Disappointed and angry

For the benefit of those readers who have the patience and interest to engage with me I will stop recording my ongoing exasperation in blogland soon. I don’t wish to bore you. But the remnants of what is left of a recent saga I will play out. If it costs me. After all, what is blogging if not playing out in public?

In the wake of my last post John has nothing to say other than (left on Nick’s blog):

“Ursula , it’s time to grow up. You’ve been told to leave. You were not invited.
Grow up and stop this persecution complex.” John is great on telling people what to do, what not to do. His kids are lucky that he didn’t have them.

I’ll come back to you, John. It won’t make pleasant reading.

So, I have “a persecution complex”, do I, (among all my other mental health issues prescribed to me by some of John’s circle)?  And you, NICK, have the fucking nerve to let that stand underneath a post in which you lament people in blogland being “psychologized”? Are you actually with it? You THANK him??????????????

Anyway, I take it, in good news, your mother hasn’t died yet. Which is great. Not least because you’ll be able to use that same punchline you used on me AGAIN – on someone else.

If I weren’t such a forgiving person I could kick myself, from here to the next water cooler, that I didn’t stop when I knew I was connecting with a couple of losers. Yes, Nick, as you say, whilst I wouldn’t call myself obtuse, you are right (“Some people are obtuse to the point of idiocy”), I certainly have proven myself to be an idiot by engaging with you (and John). Bloody hell. Never mind. We all have a hall of shame. Mine is pretty empty. So thanks, Nick and John for filling a void.

You, John, you’ll have something to look forward to. In another post. You know, the one when I bow to your command. Who “the fuck (John lingo)” do you think you are, John, to talk to me like that?

U

 

 

 

Anything goes

Where no etiquette exists you have to make it up as you go along. Blogland will, eventually, write its own rule book.

I am not being facetious here. I am in a quandry. Seriously.

A blogger has finally, against all odds, managed to throw me for six. Our blogging relationship died some time ago, briefly resurrected in the last few days.

Why am I floored? I left him a brief message acknowledging my own role in what went wrong within a particular circle of bloggers, at the same time questioning whether he felt any responsibility [for his own role] too.

I received an answer back to the effect that his (very old) mother was dying in hospital (location specified) and for me to “fuck off”.

I am sorry for his imminent loss. However, despite my sympathy, I fail to see how anyone can wallop you with a fact I wasn’t aware off, neither does it make any difference to the rationale of our exchange. I find it vaguely distasteful (and this is not a criticism, it’s just how I feel) to “use” his mother’s possible demise to tell me where the door is.

Am I missing something? Obviously I’ll leave well alone though my first instinct was to impart my good wishes. But having been told to fuck off under the pretext of your parent dying, to me not quite congruent, it’s probably best to do just that [eff off].

Well, who’d have thought it: He finally managed to shut me up and leave me with a bad taste into the bargain.

And for those I need to spell it out for: This is not about point scoring. I am genuinely bewildered.

U

No weddings, two funerals

Doing a quick spot of housekeeping, a couple of points:

“Call me Clive” went down a storm. I commented under his name fully expecting that John who my heartfelt and tender comment was addressed to knew it was me. Not so. Some kind and considered soul, always trying to make peace in the world of blog, emailed him to alert him that kind sweet Clive to whom John, kindly and sweetly, had replied was in fact no other than the evil Ursula. Wow. Same comment took on another hue. Whatever. Clive, poor sausage, someone’s invention briefly appropriated by me, barely saw the light of day before he was silenced by those who so pride themselves on humoUr and banter. Whatever. The funeral was brief. Clive barely noticed.

Second: I’ll let you into a secret if you never wish to receive a comment  from me again. This addresses those who use “blogger”/blogspot.com as their blog platform. Up to now you were given many a choice under what guise to comment, ranging from Name, Blog Name to Anon. Now? Now, or so it appears, you are only given one choice and that is to sign up to Google. Such is my conceited belief that I have something worthy to contribute I tried to register. Email, ok, password, ok. Then they want my life’s potted history – date of birth, gender, and what not. What for? None of that info is a secret yet there is something within me that objects to being asked to jump through hoops just because I’d like to share my thoughts with other bloggers. So, sorry, guys. Count me out.

U

 

Clive, well known

And I thought I’d finally been able to put my Alternative Comment Box to rest. Alas those who complain about me the loudest and give me no room at their assorted blogging inns are the very ones who’ll keep it alive, come peace or high water. I suppose entertainment comes in many guises.

Yesterday, in one of my idle water cooler moments, I strolled over to spineless Nick’s blog. He proudly claims, what a man, that I do give his blog “a wide berth”. As achievements go I wouldn’t spout it from the roof tops, Nick. Doesn’t look good on your blogging CV.

