poliphilo

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We have dispensed with the services of our cleaner. Ailz didn't like her. She thought she wasn't terribly good at what she did. There was also evidence, strong but not conclusive, that she was stealing things.

When you do jobs you don't particularly believe in for the money and nothing else you will skive, cut corners and break rules. I know, because I've done it myself. I worked as a cleaner on the trains once and taking liberties made the job bearable- even good fun at times 'cos I got a kick out of being bad. I was also clever and canny and knew what I could get away with. For instance, if a first class carriage was empty one could go and sit in it between stations and read a discarded newspaper with one's feet up instead of- I don't know- polishing taps in The W.C.. The boss- a wide boy who told us "I work hard and I play hard" (nasty little scrote)- thought of me as an ideal employee. If I was ideal Heaven only knows what my colleagues were getting up to.

So I don't judge.....

But also I don't like employing people to do menial work.

Still if we don't have a cleaner we're going to have to do the job ourselves. As a first step we have been buying mops.

Judy and I have been taking about Muranow, the district of Warsaw that used to be the Jewish ghetto.

After the war the authorities bulldozed the remains and used the rubble to make concrete to rebuild the district. Human remains will have been included in that concrete. Judy says Muranow has a lot of ghosts. I assume she means real ghosts and not just memories.

Muranow is a part of a major city. People need to live there. So what do you do when you're rebuilding? Do you fill it with memorials? But no, because you don't want the new residents to feel weird about their home. Or do you start from scratch, make something very unlike what was there before and hope the past will be forgotten?

I'm told the only building that was left standing wasn't anything Jewish but a Catholic Church. One could write an essay about the implications of this.

All old towns have horrors associated with them. Rome, Istanbul, Paris, London- age after age there have been terrible things happen in them. Even our quaint, pretty little county town of Lewes has had things happen in it that you wouldn't know about unless you did the research. There was a big mediaeval battle fought on the nearby hills and afterwards the soldiers of the defeated army were massacred in the streets. In Queen Mary's reign Protestants were burned alive in the town square.....

Early morning. The no longer entirely full moon is high in sky. The clouds that go past it and over it are orange, then yellow, gradually losing colour as the sun rises. The bits of the landscape that aren't in shadow also change colour. This is the last day of August. It no longer feels quite like summer.

We had wind and rain in the night but not the thunderstorm we'd been forecast. I had a dream in which African people were talking a language called Simbutin.

Our dead friend's friend wanted to spend yesterday just as she'd spent the Sunday she spent with us last year: Quaker meeting to begin with, lunch at a dim little pub on Sovereign Harbour, then a walk down the far end of the development to watch boats come in through the lock. She likes to see the lock gates open and close.

She talks continuously. People who live alone often do. I find, though, that she knows a lot about classical music and "The American Songbook"- and this makes me warm to her because I like it when people are knowledgeable about the things they enjoy. The tells me how she been listening to Leonard Bernstein talking about Mahler's symphonies being crammed with Jewish folk tunes....

"Sunny intervals" says the weather forecast.

But that's life, innit? Sunny intervals.

We have the house back. Having eight people to stay was an interval. Not entirely sunny but sunny in parts.

Nothing ever stays the same.

Nothing constant, nothing still
A hammer beats on a distant hill
To syncopate our sense of loss.
The world tree, the bitter cross
Holds on its arms the guttering breath
Of God involved in the change of death.

I wrote that when I was a still a Christian- a clergyman no less. The fact that I remember it (though I've forgotten most of the poem in which it was embedded) means it must still resonate with me. The imagery is Christian, the sentiment universal. God- who is us- has chosen to be involved in change.....

Today we are spending some time with a friend of a deceased friend who is spending the bank holiday weekend at a hotel on Grand Parade. She thinks we're wonderful, we don't like her very much. I'll be doing my best to think sunny thoughts because reality isn't imposed on us, we make it ourselves.

The birthday party was loud. No music. Just loud voices in a small room. I can enjoy that sort of thing for a limited amount of time. Very limited- and this went on for hours.

Odi and the other seven went up to London in the evening and are now going to enjoy and add to the loudness of the Notting Hill carnival.

Wendy and Mary who were at the party stayed overnight. Wendy fixed me eggs for breakfast.

Seems like it's now going to rain all day.

