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 A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
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Ten years ago I was writing several blogs on various subjects - F1 motor racing, Music, Classic Cars, Great Romances and, most crushingly, a personal journal that included my thoughts on America, memories of England and Africa, opinion, humour, writing and anything else that occurred. It all became too much (I was attempting to update the journal every day) and I collapsed, exhausted and thoroughly disillusioned in the end. So this blog is indeed a Toe in the Water, a place to document my thoughts in and on WdC but with a determination not to get sucked into the blog whirlpool ever again. Here's hoping.     |
| The Gods If those whom the gods love die young, it's clear they're not keen on me. |
| On Despatch To me it seems that it’s not death we fear so much as the manner of our death. If there’s life after death, then we’ve nothing to fear except consignment to the wrong place. And if death is just that and we cease to exist, we won’t know anything about it and it won’t hurt. But the dying process - that can be a terrible thing indeed. |
| Pets Different pets suit different ages.This has taken me a lifetime to realise but I also seem to have fitted into the most natural order of ownership of pets during my life. Small animals are the best for the very young, I think. They are more attractive to little people and easier to care for than larger creatures. I experimented with a few in my childhood and quickly came to the conclusion that guinea pigs are the best. They’re very little trouble and have the enormous advantage of communicating through various distinctive and easily identifiable noises. In later childhood, nothing beats a dog, preferably of the tough, boisterous and energetic type. I cannot imagine how empty a process growing up must be without a dog to accompany and inspire one’s desperate adventures. And finally there is the cat. This is an animal designed to fit with the slowing down of age and the cessation of strenuous adventure. Cats like nothing better than to sleep in the sun and ponder the quality of the food they’re presented with. No drama here then, apart from some rubbing of owner’s legs whenever they enter the kitchen. Add to that the fact that cats appreciate an aged human that will stay still long enough to be slept upon and there’s no contest. Cats are for the later years of life. Word count: 225 |
| Diet There was a time when I was on the seafood diet. See food and I eat it, of course. Old age has had the last laugh, however, and now I am confronted with the need to think before I eat. This has recently become complicated by the fact that I have more than one major consideration in deciding between diets. On the one hand, I have been sticking to a reasonably heart-friendly diet for the last few years. It seems to have worked for there has been very little change in my relevant numbers in that time - I am holding my own, it seems! But now I find that I need to start being kind to my kidneys as well as the old ticker. These guys are not what they used to be, apparently, and are demanding an easier time from me as a result. And that’s where things begin to become complicated. Heart and kidney diets don’t overlap a great deal. What’s good in one case is often a definite no-no in the other. And I find that my options on allowable food are shrinking almost to the point of non-existence. There are about five foods that are more or less guaranteed not to kill me and real invention is required to devise new ways of combining these into something vaguely palatable. Not that I’m complaining. It’s an interesting experiment and my wife is endlessly creative when designing new dishes from so restricted an ingredient list. I’ve always regarded food as just fuel so it’s fairly easy for me to adjust to new and unheard of meals. Looking into the future, however, I can’t help but wonder about any third requirement that comes along. With my luck, there’s something that will give new instructions for a specific diet or it goes on strike. And what happens if that wipes out my last remaining foodstuffs? Life was always a bit of a crap shoot, wasn’t it? Word count: 326 |
| The Present I wonder if any of us actually lives in the present. We speak of it as though it were a comfortable place with extensive grounds, a place that has more to do with today than anything else. But the present is really an infinitesimally small slice of time sandwiched uncomfortably between the rolling and receding hills of the past and the dark mystery of the future. It’s hard to see how any creature made with memory and dreams could exist only in the present. Word count: 86 |
