Elucidation

Oh Dear! Feedback has suggested that "Planets" doesn't read as clear and smoothly as I had assumed it did. A little elucidation: What I hoped to create was an understanding of one way to manage the unmanageable. Let's say that circumstances had contrived to make her way of being in the world intolerable for our imaginary friend. Say we see her world as Planet Reality. Our friend realises that the only way to survive the weight of the emotional pain she feels there is to move to a different world. Planet Survival, I called it. The imagining then follows her, via a budget airline, from the one Planet to the other, listing the sort of things which would be likely to be packed in hand baggage, and others in checked-in (hold) baggage. Obviously, a lot has to be left behind. Life would be narrower,more restricted but feasable on the new Planet. Once there,a new way of being in the world develops and she manages really well. There are still glances back, ties,short visits to Planet Reality but, by and large, the only way she could hope to cope at all would be to establish herself on the lesser but viable Planet Survival and do her best to pretend it's what she wants and enjoys. Simple, yes? However, the computer having succumbed to The Wizard again, I have VERY little and limited access to it and may not even be able to reach you all at all. With hope, Liz

Planets

As you will have noticed, it is the really funny side of a three score and more than ten external life being lived by an inner forty- year old that fascinates me and, I hope, Dear Reader, you, too. However, sometimes, it has to be acknowledged, real life is not always that ready to afford us the fun. This came to me, recently, after a conversation with someone in the position of being something of an expert in the matter. The matter is survival. (You will come to see its relation to the planets as you read on). This lady sees herself as exisiting on a very small planet circling, as it would, around the main, huge one. She moved there some years ago when life on the main planet became unmanagable. I believe she would find it fair if I told you just a little about how that came about. She was living what she saw as a pretty normal life, in pretty normal circumstances with the usual expectations of the present and future and a clear enough view of the past with its dark and light, joy and disappointment: an ordinary woman with an unexceptional story, millions like her out there on Planet Reality. Over some time, she suffered a number of losses. Some were sudden, some were gradual, some could be incorporated and some, well one in particular, she would need to accept were incapable of incorporation. What to do? She made valiant efforts to continue her life on Planet Reality. Weighed down by the excess baggage of the grief and pain she suffered, feeling unsupported, afraid and at risk of becoming too demanding of the good, reliable things still available to her, she decided to decamp to a much smaller planet, just to the North West and still in sight of Planet Reality.

This was Planet Survival. As everyone of you will know, travel is far from easy, these days. The only direct route to Planet Survival was via a budget airline. Not only that, her new home was not going to be big enough to accommodate anything like the bulk of her possessions. Two such predicaments will need some ingenuity in the resolution. What to do? What to take? What to leave behind? Having booked a flight, the priority was to plan the actual trip. As, yet again, you will be aware, one is allowed only 100ml of liquid in hand baggage on any flight. It was clear that tears would have to be left behind, or, anyway, strictly rationed. 100ml - I hope kind readers over the Pond will excuse the metrics - is not much liquid so that would take some getting used to. Vulnerability had to go in hand baggage, too, much as she would like to have left it behind. As for hold baggage, one suitcase weighing 15 kilos was the limit. Thus, most of her history, in its heavy books, would have to be abandoned or, at best, archived so that she could access it should things ever change enough to make it possible either to glance at or even read some of it, again. Sadly some friends would, inevitably, remain on Planet Reality . She could take only those of whose love she was sure enough, even if love was more realistically evaluated by a capacity to speak the same language as she.Ah!love: too difficult to make a decision. No doubt there was some love that was there and might have gone with her had it but known. It was so tied up with tears, though, she would surely have exceeded 100ml. If ever she reached a sensible decision about love she could always send for it. Loneliness: some left behind, some must be taken. There was room for only minimal family. That went on the very top of her hold baggage, love squeezed in beside it. Next, she packed her sense of fun and laughter. Fortunately, they were light enough that there was an enormous amount in before she got to 15 kilos. After that, music, filling all the remaining gaps: not too many slow movements and no Lutoslawski.

