I'm having a pause at the moment, before writing again.  Life's taken a dark-ish turn,  or so it seems, I must get through it before doing anything else.

March is always a difficult month for me. 

Life's soundtrack. Keith Richards - I'm Waiting For The Man (Lou Reed Cover) (Official Video)

Interesting cover.  I like it.  The original has been part of my life's soundtrack, along with the rest of the 'yellow banana' album.  

Val's internal interminable monologue as she no bakes no bake gravel flapjacks

 So before the Cancer Research UK 29 day yoga challenge started, we left Dave pondering - well, pondering all kinds of things out on the moors.

I expect he was having a mid-life crisis-style-event.  Or not.  Because I don't believe in mid-life crises, myself.  Staring old age in the face as I am I've gone through enough 'crises' to know they don't just occur in 'mid-life'.  There's nothing special about mid-life, that requires a crisis of its own.  They happen all the time, depending on circumstances.  Twenty five or sixty.  Age makes little difference.  Sure, you learn a bit as you go through life. Menopause?  Nah, bollocks to that.  Likewise the andropause.  But you forget a lot also.  Although, if I understand Hegelian dialectic correctly (laughter) nothing is ever really 'forgotten'.  It's merely subsumed into the whole, creating the being we are forever in the process of becoming.  Hegel would lose the 'forever'.   

But I digress.

Back at the yurts,  Val was not baking her specialty -  'no bake' hardcore smashed gravel flapjacks.  Her fifth batch that day.  She was breathing heavily and muttering to herself as she smashed gravel with a large mallet and mixed it with golden syrup and rolled oats before pressing the mixture into a tray lined with clingfilm and refrigerating it overnight (full recipe not available, sorry).

'I know Dave's testosterone levels have plummeted.  Plummeted from, let's be honest, a very low base, to the infinitesimal.  He's not the man I thought I married.  Or is he.  Perhaps I was just stupid.  Blinded by his facility with a trailcam and his knowledge of all things otter.  I wonder if I should DIVORCE him!'  Val smashed the mallet extra hard as she said 'DIVORCE'.  A fragment of gravel flew ceiling-wards and clattered into the uplighter.  'Or perhaps he's experiencing the andropause.  Maybe I should cut him some slack.  Or perhaps NOT!'  Val's mallet hit the dwindling pile of gravel again and the hand-crafted kitchen table - hand-crafted by Dave, from local sustainable sources - i.e. the small stand of coppiced oak behind the yurts - shuddered.  Val paused, as she remembered Dave diligently sanding planks of oak and whittling the table legs out in the shed on cold winter evenings with only a small brazier and his fingerless gloves to keep him warm.

'Perhaps Dave's not so bad.  Perhaps it is the andropause and he just needs some more hot stoning, and an ear candling session to rev him up a bit. And a double strength boiling goji berry oil colonic irrigation is always a good answer no matter the question.  Mind you,  Dave's been going through the andropause ever since I met him thirty years ago.  Never mind.   If he ever returns from the moors I'll make a new man of him.'  

Val threw her mallet into the air and caught it deftly, before pressing the final flap jack mixture into its tin tray and popping it into the refrigerator.

more later - when Dave returns from the moors in a spiritually enlightened state, loses his bobble hat and gets a surprising job offer...

My Book Seapenguin

 

I published a paperback in 2017 - it's got almost all the original blog posts in it.

https://youtube.com/shorts/YdNHC7NbbtA?si=KRYs-reVcmWGKwPq

Above is a link to a Youtube short regarding the book.

And here is the link to my Amazon author page. https://www.amazon.com/author/katesmart

 I'm taking a pause here because I have something else going on writing-wise and I'm unsure whether to place it here or whether to start another, temporary blog.   I'm having a quick think.

Meanwhile, apologies for the truncated Dave post.  He is currently Hereabouts in a yurt-cum-sweat lodge - Val found him on the moors, ending his brief burst of freedom and accusing him of having 'mental health' that required immediate intervention with hot stones, a goji berry enema and three weeks in the sweat yurt.

