Further Late Night Thoughts From My Balcony Over A Calvados

Further Late Night Thoughts From My Balcony Over A Calvados

I have always found anomalies intriguing because they tell you that something that you think you know or your reasoning must be wrong. So you have to rethink. Here’s my latest.

A humanoid skull dated to 200,000BC and attributed to Devonian man was found some time ago. Much more recently DNA has been extracted from it and undergone analysis which proved it identical to current homo sapiens DNA. That surprised no one since Devonian man has for several years been presumed to be homo sapiens prime ancestor, with little bits of Neanderthal and possibly others in the mix. What we don’t and can’t ever knnow is which bits of the DNA were switched on or off. That has some significance because we all now carry the DNA to potentially turn us all into hairy apes, but it is switched off. We don’t know what got switched on or off or when but what we can quite reasonably infer is that Devonian man had the same potential as humans today.

Set that aside for the moment look at the generally agreed picture of human development after 10,000BC, the end of the last ice age. Hairy cavemen (and women) and primitive technology come to mind. Recent discoveries, particularly Gobekli Tepe, have shown that at that time technology in some places at least was more advanced than previously thought. Agriculture and farming, understanding of astronomy and ability with stone carving, for instance, were more advanced albeit still quite primitive. But…..if the ice age and its cause had wiped out all previous technology that would be the case (a big assumption, admittedly). So consider then advances in technology from 10,000BC to today. They are huge and have been developed over a mere 12,000 years. So, if we are to assume that this is the height of human technology development to date we must assume that Devonian man, with the same potential, did nothing with that potential for around 170,000, as against 12,00 years. It’s an equally big assumption. You can choose which assumption you wish to make but I think you must make one of them.

The root problem here is hard evidence, virtually all of which if there was any would have been wiped out by the last ice age. There is, in fact, more evidence for technologically very sophisticated societies existing prior to the last age than there is for only hairy cavemen roaming the planet (the two could co-exist, of course, as they do in effect now).  But none of the evidence is really hard; it’s anecdotal, the stuff of myths and legends. Prior to year AD0 there wasn’t one god but very many different ones who were worshipped all over the globe. So what then constituted a god? Someone/thing with technological capabilities you couldn’t comprehend? Items discovered embedded in coal seams, which must be at least 300 million years old (we currently think), pose further conundrums.It’s all very puzzling but try imagining a man in a pin-stripe suit and a bowler hat carrying an umbrella and brief-case 50,000 years ago and see what that does to your picture of pre-history.

 

What Is Stars?

 

What Is Stars?

The weather being what it is (fine), at around 11 o’clock in the evening after watching football I like to sit on my balcony with a calvados and maybe coffee to hand, smell the jasmine and contemplate some of the unsolved mysteries of the universe. As Sean O’Casey put it in Juno And The Paycock, «what is stars?».

My thoughts have been given sharper focus by the release a couple of days ago of the US government report on UFOs (or UAPs as they prefer to call them: Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon). I’ll stick to UFOs because one thing the report confirms is that these are objects, not tricks of the light: radar and other sensors have detected their solid prescence. Not only that but, as the report also confirms, their oberved movement defies anything we know about locomotion today. The compelling question then is not where they came from or whether they contain little green men but how the hell did they get here?  Time dilation, wormholes between parallel universes or something we've not even been able to imagine? Who knows? Because to do so they would apparently have to defy our current standard model of physics; Einstein eat your heart out. We do currently know that Einstein was wrong in some aspect of his theories of relativity but not in what aspect. The report quite rightly refuses to speculate. 

The other aspect of the report I found interesting (and the published report is only the cdelassified version) is that it takes account only of sightings confirmed by military personnel. There have been some 140 of these in the past two years, about one a week, disregarding any other reports by civilians. So someone or something out there has got something like CCTV on the Earth. A great aspect of the report is that it legitimises reports of UFOs and indeed, suggests that the fear of appearing foolish has suppressed many more reports. That suggests that much more relevant information (as well as wacky fantasies) should become available in the near future. As wacky fantasies go I can foresee a headline in The Sun newspaper(?) «Will Aliens Intervene In The Euros? If England lose to Germany that must surely be the case. I’ve no idea what else to make of the report but it poses enough fundamental questions to fuel many more nights with a calvados on my balcony.

