Towards the end of the time I had a presence on Facebook, all the quizzes and personality tests began to grate on me, there were so many of them.

I did a few, though, intrigued to discover my results and those of some select ‘friends’, but apart from seeing the tests as a bit of fun, generally I’ve been sceptical of such snapshot analyses of personality types or intelligence quotients. I’ve always suspected psychometric testing would prove unreliable in the longer term, (at one set of tests at a job interview once I was identified as having Management Potential – hah!) as personality evolves. Besides, even on a daily or weekly basis, we all have moods, PMT (girls) when we’re not at our best, days when we’re blunted by life, out of whack, or just hungover.

However. Last week a friend lured me to take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test again. It’s one of the more respected and reliable ones so I decided to join in.

The first time, circa 1995, when the MBTI test was doing the rounds at the ISP where I worked, I came out as an INTJ. This time I was intrigued to see if my profile had shifted. It hadn’t. The 2010 result was the same, INTJ. I was surprised. Admittedly, my introversion indicator had gone up (oh dear, must get out more) and my judgement indicator down (which bucks the mid-life stereotype maybe), but in spite of everything I’ve been through in the last fifteen years, my personality seems remarkably consistent/resilient. I guess I can draw something from that.

According to Wikipedia, and this I didn’t know, the INTJ type is, ‘one of the rarest of the sixteen personality types, INTJs account for about 1–4% of the population.’

Perhaps this explains a few things. So rare, so alone…  :)

On the other hand, I can count some good INTJ historical role models: John Maynard Keynes, Hilary Clinton, Michelle Obama (woulda, shoulda, coulda been a lawyer?) but hang on – Hannibal Lecter? Oh, that’s not so good.  Jane Austen, though. And Isaac Asimov, Lewis Carroll, Cormac McCarthy – cool – bodes well for the writerly aspect – and – OMG! – Ayn Rand!

My friend turned out INFJ, so we declared ourselves MBTI compatible cousins (if not kissing ones).

Did any of this shed any fresh light on anything? Perhaps not, but it was a mildly affirming experience even so, and gawd knows we all need some of those.

[That's enough acronymns. Ed.]

August

The Rainbow Chard should keep going a little longer…

Meanwhile, the pink, blue, purple and white wavyleaf sea lavenders (limonium sinuatum) are cut, bunched, and drying in the greenhouse.

Here are some flower words: inflorescence, rachis, peduncle,  pedicel, panicle, petiole, corymb, calyx, corolla, capsule

Spoken together, out of context, they sound like an incantation.

They sound like the mysterious list of ingredients for Love Potion Number 9.

It never ceases to amaze me how creatures work their way in beside the lives of humans.

Since moving to the new place, I’ve seen dogs strapped into bicycle child-carriers being towed along the canal towpath as part of the family holiday,  a custom-made cat pen (a long ‘run’ made of chicken wire) fixed to the top of a canal boat, cats on leads, dogs on motorbikes. It seems when you get a pet, before long you’re making ridiculous accommodations for it.

It’s true. When we went to the Isles of Scilly, for example, Dog rode around in a zip-up overnight bag to the general hilarity of the small population there. Several total strangers came up to us to ask if they could take photos of him. Since arriving here, which is colder than the old place, he’s been furnished with a small wardrobe of garments. In January, I succumbed to his miserable cur-like shivering and procured a blue child’s tank-top from the charity shop. This was not a complete success (the baggy hem got liberally pissed on), so take two was a (more expensive) custom-designed red and black striped dog ‘jerkin’ cutaway under the belly. This was very effective, even if the Dennis the Menace style did get him into fights. Then, one time when I was on some industrial estate waiting for Jnr to come out of a round of aptitude tests, killing time, I wandered into Pet World and there, in the sale bin, was a small dog-sized black satin bow tie…

Going soft on cats and dogs is fine, a national passtime, and as the fridge magnet saying goes: ‘Thorns may hurt you, men desert you, sunlight turn to fog; but you’re never friendless ever, if you have a dog‘, but as for developing relationships with other species…

Take Next Door’s chickens, for example. The chickens (turns out there are three of them) aren’t laying yet, nevertheless  they are housed in an avian abode which is positively luxurious. It may be a touch bijou compared to the horrid old shed my folks’ chickens called home circa 1975, but it has all the mod cons, is light, bright green, easy to clean, and called an Egloo. In it, the chickens may look cute, but this does not detract from the fact they get pests, peck the grass bare and leave enough large slimy deposits to carpet a small garden.  I’ve never fancied keeping chickens.

