Something Afoot

Four Thoughts

Getting Older
I guess that getting older has both advantages and disadvantages. One becomes increasingly slower, and often prepared to miss the bus. This much associated with increasing aches and pains. Health issues become increasingly prominent, along with the growing sense of one’s own mortality. I find myself becoming increasingly intolerant, although not yet, I hope, a Grumpy Old Man. One should be thankful for life experience, which brings wisdom, knowledge and the time for new learning experiences. Age brings the capacity for humour, wit, and most definitely sarcasm. The downside is that age really does remind us that it brings with it an increasing dependency upon others to do things that we were once able to do for ourselves.

Homesick
Being someone who loves to travel, to explore new places, revisit favourite cities, being homesick doesn’t really fit my psyche that much. However, I spent the first forty odd years of my life in Cornwall, and occasionally on seeing images of places I know, the sea, the beaches, the harbours, all of which make me think once more of my love of the place. Lockdown, and the pandemic reinforced my sense of ‘home’, and that it could, in fact, be anywhere. Living in Edinburgh is cool, it makes exploring Scotland so much easier. Finland is another place I could happily live as it is not the dysfunctional place that Britain has become.

Family
Growing up in a dysfunctional family was not that good. My parents were ill-educated working class people. There were always the rows, more often than not about various affairs. If not the rows it was the noise of sex that prevented sleep. This didn’t seem to bother my brother too much - but he is ten years younger than me. It was probably my grandparents who saved my sanity, particularly my grandmother. From them I received ‘love’ (whatever that is), I don’t think my parents knew much about that. My grandmother gave me a love of music and literature, she taught me to cook, how to iron my own shirts, and, most importantly, to treat women as equals. Apart from my grandparents the rest of my family were, as far as I was concerned, unwanted. Other people seemed puzzled that I showed no grief at the death of my parents, but that, on the contrary, I expressed a degree of joy.

Friendship
Friendship - what is it? How does it work? I have very many ‘acquaintances’ but very few friends. Ideas of friendship work in many ways. There are those who want friendship without trying to achieve it - the stalkers who engage in harassment. Then there is the line of friendship, love, sex, pregnancy, marriage, divorce, and not necessarily in that order. For me a friend is someone who will be there for me, and help in time of need without question. A friend is someone who will be honest with me, and tell me the truth, rather than what they think I want to hear. Friendship is about trust, without which one could not have friends. Friendships can also be formed through team spirit, and the trust built through that. I played cricket for many years, a game where one has to trust the other team members to do what they are asked, when they are asked.