Schadenfreude

 I confess that I suffer from schadenfreude. There, I've confided in you  but please don't tell anyone else. I don't have it badly: I take only the mildest pleasure in somebody's minor pratfall. Yet I do giggle when a woman in expensive high heels and a lavish hairdo drops her £3k handbag and her dusty and unclean personal belongings roll all over the pavement. In fact, that's worth a snort. Or two. Tee hee.

Usually though, I'm worse when I am envious. I have always wanted to go up in one of those boxes attached to a crane attached to a lorry that they use to put the Christmas lights up. Or similar lofty items.

If I had the chance - and I have flirted with many operatives to let me in but to no avail - I would open a bottle of champagne up there and have myself a merry little party, raising my glass to you land-locked folks.

BUT, yesterday my boat came home. I was having a coffee in my usual happy place when my morning suddenly became so much happier. The privileged chap was working outside a posh department store opposite when he dropped the banner he was holding.

Deffo worth a guffaw - and just look at the name of his firm! Also take a shifty shufti at the look on his face when he realises he will have to lower the box and rescue the item. By now a small but highly appreciative crowd had gathered on the pavement: some wished him well but others were tittering. even snickering. That's what is so good about schadenfreude: the wealth of expressive synonyms for reactions.

My coffee was now cold but we must suffer for enjoyment. I was not giving up until the fat lady sang. But she did warble when he wound himself up (although he had been even more wound up before - such are the vagaries of English), managed to get the banner in place and we all went home, deeply satisfied. It merited that glass of champers anyway and I chortled as I sipped. Wouldn't you - honestly?

AI: Ambivalent Interaction

 I do use AI, despite worrying about how much water it drinks, to check facts that I cannot be sure of before posting my wondrously informative blog articles. I do not consult them about Doc Barbara, whose fabulous exploits are beyond their capacity and require a human brain to savour fully their subtle hilarity. If you have that type of superior grey matter, do click on the live link on the right-hand side bar.

Despite the fact that they are huge machines, I find that each has an individual personality.    

Claude with his (they are all blokes) pleasing brown icon is like a kindly but stern doctor. He listens carefully and prescribes the right medicine but his eye is always on the clock and, deep down, he thinks it's your own fault if you are ill. His white coat is always pristine and his stethoscope has a sinister look in its gleaming eye. From his head issues a thought bubble: if you hadn't eaten that extra chocolate, you wouldn't be cluttering up my surgery now. I always leave with a sense of mild but ineradicable guilt that I hadn't discovered my diagnosis all by myself without troubling him. 

ChatCPT is more of a teacher: he enjoys imparting his wisdom in a neutral but solicitously patronising manner. In an old-fashioned classroom, he sits on a high chair on a dais, a tad absent-minded under his mortar board and non-judgemental about the way I am blathering on endlessly about semantic shift. (Live link on the side bar for access to that fount of free fascinating facts also. My alliteration bypass failed). He nevertheless makes me feel I haven't done my homework which is unfair because I was a right little swot at school and always handed in my prep (that's how posh it was) on time.

Gemini is different: you can't get away from him. He's like an over-eager puppy, always there and always trying to help. If you Google a local restaurant in July, he offers to give you its Christmas menu and to write a punchy and catchy review for you. However he stops short of offering to pay the bill and has no memory. I have told him umpteen times to avoid the word "incredibly" but he still uses it - constantly, inappropriately and irritatingly. He's unctuously flattering and yet self-contradictory: the customer is not only right; the customer is incredibly and wonderfully amazing and he, Gemini, was totally wrong in what he just wrote. Perhaps there are 2 of him. I do hope not. 

Perplexity: one too many but I have managed to shut him up when he didn't know the difference between metonymy and a kenning. That has saved a lot of water and I feel very smug. Nevertheless, I am British and always thank them at the end. 

Dear Mr. Einstein

It is with great trepidation that I take issue with a genius, particularly one with unruly hair, piercing eyes and equations that I will never understand. I have tried and have bounced on a trampoline to test the geometric bending of the fabric of space and time but all I achieved was very sore leg muscles. 

Yet I am not planning to tangle with ideas about space/time continuums (or even continua) but with his saying:

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

There is a school of thought that claims he did not state this but I will argue with anyone who did: I am in that cantankerous mood.

Surely we all do this daily and we cannot all be mad. If the car does not start first time, we try the ignition again and again and again and ... Only after that do we call the emergency services. If my dishwasher fails to get going, I do not phone the engineer until I have pressed all the buttons several times - although I might give it a gentle kick and utter a few expletives in order to vary the procedure. Perhaps that means it doesn't count?

Even on a more emotional level, people go on from a marriage that hasn't worked and try the whole sorry mess again. Multiple times in some famous - or infamous - cases. They may be unwise, unduly romantic and self-deceived but they are sane. 

