About Nothing In Particular

We took my mother-in-law shopping with us yesterday. My father-in-law is fussy about what he eats (and why not?) and this necessitates going to more than one store- which is tiring and expensive. I don't quite know why going to two stores means you spend more (if you were totally disciplined it wouldn't) but it does. 

In the afternoon I took to my bed for an hour to fend off a migraine. I used to get migraines about once a week. These days it only happens if I'm really, really stressed. Going round two stores with my mother-in-law is stressful.

She probably finds it stressful too.

My father-in-law is very frail. He only leaves the house to keep medical appointments. When we returned home with my mother-in-law and the shopping he gave me a bottle of whisky to say thank you. It has been sitting unopened in his cupboard for a year (it will have been given to him as a pickmeup by his lodge brothers) and it will now sit unopened in mine.

I'm almost teetotal these days. Not from principle, simply from lack of interest. I wonder whether I ever had any great enthusiasm for alcoholic drinks. Yes, there are circumstances in which a bottle or beer or a glass of wine is appropriate and nice, but as a regular thing? No. Alcohol makes me tired and headachey. I'd rather drink tea. Tea is comforting.

The Island Of Dr Moreau: H.G. Wells

One in a long line of stories about white men behaving badly on tropical islands. The Tempest and Gulliver's Travels are ancestors, The Lord of the Flies is a descendant, The Ebb Tide and Victory are close cousins. I suspect Wells of an intended side-swipe at the Jungle Books; for Kipling "The Law" is intrinsic, for Wells  imposed and unnatural; Kiplings talking beasts are noble, Wells's anything but. Wells doesn't like animals (no pets in his Utopia) and Darwinism rather gives him the creeps. Men are beastly- but can they be anything more? In different moods he gives different answers. Here it's quite definitely,"No".