And Yet More

More

Just more pictures of flowers and no apologies for that because this will almost all be fried and over in a couple of months time.  In the first, the front of the house, you can just see at the top the jasmine hanging down from the balcony which is perfuming the living room (and another is doing the same for the terrace out back). I didn't plant the sunflowers; they are gifts from the messy feeding of the birds on the balcony above.  The second is one of the pelargoniums I managed to keep over the winter and is doing its nut in the front too, along with others.  The third is the balcony in which you can just see towards the top the blue clematis which has clung to the honeysuckle down one side of the balcony and is now in full bloom.

Just About The Garden

 

Just About The Garden

Over a month ago I thought I was just about done with the garden, apart from maintenance. It’s the «just about» that keeps me busy. My attempt to front the long boxes on the balcony with Lobelia failed miserably so I have now replaced them with some climbing nasturtiums I grew from seed. They can climb up the railings on the balcony or drop down from them. Either way they won’t affect the limited space for guests on the balcony. There’s room for two guests and two chairs. Sit on the left for long and you are liable to be crawled over by clematis or honeysuckle; sit on the right and scrambling geraniums will do the same. It’s your choice. 

The photos below are of the view from my bedroom window, the front of the house, the Pilgrim rose in the back garden and the balcony

 

There’s honeysuckle in bloom to the right and left of the balcony so the scent in the evening is great. The one to the right seems to bloom twice a year unless I’ve got one of them in the pots beside the porch below. One I know I stuffed years ago into a hole in concrete that covers one of the spring sources that runs in font of my house. I don’t think there’s another in a pot but honestly can’t remember what I’ve got in the pots now and they are too crowded to see properly, although I do know that there are at least two clematis in them. It’s probably why I am known as the mad English gardener. French pots would have plants metrically spaced and lined up in rows for inspection. Anyway, it uses the lilac tree beside the porch to get up to the vine that grows over the balcony and climbs all over that.

 The honeysuckle on the left goes up to my bedroom window and seems to be trying to climb in (see photo). It has flowers that start as red buds whereas the other is pure white/yellow so must be a different variety. It had started to climb along with the jasmine all over the TV dish above it until I got Carl to risk live and limb pulling it down last year. If you haven’t got much horizontal space but vertical space up to the sky what do you do?

I’ve now got bunches of sage and winter savory drying in the sun on the table on the balcony. I find winter savory («sarriette» here) an intriguing herb since I never encountered it in England and it grows profusely in my herb patch and has even self-seeded on the roadside. I’m sure it must be around in England since it is perennial here to temperatures way below those that England experiences. It seems to be used here mainly with goat cheeses but has potential for stews and casseroles. The scent/flavour is somewhere between oregano and thyme. 

 

The pots of seedlings that were on the balcony are now planted. The climbing nasturtiums as I have said and the morning glory in the pot on the balcony that conatins the jasmine and the rest over the road in the pot against the wash-house. Both are intended to produce flowers later in the year after August has fried nearly everything. Morning glory don’t like being moved, the ground here is not conducive to seeds and I have had limited success with them in the past so I’ve put some more seeds as an insurance in a pot on my kitchen windowsill alongside the two chilli plants, pot of chives and a dahlia tuber starting to sprout. The last is another «just about»…………..

More Flowers

 With the lemon tree now on the balcony there is no room for more than two persons on it. I was especially pleased with myself on getting the lemon tree from the terrace at the back down to the balcony. I couldn't possible lift it in the pot and was confronted with six steepish stairs to navigate.  I'm not usually that imaginative but have copious books in the house and managed to create temporary shallow stairs with books to slide he pot and tree down. It took about half an hour but time is one thing I have a lot of so what the hell.  Here are photos of front and back.

Flowers

 

Flowers

Nearly there! Curtailment of the markets, and length of journeys, at the moment has meant I’ve had to get plants from the couple of local garden centres, which has restricted my choice of what flowers to plant somewhat. That situation is complicated by the fact I tend to get into argumens with myself about what to buy and plant where; and I tend to lose the arguments. However………..the remaining container on the balcony is now planted, as is another of the hanging baskets, the couple of vacant slots in the front have been filled and the rather careworn pansies from the hanging basket have been reansplanted across the road. What remains is to decide what goes in the one remaining hanging basket and then to find spaces in the back garden for whatever is left over. Even I should be able to manage that. I’ve also got climbing nasturtiums and morning glory seeds sprouting on the kitchen windowsill as well as a couple of pots with chilli plants in them. Alongside the existing pot of chives; I’ll worry about where to put the nasturtiums and morning glory later. The chives supplement the sage, mint, oregano and winter savory in the herb patch in front and I’ve planted some ginger among the itises opposite as an experiment. Mad Englishman indeed! It all makes sense to me (sort of).

