Luna the cat and a bloodbath

 Recently I was away from home for a short while. When I was away I received the following text. I found it again when I was clearing out the inbox on my phone. The text (or at least, the vision I imagined) is so good that I thought I would share it for posterity.

Luna is a cat.

Ok luna opened sachet tomato ketchup last night like bloodbath in kitchen!!!!

[7th October 2023 12:23]

Rendered into better English, with some punctuation. 

Ok. Luna opened a sachet of tomato ketchup last night. It was like a bloodbath in the kitchen!!!!

My mind boggled at the imagined image. I'll leave you to do the same. Fortunately our kitchen has a tiled floor.

[28th October 2023]

When you get to our age: ailments, lathes and the river

Hi Mike, Good to hear from you! Just recently, for the first time, I find myself wanting to prefix what I'm going to say with "when you get to our age..." (wygtoa). It feels strange, and is really a bit unwelcome. I hope I didn't sound like I was nagging but (wygtoa) several of my friends and acquaintances have been suffering from ailments both serious and minor and sometimes I become just a little anxious that someone is in a poor state and I don't know about it. With that said, the last thing any of us needs is someone else going "are we there yet?", or similar, particularly if you are feeling out of sorts.

Sorry to hear you've been poorly. The flu/Covid you describe sounds nasty. I understand what you say about "unable to concentrate". I've experienced that myself, though fortunately not recently. Another symptom I have experienced is a feeling of "not really being there/present". I think that fancy name for that is "dissociation". That wasn't actually unpleasant, but it isn't something I want to repeat either. On the other hand, on a couple of occasions I think I've experienced minor hallucinations - that was just weird, "dissociation PLUS strange sensations". People pay a lot of money for experiences like that! As far as I'm concerned they're welcome to them.

I particularly understand the "not being able to read" bit. There was a brief time in his later years when my Dad had a spell like that. At the time, I felt really sorry for him because it took away a genuine simple pleasure. Fortunately the effect was due to diabetes and got fixed, so it was all ok in the end. I think he was re-reading one of the Brother Caedfael (spolling?) stories the week before he died.

I'm still waiting to pick up Rivers of London again. I simply haven't been in a bookshop recently and my library haven't come up with the goods yet. I've been wondering (in general) about graphic novels. I may give one a go (maybe even a RoL one). I think they are a legitimate art-form (like comics, plays, TV etc) but maybe suited to a particular audience, so I note your comments and accept that graphic novels may not be for me. One of the things I like about RoL is the discriptive work and the backgrounds and, of course, that will likely be lost in a graphic novel. I think I'm someone who falls into the category of "I prefer listening to plays on the radio to watching movies - the pictures are better!" Talking of plays on the radio, I was speaking to Chris Freemantle over the internet yesterday and he said that he had been "...listening to a Radio Four play...". I don't think I was fully paying attention to him, or perhaps it was my dodgy hearing, because just for a fraction of a second, I thought I had heard him say "...listening to radio foreplay...". I'll leave your imagination to fill in the gaps, because that momentary misunderstanding certainly had my mind boggling.

Well done for venturing out "on foot"! It's something I don't do enough of. If I was over there, I would be tempted to offer to join you. My exercise is mostly my cycle down to town most days to pick up a newspaper and minor groceries. That, and the same trip to the Men's Shed and then the pub two nights a week. Purchasing the bicycle was one of the better things I have done since coming full time to Ireland, and it was a complete whim. 

Tomorrow, at the Shed, my task of the evening is to connect two pins inside a push-button on/off switch on a lathe. It isn't "latching" as it needs to and I think the problem was that I had misunderstood the details of the wiring (part of the problem is retrofitting cheap Chinese components to ancient British equipment, with little or no documentation for either. The lathe is a small Myford). Internet diagram to the rescue. At tea one evening I was pleased to announce: "Three bits of good news: the lathe motor runs in both directions, there hasn't been a big bang, and I'm still alive!" If the "latch" works, then all I have to do is re-route some of the wiring and thoroughly clean the lathe (it's in a terrible state). I'm sure there will be other things to do as well.    

