Napoléon

– Not many episodes left.
– Sorry?
– War & Peace. The television adaptation. It's almost over.
– Of course.
– I've been quite swept away by it all. The sumptuous palaces, the bloody battles, the broken hearts. The Russianness of it all.
– It is certainly very Russian. You should try reading the book.
– It seems a long book.
– It is a long book.
– Whereas the television series is only six hours.
– I think it would take you longer to read the book.
– It seems quite a commitment.
– Well, yes. But then it is a pinnacle of Western literature.
– Many of the great novels seem a little on the wordy side.
– I suppose they are. David Copperfield,  Les Misérables, Don Quixote, Moby-Dick.  Enough to keep you going for a few weeks at least.
– Perhaps something to take on the summer holiday.
– Depending on your luggage allowance.
– I could just put them on one of those electronic reader devices.
– I think that's cheating. It's not the same if you're not lugging around half a ton of paperbacks. Besides, what's the point if no one can see what you're reading?

Think

I was watching a programme about the brain: how it works, how it perceives reality, what reality is. That sort of thing. And I was reading a book by Oliver Sacks: how our perception of the world, our behaviour and beliefs, can be warped by physical insults and injuries to our brains. How anything that could go wrong with our perception probably does go wrong at sometime or other to someone or other, and a bizarrely perturbed reality is the result.

These are deep and occasionally disturbing concepts. We knit together a model of reality in our heads which appears to be an accurate, self-consistent description of how the world around us really is, but is still just a model, a story constructed inside our thoughts. Our most brilliant ideas and most heartfelt emotions are just the result of  myriad electrochemical signals firing across an enormously well-connected neural network that appears limitless in its ability and yet frequently turns out to be confounded or misled or just plain sluggish.

I speak from experience: I seem, in my mildly advancing years, to be taking longer to recall names. Of people, rather than objects. You know they are in there, somewhere. But they don't leap out at you as they once did. Instead you have to go scrabbling around after them, like burrowing through a mound of papers in search of the credit card bill that requires payment. You begin to make notes of this and that, just in case.

The scariest and somehow most hopeful thought is that all these facts and ideas and memories are all somehow still locked away in there. They haven't been forgotten and thrown away with the rubbish. They are just waiting to be unlocked.

Patisserie

– The kitchen seems whiter than usual.
– Yes, sorry about that. I was doing some cooking. Baking, in fact.
– Baking? Bread or cake?
– Here it is.
– Indeed... Bread or cake?
– It's a Victoria Sandwich.
– Of course. I see it now.
– I was thinking it must be the first one I have ever made.
– Well, for a first attempt...
– The recipe said it was fool-proof.
– Yes. You always have to watch our for recipes which say that. It has turned out – interestingly.
– You know how sponges are meant to be light and fluffy? I was thinking that perhaps it hadn't risen as much as I was expecting.
– They are probably tricky things to get right.
– I think the flour had been sitting in the cupboard for a while.
– Yes. That is always something to watch out for. So they tell me.

Chill

– Perhaps not as cold today.
– Sorry?
– I said perhaps it is not as cold today.
– It's just that I couldn't hear you for my teeth chattering.
– In fact, it's positively mild at the moment.
– Perhaps you have just acclimatised and are now insensitive to the cold. As to so much else.
– I turned the central heating up a good two degrees.
– Quite. I must have caught a chill at the weekend.
– That was a bracing walk, wasn't it?
– It's a pity it didn't actually snow. Biting cold winds numbing you from head to toe are all very well, but it's not a patch on getting buried in snow. The few flakes that came down were almost an insult. Do your worst, you wanted to shout at the elements. I dare you to throw all you've got at me.
– Really? I thought you looked frozen as it was.
– Nonsense: I normally have a slightly blue complexion. I was all for a dip in the canal, if only I had brought something to break the ice.
– There wasn't that much ice. The ducks were paddling about quite happily.
– They don't know any better. I suspect they are quite well insulated. It's as if I were to walk along wrapped up in my duvet.
– I thought you were.

Heroes

I fixed the cat flap this afternoon. It had been ripped off last night, torn from its hinges as easily as a damp slice of bread. I have no idea how this happened, what kind of creature did this. All I know is that my cat manfully fought off the intruder, and somehow emerged unscathed. At least physically: who knows what deep trauma she has suffered psychologically but does not possess the words to express. At least she is not off her food; so it can't have been that big a trauma.

On an unrelated note, the passing of David Bowie this week brought back memories of when I was an impressionable youth in the early seventies, with an older sister who bought the albums when they first came out. Space Oddity made a big impression on me. I think at that age I particularly appreciated songs about astronauts.

Force

The house is looking a little emptier now. Though not too empty, as I've still not taken the decorations up into the loft, but left them in a neat pile of boxes at the bottom of the stairs as a final reminder of the recent festivities. Perhaps everything is a little drab, now that the walls are no longer festooned with dazzlingly bright tinselly garlands, nor twinkling faery lights sellotaped around the window frame. It all underlines the generalised dullness associated with this time of the year, when the best you can do is shuffle around the January sales under grey leaden skies, looking for a bargain in the sock department.

But there are some innocent pleasures to be had in this sombre period. I went to see the latest Star Wars last weekend. Usually I only venture out to the cinema to see films starring hobbits or James Bond, so the arrival of the next trilogy in the Star Wars saga will fill a useful gap in my cultural life. It was touching to see again the original cast of Episode IV, though it does make you wonder how well you yourself have aged over the last 35 or so years. Sadly, not as well as Harrison Ford.

Epiphany

– I thought you were taking down the Christmas decorations today?
– I made a start – look, the tree is gone.
– It's over there, in the corner. You've just moved it.
– And removed the baubles. There were a lot of baubles, you know. And tinsel. It all takes time. I did as much as was humanly possible.
– If you say so. Of course, they do say that you risk incurring a lifetime of bad luck if you leave the tree up beyond Twelfth Night.
– They do? Does it count if you take off the baubles and move it into the corner?
– I don't know. Do you want to take that risk?
– Good point... Of course, members of the Eastern churches don't celebrate Christmas till tomorrow.
– And?
– That gives me another two weeks.

New

– A New Year! A new beginning!
– It is the third of January. Not quite the beginning, but a few days in.
– I know, but things have been hectic recently. And three days represents less than 1% of the year, which is well within experimental error. In terms of the spirit of the thing, this is still the beginning.
– If you say so.
– Because, if anything, rash and unrealistic resolutions have probably faltered by now anyway, so it is the ideal time to make some new ones.
– Mine haven't faltered.
– That's good to hear. Dogged perseverance is a noble virtue.
– Mainly because I never made any.
– How did you not make any? Everyone makes resolutions.
– Do they? It all seemed a little futile.
– That's why I was saying how useful it is to begin again – to put aside these understandable, if somewhat feeble, doubts and to look to improving all the glaring deficiencies in your character.
– Thank you. And what are these glaring deficiencies?
– It's not for me to say. But if it's of any help, I happen to have a list.
– You've been writing lists of my faults?
– That comes across as quite negative, you know. Think of them as opportunities.
– You've been writing lists of my opportunities to correct my faults?
– You see, that sounds much more positive.
– It appears to be quite a long list.
– I was trying to prioritise the more noticeable ones.
– And is this particular list before or after prioritisation?
– After, I'm afraid.