Dottiness

Checking below, I see that I have written about dottiness before. I may have used its more formal name,' Eccentricity', but there is so much of it about and I have become so familiar with it that I feel that, now, I can give myself the liberty of addressing it by its pet name: dottiness. In other words, were I to be writing in some other languages, I have come to know it so well I have earned the right to say "thou" to it instead of "you". For example,although I have retired, I occasionally see someone I used to work with for a sort of top-up, or because of a momentous happening in their lives. At a certain moment this morning the door-bell rang and there stood two young women, one behind the other. Oops! Oops, indeed! The one appointment had been set about three months ago and the other two days ago. How to choose whom to see first. I did know that one of them had a very formal professional appointment immediately after and was wearing a sort of uniform appropriate to that work. I asked if the other if she could possibly wait and she agreed that an hour doing nothing in the Thank- God- for- it sunshine would be as therapeutic as talking to me. Oh Dear! At least it underlined that I had done the right thing to retire. The inner world, mine and everyone elses, has never failed to fascinate me, retired or not, but also to stick out its foot and trip me up with a ruthless lack of humour or consideration. I relied so much on my memory, for life as well as work. What happens to it, to us? Why do the brain cells have to wear out? I expected to maintain them at their forty-year old level for ever. Further to compound the confusion, I forgot to go to a discussion group I attend even though it presents one of the few situations where I can exercise my abstract thinking cells now that I no longer delve in to the inner worlds of the troubled and the inquisitive - anyway, no longer for a living. I should say, though, that I do still have some supervising role. Even that skill is going. Last week, I was guilty of saying, "well, obviously....". My supervisee replied, rather drily, I thought, " It's not obvious to me". It does seem to be taking me rather too long to drag myself from the idea to the reality; the idea being that I am forty: the reality, forty in a more than seventy year old carrying case. (I have an image of an ancient early cello in a hard case; the inverse of my situation. I am a modern cello in an ancient carrying case).

The examples are legion. Having spent a restless night, I stripped the bed this morning to find a purse full of small change and a bumpy wallet under one pillow. This non-princess had left them there as a security measure before going out with what the Welsh would call a 'tidy' handbag which had no room for them. In the freezer I found a bag of potatoes. Hours had been spent looking for them. In the end, I had had to run - I use the word loosely - down the road and buy more. What were they doing in the freezer? What had I put where potatoes should go instead of in the freezer where whatever should have gone? Dear Reader, we shall never know. The Guru, who, as you may remember, has often saved me from the worst of the danger I put myself in, has found a place that suits him to move in to. Watch this space for the chaos that is bound to ensue when he has actually gone. The worrying thing is the normality of how things feel. I have no conscious awareness of the ironic, the careless, the bizarre. Conscious awareness is what I am supposed to be good at. What phenomenon lies behind my parking on a Disabled Parking Bay and failing to display my entitlement badge? Age, I hear you say; plain and simple age. You may well have the explanantion. I begrudge the £120 it will cost me for that particular lapse of efficiency, that particular display of dottiness instead of the appropriate document. As you know by now, reality figures highly in my philosophic struggles. The issue of being more than seventy while still operating - at most levels - as if I were forty forms not only the basis of this blog but also the basis of my way of being in the world. It is fascinating to me that a comment left on the last blog post suggests the very opposite. My commentor seems to accept as a given that we all see our 'reality' as what we want for ourselves. In other words, relevant to that post, the reality is that you are a size 12 if that is how you see yourself. There is no relevance in what a manufacturer calls your size. Now, is that dotty or isn't it? Perhaps we are all dotty and friends are those whose dottiness suits you. Until soon....

Realities

Now there's a challenge: reality. The word affords as much clarification as averring that one man's meat is another man's poison. What is reality to me can easily be fantasy to everyone else. However, what I'd like to put to you, as we speak, is the kind of reality that, for instance, sees itself in the mirror. Yes, I do realise that I have touched on this subject in various guises before and even before, (see below, I say), but, when your inner world and your outer world are vulnerable to a confusion of generations, it has to be useful to examine it, again, from time to time, don't you think? Anyway, pursuant to a delicious lunch which had had a certain measure of spinach and other green goodies, I went to clean my teeth. There ensued a debate you will be familiar with - the females amongst you, that is - whether to do a thorough job and disturb the makeup around mouth and chin, or whether just to pass the brush gingerly across the teeth, doing the minimum to remove the debris and preserving the status quo ante of the paint work. It was at this point, gazing in to the mirror, that I noticed my gums. The metaphor for age that calls it 'long in the tooth' is wrong. One is actually 'short in the gum'.

