Walking The Dog

Constants - those rooting things that never change. Those things that we depend upon. That ground us firmly in who and where we are. The things that if removed would be replaced by chaos. When I was thinking about what to write,  I clumsily started to input c-o-n- into my phone and up popped the suggestion 'consonants.' Consonant - definition: any speech sound that is produced by stopping the air flowing freely through your mouth - 'f', 't', 'z', 'm' ... etc, and also any written letter that is not a vowel. By substituting the t in constant with the on in consonant my phone unwittingly suggested something that at first glance might appear to be constant but is not. Language evolves and changes - even its letters; its building bricks. Not all of the vowels and consonants we take for granted today are the same as the ones known, for example, by Shakespeare. If we go further back in the history of the English language, to Chaucer, they are...

Half-way into January. A small step into a new year. And I am another year older. How did this happen? I could answer part of that by reminding myself that as I was born in January and have just had a birthday I am a year older. But half-way into January (over half-way now - several days have passed since I started this blog) and a small step into a New Year; how did these happen? Time doesn’t stand still. I've said that before. In November's blog. I called it out as a cliche then too. It is. But if cliches can be good and I think this is a good one. Time is animated. Time moves. I wittered on about this at length. In November. Two months ago. Two months filled with frantic present hunting; over-eating; over-spending; under-sleeping; and wrapping (always late on Christmas eve - so late that I risk Father Christmas finding me sitting on the floor surrounded by paper and string - the sellotape always runs out at about 11.57pm on Christmas Eve, doesn't it? - hot chocolate in...

What do I remember of the year we spent in Australia? The heat; the long drives; long-striding lightning dancing across distant, dry plains; the gorillas at Melbourne zoo; an abundance of unfamiliar fruit and vegetables; kangaroo (and roo-burgers); trams; crisp slithers of eucalyptus leaves underfoot on forest trails; a little girl who didn't like sand between her toes; vertiginous peaks and plummeting shadows and cliffs where the earth had broken and fissured in the Blue Mountains; the Twelve Apostles of the Southern Ocean; spiders (lots of spiders); a relaxed cafe culture; Italian food on Lygon Street; earthy browns and creamy dots of aboriginal paintings; verandahs; snakes; public parks; wind, buffeting and forcing dry grit into your face round every pavement corner; and a distant city that sat on the palm of my hand - yes to all of those. But the sharpest memory is of the light: a fierce light, forcing a wash of white over everything burning in its glare. An unforgiving lig...

In a few hours - and fewer hours by the time you get to the end of this procrasti-ramble - it will be another year. 2016 will be in the past and 2017 will open its doors and lie before us. Which is all pretty obvious really. This being 31st December. What perhaps isn't so obvious are the hopes and aspirations we invest in this passing into the New Year. The promises that we wish upon ourselves and that we call resolutions. Brief intermission in the ramble for a picture of the end of a winter's day The New Year's Resolution is a gift in the hands of a procrastinator. Hours ... no, days ... spent planning exactly what to pick; which dissatisfaction with oneself to correct; which dream to commit to; which impossible ambition to clamber towards. Note the words dissatisfaction, dream and impossible and call me a cynic. Or a realist. Or a resolution agnostic. Why do we accede to the annual resolution humiliation? Where and when did resolution-making start? Why do I h...

Doing a Kim Kardashian will go down in our family annals as a moment when my embarrassment was acute and I managed to make everyone in the room ache with laughter. Proper belly laughs. Holding of sides. Tears running down cheeks. Collapsed back into chairs or rolling on the floor. Yup - proper rocking from side to side rolling. For what felt like minutes but was probably only ... minutes. My face hurt with the intensity of the laughing and burned with all-consuming embarrassment. Kim Kardashian it said. The paper scrap I'd drawn from the pot. Kim. Kardashian. Describe her in three words. Actions allowed. Ums and ehs and erms all contributing to the three word rule. A huge dinner was nestling inside my tummy. With rather too many glasses of bubbles, then wine, then pudding and more pudding. Kim. Kardashian. In three words. Easy? Well - yes; probably. Unless. Unless. Unless you make the near-fatal mistake of thinking it would be a good idea to stand up and mime the...

