Celery

The other week I opted for a celery soup at lunch, mistaking its local name for the one for leek. So I've finally found out which plant it is whose slightly unpleasant taste usually suppresses that of carrots, peas and other vegetables, even when it's present in a comparatively much smaller amount.

Derek Mackay

The more I read about the case of the recent Scottish finance secretary, the more bemused I was. I can understand that these days, a minister can't show an unrequited infatuation and get away with it. But many talked of Mr Mackay almost as of a child molester, while the worst that was reported was that he kept sending a 16-year-old frequent social media messages, including one in which he called him 'cute'.

I mean, come on. An ordinary teenager unable to block on social media somebody whose messages he doesn't like receiving is a bit hard to imagine. Not to mention that we're talking about somebody who according to (not only) the SNP is old and mature enough to take part in a general election.

And then, presumably the youngster was indeed cute in the older man's eyes. So what? Next you'll be telling me that my not daring to even offer a handshake to somebody introduced to me if he's the least bit attractive isn't a result of having been growing up in a puritanical environment, but a desirable grown-up behaviour.

Mr Mackay is obviously no philosopher and nobody will order him to drink hemlock, but the accusations that he was 'grooming' the young guy do sound like a faint echo of the accusation that Socrates had been 'corrupting the youth'.

True listening

"A person cannot give full attention to what is being said to them at the same time as assessing it and framing a reply. I cannot do this, and neither can anyone else I have ever met. Therefore, true listening rarely occurs."

(Rachel Pinney: Creative Listening, as quoted in Jim Pym: Listening to the Light)

I think this is true about any conversation in which one is supposed to react immediately after the previous speaker has finished talking. But it reminded me most of two features of my rehab stay.

One, of how rarely I spoke during the speech-therapy-based sessions, because before I properly pondered what had been said and what could be said in response, somebody else would already be replying; in fact, often the very topic would have changed to another by the time I had a reply phrased well enough to consider it worth uttering.

And two, how during those sessions at which it was compulsory to give a short summary of one's views formed on what had been said, I would often stop paying proper attention as early as mid-session, trying to inwardly formulate (and not forget) said summary in time for when it was my turn to give it.

Day shifts going on

It was bad enough news when the company doc didn't allow me doing three shifts. Now there are so few orders for the work I'm meant to do 'primarily' that I'm helping elsewhere, which isn't too bad, but it also means only doing day shifts. I've just finished a fourth week, but I just can't get used to it.

True, I can get through the working week by getting up in the wee small hours, sitting at the laptop until it's time to go to work, then having a few pints and going to bed. The last time I even managed to do things I meant to do on the day I meant to do them before going to work, as opposed to on the following night. But being up mid-morning is so unnatural to me that I can't stick to the pattern over the weekend. I can just about manage Saturday, but on Sunday I have to return to bed after sunrise, and on Monday I have to start getting used to the day-shift rhythm all over again.

Even the day shifts' only advantage, lunches which are varied and prepared by somebody else, don't make up for the resulting tiredness and increasing backlog of things I'd like to do in my spare time. And the end of this day-shift run is nowehere in sight.

Brexit is here

For some time it looked as though the extensions might go on until the whole idea was scuppered, but in the end we got there. As a mild supporter*, who thought that on balance it would probably be better for the UK to get out, but who didn't lose any sleep over it, I'm glad the day has come, but I was actually asleep, rather than celebrating, at the moment it happened. (And anyway, we are still only into the transitory period.)


* if I later turned into a somewhat stronger one, it was just a reaction to the condescension and fearmongering on the other side of the debate; basically they were saying "this would be a complete catastrophe, but we the sages will save you nincompoops from your own folly"