On the whole I can take any blemish in anyone but backbone is a basic requirement to keep my interest afloat. Yes, so berth or not, my sail took me into Nick’s still backwater. To be fair, his blog does have some use. Mainly to amuse me for all the wrong reasons. And I wasn’t disappointed. Among comments left in reply to his last post you will find the following nugget:

“… PS one final remark – I’m only here because I picked up on some bizarre drama around a person with mental health issues on a bullying campaign to you and various other bloggers mainly from UK. I’ve had a good mooch around and all I can find is a wind-up fake account channeling through the title bitch on the blog. Which I think is being put out by a man called Clive who is well known and across the www for identical scam / troll like activities….”

So far so funny. Call me Clive. Well known. And beware; considering my “mental health issues” that some bloggers are so eager to speculate about, nay diagnose long distance, I’d be careful: Ever thought about which place offers itself to bury the hatchet some think I carry? 🙂 Don’t worry. There are limits as to what I sacrifice to low life. Time, yes. Prison and my conscience plaguing me? No. Instead I leave members of my fan club to shooting themselves in the foot. That’s why they barely have a leg left to stand on.

So, there I was, caged in by my mental health issues, trying to locate the hatchet so I can bury it, chuckling away at that priceless comment, the suspense of waiting for spineless Nick’s reply to the above comment sweetly killing me.

I made a bet with myself since there were only three ways it could go: Either Nick would take the comment seriously and agree, take the comment seriously and defend my honour, or take it for what I believe it to be, namely a bit of fun. My money was on Nick taking the comment seriously – because his imagination does have narrow limits, yet, despite his spinelessness, putting up some defense for me. Good job I kept my stake low. I lost. He took it seriously and gravely concurred, other than to the my being a man bit.

Oh, Nick. I know you aren’t the youngest chop on the blog but you really don’t get it, do you. Think about it: Someone posting under “Anonymous” (no blog), signing off with “John” satirizing my persona as perceived in the starved of wit Outer Siberia of Blogland. And both you and glitzy Bijou fell for it.

And no, Anon John wasn’t me though I wish it were because the idea and execution rather brilliant. I have a good inkling who is behind the joke but that is for me to cherish and for you to guess.

Hugs and hisses,

Call me Clive

 

 

 

Coincidence?

This post is dedicated to Ramana who is a great fan of synchronicity, mentioning it often. Call it synchronicity, call it coincidence, call it what you like … but here, dearest Ramana, is one to trump them all. Spooky …

A few weeks ago we had a spot of flash flooding at midnight coming through the ceiling.  I don’t want to relive the experience. Let’s just say there was a lot of water – not least in my study. A frog and a goldfish would have been very happy.

Water and paper only mix in as far as they bond like glue. My idea of a marriage made in hell. I did what I do best: Limit the damage. I even managed (don’t be sad) to avoid electrocuting myself as water trickling into extensions leads and their sockets sizzled, giving off ominous smoke signals. If there is one thing I am proud of  in myself it’s how I manage a crisis, any crisis. Methodically. Stay calm now, go into (after) shock, if necessary, later. So, yes, switched off the electrics at the mains, did my salvage work in the romantic glow of an industrial strength torch.

So where does synchronicity come into it? Simple. In the aftermaths of Noah’s Ark I have been reorganizing my study, boxes of photos, all my papers, not least letters. Letters which I have kept from the day dot. All sorted by sender/addressee. Yesterday afternoon I re-read those written by my father. I nearly didn’t because they were strong tobacco at the time (twenty/thirty years ago), nothing to revisit in a hurry unless you want to upset yourself. I don’t know what came over me. I steeled myself and read. Holy shit.

And here it is: My father and I haven’t had any contact for about nine months. None. And I wasn’t going to ever instigate any again till he bloody well himself picks up the phone or writes or something. Which,  my mother once said to me, “he won’t”. Well, fine. So be it. Why is it always me doing the running? Enough.

Remember, I re-read his correspondence yesterday afternoon. Four hours later, as if by magic, my father sends me a tentative email asking for renewed contact. If that isn’t synchronicity then I don’t know what is. And the only reason I didn’t fall off my chair in wonderment is because a) my sense of balance is superb and b) I was standing.

Awaiting a round of awe and applause,

U

Real

My mind firmly nailed to the cross all bloggers have to bear [blogging] one question:

Some bloggers appear to make a distinction between “real” people and those they meet in cyberspace.

Do you?

U

Opposites and their attractions

What do you do if you want to go wean yourself off something – can be anything, not just hard core addiction? Say, for instance, and I know why my father pops into my mind this minute, you were addicted to being obsessively tidy – would you be able to leave alone for a week, not to say a WEAK, and see where it leads? Would you? Or would you just procrastinate?