Next Door also have a ferret. I’ve seen him, he’s albino with pink eyes, an ugly little creature with impressive teeth. His cage takes up a good portion of their averaged-sized garden, is very well appointed with tube runs, golf balls, a sand box, a climbing frame, and even a hammock. Nice, but I’m not tempted. According to Wikipedia: As with skunks, ferrets can release their anal gland secretions when startled or scared. The smell may be much less potent, but ferrets also bite. I’d rather steer clear of ferrets.

If other people want to keep snakes, rats, birds, reptiles, or rodents, why should I concern myself, you might wonder? Ordinarily I wouldn’t, but somehow proximity brings entanglements…

For a small cash remuneration up front, Jnr was persuaded to look after their menagerie when Next Door went on holiday for a fortnight. Two days in, everything changed. A place came free on a short canal boat trip and Jnr was invited along at the last minute. He wanted to go.

The choice was, either he would have to say ‘no’ and stay to look after Next Door’s pets, as agreed, or the animals would die, or I would have to step in and do the job for him.

Damn.

So, the first morning I put on my rubber gloves and, armed with a plastic bag (Jnr had already briefed me with: ‘the ferret likes to run up your arm’ and ‘bit me once’) set off to feed the ferret.

As soon as I opened the cage to change his water – ew – the ferret stirred. He emerged from his hammock, blinking and stretching and rubbing his little pink eyes. What a large nose, it was oddly appealing. Then he yawned and made a waking-up noise.  Aww. Then he began chirrupping. He was  pleased to have a visitor. Two weeks without his keepers and I could see he was lonely. In spite of myself, moments later, I couldn’t help thinking the pink-eyed ferret was actually quite cute.

Then, before I could put his food inside the cage, he tried to climb out. He wanted to be picked up. Arrgh! (Cute or not, I didn’t want to handle him.) I pushed him back in (gently, hand behind the plastic bag) and wondered how I was going to get the food inside there.

It’s not difficult to outsmart a ferret, even a very fast one. I worked out if I put a biscuit down by his tube-run he’d scamper down there to get it, giving me enough time to shove the food and water bowls in at the top and close the cage door. My ferret-foiling master plan worked.

You know, even in two days, that creature made me grow to like him. He even made me feel a bit guilty about not giving him some fuss.

So did the stupid chickens, in their own way, clucking and bobbing about every time I appeared.

There’s no hope for me, really.

But the worst part is yet to come.

Remember the frogs? I’ve even become quite fond of the frogs.

One lives in a hole in the back steps, it hops around in the area outside the kitchen, keeping the slugs off my herb pots. Sometimes it hangs out in the hanging basket and when I water the flowers, does a high dive out of the basket and lands at my feet, ‘Plop!’ Every time this makes me jump, but I don’t mind.

However, at the weekend, we had a visitor, one of J’s mates, a big hairy biker and sysadmin. On his final evening here they went out the back door to watch the Perseid meteor shower at the top of the garden. BHB was wearing his heavy-duty motorcycle boots. He started up the steps , looking skywards… oh no.

Crunch.

Oh no. Poor, unlucky frog, he didn’t stand a chance.

I’m sad to report the little existential frog trio are now a duo.

Creatures, eh? They get to you.

:(

It’s only early August but already there’s a nip in the air; autumn feels just around the corner.

Usually, I like autumn, there’s a conditioned response which comes with it, an expectation of change arising from years of new terms and fresh starts, something to look forward to, even if just a shift in gear.

