Looking forward to the indeterminacy

Posted on 6th July 2021 by Ian

An Irish colleague complained at the lateness of the English summer holidays, feeling the best days were past before children had a chance to step into the weeks of freedom on 21st July.

The delight of the summer holidays in my childhood days was the indeterminacy, the loss of a sense of time or date. Days could last forever, memories accumulate in a single afternoon.

Indeterminacy always seemed a good place to be.

In times travelling south through France on summer holidays, there were stops at service stations that were nowhere in particular, but inspired a sense of irrational exuberance. Destinations frequently did not match anticipation, but that never detracted the following year from a sense on the southward journey that the indeterminate places were special.

One year, the thought occurred that upon retirement a journey through the indeterminate would capture a sense of being free at last.  The contemplation progressed to the point of silliness, there would be a drive back to Ouistreham for the ferry and then I would say, “No, I don’t want to go home,” and the car would be turned around to southwards again to revisit the anonymous places that had so filled the mind with contentment and expectancy.

Perhaps a fondness for the indeterminate is indicative of some deep rooted insecurity, but there are smells and tastes that capture and convey that sense of optimism.  Wright’s Coal Tar Soap, immediately conjures the summer of 1976, but also many other summer moments since.  Its smell brings thoughts of holiday time and sunshine and friends and days that were endless.  Unplaceable moments from years long past become yesterday; their indeterminate nature allowing them to become any time the mind might wish.

The taste of vinegar on chips could be any moment in fifty odd years of remembered summers.  Sarson’s Malt Vinegar was the taste of seaside cafés with formica topped tables and aluminium teapots.  Ask which café in which town, and the question is unanswerable; a handful of possible places arise, but to be definite is not possible.

Trying to recall when places were visited, it becomes clear that even the memory has its own indeterminacy, places visited in one year are filed by the mind under another. Remembered sequences are not possible.

Perhaps it is the beauty of indeterminacy that certainty of time and place do not matter; it is not what is on the outside that is important, it is what is felt on the inside.

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Johnson grasps the nettle

Posted on 5th July 2021 by Ian

The Prime Minister has finally accepted the principle of there being an acceptable number of deaths. This is not callous indifference or reckless politicking, in every sphere of public activity, there has always been an acceptable level of deaths, it’s just that there is a reluctance to acknowledge such thoughts.

The obvious example is the number of deaths on the roads. In 2020, even with lockdown, 1,472 people died on roads in the United Kingdom. Had the government wished to reduce that number to zero, it could have introduced speed limits of 10-15 mph.

The social and economic cost of such a restriction would be massive: transport costs would escalate; journeys to and from work would become unfeasible; freedom of movement would become an option only for those with the means to spend days travelling to a destination.

Faced with the costs, and the public opposition, severely restrictive measures are considered inappropriate. The government will continue to introduce road safety measures, but these will be consonant with its other social and economic priorities.

In blunt terms, allowing the current speed limits to continue to operate means that the government considers there to be an acceptable number of deaths. Of course, no government spokesman would ever dare to risk the opprobrium that would follow if such an admission was made, but, when the option of bringing the number of deaths close to zero is available, not to pursue that option can only lead to the conclusion that a number in excess of a thousand a year is the accepted price of a social and economic order that depends upon swift transport.

Within government, there will be officials calculating what will be the acceptable number of deaths caused by Covid-19 that the public will accept in order to allow the economy and society to return to normal functioning.

It is a certainty that the current rules could not continue indefinitely. In practical terms, the economic costs would have brought severe social costs. But there were less measurable factors that the government had to consider, how long would it have been before social cohesion was eroded?

No-one is speculating on the number of deaths considered to be tolerable to allow the resumption of normal life, but one assumes the government have a figure in mind.

And should such an idea seem unacceptable, ask why the national speed limit is 60 mph and not a figure far lower. Deaths are accepted as the price of other priorities.

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You are going to die

Posted on 4th July 2021 by Ian

“Sir, I think I am going to die.”

“You are,” I said.

“Sir, that’s not a very encouraging thing to say to someone who doesn’t feel very well.”