Last night, I was invited to dinner. I enjoy the experience of dressing up and putting one's best dress forward. There were seven of us. The sum total of the age of the others just about added up to my age. Well, I exaggerate, but not by much. Among the group was a young man whose profession I won't divulge. You would recognise his characteristics instantly if I were to and then there would be no point in my going on. Suffice it to say that, having been introduced to me, his eyes swept over me and his back swivelled towards me. Written on a sign across him were the words:" No interest there. Old lady, must be her (hostess) Mother. Not worth my bother." Now, there is another reality. The old are invisible. The young specimen of whom I write, though, was something of a cliche, himself. His arrogance manifest in trick questions. You know what I mean. He asked questions to which he thought only he knew the answer and the rest of us were left, in failing, thus to reaffirm his superiority. Dear Reader, I won. Only once, but I did. He asked if anyone knew where the headquarters of a certain car manufacturer could be found. I knew and named the place. He actually had the gall to turn round and look at me properly for the first time. With surprise, Dear Reader, with surprise, he agreed I really did know of which I spoke. I didn't know whether to be more annoyed by the surprise or by the blatant writing of me off. It was, in the end, too funny to be annoyed at all. Reality is reality. I am old and invisible. He is young and obnoxious.

The other day I went shopping with someone dear to me who happens to be stunningly beautiful. Whatever she tried on looked amazing on her. However, there was one hitch in the smooth running of the outing. She has made up her mind what size she is. Irrespective of variations of model and make, she knows, intractably, what size she is. Good, makes everyone's life easier. But does it? Let us suppose she has decided she is a size 12. What happens when size 12 Jaegar turns out to measure the same as size 14 Marks and Spencer? I tell you what happens. She walks away. She doesn't wear size 14. " So what?" you may ask. Well, she may well miss an item that would have enhanced her appearance even more, she leaves baffled and confused salespeople in a little trail behind her and she leaves me facing, anew, the question of reality and when is a 12 just a 14 in another language. As I have said, this lady is beautiful. There is a strange phenomenon of which you will be aware. In the mirror our faces are distorted. We never do see ourselves as others see us, unless in a complex arrangement of several mirrors. (I speak here of the physical. The statement is too often true of the character,too). So, it seems I have talked myself out of my starting premise: it is not reality which is found in the mirror, it is only the remains of a good lunch. Prynhawn da.

Hourglasses

Knowing what I wanted to draw your attention to, I asked my inner voice for a title and the one you see popped up. Hopefully, we shall all know what it means by the time I get to the end of this essay. What I had in mind was some sort of inversion of what was to what is. Example: You will have noticed that womens' underpants are fuller in the back than in the front. (This may well be true of mens', too, for all I know, but I am excused ironing duty on underpants so haven't had the same opportunities to assess the situation). I have always understood that this is to accommodate the greater girth of the human sit-upon as opposed to the curve of the part the cat sits upon. Well, Dear Reader, prepare for a shock: when, inadvertantly, I put said garment on back to front, it fitted. I shall spell it out in case shock has stilled your visualisation faculty: my front tummy is now bigger than my back bottom. There was a touch of what I can only call 'rue' in my laugh as I struggled to right the situation, going through the pantomime, again, on my feet struggling to lift a foot ,bend my knee and so on and so on to get the damn things on the right way round. I could, of course, have sat down somewhere, but this seems such an elderly approach and a definite giving in.
I had a similar experience with my hair. My hair is cut by an expert whom I have come to trust and depend upon. Each time I go the fact that I can't afford him is washed down the sink by the concomitant fact that old age is intrinsically a visual challenge as it is, so the cut of one's hair becomes of crucial importance. (That's what I tell the accountant, anyway). Along with the Guru, the haircutter is always trying to drag me in to the here and now. Why don't I dye it blonde? It's muddy brown/grey. Why don't I have it spiky? It's flat and droopy. The tension between mutton -dressed -as -lamb, as my Mother and her friends would say when really gunning for some unfortunate over-kill acquaintance, and dragged- through -a -hedge- backwards is not easily resolved, in my experience. Anyway, through a mixture of skill, scissors and sorcery, my hair emerges wildly fashionable and effectively tumbled one month's mortgage after each visit. Then I wash it myself. The result: cut by a madwoman with pinking shears in the dead of night with her eyes closed.
But my age group is not the only one given to inversion. I was walking through the flag-ship store of an extremely well-known British retail company the other day. I like looking at babies and little people. I am fascinated, watching them trying to make sense of the world. A Mother was bending over the end of the push chair - buggy, for kind readers over the pond - of one about nine or ten months old. She was pushing a fat little foot in to a leather slipper, trying it for size, I assumed. This was not easy because the companion shoe was attached to the one she was trying. Not much room for manoeuvre. I looked to see how Cinderella was coping with this. Peacefully: she had one of a similar pair in her mouth and was happily chewing on it. This life-long professional interferer was instantly charged with what to do. Draw the Mother's attention? Tell a member of staff? Call a Medic? Do nothing. The vignette was complete. The Mother had undisturbed time to try the sizes, the child was content, the second pair of shoes was ruined and I had relinquished the kind of intervention that had been automatic, normal to my ageless inner self.
I have just registered that hourglass refers, primarily, to one's figure. See above for how that would apply to me. Bora Da (A.V., thank you!)

