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"Pity they don't have volume control on those things," said Ailz, as Airbourne- the Eastbourne air show- entered its second day. "Is it the Red Arrows again?"

I went out into the garden and caught a distant glimpse of a silver machine stood on its nose as it dived towards the sea. "Just a single plane," I said.

Ailz consulted the online programme. "It's an RAF Tornado" she said.

"What?" I said. "Can't hear you for the noise".

The soundwaves coming off that thing were almost palpable. A real tornado could hardly have been louder....

The reason it wasn't the Arrows is that it costs £20,000 a day to hire them- and Eastbourne is a bit strapped for cash these days- with half its income from the Council Tax going on housing homeless people and refugeees.

I'm all for housing people, but shouldn't the money for it be coming from some sort of central fund?

And I think back to a conversation we had earlier this summer with a gardener who was putting bedding plants in the long flower beds down by the pier. "Could be the last year we'll be doing this," he said. "Shortage of funds."

The movie, Lawrence of Arabia is a pack of lies, but then the book on which it is based, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, is a pack of lies too- so why not?

I had always thought that John Buchan's Greenmantle- the story of a young Englishman posing as a Arab prophet and leading a revolt agaisnt the Ottoman Empire was a response to the Lawrence mythos, but I find that Greenmantle (published in 1916) actually comes first. Buchan designed the robes into which Lawrence obliging stepped.

What did his friends call him? It seems they may have simply called him "T.E." His given names were Thomas Edward, but I can find no record of anyone ever calling him Tom, though it seems his brothers may have called him Ned.

Bernard Shaw, who was a friend, said of him that he wasn't a liar but an actor. Someone else said he had the gift of "backing into the limelight".

David Fromkin in an incisive article for The New Criterion compares him to James Dean- an actual actor- and like Lawrence a masochist; both of them loved speed- and it killed them. He is the quintessential 20th century icon, says Fromkin- rootless, forever young, a creation of his own genius for publicity- supplemented and egged on by the hero-worship of others- which he alterately welcomed and repulsed. By a wonderful irony his guerrilla exploits and philosophy- developed in the service of Empire- became a study text for the anti-Imperialist heroes of a later generation- Che Guevara, Mao-Tse-Tung....

One quality he certainly possessed was charisma. He razzle-dazzled most of those who came within his orbit, though a society hostess (as recorded by Henry Williamson) found him boorish and a bore.

Lawrence was an assumed name, inherited from his parents who lived out of wedlock. He later tried out other ones, first Ross and then Shaw. Neither stuck. Henry Williamson called him Everest....

He didn't look much like Peter O'Toole. He had a big head and was only five foot four. If they were looking for a lookalike to play him in the movies they could have done worse than hire Stan Laurel.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom is a tremendous book, but its central figure never comes into focus. Is it history? Not really. Is it a novel? Not quite. What's it about? That's never entirely clear, but the descriptions of people and places are magnificent. I decided at early stage to stop trying to understand what was going on and simply enjoy the ride.....

I was a bit staggery yesterday morning, it had worn off by the afternoon, but I thought I'd take a walking stick with me this morning, not because I needed it but in order to get used to carrying one in case I need it in future.

We have a fine collection of sticks. I opted for a black malacca cane of my father's because it was the right height. It's a superior cane- as most things of my father's were- a little battered but with a silver band round the ferule. Proper hallmarked silver too. Before I take it out again I must give the band a polish....

The annual air show opened this afternoon and town was busy. The Red Arrows flew over. I sat in the Meeting House and listened to them roar. A girl with two minders (how old was she? 20 perhaps) was sat on the bus having a very noisy panic attack. "This is a bad place! I need to feel safe!" The older, senior minder talked her down- calm, reassuring and firm- the voice of authority. It's always good to witness someone being good at their job.

Walking back from the bus stop, rapping the pavement with the unnecessary stick, I felt even more than I usually do that I was an actor playing the role of an old man....

We bought this house with the proceeds from the sale of my mother's farm and our own savings. She owned 90% of it and we owned 10%. My mother died in '22 and the lawyers have been at work (slowly, slowly) and Ailz and I now own the whole of it in equal shares.

Is good.

Woke up this morning...

And it's always something sorrowful that comes next because it's the blues, innit.

In my case it was a simple case of feeling a bit ropey so I'm taking it easy today (yesterday we were out to lunch and I ate mac and cheese and that could have had something to do with it because I'm lactose intolerant ) and went back to bed for an hour and then watched a movie.