I gather she has been living on Planet Survival with great success. She can see Planet Reality and, truth be told, has been known to spend the odd week-end there. Sometimes, a phone call, a sighting in the street, some seemingly obscure reminder, will pull her reluctantly back to the feel of life on Planet Reality. As things stand, though, she does not see herself going back to live there, permanently. She is happy and, for the most part, secure on Planet Survival. At any rate, her postcards back to Planet Reality make sure there is no hint of anything but the Good Life she is thoroughly enjoying, refreshed by new and exciting elements never available to her on Planet Reality.

Now, it is absolutely no good you trying to guess, even if you thought you had enough data, of whom I speak. I made it all up. It was, though, triggered by the predicament of several acquaintances and former work associates and an imagination too used to seeing things in visual images. But next time you glance at the night sky, blow a kiss at the smallest planet as it circles a big one and think of Tinkerbell. Bora da

Hassle Avoidance

As you will know, if you have been kind enough to keep up, the latest post was called "Hassle". It turns out to have been the toe of the Giant's shoe, the hair on the elephant's head, the tip of the iceberg. Since then, I have been subjected to the Emperor, the Juno, the ultimate definition of all hassle. The Wizard of Cyberspace came and stole everything. My emails, my googles, my Mystery Shopper work, my profiles - that's what Guru says; I wouldn't know a profile if it was sitting on my lap as I write - all disappeared. Even the seascape wall-paper I enjoy during the wait for things to warm up upped anchor and crossed the channel. Worse is to tell. My blogposts had gone. Every single one, ab initio. The short version of the outcome of the last four days is that Guru has been able to restore its basics but everything is much more complicated to access than before and I have to wait patiently - I know, I know, patiently is not what I do best in many respects - until he has a window to come here and mend it in situ. (I tried lugging it to him. That was the just partial success I have described). He has had two - at least two - identifiable reactions. 1)He is delighted that I have become so computer-dependent (not even secretly delighted) 2) He is increasingly, but quite sweetly, impatient with my, to him, incomprehensible panic and demands on him. He knows everything is still there, somewhere. I have nothing but my faith in him.

The crisis rather pre-empted my scheme. I had intended to write, straight after the latest post, a piece about hassle avoidance. So I shall move on from the above red ink outburst and give you the suggestions that came to mind. Hassle can be avoided in numerous unsuspected ways. For instance, take the lock off your mobile phone. Instantly, you have one less step before you can activate it. Guru is concerned about what an unlocked phone may get up to in womens' handbags. Take a chance. Live dangerously. Live longer with one hassle less. If the number you rang is engaged, use the 'ring-back' service. It saves your dialling finger and you can go on with the ironing while you wait. (I don't do this. I don't have patience enough to wait, nor ironing since Guru left.) I called in an electrician to arrange for a ground floor switch to operate a lower ground floor corridor light, left on for security, so that I didnt have to 'run' down the stairs every night to switch it off. I have two gadgets to operate the radio in my bedroom, which is also where I've installed my desk and the computer. Why? Well, so I have neither to get off the bed to find it beside the desk, nor leave my desk to find it by the bed: simple, no? My hair-dryer, which used to lie on the floor in the cupboard I call, with all seriousness, my dressing room, now hangs from a hook on the wall. Why? so I don't have to waste the expenditure of an eye-watering sum of money spent on acupuncture continuingly bending down to pick it up. There is a land-line phone in every room. Now you know why: so that I don't have to rush round looking for one. I have been known even to throw money at a problem, so great is my hassle-avoidance drive. Well, taxis, if you must have a for-instance. Yesterday, caught in an unexpected down-pour, I bought an umbrella from a shop I was sheltering near. It makes the 23rd I own: honestly. But no getting wet hassle. Having been advised by the Chinese doctor responsible for the above acupuncture, to sleep with my ankles higher than my hips, I have put redundant phone books under the mattress rather than spend the night chasing the pillow I was supposed to put directly under them - my ankles, that is. I even put nine days worth of tablets in to little pots so I don't have to search them all out, one by one, every morning. (Because that is the number the tray will hold, since you ask.) The list is endless, obsessive even. But I have only so much energy, I am considerably more than three score and ten by now and every little helps. Clearly then, the most efficient way to avoid hassle in my case, would be to throw the computer out of the window. There I've said it. The Wizard is listening. You are listening - I hope - and that's the answer: I am accustomed to having you out there. I don't want to have to do without you, so I shall go on avoiding little hassles in order to keep enough hassle-capacity to cope with the technocological revolution that keeps me in touch with you, Dear Readers, and with loved ones on islands off islands in the far north. Anyway, by the time I have found the key to unlock the padlock that holds the grilles across the window and moved the table to reach the grilles and the window and struggled to open it, the feeling has usually passed. Prynhawn da.

