the soundtrack of long life

We have been told that white stands for purity.
I've heard it whispered, the fair are of God.
Someone said colours are all in a rainbow.
I'm saying to you there are some they forgot.

Down in the gutter I heard someone crying.
Also heard laughter to add to the role.
That's the confusion and pain that I'm feeling.
Reach for my hand and I'll give you my soul.

Thinking's a headache, that's why we avoid it.
Thought reveals truth and the pain of the facts.
Now I see rainbows of many more colours.
Beauty is red, yellow, pink, brown, and black.

A Word About Colour, Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and The Trinity

A very sixties sort of song, from when the World was young and innocent.

life lessons that are priceless – survival in the corporate world

«That evening, Mr Salter, foreign editor of The Beast, was summoned to dinner at his chief’s country seat at East Finchley.
[…]
Mr Salter’s side of the conversation was limited to expressions of assent. When Lord Copper was right he said, “Definitely, Lord Copper”; when he was wrong, “Up to a point”.
“Let me see, what’s the name of the place I mean? Capital of Japan? Yokohama, isn’t it?”
“Up to a point, Lord Copper.”
“And Hong Kong belongs to us, doesn’t it?”
“Definitely, Lord Copper.”»

Scoop, Evelyn Waugh

life on another hill – multiculturalism

A greenfinch and a goldfinch companionably passing the time of day on a pine branch outside the Fool’s office window. Apologies for the lack of quality of the photograph – it was taken through a dusty pane of “arithmetically” sealed (as they say) double glazing, the windows in these modern offices being non-opening in order, no doubt, to prevent people from jumping out out of sheer despondency.

the soundtrack of contemporary life

When the rain came down, I was older than the earth
I could die right now, and plan another birth
Anytime I choose
I am in peace, in love, in harmony when the rain comes

When the rain came down, I was standing in the green
My soul was touched by every tree that my eyes could see
I am in peace, in love, in harmony when the rain comes down

When the rain came down, melded with my tears
When the rain came down, float away their fears
When the rain came down, bigger than the sea
When the rain came down, then came me

When the rain came down, there was no one else around
I could feel my feet being swallowed by the ground
Every step I take, I am life, I am life

When the rain came down, melded with my tears
When the rain came down, float away their fears
When the rain came down, bigger than the sea
When the rain came down, then came me

When the rain came down – Happy Rhodes

life lessons that are priceless – better awake

«Instantly Myrtle looked away, and I knew that I had made a mistake. I was being found lacking in romance. I held her close to me. “Poor Myrtle”, I thought; “and poor me as well.” I went on holding her close till I ceased to be found lacking in romance.

Saturday afternoon passed like a dream – in fact much more satisfactorily than any dream I have ever had. Men can say what they like about dreams. Better awake, is my motto.»

Scenes from Provincial Life, William Cooper

life on the hill (II)

I always knew I wanted a garden. More than that, some space to plant trees. And box hedges.

The smell of box and fresh water on granite has been with me since, as a child, I spent whole days playing with boats (made of cork, with chicken and duck feathers for sails, and shaped tin plates for keels and rudders – brilliant) on the pond at Grandmother’s house.

I have a very early memory of slowly bending over the water and laying my cheek against the surface, trying not to disturb the absolutely clear reflection of the boats and the trees and the house on the absolutely still water. And staying like that for a while, just breathing in the smells. If I were asked for some definition of pure happiness I might well pick this – trees are in it (a great big ash providing a caressing, flickering shade); boats are in it; a beloved house is in it; close family is in it.

So I have long known of the spell of gardens. But even then I was unprepared for how much the first years of pottering around the Hill have provided a sense of peacefulness and perspective to life in these troubled times.

I would not claim to be engaging in contemplation – fools and contemplation make uneasy bedfellows. And it is hard to be contemplative when finding oneself on hands and knees, clawing at the parched earth in search of a lost drip-watering pipe, with brambles dragging at one’s feet and lethal pine needles reaching for one’s eyes.

But – in the time-honoured fashion of old men and fools – I do often find myself talking to myself. The great attraction of this is not, of course, that momentous debates are engaged in, or a solution to the problems of the world addressed, let alone arrived at.

No, the attraction is that no such conversation is ever subject to misunderstanding; or immediate contradiction; or turns from a simple talk to a heated argument at the drop of a hat, leaving one wondering at where the hat was dropped. Rather it’s made of frequent mutual pats on the back, and “what a clever man we are, my dear Fool”, and “I couldn’t agree more”, and “you make me laugh”, and “we must do this more often”.

