Trying to be idle

Worcestershire, March 2025

I am consciously trying to fit less into my days, but it isn't easy. I've just spent a happy hour browsing the different live venues in my area for films, shows, theatre and live music, and booked two events, one for later this month and the other in October. On the other hand, on Thursday evening I am considering neither going to badminton nor supporting our introductory course to meditation and Buddhism. But I have agreed to lead the Buddhist group on Tuesday, because nobody else is available, so how could I refuse? (Update - the person who was supposed to send out the email about the Tuesday evening meeting failed to do so, so only three people came and one of them was an hour late. So I'm saving my idea for next time I'm asked to lead.)

I am no nearer to solving this puzzle of how to spend my time. Everything is flexible given that I don't have a paid job, but there is quite a bit that needs to get done - things like insurance renewal, house maintenance, keeping the garden in check - so I find it difficult to be at home doing nothing. For a while I tried to abandon the lists that keep track of the jobs that are waiting, because I thought it might make it easier to do nothing, but instead I was always on edge worrying that I would miss a commitment or a deadline. There is a good deal of satisfaction in crossing jobs off the list, but the list never gets any shorter. I don't know what the answer is.

One of the jobs on the list relates to my progress towards ordination. I'm meeting three good friends who have agreed to support me in this, and to get the most out of the meeting it's been suggested that I write a kind of report. There's a framework for this in eight sections, but I'm finding it extremely tedious - in fact, I'm writing this as a distraction before going back to carry on with section five. It will be easier next time.

Given that I am determinedly trying to do less, there's not much more to say here. I've been to see mum and we had a lovely trip to Lidl, I've been working in the garden, watching some tennis, some films and reading, board games, badminton and volunteering. It's interesting that this is what I've been up to when I'm trying not to do too much.

What I've been reading

We
by Yevgeny Zamyatin

narrated by Toby Jones

"In the totalitarian society of the OneState of the great Benefactor, in a glass-enclosed city of absolute straight lines, is a world where people are numbers, there are no individuals, only numbers. Even nature has been defeated, banished behind the Green Wall."

A precursor to Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, this is a Russian author imagining a future in a rational world where Freedom and Happiness are considered to be mutually incompatible, and happiness is produced by the removal of freedom. It's another Classic that has a literary style, so quite a bit of political discourse at the cost of plot, so I can't say that I enjoyed it.

Rubyfruit Jungle
by Rita Mae Brown

narrated by Anna Paquin

"Beautiful, funny and bright, Molly figures out at a young age that she will have to be tough to stay true to herself in 1950s America. In her dealings with boyfriends and girlfriends, in the rocky relationship with her mother and in her determination to pursue her career, she will fight for her right to happiness."

I think it makes a great difference with audiobooks whether I listen to them in just a few sittings or over a longer period. I'm sure that I enjoyed this one more because I didn't leave great gaps between listens. It was a fairly ordinary story about a woman growing up as a lesbian in the American South and then later in New York, and nothing wrong with it at all. Unusually, the narration wasn't as good as usual because there was almost no difference in the voices of different characters.

Piranesi
by Susanna Clarke

"Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has. In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls."

I'm not sure what to say about this - it starts in a magical realist way, narrated with a very particular, naïve voice, and then it starts to become interwoven with a modern voice, and it all comes together at the end except that the mystery is never explicitly solved. What exactly happened remains mysterious, but slightly less mysterious by the end. I think I liked it. It was certainly much more fun to read than The Satanic Verses.

The Blue Flower
by Penelope Fitzgerald

narrated by Thomas Judd

"Set in Germany at the very end of the eighteenth century, the passionate and idealistic Fritz needs his father’s permission to announce his engagement to his ‘heart’s heart’, his ‘true Philosophy’, twelve-year-old Sophie von Kühn. It is a betrothal which amuses, astounds and disturbs his family and friends."

Another literary 'Classic' book which failed to provide any interest or engagement, despite being based on the early life of a German poet and philosopher. Perhaps if I were interested in German poetry or philosophy...? Despite this I'm finding it very enjoyable to be able to borrow audio books freely from the library, even though the range is a little limited and four out of five books I'm interested in are out on loan. I'm going to start experimenting with the 'Reserve book' option next.

