Lucky Me

          From a window overlooking a car park, I observe a disturbing incident. An ordinary looking car pulls up and its occupants emerge. One, a young man, is screaming, flailing his arms and stamping his feet. He is in distress – emotional or psychological. Then, two young women of about the same age as the man get out. One is the driver. They stand by, calmly observing the man, whose tantrum resembles that of a toddler, intense but non-threatening. They appear to be accustomed to his behaviour. Are they his minders? After a while, they pull out vapes and puff on them while they wait for him to calm down. When he does, they cajole him back into the car, though his screaming continues, sporadically.

          I turned my attention to business in hand and, when I looked again, some fifteen minutes later, they had driven off. I can only guess at their circumstances, but one thing is certain: I’m thankful that fate has not, so far, placed me in a similar situation.

          As it happened, I was already counting my lucky stars just the day before. It was a dreary, wet and windy Sunday, ideal for hunkering down in front of a big screen, so I headed to the cinema with some enthusiasm. Unfortunately, I had not factored-in the subject matter of the film, Die, My Love, a dramatic study of a woman’s struggle with perinatal depression. Harrowing is the word I would use to describe the story and, when I left the cinema, the weather looked somehow even more grizzly. The only bright spot was that I had never had to deal with such tragic drama in my own life.

          These two instances of psychological turmoil – one in real time, the other as re-told – caused me not just to be thankful for my own good fortune, but to ponder the importance of empathy. None of us knows the troubles that strangers have to deal with. If we did, we might look with more compassion on their plight, such as we might hope for ourselves if the tables were turned.

          But not all of my week was spent in the bubble of an undeservedly charmed life touched intermittently by other people’s woes. I experienced something almost unheard of in recent times: I got an unsolicited and unscheduled phone call from an NHS doctor. I had heard of their existence and had even seen one not so long ago, but I assumed they were in very short supply and far too busy to bother with the worried well, such as me, but it transpired that I had unwittingly provoked one of them into taking action.

          The previous day, I had asked the receptionist at the clinic to cancel my prescription for statins. She asked if my reason was to do with side effects and I answered with a flat “no”. We left it there but, in fact, there has been a side effect, of sorts. It amounts to an ongoing discussion with my Other Half as to whether we should be taking drugs – preventative or otherwise – without questioning their efficacy and the ‘big pharma’ motive behind their promotion. I know for certain she’s not an anti-vaxxer and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t want to see my early demise, so I thought I would abstain until my next round of blood and cholesterol tests, just to show openness to the argument.

          The receptionist obviously ratted on me, which explains the doctor’s call presenting to me, personally, the statistical case for the preventative powers of statins. I caved. After all, he was doing what the NHS is supposed to do (and what for-profit medical systems shy away from): pre-empting the need for future, costly medical treatments. My charmed life is to be extended for as long as can be and with as little expense as possible to our NHS – or so they would have me believe.

Apostrophic Tradition

          The apostrophe having dropped out of the word Halloween is something that would concern me inordinately if I thought it were due to grammatical dereliction. In that case, it would be up there, on a par with potatoe’s and other abominations in my line of fire. But the omission of the little punctuation mark in this case signals something altogether more sinister: the erasure of history! How many kids who dress up as spooks on the last day of October know that the origin of their capers lies in a Christian feast day? And what is the relevance of spiders to this ritual?

          One of the benefits of living in a block of flats is that your door is generally inaccessible to trick-or-treaters but, on this last occasion, I did not escape scot-free from the intrusive shenanigans. The flat in which I took refuge is in the centre of Manchester, where it was not children who caused a nuisance, but adult revellers in the streets, whose noisy, drug and alcohol-fuelled antics went on until dawn, as did the sound of sirens from the emergency vehicles dispatched to rescue them from self-harm. How many of them were out celebrating the eve of All Hallows Day? What even is “All Hallows”? Well, in modern parlance, it translates as all things holy, or “all saints,” according to ecclesiastical practice. You would never have guessed that from the goings-on in Manchester.

          The present form of Halloween, largely the business of children, originated in the USA and was adopted here only lately. Boomers like me have no recollection of pumpkins featuring in our childhood. We might have been aware, to a greater or lesser extent, of the mark on the religious calendar, but nobody dressed as ghosts. It’s not surprising that we can’t bring ourselves to embrace the artificial and apparently random spookification of All Hallows. It adds nothing of value to our lives (unless we’re in the fancy dress business). To the contrary, it erases an aspect of our social history, already fading in the light of secularism.

          Lest my tone be mistaken as advocating against American social imports, I should point out that my generation enthusiastically adopted rock’n’roll (apostrophes and all), though by then, of course, we had pretensions to adulthood and were on the cusp of becoming paying consumers. One assumes that it is the parents of today who provide the wherewithal to kit-out their kids in faux scary and help them carve faces into pumpkins. Speaking as one with no experience of parenthood, I can only imagine there is irresistible pressure within children’s peer-groups to out-Halloween each other. Far be it from me, therefore, to advocate discouraging the purchase of mountains of disposable tat for their excited offspring. That way lies tearful tantrums, so I’m told. Rumour also has it that there is an entire city, somewhere in China, whose raison d’être is to manufacture this stuff and were its customers to fade away, its economic future would be dire. But hey, c'est la vie, capitalist-style.

