Do Animals Have Souls? (part 2)

'So Uncle Tuppy.  Five years ago you set off in the coracle to free a boatload of lactating ewes held captive on a prison ship (please see my five e-book tales on Amazon, if you want to know more). Now, you're wolfing down your third bacon sandwich of the day, and wiping grease off your chin. Isn't there some kind of APPALLING CONTRADICTION there?  In short, aren't you a hypocrite?'
'Well, I - '
'Let me complete my train of thought before you start with the weasel-worded reply. You're not only a hypocrite - you're a PSYCHOPATH,' Tuppence continued, folding his arms. 'You're devoid of compassion and moral integrity.  You've a black hole instead of a conscience.'
'That's a nice thing to say to someone who bought you Thomas the Tank Engine pyjamas for your birthday.  And a Smartie pencil case.'
'You're not even attempting to defend yourself.  You're resorting to feeble sarcasm and personal attacks.'
'Isn't that always the best way?'
'It's lazy.  Where are your facts?  Your counter-arguments?'
'I have none.  I admit everything.  I saved the ewes because I could.  I eat bacon because I can.  They sell it shrink-wrapped for one ninety-nine a packet off the back of the grocer's van.  It would be rude to say no.  I'm human, therefore I'm fallible - what can I say?'
'You've said plenty.  And you aren't human - as well you know.  You're a sheep.  You're supposed to be a herbivore, yet you eat dead pigs. What's wrong with you?'
'I don't know.  I'm weak. I know that what I'm doing is wrong. I don't think of bacon and sausages as being real.  They're like biscuits or crisps...'
'Oh shut up. I wanted a proper argument with dialectics and everything. But all you can do is waffle about crisps.  No wonder I'm delinquent.'

This Morning's Conversation - Do Animals Have Souls?

'Discuss.'
'Not till I've had my second cup of tea.  How many TIMES?'
'Ooh testy.'

Tuppence is out of the sweat lodge (please see previous posts for details*) and is recuperating** on the sofa by the fire in our 'house'.
Well, I call it a house but that's a very loose term really.  It doesn't conjure up its ramshackle walls, the hole in the wall that we use as a door, or indeed the 'tarp' roof.
But regular readers will know that.
'Bear Grylls and that other outdoorsy fat chap off the telly would love it here,'  enthused one of Val's yurt guests recently, as they peered through the hole in the wall while wandering past on one of her 'guided wildlife excursions'. 'It's perfect. Not a single mod con in sight.  Mind you I couldn't cope without underfloor heating and a rainforest shower.  I couldn't actually LIVE here.'
'You're so right!' cooed Val obsequiously, 'It's a pastoral idyll, perfect for de-stressing and taking a break from the pressures of city life.  At least that's what I've said on my website.  Mind your step on the sheep muck Demelza. You don't want to get that on your Crocs.'
'Ray Mears?' sneered Tuppence, throwing a used hankie at them, 'He's not outdoorsy.  He uses stock cubes for Christ's sake!'
'Oh my god - is that a talking sheep?' gasped the yurt guest. 'I thought it was a rug.'
'Yes.  And here's another one for you - bigger and ten times uglier,' I snarled, 'Now sod off and let us have our breakfast in peace.'
'Any minute now...' said Tuppence, struggling to his feet and dusting the biscuit crumbs off his britches.
I knew just what he was about to do.   He was about to...
'Fetch the shotgun Tuppy!' cried Geoffrey, flying in. 'Fetch it now, and blast them to smithereens!'
'Where's smithereens?' said the yurt guest. 'Val - where's....'
But Val had fled.  She knew us of old.
'Oh no.  My Crocs...'
Tuppence leapt through the hole in the wall and seized the yurt guest by the 'bingo wing'***.
'You're our guest now...' he smiled as he deftly roped her into the wooden rocking chair by the fireplace. 'Now,where were we Uncle Tuppy?  Something about animals having souls, wasn't it?'
'Oh yes.  But that can wait.  Let's have a bacon sandwich.  I've not reached full cogitation strength yet.'

*there aren't any
**eating biscuits
***the bit that really hurts when you grab it

I've five e-books all featuring the same characters doing various things - find 'em on Amazon here.

