Reflection

I am a fan, unfortunately, of puns. I can't resist them. I drive my husband to distraction, especially as, before delivering a great big fat juicy pun, I collapse in a fit of uncontrollable, and in this context, inexplicable, laughter. By the time I've got it out,  it's lost all it's potential for humour. 

One of my more macabre and long-standing games that enliven an early morning lie-in a deux, is to muse on what I want put on my headstone. 

My favourite, for a couple of years now, is, 'She Made Herself Laugh.' Just that. The irony is, that  I have no intention of having a headstone, or any permanent memorial at all. I want my ashes scattered quietly and illicitly in Buckholt Woods near Cranham, where  some of my quietest and most illicit activities have taken place. (When I was a LOT younger, naturally. See, it's all a joke to me, even if it's only my ghost that will be laughing out loud. You hear me laughing now, don't you?) 

Reflection. I bet you thought I was about to engage in some deep though-provoking musings with life-changing potential. Didn't you? You may even have decided not to read this piece at all, as we all have had it up to here ^^^ with thought provoking musings with life changing potential, haven't we? 

Yes, Mary. 

I was looking in the mirror this morning ( At last!  And not even a good one: they rarely are, that's not the point... .) I was looking in the mirror this morning and an old lady stared back at me.  

"Why, hello!" I said, caught somewhat by surprise. "Where did YOU come from?"

There was no reply, naturally. I may be old, but I'm not delusional. Yet. 

It was a pivotal moment. I could have attempted to massage away the bags under my eyes, or tried to disguise the wrinkles with make-up ... (And I MAY! I reserve the right!) I might have began a rueful dialogue on the missed opportunities of a lost youth. I didn't do THAT, because I have  a habit of taking opportunities, and even making, them if there are none around... . 

After a pause, I continued the conversation with the old woman in the mirror:

"Let's not fight," I said, "You can come along for the ride, but you have to promise me that you'll laugh at my puns."

We both smiled, identical smiles, broadly. I'd go as far as to say, very broadly indeed. 

Head Full of Sky

I am living, for a spell. In a country at war. Coming from another country at war, I realised with a shock, though I  hardly ever think about it. Why don't I think about it? I wonder.

War is hateful. Hate starts war, fuels war and, so it seems, needs to spill an ocean of blood to exhaust itself through war. 

Why is it so easy, so necessary, for us-kind to find a reason to hate? Where does it originate? Why does it persist? 

I remember a Monty Python sketch of so long ago, where an upper-class twit and a lower-class slob were debating the ownership of property:

LCS:   Where did ya git yer Stately Home an' all this land from then?

UCT:   I inherited from my father.

LCS:    An' where did 'E git it from then?

UCT:    He inherited it from HIS father... 

Imagine  this conversation delving back into the mists of time ... . Until, ultimately:

LCS.  And where did HE get it from?

UCT: He fought for it

LCS (Raising his fists ) Alright then! Stick yer mitts up! I'LL fight YOU for it! 

And so,it goes on. And so it will I guess. I read cute things, I write cute things, but I'm not very optimistic. I toy with Eckhart Tolle's conviction that a new consciousness is evolving : a better human being is arising from the murk of who we are now -  but I see little sign of it beyond the bounds of the better-off and well-educated living in settled communities in secure countries. Please, someone, tell me I'm wrong.

There must be consolation.

I tend to bury my head in the sky, to let go of reality, to read someone else's news, to live and to love as if terrible stuff wasn't happening. No-one ever tried to teach me to hate. I am SO lucky that I found someone to despise all on my own. 

Yesterday was Memorial Day. I spent an hour or two in a cemetery near here. I observed, I am an outsider. I am British, my grief is rarely a public spectacle. I'm not saying that's a good thing. By no means. I was moved, profoundly moved,  by the sea of flags on Veteran's graves. I wept in the tent where a table was set for the men taken as prisoners of war, and who are not coming home. 

I couldn't go on. I need to stop, to see where hate gets us, in order to wonder ... Does it HAVE to be like this? 

