The week that was and was not!

I had planned to start this blog with, ‘It’s been an uneventfully eventful week.’ I am not sure what that means. I did it and I didn’t. an opening paradox.

The idea came from the book I started yesterday as preparation for the play I am taking my family to see in Sheffield in a few weeks. Anna Karenina.

I won’t tell you the opening although as books go, it is probably the only one other than A Tale of Two Cities and Moby Dick that I know the beginnings. Oh, and maybe On the Road.

I am sure there are many more famous openings.

If you are interested, see below.

Well, what took place in your week Rod?

I was on leave for the first few days.

It was a topsy turvy, as still recovering from IDLES my daughter tested positive for Covid. This was her second bout, the first following a visit to Bristol last year. It is perhaps something to do with Bristol (the band are from there) or, it could be she is hanging-around the wrong types.

I remember thinking before I decided not to think about it, ‘If I am going to get Covid, this will be the place (the concert),’ and, ‘If I do, it will be worth it.’

Well, after a PCR and more lateral flows I have remained clear.

I’ve still not had it.

At work, virtually everyone I know has.

I am either doing something wrong or right.

Back to the uneventualities.

Yesterday I visited one of my patients at home.

It was very sad.

She is a very old lady.

Not only is she old, she looks it too.

She is very, very thin, something the dietician can’t fix.

She is very, very wrinkled, perhaps because of her thinness and her lifetime of smoking (cigarette packets and spent fags scatter the living room as her vape sticks out the side of her chair).

At first I didn’t find her house despite having visited on multiple occasions. I couldn’t see her window which is usually recognisable by the cage.

Eventually, putting-on my glasses and consulting my computer, I walked-up to the right door. It was slightly open, as it always is when she knows I am coming.

Beside the door was the empty cage.

‘Maybe she’s been cleaning it,’ I thought.

Inside, she was sitting.

No Mickey.

‘Yes, he died, he was quite old,’ she said, ’15.’

‘I am sorry to hear that. Will you get another?’

‘They live to be 15 with me, and, even with wishful thinking I don’t have that long.’

She’s survived Covid too.

It’s a strange world.

I read Søren Sveistrup’s book, ‘The Chestnut Man’ at the start of the week, it is, what I believe is called a Scandi-Noir. Police, murder, darkness. I recommend, although it took me a while to get my head around the different Danish names, none of which were familiar.

And, why mention this? No, reason, just a recommendation. It kept my interest and had an unexpected ending. What more can you ask?

Last week I finished the Da Vinci Code and have now moved-on to Angels and Demons, the prequel.

My life overlaps with biblical readings, the Masons and a love of history and art. I guess it is designed for me.

At the same time I am listening to Daniele Bolelli’s podcast about the Assyrians and King Hezekiah ‘The siege that changed all of history’. (Something I studied in school as a 16 year old).

I am drawn into the past.

The Da Vinci Code talks about ancient symbols, and reading about the Pentagram (which follows the golden ratio) and the Star of David (which has its own perfect geometry), I sent my daughter the drawing instructions.

This followed-on from a discussion earlier in the week about circles.

‘Can I borrow your compass?’

‘Why?’

‘I want to draw some circles, what else?’

‘I sometimes use it to draw triangles,’ she replied with satisfaction.

My research produced the Star of David directions. You can try if you like.

Staying with my daughter, she has finished learning about Christianity in her GCSE course and is moving-on to Judaism.

You could call that one of my special subjects.

Sure, I couldn’t tell you as much as the rabbi, I do know things. (Don’t Telma) 😄.

Last night we watched an episode of Shtisel, the Israeli drama involving the lives of an Ultra-Orthodox family in Jerusalem.

It quickly became apparent that my perception was not the same as my daughter’s, her having such radically difference reference points, for example, my awareness of the switch between Yiddish and Hebrew, the different clothes, mannerisms and mis-translations.

‘Do Orthodox Jews have those things by their ears?’

‘Peyot, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, usually, they are something the Ultra-Orthodox have.’

‘Who are the Chassidim?’

‘Would a Reform Jew have them? What about a Kippah?’

There are 101 more questions about the ways of the Jew, no one has written, The Tao of Judaism. There’s an idea. (There is a blog, however.)

I fear I am going-round in circles.

I’ll end with the government, who are, in a mess.

Well, they are always in a mess, it is just that it looks like it might catch up with them.

I’ve mentioned Covid a couple of times already.

It’s hard to get over the knowledge of the partying and so on that went-on in Number 10.

It is also hard to reconcile what took place with all the evidence of lying and falsehood that the government has peddled over the past decade.

I am not crying for the beloved country, but, almost.

If this is what it takes, then, so be it.

It is hard not to become caught-up in conspiracy theories, disentangling who pulls the threads, who is the puppet and who the master.

If the party’s party is over, hooray.

We will still be left with another group of distorted individuals who perceive the poor as bad, immigrants as the enemy and more and more money the ultimate goal.

Maybe they should spend some time drawing circles?

Da Vinci I understand spent decades trying to square the circle. This means creating a circle that has the same area as a square. Don’t ask me how you would do it. It is certainly a good way to keep people busy.

1. Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way
2. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness
3. Call me Ishmael
4. With the coming of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road.