| Card Art Many years ago in Zimbabwe I had a friend named Phil - the same guy who appears in my story entitled Chimanimani in fact. I mentioned that he was a photographer but that says very little about Phil's artistic talent; he was, in fact, a genius. When I first met Phil, he was trying to be a painter and produced strange works with an eerily innocent feeling to them that inspired an answering painting by myself in tribute. But he was becoming frustrated by his limited technical ability; he had never studied technique in a formal setting and was reaching the point where he could no longer do justice to the pictures in his head. That was when he discovered photography. From that moment we saw little of Phil; he was always off somewhere on a photographic project, returning at rare intervals to show us the most fascinating and original photographs I have ever seen. His eye for the unusual and beautiful was unerring. Very quickly he found his metier, a concentration on the tiny details, the unnoticed beauty in everyday things - what we would call macro-photography now (no, I've never understood why it is not called micro-photography either - presumably it has something to do with the fact that it uses macro lenses). In Phil's hands, the camera became an eye into another universe where lichen on a pebble became a new world and moss at the edge of a stream a seething jungle. But Phil wanted more. He packed his bags and went off to university in England to study photography. Years later, when I too came to England, he was working as a freelance commercial photographer in London and occasionally he would visit to show us his latest work. Sadly, it was typical of the commercial photography world: slick, sharp images of cars on a beach in the dawn light, that kind of thing. Gone was the eye for the unusual, the strange beauty of the miniature world that passes unseen for most of us. Phil knew what was happening too. He accepted that his bread and butter was in these sophisticated images designed to sell and looked forward to a time when he could express himself freely again. Time passed and Phil moved to Germany where there was more opportunity to make big money. And then, just a few years ago, he dropped in on us on his way to America. He was off to the land of the free to make his fortune and now lives somewhere in California, still working as a commercial photographer. But what brought Phil to mind was that recently I have come into contact with a branch of commercial photography that could have been made for him. Weirdly, it's the selling of credit cards. And there are plenty of very ordinary photographs out there that try to sell us on the whole idea. But just a few photographers have realized where the real beauty of credit cards resides - how to make them almost irresistibly attractive. It's macro-photography that does it. Show a hand proffering a wad of these cards and they look so ordinary that we shrug and move on. But get really close and into the tiny details and suddenly they become a landscape of rich, glowing colors, eerily metallic protuberances and misty distances, yet always they remain instantly recognizable as the humble credit card. I have begun to collect these images, so fascinated by their strange beauty have I become. The fact that they are designed to sell is now irrelevant - I see them as works of art. You may laugh and consider me weird, that's fine, but take a look at just a few examples from my collection and tell me that these are not somehow fascinating and beautiful to look at.  Word count: 633 |
| Quoting Oneself Here's a wise old saying that I usually attribute to my father but was actually devised by myself: If you've nothing to say, don't say it. |
| Not having anything of note to say today, I went looking amongst some old stories and found a particular favourite of mine. If nothing else, you might find it mildly amusing: An Urban Flip I knew him only as Townsend Phillips. He walked into my local drinking hole in Belize City some time in the early seventies and soon became a regular there, appearing most nights and blending naturally with the mostly expatriate clientele. We were a mixed bunch, originating in Britain, Australia, South Africa and other outposts of the defunct British Empire, as well as a few Americans, so there was nothing unusual in our easy acceptance of him. When asked, he claimed to be in bananas and tropical fruit and I did not call him on it. Many of us had shady pasts or unlikely professions, after all, and one more added nothing to the general aura of humid and seedy desperation that hung over the bar. In time he became a friend of mine, as much as I had any friends in those days, at least. And our conversation wandered through most of the usual subjects, the heat, the rain, Belizean politics, the dream of escaping to the Cayes at some time, the longing for a posting closer to home. As his extensive and sophisticated knowledge of politics became apparent, I did not press for details but watched and waited, content that more would be revealed if I were meant to know. Townsend was particularly quiet about his personal life before Belize and even now I have no idea whether he had family back home, was married or had children. That, too, was common enough amongst us so, again, I never pressed him on it. But I noticed his numerous absences for a week or two and the way he reappeared without explanation or remark, picking up as though he had never been away. We did not ask or comment, knowing that the answer would be "business up country" or something similar. It was a surprise, therefore, when Townsend put his trust in me one night in late 1982. He had by-passed our habitual table as we returned from