eggstrordinary

Walking up the street from the butchers, I thought how wonderfully peaceful London is when numbers of people go away. You might rejoin “If you don’t like the noise, why are you living in a big city ?”   Whole other discussion: noise may be exciting and interesting, noise may pollute. Much noise is generated nowadays to drown out other noise. Quietly down the street on my left through the sunshine came a slender girl with endless legs in a pretty jacket, on which I readied myself to remark. While on my right, some twit in an extortionate gas guzzler gunned his engine, disrupting ear and air. I said “How nice you look !” She replied, indicating the Italian stallion “That’s what you get for having a low riser-“ “ I said “That’s what you get for having a small penis.” She gaped, I smiled gently and walked on. Speak as you find.

Easter seems set to be the New Christmas, set about with expectation and compulsion. You must go away, laden with new clothes, bags, shoes, cosmetics. And chocolate. There is lamb and chocolate, cake and chocolate, eggs and chocolate and chocolate eggs, chocolate rabbits, chocolate horses and chocolate dolls. And cards and chocolate. I like my chocolate plain and dark, one of two brands (Belgian or German) and I think some of the most disgusting chocolate I have ever eaten was in the form of a lovely to look at , best it stops there, Easter egg, long before the years of discernment. Though every kind of taste is personal.

Recovering after illness earlier in the year, I ate anything I felt like eating because I didn’t feel like eating much. And while in this mood, I chanced on my favourite pizza. I waited to hear my internal voice disapprove but it didn’t, so I bought it. I was telling Bunslove about it and he said “I don’t understand, what so special about it ?”   I explained – “Yes, yes” he said. “But you must have done this before –“   And I explained I never had.   “But why ?” exclaimed the most enlightened vegan I know.   I explained pizza is a treat to me and I was afraid I’d make a mess of it.   “But you can’t” he said. “Do as it says on the box.   Have you got a glass of red wine ?”   I said I had.   “Well there you are – I can’t believe you have never done this before.”   So I tried to explain the feeling of doing things properly. “Look “ he said. “ This is what you fancy. Enjoy it. I’d like to get you have one of these in the freezer for when you next feel like it.” Keep your Easter egg, I have the Bunslove Special.

This idea of doing things properly goes very deep with me, so deep that it may ricochet and paralyse me from trying something in case I don’t do it properly. Of course, it is familial and from a certain time in our national mindset when achievement meant doing your best.   But I have never got over the fact that, on my emotional uppers, I prayed “Please God, may I have a corner ?”   and I got my apartment. There were all sorts of slips between cup and lip and I kept saying to myself “Other people manage, you can…” And I did.   And there is an outside space (not to say a garden), becoming proportions and a door that locks. How I have blessed that door !

And though my version of the Great Spirit is a long way from an old man with a long white beard, it is the voice that I hear on the rare occasions that I leave the house in disorder or take a silly risk. “What are you are doing ?” demands the voice.   I once tried to explain this to a group of whom everybody got it, except a psychiatrist (I think he was very angry about being on a cruise, probably did it to please somebody else). For him, there was no conscience, no internal dialogue, no simple faith. If I was hearing voices, I needed his help and he was not happy when it was declined.

“Great Spirit Moon”