A ps to amuse you: listening on the radio to a pianist playing as I typed, there were about five seconds when he and I were fingering in precise tandem. Awesome.

Hassle

Hassle is a word fairly new to me. I can't remember what the phenomenon was called when I first recognised it. It wasn't hassle. Nuisance, perhaps: bother, aggravation - not aggro - annoyance, would all have conveyed the same frustration. Hassle it is currently. I need to define what I mean by the word and leave it to you to see if you are ad idem and, particularly and, to put your own betes noirs under the comment bit at the bottom. (I understand that's a hasselous proceedure in itself). Hassle is that which interupts the smooth flow of your life. It can be active or passive. The most efficient route to a place it's not easy to reach at any time can be impeded by road works and diversions. That's a passive hassle. Active hassle is finding an alternative route. The light has gone out over your make-up mirror and, without it, you can't use its magnification to make sure you've put the eyeliner, accurately, just above your eyelashes . Wonky eyeliner is not a good look on those who are more than three score and ten. The broken light is passive hassle. Climbing on to a chair to remove and replace it is active hassle. My printer is broken. This fact furnishes a pot pourri of hassle. I can't print anything. I have to go through the hassle of moving various impedimenta to reach the back of it to make sure that both the black and the grey cables are plugged in. They are. I have the hassle of contacting the Guru, who is probably at work, to ask if he can sort it. I said 'ask'. I really meant I had to choose whether to go down on one knee - the only one that works - and throw myself on his mercy or say, casually, "when you next have a moment, I wonder if you could look at the printer. It's not working". I tried the latter. I was put through the you-must-have- done-something routine, told to re-check the cables and get on with it. When I reported that its little light was on, the cables were in and all looked well but the message was still 'Printer off-line", I was laughed off the phone. The hassle of being the wrong generation for the current state of the world almost goes beyond hassle to the upper limits of disaster.

When I was working I used, occasionally, to throw money at a situation to mitigate its hassle-value. An example would be to ask the person who helps me with cleaning to do some ironing. It does not make sense to a well-brought-up old lady to spend money on something one can do oneself so it was'nt a request she was used to. The iron needs its periodic rinse-out. This is active hassle. It's a semi-professional iron with a huge tank separate from the bit that actually strokes the clothes. It is heavy and awkward and really hasselous to tip and rinse. However, it spits brown spume over everything on the first press of the 'steam' button if you dare to ignore it's routine requirement. I thought that asking someone else to do the ironing would obviate the need for me to deal with its ablutions. I was wrong. She left me a note saying she couldn't do the ironing because it was spitting brown spume - only she said "muck" so it must have been thicker. Explaining how things work produces more hassle than doing whatever oneself. But, I was guilty not only of deception in not explaining the need and asking her, outright, to rinse it out, first, but also of a costly avoidance technique. It would have been hassle-cheaper to have come clean, explained and enlisted her benign co-operation. Instead, I did the ironing, myself, giving the iron the opportunity to spit at an unremarkable rag before starting to iron the real stuff.
A dear friend caught in the usual humungous hassle of selling and buying property, has to choose between losing a house he likes and is in process of buying or paying an extra sum of money because the Vendors have just discovered they have a mortgage penalty and want that cost, for the time lag between now and when the mortgage would end without penalty, covered. He is torn between the reality of what this means to his innocent self and the reality of where to go and where to put his stuff if he can't move in as planned. I probably have to find a different word to encompass this: calamatation? Last night I arranged to meet a friend after work. I was outside his work. He was outside his home. That's not hassle. It's a failure in communication and almost in friendship. What was hassle was beating a way through the rush hour traffic to reach a rendezvous which we had mutually understood and agreed. That could have been hassle, nuisance, bother, aggravation, annoyance all in one. Oh Dear. Prynhawn da.