“Do you know,” I responded, “I think the existentialists would suggest that we cannot enjoy life until we have faced up to the reality of death? Anyway, we have had this conversation before. You are going to die, but in the early years of the 22nd Century.”

“I think I might do my assessment this morning and then ask to go home.”

“Perhaps a good idea.”

When I was a child, death was not discussed. Because it wasn’t discussed, there was a house on Long Sutton village green that for years frightened me. It was 2014 before I confronted those childhood fears.

In the days before natural gas reached our corner of the West of England, there was town gas.  No-one ever explained why it was more dangerous than the gas from the North Sea, and no-one ever explained from which town it came.  But in our village, people had gas produced by a gasworks.

The danger of such gas only became clear when a mother and her son who lived in the house at the corner of the village green died following a gas leak. It was not a leak in their house, for they had no gas supply, but a leak from the gas main that passed down the street.

Such matters were not discussed with a boy of six, and the curtains of the house seemed always drawn, making it impossible to imagine what it might be like on the inside; but the sight of the house became something frightening. Death is an alien concept when you are six years old, and that someone should die from something that might be obtained by putting sixpence in a meter seemed incomprehensible.

For close on fifty years, it had not been possible to pass through that village without a chill feeling when seeing the house on the green.  Perhaps it had been an introduction to death, perhaps it had been a threat to the assumed security and stability of life in 1960s rural England.  Perhaps there was something even less tangible.

The house is an attractive building without a hint of a past. It is far removed from anything that might be disturbing. Its persistence in the memory was irrational.

It was not until a summer’s day seven years ago that I drove to Long Sutton, bought an ice cream in the village shop, and sat on a bench contemplating the house. Afterwards, I walked to the churchyard. Had the mother and son been buried there? Probably, but having no recall of their name, the grave would not have been easily found.

Sitting at a meal that evening, I asked my mother, “Who were the mother and son who died from the gas leak?”

“The Thomases? You don’t remember them, do you?”

“I remember them dying, for years I was frightened by their house.”

“Why did you never say?”

But what would have been said? Isn’t that the problem with childhood fears? If there were words, they could be articulated, and then there would have been nothing of which to be frightened.

Perhaps conversations about death are needed with more children than the Year 8 student with the stratospheric IQ who wasn’t feeling well on Friday morning.

Thomas house

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After Nostradamus

Posted on 3rd July 2021 by Ian

According to the radio, yesterday was the anniversary of the death of Nostradamus in 1566. The presenter of the programme described the French astrologer and physician as the greatest “seer” in history.

In my teenage years, I would have been immediately interested in such an item. Growing up in a small rural community, where stories were never questioned and where concepts such as verification were thought unnecessary, there was little awareness of how credulous we were. In our house there would be books by Erich von Daniken on the presence of aliens among the ancient civilisations. There would be a reading of the “stars” in the Daily Mail each day, I had a stainless steel ring with a Libra symbol on it. There would be a fascination with stories regarding UFOs, particularly as there was said to be a particular alien focus on the town of Warminster in our neighbouring county of Wiltshire. Added to the beliefs in astrology and alien visitation,  there would have been credibility attached to tales of black magic taking place in the community. Black magic was more threatening than Martians, one man was said to have left the village after a pentagram was painted on his door.

Perhaps a belief in astrology was forgivable in the pre-scientific times of Nostradamus,  but now attaching any credibility to the notion that distant fiery stars can somehow shape the fortunes of individuals is as logical as clapping your hands to stop Tinkerbell from dying.

The constellations which form the zodiac, together with those like Orion and Cassiopeia are arbitrary human constructs. Constellations only exist in two dimensions, on the maps and charts in which they are outlined, in space the stars may bear little relation to each other, some may be a thousand light years closer to the Earth  than others that are deemed to be part of the same formation. Unless you believe space to be a dome over the Earth, then the signs of the zodiac are no more than a remnant of medieval thinking.

The truth about astrology was not the only aspect of Nostradamus’ work that might have caused my teenage self to ask questions. Nostradamus made nine hundred predictions, as my father might have commented, if you bet on enough horses, then some of them will win. No-one, however, pointed out the number of things he got wrong, nor did they point out that what he is supposed to have predicted is frequently a mistranslation of medieval French.

