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I've been looking at some of the stuff about Diddy.

Seems very like the stuff about Epstein.

Only with Diddy we're getting more detail. I guess because Epstein was happy to be an eminence grise whereas Diddy is a celeb- and out there being snapped with all the other celebs. He was in plain sight. And his "parties" were in plain sight- not hidden away on a private island. Also the people round Diddy- in his immediate circle- are entertainment people- not best known for keeping shtum.

Seems like both men were affiliated with intelligence organisations, collecting materials that could be used to put pressure on the rich and powerful. Was the same thing true of our very own Jimmy Savile? Wouldn't surprise me.

Stones are being turned over. One here. Another one there. What's underneath ain't nice....

I don't like to take my phone into Meeting for worship because it might wake up and break the silence- so I've taken to wedging it among the books on a shelf in the library. Cunning, eh? No opportunist sneak thief will think of looking there...

(Yes, I know I could simply turn it off, but I don't know how- and if I start pushing buttons it does things I don't want it to do like ringing random numbers.....)

Thing is, I forgot it all about it.

And I've been without it ever since.

As you can see, I've been in no hurry to retrieve it.....

Prime Ministers are coming and going these days like Caesars of the later empire. And while they're in office they seem to spend most of their time fending off attacks. It's remarkable that anyone would want the job but- as always when a leader is going down-there are numbers of people crowding round Keir Starmer, kicking him in the shins while professing undying loyalty and hoping to catch the crown when he falls.

YouTube keeps sending me little clips from Game of Thrones. I never watched the show (too long, too long!) but I'm rather wishing I had. All that plotting, killing, betraying- it reflects our times. I particularly enjoyed a little speech of Tyrion's in which he confesses how surprised he was to find he enjoys "the Game."

People are getting hurt- and more than simply hurt- but there is comedy too. If Starmer is remembered at all- and there's very little about him worth remembering- it will probably be for the Conference speech in which he asked for the return of the Israeli "sausages...."

Fluffy blue clouds on a pink sky: this morning's sunrise was sufficiently unusual for me to get out of my chair to go to the window to gaze and admire.

The clouds are heavier now. I'll definitely be wearing one of my padded shirts.

Every morning on Night Cafe there's a competion to be marked. If you join in you earn two credits- and I get through those at a great rate so I'm happy for any top-up. The theme of this morning's competition was "gourds"- which meant I was scrolling through image after image of pumpkins- and thinking, "Come off it, guys, pumpkins belong at the end of next month, not this....."

Item by item I'm assuming my winter wear.

The day before yesterday it was a woolly scarf

Yesterday it was fingerless gloves

Today it was a smoking cap.

Next will be a padded shirt. Tomorrow? Maybe....

Cinema has been in existence now for more than the length of a very long human lifetime- and everything that can be done in it has been done- or pretty much so. Knowing a bit about film history spoils one for most of what is being produced these days.

I watched the first episode of Netflix's Ripley. I like Patricia Highsmith, I like Andrew Scott, I like luminous black and white cinematography; I even like a story that unrolls very, very slowly (I'm reading Balzac, ain't I?)....

But....

By the end I was thinking, "I've seen all this before, and it was 50 years ago, only then it said Antonioni on the label."

Picture Diary 57

1. I'd like this one please

2. The writer of ghost stories receives inspiration

3. You make your own reality

4. The Shrine

5. Holiday Weather

Ailz and I set off for the Meeting House. At a certain point our ways diverge. She chugs of down the road in her motorized scooter and I take the short cut across the rec, After a few steps I find I've forgotten my keys to the Meeting House so I change direction and charge after her- and the dog-walkers are treated to the spectacle of a silly old greybeard running across the greensward waving his stick.

Night Cafe, where I create AI images- has a list of prohibited words- but it isn't posted anywhere- and you only find out you've strayed when you use one in a prompt. Then you get a message, more in sorrow than in anger and calculated to make you feel small, letting you know you've been bad. One of the prohibited words I found out this morning is "Stalin". So what if I want to fake up a photo of the Yalta Conference?

We're having a lot of rain. I like to hear it beating against the windows. And when it does I think of a line from an early Ted Hughes poem- written I guess when he and Sylvia Plath were living In Mytholmroyd on the edge of moors- which goes "This house has been far out at sea all night." I quote from memory because I won't have a Hughes in the house- though I concede he was a true poet....

Mytholmroyd. Aren't north country names wonderful! I've been there. And it's as wuthering as it sounds. Just up the road is the larger village of Heptonstall where the old church- now a blackened shell- was described by John Wesley as the ugliest church he'd ever preached in. Sylvia Plath is buried in Heptonstall. The headstone memorialises her as Sylvia Plath Hughes- and her fans and admirers, back then, which must be 40 years ago at least, kept scratching off the Hughes and Ted and his sister kept putting it back. I don't know the current state of play....