That, and hard manual labour, and, by necessity, a life much more closely attuned to the seasons and the weather – I am forever praying for rain –, have all made a contribution that cannot be overestimated towards restoring a sense of peace (that word again) and of the truly important things in life.

Sometimes I just feel like lying back under a tree on top of the hill and going to sleep. I have only refrained from doing so for fear of attracting the vultures. Or frightening the other Hill dwellers.

the soundtrack of contemporary life

Alabama, Arkansas, I do love my Ma & Pa
Not the way that I do love you

Holy moley, me-oh-my, you're the apple of my eye
Girl, I’ve never loved one like you

Man, oh man, you’re my best friend,
I scream it to the nothingness
There ain’t nothin’ that I need

Well, hot & heavy, pumpkin pie,
chocolate candy, Jesus Christ
There ain’t nothin’ pleases me more than you

Ahh, Home
Let me come Home
Home is wherever I’m with you (2x)

La la la la, take me Home
Baby, I’m coming Home

I’ll follow you into the park,
through the jungle, through the dark
Girl, I’ve never loved one like you

Moats & boats & waterfalls,
alley ways & pay phone calls
I’ve been everywhere with you

That’s true

We laugh until we think we’ll die,
barefoot on a summer night
Nothin’ new is sweeter than with you

And in the streets we're running
free like it's only you and me
Geez, you’re somethin' to see.

Ahh, Home
Let me come Home
Home is wherever I’m with you (2x)

La la la la, take me Home
Baby, I’m coming Home

“Jade?”
“Alexander?”
“Do you remember that day you fell out of my window?”
“I sure do, you came jumping out after me.”
“Well, you fell on the concrete
and nearly broke your ass
and you were bleeding all over the place
and I rushed you off to the hospital.
Do you remember that?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, there’s something
I never told you about that night.”
“What didn’t you tell me?”
“While you were sitting in the back seat
smoking a cigarette you thought
was going to be your last,
I was falling deep, deeply in love with you
and I never told you ‘til just now.”
“Now I know.”

Ahh, Home
Let me come Home
Home is whenever I’m with you
Ahh, Home
Let me come Home
Home is when I’m alone with you

Home
Let me come Home
Home is wherever I’m with you

Ahh, Home
Yes, I am Home
Home is when I’m alone with you.

Alabama, Arkansas, I do love my Ma & Pa
Moats & boats & waterfalls & pay phone calls

Ahh, Home
Let me come Home
Home is wherever I’m with you
Ahh, Home
Let me come Home
Home is when I’m alone with you

Home, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

life lessons that are priceless – obsession

«Waking or sleeping, I dream of boats – usually of rather small boats under a slight press of sail. When I think how great a part of my life has been spent dreaming the hours away and how much of this total dream life has concerned small craft, I wonder about the state of my health, for I am told that it is not a good sign to be always voyaging into unreality, driven by imaginary breezes.

[But] If a man must be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most.»

“The Sea and the Wind that Blows”, in Essays of E. B. White, Elwyn Brooks White

life on the hill – a potted history

In the beginning was the View.

Towards the south, there’s Eugaria on the left, Colares on the right and, smack in front, seemingly the whole mountain. From the top of the hill, the sea on the western horizon, Palácio da Pena on the eastern, and glimpses of houses here and there, like jewells on the greenery.

The real-estate agent showed it to us more or less in desperation, after we had successively turned our noses up at her complete portfolio of apparently more desirable plots in the pine forest at the bottom of the hill. «I suppose there’s another one I can show you», she finally huffed. «Up there …» – Dismissively, probably hoping to get rid of us and to return to more lucrative clients.

And she brought us to the Hill.

At first we didn't understand it, kept waiting for the catch – to be shown some dank spot behind a wall, for instance, or a bog on the northern slope with no view and no sun exposure. But she waved her arm and said “This is it”.

“It” was a long, narrow strip of land straddling the hill north to south. And we couldn’t believe it.

It was what we’d been looking for all along. An unimpeded view. Size enough (just under the proverbial “acre of land”) to plant trees, of which there were very few. Isolation enough to give one the illusion of being in the country.

That there was a small run-down vineyard only added to the charm (the road at the northern edge is Alto das Vinhas – Vineyard Heights –, and indeed there remain a few here and there in neighbouring plots).