I know I'm not as bouncy as I was a year ago but I'd hoped our annual visitors wouldn't notice. Only Odi did.

Odi has been talking for a while of moving down to Eastbourne in the hazy future to look after us- her sort of parents- in our old age. She's now saying that because of my steep decline she needs to firm things up.

Is my decline really so steep?

Well, my health ain't bad. The blood tests I had done a couple of weeks back have revealed nothing wrong. Except for a little too much cholestrol. The doctor is prescribing statins and I've said "OK" in order to keep him sweet- only I might forget to take them.

But I am slower, weaker, wearier......

Do I mind? No more than I mind any change in my circumstances. It would be nice if things always stayed the same, but boring perhaps.

I see movement out the corner of my eye. I look. For a moment I think it's a mouse or vole sitting on the floor. Then I recognise that it's a feather that has drifted in through the open patio door

It's a pigeon feather.

I see more movement at the door -and, blimey, it's a squirrel. It almost comes in the house then thinks better of it and scurries off.....

Feathers are common round here but squirrels ain't.

I love pigeons, I love squirrels. And all the more because lots of people think them a bloody nuisance.

Both of them showing up at the end of this post- which reveals more personal stuff than I usually do- feels like Dame Nature giving me a nod and a wink.....

There was heavy rain and a thunderstorm last night. I'd thought it was a brief thunderstorm but Ailz says it went on for ages and at one point she got up and shut the bedroom window because the rain was blowing in- something I hadn't registered at all. So clearly I slept through most of it.....

The brown lawn is turning green. I'll need to be mowing it soon.

Mother arguing with sixteen year old daughter.

The issue is whether daughter should do the washing up now in accord with mother's "routine" or later at her own time of choosing

Mother wants Ailz and me to back her up and is shocked that we don't.

We say things like,

"Don't be so bossy".

"Your're on holiday and this is our house so your routine doesn't apply and basically we don't give a fuck whether the washing up is done this evening or not."

and

"Teenagers are supposed to rebel against their parents."

Bought this rather large picture of the Beatles at the tip shop. Couldn't help myself. The Beatles were doing their most interesting, way out stuff while I was in the process of becoming an adult. Can't help loving them.

I was talking to the visiting twelve year old about E.T.s. and was impressed by how much he knows. Has he heard of Roswell? 'Course he has.

His name is Jasper, which to me means Victorian villainy- in particular chaps in capes and top hats with twirly moustaches tying maidens to railway tracks- but seems to have lost those associations for later generations.

Having people living in is exhausting. Flip side is that I'm sleeping longer. Had a dream last night where I was giving an improvised performance as a pilgrim/adventurer in an open air venue, walking among the audience and, as everyone- including myself, acknowledged- being utterly sensational. The thing ended with some sinister female seducers giving my character a cup of drugged wine which sent him to sleep.

We asked Hannah and Sam from Quakers back to the house for the big lunch-cum-party that Odi was going to organise for Christa's birthday. As it turned out the plan wasn't actually a plan but a lovely pink cloud that had dissolved in the heat of the morning and Odi and family had gone off to spend the day at The Cuckmere Haven instead. No worries, we improvised something to eat and the four of us spent the afternoon chatting.

Sam- who is falmboyantly gay said he'd just learned that Oscar Wilde was gay too and it had surprised him no end. "But it's the most famous thing about him,"" I said....

We talked about writing. I don't usualy tell people about my writing because I prefer not to be thought boastful or boring but Hannah and Sam are people I can relax with. Sam is twenty three and Hannah is probably in her sixties but it's hard to tell. He's of Bengali extraction, she's Eritraean They are open, uncensored. We spoke about how so many Quakers write poems. Pretty bad poems most of them.

"But I'm a real poet" I said.

They were surprised I write this blog every day. I'm surprised too. This morning, for instance, I was initially so tired that nothing would come but I hung around, went and sat on the bed for a while, looked out the window- and here I am, tip-tapping away.

Odi and gang showed up just after we'd taken Hannah and Sam back to their respective homes. The lunch had morphed into a supper. Odi made lots of things with meat in them I couldn't eat but also puff-puffs- which are African things a lot like doughnuts. You eat 'em with sugar only I ate mine with salt. I thought I'd have terrible indigestion but I didn't.

I like it that we don't particularly have to entertain our visitors. They do their thing and we do ours and every so often we share a space and do things together....