Disbelief

A dilemma: what can a person do who struggles with what she is pleased to call truth or reality or 'see it as it is' when confronted with the imagination of a present - and for a long while past - director of works of Theatre or Opera? At the weekend I was privileged to hear a performance of Handel's Rinaldo at Glyndebourne. Now, this is, indeed, privilege. First, one has to have accumulated the cost. The cost will include tickets, travel and dinner for two. Second, one would have to have the interest in Opera and in one particular Opera. Third, one would need a serviceable companion, with a dinner jacket if male and a best frock if not, and fourth, one would have to have a stout pair of shoes and a strong umbrella for the habitual, prevailing conditions at the venue. In total , you will agree, this amounts to privilege in spades. Anyway, I did accumulate all of the above and we presented ourselves in due course and in due dress. So far, so comme il faut. That which was not comme il faut was the way the director saw fit to present the spectacle. In case you find a prod helpful, I will remind you that "Rinaldo" is a tale of the Crusades. There are winners and losers, goodies and badies and love and thwartation. (I know, but words must have been invented at some point by someone). Nothing too difficult there, then. The music is exquisite, delicate, exciting and fitting to the story. Nor is it too difficult to suspend disbelief. However, the director found all this below his capacity to interpret. It left him with not enough to do. Therefore, he set the scene in a current Grammar school. An adolescent boy is being bullied. He is also the butt of his teacher's sick humour and, what's more, his whipping stick. At some stage in this unhappy situation, staring at the blackboard, he visualises the characters in the stories of the Crusade he is meant to be studying. They emerge as real people. So far, so creative. However, the ethos of his dream is pure pornography. (I know, I know. But why can't I take oxymoronic license, too?) Now, if a young boy/man is to let us in to his dreams we mustn't be taken aback if those dreams turn out to be pornographic. It may even be called 'fact'. Where we are allowed to be taken aback is when the charm, the adherence to the Trinities and the glorious music are subjugated to the whim of a puerile director with no original work to back him up. His evident lack of intelligence and sensitivity was overwhelming. Nor could one close one's eyes and just listen. Well, since you need to ask, people of more than three score and ten find that the inner world regards closed eyes as a signal for bed-time. So, Dear Reader, I watched as well as listened and could find solace only in the knowledge that the Guru, whom you rightly guessed was my companion for the occasion, would probably find the production more interesting than if it had been true to Handel's intention and the mores and the dress of the actual epoch.

Talk about green ink. (Those of you who have been faithfully keeping up, may remember that I wrote about green ink and Disgruntled Tunbridge Wells, a post or four ago). I am aware that the very fact of complaining could have me categorised as retrograde and stick-in-the-mud. But
I was not alone. For the first time in my life I did something I could never have done at forty. I posted a comment on the Glyndebourne website, where I found numerous others, and I put my name to it. The inner mind is still blogging. (Oh dear: does that qualify as a pun, I ask you? Or is it just a Freudian slip?). Blog or boggle, I remain amazed at my timerity. Having confessed it, you may like to know that when I looked to see if my comment had got passed the Glyndebourne censor sergeant, I found it had but it had been attributed to 'Anonymous'. Incensed, I telephoned in my 'look here, my man' voice and climbed hastily down when I learned it was a website glitch and those of us who had the courage to make public our views under our names would have this corrected as soon as possible. However, it remains one of the sorest of trials for the elderly to find that cherished and even revered spectacles have been vulgarised and shorn of their integrity in the service of the new and the inventive and, let's acknowledge it, the vainglory of those with too little humlity to seek out the essence of a work and give it the power to attract the current audience they think is diminishing - and may well be for that matter. Why does the production have to leave the 'script'? People have been coming back to music, and, for that matter, to books, they have heard and read many, many times without expecting them to have a different cardre or a different ending or be thrillers instead of love stories. Please, tell me where the added value is in changing all those things when producing plays - Shakespeare, for instance - and, more often, Operas: thrills for thrills sake? So, what is a person to do? Close one's eyes but then - sleep, sleep perchance to dream. Aye there's the rub: and there we are, back with our director in spite of ourselves.

