Post 340: Four seasons in a day at the Forum.
I could have cried as I walked around the car after getting back from Blandford Forum today. Scratches all the way across the car doors on the near side from another few close calls with Dorset hedgerows.
I wouldn’t normally notice, but I parked in backwards and couldn’t help but see them on my Darling’s car that’s still not a month old.
Perhaps the insurance will cover a polish and fill-in — who knows.
All I know is that I’m fed up with the tidily lanes. Really fed up.
The centre of Blandford Forum was, for us, just over the River Stour, and today’s weather was 7 degrees that felt like zero in the wind. The clouds were marching across the sky with determination, with the occasional shower of hail. It was not the best day to be tourists, and with my Darling on day two of her sniffy nose cold, I was overprotective and insisted we seek shelter pretty well as soon as we started to look around.
Thus, the tour of the town was cut short, and the pretty well empty pub, the Greyhound, was where I suggested we could get a bite to eat.
Sadly, there were no open fires to welcome us in, but it was not a draughty pub and, being empty, the footfall didn’t open and close the door continually, so it continued to be plenty warm enough.
As my Darling paid for the food and drinks, I descended to the large restaurant area of the pub down four steps and was confronted by an enormous wall painting of my Darling’s favourite male singer, Bob Marley. His dreadlocks in a huge array in his unmistakable fashion.
“Taken too soon,” in my view — lots of people’s view. I remember the day he died. I cried.
It wasn’t long after I had gone to one of his concerts locally. Uprising was the tour name, but unbeknown to me, he was dying. To me he was full of life and zest and looked and sounded on top of his game.
His death was a big shock and has always been a sad, shocking moment in my life. May 1981. I was still only 16 (just). What a big man he was, to die — to die of cancer. Foot, skin cancer.
It is a shame and bad luck that any of us are here, bemoaning our lives of suffering.
I sat with my Darling and looked out of the nearest windows at the hail hammering on the roofs across the way, bearing down on this ancient town that had seen so much back in time — stories that I can’t begin to understand because of the weather today preventing us.
It was just the kind of day that attracts thought, and I was certainly thinking.
I said to my Darling that in other times — golden times, bad times, times when things were hard, times when things were sad — when I die I’ll be looking on at this world and wondering why I’m leaving it, but with a heart full of woes for my fellow humans. This is not a golden time to die when science is leading us to pastures new, where there’s an excitement for the future. No.
In my view, there is little to look forward to.
At sixteen, when Bob Marley died, there was a new kid on the block called the personal computer. Yes, at that time it was the size of a small flat, but it was the new thing. And while the race to the moon had pretty well ended, there were gadgets flying far out into space that would be years in travelling to the edge of our solar system — if they continued to work.
This was exciting for everyone, and back then there was a new technology or a new system every day. We were only little dots on an insignificant planet in a solar system with our sun — but we had intentions to learn what else was out there.
Star Wars on the screen leading us into unending space, and the Cold War stifling kids’ thinking. This is the world I grew up in.
But there was always hope for a better tomorrow.
Going back to my conversation with my Darling, still waiting for our dinners in a basket, I was saying how dying right now would not bring the shock, horror, nor worry that you’d be missing out on something that it could be.
Far from it, I went on — there’s nothing much to live for for the kids nowadays, is there? What have they got to look forward to?
I mean it. I’ve never known a time with less to look forward to.
Enough of that.
The dinner was not all about me and my gloomy thoughts about the world. We needed a bit of shopping, so that would be the next port of call.
We said goodbye to the lovely staff of the Greyhound — and Bob up on the wall — and split up as we headed back to the car park. My Darling went to do a bit of food shopping while I had yet another go at the Bluetooth connection from my phone to the car.
It wound me up again, and with a heavy heart I gave up looking for an answer as to why my phone wouldn’t talk to the car like my Darling’s phone does.
Who knows the vagaries of these delicate instruments.
I’m still slightly annoyed that the cottage had no WiFi. “Slightly” is an underestimate, obviously.
If it wasn’t for the tiny lanes and the lack of WiFi, this would be a place I’d love to come back to, because the cottages and the hosts are magic.
But it’s not.
Two more sleeps to go.
I had better get on to booking a polisher for my wife’s car when we get back. I wonder if the scratches can be fixed by the insurance? Who knows?
Anyway, I’d better get to sleep.
Good night.