The movie was Zero de Conduite- the made-on-a-shoestring very early talkie that proves you don't have to have the resources that David Lean had to make a deathless classic. It's almost plotless, it throws a handful of gravel at the proprieties (just about all of them) and it annoyed the French authorities enough for them to ban it for twelve years. It has been inspiring other film makers ever since. It is irreverent, anarchistic and fundamentally good-natured. I didn't get it when I saw it in my early twenties but I'm so very much younger now.....

In waking life there's no-one I like less than Rock Star politico Tony Blair but in a dream last night I was very fond of him and hugging him and congratulating him on some fix he'd pulled off which involved daleks. The negotiations had been long and exhausting and he was so tired- poor thing....

I'm reading T.E. Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom at the rate of a chapter a night. As in the movie he spends a great deal of time schlepping through the desert, only the topography is very much more varied than the movie would have you believe and there's more vegetation. He describes it all very well. I admire the movie but it simplifies and sensationalises everything. That iconic scene with Omar Sharif trotting out of the heat haze to shoot Lawrence's guide? Didn't happen. In fact the character Omar plays didn't happen either- or is charitably to be regarded as an amalgam of many different people.

I'm also reading Nijinsky's Diary. Nijinsky and Lawrence were contemporaries and while I'm not quite mixing them up I'm finding they sort of intertwine. They were the rock stars of their era and ran with the same crowd- and both were friends of Ottoline Morrelll....

The Meeting House is on a side street with little foot passage and we think it safe to leave the doors open and things lying around- only it isn't. Our Friend Maggs had her purse stolen from the lobby yesterday, She and Helen were in the building but engaged alsewhere. We need to issue a warning.

I gave Ministry about how we've neglected the requirement to read snippets from Advices and Queries (or the little red book as I'm told I shouldn't be calling it) during Meeting for worship. When Keith was unofficially running things- in the lean days after covid- he was punctilious about doing so, but he has withdrawn from leadership- a natural process because his health is failing- and no-one has taken up the baton. This isn't something I feel strongly about (in fact I'm very happy to neglect the little red book) but felt prompted to say something because others do (by which I mean Ailz gave me a dig in the ribs as the Meeting was starting. I was aware as I was speaking that raising matters like this is what an elder is supposed to do. I would like to be an elder, though "like" is not quite the right word; it's rather that I think I'm a goodish fit for the job and though we have two elders their attendance is erratic- and I'm almost always around.

A while back we gave Elisa a couple of paintings. She wanted to pay us so we said she could buy us a dinner for each picture- and yesterday she took us out for the second time. I picked a place almost at random- The Grumpy Chef in Seaford- and it turned out to care about what it does. I had a view of the kitchen from where I was sitting and could see the young men working under direction- and very able and purposeful they all looked. Best meal I've had in ages...

I don't do superheroes.

Because, well, I just don't.

But I keep a weather eye on what Marvel and Disney are coming out with because- though I'm not interested in all the whizzing around and biffing people on the chin- they're dealing with the spooky things I've always been passionately interested in- but the Enlightenment dismissed- and are helping move them out of the category of fun but loopy into the category of just the way things are.

Want to keep abreast of the most advanced thinking about the Nature of Reality? Don't bother with academia or the mass media- go straight to the entertainers. They're the ones with the skinny.

And what they're telling us is sinking in. Twenty years ago people would have looked blank if you'd started talking about the Multiverse but now- no problem- they've seen Benedict Cumberbatch travelling through it.

So as like as not when the President finally steps up onto a podium and releases the truth about Roswell we'll all go, "Yeah, boring! Now tell us something we didn't already know...."

I'm weeding in the front garden and I find the discarded capsule from a Kinder Surprise. I hold it to my ear and it rattles. The toy is still inside. How exciting!

So what is it?

It's a donkey.

I don't think anything like this ever happens by accident. So what does it mean?

My mother loved donkeys. Used to support a donkey sanctuary. Perhaps it's a communication from her. Like, "I'm still around. Carry on. You're doing fine...."

Ailz sometimes calls me Donkey. First time she did it I thought it was because I was so well hung. "No" she said, "It's because you eat so much". Maybe this is affirming donkey as my spirit animal. I used to think it was otter but donkey may fit me better. Especially as I get older- and slower. No problem. Donkeys are patient, gentle. long suffering. Yes, I'll have some of that

Whatever...

I dig my donkey.

I've put it on display.....

A friend has put himself on a meat diet- nothing but meat- morning noon and night- and now he has soooo much more energy.

Yeah, right....

But, well, er....

