Pawn Two to Bishop's garage

On the TV a lissom young woman performs exercises that get more and more difficult. It’s five-ish in the morning and – obviously – dark outside. I’m lying on the couch in the dimly lit living room, certain in my mind that the young woman’s gyrations are well beyond my enfeebled body.

Not that it matters. Elsewhere in the room, daughter Professional Bleeder, a mere fluttering shadow, is mimicking the exercises and doing a fair job of it, given she’s five years short of retirement. It’s all to do with Buddha, I’m told, and a regular feature of PB’s health regime.

But both of us share another concern, we’re waiting for the butcher and the delivery of a six-part lamb crown roast, several Chateaubriant steaks which will form the heart of a Beef Wellington and other meaty bits and bobs. Costing a small fortune.

As it happens the butcher fails to turn up and things have to be re-organised. And here we are at the very essence of Christmas. Organisation and re-organisation of an interlocking series of events, movements, transportations and cash transfers. Strangely reminiscent of the last magazine I edited, devoted to logistics. An industrial practice that’s frequently misunderstood but may be summarised as: getting the right amount of stuff to the right location at the right time. Inexpensively.

We will eventually be a group of eight. But before that happens the group will fragment and three separate locations will be occupied. One of the meals – Whoops! That’s four locations! – will be in a restaurant. The cumulative mileage will be in the hundreds. Acres of wrapping paper will be wrapped.

Dwight D. Eisenhower did something similar prior to D-Day and was rewarded by becoming the US president. At eighty-eight my contribution is to spread my hands. 

The bottle? It's traditional

The party (see previous post) had a mildly odd aftermath but I’ll get to that. VR’s medical concerns meant I went alone, carrying a bottle of Languedoc red. Martin, my host, opened the door and there was a tiny confusion as I handed him the bottle while we shook hands.

VR and I are both invalids. When did I last shake hands? Months ago? Years?

I first met Martin walking to the supermarket during the last couple of years. Casually. The party started stiffly, new arrivals just standing around. Not me of course. Journalism taught me to break social barriers by forcing conversation. Encountering a Chinese woman married to a Japanese man I asked what language did they speak when alone? Their answer released a welter of possibilities.

The spread of food was enticing and varied and I’d have liked to return to the table more than once (At home I’m responsible for very dull fare). But people were sitting now and conversation was broadening. I joined in, frequently startling people into discussing subjects other than members of their families. 

No doubt you, dear reader, disapprove of such dictatorship. But most Brits welcome those who help guard against social silence. I am not necessarily liked but I may be  tolerated.

The party started at 5 pm. Most had left before me and I was home by 8.30. Resuming my duties by creating a G&T for VR.

Then the aftermath. A strange “otherness”. For a year now we’ve mainly spent our evenings alone, just the two of us. Earlier I’d been part of a group, now it was quiet in our living room. As if I was the traveller from an antique land. Nothing unexpected would happen. Just reading and some telly. Old age solitude. Ah, yes.

Death's rehearsals

We’ve been invited to a pre-Christmas party today. I tried to remember my last party outside the family. Years ago, but when or what I can’t be sure. I imagine people nodding: who’d be so foolhardy as to ask him? His blog says it all. A walking black hole.

Too true, I’m not an ideal guest. But this time perhaps the reason is unexpected. It’s 04.21 and I can’t sleep. Why? Because of Putin and the Ukraine. Given the most recent developments, far away from Kiev, I sense – for the first time - Vladimir’s going to win. And many many people will die as have already died.

As I might have died during the fifties, when I was a conscripted military men. There were several warlike opportunities. Instead I’ve reached very old age. Yet can’t sleep.

I flatter myself I have a well-developed imagination, thus I write fiction. But imagination can be a curse. I remember the way the city of Mariupol in southern Ukraine was systematically destroyed; that arid shell now provides raw material for envisaging what may happen to the country’s capital city. Presided over by the tight smiling man in the Kremlin who may, or may not, wear a toupée. An irrelevant detail which, nevertheless, stimulates relevant thought.

Shakespeare’s good on sleep and especially its absence. But this isn’t the time for easy quotes. Sleep replenishes the living body and should keep disturbing images at bay. But I – having slid lusciously beneath the duvet at midnight – must now sit around wakefully a few hours later. Thinking about irony. That Ukraine has slipped down the priorities of the news organisations to be replaced with newer horrors in Gaza. Where death is strangely more immediate.

Time to re-try the bed. There’s the party to be considered.

Like the first sniff of a casserole

The Guardian’s Saturday edition profiles certain chosen people by posing a fixed set of questions. One question: When were you happiest?

Did you learn technical English grammar at school? - many kids now don’t. Older readers will recognise the above as the superlative form of the adjective, neither “happy” nor “happier” but “happiest”. Implying an extremity.

Alas, this concept means different things to different people. Those doing day-long manual labour might say the first step towards “happiest” would be avoiding work altogether. With others it’s both good and bad: teachers, who just want to teach kids, feel frustrated marking exercise books at midnight. Journalists, dreaming of a soccer scoop, mutely collect names at a funeral.