The Satanic Verses
by Salman Rushdie

"Just before dawn one winter's morning, a hijacked jumbo jet blows apart high above the English Channel. Through the debris of limbs, drinks trolleys, memories, blankets, and oxygen masks, two figures fall towards the sea: Gibreel Faishta, India's legendary movie star, and Saladin Chamcha, the man of a thousand voices."

I get the feeling that I would have got more out of this book if I knew more about Islam and the Koran and the Prophet Mahound, but given that I don't know a great deal, I didn't get much enjoyment in the reading. In fact, I'd describe it as quite a slog.

The Group
by Mary McCarthy

"Eight Vassar graduates meet a week after graduation to watch one of The Group get married. After the ceremony, the women begin their adult lives - traveling to Europe, tackling the worlds of nursing and publishing, and finding love and heartbreak in the streets of New York City."

Another from the Classics list, and this time it was rather interesting. Written in 1963 about a group of women graduates in 1933, it sheds light on that era without being overtly political. I found it enthralling.

The Art of Statistics: Learning from Data
by David Spiegelhalter

"Drawing on real world problems to introduce conceptual issues, we are shown how statistics can help us determine the luckiest passenger on the Titanic, whether serial killer Harold Shipman could have been caught earlier, and if screening for ovarian cancer is beneficial."

I can't deny that although the book is interesting, it was also very hard going, and I skimmed quite a lot of the explanations and equations. At one point he writes something like "people often say that probability is a difficult and unintuitive idea... after forty years of researching and teaching in this area, I have finally concluded that it is because probability really is a difficult and unintuitive idea." Which pretty much sums up the book.

Oh, the irony

Bear and ragged staff, Lord Leycester Hospital, March 2025

I've been away on retreat for a week, a different sort of retreat that involved classical musicians. It was quite hard work, because aside from the scheduled times that we met and talked there were other times when we played to each other or practised, alone or in groups. There were eight of us, although one person had managed to sign up and join the retreat despite not being a musician at all. This started off as a bit of an issue, but she served as our audience for much of the time. The instruments included two violins, classical guitar, flute, clarinet, a singer, and two pianists, one of whom is a real live composer and performer, so that was quite exciting.

There was another large group of people at the retreat centre at the same time and we staged a performance for them, which added to the amount of stress and work involved. There was audience involvement in the form of singing rounds, and I accompanied a singer by playing a violin part on the clarinet for a strange setting of a folk song by Holst, which had bars of various lengths between 3 and 8 beats, very much at random as far as I could tell. And, somehow (and I'm still baffled as to how I let this happen) I ended up transposing my part even though the singer could easily have sung a tone lower. 

I also featured in a quartet playing three Handel trios that were written for recorders but we played on two violins, flute and clarinet. This was the highlight of the evening for me, because while we began each piece together, very soon everything started to fall apart and as the person with the most experience of this type of ensemble playing I had to try and work out how to get us to end together. It still makes me smile when I think about it. The audience, needless to say, were very supportive.

So that was the retreat. In other news, UJ is back from a stint in Kyiv, I'm still avoiding all news media, the car passed its MOT, I'm still volunteering on Tuesdays at the Birmingham Buddhist Centre, and I took a car load of garden waste and GRUHI boxes to the tip and to the recycling centres. But I suppose I'm avoiding the most significant event, which arose from a visit to my GP. Having reached an age with a zero at the end, I thought it would be a good idea to have a general check-up. She measured my blood pressure, which was good and low, and sent me off for routine blood tests.

I phoned up for the results because they didn't appear on the NHS app or my GP's online platform, and the receptionist was happy to send them through. I was expecting bad news on the cholesterol front, but while not perfect that was fine. What I wasn't expecting was a blood sugar result that put me in the pre-diabetic zone. Ironic, no? So I must finally take seriously the fact (which I have probably known for some months) that despite my badminton and Muscles the Personal Trainer the chocolate, Wotsits and cake have taken their toll. Now to attempt to follow the advice I would have given to my patients...

