A few thoughts on Serendipity (with a tip of the hat to..)

I can't ever make my mind up as to whether the happenings in our lives are  as a result of randomness, as exhibited by a cold, hard Universe indifferent to our existence, or if all the particles in the Universe, set in motion during the Big Bang, were always destined to arrive at a particular set of circumstances due to the laws that govern the interactions of matter and forces.
Ok, that was quite a long opening sentence, but as a summary of my own struggle with the conflicting concepts of determinism and randomness, I think it describes more or less the nugget in the middle of the whole conundrum. It is, in fact, quite a Biggie as far as philosophical arguments go and far beyond my poor engineer's brain to untangle.

Just lately, I have encountered several friends and acquaintances who tell me that all that happens to us is somehow predetermined. Fate, apparently, has its own opinion on whether we crash into a Jack Russell on our bicycles and hence arrive late at a junction where had we not collided with a dog, we would have met our ends under the wheels of the proverbial bus. We have that dog to thank for not only avoiding our untimely death, but the subsequent posthumous embarrassment at the state of our undergarments which by another quirk of Fate, might not have been pristine that very morning.

A local Jack Russell

Well, I am having none of it. Sorry. I know each action we take is the nexus for a branching tree of happenstance that is infinite in its possible courses, but to think there is some guiding hand of providence which decides in our best interests, which of those myriad sets of possibilities befalls us is just plain silly. Ok, it might exist, as might the gods of Mount Olympus with a chessboard containing rooks, bishops and pawns with our faces on. Equally probable to that is the Christian God with a Divine Plan, or even naughty elves who live in the shrubbery and hide our keys when we leave the front door open. They might exists, but there are no good, factual reasons to suppose any one of them does.

The manifestation of a possible deity..?

And I wish I had a quid for every time, over the last year, a well meaning soul has responded to news of my own recent cerebral misfortune with a "Well, it wasn't you time" or "Someone was looking out for you!" (Well, in that case, why didn't they bloody PREVENT IT happening in the first place then?). It was not so. Shit Just Happens. This is how I choose to regard it. And I am alive and grateful to be so.

And so, what we appear to have is Serendipity. I am grateful to a friend of mine for my introduction to the concept and all its glorious implications. I was aware of the word previously, certainly, but not of it's enormous significance. Our approach to the apparent randomness of Life can profoundly influence how we perceive events and what happens to us as a result.

It seems that "stuff happens" to us all the time. For instance, the imaginary terrier described above can be perceived as a nuisance or our possible saviour from a messy accidental death. Ok, that is perhaps a bit of a tenuous stretch, but you get the idea I hope.

As life unfolds and we stumble through the obstacle course that is the narrative of our existences, if we are receptive to the possibility that the unexpected changes in the course of events might bring us an interesting experience, then it is more likely to do so than if we merely regard the change of plan as a nuisance.

What concerns me is that Serendipity is being systematically removed from our lives by algorithms. Our routes are planned by Satnavs which take us to places without us navigating consciously, and without the getting-lost which often takes us to unexpectedly interesting places we might not otherwise have found. If we regard getting lost as a kind of exploration, it takes on a new meaning. For instance, once, I decided to take a route home on my bike which was not the quickest, but which I had never traveled before. There was no reason for this other than, I just fancied finding out what was down this little lane. I was utterly delighted to find an stand of plum trees which once had been an orchard for a large, now-vanished house. Had the detour been forced upon me by, say roadworks, I might have found it a drag, an annoyance, and not noticed the trees and hence not made several hundred litres of wine and hundreds of pounds of jam.

Plum wine which might otherwise not have been made

Similarly, though I like my kindle, I find it annoying that Amazon "suggests" books for me based on my previous reading material. Were I perusing a library, I might look for a book, and possibly find alongside it, another unrelated title that catches my eye and turns out to be a tremendous read. You don't get that level of haphazard delight from "Customers who purchased this also bought..." algorithms.

Such is the pervasive nature of this guidance, this "choosing for us" that an iPhone app (actually called "Serendipity") now exists which authoritatively instructs you whilst walking in a town to take random turns of its choosing, such that you encounter new places, perhaps very close to, but outside of your normal route. The reviewer noted that he had been amazed to find a park this way that he had previously not know about, though he had walked mere metres from it for a dozen years on his way to work. Discovery happened! How serendipitous! Except it wasn't really because it was to some extend guided.
It's a bit sad that this has to now be the result of a technological product and not of mere curiosity.