Are you a writer of lists? I used to be an avid list writer. If pushed, I'll still write one now. I have pads of paper that prompt list writing; my favourite is headed 'This Week ... or next ...' which sums me up perfectly. An average procrastinator will put off the listed activities to another week, another time, another dimension, perhaps. A fully committed procrastinator - or FCP - will put off the writing of the list! I am an FCP ... most of the time - carrying around bits of lists in my head; forgetting to do the things I might have remembered if I had written them down; and, until I am reminded, remaining blissfully ignorant of my many failings. Many failings that are obvious only if categorised and the only way to categorise them would be to write them down. So, as I am not going to list them and I defy anyone else to, perhaps those failings, ultimately undocumented ... or unlisted, can be forgotten. Who, apart from someone with narcissistic tendencies, wants to ma...

Whisper to the wind, ' This is how to write.' No, not these inexpertly assembled procrasti-rambles but words discovered in a book that I have been promising myself I would read for many, many months and have now started. My ascent so far has taken me to chapter 4. What a journey those first chapters have been! I am daily transported to India. All its scents, noises, lights, people, traffic, food, grime, poverty, politics, fabrics, fruits, spirits, humanity, hysteria, tragedy, faith, prostitution, drugs, hospitality, bribery, corruption, travel, cosmopolitan enlightenment, tolerances and intolerances in just four chapters; sixty or so pages. A portrait of a place so immersive and with characters so bright that they light up each page with the intense shine of their being. Reality is not merely being created for the reader - this setting and its characters live and breathe (even if some of them are fictional). What a lesson in how to write! I don't remember now ...

Broadband.  What is it? We take it for granted. We think we sort of know what it is. Do we? A ...  broad ...    band ...  ? Broad as in wide? As in encompassing a wide range of frequencies. The frequencies of multiple messages that, because the band  is  indeed wide, can be transmitted simultaneously. Or not. When it fails, picture a band that's so broad it frays and curls in on itself at the edges; rolling itself up into a tight constipated tube that no information - even information backing up like logs behind a beaver dam - is ever going to burst through.  Broadband at its most basic is simply electrons bumping into each other. It inhabits the earth and the air in a variety of forms, a broadband spectrum of electron collisions, if you like. In my imagined spectrum, there's SS broadband - the  s low,  s tuttering but mostly working variety.  This is almost but not quite as b...

A life without stories would be impossible. Look for something that doesn't have a story and resign yourself to never finding it. A grain of sand on a beach; a petal on a flower; the broken handle on my cup; the rusted rivet in a metal bridge; and the gum stuck to the pavement, all have a story. Everything does - there's the how did it get there; where did it come from; who put it there; what happened to bring it in front of me at this precise time? What is a story? Story - definition: a true or fictitious account of a sequence of events and characters; its purpose being to entertain or inform. We constantly ask ourselves, what's the story? Or, what's in a story? Different questions, but essentially addressing the same thing: we like to know. And if we don't know, we like to make an attempt at explaining things - we pry, we wonder, we invent - who did that, why, where, what happened next? We fill in the gaps. Not always accurately. But we fill them anyway, ...

According to Tate Modern - ART CHANGES WE CHANGE  I wonder if it's just me ... just me - the sufficiently pedantic one, who bothers to be bothered by this declaration? Everyone else simply walks on by. If they notice the words, perhaps they glance, read, shrug a 'yes, whatever' and walk on. Me - I glance, read and the words trigger an agitated avalanche; a silent screaming 'Whaaaaat?!' Surely, something's missing. Perhaps, a comma. Or any of the following: when, how, where, if, and, as.  All would fit. Wouldn't they? Or am I alone in my nit-picking, pernickety little world; worrying what these words mean? What the intent was behind displaying them large above the brick wall of the iconic Tate? What they are meant to say? But fail to say. Perhaps, the point is that different people will read different things into them. If they bother to read them at all. I'm still bothered, though, about what they mean to me. And what they clearly do...