“Happiest”, in this context, needs further definition. Ideally it should be unique, not a repeated pleasing event. Ideally too, since happiness is a state of mind, it must involve thought. And, for goodness sake, avoid anything that’s merely socially acceptable; like the act of being married. Was it all wonderful? Me, I hated not knowing what happened next in this alien location (a church).

Other amplifications. Happiness is warm not hot, pervasive not piercing, may arrive slowly and indirectly, may not be easily discussed. I was happy when my deputy editors went on to more elevated jobs. But happiest didn’t apply.

My first singing lesson induced a new physical awareness. Tight as a drum-skin. But again, happiest didn’t apply; what was I comparing it with? The best pork sausage ever?

Hey-hoo. Parts of Out Of Arizona satisfied me. Another re-read and they got slightly better. Yet another go-through and a short, carefully slotted sentence (“Like all those things.”) hinted I might be a writer. 

Happiest? Well, stronger than “happier”.

Not what you'd call cuddly

Unsmiling, looking neither up nor down, a grey figure against a grey background. A man most likely to be stopped at the douane.

Note the thunderous double eye-bags, the twisted mouth, the eyes that have lost all hope. Only the hair retains any sense of  style.

MikeM, an intermittent visitor to Tone Deaf, asked to see it. So here, for his delectation...

Since I, like you, am looking in on this I may ask: What does it say? A face gravely affected by wars and there've been plenty: World War Two, Korea, the invasion of Suez, various skirmishes in South America, the Malayan emergency (in which this ghost figure played a tiny part), Viet Nam, the invasion of Grenada, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Ukraine. Not forgetting the Cod War involving Iceland

He's written books and some authors append a selfie in the end-papers of their works. But no publisher would see any advantage in including this! 

Some faces are a sum of all their successes; this suggests a huge mound of failures. No happiness here, surely. But the gloom merchant pursued the job he wanted (and was best fitted for) for 44½ years and he's been married for 63 years.

Against all the odds.

Swift, pleasing and faultless

Goodbye old friend, gateway to France

UK passports last ten years so you have time to forget the palaver of renewal. But here’s a happy story based on technological development.

I wasn’t looking forward to renewal. One reason was pure sentiment and normally I detest sentimentality. It meant junking my little red booklet representative of belonging to the EU. Replacing it with the UK’s flag-waving blue number and thus being forced – symbolically – into joining the Brexit voters. Who are now strangely silent about the “benefits” Brexit is bringing us.

Even worse is the very real palaver of organising a photo acceptable to the passport authorities. You sit on the stool in the supermarket cubicle, twiddle it up and down, yet still cut off your hairline (Forbidden). Get your hairline right and find you smiled (Forbidden). Contrive to look serious but your chin’s too low (Forbidden). An adult woman I know became so disturbed by all this she rang her father to help her. I sympathised.

This time a digital photo is required and so to hell with twiddling the stool. I spent £12 at a specialist. If I hadn’t chatted a perfect photograph would have been mine – approved and paid for – in three minutes. A lad with a Canon said “Lips together.”, “Chin up.”, etc, and that took 20 seconds. He fiddled with the Canon at the counter for a minute, handed me a colour proof (I looked dully insane.) with an eight-figure code. I swiped my credit card and was gone.

Online at home I followed a simple procedure, entered the code and was gratified to see my face appear on the filled-in application. The time-consuming bit was putting my old passport into an envelope and posting it to the authorities.

I was mildly exhilarated. I rarely yearn for Old Times.

Self-torture? 2

During my RAF National Service (1955 – 1957) my technical competence was examined and, astonishingly, I was deemed capable of repairing complex electronic equipment carried in warplanes. I wasn’t convinced but when The Military says “Do this.” you do it. And the Military was right. During an 8½-month course I passed 25 exams and emerged as a Junior Technician.

Thus I learned about electrical systems and, especially, some of their associated mathematics, an interest later stretching all the way to quantum mechanics. Ah, quantum! Hard stuff which revolutionised techno-thought and led to misunderstandings about Schrödinger’s Cat.

I must confess my useful knowledge is virtually zero but my curiosity remains enormous. Rovelli’s book (see Self-Torture?) was reviewed, I think, in The Guardian so the prose is not considered hopelessly specialised. In fact, Rovelli’s aim is to reveal – as simply as possible - a decades-long quest to find out how the force of gravity can be incorporated, mathematically, into what is known about the atom.

Beyond this I cannot explain. That’s up to Rovelli. But I can hint at the weirdness.

How about: “… Planck’s length… in numerical terms… is equivalent to approximately one millionth of a billionth of a billionth of a billionth (ten to the power of minus thirty-three) of a centimetre.” Never mind about the “what”, just consider its smallness. Rovelli puts it into context: “It is at this extremely minute scale that quantum gravity manifests itself.” 

And it’s not just numbers. “Energy makes space curve. A lot of energy means that space will curve a great deal. A lot of energy in a small region results in curving space so much it collapses into a black hole…”

You see my problem. The mental images are inexplicable but I can’t stop reading (ie, letting the images form in my brain).