You have to slow down as you age. The body insists. The mind does too. And the temptations are to give up entirely- and that's not pretty to behold- or attempt to carry on as before- until you break. There's a middle way, but it ain't straight- and it's like you're making their way across a marsh, feeling for the solid ground and the deep pools with a Gandalf stick. Life will keep chucking new things at you- and you'll have to discriminate between those you can safely disregard and those you need to grapple with. For no two people will the choice be quite the same....

I remember standing on a particular patch of concrete, looking over a particular hedge at a particular view and feeling a twinge of sadness that summer was ending. It stands for all the other such twinges I've felt down the years- and forgotten about. This year I've felt no such twinges and it's getting a bit late for them to manifest. I expect them in August and it's now nearly October....

We all have friends we don't like. "Friends", that is, who should have inverted commas placed round them. They are rarely horrible people but there's something about them that pushes us away. Common complications are (a) that the repulsion isn't mutual and they don't realise the effect they're having and (b) that they are members of a larger social network and can't be cut off without causing drama.

In dealing with them kindness probably trumps authenticity, though I'm not sure of this.

I'm thinking of some actual people I have in my life. I don't hate them. I just don't feel the chemistry. Though I seem to be able to fake it.

They are good people. We have shared values. They should be the friends of my bosom. I've asked myself what the problem is and the only answer I can come up with is that they lack a sense of humour.

I have been noticing how my dreams are structured.

Though "structure" isn't quite the right word because space and time- which structure our waking life- no longer exist- or not exactly as we know them.

There is no narrative. Instead there are things that are going-on within a certain spatial and temporal containment field. I know that's not very clear but it's the best I can do.These "goings-on" are- as it were- layered; they nest within one another; they interpenetrate. And none of these statements- derived from a waking apprehension of space-time- is quite accurate either.

This morning I had really rather good recall of a the dream I'd just woken from- and this will be an attempt to break it down.

The context or spatial-temoral contaiment field involved a visit to a country house that was variously my mother's farm, a retreat house run by Matt and Julia, the couple who used to do our gardening, and an aristocratic stately home.

And the goings-on included.

1 Sitting down to some sort of celebratory meal at which my mother and first wife were present- all personnel being fluid and having a tendency to morph into one another

2 Having a conversation with our hostess about how they might have to close the retreat house and what she really wanted to do was run a cafe

3 The planting of a hedge along the drive way- consisting of beech interspersed with flowering shrubs and rose bushes

4 A meeting with a little old man, ressembling the Britsh comedy actor Moore Marriott, who was renting an appartment in the country house. I'd expected him to be a bore but found he was actually a highly skilled sculptor who showed me an enormous sarsen stone- cemented into the wall at the entrance of the flat- in which he had carved ever so subtly the suggestion- no more than the suggestion- of the outline of a bull.

5 A firework display mounted by the little old man in which little flying contraptions made ot withies bombarded the windows of the house with hawthorn buds.

6 The reading of a newspaper from 1921 containing articles deploring the degeneracy of modern times. Alfred Lord Tennyson had just died and there was a full page cartoon showing John Gielgud delivering a eulogy

7. A discussion of the confirmation of Edward VII- how it had taken place at this country house- and been the inaugural celebration at the new cathedral. Many great people had attended- and the celebrities asembled in Lord Creevey's corner had been particularly distinguished.

8. A survey of Lord Creevey's will- with the disposition of the properties he'd owned, including one called Southampton Abbey....

After I woke, I continued half in and half out of the dream. In one reality I heard the clock on the pier strike the quarter hour. In the other I looked out the window of the country house and saw there was a single track railway running across the lawn below.....

Two nights of broken, feverish sleep and getting up at some wolfish hour to try to settle the coughing with a nice, consoling cup of tea. Coming down with a cold is a seasonal marker for me. How do I know it's autumn? I know because I'm feeling like I live on Desolation Row and the oppression will never lift.

But it always does. Or has done so far. And last night I slept like a bay-bee.

I had a dream, clearly inspired by watching Yesterday, in which this American dude, who was a sort of subsiduary member of the Beatles, had written a song with his Dad and was presenting it to his bandmates for their approval. The song was an acceptable piece of 1950s pop- about girls and cars- called "Don't Stop Marie"- and there wasn't a hope in Hell that the Beatles would record it.

The1950s, by the way- the decade of my childhood- is my least favourite decade in popular culture. My life ever since has been a succession of attempts to get as far away from the 50s ethos possible.

I was listening to a couple of cheery little toonz from the 1930s yesterday- by the Savoy Orpheans. Now that's what I call music!