Expectations

Have you noticed a phenomenon by which you become the person the other person expects you to be? I have experienced the magnet, which pulls you in to a world to which you do have a key in some aspect of yourself, but which in no way opens the door fully to who you are. Any relationship or contact which does not exert this pull becomes, therefore, significant, in that you are left free to feel exactly yourself. For example, I have been known to make the odd comment which qualifies as a wise reponse to whatever is going on. If I am with someone who likes and respects me, in the sense that he/she knows accurately enough who I am, I feel wise and confident enough to carry the discussion forward. If, however, I am with someone who sees me as presumptuous and tending to suggest a waste of space, I become diffident and awkward. Any on-going discussion is stilted, adding nothing to what has gone before. In my life there are some who see me as self-centred and, therefore, lacking in empathy and understanding. In that milieu I become those things. Stories I want to tell , as I see it, to support the contention we are talking about become a dilution of the issue, drawing attention back to me. What I see as an expansion of the argument becomes a narrowing of it, relating just to me. With those people, even before an apparently dispassionate debate, I am awkward, feel out of myself and lumber in clumsily to confirm their view of me. I can be kind and generous except when in a situation where I am believed to be self-seeking. Then I really do look to see which behaviour may be in my best interest.

This phenomenon is like a wardrobe. Without premeditation, without the what-shall-I-wear the 40 year old would have asked before embarking on any situation at all, internal or external,
I find I put on the clothes of the expectation of the other. Because of the, no doubt, universal need to be loved and approved of, I am certainly not alone in this. We are demanding and whingy in the company of those who see us that way but outgoing and explicit to those disposed to see us thus. Just as we are capable of feeling different according to the clothes we are wearing, so can we feel different according to the characteristics perceived in us. A certain level of expectation and excitement comes with what one wears to an evening in the theatre. A tee shirt and track-suit bottoms will produce something quite other in the inner world's approach to the external world, don't you agree? With more than three score and ten years the sadness comes when it is too late to change the perception of onself that certain others hold, even in the face of what you, yourself, may see as incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. And there's the rub: no matter how incontrovertible the evidence in your awareness, your aura, it seems to me, may still give out the 'badness', the ' not much of a human being' the other has imposed on you. As I have put to you further up , there does need to be something of a hook already within you on which these contradictions can be hung, but, for myself, I wish I could unhook myself from the complicity with which I slide in to the clothes so beguilingly laid out for me.

I was once asked about my good , intense, but platonic friendship with a man who, more usually, very much enjoyed all aspects of friendship with women. "He makes me feel like myself", I heard myself explain. There's not a lot of that about. You'd think I would have hacked it by now, but, if at one level you are only 40, there could still be time wouldn't you say?

Strings

Before I unravel my theme, for those of you with good memories and the kindness to hold on to some, anyway, of these streams of consciousness, I should like to update you on the question of the girth of my beloved cat. (Her loss of weight was last post's discourse, in case you are as confused as I must often leave you). Concurrently with the concern about her weight, it had become a matter of some urgency to look in to her means of egress and ingress. In the early summer a baby fox came in through her cat-flap and, much more recently, two great Bouncer cats. The cat flap was changed, therefore, for a magnetic one; one magnet on the door, one on the cat. The bad news: it's too stiff for Beloved to push. The good news: her appetite has improved ten-fold. Conclusion: it must be the effect of the magnet attached to her collar. Rush out and get one for yourselves. Your health will be revolusionised.