So, I thank my friend for the introduction to the concept of Serendipity. It can make unexpected into fortuitous. I shall keep an open mind and take unexpected paths in preference to those I already know. And let's see where it takes me, shall we?

Tango!

Sorry, I have been a bit busy. Also, I have been trying to find my way around this subtly altered brain. I think I have the hang of it now. I have been making things and doing things and this seems to have scratched my creative itch in the way I needed.
I have also been taking Argentine Tango classes, which I had promised myself for a long time I would do. Oh, I have danced for many years, but Tango I always considered the pinnacle of coolness and class. About ten years ago I saw the film Moulin Rouge and after my initial scepticism, discovered that the wonderful spectacle appealed to my sense of my own pomposity. When I saw El Tango de Roxanne, I swear I held my breath for the whole of the dance. And I really really wanted  to be able to dance like that. But I never really plucked up the courage to pursue it.

Well, time is short, as I discovered, so I got a move-on and Just Did It. I found Tango Alchemy with the enigmatic and authentic Eduardo and it suits me well. I imagine the alchemy bit is the taking of the base metal clod that I was and turning it into Terpsichorean gold. We shall see...
But it's bloody marvelous! Two months in and I think I can give a good account of myself with a willing and able partner. I just feels good. I wish I had done it sooner. But these things seem to have their time and circumstances perhaps needed to be right.

I had always thought tango to be that silly dance where people, cheek to cheek, the man with a rose clasped between his teeth, strode dramatically but ridiculously out of the room through double doors to some pastiche tangoesque music. And perhaps in ballroom tango there may be some echoes of this.
But what I was after was a more traditional and authentic style of tango, more akin to this
And I blinkin' will be able to do this one day!

It's a much more introspective and intimate dance than I had imagined. I can thoroughly recommend it as a passtime. I go home from my tango class with a feeling that I have participated in something both classy and exotic. Dance, as I have mentioned before, is a primal thing that puts us in touch with parts of ourselves that nothing else can. It can be a stage where we act out parts of ourselves that would never otherwise see the light of day. And this is wonderfully cathartic. I do believe I am addicted.

And that is where I have been instead of writing. But perhaps I can hold the attention of two Muses sometimes.

Click. Whirr... Ping! Hello!

I know I said I wouldn't mention it again, but my mind came back over Christmas. Something knitted together, reactivated re-connected, whatever, in my head and my brain suddenly became illuminated like a whole night-time city seen from space.

I was quite miserable before Christmas as it was very evident from the inside that things were not as they once were. And I was bitterly upset by this. I felt slow, dull-witted and lacklustre and it hurt. I thought this was how I would be forever. And it could have been. That happens.

But somehow, it all switched back on again during the Christmas break. Suddenly, I seem to have all my faculties back. I don't know what caused it. Perhaps it was all the sleeping I did, or the respite from work, or all the company. I really couldn't say what.

I still get extremely tired in that unhealthy, impenetrable way that is familiar to me and only began last March. And I still become confused when there is a lot of information to process or when many voices talk at once, or even just one voice when I am trying to concentrate on something.
And I know that lots of people say "Oh, that happens to me too!" But there is a qualitative difference between usual, common-or-garden confusion and the sickening, lurching, spinning disorientation that I occasionally still experience. I also need to sleep a lot more than before - perhaps an hour a night more.
But these small inconveniences are all that appear to remain from my misfortune.

It's been ten months. I am back at last (at least I think so). And I am delighted.

So I just thought I would pop by and say hello.

I always wanted a treehouse

One of my friends, when I was about 11, had a lovely treehouse. We used to climb the 20 feet or so up the ladder into the hatch and a different world suddenly presented itself. It was in a lovely straight apple tree with an unusually long trunk. Apple trees are usually stumpy little things, especially these days when mechanical picking seems to be selected for. But this was a majestic specimen and rarely, as I remember, produced many apples. But as a site for a treehouse, it was perfect.

But then he had a garden that was an acre. In our diminutive (though large by modern standards) garden, there were only a couple of spindly silver birches and they rapidly outgrew the space and had to be cut down.
No chance fora treehouse there. I was envious.

