Living in changing times.

Two young women, lets call them Albertine and Andrée. They met abroad, and fell in love. Both returned to the homes of their respective families. Andrée visited Albertine,and Albertine visited Andrée. Both used Facebook, and Andrée posted photographs of their little outing to Gay Pride - happy smiling faces, proud of their relationship and glad to be among like minded friends. The mother of Andrée was not happy. She could cope with Andrée being a lesbian, but she did not want it exposed to the world. She felt embarrassed and humiliated. She understood the relationship, but didn't want it 'rubbing in her face'.

The corner of the street

The corner of the street
Originally uploaded by Albertine28

After a long walk it is lovely to see the lights of home, even if from across the river. The corner of Lax Lane and Severn Side South, Bewdley.

I came across a heron sitting on a log, and from a distant I first thought it was a bird, but as I got closer it sat so still I thought it might be just an old branch sticking out of the log, which was in the River Severn.
Then as I got opposite it turned it's head, revealing its magnificent profile.
It stayed for a half an hour, almost perfectly still, then flew off when a boat appeared.

Childhood - Leo Tolstoy on young, innocent love.

I often think with regret of that fresh, beautiful feeling of boundless, disinterested love which came to an end without having ever found self-expression or return. It is strange how, when a child, I always longed to be like grown-up people, and yet how I have often longed, since childhood’s days, for those days to come back to me! Many times, in my relations with Seriosha, this wish to resemble grown-up people put a rude check upon the love that was waiting to expand, and made me repress it. Not only was I afraid of kissing him, or of taking his hand and saying how glad I was to see him, but I even dreaded calling him “Seriosha” and always said “Sergius” as every one else did in our house. Any expression of affection would have seemed like evidence of childishness, and any one who indulged in it, a baby. Not having yet passed through those bitter experiences which enforce upon older years circumspection and coldness, I deprived myself of the pure delight of a fresh, childish instinct for the absurd purpose of trying to resemble grown-up people.

Huckleberry Finn

This was the piece read on 'Night Waves', apart from the last paragraph, and I think possibly the BBC were a little sensitive, and maybe rightly so. The word has to be appreciated in context, and after all, it does get used quite a bit by people who claim it as their own, so I make no apology for Mark Twain or repeating it.

“What do dey stan’ for? I’se gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin’ for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos’ broke bekase you wuz los’, en I didn’ k’yer no’ mo’ what become er me en de raf’. En when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun’, de tears come, en I could a got down on my knees en kiss yo’ foot, I’s so thankful. En all you wuz thinkin’ ’bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie. Dat truck dah is TRASH; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren’s en makes ’em ashamed.”

Then he got up slow and walked to the wigwam, and went in there without saying anything but that. But that was enough. It made me feel so mean I could almost kissed HIS foot to get him to take it back.

It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go and humble myself to a nigger; but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterwards, neither. I didn’t do him no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done that one if I’d a knowed it would make him feel that way.

Young love and Time Regained

I suppose Proust might have often been thought of as a dirty old man, but he does it so poetically. It is a bit risque owning up to this, but it really is one of the most wonderful passages, and quite sad as we near the end of the final volume.

And far from believing myself unhappy because of a life without friends, without conversation, as some of the greatest have believed, I realised that the force and elation spent in friendship are a sort of false passport to an individual intimacy that leads nowhere and turns us back from a truth to which they might have conducted us. But anyhow, should intervals of repose and social intercourse be necessary to me, I felt that instead of the intellectual conversations which society people believe interesting to writers, light loves with young flowering girls would be the nourishment I might, at the most, allow my imagination, like the famous horse which was fed on nothing but roses. All of a sudden I longed again for what I had dreamed of at Balbec, when I saw Albertine and Andrée disporting themselves with their friends on the sea-shore before I knew them. But alas, those I now so much longed for, I could find no more. The years which had transformed all those I had seen to-day including Gilberte herself must, beyond question, have made of the other survivors as, had she not perished, of Albertine, women very different from the girls I remembered. I suffered at the thought of their attaint for time’s changes do not modify the images in our memory. There is nothing more painful than the contrast between the alteration in beings and the fixity of memory, than the realisation that what our memory keeps green has decayed and that there can be no exterior approach to the beauty within us which causes so great a yearning to see it once more. The intense desire for those girls of long ago which my memory excited, could never be quenched unless I sought its satisfaction in another being as young. I had often suspected that what seems unique in a creature we desire does not belong to that individual. But the passage of time gave me completer proof, since after twenty years I now wanted, instead of the girls I had known, those possessing their youth.

The benefits of the single life, and the pains of growing old.

Mme de Guermantes explaining to the narrator the nature of getting old, and reasons for not having sons. Always brings a little water-me-eye.

