Warning Sign

On the way up the hill to Masjid Tentera just now for Friday Prayers I was enjoying the climb in what felt a restful break from the struggles of the day. And then came the sign, hanging off one of the guard-rails adjacent to the steep steps. In stark black capitals on a white background it read: BEWARE OF THE SPITTING COBRA. It woke me from my reverie, I can tell you, as I glanced around the neatly manicured grass on the hillside in case the creature was putting in a mid-day appearance.

It wasn't. Which, oddly enough, provoked disappointment rather than relief. On this, Sir David Attenborough's 100th birthday, it would have felt so appropriate to make first hand contact with the world of the really untamed and dangerous.

Tricky Business

Just filled in a digital arrival card for a journey we're intending to Alor Gajah over the coming weekend. I've completed this one a few times, so you'd think I'd be used to it. But I still manage to find it a fidgety thing to do. I can remember the promises years ago that the advance of IT services would make life easier. 

Can't help but wonder: What happened?

The Wheel Of Fortune

Heard some very bad news today from a friend and colleague regarding a medical problem they are currently dealing with. Life is unfair in what it so often throws at us, without warning. Something worth remembering whenever we reflect on personal good fortune.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't celebrate good fortune, good times, good health, I think. In fact, I think there's something of a moral imperative to do so. A way of pointing to the balance at the deep heart of things. The thing to remember, for me at least, is that whatever good fortune I experience it doesn't really belong to me.

As a very wise man once sung: You know what they say about being nice to the right people on the way up / Sooner or later, you gonna meet them coming down.

A Little Learning

Spent part of the day conducting lessons on line. Was struck by the fact that such a thing was pretty much unthinkable when I started teaching. Not sure it's particularly efficacious in terms of the learning that takes place. But I'm not sure that questions of genuine learning have ever been front and central in my job in the half century that I've been involved in it.

Low Expectations

There's been a big fat debate on issues regarding cholesterol levels & prescribing statins & the like for as long as I can remember. (Which isn't all that long ago these days, to be honest.) None of this matters to me at the moment since I got the numbers in on my cholesterol levels from last week's health screening and, let me tell you, they look good. Let's face it, when one sees the word optimal on a report regarding one's tired old body, one feels like dancing, doesn't one? Well, this one does.

On The Everyday

Have almost finished rereading Declan Kiberd's excellent Ulysses and Us: The Art of Everyday Living. Found it slipped down a little more easily this time round, though I still found the final chapters went a bit over my not terribly elevated head. Still I enjoyed the flights of fancy on Joyce's relations to Homer, Dante, the New Testament and Shakespeare, though preferring the generally more earthbound stuff as DK makes his way through the great modernist epic on a chapter-by-chapter basis. 

What I'm sure the critic gets right is the novelist's deep understanding of the importance of the everyday, especially in developing our understanding of what it might mean to live decently. It doesn't sound like much of a theme, I suppose, but Joyce is the most surprising of writers. (And my appetite has been well and truly whetted for another go at the greatest novel of the 20C.)

Days

Received a pithily expressive card from John & Jeanette the other day reading: May we live in less interesting times. I endeavoured to live out that sentiment today, recording a Saturday on which nothing of note happened in my life. And that's more than fine by me since it was a perfectly happy day.

Holiday Fun

15.33

Now getting into a distinct holiday mood for the long weekend as we're looking forward to an evening at the theatre watching Roald Dahl's The BFG, in the version put together by the RSC. We're taking along Hakim and the girls on the grounds that this is a treat for the littlun. But it's really for me, as you might have guessed.

More anon.

23.55

Gosh, what a great show! It gets everything right. A kind of compendium of the magic of theatre, with a number of tricks, beautifully carried off, that I recognised, and some new ones, generally of a technological nature, that I didn't. The lighting alone was worth the price of admission.

But the deepest magic of all involved in the show is that it entirely captures the magic of Dahl's fictional world for children: unrelenting energy, glorious vulgarity, unabashed sentimentality and unrestrainedly cheerful anarchy.

Hooked (In A Fashion)

Back in early April, when things were getting going again after the happy hiatus of the Fasting Month, I predicted to myself that I would relish reading The Makioka Sisters. I was right. It's a blast. Which is utterly the wrong word to use of a text that is wonderfully ordinary and subtle in that ordinariness. But the word will serve as a placeholder for now. And a placeholder is what I need since almost a month has gone by and I've still not reached the halfway point in what is a reasonably lengthy, but certainly not overlong novel.

This is not the fault of the estimable Mr Tanizaki. It's down to my grievous lack of oomph in getting on with a great read due to being weighed down by the toad, Work. I really should be doing better than this at my age.

Losing It

I signed up for a free medical check-up the other day and discovered I am now 171 cm tall. Since I was regularly measured at 174 cm up to 5 years ago I'd like to know why I seem to be gradually disappearing. I could once console myself that I am at least taller than the mighty Paul Scholes (usually measured at 170, I hear.) But I reckon that that's likely to be in doubt this time next year if the shrinking continues.

On the other hand, I was pleased to discover that my metabolic age is 44. Sounds good. Wish I knew what 'metabolic age' actually means, though.