Previously, I did a thing called Weekending, but I haven’t done one for a while. Here is a miscellany of the random ideas that have moved me of late. I call them diddeley-doddelies. If you like them, say so.
Just passing by
The minidisc transition passed me by, as had the 8-track revolution before it. The switch to niche and boutique law practices passed me by, as did the 3,000-partner worldwide practice before it. The widespread concern about diabetes and heart disease has passed me by, although, I admit, my systolic blood pressure is often up at 140. The craze for trekking the world passed me by because I’d already trekked Europe and that was enough of a by-pass for me. The onset of Covid-19 passed me by and, once I’d learned of it, it changed nothing in my routine, so that it was only years later that I did my first Zoom, which may as well have passed me by. So, with all the furore about AI going mad and destroying everyone, I have no reason but to think that Armageddon will, likewise, pass me by. What do I live for? Nothing, I’m just passing by.
Please take one
Every creature on this Earth takes what it needs. If it needs twigs to build a nest, it takes them. If it needs meat to eat, it takes it. If it needs hazelnuts to survive the winter, them it likewise takes.
The ancient First Nations of Canada had, and have, a mantra of life: to take from the land what they need and to restore to the land what they can. In that, they set themselves apart from the creatures with which they cohabit the Earth, for, while an ecosystem needs replenishment of nutrients and clearance of dead wood, the human is the only creature that does these things consciously.
Restoring that which has been taken from is a part of our natural cycle, the symbiosis that is our living existence on our living Earth, for by now we have come to realise, if we never had before, that the planet upon which we live is itself a living thing. Its life—and its death—are matters that lie within our powers, as do ours within its, and into which we, upon death, are placed.
So often we pride ourselves upon being different from the animals, the beasts, the crawling creatures of the Earth, and yet we all too often remain insouciant to the needs of the living entity upon which we conduct our own existence. In short, we recognise how different we are from them, and then promptly elide over their very existence. (I think it’s called ADHD.) By taking and not restoring, we equate ourselves to the animals that we disdain; by taking more than we need, we manifest what we identify as healthy human lust for profit, as well as what we too often fail to identify as insouciance for the deprivation we create for our fellows and for our living planet. But it is by taking, and by destroying in order to take that which we take, that we manifest our worst inhumanity. Perhaps that is why, one day, the waters will cover the Earth.
They covered it once, and God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, turned Lot’s wife to salt in the process, and caused the Tower of Babel to fall. You think a survivalist bunker will protect you? Well, it will. But only from your fellow man.
The quick and the dead
I believe, but I cannot make anyone who doesn’t, believe, unlike the schoolteacher who can make a pupil believe the knowledge they must possess in order to pass an exam. Belief is not knowledge acquired to make the believer look clever. Nor does it in any way prepare them for dealing with grief. But belief, as a metaphysical aspect of our own reality, is the ingredient that pervades the entire human existence with nothing more than a chance, incidental enquiry of “What if?” Slight and incidental as it is, it is manifested in our love, which is the most cogent binding force between the quick and the hereafter.
Not bad
Like the parson’s egg means, it’s not half bad. So, how come it means it’s total rubbish?
C’est pas terrible translates literally as it isn’t terrible but actually means it is terrible, or it’s not very good.
Bijna goed is helemaal slecht is Dutch meaning nearly good is totally bad.
Not bad is pretty good, but spoil a ship for a ha’poth of tar is disastrous.
An “ha’poth” (pronounced “ay-puth”) is a derogatory remark characteristic of Yorkshire. It comes from “halfpenny-worth”, and means someone who is worth a halfpenny. In other words, an idiot, someone of no value. But if a ship can be spoiled for a ha’poth of tar, that means that what has no value in fact has value if only when it’s painted on the bottom of a ship.
Technology you can trust
My car will soon be 33 years old. I bought it when it was five years old. It was imported from Canada with a bunch of production tweaks (wider mudguards, double shock absorbers, recessed rear lights), since when I jacked up her bodywork by 4½ inches and fitted some pretty chunky M/S tyres. She’s electric blue, never gets dirty and I love her to bits. As an old-timer, she can access the capital’s streets (though Ghent and Antwerp still don’t like her 4.2 litre petrol engine). She’s been hit by three other cars over the time of my ownership and always came away without a scratch. Annual maintenance is about 500 euros, tax 99.99 euros, insurance 250 euros. Now, if you can run a car for that annual money, I’m a Chinaman. Her sale value is around 10,000 euros.
