At this time of year, when the weather is bleak and cold and the birds aren’t singing and there’s mud everywhere and the only other dog walkers scuttle by silently and even the dogs would rather be at home tucked up in their warm beds, there’s only one way to try to enjoy the obligatory trudge round the forest and that’s to clamp on the headphones and tune the iPod to shuffle. No need to decide what to listen to, just enjoy whatever crops up. And what does is always bizarrely random: it could be Miles Davis’ trumpet followed by a movement from a Mahler symphony, an aria from Mozart, an old Elvis hit, some Cretan dance music, Lady Bracknell interviewing Mr Worthing and often something annoyingly unidentifiable…but the haphazard selection is what makes it interesting.
As does the setting on my computer which determines that, after a couple of minutes of non-use while I think or blow my nose, goes into shuffle mode and selects from my library of 78,148 photos and brings onto the screen one after another, each for about five seconds and lasting for a total of ten minutes an indiscriminate selection of about 120 images, some of which I recognise, many I don’t, but never mind, the interlude is quite mesmerising and completely addictive. To give you a flavour, my Loyal Readers, and although they’ll not mean a lot to you and because you haven’t had any pictures yet on this blog, here’s a sample:
A week or so ago, while I was gazing absentmindedly at one such diversion, an email from a brother pinged into my inbox asking whether I could find a photo of the Lady in Black amongst my childhood nostalgia file. Who was she, you ask? Well, every day, when we were kids, the Lady in Black would pass by our garden, dressed in the same clothes, carrying her umbrella, pushing her mother in a wheelchair and would cover vast distances from their home somewhere in Hersham. Later when her mother died she walked alone. Rumour had it that her fiancé was lost in World War 1 and she remained in the same style clothes so that he would recognise her if ever he returned. And why did he want the photo? Because he’s writing ‘Memories’ for his grandchildren and would like proof. Eventually I found the photo but only after hours of searching over several days but in the process stumbled upon all sorts of memories of my life too, shuffled together in boxes, drawers, files and albums. Not that you’re interested in those but you might like to see the sad Lady in Black.
But it put me in a philosophical mood: maybe life’s just one long shuffle…completely uncoordinated events coming out of the blue and taking us by surprise, for better or worse.
And that’s the profound musing - my metaphor for life - I was going to leave you with until, a couple of days ago, I got my first ever attack of gout. Truly a shuffle moment, unpredictable, unanticipated, unforeseen. Leaving me literally shuffling along. Not at all philosophical, just painful.