More on all of this later.  

Dave's Hurting Soul

'Dave.  You need to spend some time alone mate.  You need to reconnect with yourself.'

Dave thought back to when he was a teenager.  Endless hours spent listening to Nick Drake on dull winter afternoons, smoking endless cigarettes and thinking endlessly dark thoughts.  It was always late autumn or winter back then, or so it seemed.  Everything grey and brown and muddy.  Mirroring how he felt inside.

He remembered longing for a cleansing frost.  And a homely house in the countryside with a welcoming fire, books, and a patchwork bedspread.  Instead of the damp featureless first floor apartment in the brutalist concrete housing estate where he was brought up.  

Was he connecting with himself, back then?  It was hard to say.  It was just the way he was, back then.  Friendless.  Introverted.  Relying entirely on his own company.  Escaping on his bike to bits of scrubby ancient woodland still hanging on amidst the concrete and rubble of new roads and shopping centres on the outskirts of town and finding solace for his hurting soul in a bit of birding.  

I haven't changed a bit, he thought.   I live in the countryside and I'm married to Val now, so I'm not on my own.  

But my soul still hurts.

Dave takes a Leap

' I'm free, to do what I want, any old ti-ime', Dave sang softly to himself as he strode across the moors. ' I can manage on my own', he thought, 'Of course I can.  I managed before I met Val - although that seems so long ago I can barely remember how.'

Dave paused briefly on the edge of a peat bog before his long rangy legs propelled him over in a single bound.

'If only I could manage to find the elixir of life', he mused, landing neatly on a patch of reeds,  'The secret to happiness.  I don't mean eternal happiness - I just mean a general sense of contentment with the day to day and perhaps an occasional spike into bliss rather than the current mindless trudge through the mire.  Is that a lot to ask?  Perhaps it is.  Perhaps I'm overstepping the parameters of the acceptable.  But then again - why shouldn't I?  Perhaps it's time I had a long hard look at my life.  Perhaps it's time to make some changes.   Am I really happy with Val?  Did I choose the correct life partner?  Well, I know the answer to that one, don't I.  And in any case, she chose me.  I didn't have much say in the matter now I come to think properly about it.  Which is not a comfortable thing to do.  In fact I'm going to stop thinking about it right now,  it's making me feel rather unwell.'

He wiped his nose on the back of a fingerless glove as he reached the brow of the hill, and looked eastwards to a descending grassy slope, studded with clumps of spaghnum moss.  At the bottom was a low building with a thin vertical stream of pale grey smoke emanating from a hole in the top.

'People say they have no regrets.  Well,  they must be lucky because I have plenty.  Mainly about stuff I didn't do, rather than stuff I did.  Now isn't that strange?  Or perhaps it isn't.  How would I know.  I've never spoken to anyone else about it.  Perhaps everyone feels the same.  But I kind of hope not because that would be a bit dull. '  Dave leapt downhill springing from clump to clump of soft spongy moss,'  I wonder who stays here.  Perhaps they might offer me a hot drink and a sandwich.  Perhaps it's time for me to step out of my comfort zone.  Perhaps I need to start saying YES to the universe, instead of anxiously hiding in the shadows with my trail cam.'

He walked round to the front of the building and knocked firmly on a bright green door.

'Is there anybody there?'

The brass letterbox swung open, pushed by an unseen hand.  Dave bent down and met a pair of beady eyes glittering in the darkness ...

Next time - Dave makes some new friends...and some new discoveries...

The Youngbloods - Get Together - 1967 - 5 .1 Surround (Stereo in)

Dave Nark has an existential crisis

'Does Santa wear a full wig, or is it a ring of white hair attached to his hat to make it look like a wig? What does he do for the rest of the year, what does he think about?  Does he garden at all?'  Dave Nark muttered as he paced back and forth in front of the row of composting toilets behind the yurts as the snow began to fall.  He was wearing khaki-coloured fingerless gloves and biting his nails. 