“As to yourself,” she continued, “you’re always the same, you haven’t, so to speak, changed at all,” and that gave me almost more pain than if she had said the contrary for it proved, by the mere fact of being remarkable, how much time had passed. “You’re astonishing, my dear friend. You’re always young,” a melancholy remark since there is only sense in it when we have, in fact, if not in appearance, become old. And she gave me a final blow by adding: “I’ve always regretted you did not get married. But, who knows! After all, perhaps you’re happier as it is. You would have been old enough to have sons in the war and if they had been killed like poor Robert Saint-Loup (I often think of him) with your sensitiveness, you would not have survived them.”

Growing wild

You can buy these, two bunches for a pound in Kidderminster today, but I wouldn't swap a wild one, growing free by the riverside, for all the bunches on the market. Crocuses in the top field, primroses in the woods, wild garlic by the pond, bluebells and snowdrops in a long-deserted graveyard - what makes them so very special, and worth more than all the cultivated gardens in the world, and all the flower shops in all the high streets? We know the answer really - spontaneous, free, unexpected, and wild.

Coppers, eh?

This week’s little story is about the boys in blue, and I’m wondering why they can be so unpleasant. It didn’t happen to me – I guess they don’t think it worth their while trying to catch me out, old grey chap, and I’ve got lights on the front and back of my bike, and an audible signal, by way of a bell, thank you very much. It happened to number one daughter this week, who survived the ordeal.
On Tuesday Sam had her wing mirror stolen – returned to the car after work, and it was gone. She rang me, and I thought she was safe to drive home. The next day a police car pulled her over, for not having an off-side wing mirror. Having pointed this out to her, and agreed that he wouldn’t be nicking her, he wrote out an order that she must replace it within fourteen days, and get a certificate from an MOT garage to confirm that she had: all quite acceptable. Then he asked her is she smoked, and if she had any illegal substances in the car, which of course she didn’t. Failing this he did a full inspection of the outside, found no bald tyres, which she doesn’t have because she had a full set just before the MOT, and then said ‘you know your tax has run out’. Poor Sam, her heart skipped a beat or two, as she wondered how that had happened, then pointed out that it said 31/03/10, and that we are still in March, whatever calendar the rozzers are working to. No arrestable offence, and a disappointed copper.
What I don’t understand is the attitude of the man. Sam is in her mid twenties, mature student and works in a lady’s outfitters, and dresses the part. Does she look as though she drives around with a stash? The thing that actually mortified her, and she won’t forget, is that when he took her details, he asked ‘is it still miss?’ Cheeky bugger.
And what I shall never understand, and this happened all through High School, is that my daughters wouldn’t dream of doing wrong, would be terrified of getting caught, and are basically on the side of community and society. Why do the enforcers of order – teachers, coppers, etc., go out of their way to alienate those people who would otherwise be on their side, and who then become anti-authoritarian?

The only real bit in the book

If you know this part of the story, you will recognise it - otherwise, I'm just being a bit self-indulgent.

A nephew of Françoise had been killed at Berry-au-Bac who was also a nephew of those millionaire cousins of Françoise, former café proprietors long since retired with a fortune. This young man of twenty-five, himself the proprietor of a little café, without other means, was called up and left his young wife to keep the little bar alone, hoping to return in a few months. He was killed and the following happened. These millionaire cousins of Françoise upon whom this young woman, widow of their nephew, had no claim whatever, left their home in the country to which they had retired ten years previously and again took over the café but without taking a penny. Every morning at six o’clock the millionaire wife, a true gentlewoman, dressed herself as did her young lady daughter to assist their niece and cousin by marriage, and for three years they washed glasses and served meals from early morning till half-past-nine at night without a day of rest. In this book in which there is not a single event which is not fictitious, in which there is not a single personage “a clef“, where I have invented everything to suit the requirements of my presentation, I must, in homage to my country, mention as personages who did exist in real life, these millionaire relations of Françoise who left their retirement to help their bereaved niece. And, persuaded that their modesty will not be offended for the excellent reason that they will never read this book, it is with childlike pleasure and deeply moved, that, unable to give the names of so many others who acted similarly and, thanks to whom France has survived, I here transcribe their name, a very French one, Larivière.

One life - live it!