I am a going-cold-turkey type of person: Just do it. And a procrastinator.

Cold Turkey and Procrastinator: The combo from hell. My Procrastinator (Motto: Tomorrow) being top dog, Cold Turkey (Motto: NOW, and determined) being strung along for the ride. Myself? I am in the fascinating grip of conflicting interests wrestling it out.

Around New Year 2017/18 I decided, for mostly rational and many valid ones too, to give blogging a miss. And what a fine mess my Procrastinator made of it, Cold Turkey (amply supported by the Angel who thinks blogging a waste of time) being on the loosing wicket. A fly caught in a sticky spider’s web has nothing on me.

So, what do you do when you feel you need to break a habit that brings you nothing but joy?

U

 

In search of balance and fairness

I’ll break up this post not only into paragraphs as one does but, for ease and accommodating those whose brain doesn’t work in more than bite size, into snippets. Each with its own header. A sort of mix and match, pick and choose Bonanza.

Snippet One

John left me comments. Two of them to the effect that I shouldn’t “badmouth” other bloggers. It’s a good job that I am who I am. Calm and blessed with an inordinate sense and appreciation of the ridiculous.

Snippet Two – trigger warning: Character Assessment.

The Resting in France Artiste, being given John’s advice, would be foaming at the mouth, trashing the place, stomping around, declaring all and sundry, not least me, STUPID.

Snippet Three – trigger warning: Character Building.

The Sculptor? With him you never know. He is considerably more refined – if ill mannered – than The Resting in France Artiste. In absence of anything more original and not applying any [humour] himself he’d just accuse me of lacking sense of humour. It’s his default mode. Stuck on the same track as crackling LPs were back when he was young (the Sixties?). Considering that the Sculptor works with not easily beaten into shape materials one would have thought his scope to communicate broader. And it is [broader, his scope]. It’s just he can’t be arsed. Don’t say I don’t give people the benefit of the doubt.

Snippet Four – trigger warning: Descaling.

How would Joyful Rachel have reacted being reprimanded by John or anyone else? Probably by closing down her blog for five minutes, making a big play of it, to then regale us with her various and never to be doubted insights into the world’s machinations. I can’t wait till she has wrestled down Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung). Shouldn’t take her more than two and half days max to tell us that Nietzsche’s household was run by his sister. And wait for the horse. In Turin.

Snippet Five – trigger warning: Reflection whilst sitting in A&E

Who knew that there is such joy in taking the piss? I never did till the clique, as I call RiFA, JR and the Sculptor took a shining to me – the three of them propped up by John. I promised to stop calling John The Samaritan so I won’t. A pity in many ways because John is a good guy. Within their clique he has been given, or possibly sought, the role of care giver. He is the one running around with band aids, bandaging Rachel at every corner. She must be a work in progress. I look forward to the day, John having run out of bandages, the Sculptor taking a chisel to her stone to find the real Rachel underneath all those plasters and tears turned to salt. Let’s hope him unmasking her will make her smile. Just the once.

Snippet Six – trigger warning: Summoning up

John, and I mean it, I am touched that you engage with me despite dire threats to the contrary. Alas, and it made me smile, you asking me to not “bad mouth” members of your innermost circle is like the milkman asking the cowherd to stop milking. Do you really want me to spell it out, in writing, what the lot of you have dished out towards me? It’s a long long long list of many memorable quotes (we are talking years) making both distressing and amusing reading.

Snippet Seven – trigger warning: Assessment

Unlike you, John, I don’t need to be liked. So your foreboding that my readership doesn’t like me for what I am doing here holds no incentive for me. Either people see me for the person I am, or they see me as your lot does. Your lot which keeps BAD, nay, FOUL mouthing me with gay abandon or, in absence of anything original or convincing to say, just deleting me.

Snippet Eight – trigger warning: Self Awareness

Reflecting on all that’s gone before I can see one shortcoming of mine, John: I do NOT know when a lost cause is a lost cause. I, literally, do see it as one of my potential and occasional downfalls that I appear unable to give up on anyone. I do see the good in everyone and I pursue it even if they’d rather I didn’t. Looking from the outside in, it’s a strange trait of mine considering how most people appear to be able to shed others like so much dandruff if they don’t toe the line. I don’t, I can’t. Sometimes I wish I could but then I wouldn’t be me. And I like being me. Being me largely joyous, sometimes painful – by which I mean shouldering stuff others shrug off.

Snippet Nine – trigger warning: The End

To summon up: I like you, John. I think you occasionally misguided but I don’t think there is a rotten to your core bone in your body. You mean well – albeit you occasionally going about it the wrong way. I won’t ask whether you’d like me to elaborate because I know you’d rather I didn’t. What you don’t appear to see, with regards to the conduct of your clique towards me, that I do have a point. Fact is, no one is all black, no one is all white. To slander me – not my views, MY PERSONA – as your lot has done is regrettable. It marks the lot of you as neither robust nor particularly original. At least you, John, don’t claim to have any artistic leanings whereas The Resting in France Artiste, Sketchy Rachel and Sisyphus are about as sensitive to others as a bull sorting their assorted china.

