Thursday, 23 July 2026

My morning ritual

 Taking impetus from a recent post of the esteemed Dr Spo's blog, I thought "Well, why not me too? After all, nobody else knows this of me".

As in just a few weeks' time I'll be entering my ninth(!) decade, with the likelihood that I'm not going to be in this world for that much longer, instead of leaving this one particular aspect of my life unknown, why not tell everyone of a rather unusual long-term habit of mine. 

Starting just after I left school at the age of 16, and continuing right up to the present - while even adding further to it over the last 60+ years - I've adhered to it, if not for every single day since, then certainly more than 95% of those days. Maybe some of you'll think I'm as mad as a March Hare, but now I'm past caring. 


So, most mornings by far, being a news-junkie, after catching up on world news via BBC and Sky while eating brekkies, I go through this:-



 



1. Revise my memorising of all the Shakespeare Sonnets - one per day, so that in a year I'll have covered each of them at least twice. I first began doing this about 25 years ago. Why? Well, why not? 




2. Revision of around 60 poems I know by heart, from various writers of all periods. Again, one per day - plus another one per day of selected poems I don't yet know verbatim, though that may come in time. 

3. Read 3 poems per day from the anthology 'Oxford Book of English Verse 1250 -1918', following the alphabetical index of first lines. Nearly 1,000 poems in all.

4. Three poems from volumes of certain individual poets, currently they are Robert Browning and Dylan Thomas which I'm reading in tandem.
          
                                                                    




5. Read a paragraph or so from a micropedia of British history from 7,000 B.C.E. up to the 1990s.

6. I read a passage from the Bible (Do you gasp? Well, don't worry)
Having completed 10 readings in three versions of the whole darned volume from cover-to-cover over some six decades about 10 years ago, I'm currently re-reading, for the umpteenth time, the New Testament gospels and the epistles, the latter especially being a crashing bore!  How anyone on Earth can call the Bible their "favourite book" and to mean it is beyond my comprehension. 
Both Old and New Testaments (even in the widely revered King James version), moreso the former, are turgid, flat - and annoyingly sparse on detail, leaving the reader to imagine it as they wish. Of course there are a fair number of episodes we all know - the 'Old' containing the Creation, Adam & Eve, Cain & Abel, Moses, Ten Commandments, Plagues of Egypt, Exodus, Abraham & Isaac, Jacob and his sons incl. Joseph, Samson & Delilah etc etc. plus, of course in the New, the life of J.C. (or at least the final three years of it) with his death and.........resurrection(?) - and all those tedious, repetitive and often puzzling/nonsensical Epistles. But there are really not that many noteworthy events considering the length of the Testaments - yet all separated by acres on acres of ennui - and oh, but all those interminable genealogies! Who cares about who begat whom? Yawn, yawn, yawn! In those patriarchal times (even now far too prevalent in many parts of the world, alas) it seems that only men with male offspring were worthy of mention, with virtually all females being sidelined into non-existence. 

7. A section of the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas.

8. A section of the 'Catechism of the Catholic Church'. Why? Same answer.

9. A sura or so from two translations of the Koran - which I find distinctly unappealing, unmoved and not infrequently look askance on.

10 A Chapter-Text (with explanatory commentary) translated from the Hindi scripture of Bhagavad-Gita. Yes, it does go on forever and ever, though it's rarely 'dull'.


Then, if I'm so minded, I might read a section of a book on Yoga (philosophy of, rather than physical practice) plus, maybe, a section from 'The Tibetan Book of the Dead'....or others of that ilk. I have more than a dozen books on Buddhism, the only 'religious' subject towards which I feel some sense of positivity, maybe along with a degree of fascination too, but always from the outside looking in rather than a fully fledged commitment/involvement to it - though I did attend two or three series of meditation classes some years ago.


All the above will usually take me about an hour, after which 
I'll do me some physical exercises - stretching, balancing, muscle strengthening, with some basic Tai-Chi thrown in. 







Thus start most of my days - after which, I can get on with my 'normal' day, perhaps shopping for fresh food (twice a week) - then another reading of Boccaccio's 'Decameron' - which I'm now near finishing for the third time, though this time in two translations together - then start my monthly reading of a Shakespeare play (this month it's 'Merchant'). This is a habit I've pursued ever since I was about 18, never ever having missed a single month, so must have read every play at least 20 times. Then it's followed by my choice of yet another third, and surely final, reading (before it's too late) of Hermann Hesse's 'The Glass Bead Game'. 

Then, for a change, I might catch up on iPlayer with 'Traitors' - right now the Canadian version, as I've become addicted to all Traitors programmes from whichever country is currently available. The Irish one I've found particularly watchable. 






Ah well! Such is life! Heigh-ho! 😄



Monday, 20 July 2026

My dearest little Bobby has passed away.

 

He was only just nine, middle-aged for a cat. He'd been ailing with we-don't-know-what for a couple of months, eating very little but drinking lots of water. The vet did some blood tests but couldn't determine exactly what the trouble was. So, night before last, he was lying on the bedroom floor at the foot of my bed, having lost significant weight and by then not even touching his favourite foods nor the water left beside him. When I went to bed at 12.30 a.m. (having stayed up for the World Cup Football) I checked that he was still breathing, albeit slow and shallow. I woke up a few hours later to find him in the same position, eyes open, though cold and lifeless. Took his poor body to the vet this morning for disposal. (Oh how I hate these times, of which I've seen far too many).

I don't have a photo of him as I now don't have the means to take any, but he was a real dearie, affectionate to me - and especially loved to be combed with a special 'cat-comb' (not one of those plastic 2-inch combs but a purpose-made steel-toothed one with handle), he coming to me half a dozen times a day and rubbing me to say that that was what he wanted.

He was mostly black, with a white breast and white paws - and was very much a home cat, while my now sole surviving pussy, Sloopy (same age), is rather more adventurous, though he too also returns comes home.

Sorry - I know that you other pet owners go through exactly the same trials from time to time, but I've got no one else here to off-load and spill my emotions onto. So, I do apologise for my indulging in details of which so many of you will be already painfully familiar, but if I don't get it off my chest to somebody, somehow, anyhow, I'm going to crack.

Farewell, my dearest lovely boy. Thank you ever so much for giving me your love - and your trust. I do so very ardently hope we will meet up again 'later'. XXXX