Downs and ups and downs

Lord Leycester Hospital, Warwick, March 2025

At mum's house she has discovered that water is leaking under the kitchen floor. We've noticed for some time that the paint on one of the walls kept mysteriously bubbling, and various other leaks have come about and been addressed over the years. This may be a new leak or a continuation of a previous one, but now we have started the process of investigation. It is proceeding much more slowly than is ideal, but there's a lot of waiting for people to respond.

My concert went off with the impossible saxophone part and the clarinet solo going as well as can be hoped for. It's been a while since I've needed to try particularly hard on the clarinet, and it really reminded me of the joy of making it sound as good as possible. I have added another item to one of my lists - I'd like to raise my game and play music at a higher standard than I can in the current group. This cannot happen until I give up something else, and given everything that's going on this may be some way off...

...because I'm still doing too much, and this week it caught up with me and started to actually make me feel unwell, to the extent that I took a Covid test just in case. It was negative, but that just confirmed that this situation isn't arising from external factors but from my own choices. I talked this over with two different groups of close friends, and thankfully one of these discussions allowed me to give away one of my commitments: someone else volunteered to support our introductory course on Meditation and Buddhism in my place. The following morning my head felt fresher and my aches and pains had disappeared. Perhaps I have learned my lesson. Until the next time.

My recovery in mood was short-lived because the people who rent us the hall for our group notified us that not only had we managed to leave the back door wide open, but also the key was now missing. At the time of writing it has not yet been found.

June under way

Stoke-on-Trent, October 2024

I'm still in this period of over-commitment, which is likely to last until the end of June. My week's retreat in July has been cancelled because of low bookings, the retirement of our cook (who collapsed and has received a replacement heart valve), and the retreat centre team needing a break. This is a great shame because it's a retreat that I love, but will give me back some much needed free time in July.

The week of volunteering at the end of May went very well. There were two new volunteers, one of whom reminded me a little of myself at the start of my volunteering career, in that I have now become much more self-aware and, I think, more patient. It's only taken five decades for me to fully take on board that sometimes other people know better than I do.

From there I went to York to stay with a friend for the weekend, where among other treats we ate a wonderful Thai lunch and walked quite a lot. There's very little parking available near my friend's flat, so I booked a parking spot which advertised itself as being 11 minutes away. What I didn't notice was that it was 11 minutes away by car, so about 40 minutes walking, which was through a nature reserve on a beautiful evening so I didn't mind. Except that the owner of the parking spot phoned at about 11.30pm to say that I'd parked in the wrong place, so I had to move the car next morning. I'm definitely going by train next time.

At the Birmingham Buddhist Centre, where I'm volunteering on Tuesdays, my efforts to rationalise storage has been much appreciated. I've cleared out the fridge, two food storage cupboards, a cupboard that was completely overrun with plastic tubs without matching lids, and most recently, the freezer, where there were a couple of drawers containing nothing but old bread. Looking at 'Use by' and 'Best before' dates I've encouraged the team to use up items that are past their dates but probably still OK, like unopened jars of pickled beetroot, a whole bag of porridge oats, and a half-finished bag of dried apricots. In the freezer there are four large tubs of unlabelled leftovers, which (unless someone else wants them) I will take home to play Lucky Dip Dinner.

There's been more action on the periodontal surgery, which is uncomfortable and horrible at the time but remarkably pain-free afterwards, needing paracetamol for only 24 hours. Review at three months will give an idea about prognosis, but as this review will be done by the periodontal surgeon I doubt that he will consider it unsuccessful.

Lola II and I attended mum's cousin's wife's funeral at the Crematorium and the service was really good - the tributes paid by the celebrant, widower and friend were wonderful. I was glad to have Lola II with me otherwise I'd have had to talk to a lot more people I didn't know. I was asked to take some photographs, and now I'd better sort them out and send them over.

What I've been reading

Everything is Illuminated
by Jonathan Safran Foer

narrated by Scott Shina and Jeff Woodman

"A young man arrives in the Ukraine, clutching in his hand a tattered photograph. He is searching for the woman who fifty years ago saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Unfortunately, however, he is aided in his quest by Alex, a translator with an uncanny ability to mangle English into new forms; a 'blind' old man haunted by memories of the war; and a dog named Sammy Davis, Jr, Jr."