The catch would come. But at that moment, for the moment, our cup was full. That was in 1999.

the soundtrack of contemporary life

We’ll go jumble sailing,
out when the weather is fine
We’ll go jumble sailing,
you never know what we’ll find
We’ll be just like two millionaires,
going out on a spree
We’ll know that it won’t break the bank
‘cos it’s only 10 p

We’ll go jumble sailing,
out when the weather is fine
We’ll go jumble sailing,
you never know what we’ll find

Who knows all the odd little things
that will sail into view
I may find an odd little thing
that reminds me of you
I see so many people turn their noses up
at all the treasure we find
It’s sad, they don’t know what they’re missing,
but well, we’ll just have to leave them behind

We’ll go jumble sailing
out when the weather is fine
We’ll go jumble sailing,
you never know what we’ll find

Maybe find a small souvenir
or a thing we can use
Maybe a hat or a scarf
or some second-hand shoes
Maybe, either way this is one lucky dip
we can’t lose
When we go jumble sailing
off into the blue

Jumble Sailing, Clearlake

life lessons that are priceless – the subjective truth

«Lata tried to imagine the nuptial room. Presumably it would be fragrant with tuberoses; that, at least, was Malati’s confident opinion. I’ll always associate tuberoses with Pran, Lata thought. It was not at all pleasant to follow her imagination further. That Savita would be sleeping with Pran tonight did not bear thinking of. It did not strike her as being at all romantic. Perhaps they would be too exhausted, she thought optimistically.
“What are you thinking of, Lata?”, asked her mother.
“Oh, nothing, Ma”, said Lata automatically.
“You turned up your nose. I saw it.”
Lata blushed.
“I don’t think I ever want to get married,” she said emphatically.
Mrs. Rupa Mehra was too wearied by the wedding, too exhausted by emotion, too cumbered with congratulations, too overwrought, in short, to do anything but stare at Lata for ten seconds.
[…]
Now that the tears were running down her cheeks, Mrs. Rupa Mehra transferred them fluidly from one daughter to the other. She clasped Savita to her bosom and wept loudly. “You must write to me, Savita darling”, she said. “You must write to me every day from Simla. Pran, you are like my own son now, you must be responsible and see to it. Soon I will be all alone in Calcutta – all alone.”
This was of course quite untrue. Arun and Varun and Meenakshi and Aparna would all be crowded together with her in Arun’s little flat in Sunny Park. But Mrs Rupa Mehra was one who believed with unformulated but absolute conviction in the paramountcy of subjective truth over objective.»

A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth

liturgical life

Tomorrow is the Feast of the Fool’s namesake saint. He was born in Friesland and the founder of a monastery called Mariëngaarde in 1163. I like the Friesian connection – puts one in mind of mysterious fogs and dangerous plots and daring adventures.

I was once told that the saint’s name meant Peace Loving, which I always hesitated between taking as an in-built predisposition towards wisdom — and therefore A Good Thing — or just namby pamby. Now I hear it means Peaceful Ruler instead, a subtle but important difference, and a meaning I can embrace with no ambivalence – no matter how far it continually proves to be from the reality of my days (the “ruler” bit especially).

And Mary’s Garden (or Mary’s Orchard, as I’m told it can also be translated) is a better candidate than Coney Island for a name for the House, certainly one that bodes better for the future of the plantations on the Hill.

It is also the third anniversary of the Fool’s father’s death, an unhappier connotation, but one which has mellowed with time. I no longer carry my copies of The Spectator for weeks in the back seat of my car, waiting for the next time we meet and I can give them to him to read.

Happy St. Frederick's Day

the soundtrack of contemporary life

Oh I'm still living
at the old address
and I'm waiting on the weather
that I know will pass
I know that it's true - it's gonna be a good year
outta the darkness - and into the fire
I'll tell ya I love ya
and my heart's in the strangest place
that's how it started
and that's how it ends

and I know you're with me
it's a point of pride
and it's louder than lightning
in this room of mine
oh I'm just like you I never hear the bad news
and I never will
we won by a landslide
our troubles are over
my sisters are married
to all of my friends
yeah that's how it started

you took your sweet time
and I waited by you without complaint
till all the pipe dreams made me insane
so it's all over
it's all over anyhow
you took your sweet time
finally I opened my eyes

my friends and my family
they are asking of me
how long will you ramble
how long will you still repeat
the snow is still falling
and I'm almost home
I see a new year

In The New Year, The Walkmen

life lessons that are priceless – le minimum de travail

“La vraie science de la vie matérielle consiste, je crois, à suivre l’exemple de ces Tahitiens d’autrefois: trouver les moins de travailler le moins possible, tout en recherchant les moyens, par ce minimum de travail, de se procurer le maximum de vie la plus “saine” possible.”

