Walking The Dog

It's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die ... and I say someone here even though the one in question was a dog - but to us he had character and a place forever in our hearts and was more of a familiar someone than some of the people in our lives. So, I'll start again - it's an odd thing that when we are waiting for someone to die, our senses go into overdrive. We notice things that normally would be part of the background of our every day. We breathe more - or rather, we don't but what we do is notice our breathing more, as we watch his. We pause. We think. We listen to ourselves and our inner voices speak. Memories flood our dreams ... though sleep is fitful.  Why am I telling you this? ... ... we lost this beautiful boy today And in the hours before he went, I saw perfect spheres of dew on blades of grass - little orbs holding micro-images of our world; a bumble bee drunk on nectar, yellow-dusted with pollen, resting in a crocus; ten - yes, ten! ...

What comes next?       What comes next is a question we impatiently ask ourselves throughout our lives. It assists planning. It is the bedrock of ambition. It builds futures. But, right now, what comes next is tinged with more uncertainty and fear than we are used to. In our cosseted, modern lives, those of us who live in stable, Westernised societies, have become lazy in our thinking - we've too often narrowed the focus of what comes next to our own small patch of the planet - ourselves, our families, and our friends and colleagues. Now the focus of what comes next has exploded to encompass the entire planet and all its peoples and ecosystems and political situations. And contemplating this near-incomprehensible what comes next is exhausting. I've been struggling with it for at least two months. Let's face it, I'm not alone - you have too; along with the rest of the population. Of the entire world. I say two months ... but in reality, we have probably been contem...

How to switch off. Switching off is hard at the best of times, but as this is the furthest from the best of times that any of us has ever experienced, right now switching off is well nigh impossible. Or is it just me? Despite Life in a time of covid-19 - parts 1 to 4 and my advice to find our happy place; practise the ten daily gratitudes; and to be kind to ourselves, I find that I am not very good at practising what I preach. My mind jumps from one thought to another and my actions start and stop in a desperate attempt to keep up with my thoughts. Maybe meditation ... or regular exercise ... or a good book ... or gardening ... or a walk with the dogs ... or baking ... or sorting through the freezers ... I'm doing it again: sprinting towards a finish line along a track filled with distracting potholes and all the time having to find different ways of not falling in. Or if these ways are unsuccessful, of actually falling in - I walk into a room and find I don't know why I...

'The way I mean to go on' ... what does that mean? At New Year, we ask ourselves and each other, 'What are our resolutions?' I have written about this before. Hundreds of people have written about this before; every minute of every hour of every January 1st ever since someone first had the bright idea that on the strike of midnight when December 31st trips over into January, it would be a bright idea to recalibrate; to promise ourselves that we would change. And we all know what happens to most promises. They get broken; most of them before the end of January. No, strike that out and let's be honest, most are broken by the end of the second week of January; sunk with everyone else's broken promises into the murky gloom of dying resolutions and dark mid-winter. So for a moment, let's break this ramble down, reiterate a bit, and return to where I started - resolutions are pointless promises made out of desperation when we look at the lives we have created...

"To think is easy. To act is hard."                                                     Goethe Never were words more true - think about it. I think about the things I want to do; thinking about them is easy. Getting down to doing them is so hard that most of them go un-done. And little wants and wishes pile on top of last year's wants and wishes and the big wants balance precariously on the top of the heap, for a while propped-up by to-do lists and well intentioned plans but too soon they too are replaced or forgotten and sink into the bog of lost dreams. But these are small, personal things. And small personal inactions. What of the bigger things that we think about? We can all think about the big things such as world politics and economics. We can all worry about them. But to act on our thoughts? That can be hard. It risks taking us beyond...

Lord Byron - that maverick, troubled thinker and poet - said If I do not write to empty my mind, I go mad I haven't written for a while. Perhaps I have gone mad. Indeed, perhaps I have ... Perhaps the whimsy that is the word jumble in my head resides in Aristophanes's  cloud-cuckoo land . Either there, or perhaps it has flown  away with the  Celtic  fairies  of my youth. Don't you just love a good idiom? Idiom  -  derivation : probably from the Greek idioma meaning private or peculiar phraseology (ref. Oxford Dictionaries online);  definition : a group of words that when presented in a particular order take on a meaning that is not obvious from the meanings of the individual words eg. over the moon, on the ball, piece of cake, hit the sack, let the cat out of the bag, and method in my madness ... which there is. But mine is innocent; not the murderous  method  of Hamlet's  madness . And if you'll give me the benefit of...

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...

If I put my hand up, if I try to have my say, will anybody listen?  If I tread softly in a wood of silver trees and whisper susurrations; snippets sparsely spoken from my soul - my supplications rising in the warming breeze, will my words rustle any of the paper leaves and stop them falling? Falling, f  a   l     l      i       n        g falling to our precious fragile earth. Fragile is our world. Fragile our grasp of what - it - is. One world. Precious. And us, just, holding on, mere atoms in a surging sea of selfish, greedy strife. Fragile is our hold, our will, our voice. Our life. To right a wrong with words is right. To hit back with fury risks a monster roused. Stirred to act; tit for tat. Tit for tat. Tit for tat. An eye for an eye. Think on that. If I put up my hand and cry. And cry. Will it stay the will of leaders who capitulate and bluster and risk throwing o...

Snoring. Snoring - go on; say 'snoring.' And again. And again. Play with the word; roll it around your mouth - sno-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-rrrr-ring. Try it again. I defy you to do this without a tiny twitch appearing at the corner of your mouth. A tiny twitch plus a slight wrinkling of the skin at the outer angles of your eyes. Why is snoring funny? Why, for example, did I find it impossible to discuss snoring yesterday without smiling; in a professional situation where smiling was probably inappropriate? Snoring is funny. In the same way that everything about toilets is funny to a seven year old boy. It makes us smile; childishly. It's something only other people do; isn't it? It's funny! Unless you live with someone who snores. Or you are the snor-ee ... snor-er ... ? ... one who snores ... and live life in a permanent fog of day-time exhaustion. Snoring is not restricted to humans. Four-legged-friend and Bertie Baggins snore: they sprawl in front of the...

I haven't done this for a while. Blogging, I mean. The while has been spent tackling the annual creative writing exercise otherwise referred to as the NHS appraisal.  There must be a better way of establishing if we are fit to practice. A way that doesn't involve finding fifty differently worded paragraphs in which we comment on how we reflect on out learning activities. Yes - okay - it does make us think about our role. Yes - it also confronts situations where we might have acted differently. And it does force us to keep current with latest research and treatment protocols. So, maybe it does enable us to practice better medicine. But how many ways can I find to say 'I am working to relevant standards.'  I prefer this creative form of linguistic perambulation.  Perambulation - this has become our home, code-word for walk. If we mention the w word, Four-legged-friend and Berti-Baggins go into paroxysms of over-excited tail- wagging and barking. We, therefore, ...