Winter Blues?

          I did my bit to help out the NHS last week: I got vaccinated against ‘flu, covid and a new one called RSV, thereby hoping to ease the avalanche of winter infections that crashes into our creaking healthcare system every year. Let’s call it ‘preventive medicine’, which is not only easier to say than ‘preventative medicine’ but is also just as effective. Not that my motivation was entirely selfless, of course. I mean, who wants to be poorly? This is a question to ask anti-vaxxers, the most ardent of whom would not only be stumped by the logic but would also insist (without evidence) that I now have several of the nefarious Bill Gates’ micro-chips implanted in my body.

          The ’flu and covid jabs were given at the same appointment, one in each arm. A friend of mine boasted that he’d had them both in one arm, so that he would be able to sleep on his other side pain-free. But when I asked for the same treatment, it was refused, so I had to sleep on my back, propped with extra pillows so that I didn’t snore. Two days later, I was on my way back up the hill to the clinic for the RSV, when I passed a neighbour who asked me what it was and, in so doing, revealed that, though he is of advanced years, he is not between the ages of 75 and 80, the range that qualifies you for protection against ‘Respiratory Syncytial Virus’. Then, at the top of the hill, I met another neighbour, whom I know to be older, resting on a bench. I asked if he had just had his RSV jab and he said, “No, I’m too old. Not worth saving, I suppose.” I patted him on the shoulder and left him sitting there, disconsolate.

          With both my arms being sore from the previous visit, I asked the nurse whether I should come back another day for this third jab. But she was unsympathetic and dissuaded me with a tale of how inconvenient it would be to make another appointment. Then, before I knew it, she stuck the needle in and dismissed me with a wry, “There now, that didn’t hurt, did it?”

          Other preparations for winter include an underwear upgrade. When there was a very brief cold snap, back in September, I made a beeline for M&S, where they stock some comfy-looking, long-sleeved, thermal vests. I splashed out on a couple in light blue (which, I fancy, rather suits me) but, by the time I had got them out of the packaging, the temperature had shot back up to 20 degrees, thereby rendering them temporarily redundant. I’m not one to complain about the weather – I like its variability – but I was sort of looking forward to the winter and the smug feeling of having planned to be snug when squaring up to its harsh embrace.

          Now I wait. In fact, the situation seems to have regressed. We spent the last couple of days at Treyarnon Bay, in Cornwall, where the sun shone down on us and the handful of off-season holidaymakers frolicked in the waves that rolled endlessly onto the sandy beach. It was like a ghostly iteration of summer, without the hordes of visitors and the ensuing vehicular chaos. Even the lady running the ice cream hut reopened for business after having shut up shop some weeks earlier. How fortunate we were to visit a picturesque Cornish resort under such ideal conditions. And yet…

          Now, back at home and with no sign of wintry conditions arriving, I console myself with the cost-saving of not having to heat the flat in these next few days, after which we will embark on the ferry to Spain for three weeks. Surely, there will be a winter to look forward to on our return.

 

Proactive Friendship Pays Off

         It is said that men are not very proactive when it comes to nurturing their male friendships. (Those who question this assertion might be interested to know that a recent scientific paper, in attempting to quantify the apparent differences between male and female friendship patterns, provides some evidence for the credibility of this assertion.) Perhaps that’s why women often step up to help their menfolk with their friendship management.

          For example, we spent a few days last week with old friends we had left behind when we moved from Manchester to Plymouth. As two (straight) couples, we rented a cottage on the coast of Cardigan Bay – a location equally inconvenient for both parties but well suited, nonetheless, to our tastes for gentle hiking and general poking around in historically interesting places. Our coming-together was, of course, initiated and arranged by the women.

          The cottage is in the village of St. Dogmaels, a short walk from the town of Cardigan. St Dogs, as the locals call it (or so I was informed), once had an abbey, the ruins of which are bang in the middle of the village and significant enough to sustain a visitor centre that doubles up as a community café. The morning after our arrival, it was buzzing with locals and visitors who had come for the weekly craft and produce market set up in the adjacent car park. Here, we stocked up on organic veg and a chicken that had previously ranged freely but was now destined for our supper. Across the way, at the old mill – still in operation – we bought a surfeit of bread from the artisan baker. For us townies, it was the ideal village experience.

