Bannie Day 2021

Many years ago I began calling the anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn 'Bannie Day' and celebrating it as one of the days which divided the year into its four seasons. It was a bit fanciful even then, and has become completely so by now, with summer beginning in May at the very latest, but old habits die hard (and following weather forecast for back home tells me it often still begins there in June).

Anyway, here's to summer - that is to say, to it being as short as possible. Then again, I'm about to move flat and there are indications that in the new accommodation I may just about be able to keep the indoor temperature well below the 30C which I sometimes can't get rid of here for what seems like eternity.

In the meantime, I'm simply trying to survive.

Paul Greer: Less

 

They might have done, many of them. So many people will do. But once you've actually been in love, you can't live with "will do"; it's worse than living with yourself.

(p 14)

This can be a problem not just with romantic relationships. Of course, like everybody I often do use and even enjoy substitutes for the real thing: e-reader for a printed book, e-cig for a tobacco one, masturbation for sex and so on. But I guess that just as often a substitute is even worse than total absence: an obvious example is the preferability of silence to music one doesn't like, or even music one likes but isn't at the moment in the mood for. And I remember how after my three boon companions in a certain town left it shortly one after another, I began visiting different pubs - on my own, because meeting those left reminded me about the absence of those three more painfully than solitude.