Instinct

– This may sound a stupid question, but do you ever wonder what Cat is thinking about?
– Of course it's not a stupid question: it is ridiculous. It is a cat. It doesn't think. It's barely awake, most of the time.
– But sometimes, you know, she stares at you, unblinking, rapt in thought.
– I think that is a prelude to falling asleep. Or attacking.  You learn to read these signs in time. Usually following an attack.
– But they must think about something.
– I don't see why. It is merely animal instinct. It is like asking whether you yourself are thinking most of the time.
– Of course I am. Aren't I?
– Hardly. Your brain just trundles along on autopilot. Occasionally, you may actively cogitate over a particularly knotty problem, usually to do with working out what to cook for tea. But the rest of the time, you are not functioning at much of a higher level than the cat.
– That may explain a great deal. Such as why Cat looks down at me as an intellectual inferior.

Ducks.

Bicentennial

If you have been keeping count, and have sufficient fingers and toes, you will have realised that the present post is the two hundredth of this – for want of a better word – blog. If you have indeed been keeping count, I am disappointed in you, inasmuch as your time on this planet is brief, and you should learn to use it wisely. Be assured I will let you know when a significant anniversary has arrived. I have the advantage that my Blogger home page tells me many such absorbing facts; and, besides, I keep a tally by scratching a mark on the living room wall. Unfortunately, the cat occasionally decides to join in, which I suppose saves the sofa, if nothing else.

It is clearly no easy task to write a daily blog, which is why I haven't even tried. Writing a post every few days is bad enough. My life is fairly uneventful at the best of times, so I have to scrape the bottom of the metaphorical barrel containing my thoughts and experiences in order to find something to put on the page. As you will have noticed, the scraping does not usually yield anything particularly entertaining. I find it something of a catch-22 situation, in that I could be out living life to the full, draining the last few drops from the goblet of heady achievement, if only I weren't stuck indoors on the laptop. But an artist has to sacrifice himself for his art. One day my public will appreciate this, and perhaps send me a thank you card. I do not ask for much.

Glum

– The weather seems to be getting no better. Glowering skies. Wintry showers, turning to sleet on higher ground.
– What can you expect? It is January. This is what January does.
– Well, it could be cold and crisp, with a sprinkling of snow glittering under a gentle winter sun. That would be nicer than constant rain.
– They do say, people who know about these things, that this is the most depressing time of the year.
– They do?
– The New Year festivities are long past; the weather, as you note, is bleak and dispiriting; the credit card bills start landing heavily on the doormat; the summer holidays are far away. That expensive gift you bought yourself for Christmas no longer fits, or has fallen to pieces, or could have been picked up for a fraction of the price in the sales. Need I go on?
– You are not making me feel any better.
– But it must be reassuring to know that your gloominess is not unique to you, but is shared by the majority of the population.
– I don't feel particularly reassured. Especially if I'm surrounded by equally depressed people. I was relying on them to cheer me up.

Pin

– I'm having difficulty deciding on the summer holiday.
– In what way?
– In every way. Other than the summer bit – I think I've nailed that. Definitely summer.
– Any particular date?
– I'm flexible. Some time in the summer. Although, come to think of it, summer can get very busy.
– It's a very popular time. Probably something to do with the weather.
– But let's keep with summer for the moment. Just to narrow things now.
– Well, then, what about location?
– Yes. That's an excellent idea. I should certainly have a location.
– It helps enormously if your holiday is located somewhere. Although you could just stay at home. That would help reduce the travelling.
– I think I would prefer somewhere a little more exotic. But I don't know where to begin.
– Perhaps you should try randomly sticking a pin into a map.
– That may work. Not sure I have many maps to hand. There should be an A to Z somewhere.
– You probably need something on a larger scale. Covering the whole planet, for instance. Although then there is quite a high probability that your pin will land somewhere in an ocean.
– That might be nice.
– Though maybe impractical. Unless you fancy a cruise.
– You'd think there would be somewhere you could go to get help with this sort of problem.
– Like a travel agent?
– Yes. Do they still exist? I thought everyone booked things for themselves online nowadays.
– You can still find them. I'm sure they maintain a large collection of maps. And pins. That's the sort of service you just can't get online.

Psyche

– Your hair seems shorter.
– I've been to the barber's.
– Of course. That would explain it.
– A few days ago.
– Really? Have I not seen you since then?
– Yes. Several times.
– How did I not notice? It must have been the way you combed it. You do comb it?
– Yes. But I hardly think that would have made much of a difference.
– Probably I just didn't look at you properly. Or at all. It's a classic example.
– Of?
– Of the mysterious workings of the human mind.
– It is?
– Of course. The way in which, however much you may see an object day after day, the subconscious mind filters it out completely: obliterates all memory. Somehow, it decides that, for whatever reason, it is better that the event should be forgotten.
– And you think that is the case here?
– We should not question these things. They just are.

Witch

I've been working my way through some fairy tales recently. This is not because I've given up on trying to read a proper grown-up book, but because I saw Philip Pullman's recent collection of Grimm stories in the bookshop, and thought I'd give it a go. I'm not sure how many I ever read as a child, though I have distant memories of a few battered old books of fairy tales with illustrations that worried me. And years later I read more up-to-date versions to my own children. Or actually I probably read only a handful of stories many hundreds of times, given that infants seem to relish the same bedtime stories repeated endlessly night after night. But by then the stories had lost some of their terror, and the illustrations were less worrying.

So it is refreshing to re-visit them in Mr Pullman's re-telling, where he keeps in some of the grisly details that more squeamish translators glossed over. I suppose fairy stories have the advantage of being short, and pithy: there is no waffling, no circuitous setting the scene or getting to the point: you are just thrown into the middle of a complex web of intrigue with wicked stepmothers and talking animals and things happening in threes. They connect you back to your childhood, as well as to the darker world of traditional folk tales with their own ruthless black-and-white morality and hard-fought happy endings.