the bar, choosing instead one of those in the dark corner normally frequented by the most dubious and unsavory of the regulars. This was the place for whispered conversations and devious plotting so my curiosity was piqued as I sat down. And he wasted no time, getting straight to the point after a first deep draught of his drink. "Listen, Jim, there's something I want you to do for me." I said nothing and waited for more to be revealed. "You see, I'm not really in the banana trade. My work is mostly for the, umm, government." "Which one?" I asked. "The States, of course. I work from the Embassy." He realized then that the question had been my attempt at a joke and he continued after a brief smile. "I have to go away again tomorrow and I'm not entirely sure that I'll be coming back. There's something that I want to send home if anything happens to me and you're the only one I can ask." "No problem, Townsend," I said. "But why not use the Embassy?" "Well, that's it, you see. I'm not supposed to communicate with anyone when I'm on a mission. If they find out about this, I..." His voice tailed off as he realized that it would not matter to him by then. "Anyway, it's nothing too serious. Just a few goodbyes to someone I know. Will you do it?" "It's the least I can do, you know that. How big is it?" He withdrew a brown envelope from his coat pocket. "There you are, quite light and the postage should be cheap enough even for you." "Oh, very funny," I said as I took the proffered envelope. "I just hope I won't have to send it, that's all." "So do I, Jim, so do I. But, if you've not seen or heard from me by the sixteenth, you'd better throw it in a mailbox." And that was the last I saw of Townsend Phillips. He left soon after giving me his letter and I heard nothing more for nearly a month. When I did, it was not good news. The Guatemalan government was throwing a fit over someone their border guards had shot - a spy, they claimed. In turn, the Americans were denying it, saying that he was a trader who had lost his way. For a few days the story was the hot topic in Belize but it died away eventually. Guatemala returned the body and everything cooled down, to be forgotten as other events crowded into the headlines. Townsend's name was not mentioned, as far as I know. The Embassy was waiting to release it until the body had been returned to relatives and I never saw anything further on the matter. I had mailed the envelope as soon as news had broken, of course, but I did make a note of the address beforehand - some town in Illinois. The years passed and Townsend gradually receded from my memory. It was after the turn of the century that I had cause to be in Chicago on business and my thoughts returned to my old drinking friend and his presumed origin in Illinois. The address had been in Elgin and a quick look at a map advised me that it was not far away. I hired a car and made the journey, more from curiosity than anything else. Arriving in the town, I stopped at a service station and bought a street map. The guy on duty allowed me a look at a phone directory and I confirmed my thought that there would be too many Phillipses to sift through. Back in the car, I marked the relevant street and drew a logical route there. I knew the number of the house but I did not stop, contenting myself with cruising by slowly. It was like a million other American homes, recently painted and the lawn neat and orderly. There was no name on the mailbox, just a number. Nothing to indicate that Townsend had ever had a connection with the place at all. I drove on down the street. At the end of the street there was a T-junction and, on the side opposite, a cemetery. I wondered whether I had found Townsend's last resting place and, on impulse, I parked at the gate and walked in. It was silly, of course, and I found no headstones proclaiming his name. Just before I gave up, however, I came across a grave marked with a name remarkable enough to bring me to a halt. "Urban F. Lipps." it read, "December 12, 1947 December 1, 1982 One of the good ole boys" I pondered the trials of anyone having to go through life with so strange a name. And it was only as I turned away that something else struck me. Urban F. Lipps, I thought. Townsend Phillips? Surely not. Would a man choose a cover name so obviously linked to the real one? Too much of a coincidence, an amusing relation, that's all. But the date of death was right... Word count: 1,176 |
| Anaïs Nin Anaïs Nin was such a ninny She talked a Rolls but drove a Mini. Notes: This actually came to me many moons ago but it amuses me so much that I felt it bore repeating. And, if you're interested, Anaïs Nin was a writer of the mid-20th Century. I may have exaggerated her ninniness but my poet's licence is paid up to date. |
| A Fortnight Tomorrow is the big day when I go in for the next part of the procedure (they don't call it an operation) begun two weeks ago. As a consequence, I may not be around in the morning. Such is life and the open endedness of things. In the meantime, reflect on this: two weeks in the USA is a fortnight in Britain. And the fortnight refers to the fact that it's fourteen nights. Sorta medieval contraction. |
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