My other exercise is walking down to the river behind my house. You couldn't really call that a proper walk, but I enjoy it, and it's so convenient. I remember telling you about it. Making the gateway was another whim. The original reasoning was simple enough, the gate gives me access to cut the back of the hedge, but the effect has been much greater. I now go down to the river several times a week (weather and inclination permitting). Regarding ground conditions: one of the effects of making the same walk regularly is that one becomes aware of changes. Topsoil where I am is clay and the underlying ground is some sort of limestone or maybe shale (my geology is a bit dodgy). It has been a wet winter, even my local standards. The ground was very squidgy, even waterlogged but is now beginning to dry out. The river itself is changing. It was surging and opaque, like milky coffee, but yesterday the surface was flat enough, and the water clear enough, for me to see the rocky bottom in places. And I saw one or two bees (good) and today I saw a pair of swallows outside my house (that's even better). I have still to go down to the river today.

I'm going to break off there. I have to pick up the newspaper and I have a couple of small purchases to make in town. Keep in touch, even if it's only to say "I feel a bit crap, but I'm still here". It saves me worrying and prevents me from being a nag. Tell me about  any future walks.

Regards,

Tom

(17th April 2023)

Redcar Coke Ovens - January 1980

I don't remember a saharan wind but I do remember the wind from another time.

In 1980 I was "doing the rounds" as a trainee engineer (Grade MM0, Middle Management Zero). It was three months here, and three months there and so on. "Here" moved about quite a bit, but in January 1980 it was the coke oven plant at Redcar. You can still find the remains of the Redcar blast furnace and coke ovens by selecting the birds' eye view on Google maps, just a little to the North West of Redcar town.

It should have been a good time (I'm perverse enough to have a soft spot for coke ovens), except that between January and April 1980 was the Steel Strike. It was not a good time. Each day started with 15 miles across the North Yorkshire Moors (which could be pleasant), then negotiating my way through a picket line and then a further mile through the sleeping works to the site. The works had been built on reclaimed salt marsh and there is nothing between it and the the North Sea but the dunes at Coatham. Fortunately it didn't really snow while I was there, but there was constantly snow on the wind. It was bitterly cold.

I can bore for 3 countries on coke ovens and blast furnaces, and I'll spare you the details. Both are strange things, like caged dragons or demons. One difference is that a blast furnace can be put to sleep and woken again. It is not a desireable thing to do, but in this case it was done for 3 whole months. Imagine waking a coke fire from the embers. Coke ovens are not like that - they cannot sleep. They can be "turned down" but if production stops then the ovens are quickly destroyed and have to be rebuilt. So, production continued on the ovens. Several times a shift an oven would discharge tens of tonnes of incandescent coke into the air. The inside of the ovens is extremely hot (up to 1400 deg C), and the outside is still hot enough to damage the soles of your boots if you stand still too long in one place. The atmosphere between workers and management was one of tension and resentment. To top it all, the ovens (which were almost new) were suffering from serious technical problems. The air stank and all the time the wind was blowing in from the sea, carrying snowflakes.

It was about then that I decided that, right or wrong, the politicians had decided that they didn't want a steel industry and that the best thing I could do was leave before everything came to a sad end.

On a brighter note, I enjoy my place down by the river. I wish I had found it years ago, but it wasn't the time. I don't expect to see kingfishers. I think the soil is wrong for them: clay rather than sand. On the other hand, I have found myself studying the water. I find the patterns formed by the eddys fascinating. They are both chaotic and predictable and they change from day to day with the state of the river. There is one place where a branch sheds little vortices and another where there is sometimes an area of turbulence like plaited hair. I'm pretty sure Da Vinci drew something like that in one of his notebooks.