Radio

– So the broadcast was a success?
– I think so. It's not something I've ever had the good fortune to experience before: to be broadcast live to the nation on the BBC.
– And was the nation appreciative?
– It's difficult to tell exactly what an entire nation thinks. I like to think that, on the whole, it was suitably impressed.
– I wish I had heard it.
– There's still time. On the iPlayer thing.
– Does your contribution stand out?
– Who can tell? I tried to give an honest and heart-felt performance. But it may have been lost, to some extent, amid the general mélange.
– You were in the audience?
– Yes.
– So your contribution would have been – in the main – clapping?
– I prefer to use the term applause. But not only applause: there were times when we – the audience – responded to the presenter's commentary: polite chuckles to his humorous remarks; gasps of mild incredulity at astonishing factual details; that sort of thing.
– I suppose you could have made a more recognisable contribution by standing up and shouting something controversial at the top of your voice.
– But then they would have manhandled me out of the studio. Not to mention that it would have been somewhat impolite, and hardly in keeping with the cultured nature of the programme being recorded.
– But sometimes it's all about impact. Even if short-lived. And resulting in your being hauled away by the police.

Stone

I have just finished reading Stoner, the novel by John Williams, which I started shortly before Christmas. Everyone on Amazon seems to have read it in a single sitting, possibly while waiting for the kettle to boil or the microwave to ping, but it took me weeks. Even so, this is good going for me, as I famously read books fairly slowly. It's not that I have any particular problem with reading per se – indeed I am getting quite adept at it nowadays and can tackle, almost without hesitation, several fairly long words – but that I actually prefer to read books slowly, to make them last, so that the experience of entering the mind of William Stoner, and sharing his sadnesses and joys, and reflecting on what ultimate meaning there is to his life or mine or anyone's, stretches out for a significant period of time, rather than just filling the awkward pause before the tea is brewed.

Given the gentle pace of the novel and the unassuming character of the hero, it seems apt that the book has been rediscovered almost fifty years after publication and lauded as an overlooked classic, one which is able to touch the hearts of a new generation of readers who you might have thought have better things to distract them than such a sombre and subtle story. Perhaps such profundity is missing from too much of our modern society. Perhaps, in a world where the printed book seems on the path to extinction, there is a need for a novel that celebrates the emotional pull of literature.

Sail forth—steer for the deep waters only

Phantom

You'll be glad to know that I made it into work the last two days. It was touch and go at times: there were moments in the dispiriting greyness of the morning when it was hard to grasp the importance of getting out of bed. It somehow seemed so unnecessary. I find this often happens in the early hours: your capacity for logical reasoning flies out of the window and instead you fall prey to wild and dangerous thoughts. It is as if some primitive, unfettered version of your normally upright and morally impeccable self has taken over, and all capacity for calm, rational thinking has vanished. So, typically the problems you laughed off during the day return to haunt you: the leaky guttering suddenly threatens to flood the house, your extravagant spending on Christmas presents will send you spiralling into an abyss of personal debt, and the cat, having missed her latest worming tablet, will fall prey to some debilitating tropical disease which will infect your closest family and friends. It is hard to dismiss these spectres: like nightmares, they seem somehow so real. Especially the one about the cat. Perhaps it's all down to some trivial perturbation in brain chemistry: a temporary dip in something important, a slight shift in the normal equilibrium. But that itself is rather scary: that your personality can swing so wildly for no apparent reason, at the mercy of a handful of neurotransmitter molecules here or there. It's enough to give you nightmares.

Alarm

Having been away from work for a full two weeks over the Christmas holiday, I have to go back tomorrow. This is always a difficult time of the year: finally bidding farewell to the festivities, and getting back to the empty drudgery of normal life. Perhaps normal life is not quite so bleak, but it definitely lacks a bit of colour once the tinsel is packed away and the brandy butter eaten up, or (sadly) thrown out once it is deemed to pose a hazard to health. As if to underline the point, this weekend has seen the end of the turkey and the Christmas pudding. The sadness of saying goodbye to these stalwart companions of the last few weeks is offset to some degree by memories of happier times, and the knowledge that various seasonal treats are still lurking in the cupboard, or in the fridge, and will be some consolation in the months to come.

So somehow I have to get myself out of bed at a ridiculously early hour tomorrow morning, having got into the habit, over the holiday period, of slumbering a few minutes longer than I should. I have an alarm, which I suppose is of some help, though seeing I never bothered re-setting it these last two weeks, I am now pretty adept at ignoring it. It is harder to ignore the cat, who tends to want feeding between 4a.m. and – well, any time, really. She tends not to be very regular. Not something you can set your clock by. Hence the need for clocks.

Revolution

– So any interesting New Year's resolutions?
– Too many to mention. I have devised resolutions to enhance every aspect of my life. As a consequence, I will be transformed into a new man in 2014.
– Really? In what way?
– In every way. You will not recognise me by next December. I guarantee you will not believe your eyes. Or ears. Or anything.
– So can you give me an example...?
– Of?
– Of anything?
– It's difficult to know where to start.
– Well, are there any to do with self-improvement in any way? Or a healthier lifestyle? Or becoming less of a burden to society?
– Yes. All of those.
– Excellent. It's good to take this opportunity to iron out the wrinkles in your life and reach your true potential.
– Yes. That was the plan.
– Have you – sorry if this sounds unsupportive – actually made any resolutions at all?
– Of course not. Life is too short. You will have to accept me the way I am. This is as good as it gets.