I’m not sure about this autumn. This year I’m off the map, out of my usual mode, there’s no new project, no Plan A. I’m being encouraged to feel the present, stop thrashing, try to resist my habit of attempting to predict and oversteer the future.  For the first time in a long time I’m off road… drifting on waterways. The truth is, I can’t see around the corner. (Change, if it is going to happen, will be slow, deep, wordless, abstract and subterranean.)

This autumn, external plans are in the hands of others.

For example, Jnr starts his apprenticeship in fourteen days! HURRAH! If I believed in God, I would go down on my knees and say, ‘Thank you, God, for this’. Opportunities for him aside, encouraging (i.e. battling) a bored, squabbly, troubled school-leaver out of bed and up off his arse since November 2009 has been HELL and – everything else aside – one of the most challenging years of my entire life (and his, of course, so far).  (Hang on, that means I am on my knees, doesn’t it?)

His new start will necessarily bring a change for me too.

Meanwhile, J has passed his probationary period in the new job with flying colours. What happens next in that arena may have a knock-on effect elsewhere also.

Anyhow, here is (part of) what I’ve been doing with my time lately:

1) Rabbit Season:

Large black and white domesticated rabbit spotted loose on primary school playing field. Spotter doubts sanity (not for the first time) and feels responsible, like she ought to do something about it, but doesn’t. The unresolved nature of the incident bugs her for two days (thoughts of night-time violence, foxes, blood, tearful children) until she asks the builders working on the school outhouses and is given funny looks but told that, yes, the rabbit was there (real) and, yes, they caught it and returned it to the children’s centre from whence it had (quite understandably in my view) escaped.

2) Chicken Time:

Two days ago – pinch me – I looked up from the computer and saw two white chickens strutting around my  garden. I remembered the neighbours had recently bought chickens (I hadn’t seen them before) and clearly they had escaped. Then came all the fun of the circus. Eventually said chickens were caught and returned to their coop, but honestly, who needs the palaver, unless it’s this sort of palava? (We had chickens when I was growing up and I was never keen on them then. They laid eggs, but those hens were secretive, we could rarely find the eggs and when we did, had little idea how long they’d been sitting there. Plus, they bullied each other mercilessly and attracted rats, one ran across my foot once.)

2) Dog Days:

Greedy small Dog eats half-open mayonnaise sachet in pub garden. Woman spends two days concerned about vet’s bills and checking (don’t ask) to see if the danger has ‘passed’. (It does, eventually, without incident. Who’d have a dog, though, really?)

3) Wasp Season (again):

Woman dons frock to have genteel (fundraising) tea and cupcakes, with friend, here.  They worry about a nearby wasp’s nest, for different and equally valid/hypochondriac reasons, and flee to the underground Grotto, which is found to be a splendid example of an Eighteenth century shell-lined folly.

I don’t believe a photograph can really capture the eccentric texture and sparkle of the place – the pillars are encrusted with light-catching crystals, minerals and pyrites, there’s a statue of a god pouring water down a shell lined chute, lovely marbled tiles, and a plaster lion and lioness – all quite magical – but this will give you an idea of it:

4) Squirrel Season:

Later: Woman and friend decamp to her garden. Grey squirrel runs along the top of the fence a reckless half-metre from their faces and interrupts them chatting ‘bare breeze’. (The squirrel was the one chattin’, bold as brass, the women were discussing serious high falutin topics, of course – philosophy, books, the State of the Nation, nothing about sex, no family gossip, or not much…)

Meanwhile, nature continues to thrive in my kitchen garden.

Veg-wise, it’s been a mixed experience: my spring onions, Swiss chard, potatoes, broad beans and lettuce were all good, prolific and pest-free, and the runner beans are still coming along, but sadly my cabbages, courgettes and tomatoes failed, (partly because I planted them in the wrong place, partly because ravaged by ze slugs, peh, (the coffee grounds only worked sporadically), and partly because I got bored of tending them as much as they required). On balance, I might give vegetables another go, apply what I’ve learned this summer another time, but it must be said, growing-your-own is a lot of effort.

