Ah, sweet days off. Done loads of jobs today, all of them rewarding, a few of them fun.
I trimmed my box hedge around the grassy knoll. Apparently that’s the last trim I can give it this year as it has to have time for any new growth to toughen off before the first frosts. It doesn’t look that much different, a bit tidier, but the main thing is in trimming the top branches it will make the growth below fill out. It’s so nearly there now. This time next year I will have to go around with my spirit level and level it all off (it strikes me now, too late, that is how I should have gone at it in the first place!).
Also I trimmed all the grass with the same shears as the box. I had one of those strimmer jobbies but I couldn’t get the hang of it. I was chopping out lumps of earth and butchering plants left right and centre. So I sweat and it takes ages, but the majority of my plants survive.
As today was actually summery I stripped all the covers off the sofa and gave them a wash, and did the bedding. Yes I really am that sad. I get bored very easily and even jobs that aren’t fun, once done, can be fulfilling. If nothing else they save Wendy having to do them and that’s got to count for something. Not that she showed any signs of actually doing them herself mind, but in principle she might one day have considered doing them.
I did the shopping and got a new ‘phone this morning. Obviously the devious postman seized on that window of opportunity to claim he’d been around with a parcel. Left a note saying I can collect it from the main office in town in twenty one hours! How big is his walk? (Round, in non-posty talk) No wonder these posties are all minted if they are out for twenty one hours a day! Damn the Royal Mail!
My new ‘phone has a camera! No film in it mind, to borrow from the excruciating Rob Brydon in Gavin and Stacey. I had some mad idea that that was what I needed to make my life complete, apparently not. It’s just another bloody mobile and you get a thousand texts pestering you about all the things you should be doing to be down with the kids. I don’t even know any gullible schoolgirls! (Topical joke, don’t put me on the register!)
I’ve been on 2-10 this week so today was my first chance to go to TKD, bloody hell what a lesson! It was so hard that at the end, when we were doing spinning back kicks my pony- tail was so soaked in sweat it was whipping me in the face and spraying sweat everywhere. Unpleasant for all concerned.
Good lesson though, showed me what I need to concentrate on (they have a name for the bit I’m poor at, it’s called Taekwondo).
My life isn’t the sad completion of to-do lists, as it would appear above, but that will have to wait until tomorrow, Wendy has to be up for work and is waiting for me to stop typing.
later,
Buck.
OK, it’s later. As I was saying before the Wendster put her foot down, my life is not all about ticking boxes as ‘done’, it also includes…, well,…, thinking of new boxes to tick for one thing. Which is another worry.
I was reading a rather interesting article the other day on this Buddha-for-Dummies website (http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/index.htm if you’re interested) where it was saying about levels of being human, (just to give you the gist, it’s not how it was intended to be understood.) one of which was a greedy materialistic one. Being an internet based study site it gave the example of PC hardware, saying you spend all of your time looking for a shiny new piece of kit, get it, then as soon as the novelty has worn off you are looking for the next piece of kit. Soon you haven’t even got it out of the shrink-wrap before you are wanting your next fix. It was saying that it is a self-perpetuating hunger for the acquisition of goods, not the goods themselves.
Guilty as charged. That stupid ‘phone is a case in point. For what do I need a mobile? I don’t like calling people, can not see the joy of text, and am really put out if someone contacts me. Yet because my old ‘phone had a knackered screen (that made reading the very infrequent text I received difficult) I had to have a shiny new one with a camera. I’ve taken a few snaps to try it out and don’t know what to do with them. When am I ever going to say "I really wish I had my ‘phone camera right now."
Never, that’s when. Yet still I crave my next consumer fix. Currently I have set up an eBay sniper programme to bid on my behalf at the last second (well, six seconds before the end of bidding) on a pair of boots and a brilliant push-bike. It is a bargain, and ideal for what I want and need. But will it continue to be so when (if) I own it?
Buddha was a wise geezer.
The other state that applied to me was one of anger. You find everything everyone says or does makes you angry. Hmm, I can’t express it either as well or as succinctly as the website so here is the paragraph:
The hell realm is characterised by acute aggression. We build a wall of anger between ourselves and our experience. Everything irritates us, even the most innocuous, and innocent statement drives us mad with anger. The heat of our anger is reflected back on us and sends us into a frenzy to escape from our torture, which in turn causes us to fight even harder and get even angrier. The whole thing builds on itself until we don’t even know if we’re fighting with someone else or ourselves. We are so busy fighting that we can’t find an alternative to fighting; the possibility of alternative never even occurs to us.
For anyone who’s not seen me shouting at the inane tripe on the telly that is me to a T.
These are just our attempts to impose control on an arbitrary and constantly changing universe. We expect constance and fool ourselves into believing we can control things, the first I would suggest, is an attempt at a control mechanism, the second is the reaction to constantly finding you can’t control anything.
To overcome it all Buddha says you just have to realise it’s but an illusion. You can, apparently, be free from it all by accepting you own nothing and control nothing.
Who can change their nature, or more over, who wants to? Am I scared of what I would lose? Nothing, I’m sure Buddha would say, as in truth I have nothing.
I need to get to a temple and find a path I can follow.
At the moment it’s all "video meliora proboque,deteriora sequor", which, as we all know, translates as "I see the best and approve, I follow the worst".
Right, enough of my spiritual malaise, on to something a tad more controversial. The Lilster. I can’t help feeling there has been a widespread condemnation and patronisation of young miss Allen. The view of the radio DJ’s is that she is a light-weight. A superficial flibbertigibbet who’s songs are just audio fluff.
I would like to present the contention that she is the new David Bowie.
Discuss.
OK, her work is pop, and is, at first glance, all cheerful, chirpy cockney. But take a minute to consider the artfulness of the superficiality. Not since the Bowster declared "my heart’s in the basement, my weekend’s at an all time low", has shallowness been so self-aware and used so incisively. The list of examples is comprehensive, and I’m not familiar with any but the most frequently aired of her songs.
To whit; when she was banging on about the perception of success and the route to fame, she references a song in which some bint is ‘Dissing’ *cringes* her chap for showing off the diamonds on his Rolex, asking how many Africans had to die to get them. All serious and up it’s own backside. Lily turns it on it’s head, adopts the callow perspective, and says she wants diamonds, though she’s heard people die trying to find them. She is adopting a chav persona, in my opinion, for the sake of her songs. She couldn’t write them, and they certainly wouldn’t be as clever, if she was as simple as she presents. From the same song, she says she’s not a saint, nor a sinner, but everything’s cool as long as she’s getting thinner! Sublime. Side-steps morality and replaces it with yoof culture’s definition of what is important to a woman. I use the word ‘culture’ with full awareness of the oxymoron-ic nature of it’s juxtaposition with ‘yoof’!
On which note, the getting slimmer, I have lost three pounds, so everything is indeed cool.
Let the kicking commence.
Buck.
