Day 302, An offer you can't refuse

Supermarket offers are usually bogus mechanisms for improving turnover of stock and packing landfill sites with discarded, uneaten, out of date food.

Here we see SPAR making us an offer we can't refuse.

You have to get up pretty early in the morning to pull the wool over my eyes.

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Day 301, Homelessness on the rise

A terrible example.  But here we can see a large number of the homeless, some of them Santas, huddling together for warmth and comfort during the harsh winter months.

How they come to meet up like this annually is not yet understood by science.

Perhaps there is some form of internal GPS system at work, or maybe one eye sensitive to magnetic fields, all able to guide the homeless to a place of congregation.

Some with ill fitting, hand-me-down jeans, many of them unable to stand.  It is a sorry state of affairs, for one of the richest countries in the world, to have such an example of waste and loss right here on our doorstep.

What can be done?

Well the answer to that ought not to be charity, and the government should ensure that society assists those that have fallen through the net, for whatever reason, by making sure that taxation is set at a level which enables us behave in a humane and caring way towards our fellow humans.

Hang on a minute, I've just put my specs on, are these actually just young people in fancy dress?

Even so, they probably still need our help.

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Day 300, Walking, Towing men - anniversary special

Look, look, more pairs of men towing cases.  One of them even has TWO cases.

The excitement is palpable, my Eye Spy book gives me 300 points for spotting pairs of people of the same sex towing suitcases in the sunlight.

There are no additional points for one person with a pair of wheeled cases.

It is fitting for the 300th day that such an event should have occurred.  On the same day.  Not photographed on a different day and then just used on this day.  No.  Not that.

Very fitting indeed.

Awesome.


At some point no doubt I'll have collected the full set of pairs of people towing cases.

There's no rush.

Perhaps by the 3000th anniversary day.

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Day 299, The Post Office Tower, day and night

Night and day, you are the one.

A 177 metre tall dark stranger looming over the city.
Part rotator, though not so much any more now there's no restaurant with public access.

An official secret until 1993, and wasn't shown on OS maps before then.  This was probably due to it being a giant sonic screwdriver left by The Doctor to protect London against marauding forces, cosmic or otherwise.  Clearly this didn't really work as the IRA used techniques to defeat it when they planted a bomb there in 1971.

Suffering a number of name changes, for me it will always be The Post Office Tower - which can be shortened to TPOT, pronounced Teapot.  How could the name ever be improved, answer me that, huh?  Don't answer, it can't.

So here it is by day, in the roaring traffic's boom.

Day and night, night and day.

And from the silence of my lonely room.

Day and night, night and day.

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Day 298, A fall, a bump, a tropical spider

40 plus years on and 70 plus kilos greater in weight, with a physical cellular mass that has completely changed many times over, what memory of this event that occurred in 1971 (or 1972) is retained and what was the impact.

What memory is there that isn't reconstructed, or is it recreated afresh with every retelling?

Presumably Locke would have something to say about the identity of the self in this instance. Although he wouldn't be familiar with the modern understanding that shows memory of events to be multifaceted and deeply ingrained in many parts of the brain, rather than something replayed in the manner of a cinematic projection.

All that aside - The strength of the memory of the size of the bump on my head.  The tautness of the skin on the bruise.  The waves of pain that radiate down and outward.  These are all there and easily recalled when the memory is only lightly touched.

In some retellings the memory of the event being directly opposite the Children's Hospital stands out.  In others it's climbing on the war memorial with a friend, about a mile from home.  What was the weather like - beyond it not raining, no idea.  In some the memory is of being back at home in the kitchen on Kelvin Flats with people saying the bruise was the size of an egg.  Another retelling has the kitchen, the bunch of bananas, and the tropical spider that decided that the bunch was no longer the ideal home.

But in the prime retelling it is where the bump on the head caused a change in consciousness, causing greater receptivity to the subsequent spider bite, which then conveyed the super-power of being able to exactly duplicate the Māori word used in The Lone Ranger by Quantum Jump, that being the longest word in the world.

Obviously people thought that my speaking in tongues was gibberish until the song came out in 1976.  So after that nobody thought my behaviour was in any way odd, no, not at all.

So that's the fall, the bump, and the spider, and how it relates to memory, and personal identity.  The impact is both literal and metaphorical, to be clear.


And here's the bit of war memorial where the incident occurred as pictured today.

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Day 297, Get on with it, a guru speaks

Head down and just get on with it.

Or.

Lift your head up and get on with it.

Or.

Lift your head up, look around, determine whether what you are doing makes any sense in the wider context.  If it does, get on with it.  If not, why?

Point out assumptions.

Question.

Keep questioning.

You have to care about what you are doing otherwise you won't be committed to it.


But isn't all of that self evident?  If not I'll pad it out with another 45000 words and get it published as the latest self help phenomenon.

Or package it as a pithy epithet in a funky-font against a background of an appropriate photograph, sprinkle on some schmaltz, and post to Facebook.

Bucolic, semi-pastoral photograph befitting the background of a nauseating aphorism

Alternatively, at typical guru lecture rates that'll be £5975 please.

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Day 296, “What we mourn for the dead is the loss of their hopes”

As I posted my aunt's birthday card, for what would once have been a twin anniversary, the quote seemed particularly poignant.

I came across the quote while reading some of John Berger shortly after hearing Clive James being interviewed.  Clive James is terminally ill and in what time he has left he's been writing, talking, making his peace with the world, and retaining a sense of humour.

There is a connection between the two artists/writers/poets, of sorts.  James states in one of his Observer television reviews:

"Give or take the odd anatomical discrepancy, John Berger affects me exactly like Jane Fonda - i.e. any opinion of mine which I discover he shares I immediately examine to find out what's wrong with it."

It has the nature of a sound-bite, it encapsulates an opinion and is nicely delivered in a humorous style, which is why it lives on outside the original review.  I can imagine a scene of James having to examine his opinions at regular intervals while Berger carries on in his French farm house oblivious to the activity - there may be arm-waving by both.

Perhaps there's a greater poignancy with regard to the quote and the increasing proximity to both of the above artists (indeed all of our) demise, or perhaps I'm just a sentimental fool.

Let's reject sentimentality for the sake of itself and just get on with doing, perhaps that might save other people having regret for our unfulfilled hopes when we've buggered off for good.






Here's a scene of continuous beauty, a Sheffield river, almost in the city centre.

Let's enjoy it while we have it.

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