poliphilo

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"Now I remember why we used to like coming to Tonbridge," said Ailz as we traipsed from charity shop to charity shop. Tonbridge High Street has so many of them. She bought a dress for herself and one for Wendy- who had treated us to lunch- and I bought a straw hat (made in China, of course.)

"Traipse" is a word I like to use. It has weariness built into it. Traipsing is so much more tiring than a good brisk walk over the same distance would be.

Yesterday was hot and still. I felt I needed that hat to keep the sun off. Oh, how my feet hurt and my legs ached!

They promised us a thunderstorm. It would blanket the south-east, they said. Lots of banging and flashing. In the event we got some flashing but hardly any noise. This morning's weather is hot, damp and oppressive.

Yesterday's weather, building up to the storm, was sunny and still. I pursued my resolution to ground myself by going round without shoes and socks. It's nice to feel the grass underfoot. Towards evening as it grew cooler I got the lawn mower out. For that I put some shoes on.

You gotta be careful round lawn mowers. Last year, first time I cut the grass, I wasn't paying attention and tripped over ithe mower and almost certainly broke a rib or two. I didn't tell anyone because I hate to make a fuss, but there was pain for several weeks- and I had to steel myself every time I turned over in bed.

Back to the grounding. There was a period of my life when I was Nature Boy and all but dispensed with shoes. Memory tells me I once walked the mile or so into town barefooted in the snow but surely Memory is lying......

"Does Israel have the right to exist?" asked the interviewer.

And the interviewee- who was Palestinian- replied "Israel exists".....

Meaning the present state of Israel is a political fact that it would be foolish to deny but the rights of the matter are something else entirely.....

You had have the same exchange about any piece of real estate on earth. The geo-political map is always in flux. Nations blink into existence, blink out again. Empires come and go, their boundaries in a state of perpetual change. Look at a political map from a hundred years ago and it'll be hopelessly out of date.

Forget Israel- that's so contentious- and let's look at the status of a territory that's a little less so- though who knows?- California. it has existed inside it's present boundaries since the 1500s. Before that it was a patchwork of tribal territories. According to Dick Allgire- who was giving us his take on the present unrest in L.A.- it is stiil- on paper- which isn't worth a great deal- the property of the King of Spain. When Spain lost its grip on its American colonies, California passed to Mexico, but only briefly- and then to the United States. Each one of these transitions was marked by violence. Does the United States have a "right" to hold onto it? Only for as long as it can. The protesters in L.A. who are waving Mexican flags have a point....

Every name on the world map is a notion, an idea, a dream.

In 1579 the English pirate Francis Drake landed somewhere north of the present City of San Francisco. He got on well with the local tribespeople and claimed the area for the English crown, naming it New Albion. This colony of his persisted for about as long as he remained in the vicinity- and if King Charles wants to reaffirm his right to the land he would first have to ascertain exactly where it is because people no longer remember....

Brian Wilson died.

And my brain is looping the single phrase "God only knows...."

The garden was beginning to look shaggy, so I got out the long-handled shears and the short-handled shears and trimmed it a bit. It was late afternoon and the sun was on the slide and the light it was giving was mellow. I sat on the grass, snipping away and a sense of well-being stole over me that lasted for the rest of the evening.

I believe this is called "grounding". I should do it more often.....

Most weeks we get a food delivery from one of the big supermarkets. This week Ailz went with Waitrose- which is a novelty- and for the first time since Covid we had a delivery man who didn't just hand over at the doorstep but carried his boxes through to the kitchen. I told him how impressed I was and he seemed surprised- as though he'd never known any different.

I thought, "Finally things have returned to normal" but, of course they haven't. Since Covid the world has changed- but this was an odd little flash of how things used to be.

Talking about how the world has changed- but in a different register- I notice that journalists are using the term "Civil War" to describe what is going on in L.A.- where anti-ICE activists are now facing off against the Marines.....

I'm not going to go mad with bands of the 80s that never existed but should have, but couldn't resist visualising this one.

The very wonderful....

Spacey Jim and the Pleiadians

We spent most of yesterday playing at being Quakers. We were at our own Meeting in the morning and over in Uckfield (careful how you say it) for the Area Meeting in the afternoon. Ailz breezed into the hall and told the clerk, "You can start now, Eastbourne's here!"

The clerk was having difficulty with her acronyms. It became a sort of running gag. The one she mostly kept stumbling over was BMHWP- which stands for Bexhill Meeting House Working Party.

The Bexhill Meeting is down to three or four, can't attract new people and occupies a fair-sized, mid 20th century building which isn't generating any income. Is this a luxury we can afford or not? That's what the BMHWP is tasked to "discern".

The second part of the afternoon was spent on an exercise called "Why do we keep on coming to the Quaker Meeting?" with people standing up, one by one, as moved by the Spirit, to give their reasons. I was tempted to say, adapting Churchill on Democracy, "Because it's the very worst of faith groups apart from all the rest" but in the event said something less facetious instead.....

And here's the fence as it appears this morning.

I was afraid the guy would trash the shrubs and other plants that are up against the fence line but they seem untouched- so, well done, him! Now we just need them all to grow six feet tall and hide the naked wood.

I lay in bed this morning, half awake, thinking up cool names for 80s rock groups- in consequence of which I give you, for the first time ever on any stage.... Guinevere and the Broken Knights!

Picture Diary 94

1. Azrael

2. Guardians

3. The Holy Hill

4. Knight of the doleful contenance

5. The Red Desert

6. The Elephant House

The couple next door wanted the shared fence renewing and we agreed because we're good neighbours. It's happening as I write.

I like the way it looks without the fence- and the two gardens united. I said so to Alison next door and she agreed.