As I was going to say, however, I have been thinking about strings. If you visualise history - in a microcosm, one's own and that of those with whom we are involved - as being a village and landscape peopled by facimiles of our earlier selves and events, puppets if you will and then picture yourself and the others who shaped that village as holding the strings, you will begin to see what I mean. (I was going to say "past selves" but don't wish to convey any metaphysical significance). I would also like you to know that, in no way, is the puppets metaphore meant to suggest lifeless dolls. It's the best I can do to describe the vivid image of those whom I am bending over, holding strings in the manner of a puppeteer. At first, many people were holding the strings of that history. Gradually, most have left, perhaps to go to a better place and, as I look around, I see that there are now only one or two of us bending over that common landscape. While I, and a few others continue to hold the strings, nothing will be forgotten. Indeed, so much energy is used in the enterprise, that it is not surprising how little room remains in the elderly for remembering things of the here and now. A monumental significance is, therefore, invested in those comrades still holding their strings. There are those from whom life has diverted me, our value to one another changed or diminished. But when we recognise a scene for which we each hold the strings, an encompassing warmth runs over us and there is a richness of feeling from which non-string holders are, necessarily, excluded. But I find I am more and more aware of the strings I hold alone, gathering more and more of the ones dropped by the dear-departed. I rush to pick them up but, soon, my hands may be too full to hold any more, myself. As you know, I have spent some time living with someone of the Grandchild generation. We do hold some strings together, but few, so few. He looks across at those I am holding without him much as I would look at Napoleon's, I suspect. Of all I could imagine about being the age I am, the thinning out of comrades-in-strings was not one that occured to the 40 year old when that was the age I actually was. These thoughts were crystallised by a meeting with old college friends that I went to last week. The strings were not as long as three score and more than ten, but three score and more than ten minus eighteen: long enough. A celebrated alumnus was interviewed by a near contemporary. The interviewee gained a first in Economics and then took to the stage and became a household name. A certain amount of ringing round had been done to ensure a good audience. After all, we are talking more than fifty years and a touch of 'Who He'? In the event, the hall was full and, as you may expect, the interview descended in to chaos from the heckling in the audience. Not a string of his student past left dangling, nowhere to hide, nothing capable of being hidden. I have rarely enjoyed myself so much, dancing a jig with a cat's cradle of memories in company with other likeminded cats.

Which reminds me: why can Beloved Cat remember where food lies, where the litter is, how warm my knees are, but not that it is absolutely forbidden to scratch the furniture? See you soon.

Cigars

Something rather shocking befell the family recently. A friend who doesn't see her often announced that she thought the Beloved Cat, whom I shall call Daisy for the sake of patient confidentiality, had lost weight. This happened on a Sunday so there was an agonising hiatus before I could contact the Vet and even more time before the one that has known her all her life - nearly twelve years - would be on duty. However, the day did finally come when she was caught, held and poured in to her basket for the terrifying four minute drive to wherever she feared she was being shanghaied. (I have, all of a sudden, serious doubts about the political correctness of that last image: kidnapped, then). Perceiving me closing the door of the bedroom where she had been nestling on an old mohair jumper next to the radiator behind the very table on which I am computing as we speak, she slid from under it, low as a serpent and did her best to slink under the bed. Not possible: slink as she might and smear herself effacingly over the carpet, the one: the cat, was still higher than the other: the bed. However, by the same instinct that had understood the door closing, since all are left open in this house in order that My Lady should have access wherever she will, she saw that her fate was immutable. A combination of that and her heart-breaking trust in me finally resulted in compliance with the indignity of allowing herself to be picked up and thrust in to the wicker cage that had served too many cats before; not even a cell of her own in this Hell on Earth of a prison. I did put a clean towel inside to do my best to make it hers but I may just have to give in to my raging guilt and buy a new basket that will smell only of the shop and of her.

