The Bear Minimum

It’s not all that long, but it’s not all that soon, either.

It has gotten to that time of the year where the holidays are well past, and you start to look forward to your vacation in the Summer. I think, dear reader, that being cooped up most of the day in a dim office can have that sort of effect on one’s psyche, where they spend their free time dreaming of warm days and fields to walk in and beaches to lay on. Then of course, once you get there, you remember why you don’t like flies and the smell of cow dung, and that sand inevitably gets everywhere. But that’s all part of the charm, isn’t it?

This year my wife and I want to have planned our vacation well in advance, and we want to try things we’ve not tried before. She suggested we go windsurfing, which sounded like a lot of fun, but not to be outdone, I suggested zorbing, which sounds like even more fun, though perhaps dizziness will be a slight issue. You do roll down a hill in a giant ball, after all. Much like those little hamster balls.

We then thought about toning it down somewhat, so she suggested wildlife watching, which would be very nice in the Summer, and I suggested Gorge Walking, which seems like an amazing activity to me. I love the variety of locales here in our fair Britain, and I am looking forward to stepping out this Summer and seeing some places I’ve never seen before, and doing some activities I’ve absolutely never done before!

I do hope that you too, dear reader, take the opportunity to do something out of the ordinary, positively extraordinary, this Summer like my wife and I are!

Well, I didn’t really, but that particular line from that particular song seemed apt considering my topic today.

Yes, it has happened. The earth has moved a 8 centimetres off it’s previous axis due to massive earthquake in Chile last week. It’s a very strange thing to contemplate, but those in the know over at NASA have calculated and said that yes indeed, that massive quake has altered how the earth sits on it’s axis ever so slightly, which has shortened the day by a tiny 1.26 microseconds.

There are some more obvious affects to the earth after this devastating quake, including the island of Santa Maria, just off the Chilean cost, having risen approximately 2 meters out of the ocean! I do find all of this fascinating on an intellectual level, however I’m also very, very aware of how those in Chile will be feeling right now. It feels like only a short while ago the world was rallying to aid Haiti, and now Chile is facing similarly grim times ahead. I do hope people are still in a giving mood, as both of these nations will not be able to recover quickly - or at all - without the aid of the rest of the world.

It does seem to me that the world is facing more and more extreme weather and geological events in these modern times. Oh I’ve no doubt that events with tremendous and terrible repercussions occurred in the past - the eruptions which buried Pompei and the palace at Knossos come to mind - but we seem to be getting these devastating seismic events more frequently in the past decade or so.

Perhaps, dear reader, I’m just getting old, and ruminating on such tragedies a little more. I do love this big blue world of ours, and hope she continues to safely ensconce all her children for yet a few more millennia.

It has been a very long hiatus, has it not?

Ah, what, you may ask, have I been doing in all this time!? In the past three and thirty weeks of drought that I have put you through? Well, it has been a trying time, in all honesty, but one that I am most happy to be past.

My most recent months have been filled with caring for a very sick ageing relative. An old great-aunt that I spent time with when I was growing up. She had a small property by the seaside, a perfect getaway for the intrepid youth looking to fill his Summer vacation with all sorts of activities, from hunting crabs and the like in rock pools to discovering badger dens in the nearby forest, it was a wondrous place! It’s a place that I love to share with my wife, we found time to walk in the snow-laden forest most days we were staying at my aunts cottage.

We were staying with her because, alas, age had taken it’s toll, and this favoured great-aunt had taken very, very ill. In her frailty she had been struck with pneumonia, and I and my wife have spent the better part of the Winter caring for her, and getting her well and truly healthy again. I am very happy to report that my great-aunt is well recovered, and fiercely putting her house to rights after the two of us ‘youngins’ had disordered her neat little cottage. We hadn’t actually made a mess in there, we’d just moved certain things to make it easier for us to stay there and trying to help her when she recovers. She’s an amazing cook and had a stock of huge pickling and jam jars in a top cupboard, and we moved all these sorts of things that we know she uses regularly uses to lower cupboards. She’s all mock irritated with us over it. It’s a fun game.