Snippet Ten – trigger warning: Dead End

If none of you can’t see why your attitude gives me reason to try and instill some [reason] into you then, I agree, I am on a fool’s errant.

I AM on a fool’s errant. Still, as FOS (father of son) used to say, as only an Englishman can: Ursula sees a joke where other people’s humour has lost its way in the dark.

His actual words were less poetic but I am sure you won’t get the gist. Anyway, it’s why I still haven’t given up on the Sculptor. I firmly believe that if he got over himself, regrouped and saw himself as I see him, which is in a favourable light, we could become friends. Maybe I give him too much slack. But I do see potential.

Rachel? After that last little interlude a few days ago – I left her a heartfelt note, she responded rather touchingly and full of feeling, only for her to, eventually, take down both my comment and her reply. Maybe, of course, the Sculptor, as he once asked you, John, and didn’t you jump to attention and followed through, told her to not give me “any oxygen”. I don’t wish to elevate the Sculptor to what he doesn’t amount to but he definitely has the makings of a Svengali in training.

Snippet Eleven – trigger warning: Rope

Dear John (and I mean the “dear”), I could go on recording my take on what’s happened in your clique’s stagnant pond but life beckons. And all of yours short too. Lives that is – I am sure your respective narratives are labyrinthine. If you need to take a short cut remember the Gordian Knot. Some take a sword to a tangled web; I, myself, prefer applying sailors’ knots. The intricate ones that unravel with little more than a yank of your hand. It’s an art

U

Debt to pleasure

Conceited bastard that I am I rarely quote anyone, preferring to make up my own “shit” (reference John’s assessment of my merits). There are exceptions to my rule and here is one, courtesy of Frederic Mistral:

“Aioli epitomises the heat, the power and the joy of Provencal sun, but it has another virtue – it drives away flies.”

Made me think of the limitations of communicating in the virtual world: How not so much DRIVE away flies as not to ATTRACT them in the first place. Or, worse, not to BECOME a pesky fly yourself.

On this happy note I am certain the aioli I am just about to make won’t curdle.

U

 

Wittgenstein’s Poker

Pope said “a little learning is a dangerous thing”. Depends how you define dangerous. I am more interested where little learning leaves the learner and their audience.

Yes, I know I currently do my blog’s name honour by succumbing to anything that lends itself to bitch about. There is a blogger who, some months ago, signed up for a dilettante’s course in philosophy. Better late than never. Definition of dilettante: “A person who dabbles in a subject for enjoyment but without serious study”.  That’s great. Not that she enjoys her course.

Dabble for enjoyment? I once grew horseradish for enjoyment. Little did I know that some years later some pompous old fart (one of his “friends” words not mine) would come along and take offence (to the point of, yes, deleting my comment), that I bloody recognized the flowers horseradish produces when POF (pompous old fart) had predicted that he’d be 99 % certain that NO one would guess his “guess the flower” competition. I didn’t even guess. I KNEW. It was bad enough that his 99 % certainty was shattered; far worse that it was me, of all people, who did so. Anyway, POF edited all comments so that it appears that I am a cheat who pipped one of his worshippers to the post. I have little hope of them getting over it.

Yes, back to the subject. Dilettantes. As it happens the person I pipped to the post also happens to be the one who took up said philosophy class. In my late teens and early twenties, indeed to this day, I have seen people sweat, weep and generally die in increments trying to get to grips with Wittgenstein. Not this little beauty of a dilettante. She read Wittgenstein’s biography in two days or so flat and now is an authority on Wittgenstein’s take on the world. Not that that makes her dangerous (see above). It just makes her look somewhat … What? You decide …

It gave me great joy that one of her blogging “friends” (the Sculptor if you must know) picked her up on her hyperbole. Say what you like about the Sculptor but when he is in fine form he is in fine form. He was in such fine form that our Wittgenstein expert didn’t actually pick up on his subtly ridiculing her.

Today, her blog entry is on Bertrand Russell. I have no info as to how long it took her to read HIS autobiography (let’s say a week, max, Speedy Gonzales she is) but rest assured she now knows all there is to know about Bertrand Russell. Not least how often he was married. That’s it: If you want to know about someone’s mindset delve into their love life.

On a point of housekeeping: For every post I publish I have written at least twenty – too risque to see the day of light. This can’t go on. I need to find a new patch with a more benign blog name to divert my attention from the vacuous. I don’t know: White Noise?

U