'I can't go on like this,' he thought. 'What am I doing with my life?  I'm 59 years old and the world has passed me by.  Or is it the other way round?  Am I really happy with Val?  Or am I just making do - settling, as they say.  I think I know the answer to that one.  Oh dear.  But it's not just that.  The wildlife vids are just not cutting it.  I'm losing my touch.  Everyone's tik tokking now.  My vids are old hat.  Nobody's interested in otters.  They want killer whales and breaching humpbacks.  I have to up my game or move on.  Basically that's it, isn't it.  Up my game or move on.  Move on into the fucking grave.'

'DAVE!'  screeched Val from inside the healing yurt.  'Don't forget that you've kindling to chop, logs to bring in and the woodburner to clean when you've done digging out the toilets.  And you can make me a cup of goji berry tea while you're at it.  Properly mind!  I want the water freshly boiled not flat and under-oxygenated like the last time.   I'm worn out hot-stoning.'

Dave stopped pacing for a moment.   He rubbed his long nose in a thoughtful manner and removed a drop of moisture with the back of his fingerless glove. 

'DAVE!'

'DAVE ARE YOU LISTENING!'

'DAVE!'

And then he started pacing again, only in a different direction.  Rather than pacing back and forth in front of the toilets (which he hadn't dug out by the way), he narrowed his eyes, adjusted his bobble hat and headed behind them - towards the moors...

next time - Dave has an odd encounter in a sweat lodge

Beginning the year with TS Eliot

 

Keep Going until you Can't

 

'Keep going until you can't,' said the T-G, pausing by the open flap door of Val Nark's Holistic Vaxing Yurt to pack some Black Bogey into his Meerschaum pipe (with its bowl fashioned into the shape of the Transantarctic Mountains).  'That's my motto these days, Santa.  For what it's worth.  Which is probably quite a bit, coming from me.  Why do yourself down - that's another of my mottos.'   And he gave a wink and a thumbs up as he moved on.

Santa was 'proning' on Val Nark's portable massage table with five 'hot stones' on his back.  His red jacket and hat lay folded on a yoga mat on the floor beside him.   Val's ear candling kit sat tidily on a low stool, ready for use.  A sixth 'hot stone' - a large chunk of granite, salvaged from a ruined croft up on the moors - sat sizzling on top of the log burner in the centre of the yurt.

'Thanks,' he replied stoically. 'Unfortunately I think I've reached the 'can't' part.'

'How are we getting on Santa?' Val bustled in. 'Ready for your ear candling?  Oh - I think you could manage another hot stone on that dodgy 13th lumbar vertebra.  Here you go!'

Val reached over to the log burner and picked up the stone with a large pair of iron tongs.  'It's been on there all day -  must be super hot.'  She dropped it quickly on Santa's lower back.  'Which is the whole point and I'm sure it'll do you a power of good.  Take the pain and always be positive!  That's my motto!'

'OWYA BANDIT!' Santa bellowed, as the burning stone made contact.  The massage table buckled in the middle at its vulnerable folding point, depositing Santa in a red and white heap on the floor on top of six hot stones and the ear candling kit.  

He pulled a Sharpie out from behind his ear and wrote on the back of his hand 

KEEP GOING UNTIL YOU CAN'T

WHY DO YOURSELF DOWN

TAKE THE PAIN AND ALWAYS BE POSITIVE

Next time - Santa returns to the North Pole/Greenland/somewhere cold and nurses himself back to health, ready for next Christmas

Christmas Eve

 

Christmas Eve was a doozy.

Santa fell down the chimney in a cloud of soot, landing arse-first in our customary blazing pile of driftwood.

As he lurched out of the fireplace we could clearly see that he was rather drunk.   And -  as his red white-bobbled hat slipped to one side - completely, as it happened, bald.  

Tuppence winked at Alexa, murmuring 'See?'