Kaimiloa, Eric de Bisschop

sporting life (3)

The Fool rides a bicycle. Another ‘orrible, common sport, cycling. And, like swimming, burdened with its own particularly vile sartorial code. Fortunately, unlike swimming – where one isn’t even allowed into the pool unless professionally attired –, no one will actually arrest you for wearing sensible clothes to ride your bike.

One finds, however, after doing it for a while, that there are reasons behind some of the bizarre choices. And that’s how the Fool eventually found himself resplendent in another pair of lycra shorts – only this time a little longer in the leg and, reader, padded in indescribable places (to protect sensitive, un-nameable body parts against chafe, you understand).

Now, this padding, in this location, may confer on the wearer a more flattering and … enthusiastic figure of a man than he has any right to claim for himself. And which may fool (forgive the pun) the casual observer, the untrained eye (or even the jaded one, as we shall see), into thinking they are looking at something which they really aren’t.

If you see what I mean.

“Oooh!”, went the Begum Sahiba – I was about to write Mrs. Fool, but my hand was stayed by a mysterious force (an instinct of self-preservation, probably, or the urgently whispered advice of a guardian angel) – when she first saw the Fool in his ludicrous new togs.

But she immediatelly realised her mistake for what it was – mere artifice, sweet illusion, a trick of the light –, and dismissively went back to more important occupations.

So I have taken to hiding the misleading bulge beneath modest tennis shorts, and reverted to type – just another overweight old codger, laboriously pedalling his way up hill and down dale in a vain attempt to reclaim some of the vigour of long-lost youth.

the soundtrack of contemporary life

Sea Talk, Zola Jesus

life lessons that are priceless – daughters

«The father of a daughter, for example, is nothing but a high-class hostage. A father turns a stony face to his sons, berates them, shakes his antlers, paws the ground, snorts, runs them off into the underbrush, but when his daughter puts her arm over his shoulder and says, “Daddy, I need to ask you something”, he is a pat of butter in a hot frying pan. The butter thinks to itself, “This time I really am going to remain rectangular”, and then it feels very relaxed, and then it smells smoke»

The Book of Guys, Garrison Keilor

the soundtrack of the very, very old life

Lollipop, The Chordettes

The very first song the Fool remembers liking, sneakily dancing to it in front of his Other Grandmother's full-length mirror, he must have been 4 or 5 years-old. How sad is that?

the soundtrack of the craven life

She can’t blame him for avoiding the end
He don’t want to hit the bottom of the pool
She says he’s afraid of pain
Afraid of the dark and lonely days
And if he’d only take a dive
She says, he’d surface in Heaven
She says, he’d surface in Heaven
She says, he’d surface in Heaven

“Dive, dive, dive …”

This tangled web is a safety net
He won’t interfere ‘cos it’s all he’s got
She says, he’s a coward now, deterioration escalates
She’s threatening and heckling:
“Dive and you’d surface in Heaven,
Oh dive and you’d surface in Heaven
Oh come on, dive and you’d surface in Heaven”

“C’mon try, try, try …”

He calls, “please don’t make me change too much,
It’s taken so much time to learn so little
And I won’t go under for Heaven
No, I won’t go under for Heaven
I won’t go under for Heaven”

“C’mon dive, dive, dive, ah, ahhh, aahhh, oh dive …“

Surface in Heaven, Pierce Turner

modern life

They go for days without shaving.
They walk the streets in their bare backs – and think nothing of sitting down to lunch without even a t-shirt on.
They don’t know how to tie their own bow ties.
They have extended casual Friday (an iniquitous concept in itself) to sloppy everyday.
They wear socks with their Topsiders.

They don’t care if they are served fish without proper fish cutlery.
They can’t tell Milka from Valrhona.
They go out for breakfast.
They drink Coke.
They like cheesecake. And Oreos.

They unhesitatingly enter the lift or cross the door ahead of you – the idea of letting you have precedence doesn’t even cross their minds.
They watch soaps and reality shows.
They genuinely don’t understand the concept of delayed gratification. Or of sin and penance.

