August 9 - 23 ....... NOTHING happens here!

Where the hell is my DELL?

I had hoped to have been writing this to you on my new super-duper DELL laptop, but owing to the fact that DHL decided that my address did not exist, it did not get delivered.  Apparently despite this road probably being here for 250 years, and probably because you cannot drive a van up it, unlike UPS and all the other delivery companies that have made delivers to my door, I do not exist!  The driver was probably too lazy to walk.


Of course I had tracked the package on the DHL-SCI tracking site, up to and including the address query at 17:21 on 20-08-2015  but on asking DHL where it was they said it was not their package and I need to provide a waybill number.   I sent them the link to the DHL page and a copy of it and I was rewarded by . . . .  silence!

I thought I would drop the nice Mr. Michael Dell of DELL an e-mail informing him of DHL's inability to deliver a simple package and denying all knowledge of it, I expect Michael does not work at the weekend so I am not expecting an answer before Monday.  Better to travel in hope …….

I was already a bit cross in that when I purchased the DELL laptop the website said (in Spanish) ready for delivery in 2 – 4 days, and I duly got updates telling me that my laptop had been personalised to my specification and was due for delivery.  What they didn’t mention was that deliver was from CHINA!  So 2- 4 days is actually more like 2 – 4 weeks!   Naughty! Especially as the cash was taken once it had shipped.

So no computer and no answers.  Frustrating.

Corbynomics.

I have been much enlivened by the Labour leadership process, if you wrote such a farce people would never believe it, you really couldn’t make it up. I dutifully listened to the interviews with each of the four candidates on the world at one, and whether you back him or not, it really was Jeremy who was offering any kind of vision, and not simply nominalised waffle, (these tory-lite candidates should just hear themselves, there is nothing to believe in.)

Corbyn or JC to his friends (hehe) has a vision and when he talks he talks of I or we will do this and that and whatever, positive and focused on issues of import to what are traditional labour voters.  With the Andy, Mrs Balls, and call me Liz, it is all “would like to see this and that” and it is all old wine in the same old bottles, previously used by the conservatives and rinsed out and filled with a lighter vintage (but it all smells corked). And probably nicked from Tony Blairs wine celler.   

Corbyn has provided the catalyst for so many many things to crawl out of the woodwork. I never realised that the Labour Party big-wigs actually believe that abandoning socialism is a good thing. And the reason why 400,000 people have signed up is to remind them that maybe Labour values are socialist values (they can take the pictures of Maggie and Blair down now). Corbyn may not be 100% right, he may be idealistic, but he certainly seems to be what the people want, and he offers real change and a correctional push to he left!  

It is interesting that with Syritza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, and other populist and left wing movements, there is a general surge away from Capitalism towards the left.  With the terrible world situation, migration, wealth, commodities, something more "begnign" (and therfore more to the left)  surely can't be all bad. The pendulum is making the "correction" as it swings back.

So, I registered, using my UK address, paid my £3 and voted. But I am now very worried as I once had a “green thought” which would appear to be enough to get me rejected.  Dastardly deeds at Labour HQ if Jeremy Hardy is to be believed.  Socialism and Labour have become "oxymoronic" - the sleepwalking has now stopped, and for some the nightmare has begun!

 

Meow meow.

 I have had an unexpected visitor twice this week. The other night around 10pm I was tapping away at the laptop and notice something on the stairs up to my bedroom and the terrace,(no, not another man) but a black and white cat.   I see this cat every day as it sleeps on the roof of the house at the back and we do the slow eye close look at each other.   

Well it had obviously decided that I wanted to explore the roofs of my house and the house next door and the only way to gain access was via my house!   

So, the cat disappeared upstairs and re-appeared 30 minutes later and (as only cats can) walked past, imperious and ignoring me, jumped up and went out the window, just as it had arrived.  Being a cat lover, this behaviour struck me as completely normal. The next day the cat did exactly the same thing, but during the afternoon rather than in the evening!

Waiting.

But in the main this last two weeks have been “static” (I nearly put boring) I have been waiting …… waiting for the estate agent/conveyancer and waiting for Dell (not godot).  But I was determined to see what would happen if I gave in and did virtually nothing for two weeks except to read, eat and think and not try to take on anything new.  I have also hardly spoken to anybody, amazing to go two or three days in silence.

I spent a lot of time just sitting.  Now after two weeks I feel that all that inactivity has sparked some real insight into much of what I wrote last time …..  all those “men not on the stairs”  … I feel that I am almost ready to tackle them one-by-one. Kick them into touch and move on and doing this would be great on a new “laptop” for the new “me.”

One blessing is that I can get radio 4 on the laptop through the BBC i-player (for copyright reasons I cannot get i-player television) but since I haven’t turned the television on for almost 2 months, that is no great loss. 

Amazing just how much can be done, whilst listening to the radio, or how wonderful radio plays and dramas are when you really sit down and listen internally so much more vivid than any TV production.