The boys slept downstairs yesterday and Fab- who doesn't bounce or drum his heels slept in the attic. This was a much better arrangement.

I slept well and today I may have a little more energy. Yesterday it was a grind to be sociable though Ailz says I did OK.

I had a dream that I was tending three hearth fires- two of which were placed opposite one another in a narrow room- and collecting fallen branches in the wood and heaping them in piles so I'd have fuel for the winter.

Odi and company showed up at around 11.30 last night- and it was pushing one o'clock before we all got to bed. Three boys are sleeping in the attic above our bedroom and we hear every creak and thump.

I think I slept about as much as I ever do- which these days never feels like enough.

"You have a big family," says Odi, "And it's getting bigger." "Yes," I thought, "So it is...." The odd thing is how few of its members are blood relatives. Ailz no longer has any blood family talking to her and I have only a few.....

Next weekend it looks like Alice and Mab and the kids and Wendy and Mary and various people from the Quakers will join the gang and all be milling around in celebration of Ailz's birthday.

After which Odi's lot will be heading up to London for the Notting Hill Carnival.

We were saying the other day that the pigeons had declined in numbers but this morning, after I'd fed them, I counted 25 on our roof. "They'll have been hiding from the sun," said Ailz.

We're told there may be another heatwave in September but right now the sky is cloudy and there's a likelihood of more rain- which, according to the Met Office, gets likelier and likelier as we move towards evening.

Evening: That's when Odi is going to be turning up- with her extended family - eight people in all. That's a lot of people to be fitting into this not very big house. Still, we've done it before. The plan is they'll stay for a week. That's a long time for me to be projecting my fatherly/grandfatherly persona.....

I've finished Fingersmith and now I'm re-reading The Nightwatch which, to my mind, is in contention with the earlier book as Waters' masterpiece. It's set in the 1940s- a decade I just missed but which largely overshadowed my childhood.

A childhood that was mostly spent in Croydon. I came to me the other day that's it's not so much odd as artistically satisfying that I'm spending my old age in a house very like the one I grew up in. My childhood home was detached not semi-detached and had a larger garden but was suburban as this one is, no bigger in itself and had been built in the same period between the wars.....

More rain last night and early this morning. The Met Office predicts "heavy showers" for the rest of the day.

********

I dreamed I was hanging out with a couple of lads I knew when I was 17. Marc de May was leaning over a record that was playing on a turntable and using a scalpel to elegantly cut shapes out of its vinyl.

"Why?" I asked.

"Beacause it's Virgin," he said.

And then he sliced what was left of the record in two.

Which stopped the music.

Virgin, of course, is owned by British entrepreneur Richard Branson- a man famous for his teeth. Here's a picture of him with one of his friends.....

*********

Quora thinks I'm interested in the historicity of Jesus and keeps sending me information- much of it written by ex-evangelical Michael Burch who thinks the Bible is mostly lies. Was there actually, once upon a time, a man called Jesus who preached and worked miracles- or are we looking at the fictional biography of a mythological figure? I don't know and nobody does- not for sure. Yesterday I read Mark's gospel, the earliest account of him, and it gives me the impression that it's a gathering together of fragmentary records and memories, some more plausible than others- but as a whole too bald and abrupt and even-low key to be a fiction. Mark's Jesus is an angry man, marching round what is now Israel, performing healings, telling his followers off for being thick and getting up the noses of the religious authorities who eventually kill him. Do I care? Only because I'm insufferably curious. I'm not a Christian but the gospels- primarily the other, later ones- Matthew, Luke, John and Thomas- are full of wonderful stuff, insightful, mythological, poetic, inspired and inspirational- and most of it is at some level true.....

It's raining. Not heavily but steadily. Yes!

I spent a good hour with my dentist yesterday. She filled two teeth and gave me good advice. Steer clear of acidic foods and drinks, she said and mentioned orange juice and wine. Bother!

Judy and I have been talking about Hayrides. When she hears the word she thinks of this

Whereas I think of this

Big cultural difference

That's Nanette Fabray, by the way, an artiste I'd never heard of performing Jerome Kern's Louisiana Hayride in the movie version of Show Boat- which I've never seen. My pic is Bosch's Hay Wagon triptych which shows the whole world going to Hell in what I suppose you could call a handcart (a very big one full of hay) while Christ is up in the clouds looking down and shrugging as if to say, "I did my best. What more can you expect?".