I'm not going to say meat would choke me. I could force some down if I had to.

What it does is make me sad. I can't see meat and not think, "But that was once a delighful woolly lamb or a wise old pig or an ever so gentle and loving cow....."

I do eat fish. But not a lot of it. Fish are less endearing, less like us. I know I don't really have an excuse.

One of the channeled Entities I follow was recommending a plant-based diet- it could have been Kryon, it could have been Bashar- and someone in the audience protested, "But Jesus ate fish!" and the Entity replied, "Who said Jesus was perfect?"

It's raining. I'm happy that it's raining.

The last two issues of The Friend (the Quaker weekly) are largely taken up with reports on the Society of Friends' Yearly General Meeting. I think it's called that, but maybe I'm wrong. (Friends tend to be a bit touchy about their system of govrnance.) As it happens, the system of governance at the highest level was what was mainly being discussed- and I'm too new a Friend to understand or (I'm afraid) care very much about it. There is a thing called the Meeting for Sufferings (lovely 17th century English) which will be replaced by an ongoing General Meeting- which means those who like meetings will be meeting more often. I have no idea why this change is coming about or what the advantages or disadvantages may be- but there are people who feel strongly about it.

Another item on the agenda was the welcome- or lack of it- that our Meetings extend to trans people. Seems obvious to me. We call ourselves Friends and that's what we should be to anyone who comes through our doors.

An open letter came my way, written by a Friend called Frankie, deploring the angry and violent slogans being displayed and shouted by some of the anti-fascist demonstrators over the past few days. You don't promote peace and love by chanting "Throw the fascists in the sea". These are my feelings exactly. Anger begets anger, insult brings on insult. We want to break the chain not keep adding to it.

By the way, I see that the anti-immigrant people (I won't call them rioters unless they actually riot and they don't always get the chance or indeed want to) have been deterred from doing their thing in certain towns and cities by a massive turn-out of ordinary citizens prepared to stand in front of mosques and other possible targets and defend them by just being there.. Isn't this great? Among the places where this happened are Brighton (next door) and Oldham (our former home.)

Contrary to what people believe mad people don't make great art.

"Great wit to madness, sure, is close allied." That's something Pope tossed off. Probably without thinking it through.

The creation of great art demands mental discipline and concentration. You may be having astonishing visions but giving them artistic form is hard work.

Was Dali mad? Of course not. Eccentric, wilful, perverted, fearless, but he knew exactly what he was doing.

Madness shuts down genius. When an artist goes mad it kills their ability to make art.

I don't think Van Gogh was mad either.

Nijinsky wrote his diary as he was going mad. It isn't great art but it is the work of a great artist- and that makes it interesting. The mind wanders. The profound and the trivial sit side by side. The writing is choppy. Short sharp sentences. Non-sequiturs. He'll say a thing. And then in the next sentence say something that contradicts it. He says he's a beast. He says he's God. He doesn't censor himself

Nietsche thought he was God too. The book he wrote on the cusp is also "interesting" By a weird coincidence both Nietzsche and Nijinsky- at an interval of something like 40 years- employed the same guy to come in and make up the fires in their Swiss appartments.

I don't think mad people lose their hold on "reality". I think their mental defences get trodden down and the immensity of Reality sweeps in and overwhelms them.

No, don't ask me what's going on in the UK- I only live here.

I'm told we have rioting. And the ostensible reason for the rioting is dissatisfaction with the government's immigration policy- and the government has responded with threats of greater repression and harsher punishment- because that's how it goes.

Three little girls were murdered by a knifeman. Word got round that the killer was a Muslim extremist. That was the spark, the excuse. When people are angry any spark will do- and it's usually some minority that gets targeted. Actually the knifeman was nativeborn and a Christian.

I don't know how many people are taking to the streets, or how seriously violent they are. Fires have been set.

Some people want to talk the violence up, others want to play it down. I suppose I'm in the latter camp but if you accuse me of complacency you could be right.

An American news show I sometimes watch says "Civil War." I'm not feeling it.

There's a story (That's all I have, other people's stories) about the guy who turned up for an advertised demo and found he was the only one who could be bothered. There was him, there were two police officers, there was a van.

Far-right generalissimo Tommy Robinson- who tweeted the untruths about the knifeman- seems to have been caught on the hop. He was photographed roasting himself on a recliner in Greece. He helped wind the clock but wasn't around to hear it strike....

A Miscellany

. Inanna Descends

2. Siblings

3. Bonjour, Madame

4 Concierge

5 Deserter

A helicopter flew over at around a quarter to six this morning, making a frightful racket. The birds didn't like it either....

