Mary came in with a bag of shopping and went into her bijou turquoise and teal kitchen with magenta door knobs; she decided to make herself a cup of tea before opening up the shopping bag.
As she put the kettle on ,she saw her door neighbour Annie in her garden bending over Emile. Mary’s cat. Mary opened the back door and called,
What’s wrong with the cat?
Annie looks backwards over her red velvet coat towards the house which was rather foolish as her centre of gravity was unstable and she fell over onto the wet lawn. Mary ran out and helped Annie to get up; meanwhile , the cat Emile had run back into the house
Well, I never knew Emile was pretending to be unconscious .I thought that he might be dead. I realise I’m too old to bend over a dead cat and simultaneously talk to someone who is inside the house as it is a more complicated manoeuvre than anything that we do in the yoga class.
I’m terribly sorry I said Mary.I wasn’t thinking
That makes a change, shared Annie, because you think too much;I see that you have a book here called, what is thinking by Martin Heidegger.
I haven’t read it, said Mary,in fact I don’t believe I ever will read it because he was somewhat of a supporter of the Nazis and also seduced a student call Hannah Arendt who as it happens was Jewish ,so he obviously was rather mixed up in his mind about Jews in a bad and wicked way and also I don’t want to think about what thinking is, if you see what I mean .Do you get words coming into your mind?
I don’t think so. they only come into my mind when I’m talking to somebody. I just open my mouth and the words come. I thought it was the same for everybody but clearly it’s not.
Do you ever hear voices she asked Mary.
Yes ,I heard a voice and it said, go to the doctor immediately.
And did you go? asked Annie petulantly.
Yes, I did and he took some blood from me which he finds quite difficult. Anyway, he’d sent it for testing I think you know he found my thyroid was so underactive that I would have been in a coma in another couple of weeks, so I think that the voice was a good one.I don’t know who it was but it was not frightening at all Goodness me, said Annie. I have never heard of people hearing kind voices. I wonder if some people have a positive type of Paranoia and believe at the entire world is a conspiracy designed for their pleasure and amusement.
I expect there are some people like that , Mary,cried , but they probably think we’re all the same so they don’t tell us.
It might be very interesting if we had a gathering of women who were all prepared to reveal something strange about themselves; I’m not referring to the part of the body, I am referring to something in their mind or something that happened to them in their mind, if you see what I mean..
Yes certainly that will be very interesting see you but not for me because nothing strange like that has ever happened to me
How do you know, said Mary. it might not seem strange to you but it might seem a surprise to me. It would seem strange to me if you told me that you enjoyed Euclidean geometry or learning Russian.
Mary made tea in the big teapot and they went into the lounge and sat down on the couch which was covered in orange velvet fabric
My goodness ,said Anna, I don’t think I like this orange velvet.What a shame, whispered Mary. I can’t afford to have it recovered again for 45 years.
In 45 years we wouldn’t be here Annie pointed out in her timely manner.
I wouldn’t know—– the second Ice Age might come and we could be frozen into these seats for the next hundred years and we will then turn into fossilised bones I suppose and people might write doctoral theses about us. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Not really said Mary, because we wouldn’t know anything about it.We would be dead.
Wel,l think about the poet Gerald Manley Hopkins. No work of his was published while he was alive and it was only by chance that a famous literary person Robert Bridges in England, he was friendly with him, and had copies of his poetry This is why it was eventually published. He is one of the best poets who ever wrote in English.
I found him very difficult to read, Annie said cautiously. it’s those slant and half rhymes and the rather strange musical quality of his work which can be quite beguiling; on the other hand, it is sometimes over top to my brain. I prefer John Betjeman.
Really, said Mary , that is absolutely ridiculous; you cannot compare two poets who are so completely different that they could be writing for you in different languages altogether.
It will make more sense to compare him with T S Eliot or W B Yeats the Irish poet. but no , for comparison is odious and so he must under fall or rise on his own merits.
Personally, I like the poem which begins ” as kingfishers catch fire”
That’s a metaphor, kingfishers don’t normally catch fire…. Mary hinted
Yes, I know I did a course in modern poetry at the Polytechnic it was either that or yoga and I am sick of doing yoga.
Alright don’t lose your temper, unless you want to go to a course about anger management which is on in the hospital on Monday afternoon’s between 5 and 6.
That’s a stupid time because it’s men who tend to be more angry and most of them will still be at work.Do you think that the boss would let them come out of work early to resume to a class at the hospital without telling them what the class was called
That’s a difficult question to answer because such a man being very impulsive and prone to anger somewhat like Donald Trump l if he refused to let him go to the class he would hit the manager and lose his job and then he would apply for compensation on the grounds that he wouldn’t have hit the manager and lost his job. if the manager had allowed him to go to anger management class on a Monday afternoon at the hospital; if you don’t know, it gets a bit convoluted sometimes, doesn’t it?
Do you know I did an IQ test and it says that I am in the lowest 5% of the entire population; don’t you think that’s wonderful I don’t know how I did it?
You must do it again to see if it was correct it would be frightening if you repeated it and you came out in the top 5% because that would mean either you’ve got schizophrenia or that the concept of the IQ is totally meaningless.
IQ is meant to measure something which is independent of Culture or social class yet if you tests of verbal intelligence it is using words such as a fire, conservatory, sitting room, Harrow,Oxford, Wittgenstein, chambermaid, Maps, physics .water planet, ambivalent, pentagon crisis, Conservative Party, Europe and bulldoze, and you must admit that those are class related words.
it also uses expression ;like Barclaycard, Marks and Spencer’s credit card , Visa card and PayPal; these are unlikely to be known by the poorer members of society when they are still children, When they reach the age of 16 they will be offered credit cards by unnameable banks which put letters through the door trying to whip up some custom but if you are living on benefits it would not seem very wise to accept the offer
With Barclaycard myou have to pay by direct debit and I don’t think the social security office pays out by direct debit to anybody even those going to get benefits from them don’t get it by direct debit from the government
.l say that’s quite funny ;why doesn’t the government pay our pensions by direct debit?
No direct debit is only used to take money off you, like for example, charities like you to pay by direct debit so does the British Gas Company ,and BT telephones they say that it stops you worrying about whether you have paid the bill or not but my brother found that he was £2,000 in credit with the electricity company and they were still taking more money from the account by direct debit because he is very rich and he never looks at bank statements or very rarely looks at the bank statement and so he did not notice.
That’s rather puzzling to me as I look at the bills to see you when I am in credit or debit but then as my brother said, I am quite poor financially although I am very rich another ways
What are the other ways?
I’d rather not say at the moment.
Nor would any of us!
How my heart sings 