          Nor did the walking disappoint. The forecasts threatened rain but it mostly held off. Being out of season, we had little or no company, except for the couple who caught up with us on a set route that we were following from a 1993 Ordnance Survey guidebook. My Other Half and I had made a note in our copy of the book that we had completed this circuit in 1996, though neither of us had any recollection of the route and its sometimes remarkable landmarks. The text gave directions that were not always obvious, especially when stone stiles had since been replaced by metal gates, so we took a few wrong turnings. But so did the other couple, who were following the same route but using an app and GPS for guidance. We challenged them to meet us in the pub at the end but, the last we saw of them, they were heading in what was definitely the wrong direction through a wooded valley.

          We also met a Land Rover on a narrow lane and, as it slowed to let us pass, the driver, an ageing crusty with dreadlocks and a smoking joint between his fingers, leaned from the window, grinned widely and muttered something friendly sounding. I took him to be a survivor of the drop-out culture, one of those who went to live the simple, organic life in remote parts of Wales years ago and were never seen again. Later, we walked past a ramshackle farmstead littered with old machinery, vehicles and other stuff that might one day be recycled but meanwhile lay rusting. But it was the political slogans painted on the barn that made me suspect this might be the home of our latterly encountered crusty.

          We dined each evening at the cottage, wilfully ignoring the list of recommended restaurants provided by our host, for we are comfortable with the intimacies of sharing space and the preparation of meals. Our jollity was fuelled by many a glass of wine, though, now I come to think of it, we men ought to have raised one of them as a toast to the women for bringing us together again.

 

Flytrap

          During the summer months, fruit flies hang around our kitchen. Despite my obsessive efforts to keep everything clean, still they circle slowly around, seeking out any whiff of organic matter. I suppose they do no harm, but I am unaccountably irritated by their insouciance and just cannot resist trying to squash them. Fooled by their slow flight, I grab at them with one hand, but they scoot away with super-powered acceleration. Occasionally, I catch one in a two-handed clap, but the sudden violent movement often has repercussions in the form of spillages and breakages that are even more irritating than the pesky flies. And so, I use a deadly trap, a glass containing an inch of cider vinegar, sealed at the top with clingfilm perforated with a few holes small enough for them to crawl in to but out of which, inexplicably, they are unable to escape.

          Yesterday, it being the start of October, there was a chill in the air marking the end of the fruit fly season, so I emptied the contents of the trap, a sludge of tiny, semi-pickled carcasses, down the toilet – though not without a pang of guilt. After all, the philosophy discussion group I attend has recently touched upon ahimsa, the theory of non-violence and compassion towards all living beings, as contained in Hindu, Buddhist, Jainist and several non-religious philosophies. Then, today, an item in the news tweaked my conscience even more. Scientists have produced the first wiring diagram for a whole brain – that of the fruit fly! Leaving aside, for the moment, the repercussions of this astonishing scientific breakthrough, the realisation that such tiny creatures really do have a brain (rudimentary though it may be) induces in me more sympathy with the concept of ahimsa.

          But, speaking as a person who prides himself on possessing a degree of practical skill, I do marvel at the fact that the researchers were able to slice the fly brain into 7,000 slivers in order to analyse the neural connections. Their feat of precision puts into the shade my own, recent achievement, which was the re-hanging of our internal doors so that they fit snugly into their frames after a whoosh of resistant compressing air and a reassuring ‘click’ (though my Other Half, who is congenitally disinclined to close anything fully, will never experience the sensation of satisfaction that comes over me each time I “put wood in th'ole”, as they say in Yorkshire, or thereabouts).

          But the brain of a fruit fly is commensurate with its function in life, which is to multiply and thrive, I assume. Unlike the human brain, it doesn’t create for itself problems by striving for much else. Take, for example, the paralysis my own grey matter experienced this week when a programme on my computer acted unexpectedly by renaming a file, then refusing to save it. Although my first reaction was panic, I did then attempt to analyse and rectify the process. But I failed and had to call on the expertise of James at Computerbase, who, with a few deft taps on the keyboard and a dismissive, “What’s your problem?” demeanour, soon set things right. My problem, obviously, is a lack of understanding of how the programme works. There may well be capacity in my brain to acquire that knowledge, but what’s lacking is motivation.

          One day, scientists may be able to scale up their brain-mapping technology to the human level, whereupon they will be able to fix our apparent wiring faults. Meanwhile, I would like to set them a more modest goal: to explain why fruit flies can’t find their way back through the holes in the clingfilm. And, with my much bigger brain, allied with my newly acquired compassionate streak, I really ought to be working on a non-lethal way of ridding the kitchen of the irritating little buggers.