On the flower front, though, I can report a resounding success across the board. I love flowers and they are expensive so I don’t buy them often. Growing my own could be one solution. The cornflowers and love-in-a-mist are over and the scarlet snapdragons are in their final phase of blooming, but these have been abundant since early July so I can’t complain. The dwarf sunflowers, cosmos, clary sage, sweet peas, bells of Ireland and euphorbia are all still going strong. This summer I’ve been taking colourful bunches wrapped in tinfoil whenever I’ve been invited anywhere. A right domestic goddess I’ve become, a regular Chloris of the Shire.

So, even if I’m not really in control of very much else, which I’m not it seems, I can achieve a sense of  outer balance and inner harmony by arranging flowers. (As you can see, I’m getting in touch with my feminine side.)

White roses, white clary sage, euphorbia, white stocks, bells of Ireland.

I might allow myself a Plan B, though, if it can be arranged.

In September I’m thinking of absconding to London to see this: Skin, probably go here: Whitechapel Gallery and maybe eat here: St Pancras Oyster Bar.

My field report will be filed later.

(Apologies for the slip into third person and the salad of mixed metaphors. I felt like indulging myself, so I let them go.)

Today:

1. Moved the weighing scale and found a huge wolf spider (I don’t like big spiders). It looked dead, but when I nudged it with the end of my hairbrush – aaaaaargh! – zombie spider. I just about managed to put a glass over it, but after that couldn’t bring myself to take the next step, slide a card under, carry it to the window, wheeeee, etc. Every couple of hours I went in and lifted the glass, just a bit, to give it some air. Every time it played dead then reared up at me. (Brrrr.) *

2. Coming back from the pond with Dog, I was startled by an American tourist and his wife on the bridge. They made a fuss of Dog. Mr wanted to know if Dog was a JRT. Yep. His brother has one, apparently, back in the States. Mrs pointed out that they are probably quite common in Britain, since here is where they originated. Nevertheless, Mr wanted to take a picture, for his brother. Dog would not turn around. I spent an embarassing couple of minutes bending over the dog saying, ‘Who-zat?’ pointing at the American tourist,  feeling like an idiot, trying to get Dog to look up at the camera. Dog was not impressed. After a while, neither was Mrs. I thought she had a rather tight look about her jaw – she was about ten years older than me, the couple looked affluent, I supposed she’d had a face lift – until I realised later that the jolly picture winging its way to some small town in the Midwest included a fairly generous shot of my cleavage. (A coincidence, no doubt, but even so.)

3. After finally sewing a missing curtain ring on the curtain tie-back, I couldn’t get the lid back on the sewing box and in my irritation had an epiphany; all those old cotton reels and rusty needles, useless bits of elastic, six grey school-trouser patches, (I gave up mending Jnr’s trousers when he was about nine, complete waste of effort), one suspender clip? I plundered the depths of the sewing box ruthlessly lobbing things in the bin as I went, when…

4. I found an ancient eye shadow from the 80’s, fuscia pink, with which I used to create an extravagant multi-coloured orange and pink bruise effect, a ‘Barbarella meets Cruella de Ville’ look. I thought it was fetching at the time. Perhaps it was. Kind of scary, kind of cute. (You can wear anything when you’re young.) Away with it. Ping, in the bin.

If I was still on Facebook, all that would have been encapsulated in little more than a slightly lugubrious fortywhatever status update.

(*The spider was eventually taken to the top of the garden and set free.)

As you know, I’m fond of a good dry cocktail.

A Marguerita is my usual: a little old fashioned perhaps, but it has a solid reputation in film and literature, it’s strong, sharp, refreshing, generally reliable, and more to the point you can actually taste the alcohol in it, unlike the newfangled sugar and fat laden inventions (the names of which I can never remember’) favoured by the alcopopsters.

