Cold & windy, rain some of the day. Stuck a root of a wild briar in, experimentally, but not certain whether it will take as it had not much root. Shall plant some more as I want to try budding next year.
10 eggs. Sold 4 @ 2d each & 5 @ 5 for 1/-.
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nice idea to make a blog as your diary. many people do that. nice to see your blog
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Plant R&D as a diversion is a reasonable conclusion, I suppose. I don’t think it indicates psychosis; it’s “stiff upper lip” in action and you don’t plant plants without a glimmer of hope. Have your tried picturing Eric lugging that apple tree from one location to another?
~~~~~Intercepted George Orwell thoughts:
It is perhaps worth noticing that everyone, at least every English-speaking person, invariably speaks of Jonah and the whale. Of course the creature that swallowed Jonah was a fish, and was so described in the Bible (Jonah i. 17), but children naturally confuse it with a whale, and this fragment of baby-talk is habitually carried into later life—a sign, perhaps, of the hold that the Jonah myth has upon our imaginations. For the fact is that being inside a whale is a very comfortable, cosy, homelike thought. The historical Jonah, if he can be so called, was glad enough to escape, but in imagination, in day-dream, countless people have envied him. It is, of course, quite obvious why. The whale’s belly is simply a womb big enough for an adult. There you are, in the dark, cushioned space that exactly fits you, with yards of blubber between yourself and reality, able to keep up an attitude of the completest indifference, no matter what happens. A storm that would sink all the battleships in the world would hardly reach you as an echo. Even the whale’s own movements would probably be imperceptible to you. He might be wallowing among the surface waves or shooting down into the blackness of the middle seas (a mile deep, according to Herman Melville), but you would never notice the difference. Short of being dead, it is the final, unsurpassable stage of irresponsibility. And however it may be with Anais Nin, there is no question that Miller himself is inside the whale. All his best and most characteristic passages are written from the angle of Jonah, a willing Jonah. Not that he is especially introverted—quite the contrary. In his case the whale happens to be transparent. Only he feels no impulse to alter or control the process that he is undergoing. He has performed the essential Jonah act of allowing himself to be swallowed, remaining passive, accepting.
Marvellous stuff.
Eric and the apple tree, Eric and the limed patch, Eric and the strange new bird, Eric and the egg count. Indeed, “being inside a whale is a very comfortable, cosy, homelike thought” while “all the battleships in the world” are sinking in storms somewhere above you.