Bump in the Night Yet Again

Unnerving phenomena

I’ve had a few slightly unnerving experiences recently. As I must have mentioned before, due to age-related hearing loss, I wear hearing aids. Even with them in, I often have to ask Linda to repeat herself, which causes her considerable (and understandable) frustration. Recently, I have tried to reduce this frustration by turning up the amplification to its full extent, so that I am not saying ‘What? Pardon? Excuse me?’ all the time. It also means that I can watch telly without having the volume at a level at which it could be heard in Ely, fifteen miles away.

This habit of having my hearing aids at their maximum sensitivity has a side-effect. I’m sure you’re aware that houses make noises. Water in the pipes, door and window frames expanding or contracting with changes in temperature, and so on. The trouble is that the hearing aids amplify these noises much more than human speech. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, when Linda is at work in London and I am alone in the house, I am regularly startled by thumps and bumps from upstairs. It often sounds like someone moving about and really is quite eerie.

At Taekwondo on Tuesday night, I must have stood on a honey bee as it stung me on the sole of the foot (we train barefoot). That certainly gave me a fright. The pain was extremely sharp at the time, and the sting ached sufficiently to make me limp for the next day.

Another slightly disturbing occurrence relates to my recent 70^th birthday. One good friend gave me a book of short stories set in New Orleans, knowing that I am very fond of the city. Before I continue, I should let you know for background that New Orleans has groups of people called krewes. A krewe is a bunch of individuals who organise a float and a masked ball for Mardi Gras, a major event in the New Orleans calendar. There is fierce competition between krewes as to who can put on the best show. As you can imagine, the word means crew, and was coined in the 19^th century, presumably to give an ersatz impression of old-worldness. To my knowledge, crew was never spelt krewe in Old English.

ANYWAY, in a story written by Walker Percy in the 1980s, he mentions that once there was a Syrian krewe called Isis. Bear in mind when this was written. As far as I know, the term ISIS as an acronym for Islamic State of Iraq and Syria did not come into being until well into the twenty-first century. I recently read a novel called There are Rivers in the Sky, which partly deals with the horrifying atrocities committed by ISIS, particularly on the Yazidi people. The book isn’t much cop, but it is true that the Yazidis suffered terribly at the hands of ISIS. The thought that the concept of ISIS might date back forty or fifty years sent shivers down my spine. After some furious Googling, which seemed to confirm that the acronym was not born until the 2000s, I realised that the word in Percy’s story must have referred to the Egyptian goddess of the same name. Panic over.

Actually, I find the term krewe slightly creepy in itself. I know that no harm is meant by it, but the substitution of a K for a C in the context of the southern states of the USA necessarily puts one in mind of the Ku Klux Klan. Another shiver down the spine.

                                            Linda and I after doing the Zuiderpark Parkrun

Seventy

There is no moral or point to the above- I just wanted to tell you about a couple of minor frights I have had recently. And as you will have noted, my seventieth birthday came and went. I had a jolly time, and received a substantial amount of plunder, for which many thanks to the givers.

Linda’s present to me was a long weekend in The Hague, which was great fun, and gave us the opportunity to complete our Parkrun alphabet challenge by doing the Zuiderpark run.

We sailed overnight from Harwich to the Hook of Holland on the Thursday night. We had a very comfortable cabin with ensuite shower and toilet. It’s all much more comfortable than it used to be when I last travelled to mainland Europe by boat. Now that I think of it, the last time I sailed from Harwich to the Hook, I was in my early twenties, and slept on the ballroom floor in my sleeping bag.

The only drawback to the Hague was that the Mauritshuis, with the Vermeers, was closed for refurbishment. However, on the Friday we went to the Bredius museum, which is a 19^th century merchant’s house and art  collection which was left to the city, and it had lots of Dutch old masters. They even had one of Fabritius’ (the goldfinch man) original pencil sketch books, which you were allowed to leaf through. It’s a lovely little art museum. If you ever go to The Hague, be sure to visit it. On the Friday afternoon we wandered around the Bierkade and Chinatown. Linda took my photo in front of Spinoza’s house, as a tribute to Jeeves and Wooster.

On the Saturday, we finished our alphabet Parkrun challenge, as noted above. We then went to the Panorama (which doesn’t sound like much on paper, but is brilliant, it really does feel like being on the Scheveningen beach a hundred years ago) and to Madurodam. The latter is a lot of miniature reconstructions of famous places in Holland and is really for kids, but it was good fun. On the Saturday night, in celebration of our completion of the Parkrun alphabet, we had dinner in a place called Oogst, which although unstarred, is in the Michelin guide. It was really impressive.

                                                    Outside Baruch Spinoza's house

On Sunday we went to Scheveningen and had a pleasant (bracing) afternoon at the seaside. We sailed back during the day on Monday. I have to say, that while it is fun sailing overnight with a nice cabin, it is a bit boring sailing during the day. If you go overnight, you have a basic meal in the restaurant, a couple of drinks, go to sleep and bingo! You’ve arrived. During the day, time tends to hang heavy on your hands. And although having one meal in the restaurant on the boat is OK, you wouldn’t want to have two.

So that’s the seventy milestone passed, and no serious ill-effects. As I doubtless tediously bang on about, my lower back seems to be even older than the rest of me, and although I can still perform the exercises that I used to, they exhaust me much more. But as my great pal in the USA, Bob Smith, says: growing old is better than the alternative. The motto of the Scottish noble house of Lindsay is Dum Spiro Spero, while I breathe I hope. While you are still alive, things can pick up. That spot that you worried was cancer can regress, or be diagnosed as keratosis. The love of your life might decide to reciprocate. The complete pain in the arse at your work may find another position. The five tenets of Taekwondo are etiquette, modesty, perseverance, self-control and indomitable spirit. I wholeheartedly endorse the third and fifth of these. Never give up.

September poem

Sunday Night

In dark and mist the church is lost to sight

Benign and gold, a second moon is shown.

The Roman-numbered clock floats in the night,

And keeps its watch on stragglers going home.

 

Look out the bathroom window. The back lawn

Is still. Some neighbours’ bedroom lights still show.

A dog barks in the next street and is gone,

And Sunday silence falls on all below.

 

Three hundred miles north a vessel braves

The tide and rock, the estuary swell.

Whose watch is it? Who minds the shifting waves

And guards his comrades from the salt-dark hell?

 

Preserve the empty streets, the moonlit park.

But keep a light on, comfort those of us

Whose footsteps echo in the lonely dark.

Until we all must board the late night bus.