BUT, I also find the run up to my birthday a bit depressing and with one of two notable exceptions (especially my 50^th) always find birthdays to be a bit of an anti-climax. This year the plan is simple.  Well I was going to go away for a couple of days but DHL have rather messed that up, so …….  I plan

A nice bottle of Cava and a huge plate of Paella for lunch with Rabbit, Squid, Mussels, Clams, and 2 or 3 really large fat Langoustines (the size of baby lobsters!) …… I am sure that will do the trick.    

My computer will arrive (haha) and I shall commence the “magnum opus” on Tuesday (after spending Monday evening drunkenly trying to work out how to make the laptop work with Skype, etc)……. 

The working title for the magnum opus is “yesterday, upon the stair” of course everybody writes the first book from life experience but I want to have some freedom so I am going to project my early life onto a fictional boy, I can then surmise what happened in the gaps of my memory and can, I hope, derive more insight for myself. In making stuff up maybe the  real truth will emerge.  

But, (and I cannot shrug this off) I have this “dread feeling” of a skeleton in a mental cupboard, long since locked away, and I feel this is "key" to some of my difficulties today  …… Pandoras box? ....... Still lots of “carajillos” will, I am sure, make the journey all the more bearable. This has now become almost (?) an obsession.

Well today Sunday, 23^rd August is the last day of my 59^th year on this planet, tomorrow I am 59 and I start my 60^th year.   And taking a leaf out of my good friend Martin’s book, intend this next year to be significant (well I have already started on some of that) so that on my 60^th birthday I can, well, actually, not sure exactly what, but I am sure it will be, well, significant!

Gradually revealling myself - through writing.

Anyway ……. off we go into this, my “significant”  60^th year. 

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 {Crash, tinkle, tinkle!}    .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .  Cynic!


Ok... a funny:

AND

I just found out this was post number

Phewy!   all those words (but the tree's are safe!)

August 2 - 8 Gear Change ........... you have been warned!

Gear Change ……  no recipes this week.  We are cooking “tougher stuff.”

Pour a glass of wine or something stronger ...... OK?   Off we go ....

I have been waiting patiently, for the right trigger to come along and set me off on my inner exploration and as I listened to a programme on “reality and perception” thanks to the BBC i-player a reference was made to Hugh Mearns Poem of 1899 “Antigonish”,  well this meant nothing to me either until I heard the opening line…

Yesterday, upon the stair…………..

And then of course the whole first stanza was there in my mind

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today,
I wish, I wish he'd go away...

Being a curious chap I wondered if there was more and indeed there is and it is only when we read more that we realise that this is not such a funny little rhyme but something deeper and much more significant (disturbing?).

The poem continues ……

When I came home last night at three,
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall,
I couldn't see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don't you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door...

Last night I saw upon the stair,
A little man who wasn't there,
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away...

The circumstances around the poem are not important, though the title refers to a town in Nova Scotia where reported ghostly sightings had taken place.

Well, ghosts, demons, dragons, guardian angels, unresolved fears and desires, the unconscious call it what you will these are what makes us what we are today. Whatever construct we choose the key is that something can open doors to our past and allow enlightenment, recognition and comprehension.  The scales fall from our eyes, well that’s the theory anyway, we have “catharsis” and walk from darkness into the light of inner knowledge …… blah, blah, blah. Yeah right!

If only it were that simple. What is nearer the truth is that maybe we get to take a step from where we were to a new place, where we can look at the change of view, and the new perspective and maybe through that small change gain insight and that insight drives us forward to the next step, hopefully forwards but it might just be one step forward and two back (sorry but unrealistic optimism has no place here) or maybe one forward and one to the side.  The key thing is that moment of cathartic insight brings change and as far as I am concerned (and from my psychotherapy training) that or any change is to be welcomed as we are no longer “stuck”.

So, yesterday upon the stair I saw the phantom of the many men who were no longer there, they were men who had entered and left my life since early childhood.   The women in my life is a whole "other thing"

My biological father, never knew him as I was adopted more or less at birth

My adoptive father, he ran off with the neighbours’ wife and abandoned my mum and I when I was five.

My grandfather, with whom my mum and I went to live, died suddenly as a result of genetic condition when I was seven.

An uncle who I saw very occasionally and a pianist who inspired me to learn music, though I was very frightened of him (he hated kids).

The mentally disabled man who molested me (not sexually) in a departmental store and gave me my first sexual thought as I recalled the feel of his rough stubble as he hugged me tight and rubbed his stubbly cheek against mine [and I think, kissed me] when I was aged around 8.

My mums best friend “John” who was gay, and who gave me the best birthday party ever when I was 9.

My mums second husband whom she married when I was 13 and looking for a “dad” but he only grew to inspired a loathing due to his weakness and appalling treatment of my mum.

The vile and dreadful pederast who took my “virginity” at 16,  (could only even start to think about this after I read his obituary a few years ago.)

There are more of course, but these will do for now ("enough to be going on with" as my nan would say!) 

The agony and the extasy of being Gay and a christian,
every sexual thought could be an arrow of self-hatred

BUT there is a whole religious flight of stairs devoted to passing men on the stair who happen to be 

“God, (ineffably difficult to comprehend)

Jesus,  (the Lord is my shepherd and he knows I'm gay....)