On an even brighter note, Noreen and I are off for a couple of days in Bantry. Two nights in a fancy hotel. I'm looking forward to roasting myself in the sauna.

I've got another letter to write before I shut things down, so I'll end there.

Gateways and Boundaries

Do you like mysterious doors or gateways, maybe even to ways to other dimensions? Of course you do, everybody does! Here's a little tale for you. Of course it's all true, but maybe the contrast and brilliance have been turned up to eleven in places.

When you were in K???? I remember taking you along the road and through a field to go and look at the River A????, which flows down from F???? village to where the river joins the larger River D???? in K???? town. 

Every year, when I cut the hedge which forms the boundary of my place, I have to trek along the road and then back through the field, so I can inspect and cut the back of my own hedge. It's all a bit of a nuisance. The hedge itself is Leylandii and somewhere inside of that is a chain-link fence supported on concrete posts. As I'm sure someone must have said, sometime, "it ain't going anywhere". Fortunately, I took the growing heads off the plants shortly after we moved in, so it’s not going to get out of control. Now I wish that the people who built the house had used something other than Leylandii, because it's too vigorous, but I'm not complaining because it’s attractive and maintenance free apart from once a year. 

Last year, I cut the inside and top of the hedge and had got to the stage of thinking about going round to the back. Cutting my hedge takes several days, so the job can spread over weeks. For some reason, I cut a little deeper into the hedge than I do usually in one back corner, and I noticed that the hedge growth was a little less dense there than normal. I poked around a bit more and found that the posts for the chain-link fence had been arranged in such a way that they formed a gateway inside the hedge.

This potential gateway was intriguing, so I showed it to Noreen and said that I thought it would be practical to make a gateway out into the field. The effort of creating the gateway would make the exercise of cutting the back of the hedge a whole lot simpler for the current  year and all future years (no need to walk a hundred yards along a busy road and back through the field). Noreen agreed, and a day or so later I had a gateway. 

I think the background story of my gateway is that when my house was being built, the builders constructed the gateway for access. They even put a threshold sill stone in place. When they were finished with the house, the builders filled the gap with an separate bit of fencing and planted the hedge, which over time obscured the potential gap.

A little more work, and I had constructed a little wicket gate to fit the gap. I can even point to evidence of the gate being completed on 25th August last year. Gate construction was made easier by having square upright concrete posts to work to. Not only is the gate easy to open and close, but it is invisible from both my garden and from the field! From my garden it is camouflaged by a piece of trellis covered by plastic pretend hedge, and from the other direction it exits into a wooded field boundary and is invisible from the field itself. So, now I had a hidden, secure gateway between my garden and the field beyond. It’s the sort of thing children love (and that includes children of advancing years).

The gateway served its intended purpose in simplifying the maintenance of my hedge, but it gave more. Now I have the gateway, I'm in the habit of walking down to the river, typically once a week. The distance is 150 metres as the crow flies or 350 metres around the perimeter of the field (which is the way I go, 'cos I'm good). 

Nobody would describe my place as urban and to call it suburban would be a positive insult, but access to the river takes rural to a new level. All you can hear on the other side of the hedge are natural sounds and the gentle whispering of traffic on the distant road. 

It really is peaceful down by the river. Having access to the river is a great improvement to my amenities.  Come the summer, I may spend a bit more time down there. My neighbours don't mind (because they walk their dogs down by the river), and I don't think the person farming the field will ever know!

When I’m walking around the field something strange happens. The atmosphere changes and everything becomes much quieter. The sounds of traffic from the road cease completely. This always happens in the same place. The effect does not change with the weather, in sunshine or drizzle, the same peace descends. The silence is welcoming, waiting to be filled by the sounds of the river. 