Now, those pedants among you will have noticed that the green ink never managed a capital letter when referring to the director. Intentional, that was, if below the conscious at the time. Prynhawn da

Yesterday's snow

As a little one - well, twelve or so - I was fascinated by the idea of lost snow. Confession: I have been messing about looking for a way to express this without sounding superior, but I give up. I was born in an era when education was taken as a given, if you see what I mean. It was tough, could be boring and it was impossible to avoid. There was so much of it you felt drowned in that very realisation. I used to have a fantasy that, one day, I would know all there was to know. I mean an active fantasy. I would lie in bed and picture myself the Fount of all Knowledge. People would have to make appointments to consult me. And no, it wasn't going on up to last year. Actually, it stopped when I was about fifteen, I guess; I hope. Anyway, all that, just to tell you that I was introduced to the French language at an early age and one of the things that stood out and has remained sticking out over all these years was the idea of the snows of yesteryear. " Ou sont les neiges d'antan?" Well, where does the snow go? It is just too mundane to say it melts. It's a mystery. I came to believe that it was a metaphor for memory. Let's say, for the sake of argument, it is a metaphor for memory. So does that mean that memory doesnt really exist, it is just a puddle on the pavement? If it's more where is it stored? Is it in the ether, in the imagination? I can see that in the post below, the one that remembered the vital importance of having memories restored by a resumed friendship with the Father of my children, I saw the ancient snows as residing in him. But I held his history, too. His past had been with me. He can tell his friends about his earlier life, but I was there: I have the substance. I see sculptures. They see pictures. I think he sees snow as a commodity to shovel, to avoid slipping and to ski on, so it wouldn't be helpful to ask him. Sometimes I tell the people dear to me about people and events that mattered to me or affected me in the dim, distant past. This doesn't make them shared memories. This makes them anecdotes. No repository of snow found in the present then - even if their eyes haven't glazed over by the time I could ask them, and yours too, for that matter.

To-day, I had lunch with some women friends. One I feel particularly close to and two of her friends from a life not common to both of us. We were roughly of an age, within a decade or so and we reminisced. (Subject of another post: the difference between reminiscence and gossip - discuss). Something that emerged - I am avoiding "issue" - was how much experience we had in common, although one was born in Europe, Continental Europe, that is, although we didnt have to put it that way until comparatively recently, and the other three in very different parts of the UK. By the time lunch was over we could have made a whole snowman with what had come back to us. Not all we talked about would have been relevant to the forty-year old inside me. It was from earlier. Amongst other things, we talked about 'Make do and Mend', very much a second World War thing. (I still do - make do and mend, that is). Of course, we talked about the change in mores and how the young live their lives so differently from ours. There has been a cultural revolution - or three - since I was forty, never mind since I was fourteen. Does it signify? If so, how and why? Is there room in a memory that is more than three score and ten to hold all the personal and world events and changes? Maybe, it is right and healthy that we don't know where the snows of yesteryear have gone. There would be no room to live for to-day, to play with the babies, to worry about phone hacking and the sanctity of cyberspace. Ah! that's what's happened. That's the answer. The snows of yesteryear are in the safe-keeping of the Wizard of Cyberspace. Nos da.