My friend used to sleep out occasionally in his treehouse during the summer months. It was a six by four space with a felted roof which easily accommodated an eleven year old boy in a sleeping bag. This, we considered, was very cool.

A dark Boxing day landscape and some rain on the lens.

Today, we went for our Boxing day walk somewhere I wouldn't usually go. Our traditional walk was deemed unwise on account of the route skimming the edge of the Somerset Levels where at the moment, some villages are still cut off by floodwater after several weeks of watery isolation. Best not go there, we thought.

So we headed up towards the Cotswolds to the area I grew up in around Wotton Under Edge. It rained a lot, of course it did:  It hasn't stopped raining since April. But it was nevertheless very beautiful and I revisited some boyhood memories of fossil hunting and string spear-throwers. It's all a bit overgrown there now but when we were kids, the trampling of many pairs of juvenile feet kept the undergrowth down. All manner of games were played here and what finer playground could a ten year old lad and his friends hope for?

How could you NOT imagine hunting dinosaurs here?

It was, until that unreasonable tyrant puberty changed my motivations and made me feel acutely isolated and miserable, a great place to be a kid

And though I didn't really find myself experiencing any nostalgia for the place or the time, I did occasionally view it through the eyes of my ten-year-old self. It's strange revisiting somewhere from your distant past, but as I mentioned once before, memories are best viewed as just that and to attempt to recapture their atmosphere is usually a mistake. But I did stumble over some of that and I did get the urge to make a bow and arrow. But I didn't have any string and it was raining too hard anyway.

Looking at the small settlements, Wortley, Aderley, Nind, it struck me that the old ramshackle farms and crumbly buildings which used to house farm labourers are all now pristine, renovated and very des-res. Many of the old tumbledown cottages must now be worth half a million or so, with their limestone facades and in one case, thatched roof (we never had thatched roofs round there. What are they thinking?). One place even has a pair of stone stags on plinths. I know taste varies, but that is a bit tacky, surely? No, no, I shouldn't judge and perhaps they come to life at night and are joined in the garden by satyrs and centaurs. I like to think so.

There is, it seems, money about, if you look in the right places. And I do not begrudge this development: The places would surely have fallen down and been lost had they not been bought and done up. And it means there are plenty of people with sufficient disposable income to finance the local farmers' markets and enough pushy determination to keep the local schools open and to a high standard.

I always wanted one of these!

But in one garden, I saw this, and though I do not harbour any envy for the big, remote, beautiful farmhouses, I do envy these kids their tree house. I hope they use it and don't spend all their time on the PS3.

How Little and How Often?

I wonder who invented whisky. I just bought a bottle. It's a Birthday present for someone and it will be a few days before I give it to him. But it's ok. He won't read this so I won't spoil the surprise.
I don't like whisky. I had no idea which one to buy. Is Johnny Walker Red Label good? When I taste it, it makes me feel immediately nauseous. It's a taste I never developed and probably just as well. There are things such as skiing, motorbikes and whisky which I have avoided because I just know I will love them and if I get a taste for them, it will be my undoing. So, whisky will remain for me an unacquired taste.

The shops were as one would expect on Christmas eve: Lots of couples wandering along the aisles of Tesco's, Yate, desperately trying to remember what they came out for and how all this previously undesired stuff had found it's way into their trolley.

Very little here by way of inspiration. Everyone was surprisingly pretty much silent as they goggled at the shelves. Perhaps they had used up all their words for the year and had got to December with none of their allocation remaining. So maybe they could only point speechlessly at the pyramid of kitchen towels, half-price mince pies and bottles of Baileys and shrug. I know how they feel.
Words do seem to have a life of their own. These days I find them rather reticent. Whereas they used to flood into my head at the merest opportunity and overflow here, now, I have to squeeze them from my uncooperative brain and on to the page. I don't know why this is. It could be due to a lot of reasons, some neurological, some circumstantial, perhaps even some behavioural. Perhaps I don't need them any more?
Whatever: At some point in the last nine months I seem to have lost my Way With Words. And I miss it.

A friend who is a published author said that it is like any "muscle" by which I assume she means that it gets stronger with use (in which case, the iris, the tongue and those smooth muscles that produce peristalsis ought to be exempt from the catchall "any" as they don't get stronger with use.)
But I take her point.

And so, in an attempt to rediscover what it means to be articulate and to preserve what vocabulary as remains to me, I shall be jotting down the occasional thought here.