A Marguerita usually arrives in an elegant glass, too, pleasing to hold, swirl, etc. but in summer therein lies the problem, a Marguerita is a sipping drink and on a hot day I’d be the first to admit a Marguerita can fall a little short; on a hot day you need a long drink.

Well, this summer I found my perfect solution. I had a new (to me) cocktail experience, a dry combination that most definitely hit the spot: an Italian Kiss.

This is how they made it at Revolution in Bath:

• A chilled highball glass filled with two cubes of ice and a long swizzle straw
• A cocktail shaker filled with ice
• Add to the shaker: 1 measure Martini Rosso, 1 measure Martini Bianco, a generous dash of angostura bitters
• Shake
• Pour into the highball glass, top with soda water, garnish with a wedge of lime

Ta-da! A dry, refreshing, grown-up alcholic beverage with a pleasing viscosity and excellent taste which finishes with a little fizz of fruity bitterness on your tongue.

I’m not much one for soft drinks (soda water and lime, cranberry juice, that’s about it) but recently I discovered a range of sharp, fruity organic cordials. The blueberry one is my favourite.

This is what I do with it:

• tall glass with ice and a swizzle stick
• 1 measure Belvoir Organic Blueberry Cordial
• 1/2 measure Cassis*
• top with soda water
• garnish with a slice of lemon

* Cassis: good to have on hand in the summer for lacing summer fruit puddings, jellies, and making Kir.

It’s been so close at night lately, I’ve felt as restless as a Southern Belle.

I swear – what to do?

Leave the window safely closed and wake fretful, sticky and damp in the small hours, unable to get back to sleep, or open the window to the cooling breeze and allow in with it a small blizzard of invisible flying night biters?

The Americans call these creatures – mosquitos, midges, bedbugs – no-see-ums.

I’ve always been sensitive to insect bites.

In Cornwall it was horseflies, in the Scottish Highlands, midges, in the Red Desert, red ants (bastards), in the Coromandel, sandflies (they really nip), and just about everywhere else I’ve ever been, with varying degrees of genuine danger, mosquitoes.  I’ve been a feast for the beasts every damn place.

The symptoms are always the same. A hit or two and I wake dotted with swellings, itching and inflamed. Can’t stratch that itch, either. Even rubbing on some Antisan (a topical antihistamine) brings only temporary scant relief.

Lately I seem to have been especially plagued by no-see-ums. Why me?

According to an article in The Telegraph,

To the mosquito some people’s sweat simply smells better than others because of the proportions of the carbon dioxide, octenol and other compounds that make up body odour.

It is those people who are most likely to be bitten.

I went for a perfume consultation once, only to be told I have ‘acid’ skin. (I suppose this comes as no surprise.) On the upside, apparently, perfumes  in the olfactive families with higher proportions of fruit oils or ambered tones with citrus notes suit such people best. The advice was helpful. I looked for those tones and found Addict, by Dior ( Silk Tree Flower Mandarin Leaf Orange Blossom Night Queen Flower Bulgarian Rose Bourbon Vanilla Absolute Mysore Sandalwood Tonka Bean) and made it my everyday signature scent. I like it. It suits me.

Perhaps the mozzies like it too. Maybe I should try something new. (A heart note of DEET? No. I don’t wish that.)

On scent, someone looked up Lily of the Valley recently, landed on a recent blogpost here and led me, by curious return, to a wonderfully gothic (yet camp and fun) purveyor of perfumes, the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. Such bewitching brews and intoxicating illustrations. The rich descriptions and the poems with them – Keats, Poe, Shakespeare – gave me a good twenty minutes of real delight. I’d like to thank whoever-you-are for that.

(Goths and Emos and clients of Black Phoenix beware, though, as according to the TravelDoctor,  ‘dark colors absorb heat and lighter colors tend to reflect heat, mosquitoes also tend to be more attracted to victims dressed in darker clothes.’ Haha.)