When I reach the river the banks are clothed by mature native trees and beyond the margin on the far bank there is a dark plantation of commercial conifers. Upstream there is short length of rapids and downstream the river broadens and becomes much quieter. On the opposite bank a tree trails a dead limb into the water. When the river is high this branch is dragged forward with the current and flicks back when the tension overcomes the water. The motion is repeated rhythmically. The atmosphere is quiet except for the sound of water, no houses are visible, not even my own, which is only 150 metres away. I am in another dimension, separate to, and completely insulated from, the modern world. Every time I go there I pass through a hidden portal and traverse a zone of silence and when I return the experience is reversed.

I’m afraid there is a prosaic explanation to my inter-dimensional portal. The field has an uneven slope between my house and the river. The steeper slope in the middle means that when I'm at the river the houses are hidden and all the sound from the road passes above my head. Whatever you may think, unnaturally, I choose to ignore the obvious and continue to visit my magical realm via a hidden gateway and barrier of silence.

4th February 2023

Letter to Carol - Michael O'Conner

 Hello Carol, Happy New Year! I hope you and yours are keeping well.

As you can see, I've survived the festive season. I've eaten too much, drank too much (not too, too much) and not taken sufficient exercise, but I feel good. Siobhan and Margaret returned to base, so all four of us were there for an extended week. 

I cooked Christmas dinner. The frozen "three-bird-roast" took 3 hours to cook. That seems like a lot of work but actually it really wasn't; it was just a case of following the timetable I'd written out for myself, doing stuff and doing particular things when the alarm on my phone went off. There was plenty of time to do other things as well. 

As a family, we seem to have moved away from large expensive presents towards lots of small and sometimes silly things. There seems no point at all in exchanging vouchers. I do give Siobhan and Margaret (small) quantities of cash but that's different to me. There are lots of sweeties and biscuits as well! And chocolates!

I spent a fair amount of time over the holiday scanning photos and documents from the laundry box I told you about. Remember my brother James, the little boy I showed you some photos of? I've found another photo of him. I know I'm biased, and that the emotional associations will sway my judgement as well, but he was a handsome boy. 

One of the advantages of scanning things is that it makes it possible to zoom in on details and that can provide additional information: things like, two photos with the same background were probably taken at the same time. I've been constructing time-lines for the various characters in the story (My mother Margaret, her husband Alastair, James and my sister Catherine). Little details are coming to light and the story is taking on much more depth. The outline I told you was mostly correct, but even in a couple of months there is now so much more: some of it would suit a Boys' Own adventure, perhaps written by John Buchan, and some would suit a romance in a women's magazine, maybe by Barbara Cartland but honestly I've never read any of her work - maybe I should. I hope I can do the story, and my relatives justice.

Talking of stories, here's a sort-of "meta story". Cycling home from the surgery today, I stopped to exchange greetings with an acquaintence, Michael O'Conner. I am cycling home and Michael is walking home from tending to some horses he looks after. He walks the road twice a day, in the morning and in the evening, rain or shine. If I am cycling I stop and talk with him, if I am driving, heading in the right direction and especially if it is raining, I will give him a lift. Somehow, our meeting like this seems particularly Irish, or Scottish or "country". 

Michael will be a little younger than me, probably in his 50's. He is separated or divorced from a wife and has (at least) a daughter and one or two grandchildren. I know where he lives and where he is from (Castlemagner). His untidy hair is blonde which has turned to white and he's soft spoken. He wears heavy boots and a dirty black jacket. His face is weather-beaten and ruddy with a strawberry nose and hooded eyes. I would guess that he is a heavy drinker, quite possibly an alcoholic. I think he would be a handful if he was drunk. Honestly, if you saw him, I think you would avoid him (and in general, you might be right). Despite any of that, he is considered "reliable" and he looks after expensive horses. Once, when it was convenient for us both, he took be to see a mare who was in foal.

Michael and I are not friends but we are friendly to one another. We are an ill-matched pair. We would not meet socially but we meet on the road and exchange greetings and stories. I think our meetings serve some purpose but I do not know what it is: one for psychologists, sociologists and philosophers.

Must go. Got to have some sort of lunch before I collect my daughters from Cork.

Keep well!

Tom