Sunday we had lunch with Edna and Miriam at Chilley Farm out on the marshland at the back of Pevensey. Sitting at a table close to ours was a guy who looked strikingly like J.D. Vance. In bushes a short stroll away were birds. I did the stroll and the bushes turned out to be grouped around a length of drainage ditch with water in it and the birds were sparrows- a very great number of them- twittering and flitting from perch to perch. It was like an aviary- only one that was open and free.....

Yesterday were were on Primrose Farm for the yearly hayride that Peter Appleton- who is a Quaker and a trustee of the Bernard Baron care home- lays on for BB residents and any Quakers who might be interested. No hay is involved. A trailer with seats in it and a roof is hitched to a tractor and is pulled down farm tracks, through fields of grass and corn to the place where cows are milked and give birth. It's a place from which you get a fine distant view of The Long Man figure on Windour Hill.....

Today's weather forecast says we've a better chance of rain than we've had for weeks.

I have three kids. I have an excellent relationship with my daughter and a lousy one with both my sons. I think it comes down to having things in common and not having things in common. Families are weird.

Down the years, however, as my blood family splintered I have aquired other kids and grandkids who are not blood but might as well be. But that's another story- or several other stories.

My youngest son, the one who was briefly a soldier, got divorced and remarried a few years back. He didn't invite us to his second wedding which was both hurtful and a relief. We hadn't openly taken sides but our sympathies were with his first wife and I expect he knew. Such things don't have to be openly stated for them to be apparent. We're all telepaths even if our skills are undeveloped.

The worst thing about this was losing touch with his daughter, our grandchild. But she's entering her teens and becoming curious and last night I opened a message from her in which she said simply that she hadn't seen us for ages. That was enough. I felt awkward for a moment and then didn't any longer and sent her a message in which I glancingly referred to her father's dislike of us and swept it aside. Now we're in the process of setting up a holiday for her in the New Year in which she'll come down to stay with us or near us in company with her mother and her mother's new chap- who we've never met.

I'm so pleased.....

Edna says they're not seeing birds at their feeders any more. Implication is that the heat is killing them.

But yesterday when I got up at around 6.30 I saw rather a lot of blue tits making their way across our garden from side to side. You wouldn't quite call them a flock because they were well spaced out- arriving it ones and twos- and some paused for a moment in the bushes before carrying on, but they seemed to have a common mind. Bluebirds rarely show up on our patch so this was heartening. I've certainly never seen so many all at once.

So perhaps the birds aren't dying but simply sheltering during the hotter hours and getting their business done in the relative cool of the dawn.

I'd like to think so.....

The nights are drawing in, the leaves are beginning to turn brown, summer is nearly over, isn't it?

In the past I've always been sad when summer ends; this year I can't wait. I'll be so happy when we get some proper rain.....

Yesterday afternoon my phone went off with a hooting noise as if warning me of incoming enemy planes and flashed up words in a red box that told me not to do anything that might cause wild fires. I don't think I was being singled out; I think the government was sending this message to every phone it could reach.

Do I like it that government can bounce itself onto my phone any time it likes? I don't think I do.....

The heatwave carries on. I haven't known anything like it. Yesterday and the day before passenger trains were derailed- one in Sussex, just a few miles from here and one in Essex. Derailments are rare. I don't believe anyone has an explanation but we're all thinking it must have something to do with the sun doing something to the rails.

I was about to put my socks on this morning and suddenly thought, "Why on earth am I wearing socks in this weather? I should be walking barefoot."

******

I'm rereading Sarah Waters' Fingersmith. It's a Victorian novel written in sentences shorter than the Victorians allowed themselves and including all sorts of words and imaginings they would have considered unpublishable. Dickens, the Brontes, Wilkie Collins and Sheridan le Fanu stand behind it, in the shadows, going, "If only we'd had such freedom." It's a wonderful book.

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poliphilo

September 2026

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Cleaning

All Towns Are Haunted

The Last Days Of Summer

A Hammer Beats

After The Party

Visitors

A Change In The Weather

Rebel, Rebel.....

Nothing Is Real And Nothing To Get Hung About

Quite A Fun Day Actually

Fuel For The Winter

Big And Getting Bigger

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Rain, Virgin, Jesus

Hayride

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