Yesterday I heard my first cuckoo of the season. Oh yes I did! Oi! You at the back! I DID hear my first cuckoo call of the Spring. For once the morning was silent as Radio 4 had been bypassed in my hurry to attend to an urgent matter. ('You're not going to tell them are you?' asked Ed incredulously) Further explanation not available.
I really had intended to continue taking care of business but am suffering the side effects of starting to do so. I am, therefore attempting to distract myself from the dead left foot, the aching back and the overwhelming need to go to sleep. There is another hour before I can have more meds so.... to what the messenger brings.
Mr Cuckoo, because it is only he who sings that unique song, acted as the herald for Madam Spring yesterday. It is a sound I love to hear. The sound brings a lifting of the heart, an anticipation of the pleasures to come and each note promises warmer, kinder days. And then I went to the garden centre with my lovely friend J and her equally lovely daughter B. Mr Cuckoo Sir! You are a fibber! Your promises were overwhelmed by a bitter, bone cutting wind and stremities had to be revived. I note, wryly, that you sing not a note today. Harrumph!
Yesterday, despite the cold, saw your Scribe admiring J's garden; offering advice (groan. Ed) , spotting treasures, snaffling a stunningly beautiful purple geranium - oh joy! and rescuing an accident Clematis cutting - butterfingers J! Then we went to the garden centre. Now there are a number of establishments wherein I could bankrupt myself: would take oh! less than half an hour. They are: chemist, garden centre, Lush, Ikea, Greek restaurant, Indian restaurant and any store that sells decent malt whiskey. But. Harken! One of the joys of being penniless, poor, potless, is that you can look,admire and drool and then encourage your companion to spend far more than she might have intended. I keep my fingers crossed that her purchases thrive.
This morning I've been pondering on being manipulated. As a child, I was manipulated by fear, threats and worse. As I grew into a defiant, scared of nothing teenager of 15 I was manipulated by hollow promises. I have written already of the broken promises of authorities, the false horizon painted if only you do ...... such and such. But there is a positive form of manipulation that we oft times ignore. We hooman beans, of course, tend to focus on the negative of our interactions, our memories usually because those are the things ingrained in our entire bodies.
I recall the first time my Beloved Son and Heir manipulated me. Mother Nature is no slouch when it comes to providing the vulnerable with the wherewithal to be protected. Part of her tool kit is the way she designed the young of most species. Take a pair of big brown (insert colour) eyes, add a dash of a smile and bind together with a chirruping giggle. Instant! Nothing beats that on the attention stakes. He was about 18 months old and showed a love for the female of the species which he retains to this day. Big women, little women, black women, white women, fat women, thin women, six months to sixty years - no matter - they were female and he showed great skill at bending them to his will. I was cross with him for some minor infringement and was telling him off in that pretend, fierce way you use with toddlers. He hiccuped and turned to me having enlarged those big brown eyes so they almost filled his face, quivered his bottom lip and wailed 'But I Lurb You!' V was one of the last letters he mastered. Hopeless. I was defenceless! It was a bit like I imagine it would be if Omar Sharif were to ride up to you on his camel in a cloud of dust; fix you with those limpid deep brown pools and insist he was taking you for his Queen.
On the news I heard about a fabulously beautiful, famous film star had released the information that she had been treated for bipolar. Initially I thought 'how brave! how refreshing that we have another advocate for one of the last taboos'. Those of us who have admitted to others, not just ourselves, the presence of the Black Dog, as Churchill described his depression, need all the advocates we can get. On the surface here is a woman who has everything: beauty, health, wealth, a doting famous husband, beautiful children and a stunning career. What on earth has she to be miserable about? Apart from the fact that the piranhas have been feasting on her since she appeared in the perfick television programme; that her husband has survived cancer, that her life is lived under the glare of the telescopic lenses. Trying to maintain a front, a coolness, a calmness, never letting the perfect mask slip is hard enough for the average nondescript, un-newsworthy individual let alone a stunning beauty such as her.
Then I remembered the nasty little court case in London. The one where some celebrity magazine was being sued over unwarranted, and it has to be said not entirely flattering, pictures of the couples wedding. Part of her evidence in chief was that to her and her husband, £1m was an insignificant amount of money. Pause for effect. It was a little while before the less well off in the Country released the out breath. Remember my old friend Perception? Well Perception told us that she had forgotten; her tectonic plates had completed shifted; she had moved up the social ladder not just by one notch but by many. Now she was perched above us looking down pityingly at our paltry incomes. Unfair? Yep! Unlikely? What do you think?
Then I got to wondering whether the announcement was a spoiler: that some red top rag had a story, or worse still, a grainy picture, of her being escorted unceremoniously into a clinic and was going to run it over the weekend. Maybe her publicist advised her to beat them to it to get her version of events in print first. To deflect attention so that it is focused in sympathy with her rather than in condemnation of her. In a way I hope so. I am tired of being manipulated by the press. The ring in my nose no longer supports the weight of an editor's fingers as (s)he insists I see things from her/his point of view. I have learned that Frank Carson was right: 'It's the way I tell 'em'.
So I end with a little prayer: 'Lord, make me less cynical, but please just not yet!'
Love and Peace
THE Purple Fairy xxx
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