One of those days

One irritation about being a granny is you can't put it all down to PMT. You can't put it down to anything -- except YOU.

Beloved has gone off to pursue his love affair with the bank. (You and I, darlings, do it all via telephone and the internet these days; not Beloved. And don't imagine he's having an affair with the teller, nothing like that; a faithful man, Beloved, luckily for Granny. More like an affair with the hushed space, the counters, the officials trying to speak English, the pieces of paper with figures on, the signing rituals. etc etc etc. Each to his own. Each to his own.)

Granny meanwhile sits at her desk feeling blue, unloved, unread, etc etc and guilty about feeling this way; think, she might live in Baghdad. And if you want to know about that, Riverbend has posted again lately, go here. After which you will know exactly what Granny's melancholy is worth: or rather isn't. It adds to her melancholy for sure, as did Blair, yesterday, denying - yet again - all responsibility for the havoc in Iraq, as did a documentary on Channel 4 last night about Iranian pilgrims to Karbala, which makes quite clear the total gulf between Bush/Blair and them. And to Bush/Blair add all of us, helpless adherents of their total ignorance and idiocy. (For yet another mind-blowing example of that go here.)

As for the documentary; on the one side - the Iranian - Shiite pilgrims - all awaiting the return of Hussain. (No, not Saddam, darlings. Sheik Hussain.) On the other - Bush's - conflagration in the Middle East, global warming, all our fears, presage what his lot want; the Second Coming. APOCALYPSE either way. The one comfort being that most of us know bloody well that once we're dead - of thirst, bomb, whatever - we're DEAD. No illusions about after-lives of paradisical or hellish varieties. Well that's a relief isn't it? Though we'd prefer, most of us - Granny certainly would prefer - for our children and grandchildren to have long peaceful productive lives, wouldn't we? Who'd choose the Messiah over that option? Too many is the problem. IS THE PROBLEM.

Better to think about birds. Granny likes birds. No, she wouldn't go halfway round the world to see a rare one; she's quite happy enough on a fine afternoon like the one yesterday to go down to the salt-flats with the tide coming in, and to watch birds she knows well doing their thing; flirting with earth, air, water, bobbing, diving, flying, pecking about, feeding in the different ways dictated by the different shapes of their beaks. While Beautiful Wimp, who is not the least interested in birds leaps about on the tide-line trying to catch fish. His optimism is boundless almost as beautiful as he is. Maybe there's a lesson for a gloomy Granny there. She hopes so.