          Five evenings after Halloween, there is another celebration, irrefutably British and indisputably secular in origin. As such, it is resistant to foreign interference. Guy Fawkes night still follows the same rituals now as it did when I was a kid: children blagging money from adults with their “penny for the Guy” schtick, a box of fireworks for dad to let off in the garden and a bonfire on which to burn (an effigy of) Guy Fawkes. It’s all good, harmless fun – as long as you’re careful with the combustibles and don’t take the effigy-burning too seriously. Apart from fancier, more expensive fireworks, there doesn’t seem to be much scope for further monetisation of the tradition. Could that be the reason for its enduring sameness? Mind you, there is simmering controversy as to the title. If this night belongs to Mr. Fawkes, surely there should be an apostrophe in the spelling?

 

Procrastination - The Thief That Steals Your Future.

          Though its usefulness persists, the metaphor “flogging a dead horse” is a cruel and crude expression. It belongs to another era – pre-RSPCA, I imagine – and its retirement surely is well overdue. I mean, when was the last time you, or anyone you know, flogged a horse, be it dead or alive? Hence, I propose replacing it with something not only kinder but also more relevant to modern lifestyles. How about, “clicking a dead link”?

          This sprang to mind last week, prior to attending an event to do with the struggle to prevent further destruction of the natural environment. Isn’t that battle already lost? Are activists just clicking a dead link? After all, they’ve been at it since the middle of last century, even before Rachel Carson’s seminal book, Silent Spring (published in 1962), raised widespread public awareness. The net result of 75 years of expression of concern, activism and even some legislation, is that the ecosystem is being degraded faster than ever. This must be disheartening, to say the least, for Jonathon Porritt, who joined the Ecology Party (now the Green Party) in 1974 and whose latest book* launch I was about to attend.

          Jonathon Porritt is fortunate to have a name that is memorable in and of itself. If you are fighting a cause, a nom de guerre is a useful identifier that helps you get attention more easily. That said, there are several ways to misspell his forename! Nevertheless, the moniker has stuck with me, so I was persuaded to turn up and hear him, regardless of my habitual aversion to speakers ‘preaching to the converted’. After all those years of battling globally-entrenched economic interests, I would not have been surprised to find him somewhat despondent and bitter, yet that expectation was not met. Certainly, there was anger and exasperation in what he had to say, but he pointed to battles won and expressed hope for the future. We all need significant triumphs from time to time, if only so that we can continue to claim that hope really does spring eternal.

          The struggle to convince humans that lemmings are not a good role model is timeless. The inhabitants of Easter Island became so obsessed by building huge stone statues, that they chopped down all the trees and ruined the soil in the process, thereby assuring their own destitution. Perhaps they didn’t see it coming but, in our modern times, we don’t have that excuse. We have scientific data to warn us that our equivalent of giant statues, the pursuit of constant economic growth via extractive capitalism, will result in the Easter Island-ification of the whole planet.

          But how do you get people to acknowledge this inevitability? I was walking in a nearby park (with my litter-picker), when I came across a collapsed tent and the belongings of its recently departed inhabitant(s) that were scattered around – toothbrushes, clothing, utensils and some other, unsavoury-looking detritus. I was thinking about clearing it up, when a dog-walker came by and said, “You’d think the council would clear that up”. I murmured assent, but that was not what I was thinking. The council has more important things to clear up, e.g. the social consequences of poverty, ignorance, addiction and destitution. It’s the inhabitants of the tent that need taking care of, not the litter of their homelessness.

          When people are struggling to get through the day, they have nothing to give to the future. Only by considering the welfare of our fellows on a par with our own will we collectively make significant progress towards averting the looming eco-disaster. Did you ever have that feeling that you’re banging your head against a brick wall?

*Love, Anger & Betrayal. Just Stop Oil’s young climate campaigners.

 

The Presence of Absence

          Lately, I’ve been buying pink grapefruits from the local supermarket. I’m so addicted to them that I daren’t look to see the country of origin, lest it be too far across the globe for the carbon footprint not to prick my conscience. I take pleasure in juicing them on a vintage, electric Moulinex that is activated by pressing the halved fruit down on the rotary spindle, which alternates direction each time it is engaged. That is, until the motor packed up and my efforts to fix it came to nought. So, I trawled eBay for a replacement and saw the same model, in an authentic 1960s shade of custard. Nostalgia tempted me (and it was reasonably priced), but reason prevailed. Old electric motors die, don’t they.

          Thus, paralysed by indecision, the matter was put aside while we executed a plan to make the most of the mild weather. We went on an excursion in the campervan – the last, perhaps, before the clocks change and the days get shorter overnight. A previously unexplored section of the north coast of Cornwall was our target for a stint of hiking, sampling local produce and engaging with nature in general.