Also over is my camera problem so here are a couple of photos, of the the back garden and the clematis and rose in the pot beside the wash-house which I’ve decided to take over from the village auuthorities, 10 yards along the road and opposite my house.

 

Early Summer?

 

Early Summer?

in my last post I said it’s spring but now it may be early summer; the two collide here in a very short space of time. Much depends on the cold Mistral wind. If it’s not blowing or if I am out of it and in the sun it’s early summer; in it I regress to thinking it’s still only spring. Locally grown asparagus and strawberries have arrived in the shops and markets and the same goes for melons grown under glass; but maybe it can’t truly be summer until the apricots arrive. The local orchards have been full of bloom, we just have to wait a while for the fruit to follow. I’ve been putting some fruit, mangos, kiwi fruit, into small jars with fruit alcohol, sufficient for a dessert with friends. In fact extending culinary possibilities for meals with friends has become something of an obsession during the confinements. I think that will probably become increasingly important to my social life in the future.

Gardening

My gardening is progressing slowly. Watering has been the main concern as we have come through the principal time for rain here with the number of times it has rained that you could count on one hand. So I have been watering twice a week. One long trough on the balcony has been planted and one hanging basket. I still have two hanging baskets and various empty slots to fill but am struggling to find the plants I want in among the limited variety available in garden centres and markets. Some successes are showing. The clematis and sclimbing rose against the wash-house 10 yards along the road and opposite my house are in bloom as is one clematis directly opposite. At the back the cotonilla is doing its yellow nut as is the climbing rose, white spring in summer is in bloom as is a red potentilla. So far so good.

Royalty

The funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh gave me cause to reflect on what I really thought and felt about the occasion rather than what every Brit was supposed to. It was a sad occasion, obviously, particularly for the Queen, who looked bereft. But I can’t honestly say that I personally mourned. It is always sad for some when someone dies (John Donne’s No Man Is An Island) but for me it was just a stranger dying.

I’m in favour of the UK having royalty as nominal Head of State rather than a President as I think it offers more for a similar price. But I am very glad to have no part in the extensive royal family and would like to see privileges accorded to the extent of it curtailed. The bargain seems to be that royals are privileged and therefore owe a duty to the state. But duty is a cold word, hardly one to live one’s life by, and few people do. A merely dutiful husband/wife is a cold one. Most people live their lives through their emotions, ambitions and necessity. It is this, perhaps, that is at the root of the brouhaha around Harry and Megan and Diana in the past. If you are born privileged, you are supposed to choose duty above how you wish to live your life. In this respect, the royals are more an institution than a family and it is the institution that rules. I think that maybe countries such as Holland and Denmark have found a better arrangement for the modern world.

I find a bizarre contrast in this with my French friends. They always seem to be more au fait with what is happening in the royal family than I am yet would never want a royals as Head of State in France. There is privilege in France, plenty of it, but not associated with royalty and generally resented by those who don’t have it. The «peuple» in France, which can be lossely translated as the working classes, seem to me to be much more conscious of their collective power and jealous of their rights than their English counterparts and much quicker to protest if they think them infringed. The working classes in the UK seem somehow more deferrent to privilege; protest in the U>k is token; in France it is designed to disrupt. History, no doubt, accounts for these differences but my sympathies are with the French version of protest.  Show them that you mean business..

Travelling On Youtube

I’ve mentioned before that during lockdowns I’ve watched a lot more videos on Youtube, on archaeology, politics, and for cooking ideas but also to revisit places from my travelling days. Travelling is on hold for most people now (apart from the thousands coming into Heathrow during the UK lockdown) but I’ve indulged in nostalgia and been hugely disappointed. Not that I’m likely ever to see those places again but now I don’t want to. I stayed for a week on Samosir island in Lake Toba, Sumatra, a primitive paradise among kind, gentle people. There was no running water and no electricity but there were the «cleaner fish» in the lake and it was bliss. Now there are packaged tours there, with all that that implies. I stayed a similar time in a hut on an unspoiled, almost empty beach in Phuket where now there are hotels, swimming pools and loungers. I slept in a cave in Petra and danced the evening away with Bedouin around a camp fire; now it is no longer permissible to sleep in the caves and the Bedouin can no longer graze their camels and goats there. So it has been disappointing to revisit these places, even vicariously, but I am even more glad I visited them when I did.