Here is today’s pause for thought. Out walking this morning we passed below the summit of Stagborough Hill, a glorious green field facing south and quite a sun-trap on a chilly day. The footpath actually runs through a field used for off-road driving in four-wheeled drive cars, which trundled around the field whilst we enjoyed lunch. In the windows the vehicles displayed mottos along the lines of ‘One life – life it!’ Is it me, or is there something extremely tame about driving around a field in a motor? Me and my significant other, having walked for a couple of hours in bright sunshine through hills and valleys, watched bewildered as hefty drivers steered even heftier vehicles around a field. For people who most probably drive a car all week, to want to so at the weekend seems distinctly odd; for the same people to claim some sort of ‘living adventurously’ by driving around a field on a Sunday morning is quite ludicrous. Given that in the neighbouring woods all sorts of people are riding cycles on a variety of tracks suggests a wonderful contrast. And of course there were the walkers as, like us, enjoying the wonderful feeling of the sun in your face and the chill in your bones. So if you want a bit of adventure, try linking it with a bit of exercise – get off your bum and get out there in the elements; good for you, good for the environment, and I reckon, more fun. When I was younger, it used to make me feel quite …

To the woman on the mobile phone, junction of Lax Lane, High Street and Lower Park

To the woman driving up Lax Lane whilst using her mobile phone.
It is my custom to gesticulate to drivers who think it quite safe to negotiate tight bends, busy roads with narrow pavements, and other obstacles whilst holding a phone to their ear. I consider it to be a dangerous practice – driving one handed is daft, and talking to someone on the phone distracts one from paying full attention to the driving. To be frank, you are a bunch of idiotic fools who put your own convenience over and above the safety of others – you think you are safe, and from where I stand, on the pavement or a cycle, you are a bloody menace.

So when a woman got to the end of Lax Lane this morning, talking on her phone whilst approaching one of the most difficult bits of road in Bewdley, I was cross. It is a blind turning – one has to ‘peep and creep’ to emerge, and turn very hard to get out of the junction. Me and my little boy considered ourselves to be in danger from such an idiot, and I gesticulated. She seemed to think I was out of order, and wound down her window to speak to me – I think she was showing off that she could do this from her side, electric windows. She asked if I was a policeman, then repeated it whilst I stood somewhat bemused. She said if I wasn’t I should be minding my own business. We had a little altercation.

You silly bloody sod – it is my business. It is my street, and it is my arse in danger. Your appreciation of moral understanding is so low I can hardly reach down to you. I’m an anarchist – I give not much of a toss for a policeman; I am concerned about protecting myself and my environment, and my freedom to safely negotiate that environment. I don’t need your small minded attitude that considers only ‘crime’ and getting caught – I can make my own judgements, and tell other people when I think their behaviour is thoroughly lacking, if it impedes upon me. You, with your two child seats in the back of your motor, ought to develop some safe driving habits.

Actually, she said it was an emergency she was dealing with. I told her, if that was the case, to pull in and speak safely. She wasn’t impressed.

So next time anyone thinks of being a twat whilst driving – on the phone, drunk, speeding, dangerous motor – remember that many of us think you are twats, and would be quite happy if you kill yourself and all your loved ones. And if you feel like me about twats on the road, feel free to gesticulate and shout at the bastards – perhaps it is the only way to get through, and there are far more of us out there than the police, who can’t catch all the bad guys.

And a few words on death...

Our love of life is only an old connexion of which we do not know how to rid ourself. Its strength lies in its permanence. But death which severs it will cure us of the desire for immortality.

The Fugitive - Chapter 3 - Venice

A few words on love, from The Fugitive

Chapter three, 'Venice'

We think that we are in love with a girl, whereas we love in her, alas! only that dawn the glow of which is momentarily reflected on her face.

The morality of the working-class, or lack of it.

What later translators called working-class, C. K. Scott Moncrieff refered to as 'the proletariat'; the narrator is trying to find out more of Albertine's past life.

I asked myself whom I could best send down to make inquiries on the spot, at Balbec. Aimé seemed to me to be a suitable person. Apart from his thorough knowledge of the place, he belonged to that category of plebeian folk who have a keen eye to their own advantage, are loyal to those whom they serve, indifferent to any thought of morality, and of whom—because, if we pay them well, in their obedience to our will, they suppress everything that might in one way or another go against it, shewing themselves as incapable of indiscretion, weakness or dishonesty as they are devoid of scruples—we say: “They are good fellows.”

Not much point in that, then.

Friends Reunited. The company that brought that site was pouring money down a drain. I've just had an email from 'Sally', although I'm beginning to think she isn't real, or she doesn't read what she has written:

We've given the Friends Reunited site a good Spring clean for the new year, so why not do the same to your profile?

Your profile has been viewed 0 times already in 2010, so make sure it's up to date with all your latest news, photos and information for friends passing by!

Wow - zero views this year - better make sure the portrait pic is bang up to date!

You wouldn't believe what grown ups get up to.

I loved this so much I decided to share it. An 'all staff' email, when there is about six of us at work, the other 200 on half-term. I've changed the name, out of respect. I have to say it came from an adult.

I have lost a bright yellow fluffy pencil case, that contains my life collection of pencils, pens etc.... I had it in my possession towards the end of last week. Please if you find it can you let me know or pop it into room 026. Some of the pencils have my name "Jennifer Bull" on them..... I know very sad!!

Thanks

Jenny