The Vet is big and jolly with a loud bass voice. His surgery is well run with two adjoining areas. An arrow points to "Cat waiting area", another to "Dog waiting area". These are both ignored and, no, I don't know where the rabbits and hamsters wait. We, that is, Daisy, my son who is visiting, and I, waited quietly in the wrong place while I held Daisy's paw and my son walked about reading all the notices. Finally it was our turn. The Vet listened to the presenting problem and looked at his screen. Daisy, who hates the basket, had to be dragged out of any port in a storm in the interest of the consultation, weighed, compared with the info on the screen and pronounced, indeed to have lost weight, a tenth of her former body-weight. This and that and the other were prodded and examined and, with heart in boots, I agreed to blood and urine tests to establish the, no doubt, terminal cause; thyroid, heart, cancer, whatever. Casually, I asked whether he thought it may be life-threatening - no, he didn't believe the light-heartedness either - and was less than reassuring when he said he couldn't know, yet. He warned us he may be some time as he went outside with the love of my life. But they were back in surprisingly little time and there was no more to do than wait for the results - this was Thursday, so no proper breath taking until Monday. Dear Reader, all was well. Come back in six weeks to eliminate irritable bowel syndrome - and another several hundred pounds: sterling that is - and stop worrying. Maybe she had just lost weight and we could review her diet. "Sometimes a cat can just lose weight ":Vetinary Surgeon. "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar": Sigmund Freud. Nos da.

Perceptions

There is any number of possible headings for to-day's blog thoughts. What I have in mind is the lacuna between the perception of a phenomenon or event that someone of three score years and more may have and that of a younger person. How to categorise 'younger': anyone who is less than seventyish would do, I suppose. Nothing new in that, it's what the blog is about and, as you know, I do try to keep focussed on the issue as stated. (I bet my English teacher never dreamed she would be so awesomely respected at a distance of sixty years). Anyway, the present concern is birthday cards. As it happens, two of the people who are closest to me have a birthday on the same day, not the same year, just the same day. I duly sent off cards, one from me and one from my beloved cat - of course, what did you expect? - then, since one of them is the Guru who is staying with me at the moment, waited with some vicarious excitement, to see what else the postman would bring. Nothing, nicht, rien and so on and so on. Since he has the widest circle of friends of anyone I know, I was surprised to the point of disbelief. Indeed, so affected was I that I took him for a meal about forty times as grand as I could afford, to make up for the shocking neglect of all the other people in his life. During the course of this gourmet indulgence, he, borderline forgiveably, looked at his mobile phone. "That makes sixty two birthday texts and more on Facebook", he announced, with some warranted satisfaction. Had he actually received that number of wishes in the form of cardboard designs and stamped red envelopes, the local postman would have sued for displacement of his most important disc. Where perceptions come in is that the Guru found this quite normal and could not get his mind around my view of it as strange and, more important, transitory. How can you keep, in your box of special preciousness, sixty two text messages? I do have, still, in my special box, the cards from my seventieth birthday and from my seventy fifth. If you really need to know, I also have the congratulatory cards sent to me when each of my children was born. I know, I know, in due course they will be the ones who throw the things out, with a ripple of amused intolerance for a Mother too sentimental to know better: their perception.

I am reading more and more comments in newspapers about the sterility and empty nature of electronic communication. There does not seem to be anything we can do to stem this tide. The thing is, the young do not perceive it as sterile. It is what they know. My cards seemed quaintly old-fashioned to those who received them. My 'Thank you' notes seem dated. I go in to shops to find what I need. I don't look on-line. It makes me feel disorientated, ghostly. I am in danger of losing my perception of the world as a more or less friendly place, peopled by others more or less like me - Heaven forfend, but nevertheless..... I work hard to think myself in to the way the current generation perceives the world, the speed of it, the knowing of newsworthy events almost as they happen, the obsolescence of stuff that was new the day before yesterday. Why do we need to get to Birmingham fifteen minutes faster then we do at the moment? (For those kind readers over the Pond, a road is being built which cuts through swathes of one of the most beautiful corners of beautiful England in order that one may get to Birmingham 15 minutes sooner than one can at present). I begin to suspect that we are in danger of running away with ourselves - or from ourselves? But that is how I perceive it. Someone somewhere must perceive it differently or it wouldn't have happened. You know what, I have the feeling that, older or younger, I am going to be perceived as a green ink writer of letters - not yet emails -to the papers. Is it even possible for 75 going on 40 actually to become, to transmogrify in to an accurate perceiver of the world as it is perceived by thosewho are truly 40 or less? Should I be giving a d..n? What do you think? C u soon.