St. Paul, (messed up and repressed)

St. Bartholomew,  (flayed)
  
Sebastian [always the focus of homoerotic attention, I felt every arrow of self-hatred in my heart], 

Aelred of Rievaulx , (offered hope maybe with his idea that "brother should cleave unto brother in the love of Christ" - he hadn't too many hang-ups about particular friendships)

Saints. Sergius and Bacchus”  (a warrior gay couple from the more "enlightened" pre-"enlightenment" early church)

VERY SADLY this staircase led me to my own personal circle of hell, which I only escaped at age 40 …..    

 "Abandon all hope ye who enter here"   - thank you Dante!

But  thanks to a particularly horrendous display of "christian love and charity"  when I was in India I can thank goodness that I found another path to potential happiness......... (law of unintended consequences)  ........    hooray  for ..."SECULAR HUMANISM"    or more amusingly .....

 So, here we are back on that stair .....

 

I meet them all on the stair, passing shadows but as the poem goes on to say

When I came home last night at three,
The man was waiting there for me 

Always waiting, always passing, on the never-ending stairs

Oh the terrors of “three in the morning” our body clocks and bio-rhythms are at their most depressed, it is the time most people die in their sleep (or otherwise), and the time people have the worst nightmares. And at the dreaded three in the morning  “the man is waiting for us”  That staircase that takes us deep within ourselves and we only perceive whom we passed in the night “two ships passing in the night” but each affected by the other.

Suddenly in the poem we realise that it is not a funny little rhyme anymore but something more sinister and we don’t like it …..

Go away, go away, don't you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door...

Leave as you entered, by the door BUT quietly don’t cause an upset is the plea but normally the man goes and bangs the door sending reverberation throughout our psyche and leaving us to suffer the consequences and pick up the pieces.

And round we go again, but in the first stanza we “met a man” and now we “saw a little man”. For me, sometimes it the same man being shrunk down to size, sometimes the “met a man”  means he came unbidden passing me but “saw a (little) man” means that I see him on the stair but I am not on the stair myself so there is no passing and gradually the man is loosing his power to affect me.

BUt there are more men “waiting”  and so they have to be dealt with; and having been dealt with I will see them on the stair one final time as they open and pass out the door, which they close quietly and disappear from my life, for good.  I can and will have control of their entrance and exit in futrure.

So now I start to look at these men (listed above) and start to analyse just how to enable them to pick a door and leave quietly.  The means is half the battle, I have the motive and with the time available to me here in Spain I have the opportunity.

Means , motive, opportunity  - lets “murder” a few ghosts!    


 

As the saying goes "the devil is in the detail"  and for me the details are at times painful, and disturbing.  But it is important to reduce an dif possible make them impotent and rid of any power over me, as an adult today.

Thought:   Like Fairy Tales,  Cautionery Tales,  and the like , this Poem has a benign outer skin, but as we peel away the layers and move from the exterior to the core, it’s true personality is revealed … just like the apple offered to Snow White …. hearts of darkness …  and those “long dark nights of the soul!”

More interestingly is the fact that each tale, story or poem, plants in us (normally as an “innocent child”) the seeds of something much darker which has our entire life to grow develop and reek whatever havoc they may!   Especially as these tales were read to us at BEDTIME!  At the top of the stairs down into our subconscious!..... “Grim(m) indeed!”

 Small wonder that my favourite book was  "Wind in the Willows!"  and I identified 100% with Mole!   (more on THIS in a future chapter!) Another book which was a great favourite was "Stig of the Dump."

Mole, looking for companionship and an older wiser head
to explain the mystery of life.......  I identified with him!

My next task is to find a way to narrate all this. I don't want to do it in the first person, nor do I want to do it all chronologically and I want to be able to ponder, question and surmise ... and to fill in the gaps and blanks!

I shall just wait for the next catalyst, and hope that six come along together!

AND IF ALL ELSE FAILS

………. And in other news

1.   Still awaiting my NIE, process changed necesitating an additional stage. Hope to have the NIE by Monday. I can then open a bank account here and buy my new laptop.

2.   Connected to the above, blasted the estate agent/conveyancer and told him using the “broken record technique” of assertiveness  I wanted the process complete within three weeks. With every excuse he gave me I just repeated the phrase “OK but I want the process complete in three weeks. (August 31).”

3.   An old friend of mine from my days in Guatemala is here in Spain and plans a visit to me just after my birthday for a few days.

4.   The Life of Brian  “La Vida de Brian” is being shown in the open air as part of the summer festival of activities here, so I want to go and see just how some of the puns works in Spanish!   “Welease Wodderick”  “Blessed are the Cheesemakers” etc.

Footnote: oh ironies of ironies ...... the film was shown projected onto the wall of "the Church of the Conception" ........ which I thought very funny, and by chance I could watch the film albeit at a distance from my terrace, no sub-titles, dubbed in Spanish and no sounds of laughter either :-( 

"He's not he Messiah; he's a very naughty boy"
 






And finally just to reduce the tension a bit ....

 Thanks to  

Fino Sherry  (2 glasses)
Junilla Red Wine  (half a bottle)
Pedro Ximenez ( 2 glasses)
Coffeee with shots of caramel vodka

without which this blog could not have been written!