I decided to change my blog name again, so if you’ve seen my pold sites: ‘Musings and Perusings’ or ‘From the Pulpit…’ then follow this site!

Eggiebear

I had a lovely relaxing (sic) time while I was away and I bought a number of books to add to my collection of  ‘Books I will start to read but not finish’

One that I may get through though  is called “100 Plants that won’t Die in your Garden”  I take it with me in the garden  as I survey my efforts  and try to identify what the shrivelled lifeless things that are no longer of any use to me  once were. (I do a similar thing when I’m having a shower…)

I also bought a book of Robert Browning’s poetry and T S Eliot’s work,  Roger Penrose’s The Emporer’s New Mind’ and a couple of books on St Anselm’s Ontological Proof of the Existence of God.  A little light summer reading I’m sure you will agree!

As I was sitting on the Harbourside of my favourite holiday destination  next to people reading the latest John Grisham thriller and Aga sagas by various writers,  I was idly leafing through ‘Theories of Everything’ by John Barrow, a passer by asked me “What book are you reading?”  when I showed them they ran away…

I got to thinking  about ‘The Peter Principle’  does it apply to internal thinking processes as well as to business systems’ because I’m reading books that make my brain hurt and I wonder if I  am reading stuff that is really out of my league.  It’s lLike listening to music from a distant room; I know something is going on but I have to strain my senses to make out what it is!

I can recall the problems I had with Steven Hawkings’ ‘Brief History of Time’  My phone didn’t stop ringing “Eddie,” he  would say,”does this sound right? Can I pass this by you? Can I put this in the book?”  I would reply “Look Stevie just do your best, there’s only you and me that would know if you got it wrong again anyway!”

When I was a lad I used to get learned tomes out from the public library and write in pencil in the margins  things like NO! Think Again! and Check your Calculations! before returning them and wondering what the next reader would make of my annotations.  Such fun!   I still do it to books I give to charity shops and you should see the margin notes I’ve written in my Bible!  I have tried to explain to my wife about her duties and obligations by claiming…”You have to do such and such a thing, it’s written in my bible” and it is, albeit in biro!

I am a firm believer in Anselm’s Ontological Proof of God, partly because it makes sense and partly because I have not found any competent refutations of the Proof, even Bertrand Russel’s prognostications on it are bollocks!

So back to The Peter Principle’  Does it apply to internal thinking processes as well as to business systems?

Think about it!

At my time of life (I’m old) and with my cognitive and physical disabilities  I was  hoping to spend the twilight years of my life gently pottering about in the garden and in my library; growing pretty flowers in the first  and reading pretty books and poetry in the second; maybe writing a whimsical, lighthearted story or two to pass the time…but …and mine is a big But I met with a few ‘obstacles to my plans.

In poetry my problem is that instead of  focussing my efforts  on doggerel and twee poetry as a balm to my aged brain and aching intellect,   I have reconnected with the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins (GMH)  and I LOVE IT!

O how I wish I could forget that I ever knew his stuff and could concentrate on Patience Strong’s guff instead but I can’t.

GMH wrote such amazing  poetry but in a style that tests the intellect and perseverance of the reader to such an extreme extent in order to understand what he is explaining that  it is not enough just to know the laws of rhyme to appreciate his work.  He deconstructed and rebuilt so many rules of rhyme, metre, language and allegory.

Reading one of his works is  like doing a jigsaw (albeit a  beautiful one!) in your mind, you must understand the shape of the pieces and their relationship to each other and the whole  picture in order to complete it.   Each word, sound, stress and image that GMH uses is he uses with an intent sometimes different from the accepted norms of poetical language and convention but by doing so he produces poetry so beautiful and sublime that it transcends almost all other poets (Yes Mr Shakespeare I’m talking that includes  you!)

If you don’t believe me then get W H Gardener’s book ‘Poems and Prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ and immerse yourself!

I am struggling to write my book, not because I can’t write but because I have writer’s block…well not a block as such but it  a bottleneck..I have so many ideas and thoughts assembled in my mind thaty I’ve collected through my life about how I want my story to be  that I can’t get them to come out in a sensible coherent order…

I know what I want to write, in fact I’ve written most of it in a  first draft but I can’t decide how it should be constructed and organised…

I shall soldier on…

All Writers Are Vain, Selfish and Lazy – http://www.advicetowriters.com/home/2018/6/17/all-writers-are-vain-selfish-and-lazy.html

I read this quite from Georgia boy and recognised he was taking about me!

I am reading the book  ‘My India’ by Jim Corbett. Jim Corbett was a Big Game Hunter turned benvironmentalist and wildlife photographer who flourished in the first half of the 20th Century.  I already have a copy of his book ‘Maneaters of Kumaon’ detailing  his later exploits of hunting and shooting man eating tigers in India, oth books are wonderfully written and highly enjoyable (if you can leave aside your squeamishness for a while) and if the tales he relates are true they are truly wonderful!

Now, I have liistened to more than my fair share of bullsh*tters and tall tale tellers relating all sorts of wondrous deeds yet am still inclined to believe this chap because all the liars I have met have spun tales about their own derring do and brushes with death but Jim ta;ks about other peoples deeds and dangers as well as his own which is uncommon for liars and braggarts to do.

He tells of when he was hunting a tiger wth a chap called Har Singh when they were surprised by a tiger. Jim had learnt to climb a tree but Har Singh hadn’t, so while Jim scaled his tree Har Singh was crushed to the trunk of his by the tiger!  The tiger had stretched its arms around the tree and according to Jim’s tale… started to claw big bits of bark and wood off the far side of the tree.  While it was so engaged Har Singh was screaming and the tiger was roaring

Jim frightened off the tiger by firing shots from his rifle into the air and went down to help his friend.

‘He  found that one of the tiger’s claws  had entered his stomach and torn the lning from near his navel to near his backbone away and that all his insides had fallen out.

He wondered whether it would be best to cut off all the insides that were now outside or to put them all back inside.  He chose the latter course so gathered up all the dangling bits and covered as they were with leaves and grass and bits of sticks  put them all back inside, then winding a cloth round Har Singh’s wound and with the man holding the  ‘bandage’ in place they walked the seven miles back to their village when they got near to home they decided it would be better to go a further three miles to the hospital where they could get help.  When they got there the hospital was shut but the doctor who lived close by was awake so with the help of a local shopkeeper who held up a lantern Jim held the two sides of the wound together while the doctor sewed it up.  Har Singh survived and died many years later of old age but as Jim commented ‘it is important that everyone hunting tigers should know how to climb trees; if Har Singh had learnt how to do so he woyuld have saved us all a lot of trouble…