I cut the grass yesterday. I'd been holding off to give the wildflowers a chance to bloom and seed- and now they're mostly finished. The ragwort is still going strong, though, and I've very carefully mown around it. Ragwort used to give us a headache at the farm because we had horses in the fields and it's supposedly poisonous. The horses' owners- house dwelling Romany- who presumably know as much about horses as anyone on the planet- were never bothered. I think they thought their horses were smart enough not to eat it. Anyway, I don't have to worry about it here. There are no horses within a mile- and ragwort is beautiful and smells glorious....

For some reason, and don't ask me how it came about, I'm taking an interest in Vaslav Nijinsky. There is no footage- not even the tiniest scrap- of his dancing, because Diaghilev thought the primitive cinematography of the day wasn't up to doing it justice. And maybe that's OK. It means there's nothing in existence to make us question how supernaturally good he was. Sarah Bernhardt came away from a performance going, "I'm scared, I'm scared. I've just seen the greatest actor in the world".

People affirmed that when he leaped through the window in The Spectre of the Rose the laws of physics were temporarily suspended. Asked how he did it, Nijinsky said, "I jump and when I get to the top of the arc I just pause a little before coming down."

He "went mad". I don't know what that means- because it seems to me that as he wrestled with the restraints that were holding his mind together he was never more brilliant, more frightening, more enlightened. I've been reading snippets from the Diary he kept at that time- and they're astonishing. "My madness, he wrote, "Is my love towards mankind."

His last public performance- towards the end of the Great War- was in front of an audience of silk hats and their ladies at a posh hotel in Switzerland. He sat in silence, facing the audience for half an hour (can it really have been that long?) then rose and said "I'm going to dance you the War- which you did nothing to stop..."

One of our friends has been diagnosed with dementia. Well, I knew he had it but maybe he didn't- and it has hit him hard. Plans are being made to move him out of his single-person flat and into a care home.

To warehouse him.

For everyone's convenience.

Dementia is something I am determined not to get. Determined, determined, determined.

I can see our gull through the window. It's perched on a fence post, standing on one leg like a yogi- with its head turned backwards and its bill resting along its back. I'm thinking that its weight, fore and aft, must be in perfect equilibrium. Its eyes are open, so even though it's resting it's still watching the world....

Oh- and now it's gone. It must have spotted an opening....

The high ups at the BBC will be wondering what to do with the huge tranche of their current affairs archive that is imprinted with Huw Edwards' serious voice and serious face.

Edwards has been a news reporter and presenter since 1986 and topped off his career as the man providing the commentary on the establishment's most elaborate floor shows- including elections, Olympics, royal weddings and royal funerals. It will be an embarrassment to all concerned that every time the announcement of the Queen's death gets replayed people will be going, "Oh look, a paedophile!"

Much of what he did can simply be hidden away- as has happened with the Jimmy Savile, Stewart Hall and Rolf Harris materials- but Edwards wasn't a light entertainer but a chiseller of historical landmarks. Only in Orwell-land- and we're not there yet- could it be pretended that he never existed.

They keep promising us thunderstorms- but there seems to be something about the atmospherics of this area where land meets sea that drives the big clouds away to north and south and keeps us tingling in anticipation of a ruckus that never happens. Last night as the sky got more and more leaden I saw a single scribble of lightning and- a long time after- heard a faint drum roll- and that was it.

The day before yesterday- or maybe the day before that- was the hottest of the year. This morning we have an overcast and the air is cooler.

I would welcome a proper storm and some proper rain....

I watched Lawrence of Arabia. This took up much of the middle of the day. The evening before I'd started reading The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence's "self-regardant" account of the desert revolt he got caught up in. "Self-regardant" is his own word so let's not accuse him of naïveté. I've always found him interesting, but why I should want to deepen that interest at this particular moment in time is beyond me. I had a favourite Balzac lined up but, having just finished La Chartreuse de Parme, I felt I'd spent long enough in the atmosphere of early 19th century France and it would be nice to go some place else....

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poliphilo

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As Loud As A Real Tornado

A Propos T.E. Lawrence

I Walk With A Stick

Is Good

Zero De Conduite

Rock Stars

More Like A Diary Entry Than Most Of My Posts

Marvellous

Kinder Surprise

Meat And Fish

Lets Be Friendly

Art And Madness

Notes On A Developing Situation

Picture Diary 49

Bloody Helicopter, Ragwort, Nijinsky

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