Constancy

Once, very many years ago when I was young, in the distant past, a long time ago, in the mists of time, I had an unnerving experience in my alcoholic days.

One morning I woke with the usual debilitating hangover and turned on my bedside radio as I did every morning of my life. All I heard was a constant hissing instead of the cheery voice of the morning announcers. No one had changed the channel. But it wasn’t there. Kapoof! Gone! No matter how I tried to tune it closely, there was just hissing.

It wasn’t long before I had worked myself up into an absolute panic. Something dreadful had happened in the outside world of which I was unaware. Like a Coup de tat or something worse, a possible Alien invasion maybe.

I eventually phoned my best friend and, blabbering, told her of my worst fears.

In those days there was no Internet, best friends were both psychiatrists and sources of information.

She roared with laughter. “Oh, it’s been in the papers for weeks that today, the BBC is not broadcasting on that wavelength any more. You have to retune your radio.”

So then I fiddled and faddled around and eventually I found BBC in a completely different place on the tiny indicator of my antiquated bakelite set.

It was a Sunday I remember. Sunday is the day after Saturday which is often a big hangover day for alcoholics who party on Saturdays.

The best kinds of things are reliable. You can bank on them being the same every day. They make a framework in which you live.

No wonder nowadays it seems that everyone has mental health problems. The lack of constancy is unnerving. No thing seems reliable. The old broadcasting channels have been switched off. There are experts in everything each with differing viewpoints, all of them purportedly the ‘truth’. The mind is bombarded with information, news, views and flashing images. There is no time to sit on the bed and wonder if there has been an alien invasion or phone a friend to find out.

There is no constancy in institutions, politics, manners, sex or gender, health, religion, right or wrong, marriage, money, travel, relationships, attitudes, history, fashion, work, loyalty, patriotism, geography, weather or the Earth itself.

The whole world has changed channel.

Grandchildren

Mr Furlong and I brought up five children.

I don’t know how we did it.

They all turned out OK.

Our grandchildren range from thirty something to three something.

I know the older ones are alive because we occasionally chat on WhatsApp.

I know the young grandchildren are alive because they physically come to visit us.

Everytime they do, I realise how amazing Mr Furlong and I are. We brought up five children altogether all at once!

We cannot fathom how we managed.

But if there is something perculiar about us, that’s what did it.

Fate, Kismet, Karma

Mr Furlong received a very nice navy blue jacket for his birthday from one of our children.

Unfortunately there was something faulty about the zip and he returned it to the shop where they replaced it with a new one.

Mr Furlong wears that jacket regularly. He likes it very much.

Yesterday as we were otherwise busy, I was out and Mr Furlong was working in his man shed, Bass, the dog, dragged the jacket off the chair where Mr Furlong had slung it in his bedroom, pulled it up onto Mr Furlong’s bed and proceeded to gnaw off several sections of the zip.

Mr Furlong is not happy.

But I think there is some fate, karma or kismet that Mr Furlong has to endure a situation where a jacket that he really likes, is rendered zip less in some way.

Besides chewing the eye off the green plastic garden frog, Bass the dog has not chewed up anything else.

The dog walker is going to be surprised to find sections of Mr Furlong’s jacket in this morning’s poo.

And I am going to have to hide my cosy dressing gown which has always had an unreliable zip, lest Mr Furlong’s karma spreads to me!

Blooming Orchids!

In a past life as a working couple, we had a Rose Farm. We became pretty expert on how to kill roses quickly.

I swore roses could hear. If I said to Mr Furlong that I was thinking of chucking a limp and dying rose bush onto the compost heap, it would suddenly perk up, resuscitated self and make flowers.

For some years, we have had a wonderful collection of orchid plants. They have bloomed constantly and consistently for us over this time.

But something’s gone wrong.

There’s not a flower spike in sight.

My loving care has failed.

I’m going to say very loudly to Mr Furlong that I’m going to chuck these blooming orchids on the compost heap.

Perhaps they will hear me, especially if I speak very loudly.

I’ve tried everything else.

Falling on your sword

Seems to me several things are becoming obvious.

Falling on your sword is becoming fashionable. It should be.

Three comments here and a big apology.

What the hell is happening on WordPress? I now am unable to comment on sites I’ve been liking and commenting on for years. Sorry Granddad and others. People seem unable to comment on mine too. I do apologise. I found a ton of unapproved comments this morning.

And this morning I couldn’t understand the new layout of simply making a blog post! All my blogs have disappeared except two!

WordPress has made so many changes to the way it works, it is destroying itself! Maybe I should go back to Blogger. I’m really disgruntled. Any suggestions?

WordPress is killing itself blinded by its own ‘cleverness’! They could ‘fess up that they’re currently a mess.

Amber Heard should fall on her sword and accept that vengeance and spite is not ‘clever’

Putin should fall on his sword immediately by apologising for invading someone else’s country which he obviously thought was clever.

And it’s happening in Parliament in the UK in an act of Harri Kirrie by Kier Starmer and Raynor of the long legs distracting the PM allegations threatening resignation if they get Beergate fined. They seem to think falling on one’s sword is clever.

I think so.

It could change a lot of things for the better.

Of a (sotto voce) Sex-soowal Nature

Mr furlong and I laugh sometimes about how our parents and our grandparents talked about sex.

When they spoke they were very uncomfortable with the word sex. In fact they very seldom said that word. They would lower their voices and say “Its sex -soowal.”

Right now in the press, there are a lot of things of a sex-soowal nature being reported.

There’s porn in The Commons.

In Germany, there’s a precident case of imprisonment for a woman “stealing” her partner’s sperm by poking holes in the condoms.

And in the USA, we have Amber Heard discussing the most intimate details of a sex-soowal nature that YouTube content creators are loathe to mention them in case they are censored because they are so sex-soowal.

Sex with another, and our sex lives are really intimate experiences, so intimate that most people don’t actually share the very miniscule details of it. Or the urges of a sex-soowal nature that drive us to do these strange inelegant behaviours in the process.

Amber Heard is being sued by Johnny Depp for writing a defamatory article about him and contravening the silence clause in their divorce. In her opening statement she admitted to doing so.

So what’s sex got to do with it?

I’m old fashioned enough to think that certain things of an intimate, private, co-experience where two people are doing weird stuff, are too sex-soowal to discuss.

Dignity for Heard has evaporated and social media is finding her wanting.

There’s sex and there’s sex-soowal.Its strange to discover that primness is not dead but lives on!