They treat – and talk to – their elders as if they were their own age.
They wouldn’t know how to address a King if they met him (as one does).

They NEVER sit up straight.

Sometimes I lie awake at night and worry about these things.

office life (3)

I'm bored

I'm the chairman of the bored,
I'm a lengthy monologue
I'm livin' like a dog

I'm bored

I bore myself to sleep at night
I bore myself in broad daylight coz

I'm bored
Just another slimey bore

I'm free to bore my well-bought friends
And spend my cash until the end coz

I'm bored
I'm bored

I'm the chairman of the board

I'm sick
I'm sick of all my kicks
I'm sick of all the stiffs
I'm sick of all the dips

I'm bored

I bore myself to sleep at night
I bore myself in broad daylight coz

I'm bored
I'm bored

Just another dirty bore

All right doll-face
Come on and bore me

I'm sick
I'm sick of all my kicks
I'm sick of all the stiffs
I'm sick of all the dips

I'm sick

I'm sick when I go to sleep at night
I'm still sick in the broad daylight coz

I'm bored
I'm bored

I'm the chairman of the. . .

BORED!

life without father

Regret at the things left unsaid until it was too late seems to be a commonly expressed feeling.

But not everything needs saying. And, anyway, during the course of a normal life the main things will have been said, love expressed, values transmitted. That job will have been done.

Me, it’s the small things that get me: must show him this, must ask him that – an old photograph, a new boat, an unknown bird, a sentence in a book (just now it’s the Essays of E. B. White, which would be right up his street). That job is never done, and cannot now be continued.

That's what gets me. The simple, everyday things.

life on the ocean blue

Did you know that the round-the-world record for a sailing boat is faster than that for a motor boat? Well, it is.

50 days, 16 hours and 20 minutes for the sailors aboard the maxi catamaran Orange II (seen below on another record which they also hold).



60 days, 23 hours and 49 minutes for the petrolheads aboard the futuristic trimaran Earthrace.



More astounding of all, however, is the 57 days, 13 hours and 34 minutes which constitutes the solo sailing record, set by super-Frenchman Francis Joyon on the fabulous Idec II.



Yep, that's one bloke, all by his lonesome, circling the world on a sailboat a neat three days and ten hours faster than a full crew in the most advanced motor boat the industry can come up with. How cool is that?

musical life

literary life

You're The Catcher in the Rye!

by J.D. Salinger

You are surrounded by phonies, and boy are you sick of them! In an
ongoing struggle to search for a land without phonies, you end up running away from
everything, from school to consequences. In this process, you reveal that many people
in your life have suffered torments and all you really want to do is catch them as
they fall. Perhaps using a baseball mitt. Your biggest fans are infamous
psychotics.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

out with the old life, in with the new

From the subscription renewal card of a famous magazine:

“Another year of … Admitting nothing, blaming everyone, being bitter and looking fabulous”.

Happy New Year everyone!

wild life (2)

And then there was the day Reynard came calling. As I stepped around the corner of the House on some errand, there he was, sniffing the ground. I stopped with a start, unsure of how to react, tentatively calling “Bonjour, Maitre Renard”, not wanting him to run. He didn’t seem scared, but didn’t seem keen to stay either; just sauntered off at his own elegant pace, cool as a cucumber, brush straight up in the air, giving me a last look over his shoulder as he slipped under the fence: “Some other time, perhaps”.

But I never saw him again, though he would be welcome, to cull the hordes of rabbits growing plump on my lantanas and geraniums (lantanae? gerania?) – and even on the barks of the fruit trees, the fucking little bastards.

family life

When the Fool was around 4 or 5 years old, his Grandmother felt it was time to make a start on his and his elder brother’s education in foreign languages. This was done at the dinner table, on which there happened to be a pair of small ceramic frogs (one pink and one pale blue, God knows why). Naturally, there were also forks. And frogs and forks, Grandmother decided, were as good a place as any to start an education.

That was without counting with my muddled brain (even then). At some point, exasperated at our continuing failure to correctly name each of the two, she picked one of the ceramic frogs from the table and gently knock-knock-knocked me on the head with it, all the while repeating “frog, frog, frog!”

The frogs – like some later-day version of Pentecostal tongues of fire – did their job, and neither my brother nor I have ever since confused our frogs with our forks, confusable though they are.