Nostradamus undoubtedly believed himself to be the recipient of insight from a supernatural source, now he would probably be more likely to attract the attention of psychiatrists than the public.

Perhaps our world of the 1970s was a lingering presence of pre-modern thought, yet there was always a sense of excitement in stories of the esoteric and unexplained. The scientific world, devoid of mystery, can seem a dull place in comparison.

 

 

 

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The darkness of dementia

Posted on 2nd July 2021 by Ian

It was always summertime when they came to stay on the farm: my eldest aunt, her husband and her family of four. It was always a happy time. The eldest of my cousins would take me fishing on the banks of the River Parrett. My aunt was always cheerful, always having a composed wisdom in all that she faced. My uncle would assist my grandfather and my two uncles who were on the farm with the gathering in of the harvest. We would go out to the fields with them. Riding on the wagons there would be stories and laughter.

My uncle died from pancreatic cancer in 2008. I flew from Dublin to Heathrow in order to get the train out to Didcot to attend the funeral. My aunt seemed unchanged from the person I had always known. It seemed hard to imagine that she was over seventy.

Age did not weary her. Aged eighty-three, at a wedding reception in 2018, she was out on the dance floor with those sixty years younger.

But the shadow of forgetfulness has arrived. The isolation of lockdown has accelerated the decline. An aunt tells of conversations with her eldest sister where after a few sentences the thread is lost, or repetition begins. It is hard to imagine the forever young woman will no longer share wise words and happy memories.

In Sebastian Faulks’ Human Traces, there are words to which I have had frequent recourse.

He looked up and forced himself to regroup. ‘Yes. Yes. I just have to say, while I am still able, a sort of goodbye, or at least an au revoir. Some weeks ago I … Er, I suffered a peculiar experience. I do not wish to go into it except to say that I appeared to lose my memory. I was in a police station with no recollection of how I had got there. I was not unhappy, I just did not know what was going on. I was like King Lear. “Methinks I should know you, and know this man;/ Yet I am doubtful; for I am mainly ignorant/What place this is; and all the skill I have/Remembers not these garments; nor I know not/Where I did lodge last night.” Anyway, to … To cut a long story short, I have been to see various distinguished gentlemen¬at the hospital in Queen Square and it appears that I am in her early stages of some kind of senile or pre-senile dementia.

‘Rather interestingly, it has been named after Alois Alzheimer . . .

. . . He looked back to his postcard. It said: ‘Age.’

‘Yes. Age. I am rather young to have this sort of thing, though perhaps sixty does not seem so young to the children at the far end of the table. The truth is that we know very little about this illness. We know very little about anything, as a matter of fact. Never mind. It is really not important. It is just that one day I may no longer know your name, and I ask you to forgive me if I pass you in the street or on the stairs and my face does not light up with love or recognition. Please forgive me. I shall no longer be myself. I am going into a dark country and I very much wanted to say goodbye to those that I have loved before I go. . .

. . . He gazed once more down through the mist of faces until he saw the features of the woman he had loved – no longer young, but red and twisted with grief, shining with tears.

‘I have been blessed beyond what any man could hope or wish for,’ said Thomas. ‘All I ask now is somewhere safe to live. I must pull in sail and lower my sights from the horizon. I am quite content to do so because I have been so fortunate in my life.  I always felt that if I had to make a speech like this I should find some Shakespearean eloquence. But it is too late and the plain words will have to do. As a doctor, I have achieved absolutely nothing. Nothing at all, though God knows I tried. But in love I have been rich. Once long ago I finished a lecture in another place by saying we should try to make our lives a hymn of thanks – or some such phrase. I do not think it was a very memorable phrase, even to someone without my difficulties. I shall do my best to follow my own advice. All I ask is for your forgiveness.’

He looked one last time down the table of anxious faces. ‘My mind may not know you,’ he said, ‘but in my heart you are remembered.’

In my aunt’s heart, I know that all those who loved her are still remembered.

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