It seems to me that a wholesome home life is good for the soul. Yesterday I spent almost a whole day cutting, drilling and tapping M8 threads in steel plate for my van and I found it immensely rewarding. But when this kind of thing becomes your main passtime, spare waking moments tend to be spent on staring into space and thinking how to make a stool for the van which can be sat on but which will slide into the bed the rest of the time and contain all the frying pans etc. Mechanically, its inventive, but it does not inspire. Rather, it kind of calms. Which is ok if that is what you are after. But not all the time.

But I think the whole point of this blogging malarkey is for us all to find our way to a Vibrant Life of The Mind. Well, perhaps I shouldn't generalise for everyone, but that is a large part of it for me. That and the connection it feels it gives to Wider Humanity. At the moment, it is all a bit quiet in here and not vibrant enough. And nobody likes feeling lacklustre, out of touch and un-shiny, do they?

So, Little and Often is how it needs to be.

And as an afterthought, in no way connected: Does anyone ever get a word that decides to inhabit their brain for a day or so and pops up all the time in their mind's ear? For me, today, it is the word "Helminth". Such a fresh sounding word I feel (given what it denotes). Sorry. Complete non-sequiter there. I am hoping for more of that as the sudden changes of direction make life more interesting.

And that is enough rambling nonsense for today, I think.

A Very Mellow Weekend

This last weekend, after my five days in bed with flu and a 41C temperature, some friends, chancing catching my bug, came to stay. We had planned to go off in vans to Cornwall, but it was cold and we were all still hacking and coughing. So we thought we would have a quiet weekend.

I find it lovely if a little odd to be able to say that as an adult, I have known someone for thirty years. I am surely not old enough to have had effectively a thirty year friendship with someone I didn't meet as a child. But it is so and regularly, we meet up and spend lovely weekends together. Much beer and wine is drunk and some excellent food consumed, all the while enjoying the company and conversation of like-minded people. It's what life is all about, I think. 

This weekend, we went to Bath to the Christmas market, but it was far too busy and I confess I struggled a bit with the cognitive load of managing to avoid the trajectories of hundreds of people milling about. 

So, yesterday, we went for a quiet walk around Woodchester Mansion which I have written about here before. I snapped this picture of the quaint boathouse in which I am troubled now to see that the window is open. Who opened the window and why? In Summer, this is an idyllic spot, but on a Winter's day, there is a strange air about the place and one could almost imagine some troubled spirit standing looking out of the window. I am not usually given to such thoughts but it did feel mildly spooky, especially considering the unfinished mansion just up the valley. The Romans were here thousands of years ago and at the top of the valley, long barrows still exist where bronze age burials took place. It is a place of atmosphere.

So, on we went around the lakes, whilst buzzards wheeled above us in the still cold air and ducks quacked in the water with derisory laughs of ridicule at the muddy feet and hubris of we passers-by.

It was a lovely crisp day and the walk was just so wonderfully English - something I rarely consider since I was born here, live here and spend most of my time here. 

So, we walked and talked and there was a bonfire where some National trust volunteers were clearing dead wood, and the woodsmoke just smelt so right.

We returned to the van and drank tea, ate cake and talked some more. Gradually a Winter's day elided into a cold evening as the sun went down. Home called to us, with dinner already in the oven.

At home, I made mulled cider with an otherwise rather undistinguished apple wine from last year, some cider and assorted spices with brown sugar. In fact, I made about a gallon. 

Sitting round the table with friends and family, with a big joint of roast pork, home-grown roast potatoes, mulled cider and Jethro Tull "Solstice Bells" playing, the World was perfect for a moment. Outside, the dark Gloucestershire countryside was now asleep but still very present in the feeling of surrounding the room, the house, the town.

Banana & Ginger wine. A dessert wine of about 18% ABV. Small glasses only...

And now, my friends have gone home and I look at the gaps in my wine rack with a feeling of deep satisfaction. And it occurred to me that my banana and ginger wine needed bottling. And so having drunk the excess that wouldn't fit in the bottles, a feeling of general mellowness comes over me.
A very good long-weekend. And it's not even Christmas yet!

Revisiting Uncomfortable Places and a Resolution

I had intended specifically not to write about this, because it was something I didn't really want to remember. And I don't want to seem like I am going on about it. This is probably the last I shall say on the matter directly.