And that – endless repetition, knocking them over the head (gently!) and divine inspiration – is how you teach children new languages. And pretty much anything else.

frog, frog frog!

life under the weather (4)

sporting life (2)

The Fool swims. In the locker room, he begins by discarding his spectacles … whereupon reality acquires a decidedly nebulous dimension. Then, it’s a matter of a moment to undress and put on the swimming trunks, cap, goggles, and to step into the heated pool area itself.

And then it becomes really nebulous (no bad thing, I suppose – I mean, picture the Fool in his tight lycra swimming trunks, silicon cap and bright blue goggles. The mind shudders).

Adelante: by then he has retreated into a world within himself, a bubble of power and concentration, and he goes into his routines only vaguely aware of the other people and shapes around him.

But routines are conducive to idle thoughts: “Hello! Do I see some shapely silhouettes in the next lane?”, and in his mind’s eye there appears a gaggle of comely thirty-somethings, agog at the elegance of his stroke. “Go, Shark!”, he fancies them saying as he goes by in a welter of spray; and “Fly, Albatross, fly!”

And he discreetly smiles his wolfish smile as he leaves them in his wake …

You don’t think they could be 80-year old great-grandmothers instead, do you? Shaking their heads and murmuring “It’s that nice Mr. Mitty, dear. But we’d better not wave to him, lest he drown himself on his foolish grin”.

office life (2)

Seen on the intranet site of a corporation not a million miles away from where the Fool sits “Necessity is the mother of invention, by Plato, Greek Philosopher”.

Lest anyone think he was a basketball coach, I suppose, or a fucking Hollywood actor!

old life

I don’t know about similarly affected people, but when his hair started thinning the Fool suddenly began finding himself with frequent bruises – and even open wounds – in his tender scalp.

One gets used to it.

I just seem to have missed the part when these morphed from the proudly exhibited war wounds of the rugged, handsome man-about-the-outdoors to the sad marks of the tottery old Fool, distractedly bumping into things.

And it used to take sharp-edged stone lintels to actually draw blood. Now, any old rotten wooden beam will do the job.

sporting life

The Fool swims. He’s not particularly proud of it (horrible, common sport, swimming), but it’s what the Doctor ordered. So he swims. The school the Princess attends has a pool, and it’s available for “external users” after-hours. But the children’s teachers remain for us externals, and in the way of children’s teachers they are not content with simply watching one swim and keeping an eye out for drowners. They like to organize “activities” and contests – it stems from their habit of having to keep idle young minds and bodies occupied, I suppose. I have thought of telling them they needn’t bother with us (it’s all the poor Fool and his classmates can do to keep afloat, much less have the sort of idle thoughts that need curtailing), but they seem so happy.

Anyway, in the course of activities and contests, points are attributed and prizes given. And so it has come to pass that the Fool was elected Swimmer of the Year last year. The fact that my classmates – my competition for the Grand Prize – seem to be for the most part natives of landlocked lands who cannot have seen the sea or a pool much before their 40th birthday is neither here nor there. Modest people with much to be modest about – such as the Fool and Mr. Clement Attlee – live for these small triumphs.

wild life

“Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole”. It would take a much braver man than the Fool to even try to emulate the inimitable William Boot, nature writer and war correspondent extraordinaire. So I won't. Just some occasional notes about the creatures on the Hill.

The overwhelming impression is of rabbits, rabbits everywhere. Come to think of it, Coney Island might not be a bad solution in our quest to find a name (though it's wise to check with the American wag first, for undesirable connotations). The first weekend we spent at the House, one even fell into the underground patio (a sunken patio, the top of its walls flush with the ground – where clothes can be hung to dry in the open air but out of sight of guests. Clever, eh?). It had been a dark and stormy night (reader, clichés were promised from the beginning), and he was a fluffy little fellow, wet through and in shock at the ten-foot fall. The Fool picked him up with a towel and rubbed him, like Roger with the puppy in The 101 Dalmatians, and then set him down outside (fully prepared to take him out of his misery, if he proved to be too far gone – though I didn’t tell the Princess that). He sat there for a moment, then his ears shot up like exclamation marks and he bolted up the hill, stopped again, lifted his ears once more to get his bearings, then off again and into the undergrowth, to warn his mates about large holes in the ground.



There’s a pair of nesting buzzards, on the slope in front. One sees them often, soaring lazily over the mountain, and even more often just hears their call when they are lost to sight against the trees in the background. Once, I was trying my father’s old duck-decoys in the pool when a shadow suddenly loomed. I looked up, and there was one of the pair, hovering, checking the lie of the land, ready for the stoop. But it saw me and must have felt discretion was the better part of valour (I flatter myself thinking), and it flew off.