There was a slight hitch in the reading of this book, because the audiobook service offered by the library was being upgraded and led to the app shutting down while I was actually listening to the book while driving. Much frustration ensued until I could stop and follow various links and I discovered what was going on, and then had to wait until I could get to the library to sort it out. But despite this difficulty it was a fascinating book, although harrowing at times. I think I untangled the different stories and time periods, and very much enjoyed the mangling of the English language by the Ukrainian 'translator'.

Hard Times
by Charles Dickens

narrated by Bertie Carvel

"Father to Tom and Louisa, Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy, utilitarian school board superintendent, shapes the minds of all the young children, including his own, with the exception of only one: the circus-born Sissy Jupe."

Mildly interesting facts: this is Dickens' only book that doesn't include any scenes set in London, and is Jeremy Paxman's favourite book by Charles Dickens. What can I say - it's Dickens, he writes rather well, it entertained me during several long car journeys and the narration was excellent.

Mistress of the Art of Death
by Ariana Franklin

"In Cambridge a child has been murdered, others are disappearing, and King Henry has called upon a renowned Italian investigator to find the killer - fast. What the king gets is Adelia, his very own Mistress of the Art of Death."

A book off my shelves for a change, and it's a really good murder mystery set in the 10th century. Now I have to decide: is it good enough to go back on the shelf of books to keep?

Passing
by Nella Larsen

narrated by Tessa Thompson

"Clare - light-skinned, beautiful, and charming - tells Irene how, after her father's death, she left behind the black neighbourhood of her adolescence and began passing for white, hiding her true identity from everyone, including her racist husband."

Quite a short book, this occupied just a couple of car journeys and was very good in that situation. Though I can't claim to know much about black people passing for white in racist America of the 1920's, it was clearly a big deal with all sorts of social consequences, so informing as well as entertaining.

Noughts and Crosses
by Malorie Blackman

narrated by Paul Chequer and Syan Blake

"Sephy is a Cross – a member of the dark-skinned ruling class. Callum is a nought – a ‘colourless’ member of the underclass who were once slaves to the Crosses. Against a background of prejudice and distrust, intensely highlighted by violent terrorist activity by Noughts, a romance builds between Sephy and Callum."

This is a book for young adults, and narrated by voices that sound appropriate to that age. The content is pretty strong, particularly the ending. I certainly found it compelling but I'm not entirely sure that I liked it - the narrative voices put me off a little but I don't think that was the only reason. And I'm definitely not the target audience.

Lolly Willowes
by Sylvia Townsend Warner

narrated by Olivia Darnley

"Lolly Willowes, so gentle and accommodating, has depths no one suspects. When she suddenly announces that she is leaving London and moving, alone, to the depths of the countryside, her overbearing relatives are horrified. She rejects the life that society has fixed for her in favour of freedom and the most unexpected of alliances."

This is another from the Classics list, and was frankly disappointing. Two thirds of it was bland and the final third just nonsensical, consisting of the lead character's interactions with Satan. The author is named as a 'leading feminist writer', but I wouldn't say she is a good feminist writer, at least based on this work.

Up to date

May 2025

I'm about three weeks behind with blogging, but this week I'm volunteering at the usual retreat centre, leaving my regular weekly commitments behind. So, a bit more time in hand. 

Back at the beginning of May, mum, Sister D, Lola II and I headed off to the woodland cemetery where dad is buried. The idea was to plant some flowers on the grave and to think about what wording we'd like on the stone, but we discovered that the grave had already been planted - when and by whom is still a mystery. We added some daffodil bulbs and scattered some poppy seeds, and planted the primulas we'd brought on a neighbouring grave. Maybe that's how dad's grave acquired his plants? Anyway, it was a surprisingly jolly outing with plenty of black humour.

After a weekend in Nottingham the next item of note was the first of two periodontal surgeries to try and improve the chronic problem of my gum disease. As before, it was unpleasant and uncomfortable, but with little pain either during or after the procedure. I'm not convinced that the infection will not return, and perhaps it already has, due to the difficulty of keeping the site free of food debris. 

