Tuppence attempts to contact Uncle Funkle using the power of his own mind...

...while in the sweat lodge.

'One tap for yes, two for no...' droned Tuppence. 'Are you there Uncle Funkle....will you talk to me? Can you bring me some sweets? Not Werther's Originals or Pan Drops.'
'We've got to get him out of there Val, ' I said. 'I know you said the longer the better but it's been weeks and weeks.  It's affecting his brain.'
'Nonsense,' snapped Val,' It's the fever itself that's affecting his brain.  Nothing to do with the sweat lodge and being on his own all the time and surviving on a diet of goji berry tea and nettle and dandelion ermmmmmm......nettle and dandelion......ummmmmmm.......'
'Stew?' I suggested.
'No.  Definitely not that. It's much too...basic a name.  Besides, it's raw.'
'Salad then.'
'No. Too blunt.  Too ordinary.  Too suburban.  Smacks of clumsily-cut under-ripe tomatoes, limp lettuce, and own-brand salad cream out of a bottle.  If my online customers thought I was selling 'salad' they'd desert me in droves - and they'd be right.  The bastards.'
'What if you used Kraft thousand island and added some bacon sprinkles?'
'Don't be disingenuous.  You know perfectly well what type of stuff I sell. It's all high-end organic health foods aimed at the discerning and eco-conscious middle-earner.'
'Oh well.  Who cares what you call it.  It's basically weeds, and he needs more than that to keep body and soul together.  He needs a square meal Val.  He needs sausage and chips and some bakewell tart and custard.  Followed by a pot of tea and some banana cake, and then an egg and bacon sandwich for supper.'   And so do I, I thought.  My stomach was beginning to rumble.  It was over an hour since breakfast and I'd only had mushrooms on toast, three rashers of smoked back, two rounds of black pudding and a pickled egg.  Preceded by a large bowl of Ricicles and followed by five oatcakes thickly-spread with butter and three fruit marmalade.
'Tuppy, he's got Brain Fever.  You can't let him out mid-cure, and you can't start feeding him sausages.  It could be fatal.  Look at him Tuppy.  He's raving.'
We both bent down and stared through the flap.
'Uncle Funkle....are you there, Uncle Funkle....' Tuppence continued, leaning back in his chair with half-closed eyes. 'Help me Uncle Funkle...I need to escape...even if it is only to somewhere else inside my Own Head...'
Is he raving?  I wondered.  Or is he just bored out of his mind?  It was impossible to tell without talking to him directly, and I wasn't going to risk that in case he really did have Brain Fever.   Either way I had to Do Something before matters took a turn for the worse.
Or did I?  Why should I act?  Why was Tuppence MY responsibility?  Why couldn't someone else do the difficult bits for me?
Perhaps I should just turn my back, and leave him to Val and her weeds health foods.
But I knew I couldn't abandon him.  I'd have to have a sit down, and a think, and make a decision.  I'd have to let him out, basically.  But how would he react?  He was unpredictable at the best of times.
And who on earth was Uncle Funkle?  and why did he circumnavigate the Wintry Isles?  I was about to find out.

more later

*Paperback edition of similar stories now available on Amazon.*

'

Today's Walk - Clunie

Beavers have had a go at the saplings by the water

A dank and silent pool, that always reminds me of the one at the entrance to Moria, in Lord of the Rings

Finally it feels like Spring is, well, not quite here, but definitely On Its Way.  The snowdrops are over and suddenly daffodils are everywhere.  I went over to my regular haunt - Loch Clunie - with my binoculars, hoping to see an osprey. The male has returned to Loch of the Lowes which is just a few miles further along the road, and you just never know.  I was also keeping an eye out for kites, which I'm seeing more frequently these days.

Not today though.  I did see a number of buzzards, three whooper swans, two mute swans, and some long-tailed tits, and that was about it except for the usual pheasants, crows, and mallard ducks.  And a solitary lapwing flying over the road - I think there might have been another sitting in a field, in fact I'm fairly sure of it, and I hope they are a pair and will nest.

I had a look for frog spawn -  again, nothing.  It is a bit early for it here.

It's still bitterly cold when the sun goes in and the wind blows, but at least the days are longer and there is some warmth around.  

I feel that my brain is still in winter-mode.  Not just my brain - my whole system.

Perhaps I need a de-tox or something.

Or perhaps I should just wait, and see how I feel as the year unfolds...

I haven't forgotten about Tuppence, by the way.  He's fine.  The sweat lodge did him a power of good....

More on all that,  later............

Daevid Allen - Sacred Geometry

Nothing Is Required But Freedom - Berfrois

Nothing Is Required But Freedom - Berfrois



Kant.  Worth a read.

Today's Walk - inside my Own Head

I haven't been outside for a couple of days, except to post a letter, as I've been feeling very ill with a fluey cold.  After one day's respite the weather has continued to be awful again anyway - chilly, steady rain, low skies, interspersed with bouts of 'wind'.  (Which reminds me - I need to summon up the strenf to rescue Tuppence from the ersatz sweat lodge sometime soon.)
Everything is muddy and wintry and Somme-like, still.  Few signs of Spring - certainly nothing much to indicate that the world is coming alive again.
I've been feeling so feeble I've barely read a thing.  However, I did finish one of my last charity shop buys - 'Hello',  Leslie Phillips' autobiography, which I expected to find interesting. I always enjoy his films. However, the book doesn't go into nearly enough detail for my liking.  About anything, really. Which is quite infuriating.  I shouldn't complain though.  I suppose he's had such a long career he would have needed to write several volumes in order to do it all justice, and I'm sure he probably couldn't be bothered.  I get the feeling too that he's probably held back a lot in order to preserve other people's secrets and dignity - and possibly his own.  There is a recent documentary about him on Youtube, I think, if you care to seek it out.
I still haven't finished my second charity shop buy - James Shapiro's '1599 - A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare'.  I tend to read last thing at night, generally, and two or three lines of '1599' and I'm off to sleep.    It's tremendously well-researched (edifying springs to mind) but not sufficiently gripping to keep me awake at 1 a.m..
Which is all to the good as far as I'm concerned.
I listened to a programme about dark matter on Radio Four this morning.  I think it was In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg.  Apparently (and think I sort of knew this before I heard the programme) dark matter is what holds the universe together, only nobody knows what it is.  They aren't even sure what it isn't.  They only know that it's there because it affects other things.  I got quite excited, listening, because that makes complete sense to me.  Or at least it gives me the feeling that it would, if only I sat down and thought about it for a while.  It could even explain human nature and the concept of Good and Evil.  It's the concept of Shadow writ large. And it's not an abstract concept - it really does seem to be that way, in the nature of the energies of which we are a part.   There is some kind of interactive dynamic, between dark and light,  and the one, so it would appear, I think, really cannot exist without the other.  Besides the obvious analogies there's a whole philosophical treatise to be written about that - to add to the hundreds if not thousands already in progress.  Nobody can have completed one because nobody yet knows what the subject really is.
I find it tremendously exciting to learn more about the Universe as I hurtle grave-wards. Perhaps I am going to return to the place 'from whence I came', i.e. Somewhere Out There, and will be recycled as a dark matter 'atom' (not that anyone knows if there are such things in dark matter).  Or perhaps I'll be a bubble in the Soup Dragon's cauldron.
I must read more about it.

King Crimson - Larks' Tongues in Aspic