Whom do YOU hate? Foreigners? Gay men and women? Criminals? Anyone? Do you call it something else to disguise your sin? I do. We all do. 

Can you stop? Do you want to? 

There must be consolation.

And there was.

A putting green. Complete with tee-off, putter, flag and sand trap. It was life-sized; it was splendid; it was built for the dead. 

I thought it quite, quite marvellous that some of us can be so untroubled by war, if not by grief, that we can be laid to rest in a quiet spot on a lovely day behind a marble plaque beside the 20th green.

I had to smile, and to be thankful.

Light My Fire

My Kindle got squashed a couple of months ago. I was saddened, because it was a gift from my family for my 60th birthday, and I think if I had, maybe, not carried it around with me and used it, it might still be with us. 

Hey-ho.

However ... My ipad and iPhone carry on where the defunct Kindle left off, and I can continue to plump up Amazon's profits with my regular, often impulsive, purchases from the one-click non-stop CloudStore.

Books. 

I thought I would miss the heaviness of them. The joyful monotony of page-turning. The second-guessing of where I left off reading, from the crease in the spine. The occasional delight of throwing a particularly awful purchase across the room. I said I would. I made airy statements to family and friends vowing that my Kindle would NEVER replace REAL books... . I lied. I am not the paper-snob I thought I was.

Do you remember the first, the very first, book you ever read? Apart from your Infant School's Reading Scream, I mean? (I went 'Through The Rainbow' with 'The Happy Valley Readers', but it WAS the 1950's.) I do. It was a Noddy Book. I read it in hospital, where I taught myself to read, aged three. I was, and probably still am, a very clever bunny. 

Thankfully, Noddy Books were written with a very simple vocabulary, often repeated, and I was not allowed to do anything taxing because I was very very sick, so I picked up the book remembering what had  been read to me, and worked it out. I am convinced that ANY bored three year old with a modicum of intelligence and nothing else to do, could achieve a similar feat. Three-year olds are vastly underestimated, in my opinion. Most are geniuses. 

I digress, I frequently do, usually, as now, because I have no clear idea of where this is going. Pause for a cup of tea. 

My SECOND book was a Ladybird Book. ( Ladybird Books are maybe still around. They were sixpence when I read them: seventy-five pence when I bought them for my daughters...) 'Mick The Disobedient Puppy' a tale that taught me that, to be naughty, it was a good idea to be clever, because then you stood a chance of getting away with it. I frequently did, possibly still do. 

Hurriedly, before I lose my readership completely, returning to the present.

I do not read books sequentially. In pre-Kindle days, I would sit up in bed with a semi-circle of books spaced around me:

A Canticle For Leibowitz

Cod

Collected Poetry Of Rupert Brooke

The Times Educational Supplement

Alpine Flowers

I am a bee-reader. I sip nectar from tome to tome. Flighty, inconsistent: Authors really have to work hard to hold my attention. I skip to find out how a story ends, I leave out the boring bits, but I do, eventually finish them. I do persist. Some of you don't. I know this. 

My Kindle library makes book-hopping SO easy, and not QUITE as much fun, I must admit. I quite liked not knowing exactly where I'd got to, and maybe re-reading something by accident. I expect as I grow older and more forgetful, I won't even notice. I'd quite like to read Terry Pratchett's 'The Colour of Magic' again, as if for the first time. 

So now, I'm wallowing in, 'The QI Book of Amazing Facts','The Hollow Something' (Not 'Crown' - that is stretching my, 'I Persist' motto to breaking point) and 'Lanark'. 

My American third-grade students had to write book reports. The most interesting format I set them was a visual one ... Take a large piece of paper and fold the corners to the middle so there are four flaps. On the back write the title, on the outer flaps draw illustrations and under the flaps comment. I am going to do this. I think my Art Studio App could handle it. Or.. Hey! I might even do it USING PAPER. 

Later.

Awesome

The Grand Canyon from space...  I saw it and I thought of You.