At six foot the new fence will be higher than the old one; that's higher than my head.

Personally I'd rather have spent the money on something else- like dinners down the pub....

Big, big rooms,

Raw concrete walls, no natural light, no natural air.

I suppose the intention is that nothing should detract from the art on the walls, but, oh Gawd, such a setting does, it does.....

This is the Towner, Eastbourne's very own, prize winning art gallery. I want to love it, truly I do, and the brightly painted outside is jolly and the corridors, with their big windows looking out over the tennis courts are jolly too, but the actual mid-level galleries are like some bunker constructed to house politicians in the event of war. They depress the spirit. The art would have to be very bright and life-affirming to assert itself in such a space. Leonardo might cope, Turner might cope, Picasso might cope.

But Eastbourne can't afford to show the big names....

And the exhibition we went to see- of modernist English art- much of it small scale and soberly coloured- doesn't stand a chance. Pictures that would look really nice on somebody's living room wall are defeated by the setting. They look unambitious, tentative, sad....

I'd had to do my elder thing on one of my Friends because his long, rambling, off-the-point interventions in Meeting for Worship were annoying people- including myself- and people were getting "triggered" by his references to witch-burning, the Holocaust and other upsetting subjects This led to exchanges that had me fearful we'd fallen out permanently. But he turned up at Meeting for Worship yesterday and was as friendly as ever. Good. He's someone of whom I'm genuinely fond.

One of the very many reasons I gave up being a priest is because I was enjoying the politics too much and realised it was bad for me. Now, as a Quaker elder I've got a little footling power again and am making decisions that ruffle feathers- and I hate it. Well, that's progress, I think.

It's like Ailz said, the people who hate wielding power are the people who should be doing it, not the people who find it fun.

I dreamed I'd agreed to preach a sermon about St Andrew. The opening was clear in my mind. It went something like this. "How surprised the Galilean fisherman would have been if you'd told him he was destined to become the patron saint of a country far to the north of which he'd probably never heard...."

Why St Andrew- a figure for whom I have no particular feeling? Why Scotland?

Tuesday is when our cleaner comes.

Have I mentioned her before? I don't think I have. I don't like saying we have one because it's an admission that we're affluent and old.

She's called Carolina and she's Brazilian. Her English is minimal and our Portuguese is non-existent, but we make ourselves understood. She's lovely.

We tend to go out and let her breeze about. Yesterday we went to Tesco to buy a birthday card for Ivy. She'll be 13. I got one featuring a cartoon version of the Gallagher brothers, Liam striking a pose, Noel holding the string of a balloon. I find it a little odd that a modern teenager should love Oasis, but she does. Her father will be taking her to see them when they play Manchester.

I'm reading a contemporary novel about Anglo-Chinese people, part of which is set at the time of the handover of Hong Kong. It has its virtues but overall it's not very good. The heroine is a Mary Sue, the men are portrayed witth little understanding of what makes them tick, the mood is glum, the writing is unsure of itself and sometimes overcooked. But, then, I tell myself, most novels are not very good. Just look how few of them achieve classic status.....

Picture Diary 93

1. Guides

2. Yuki Onna

3. Please wait a minute....

4. Into Storage

5, Shhhhh

6. The Rainbow Bridge

The corridor we needed to go down was blocked with cones. "Wait there," said the nurse pointing to a row of chairs- and a little later, "Wait over there" pointing us back into the atrium. "There's a lot of people coming through...."

A lot of people? An entourage? Was the king visiting the hospital? Had he been taken ill?

When they came, they came in procession, several abreast, at a smart marching pace- medical staff, some of them carrying equipment, surrounding a very sick person on a gurney. It had the quality of ritual, of something rehearsed, everyone knowing their place and their role. They came down the corridor, brushing it's sides, hieratic, formal, through the atrium and off into the heart of the hospital.

It wasn't the king. But it was an incident. Something uncalled for. And it had upset the staff. "I wish I hadn't come in today," said the woman who gave me the eye test.

Why an eye test? Last time I went for glasses an anomaly showed up that could be an early sign of macular degeneration. I've kept out of hospitals for most of my life and If I have to start coming in now it is what it is and everything is experience.

In a dream last night I saw a beetle scuttling across the floor. It was walking on its hind legs and holding a circular object. Obviously a scarab- a symbol of the sun-god Ra, specifically of the early morning sun- and so of new light, new life, resurrection. In a later dream I had a big Victorian penny show up in the loose change I was carrying. Another big round thing, more royalty, another sun symbol....

Edna, who has been a Quaker elder for a while now, says, "O yes, I've been shouted at, cursed at".....

I haven't been cursed at yet but in my short time in office I've upset at least two people in what I believe to be the execution of my duties- which are to protect the Meeting and keep it worshipful and safe.

Keep it "holy".

I didn't realise when I took the job on that I was going to be functioning as a cop.

And a "bad cop" at that.

Others get to play "good cop", offering cups of tea, handing over the box of tissues....

While I'm the one who goes, "Watch it, sonny. You can't be doing that in here....."

I'm not a dog lover, so how come I was throwing a dog toy for the little Shitzu to fetch and thoroughly enjoying myself- even at one point losing my balance, falling over backwards and waving my legs in the air?

It just goes to show that we say things about ourselves and even believe them- that aren't essentially true.

We adopt a role, we act it out, but every so often, for whatever reason, we break character....

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poliphilo

July 2025

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Traipsing

Nature Boy

Rights

God Only Knows....

Grounding

The Old Normal And The New

Spacey Jim

Quakering

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Picture Diary 94

New Fence

Oh Gawd!

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Power Games

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This And That

Picture Diary 93

An Incident

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