And there’s a grey heron, crossing the horizon eastwards in the morning and westwards in the evening, regular as clockwork. And flights of mallard in V-formation, like F-16s. And more.

I mean to put up some sort of a bird-feeding table, though the trees still need to grow quite a bit before they are of a proper size to attract songbirds.

office life

“The best acronyms, of course, should provide no clue as to their meaning, and yet be bandied about as if the meaning were known to all. Once their meaning is known to all, however, their bureaucratic utility declines: for acronyms are to modern bureaucrats what incantations are to ancient shamans”
Dr. Theodore Dalrymple, fulminating against the British National Health Service.

“Modern bureaucrats” have nothing on blonde shamanesses, sayeth the Fool.

life on the hill

So, it’s been three years and we still haven’t come up with a name for the House. After hearing my lyrical (I thought) description of the fabulous views, an American wag suggested Bellevue (“in New York City", he added helpfully, "the hospital of choice for the insane”). To my stepchildren it is Praia Grande (from the name of a beach 2 or 3 miles away), implying it’s a beach house, a notion I fight strenuously to disabuse them of. Most other people call it Colares (after the hill-town across the valley from us), which at least brings it closer to the ideal of the 19th-century quinta de lazer (leisure farm) I naively intend it to be.

To me, it’s just the House. “Hey, House”, I greet it when I return there after a spell (but only if I’m alone, bien entendu, no need to reinforce the poor opinion of one’s mental equilibrium already held by the distaff side). And then I walk around, to check the trees, “hi there, beautiful lemon tree”, “hello, noble cypress”, “hey, mighty oak” – this to a foot-high sapling we brought from the wood at Grandmother’s house in the North, and which is being groomed in a vase until it’s ready for transplantation to its place in the grand scheme of things (as I modestly call the not-quite-completely-haphazard way the plot is being planted). And only then do I enter the House proper, and go around opening windows and putting new books on shelves, and patting the ones already there (hey, little book), lighting a fire and getting a dinner going.

And after three years I still can’t quite believe I have this life.

life under the weather (3)

This being a Fool’s blog, with all the potential for irrelevance, banality and clichés that that entails, I don’t suppose it comes as a surprise that it should have kicked off on this most banal of topics, the weather. But it’s not just that. We’ve had unusually bad weather for the past two weeks and it was beginning to weigh on one’s mind. Now the sun is out, even if the wind has not abated. We’ll see if we can move on to other things.

life under the weather (2)

Viento más estúpido, más cabrón …, thus a Spanish friend of ours inveighing the gear-busting Levante which sometimes disrupted sailing at Puerto de Santa Maria, near Cadiz, in our racing days.

I am often reminded of him when looking out the windows of the House on the Hill, at the poor trees being bashed by the merciless whirlwinds which come busting up our valley from the sea. The valley runs west-to-east, perfectly aligned, we have come to realize, to channel all wind directions spanning the compass from 210 to 330 degrees (South-Southwest to North-Northwest) and to accelerate them in a Venturi effect (the Fool likes to pretend to a scientific bent of mind, don’t you know).

Guess what the prevailing winds are on the Hill? Northwest in summer, Southwest in winter, natch, plus or minus a few degrees each side.

life under the weather

The color of the sky as far as I can see is coal grey.
Lift my head from the pillow and then fall again.
With a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather.
A quiver in my lips as if I might cry.

Well by the force of will my lungs are filled and so I breathe.
Lately it seems this big bed is where I never leave.
Shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather.
Quiver in my voice as I cry,

"What a cold and rainy day. Where on earth is the sun hid away."

I hear the sound of a noon bell chime.
Now I'm far behind.
You've put in 'bout half a day
while here I lie
with a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather.
A quiver in my lip as if I might cry,

"What a cold and rainy day. Where on earth is the sun hid away?"

Do I need someone here to scold me
or do I need someone who'll grab and pull me out of this four poster dull torpor pulling downward.
For it is such a long time since my better days.
I say my prayers nightly this will pass away.

The color of the sky is grey as I can see through the blinds.
Lift my head from the pillow and then fall again
with a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather.
A quiver in my voice as I cry,

"What a cold and rainy day. Where on earth is the sun hid away?"
I shiver, quiver, and try to wake.

(Like The Weather, 10,000 Maniacs)