Oh yes they will. ‘They’ are my extended family, my aunt and uncle, to be specific. They will be arriving - or supposedly they will be - in the next few hours. These people don’t believe in punctuality, so I don’t know exactly when they will be arriving. They are even bringing with them a two-and-a-half year old that I don’t know, who is the child of the daughter of their long time friend. They are minding the child for the next two weeks. I am really not looking forward to having my home invaded, but it can’t be helped.

Unfortunately for me, they have something that I needed, something I had left at my mother’s house when I visited there last week. Instead of simply posting it to me, my aunt informed me that she would deliver it to my house, as they would be in my city this weekend anyway, to pick up said tyke.

Now, I do care for my family, but I feel extraordinarily awkward around them. They and I are on such different wave-lengths as to render conversation pointless to one or the other of us. If I talk to my aunt, she will happily natter on about things that interest her with nary a pause for breath. This can go on for quite a long time. She is one of those people who miraculously fills vast amounts of her time with seemingly useless tasks. She was once four hours late to my house because she was ‘laminating Yu Gi Oh’ cards for her nephew. The boy was under five, so had a record for destroying these cards, but liked them nonetheless. So my aunt, being the person she is, put me out, wasted hours of my time, so the boy could have the cards, and not be able to destroy them.

She is a very well meaning person, and if you told her that her chronic lateness was actually a form of arrogance, she would not believe you, and wouldn’t understand you should you care to explain the matter to her. My uncle, on the other hand, is almost mute. The man barely talks, ever, and should you try to engage him in conversation, you will, dear reader, be waiting a while.

He often takes so long to form a reply that my aunt, who more than makes up for his lack of verbosity, will answer for him. It makes for a stunningly awkward conversation. So here I sit, knowing that supposedly any minute she could call and tell me that she is on her way, but also knowing that, knowing her, she could be hours away. I heave a sigh now, dear reader, for the frustration I feel when dealing with these people. They are good people, but as I said, we are in very different mental landscapes, and I don’t care to try to adjust to fit into theirs, and I don’t believe they could understand mine.

For now I must be off, dear reader, in order to prepare my mind for the ensuing ordeal.

I had the good fortune today to spend some time at my local library, and was pleasantly surprised by my fellow man whilst I was there! You see, my bookshelves have been becoming more over-packed than usual, so today I took myself off to my local carpenter to have two new bookshelves made. The gentleman in question is familiar with myself and my needs, so in short order he was setting off towards my home with all the necessary materials to create yet another in-set bookshelf in my ever expanding study.

As I was off work today, this left me with some free time, for though I am quite fond of my bookshelves, I am not fond of the eruption of noise that precedes ones creation. So I took myself off to my local library to while away some time. I found a thoroughly engrossing book, and sat down at one of the tables to look it over more closely. I also happened to have picked up a number of other volumes, on all sorts of subjects.

As I sat there, in the peaceful quietude that only a library can offer, the very next chair to mine was taken by a rather large, hirsute, heavyset fellow. Please keep in mind, dear reader, that many of the tables in the immediate area were indeed free, but low and behold, this fellow had made the decision to sit right next to me. I sat there, continuing to peruse my book, when he said to me, in a surprisingly polite manner, that he didn’t mean to intrude, but would I mind letting him look over one of the books in my stack. The fellows odour was intruding far more than this simple request, so I politely granted him the book, saying I thought it looked good, but I was more than occupied with the one I was reading.

One couldn’t help but notice the rather unusual assortment of books the fellow had accumulated in front of him. There were a few texts regarding early steam engines, as well as some concerning militaria, and then there was also a large book on kittens, and two books on knitting. He caught me looking at the books before him, and smiled, saying ‘Me Misses likes to knit’. I thought it rather charming that the fellow liked cats, and in spite of his rather pungent scent, I came to like the fellow sitting beside me silently reading. Well, almost silently, as he did have the heavy breathing of a hippopotamus not long finished a foot-race. Once again, dear reader, I am reminded of the old adage, ‘You can’t judge a book by it’s cover‘.