'Ho ho ho everybody!'  slurred Santa, gesturing grandly with a bottle of Jack Daniels then throwing himself down on the couch.  'God I'm depressed.  I feel so OLD.  I'm definitely past heaving sacks down chimneys, that's for sure - my back's totally gone.  I can't even FIT down a chimney these days - not that it was ever easy.  I'm barrelling along in my sleigh towards a bungalow smelling of piss and biscuits like John Cooper Clarke.'

'Don't be depressed Santa,' said Tuppence (for it was he who had brought Santa to our home and rammed him down the chimney, against all basic common sense), ' Keith Richards says he's not getting old, he's evolving, and he's ANCIENT.  Even you can't be THAT old.'

'I am,' sobbed Santa, 'I'm a myth older than time itself.'

'No you're not,' said Alexa,' You're a Victorian.'

'Am I?  Am I not the embodied spirit of St Nicholas ? Forget Prince Albert, the Coca Cola advert and the threadbare supermarket versions.  I'm the real deal, and that makes me Very Old Indeed.'

'Never mind all that,' I said,' What about our presents?  Haven't you got anything for us?'

'Oh - of course,' said Santa, groping in his pocket,  'Here you are.'

And he handed me three lumps of coal.

'One for each of you.'

'Charming,' I said, throwing them on the fire.  

'Well it's always want want want with everyone isn't it.  You can't have it all your own way.  You three have been pretty nasty this year, and you know how this works.'

'What about me and Dave?' asked Alexa. 'Do we get coal too?'

'I don't want coal,' said Dave,' Val would have a fit if I started burning fossil fuels.'

Next time - Dave and Alexa open their presents, and Santa heads back to Greenland after a rejuvenating spa treatment from Val Nark.

 

Normal service will resume shortly.  Merry Christmas to all.

Jethro Tull - Ring Out Solstice bells BBC Promo Video 1976

I wheel this one out every year.

Existential Solstice Gloom

 

'How do we survive this darkness,' said Dave. 'This bleakness.  This cold thorny wilderness. How do we get through?'

'This vale of tears called life,' murmured the T-G, leafing through last week's Bugle. 'We're all weak-eyed bats,  no sun should tempt out of our four walls.  Or something along those lines.  Blindly groping our way in the dark.  There's no easy way through. But whatever you do - avoid Facebook and Whatsapp.'

'Strong drink,' I offered, swirling my hot vodka and Bovril.  'Barbiturates.  Opiates perhaps.  It all helps to take the edge off.  Especially in the dead of winter.'

'I find loud music really helps,' said Tuppence. 'When I play my Moog at volume 11 with my headphones on it blasts everything else out of my head.  Also shooting things.'

'I can't communicate,' said Dave.  He stood up and started to pace.  'I'm trying to explain myself to people and everything but it seems to just not get through.  It's like there's a massive wall between me and the rest of humanity.  It's so PAINFUL.  Everyone else looks like they're all sorted and having the time of their lives.  I try to join in but it's like I'm behind a glass screen and they can't hear me.'

'Maybe they're just ignorant bastards,' I said.  'Maybe it's them, not you.  Maybe you're better off without everyone else.  Whoever everyone else is.  It certainly can't be US because here we are giving you full support Dave.'

'Only connect,' murmured the T-G, skewering a pickled worm with a cocktail stick.  'If only it were that simple.'

'Val's raving on about the Solstice and the psychic conflict between the waxing Moon and the waning year.  She says it's that. Plus her mother coming to stay for the Festive.  And my IBS and my dodgy prostate doesn't help - I haven't mentioned that before because it's embarrassing but I'm sharing so,' Dave shrugged,' I mean that's all terrible but it can't be JUST that because I feel like this most of the time.  She says it'll be better when the Spring comes and I can get out and about wildlife vidding a bit more but it's not that.  It's not that at all.  There's something deeper I need to face.'

Next time - Dave faces something deeper and Santa comes to call.. but which one??