At your peril

If I were asked for one piece of advice by more recent newcomers to this world:

Go by your gut feeling. Never ever ignore instinct. The pit of your stomach will tell you where it’s at.

U

Blink and you’ll miss it

All human life is here.

U aka V

Full Stop

You can’t beat it can you? Found myself saying this morning: “My life is now too short to keep pissing in the wind.”

My father, the sailor and ever so practical, will approve. As will any logistics expert. As will Looney and Conrad, the engineers.

There is no rush, guys and guyesses. Take it easy.

U

Exceptions to the rule

I rarely quote people. Other than myself. So much do I love my voice. So highly do I think of myself. Well, someone has to. If you want a job done well do it yourself.

However, and I don’t know who said it so please don’t sue me for copyright, there is, roughly: “We will be introduced in life to what we need at the time”. Indeed.

Which has me reeling as to what I need. Or why, what has been introduced into my life, I need. Yeah, that’s my trouble: Instead of gratefully receiving I question the bearer of gifts. Not that I send anyone out of the door. Make yourself at home. Be my guest. Share my bed if you can’t find a spare mattress.

U

Loud

As bodily functions of the involuntary kind go you can’t beat a sneeze. Or two. Or three. In quick succession

And no I am not allergic to anything.

U

Deja Vue

Have reached critical mass. Can’t remember what I have already said, on this blog and in my and other comment boxes. All I can rely on now is that my readers’ memory is even worse than mine. Not that I bore easily. Myself, that is.

Minds work differently. My mother and I will go over family history and anecdotes ad nauseam. We enjoy it. My father – whose mind is legendary – has to refer to his wife (that’s my mother) for any dates. As do I. Once she is gone both my father and I will be stuffed. We will not know who married whom when why and when was the last time I saw Uncle Whoever and at what occasion. It fills me with dread. What she knows I cannot google.

Would be good if we could preserve people’s brains. Or rather their content. Mind you: The world would be a bit like that pot of semolina in the fairy tale. Overspill. Slowly covering the village in white sticky goo.

U

Knotted

Sweethearts, now we are talking: Are you a starter or a finisher? Not that it matters. Start as much as you like, don’t finish it and your wife, most likely, will ask when you were planning to paint the front door. Luckily I don’t have a wife so my life is just one long roll of unfinished projects slowly dying on me.

Have now reworked that saying that it’s not the winning it’s the taking part that counts. Exactly. My sentiment entirely. Who cares if you still haven’t finished reading Proust’s “In search of lost time”? No one. And don’t mention Ulysses. I don’t want to know. I haven’t even started Ulysses yet. And never will. I can be brutal with myself. Once upon a time I crocheted (that’s needlecraft for the uninitiated) dozens and dozens and dozens of delicious delightful circles (ca. 15 cm diameter each). Different colours. Delicate. I was in awe of myself. So was everyone else. The idea was to join them all together to make a throw to die for. Except I never got round to that last step.

I am brutal (with myself, everyone else may use me as a doormat), so twenty years after my fair maiden fingers had stitched but not joined that which belonged together I binned the lot. Then I forgot all about it. Now the memory (as memories do) has come back to haunt me: Why oh why oh why did I not finish what I had so successfully started, why did I dispose of it, why is memory now torturing me? Whilst memory should be cherished, particularly once you are past recognizing your own offspring, memory is a fickle mistress and should be shown the door before she enters. Here today, gone tomorrow. Only to pop up like a wrinkled prune when your ambition stretches not much further than peace and quiet.

Thank you for that.

U

Hackles rising

I tend to engage. Even with the inane. Which is stupid since even I only have so many hours in the day. Most of which would be spent better than I do.

I am currently battling with myself whether to put forward a well reasoned view, knowing full well  it will make fuck all difference to the recipient.

U

Olympian heights

Some ways one can mend, some shouldn’t be mended.

Not for the first time I have to conclude that I am one of the least competitive people who have ever walked this earth. Everyone appears to enter contests – running, writing, cooking, best dress, biggest fish … you name it, whatever. People will compete, measuring themselves against each other: Gold, silver, bronze. First, second, third. I don’t get it. I so don’t get that I sometimes wonder whether I am looking from the outside in.

Slave to my tendency to wish to get to the bottom (and I mean scraping the barrel) of everything I recently asked myself whether I am just a bloody coward. Whether my refusal to enter any competition, in whatever sphere of life, just means that I’d hate to lose. That in truth, cruel light of day, I am SO competitive that entering a competition gives me the jitters because I can’t face coming second. Yes, enter pause for thought. Go into your heart. Dig. Assess soil. Dig some more. Remove smoke screen.

Fact is I am not competitive. Which is not a virtue but a curse. I don’t give a damn. One can analyze the shit out of it, look at it from all sides like a Rubik cube – fact is, competitions don’t mean anything to me. When I couldn’t avoid being entered into something and I won – it meant nothing to me. Nothing. I look at other people and their joy in the face of ‘success’ in wonderment. Someone once put forward that I – best case scenario – so rest in myself or – worst case scenario – have such arrogance that I don’t need the world’s approval. It is true. I am my one and only judge. Though will take the jury of those dear to me into account before condemning myself to a life of hard labour to condone my sin of  just skipping along.

U

Off with the fairies

As some of you know I am taken with gays. Not lesbians. Lesbians will wink at me and then run. Which is good. Because it saves me from running in the opposite direction. Yes, guys (not gays) there is one of your fantasies crushed.

The first gay, known to me, was a hairdresser. That’s what’s expected of gays. They dress hair. And they do. My boyfriend (living abroad) was dead jealous of Peter, the gay, gorgeous as they come (tall, slender, blond with lined eyelashes). In return Peter hated my boyfriend – in a sort of militant way one doesn’t normally associate with gays. Yes, Peter and I were good. I went down with a fever, close to death’s door, Christmas Eve 1978. Peter took care of me. Unselfish. Kind.

When we went to nightclubs our combined beauty bounced off each other. He was not so gay as not to pass as my boyfriend which saved me a lot of hassle.

Our appartments were next to each other. We shared a wall. With our respective beds on either side of it. Which meant that, in the middle of the night, he’d send me little knocks on the wall, Morse code. A bit like texting nowadays. Only louder. And more reassuring. Though his cat was pretty neurotic: As Burmese with cabin fever are. His boyfriend a fully leather clad complete with motorbike policeman. Thus I was initiated into a world I knew nothing about, still don’t. Then I moved country. I dearly hope Peter didn’t fall prey to the Eighties’ disease. He was such a sweet gentle man, a good friend.

As to GG. Well, I have been there, done that, enjoyed it immensely whilst it lasted for a delicious three years, didn’t get the fucking T shirt – and now I am a damaged case.

John, with his pig, his chickens, his dogs, came along just in time, slowly restoring my faith in gay manhood

As I have confirmed, over at John’s, the Angel thinks my gaydar non existent. True. What’s it to me what you do in the privacy of your own sheets.  My longest standing friend, not known for mincing words, and in an attempt to cure me of GG, said the most foul he could come up with on homosexual men. As did my brother. Where did they learn all this stuff? Think toilets and Hampstead Heath and you’ll get the idea. Well, I love my brother and that macho of machoest friend of mine, so – in an act of self defence and as not to whip their friendships out of shape – I no longer mention GG. Not even to the Angel.

One of the funniest comments ever, on the subject of homosexuality, was when, last year, the Angel came home and, relating the happenings of the previous evening, remarked that one of the host’s friends was SO gay “even the girls found it a  bit much”. Is that brilliant? Or is that brilliant? Let me know.

U