On a more serious note, it’s wasp season again and I’m allergic to wasp stings. In the last week or so I’ve begun to notice the local wasps becoming angry as they scout in vain for sweetness. I shall have to beware a bit myself, remember my Epipen, you never know when I might need it.

Like Sunday. On Sunday I was at Athelhampton House (a 15th-century manor house which is allegedly haunted by the ghosts of the Grey Lady and a bygone family pet, an ape, no less) for a family party. It was a fine day with a fine lunch and afterwards we were allowed to wander around the house and gardens. I saw no ghosts but I did see this.

What an amazing posh wasp’s nest? How does it stay up there? Some kind of horrible wasp glue? You have to admire the engineering, even whilst wishing for a flamethrower. I love the way the layers echo the flourishes in the cornice. (Artful insects, wasps.)

Back home and back inside, I think I’ll stop dithering about like a Scarlett O’Hara – until this weather passes and the wasps are all hibernating again – I’ll just shut the blimmin window and buy myself a fan.

June

July!

Annual Gas Inspection Report:

WARNING

DANGER

You are warned that this gas equipment has been classified as

‘IMMEDIATELY DANGEROUS’

DO NOT USE IT

According to the gas man, the chimney here has begun to crumble and fallen bricks are obstructing the flue. There’s a risk that unwary householders could succumb to carbon monoxide poisoning. The gas fire has been summarily disconnected ‘until adquate ventilation’ is restored. This will not happen until the builders have been, removed the fire surround, re-bricked and pointed the lining of the chimney, put it all back together again. (Noise, dust, mess, kettle on. Sigh.)

Fortunately, it’s a warm summer.

I’m stalling.

When will it be safe to light the fire?

Meanwhile, I’ve filled the space with these:

Bells of Ireland, dwarf sunflowers, nasturtiums.

No such thing as a safe fire though, is there? (Except perhaps a facsimile made of flowers.) That’s the nature of fire.

War #1

The programme maker’s decision to place an ex-serviceman amputee in the Big Brother house this year was a highly interesting one, I think.

I’ve watched Big Brother, on and off, since the early days, when it dressed itself up as a psycho-social experiment, to the last couple of runs, when the naked promotion of celebrity culture elbowed everything else interesting – like support of diversity – out of the limelight.

No doubt about it, Big Brother has been a twenty-first century cultural phenomenon, and its makers have decreed it will depart our screens with a political bang.

It is an unsettling experience watching ex-Northern Ireland veteran, Steve, stomp about the house, bomb-blasted limbs on show, turning his blinded, black glass eye towards the other members of the house, and to camera. As the other ‘housemates’ skirt around Steve and his difficult history, asking only the occasional tentative question, affording him a wary kind of respect, not nominating him even though he contributes little (often given as a reason for nomination) and can even be touchy and morose, their trivial concerns and showy butterfly behaviours are thrown into stark relief; Steve’s presence introduces a new element to the dynamics of the game.

It makes you think about the impact of war.

We’re in a recession, unemployment for school leavers and young graduates is creeping to a recent-history high, but I hope the presence of Steve in the Big Brother house puts a lot of young people off entering the forces.

War #2

However, one of Jnr’s aquaintances (not a BB fan) has just signed himself into the army; deal done, future sealed.

His is a familiar story. He was difficult at school,  left with few qualifications, his mother (who has mental health problems) can no longer cope with his behaviour so the local authority have moved him into supported accommodation… with no job, no money, no girlfriend, impatient to ‘get on with life’, no time, family, or resources to allow another sort of path to evolve, what choices does he have?

This lad – I’ll call him K – fits the profile of ‘cannon fodder’ perfectly, he is looking for a surrogate family, somewhere to belong, and the Army will harness these needs to their own ends – and yet, with his history, he is precisely the kind of individual who should be turned down. His chances of developing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after witnessing a traumatic event – and he will – are already high. The impact on him as an individual, on anyone with whom he becomes involved, on his children, his community even, will be high.

The statistics bear this out; personal experience bears this out.