She’s on her second engine (a second-hand one), had a bare-metal respray in about 2005, and there are spots of rust bubbling through that are going to need some attention. She is technology that I can trust (the only electronic component is the radio).
So, is there technology that you don’t trust? I really don’t know whether I will ever again step aboard an airliner. They pollute far more than my little car, they offer a customer experience that belies its impact on the Earth. My little car broadcasts its impact on the Earth.
The sin is not having an ecological footprint, it is not presenting it as a tip-toe.
Technology you can’t
The potential for danger is something that can even extend beyond the control of the guy at the controls. Travel shouldn’t be a numbers game, and yet it all too often is. The lessons that are learned from rail crashes, air accidents, car smashes, and slipping off the pavement should all be the result of ignorance, but not of a lack of foresight, and not of a weighing of risk that puts manufacturers’ or operators’ profits above the known dangers posed to those they convey.
Enschede, Ermenonville, Alaska 1292, Ethiopian, Lion, Pinto. Now they want to build airplanes that will travel at Mach 5. And heavy space rockets that will be reusable. And projectile launchers that will hurl satellites halfway to heaven before a motor kicks in to edge it into outer space. These are all technologies of the future and, whilst I wish them all good luck with their endeavours, I meanwhile wonder how many corners will be cut to give an appearance of safety whilst compromising it on the wing of a prayer. Mr Musk has stated how daunted he is by his SpaceX project, admitting that he wonders whether it is in fact achievable. Some things prove to be unachievable before they get commissioned. Others are commissioned before we find out the cost of achieving them.
Who is watching Israel?
When Russian troops overstepped the mark in Bucha, Hostomel, Izium and the rest, Israel was very quiet. They took no sides and they simply looked on—and learned. I’m sure their eyes were trained more on the reactions of the world than on the horror in Ukraine. And now we see the result. They saw how wild outrage by the west’s newspapers could engender horrified cries in western nations, but nothing actually changed. Russia’s forces could do whatever they wanted and no one could say a dickie bird. From this have they learned. Israel is immune, to do whatever it wants in Gaza. People will cry and scream and condemn Israel as killers of the defenceless. And it will simply carry on. Just as Nazi Germany carried on, regardless. Until, that is, it was stopped.
And who is observing Israel at this time, do you think? Why, yes. It’s Russia.
Your state of mind is what we tell you it is
You’re of course right: they simply don’t want to believe you. And no one is more appreciative of that than a gay man. Homosexuality is a relationship that is frowned upon à distance by church, society, the law, the judicial system that administers the law, straight bro’s, and straight bimbo’s, by parents, by children, even by lesbians. Our rights are set down in extensive UN charters and declarations to which those nations that would detach our heads from our bodies have all avidly signed up in order to bask in the golden enlightenment of liberalism.
For over a year, I tried to inculcate a sense of sympathy among my friends and acquaintances, to encourage them to join in community for a poor family in Africa. You helped. You were one of five who helped. It was a success among us half dozen. The plea was read by over 200 people. Five contributed. If all 200 had donated 15 euros, we’d have reached our target for setting up a young man in honest business. He would even have paid them back.
I broke off a half dozen friendships over it, I felt so outraged at the insouciance, the ignorance, the sense of superiority and all-knowingness from people to whom I had given so much of myself. Theatre folk? Pah! I am here to help. That is my vocation. I have accepted generosity from others and, boy, I have offered it as well. And I have been steamrollered by the dishonest, who in turn have turned on me to accuse me of dishonesty. Snakes with burning tails, they are. For generosity has its roots, not in the wallet, but in the soul. And that is why we love each other.
However, the generosity that resides in you cannot help this situation, for you are stacked against a system that knows no generosity, but only rules. My family in law and I visited a zoo park in Germany once, and, of a sudden, as we sat eating our picnic, I noticed a little girl, no older than three or four, who stood a little way off wailing and crying. She was lost and distraught and my heart went out to her, for I was once lost and distraught when I was a little boy, too. I remarked that I would go to her because she was so upset at losing track of her mummy and daddy. Gabi held me back and went herself. She said, “People will think bad of you for it.” I was stunned, that an act of kindness could be seen as an act of malevolence.
That’s how close the two are in judgmental minds.