So dear Albert, or whoever, please do not class ordinary people as bonkers - and you might just comb your hair. Several times even if you always get the same result.

The best line in all Shakespeare

 I have just finished writing vital and serious posts on 3 of Shakespeare's tragedies, each containing a different, original and  illuminating view. (You are quite right: the trumpet-blowing bypass operation was not wholly successful). Sixth Form and first year university students of Othello, King Lear and Hamlet might like to take a look at my interpretations via the link to "Top Marks" on the right of this page.

There are many contenders for the accolade of best line and, although I would like to keep you in suspense for longer, I will now do the Big Reveal. Or - leave you to first have a guess. It's not even a whole line and consists of only 5 words. 

No? Take your Complete Shakespeare and turn to Henry 1V pt 1 Act 111 scene i line vi. That looks a bit like algebra but please don't panic. 

Hotspur: I have forgot the map.

There we have it: human, clear and resonating to all ages, races and sexes (actually only men forget the map). 

The rebels against the King are planning who should have which bit of the kingdom when they have won the war. There is no 'if' about it to them - but they do need a map on which to draw the new boundaries. Our hot-headed daredevil thinks he has left it behind but Glendower, whom he derides, has brought it with him. Now they can quarrel.

This line is the perfect and ultimate proof that Shakespeare is timeless, (although Sat Nav has made such absent-mindedness less crucial). Nevertheless I reckon it is the one utterance that speaks to us all, always has done and always will. 

Does it do me good?

I will be 88 in a month's time and I have just noticed something about growing old.  I cannot put a date on when it started but it certainly wasn't happening when I was 30. It was probably  about the same time that people warn me kindly about "having a fall" instead of  "falling."

If I tell somebody that I do a daily crossword, for example, the instant and universal response is that it's good for me. It keeps my mind active, they assure me. It gets my brain working. I do not doubt that is true and that my elderly synapses need all the stimulus they can get - but that is not why I fill in the little squares. I do it because I enjoy it.

Even worse is when I am actively composing my blogs, such as the scholarly one about word meanings and semantic shift. It contains interesting information about our language which is not readily available unless you know where to look. I do it to pass on knowledge - not to oil my own mental cogs. 

People mean well - but I am old, not ill and in need of a cure. They wouldn't say it if I were decades younger and writing a best-selling novel. "Oh, well done, Mr Shakespeare, it did you good to write Macbeth" - said nobody, ever.

A further thought about Mendel

 Whilst my admiration knows no bounds for early scientists who stuck pins into their own eyes (Isaac Newton) or scratched the pus of cow pox lesions into a small boy (Edward Jenner), I like to ponder on the less scary biography of Gregor Mendel. 

(That is too flip about Jenner: he had a sound, scientific basis of knowledge when he injected the boy and his discovery has had the miraculous effect of eradicating smallpox globally). 

Our curious monk (take that whichever way you please) grew and cross-bred around 28,000 pea plants between 1856 and 1863. I leave you to perform the higher arithmetic, but that's a lot of peas per annum in my estimation. Perhaps his failure to obtain teaching qualifications made him determined to continue to experiment.

From this, he deduced that traits such as colour (green or yellow) and smooth or wrinkly skins (I wish he could do something about my hair hues and facial crevasses) are inherited in discrete units (now called genes) and that some are dominant and some are recessive. He also looked at pod shape and colour, flower colour, flower position and plant height. This was thorough research and a huge finding but its importance failed to be recognised for over a hundred years. 

Whatever was made of his theories later, I love to think of him, peacefully patrolling his lines of legumes in the monastery garden and jotting down their features. Calm and soothing. I'm sure he talked to them.

Yet, did he ever have nightmares?

Definitely something amiss with the one on the left!

Thomas a Kempis

Thomas a Kempis is revered by me for one of his sayings, the translation of which would be: "Love few and simple things and you will find good peace." The second line has been rendered more poetically as "Simple life much comfort brings." The Latin reads (and I think the words are fathomable):

Ama pauca et simplicia

Et pacem bonam reperies.

I totally approve of his standards of restraint and believe that he is more than ever right in an age of luxury (for some), complexity, the endless quest for better material goods - and the resultant stress. I used to  love a hike on the Pembrokeshire coastal path, gazing at lighthouses, rocks and waves, followed by a cold dip in a surfy sea.

Now that I am depended on a rollator for mobility and go only as far as my local park, I still relish the flowers and trees and, when I get home, love to see my pet snails wave their antennae at me when I talk to them.

Perhaps even an autumn squirrel, that imagination transforms from grey to red.

Accepted in principle (and easier for a war baby, perhaps) but - what constitutes simplicity nowadays? Am I breaking faith if I eat one chocolate truffle or have a small glass of red wine with a basic dinner? Is it relative - so that I am abiding by his dictum if I spend less, much less, than other people, never fly and do not own a car?