Then there was an online retreat over a weekend, when three of us took ourselves off to a luxurious house not very far away to do the retreat together. I rigged up the TV with a webcam and hooked it up to my laptop so we could sit together for the general sessions and we split up into separate rooms for the parts where we were in different groups. We cooked and ate meals together, had some deep conversations and generally looked at life in a different way for a weekend. We all agree that it's a fine way to do this type of retreat - I don't sign up to do the online ones at home because I'd be too distracted with all the things needing my attention in my own house.

The next event was a trip to London where I met up with Lola II and Mr M for a Nepali lunch and a walk around in Woolwich, followed by a film in a cinema which has a membership scheme a bit like a London club. Next day Lola II and I went into town for brunch, she went on to one of her volunteering shifts and I met an old school friend before going on to visit mum. Then came the trip to Manchester that I wrote about last time, and a busy week leading up to this stint of volunteering. I've mostly been in the kitchen, which is the work I particularly enjoy, often in charge of the meals for those with allergies and intolerances.

There's plenty more that I'm looking forward to in the coming weeks so I don't expect I'll be able to keep on top of blogging, but that's life and I'm making the most of it.

Pointing

April 2025

Glf is a very good bloke as well as a bricklayer and did a wonderful job on my wall on the pub side, nearly four years ago now. So when I needed the chimneys pointing, he should have been my first port of call instead of the cowboys who persuaded me that they could do it without scaffolding.

The job involved a lot of coordination between the Glf and the company with the scaffolding, which led to a few weeks' delay.  They all turned up first thing on Friday to case the joint, plans were made and the scaffolding started to go up for the first chimney, which took all day. It was decided that a separate scaffold tower was needed for the other chimney, so that was erected the following Thursday. 

I actually climbed up to the top to have a look, and sat for a while just experiencing the discomfort of fear. I couldn't manage to take any pictures that time, but I overcame the fear and went up again a few days later and did take some of my own pictures - the weather was beautiful and I had a lovely view of my neighbours' gardens.

Glf appears to have done a similarly good job on the chimneys, and even came to my rescue and fixed things when the scaffold people broke my key safe. He wasn't able to help with a leak that is discolouring the ceiling right next to the front door, but has given me some contact details for roofers who may be able to help.

I haven't yet contacted the roofers because, in time-honoured fashion, I have taken on too much and have passed peak efficiency into a state of frazzled panic in case I forget anything important. I was looking forward to a clear weekend when I hoped to catch up, but sadly a family member died and I was called away. Lola II came with me and made the weekend much better (for both visitors and for host, I think) and we were even able to be useful by helping to look at possible venues for the food and drink after the cremation. 

With a stint of volunteering to come, I am trying to do just one thing at a time. When I remember to calm my mind, everything is fine.

Cooking

March 2025

I'm going through a particularly busy period at the moment, again (when will I ever learn?) One of the things I've been doing is a whole lot of cooking for people - there have been many recent cooking events, two of which included someone whose dietary requirements are the most restrictive I've had to deal with. 

The first meal was at the Birmingham Buddhist Centre, where I'm going to be volunteering on Tuesdays when I'm not doing something previously arranged (like volunteering elsewhere, staying with friends, and retreats). This is to cover for someone who's gone off to be ordained, so it's going to continue until mid July. The people who work there (including the one with the severely restricted diet) have a team lunch (which I will attend) followed by a team meeting (which I won't) and they take turns to cook. I'm only doing the cooking on alternate occasions that I'm there, along with jobs like testing the fire alarm, a bit of cleaning, and replacing consumables like toilet rolls, washing up liquid and hand soap. Having done a quick stock take, next time I'm there I'm going to go through the store cupboard to release some of the older jars back into the wild.

At the end of the day of that meal, for our regular weekly Buddhist meeting I'd offered supper to our visiting speaker who was coming from Milton Keynes. He got caught up in the terrible traffic mess nearby that has been caused by a large bridge installation for HS2, so it took him twice as long as it should. As well as inviting the team, I also invited someone who hasn't been to Lola Towers before, and he got completely lost, gave up, went to our meeting venue and missed supper altogether. He was leading the meeting the following week, so I gave him another chance.