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

Today's Walk - Clunie

Loch Clunie - again.  A very dreich day, and I was tired, so didn't walk round it as I usually do.  I admired the masses of snowdrops, which will be followed by an even better display of bluebells as Spring progresses.  Unfortunately my present camera is very basic and can't do them justice.
Good views of Castle Hill (flat-topped mound on the far side) and of the island, with the Bishop of Dunkeld's house.  Obviously it doesn't belong to the Bishop of Dunkeld any more - and hasn't for a couple of hundred years, as I remember.  It's a shell now.  What a shame.  It must have been a great place to hole up in on a wild and stormy night...the only access by boat...looking out at the churning black waters of the loch from an upper window, while sipping a glass of best brandy and gnawing a peacock's leg (or your own, if supplies were low), and driftwood smouldered in the stone fireplace...
The house did actually burn down in the 1950s, but I'm unsure why.  Possibly smouldering driftwood.
Wildlife spotted today included a herd of about a dozen roe deer in a field (unusual to see such a large group in the open), flocks of geese (greylags I think...) and cormorants on the trees on the island.  Mallards and tufted ducks on the loch.  Various small birds such as blackies, robins, coal tits and wrens active in the surrounding woods.

Gin, Cigarettes, and Desperation: The Carson McCullers Diet

Gin, Cigarettes, and Desperation: The Carson McCullers Diet



I'm a big fan.

Fart fart fart &c.., oh - and higher selves...

'FART FART FART OWF DE AUTOBAN.  FART FART FART OWF DE AUTOBAN. FART FART FART OWF.....'
'No, he's not cured yet.  Put him back in, and give him an extra knee rug,'  I shouted to Geoffrey, through the hole in the wall.  I shouted because I was on the settee, with my feet up, picking my nose and reading the letters page of the 'Daily Bugle', and Geoffrey was Outside, by the Ersatz Sweat Lodge, which we'd built by the Old Midden, from a kit we'd bought from Val Nark's eco-health-shop.
'Right-oh.'
'And turn the dial up to 'red'.'
'Okey-doke.'
'And make sure you close the door properly this time.  We don't want any heat to leak out, like it did before.'  Not to mention his tiresome singing, I thought to myself.  But I didn't say it out loud. Which is unusual for me.
'Like it did before, when it was YOUR turn to close it by the way.  Anything else?'
'Pick up a barrel of best brandy, three pounds of baccy, some tea-bags and a bag of jellybabies when you're passing the tunnels.  Oh, and a pint of milk.  Make that two.  And a tin of Campbell's meatballs - I feel like having something different for tea.  I'm going to curry them.'
Anyway.  As you'll have gathered, if you've been following things recently,  Tuppence has been suffering from an intractable fever and pickled onion flavr Monster Munch addiction after his stay in gaol; on the advice of Val Nark we built an Ersatz sweat lodge for him to stay in till he's cured.
So far there's been no change in his condition, except that he keeps singing any Kraftwerk song which includes the word FAHRT,  phonetically, in a heavy and terrible German accent.
We're not sure how long the cure is supposed to take - there was nothing in the instructions and Val was a bit vague time-scale-wise. 'Just till he's better, for God's sake!" she barked.  "Now go away and use your common sense.  I WOULD say consult your 'higher selves' using hazel rod divining twigs, but I know you've not got those.   Higher selves, that is, not the twigs.   The twigs are available to buy in my shop, prices starting from £10.99 per individual twig.  You two idiots, with your persistently oafish refusal to address your vile processed meat, alcohol, salty snax and baccy predilections will probably remain on the basest, crudest and most repulsive level for the rest of your unnatural lives.  Anyway I've sixty pallets of flapjacks to ship to North America and I need to focus.'
'Level?  Level of what?'
'Spiritual development, of course. An ability to commune with your higher selves.  Me and Dave do that all the time, of course, what with us being vegan and having an eco-business and living in yurts and all.  But you two never, ever will.  Be able to, that is.  Now sod off and let me get on.'
Oh dear.  Higher selves though?  I was intrigued...
'Just get me the Monster Munches and I'll be right as rain,'  a thin voice wailed as Geoffrey secured the flaps and thumped the pegs into the ground with a mallet. 'I'm bored in here.  I know it's meant to be hot and dark and sweaty and it's all for my own good but I'm fed up now - please let me out.  And if you don't let me out, rest assured that I'll wreak a horrible revenge...you know I will....'

Next time....Tuppence finally gets out of the sweat lodge, and Geoffrey and I run away from him and his wrath, on the pretext of setting off to find our higher selves.....

Jock Mckay Aka Jack Mckay (1930)

My late father had a habit of saying 'Aye aye, Jock Mackay' during lulls in conversation.  I'd no idea that there really ever was a Jock Mackay, but good grief here he is on Youtube, in the 'flesh', and wearing a delightful 'double tartan' outfit that I can imagine might appeal to the Tupfinder General.  Someone kind on Twitter pointed it out to me.

Wolves - Howling - In Nature

From one Woolf to another....

The Recorded Voice Of Virginia Woolf