War #3

We had a visit from my sister-in-law at the weekend. For the last three years she has been involved with a man who ’served’ in the Falklands, a ‘veteran’. He has PTSD, but because of the way the Army trains its service personnel, he finds it nigh-on impossible to ’seek help’. The after-effects of warfare, however, rain on. She’s just kicked him out again.

War #4

When I was nineteen, I had a boyfriend – call him A – who had been in the forces.

By the time I met him, he was a fisherman, a partner in a small two-man trawler which worked out of a harbour on the south coast of Cornwall. Even though women are supposedly bad luck at sea, a couple of times, in fair weather, I was ‘allowed’ out on the boat with them. This meant rising at 4 am,  huddling among the oilskins in the cabin, staying out of the way, making the tea. The stench of fish was fearful, the trawler was a dangerous place, the work was dangerous, too; hard on the bodies of the men, hard on their hands especially, but I value the experience, looking back.

It was an ancient scene, men reduced to dark shapes moving wordlessly between sea and sky, hauling in the harvest, the netful of rich and strange fruits de mer; the best, the rich, the mother-lode, a shoal of marketable grey fish, but also the strange, the useless, multi-coloured sea urchins, spider-crabs like spiny space-fiends, gobbet blobs of jellyfish, like Neptune’s snot, and the occasional real hazard, a sinister brown muscle with teeth, a conger eel trying to thrash its way free. Yet more timeless were the scent of ozone, the rise of the seaswell, the momentary weightlessness as the surge fell, the screech of gulls fighting for the fish-guts thrown aft, into the wake of the boat. As we sailed back to port, there was the finale, the real (private) reason I was there, a line of atomic orange growing wider, splitting the sea and sky apart, sunrise…

‘A’  signed himself into the forces after leaving school, because – and this was his way of putting it – he thought the army would be ‘a bit like the Boy Scouts’. Also, he didn’t get on with his step-father.

Of course, the experience turned out to be nothing like the Boy Scouts. Far from it.

He was posted to Northern Ireland. When he returned he was what they used to call ’shell-shocked’. Practically, it meant this: if a car back-fired, or someone dropped a tray, broke a glass, burst through a door unexpectedly, didn’t matter where he was, he’d hit the deck, shaking and sweating, incoherent. When the moment – the flashback, whatever it was – subsided – he’d come to his senses again – and I don’t know which part of the experience was worse for him – and have to deal with embarassment, cope with his deep sense of shame.  Sometimes it made him withdrawn. Sometimes he suffered terrible nightmares.

War #5

I am coming to understand something else, too; the effects of war trickle on down the decades.

My mother was an evacuee in World War II.  Aged eight she was sent away from her family and everything she knew to live (unhappily) among strangers. I’ve read some accounts of the two phases of the evacuation. Often evacuation was sudden, the children were not given time to prepare and what was happening to them was not explained. Often years passed before they returned. All other issues aside, the emotional fracture, the sense of abandonment, for some, there were worse aspects to evacuation, some of the host families were actively hostile to their charges.

Imagine a truncated childhood with no story to fill the gap. This would be shell-shock of a different sort.

But what must it have been like to return?

War #6

J’s grandfather fought at the Battle of Mons.

A bullet carved a trench across the top of his skull destroying part of his brain.

Somehow he survived ‘brain-fever’, returned home with his ’shrapnel side-parting’ as it became known, and lived long enough to father his youngest child, J’s father, and a few years more besides.

I’ve heard tell that he was a silent, shadowy, fire-side figure, prone to drink, subject to bouts of erratic behaviour, whims would come upon him, he would decide to sell the family possessions at short notice, up sticks, and move them all across town.

This too, explains some things.

War #7

I’m glad Steve is in the Big Brother house, not because I like him (I don’t, but I don’t dislike him particularly, either) or because I want him to win (I don’t, but good luck to him) but because he is a tattooed, amputated, illustrated man, an awkward walking story, a cautionary tale, a tangible reminder of the effects of war.