          I found a strategically located campsite at Delabole, a name that intrigued me because it sounded French. Norman, perhaps? Cornish placenames tend to have prefixes, such as “Tre” (homestead), “Pol” (pool or pond), “Pen” (head or end) and, of course, “Saint” (saint), but this place is different because it was named after a hole in the ground. (Not a Norman nobleman after all.) I didn’t know it until I went there, but Delabole is the site of a “world famous” slate quarry that continues to be productive, six hundred years after it was first excavated. As for the name, Deliou Manor, near the present site of the quarry, was listed in the Doomsday book. By 1284, it had become known as Delyou Bol – a translation of the old Cornish – “delyou” meaning flakes or leaves and “bol” a pit – which gives us the Pit of Flaky Stone.

          We did go to see it, walking past the vacant coach-parking lot and standing, alone, on the viewing platform (sightseers are more numerous in the holiday season, apparently). We watched an excavator poking noisily at the prized sediment and tried to imagine the time when more than a thousand people worked there. Now, there are five men and three machines, so there wasn’t much to see. We continued along the path to the coast and a café at Trebarwith, a placename more familiar, insofar as it is easily confused with a hundred others.

          There’s something sweet about seaside holiday places at the end of the season. There are few if any other customers, so staff are friendly and relaxed. You feel smug if the weather’s fine and privileged, as if you were in First Class. It was in this kind of bubble that we set off on a five-hour trek. Yet, there was also an eeriness, induced partly by the lack of a breeze, the stillness of the ocean and the absence of any other hikers. This might have been something to savour, yet we were not gratified by such exclusivity, especially as it applied also to the wildlife. During that walk, not once did we see any creature emerge from the sea. Apart from a few sheep and cattle, the only fauna we spotted were three caterpillars, three butterflies, two black beetles and a slug. Had the end of the world occurred since we left Trewhatsit?

          More likely, it’s just a quiet time for nature, but now that we’re back in the city, it’s business as usual. I was going to resolve the matter of the citrus juicer but, having opened the freezer and seen the gallons of frozen apple juice stashed within, I have put it on hold again – which, incidentally, gains me respite from the carbon-footprint anxiety.

Pressing Engagements

          It’s that time of year again: the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness – and influenza. Actually, it’s been so long since I had the flu that it seems now like one of those childhood afflictions one no longer need worry about. I am, of course, not uniquely immune to the virus; regular vaccination has saved me from the dreaded lurgi. So, I was pleased to be invited this week to the local clinic for the annual flu jab.

          My appointment was set at 09.22 (which did strike me as being improbably precise) and when I arrived ten minutes early, I was perplexed to see a queue snaking out of the entrance and into the carpark. My first thought was that I could have stopped for coffee at that nice little café I walked past, but I observed the queue shuffling forward at a fair pace, so I took my place. Before long, I was inside, with just enough time to banter with one of the attendants, who told me they were doing 850 jabs that morning and that the reason it was organised so efficiently was because “the boss is ex-military”.

          ‘Military precision’ is one of those assumptions that, in my view, deserves to be questioned. I may be biased but, with a father who served in the armed forces, I was accustomed to hearing stories to the contrary. The terms ‘balls-up’ and ‘cock-up’ were familiar to me from an early age and, later, I learned the US forces equivalent, SNAFU. It was with scepticism, therefore, that I viewed footage during covid lockdown of army personnel taking charge of vaccine distribution. I took the cynical view that it was just a morale-boosting stunt. Nevertheless, here I was, rolling down my sleeve and being ushered out of the back door, with my phone displaying 09.23!

          Anyway, now that I’m jabbed, I can relax and enjoy autumn’s delights, especially as the weather is clement and there’s plenty of sunshine to enhance the colourful, turning foliage. The bumper harvest has already given us a freezer full of stewed apples and there is no end in sight to the season’s plenty. Now there is apple juice. A friend, who lives in a farm cottage next to a small orchard, invited a group of pals for an afternoon of sharing both the labour and the produce of an apple-pressing session. She had hired, or borrowed, the equipment and we were required to bring suitable containers. Glass-bottled juice can be pasteurised and kept, plastic-bottled juice can be frozen and kept, but untreated juice will soon ferment.

          Had I realised the scale of the abundance, I would have brought a wagonload of vessels. She has no more than a dozen fruit trees, but they were loaded with fruit. Even so, there was no need to reach up for them. Heavy winds had deposited so many on the grass that we could barely cope with the gathering. I soon became expert at throwing them into the hopper that chops them into a mulch that is then then put into a screw-press. The juice flows from the base and is collected into buckets for bottling.

          At the end of the afternoon, each of us took away our filled containers, leaving sacks full of unpressed apples, the fate of which may be to rot. I put plastic bottles in the freezer (in the spaces next to the stewed apple), gave glass bottles to neighbours, took some more to a workshop next day and put the remainder in the fridge, where they will turn into cider if I don’t drink them pronto.

          But I can’t help worrying about all the surplus left languishing in orchards around the country. All that nutritious produce going to waste, for lack of a viable distribution system. Perhaps we could call in the army.