Rabbits, Rats and a Motorcycle.

What indeed is the difference between a rabbit and a rat?

 

You know this questions makes very little sense. So don’t try to find meaning where meaning isn’t.

Just observe, and make your choice.

Life makes very little sense too and what follows makes even less sense; ok we will try to order it, but that’s just human folly.

Others will see different patterns and make different choices, it’s ok.

And then we die.

 

“We haven’t seen any bees”. Russ is sitting outside on his terrace looking worried, surrounded by pots of plants but no buzzing. 

 

He has just flown from Africa to Turkey, and from Turkey to Greece. Then another flight internally in Greece to one of the islands and then another flight between two islands. Then he flew back to Turkey and from there to France.

 

And he’s wondering why there are no insects on his flowers.

 

A week later, today, he is flying from France to America, from there to Canada and then back to France before flying once again to Turkey and then back to Africa. He will repeat much of that again in October. 

 

How is he travelling to the airport today? By train and tram? 

No.

Someone is driving him, who will have to drive back; three hours or so of petrol emissions.

 

‘What’s that?” I ask , pointing to something small and black jumping up and down in a flower pot down stairs in the sub-garden. It’s too big to be a bee. Too small to be a rabbit.

 

I get up and go and look.

It could be a baby mouse.

It could be a baby rat.

Except there’s five; so mice or rats.

Plural.

 

I look at the tails, I’m pretty sure they are baby rats, which means a big serious rat is somewhere nearby, but I don’t want to alarm them too much.

“They might be mice”, I say.

 

Stephanie gets out her mobile phone; it connects to a satellite somewhere up above the ozone layer – initially put up there with a few tons of fuel – using a server remotely buried in the Californian desert and cooled with gallons of water. 

“The ears are different”, she concludes and goes to have a look.

She takes a photo and uses an app that identifies rodents by their colour and jumping skills – rodentIDik, I think.

“They might not be mice” she concludes. 

I think it’s better that it came from her.

 

I cycled here today, so I’m feeling self-righteous.

But I’ve been told by someone close not to feel self -righteous because if I do I’ll come over as self-righteous.

My bike, by the way, is not electric.

I’m thinking of getting a t-shirt printed ‘real bikes rock’, something like that.

 

The next day I bumped into George and Kerry, they were on their bikes, I was stepping into my car. A few days prior, roles had been reversed; I had cycled past them driving the other way in an open top Triumph.

Going for a spin.

We talked bikes, of course; I told them about my t-shirt slogan project.

They countered with : electric bikes………

Not wanting to sound totally self-righteous I suggested ‘elevate.’

To be fair they thought about it, but they went for ‘electric bikes get you there’. 

We decided that we both need to work on the text a little more before we start printing.

 

Patti doesn’t have a car, she doesn’t have a pedal bike; she has a motorbike. 900cc, a Triumph. She’s 70, and about to drive right across the country having already traversed half of Spain spreading the ashes of her partner who passed last year. I suggested we added a few letters to the side of the bike she was astride. 

‘Antly’, I said.

‘What?’

‘Antly, Triumpantly. It would look good, sum you up.’

‘Triumph might not like It’.

‘Fuck them.’

 

Sometimes life is too short to care about some things.

In fact……

Life is too short for a lot of things.

 

Crap wine.

Crap books.

Crap films.

 

To name three.

 

To care what a major industrial corporation thinks about how you decorate their product that you bought, to name four.

 

Later, or it might have been before – I forget the time line of all this – I cycled home. 

Along the river, up the valley, through the forest; the way got steeper and steeper.

I arrived home as a pile of sweat, grabbed an offered beer and collapsed on the inside outside sofa that isn’t a sofa.

Three butterflies landed on me and started licking.

One on my forehead, another on my arm and the third on my leg.

A cat came over and said hello and then wandered away.

The day settled, the day dimmed.

A storm broke in the middle of the night.

Another is due soon.

 

There will always be another storm but also another calm before the storm.

 

Two nights ago, before I went to bed, I read an article about the best orientation (north, south, east, west) for sleeping according to various cultures and philosophies. The consensus seem to be that a head to the south was better for several reasons including lower blood pressure. The last time a doctor took my blood pressure he informed me that mine was somewhat high, so I decided to switch my sleeping orientation, reversing head and feet.

I had the worst night’s sleep  ever; I woke relentlessly, had the most vivid nightmares and arose in the morning feeling beaten and distraught. I can’t decide if it was simply a consequence of the radical change itself or the new position. I am hesitating repeating the experiment tonight, but feel that I should at least give it a second chance.

 

Last night I gave that second chance and woke after only an hour’s slumber, then the storm broke; buckets of wild rain crashed onto the metal roof under which I was trying to sleep and brazen flashes of lightning tore their way through the night and into the open doors behind which I was seeking refuge. All night the storm raged around me and my sleep was once again broken, ragged and irredeemably lost.

 

So tonight?

 

The day heralded grey, all is calm.

Everyone else, in their usual orientations, is asleep.

I drink a bucket of coffee.

I pick three courgettes and replace the scarecrow that fell in the night.

He has not been made well, stuffing him with newspaper was not ideal as newsprint absorbs the rain and his soggy stomach has moved into his knees.

People say he looks like me, I hope it’s because I have dressed him in my own, discarded, clothes rather than the low lying stomach. Re-righting him I found the three courgettes and marvelled at how his fall had missed an emerging tomato plant.

 

Broad beans for supper.

Broad beans yesterday.

Broad beans the day before that.

 

Broadly speaking that is my diet.