Dear Readers,
One of the first things that The Muse and myself agreed on is that change is the only constant. It’s a great thing to agree on, and it also (to borrow a construction from my friend Thom) has the benefit of being true. (We agree on some other things too, like who’s best at washing up and where to live and when to break the rules and where to find magic.)
We were out last night, in a new for us place called 1200 Postcards. (There’s a curious story behind the name that you can hear when you go there and ask.) So I’m at the bar, waiting for a delicious and refreshing beverage and of course I’m eavesdropping on other people’s conversations. There’s a person at the bar critiquing the barman’s lime cutting technique. As in, talking about it out of the side of her mouth to her friend and not so loud that he could hear. I could hear – I am a very good eavesdropper. Plus her face gave her away – as my grandmother might say, she had a puss on her like a bulldog licking piss off a nettle. She did not like how her limes were being cut. (The woman at the bar, not my grandmother. I don’t know if either of my grandmothers ever saw a lime. They certainly never stood at a bar sneering at one being sliced instead of listening to great music and chatting to new friends.)
But of course, her whispery derision wasn’t going to get the limes cut to her taste. I wondered what the point was. Maybe I’m being unkind. She might have been having a terrible, terrible month and she might not have had any capacity for dealing with limes cut not-to-her-liking. This careless chopping of citrus was one frustration too far. She and her friend shared our table later (the bar was busy) and she talked about the limes for a good five minutes before ripping into the decor and everything else she disliked. Good times. The bar is great, by the way. We had a great chat with one of the DJs, Debbie, who has been on the ones-and-twos for longer than we’ve been alive.
You grow up you go places you do things you meet people and later maybe you get settled in your ways and like things just-so but you need to have a little give, a little flex because most people do as you do and do things in certain ways and if you always and they always ever want things to be just-so how would anyone ever discover new joys?
I suppose I’m writing about Lime Lady because I was surprised by how much energy she gave to talking about something she could not change, something that itself was a change from what she was expecting. I’m learning to be more discerning and maybe that’s why her behaviour took my interest too – is there a too-far version of discerning that means you can only enjoy things that meet your standards and tastes? Maybe that’s what snobbery is. Not for me, hopefully. But then I don’t want to be too forgiving either. If anyone cuts my limes into cubes with the same knife they’ve just used to gut a mackerel I might go full Lime Lady. All about balance, like many things.
Of course – you know this already, gang – I’m totally projecting here. I’ve been reading the news again. Such a bad idea, reading about the garbage ideas of the people in government and the insane behaviour of the people running the energy companies. I can’t change anything about their actions. They can’t hear me complaining. And changes for the worse are inevitable when a small group of people make decisions to benefit themselves and not everyone. But now and then I let myself overthink the reasons why people in positions of influence make choices that are bad news for other people, and I think less about the good things closer to home. But there is good news here – noticing that I’m doing this is the first step in the direction of doing things differently.
As far as I could tell, no-one else in the bar was complaining about the limes. They were dancing, laughing and chatting, and eavesdropping – all the joyful things. Time to change my bad news habit and find more joyful things. I might go to the beach and get an ice-cream. Be lucky, friends.
Yours sincerely,
Paul