this week so haven’t got around to blogging.  And as I’m slapping on the thickish emulsion I’m thinking about how paint used to be: thin as water, dripping everywhere, no rollers and needing three coats of everything.  Before thick paints came in it really was intolerable; no wonder people only decorated once every twenty years or so.  But the cleaning really is the worst thing; washing ceilings and tweaking the grime from its lurking-place behind the pipes, not to mention sanding radiators, it really is a pain.  You just wish you could gather the whole room up, bung it in the shower and then subject it to a brisk rub-down after which it could go for a nice jog to dry off and then you’d be ready.

But you can’t complain at the number of gadgets available to the modern decorator; from brushes that don’t splay out when drying (we used to wrap ours in rubber bands) to paint pads to rollers (imagine painting a ceiling without a roller!) to little gloss rollers (I love those) life is just so much easier nowadays.

In other news, we now have a new garden strimmer.  Daniel asked if we were going to name it.  Now I know I call the car Bertie but I thought this was going a bit far.  ‘What would we call it?’ I said.

‘Arnold,’ he rejoined.  Took me a moment to get it:

 

The song’s about 2 minutes in.

Off to give the ceiling a second coat now.

Kirk out

This Page Intentionally Left Blank

We don’t have local elections here in Leicestershire but if you do, don’t forget to vote.  Local elections are often run on local issues, viz the trees in Sheffield:

https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/local-elections-2018-sheffield-tree-felling-labour/

and in London the issue is more likely to be the Windrush scandal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windrush_scandal

which impacts on how the government is seen both locally and nationally.  Mind you, the Tories in Ilford don’t seem too worried, if this leaflet is anything to go by:

https://www.google.co.uk/search?client=opera&q=conservative+leaflet+Ilford+2018&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

(I’ve given the google search so you can be sure a number of sources have reported it: I wasn’t sure if it was a spoof at first.)

But now we’ve had a good laugh at the Tories’ expense I come on to today’s question.  Which is, seriously, what is the point of pages intentionally left blank?  I downloaded an e-book yesterday and had to scroll through about half a dozen pages which said ‘This page intentionally left blank.’  Apart from being a contradiction in terms, since, thanks to these words the page is now no longer blank (a pedant would write ‘the rest of this page intentionally left blank’) what is the bleeding point?  In the old days when books were bound and you had to have a set number of pages it was understandable, but with an ebook you can have anything anywhere, can’t you?  So WHAT IS THE POINT???

This goes in the ‘annoying and futile’ bin along with progress bars that don’t show progress:

(https://lizardyoga.wordpress.com/2014/10/09/the-progress-bar-of-sisyphus/)

and voting Conservative (ho ho.)  So…… make sure you head down the polling station some time today – and don’t leave your polling card intentionally blank.

Kirk out

This Post Will Self-Destruct in Ten Seconds

When I was a child one of my favourite TV series was ‘Mission: Impossible’ (not the films – those came later.) 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission:_Impossible

At the beginning of each programme a disembodied voice would say: ‘Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is…’ and I would be on tenterhooks lest they choose not to accept it and there would be no programme.  In fact one week they did choose not to accept it, though thankfully they changed their minds a moment later.  Phew!  The music was thrilling and there was a fuse burning down across the screen – very exciting:

I must have had a deep attachment to programmes back then (I know my life was ruined if I didn’t get to watch ‘Batman’) but somehow as you grow up the attachment wanes: and one programme I have never been tempted to watch is anything with Matey Popkins on it.  In fact I think as a media troll Matey should get as little publicity as possible, which is why I’ve given her a pseudonym, and why this post will self-destruct once it has been read.

The trouble with trolls is that they feed on attention, which is why it may have been a mistake for Theatr Clwyd to put on a play entitled ‘The Assassination of Matey Popkins’:

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/apr/27/the-assassination-of-katie-hopkins-review-theatr-clwyd-mold

Of course Matey, impulsive little scamp that she is, didn’t trouble to find out what the play was actually about and turned up out of nowhere with a giant billboard saying something about free speech or whatever (yeah, yeah).  But the trouble with satire is that unless you know it’s satire, it can look exactly like the thing you’re satirising: so that if all you know is the title, ‘The Ass of Matey Popkins’, rather than coming across as an examination of social media, seems like something much more sinister and intolerant.

Which brings us back to the world of dear old Matey – who has had enough publicity for one day and needs to go back to bed.  Night, night Matey!

Please click the ‘like’ button, after which this post will self-destruct in ten seconds.  Please stand clear of your computer. 

Ten… nine… eight…

Kirk out