The third cooking event was as a result of a fundraising auction, which I don't seem to have mentioned before. The Birmingham Buddhist Centre is in dire need of renovation, and one of the fundraising ideas was an auction of activities - things that people like to do that others could pay for. There were offers of lessons in paddleboarding, sourdough cooking, poetry, swimming, snooker, and crochet; there were guided walks in and around Birmingham; there were home-made items including clothing, jewellery, art and toys; there were press night tickets at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre; there were meals at a local cafe. I won a guided walk around Worcester, and I offered a three-course vegetarian or vegan meal for six, which went for £90 to one of the Buddhist communities in Birmingham, where six people live together in a shared house.

They wanted vegan food, and although the person with the dietary restrictions said she was fine to do some of it herself, I felt as a matter of principle that I should include her. So I created a soup out of all the vegetables that were on the list, then a deconstructed pasta dish that included gluten-free lasagne sheets and buckwheat, and a lemon tart made with gluten-free flour. Lola II had told me to remember to take pictures, which I remembered just as the last mouthful of the lemon tart was being savoured (it really was a good one). So it went entirely unrecorded for posterity.

The next cooking event was for the chap who hadn't managed to find Lola Towers the previous week and involved another three people too, and then the following evening I offered supper to another friend. And this weekend I've been away with two other friends, and we were cooking for one another again. Now I'm ready for a break from cooking.

What I've been reading

For Whom the Bell Tolls
by Ernest Hemingway

"The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerrilla unit in the mountains of Spain, tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal."

Perhaps not the most suitable reading for a Buddhism-centred solitary retreat, but what a writer! Within the first few pages it felt as though I had known these characters in the middle of the brutalism of the Spanish civil war for ever. How they behaved was completely realistic, and despite all the killing they were not dehumanised. This is one of the best books I've ever read.

Spike: The Virus vs. The People - the Inside Story
by Jeremy Farrar with Anjana Ahuja

"Jeremy Farrar was one of the first people in the world to hear about a mysterious new respiratory disease in China - and to learn that it could readily spread between people. A member of the SAGE emergency committee, Farrar was a key decision-maker at the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic amid great uncertainty, fast-moving situations and missed opportunities."

Given to me by Sister D, this book was written just as the pandemic was starting to peter out by a couple of scientific insiders - the Director of the Wellcome Trust, assisted by a Financial Times science columnist. It describes how Covid-19 evolved and was handled internationally, and set this alongside the management of the pandemic in the UK. Despite his flagrant disregard of the rules that he helped to set, Dominic Cummings seems to be the only person within Government circles who actually understood the importance of the science and attempted to direct policy accordingly, rather than focussing on the politics (Johnson), being incompetent (Hancock) or keeping very quiet (Gove). As a book, it is obvious that it was written in a hurry by someone who actually understands and cares about the effects of a pandemic on people rather than politics, so a slightly dispiriting story to read.

Passage
by Connie Willis

"Psychologist Dr Joanna Lander has spent two years at Mercy General Hospital studying patients who have been declared clinically dead but then revived. Many have had near-death experiences, NDEs, which are remarkably similar the world over. Then brilliant young neurologist Richard Wright discovers a way to induce an NDE using psychoactive drugs."

This is the last Connie Willis book that I own other than the two that I love, and I won't be keeping it. It's slightly less annoying than the others I've read recently, but she still needs a good editor to get rid of at least a third of the pages, mostly those containing accounts of the characters simply walking, running or driving from one place to another. But at least there's a little bit of substance here, with a thought-provoking idea of what near death experiences might be leading to an imaginative account of what might actually happen after death.

Orbital
by Samantha Harvey

"A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans."

An unusual book given to me by a friend. The language is very rich and colourful, full of observation of the earth from space as well as detail of life as an astronaut. At one point I became so caught up in the inevitability of the end of the Earth that I despaired (although that's absolutely not what the book is about). A strange and immersive experience.