Last week, I went back, 32 weeks to the day, to where my sub-arachnoid haemorrhage happened. I decided to go to a dance at the venue where, eight months earlier, that horrible, sickening thing happened in my head and of which, mercifully, I remember very little.
I remember the song that was playing and the move I was attempting when, like a tube of toothpaste squeezed hard with the cap on, something burst into my head. Quite literally. And the yellow that flooded my vision, the whining noise like the noise from the test card, and the agonising explosion in my head that immediately ensued, it all came back to me, albeit in an attenuated way.
Initially, when I arrived, I couldn't walk into the room. I walked up to the door and it was as if there was a force-field off which I bounced, the way two strong magnets will repel each other in that weird way, authoritatively redirecting your hand along the lines of force.
Only it was my whole body that was redirected. To a chair in the foyer, where I sat and shook and probably looked utterly pathetic.

Some kind people who were there that night, came and sat with me and created an air of calm, for which I am grateful. So I determined to follow the comforting ritual of taking off my shoes and putting on my (new!) dance shoes. This seemed to allow me to roll along a well-worn path of familiarity and I managed to get the momentum up to carry me through the door and into the hall.
And, you know, I am quite astonished at the aversion I felt. Histrionics is something that normally seems incredibly irritating. But the strength of my feelings were quite overwhelming and very unexpected for a matter-of-fact chap like myself.
So, I danced, and being brain-stem stuff, the movement flowed and I felt at ease quite soon. However, I decided not to tempt fate and when "Moves like Jagger" came on, I sat down. No aversion per se, just prudence.

Well, here we are, eight months on, and more-or-less back to normal. Thinking is still a bit hard and I get distracted easily. This is frontal lobe stuff. Even now. But concentration has improved, possibly even to a better level than before, as I have had to consciously put in place strategies to cope. Attention is still a problem. Some voices will take hold of my attention for reasons I cannot fathom and will hold it against my will. Dragging it back to the task in hand can be hard or impossible and this makes me instantly confused and tired in a way I had not experienced before.

Sometimes, like when I was in the building society, trying to sort out some stuff for my mortgage, a (usually female - no idea why this is) voice will cut through my concentration like the sound of chalk scraping on a black board and it will be as if someone has hit me on the left hand (again, no idea why this should be) side of the head with a shovel and I will reel away in confusion. Certain "Teachery" voices do this repeatably. But I am getting better at "centering" myself and now don't have to go and have a lie down. Progress indeed!

And I confess, I don't feel as clever as before. Some raw mental horsepower seems missing. I cannot say whether this is because some circuits of my neural machinery suffered damage due to lack of blood flow or the interference from clots and "cellular debris" (as the neurologist delicately referred to the gumming up of the works caused by a bleed and subsequent healing). Or perhaps it is to do with my attitude: Where things seem tiresome, overly complicated or even merely irritating, I find I am unable to find the motivation to take it in. This is a problem at work where the majority of daily issues seem to fall into these categories. This also may be neural, or perhaps a new and semi-conscious indifference to minutiae. But I am working on this.

Writing, like this, also seems quite a challenge. Whereas it flowed before, now it feels "lumpy", like swallowing dry bread and trying to sing at the same time. Again, is this capability or motivation? I cannot say. I don't really know what to do about this.  need to think a bit more on it perhaps. Or maybe "just do it" (though often, I don't really feel like it)

But in general, reading how dreadfully affected so many SAH sufferers continue to be, even years later, I count myself lucky now to be as compos mentis as I am and fortunate at how physically well I have recovered. I was confused as to what to expect: It wasn't a big bleed by SAH standards and it could have been so much worse. Thank Nimodipine, I didn't get the spasms in my my blood vessels up there! That'll do for you, even with a lesser bleed, like mine!

But I am still surprised at the lingering effects now that the pain and tiredness has pretty much disappeared. Perhaps the remaining problems will mend, like the rest seem to have, or perhaps I will be like this forever. In which case, that's ok. I don't mind being a little bit less intelligent but a bit happier at being alive.

With my 32 week revisiting of the venue, I feel I have exorcised the final demon. The chapter is obviously not closed as I am still getting cognitive weirdness. But something has now resolved in me and I am calmer about everything.
So, with that experience laid to rest, I shall not mention it again. Case closed. Time to get on with working with what I find in my slightly rearranged brain. Let's see what it can do, shall we?