Also, while waiting for my ticket to get off Desolation Row, I've been watching Lyam Christopher- the Golden Dawn magician- talking about raising demons. He has a lovely, gentle, friendly voice- and I find him soothing. I used to be a Witch and so a lot of what he talks about is familiar. I've done the Lesser Banishing Rite of the Pentagram- though I called it something else- and my practice- like his- had a lot of Jung in it. Ceremonial magic is fun- and I respect it- but it's not, ultimately, for me because once I've done something I want to move on and do something else- and I grow bored with all the faffing about. Anyway, I find him not only soothing but wise and- and here's something he said that I find illuminating and insightful. He was using Poe's poem, The Raven" as an example of a (failed) invocation and answered the criticism that "yeah, but that's just literature" with this: that "Literature (and the arts) is where we banished Magic in order to convince ourselves it's not real."

I was feeling under the weather- and remembered I had Netflix.

Was there anything lightweight enough to fit my mood? Yes there was. Richard Curtis' movie about the struggling musician who is the only person who remembers the Beatles would do very nicely.

It's fun, its superficial, it's untrue, it's a typical Curtis rom-com in which the dork gets the girl- and it has lots of Beatles tunes winningly performed. What did it cost to use them? 10 million something or others- probably dollars but it could have been pounds.

I was feverish. There was thunder, there was rain. I got up in the middle of the night and had a cup of tea.

This morning, the misty rain and the rising sun gave us a ghostly rainbow

Aces High showed up on a YouTube site specialising in forgotten movies- and was the only title I recognised. I'd always wanted to see it.

Malcolm McDowell, Christopher Plummer, Simon Ward, Peter Firth: Quite a cast. With surprisng cameos from John Gielgud, Ray Milland, Trevor Howard, Richard Johnson.

And an impressive attempt at authenticity. The French are played by real French people, the Germans by real Germans. And where- in 1976- did they find so many planes? SE5s for the Brits, Albatrosses for the Germans. Pity the flying sequences had to be done over what was rather obviously the peaceful English countryside, but how do you fake up several miles of the Western Front on a limited budget before the days of CGI?

The script was based, but no slavishly, on R.C. Sherrif's Journey's End, with grace notes from Cecil Lewis's Memoir Sagittarius Risiing. I've read them both.

Those planes! Box kites fitted out with engines. A rudder flips from side to side; what's it made of? Plywood?

The horror. Not only the fear and the dying, but the class prejudice, the wrongness of life in uniform, the girls resorting to prostitution, the having to be so bloody cheerful when you're emptied out of all soft emotions.....

There's nothing we haven't seen before but it's an honourable trip down that Long Trail A-winding. I don't know why it's been forgotten.

We have a cleaner come in once in a while. How she gets things looking so tidy is beyond me....

A young woman and an older woman attend a very serious conference about social justice. The young woman is having fun, getting up to speed with people she hasn't met in a while. The older woman takes her aside and tells her to "weighty up". What abominable English and what abominable advice! What makes it even sadder is that the young woman took it- and has regulated her conduct in accordance with it ever since.

Did you know that Keir Starmer won this years election with far fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn got when he lost to Boris Johnson in 2019? I think this tells us just how fast our faith in mainstream politics is eroding.....

I hear cats being horrible to one another so I go out into the night and find Marlowe engaged in a stand-off with a black cat of unknown origin. I try to distract them but they're so fixated on one another that I might as well not exist. The smart thing would have been to apply water but instead I pick Marlowe up and hurry off inside- and he's too surprised to struggle. I put him down on the kitchen floor and bar the exit- and he attacks my slippered foot, tooth and claw, with all the mindless fury the black cat has been spared....

Picture Diary 56

1. You are expected

2. You see, it's like this.....

3. Scribble, scribble, scribble

4. Like a puff of smoke

5. A choice of worlds

The Sainsbury's delivery guy helped me transfer our shopping from his baskets to our carrier bags- which doesn't usually happen- and it wasn't just because he's an extra nice person but because the company has brought in a new regime whereby his every action is timed. "I have seven minutes to complete your delivery," he says. Clearly he found it stressful. "I'm hoping he says, "that the bosses will come to their senses and go back to how things were."

I hope so too.

Does capitalism really have to be so mean?

I dreamed I had a room in College- and couldn't find it. In fact it no longer seemed to exist on the corridor where I knew it ought to have been. I was having a bath in someone else's room (the dream skipped the bit where I broke in) and he returned and I had to get out, dripping wet and make myself scarce....

Our getting-up time now coincides with the grey of the dawn. Soon enough we'll be rising in the dark. This morning I got to see the the great yellow harvest moon hanging among clouds on the western horizon.....

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poliphilo

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Diddy

Phoneless

The Game

Autumn Spice

Wrapping Up

Deja Vue

Picture Diary 57

Bits And Pieces

Crossing The Marsh

Where's My Twinge?

"Friends"

Anatomy Of A Dream

Getting Better All The Time

Not At My Best

Aces High

Three Unrelated Observations

Cat Fight

Picture Diary 56

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