Sudden Stories in Fear of Weather

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The Predator's World is Silent

Outside is mob rule and mayhem. I wake each morning to a public demonstration of collective power as birds hurry around like mad things, busy with their dark logistics. There are bees, bloated and drunken, the horse stares at me, and a violent budding now afflicts every bush and branch. It rained last night, so a carpet of menacing purple flowers has emerged from the grass. I don't know when it will end, but the flowers are already multicolored and expanding and they make me miss Laila.

I put out food for the hedgehog – a peace offering if you will – but the thing rushes past as if motorised and the cat thieves the rest. I recently saw a 'Hedgehog House' for sale on e-Bay that claimed to be 'Cat-Proof' and suitable for the 'Forward-Thinking Hog.' I may look into this.

Each day I confront an intimidating gang of Jackdaws – they always have a sentinel perched on the phone lines to cry out and warn the others when you approach – and a variety of rotund Robins so tough the wind rolls them over and they just get up again. Ferns are unfolding, so they catch the wind and nod, and as the sunlight strikes the waiting trees, they boast their billowing plumage, reaching up and above me. Two Blackbirds fight over something disgusting, and there are foxes also; at least one (sleek) rat – a scout perhaps – and busloads of idiot bugs that bang against the light like addicts. I cannot sleep. Politics rages all around me.

When it's just too much and beyond human tolerance, I come blundering out in my dressing gown to let them have it – the whole disorderly rabble. I tell the ducks to stop messing about; I lecture the horse over the hedgerow and I shout at the lambs to calm down as they bound around the field without reason (if you watch closely, it's their LEGS that do the bounding, with the lambs knowing little about it). My words, of course, have no effect on this plebian assembly. Laila would have laughed.

As for the birds, I tell you, they do not listen and do whatever they please. Am convinced that some fly around for the sheer fun of it. Crows mob buzzards, Wagtails flirt and there is a strange crowd of fluttering brown miniatures that travel together, never stop chattering and eventually panic one other into moving on.

The only thing that shuts everyone up is the arrival of the Sparrow Hawk – when, quite suddenly, no one has anything to say. He preens himself (his is a silent world) and looks around with disdain. Then he lazily flaps away with all the confidence of the tyrant. But right away, the rabble reconvenes, talking about it, carrying on and filling the air with sound and movement. Am telling you, this lot may look good, but they're opportunistic and only befriend you when it suits them.

In the evening, the Magpie with the one white knee and outrageous political views visits me, and I am often required to confront her with the facts. The 'Forward-Thinking Hogs' arrive at ten and the second shift at two. Around four, the neighbours-from-hell are at it again, shouting at each other from the treetops. Once awakened, I walk. I must. Down the straight lane of blossom that Laila loved so much, to the horizon, then a small bridge where water rushes over tumbling green. It looks so pretty now, innocent and unmarked by history; this is where she died. The water was so suddenly strong and dark that, despite her cane, she fell. A very particular form of death, one she had often considered and then rejected, hoping instead to slip away quietly in her bed and with me at her side. A short moment of confusion and violence, a wave of pain and then freedom.

Now the leaves are fingered by shadows, and beyond, the hills appear. I circle back through the sloping field as best I can, with its brown cow inhabitants. Usually they ignore me as I mumble under my breath, yet sometimes they follow insistently, passively pressing – like people filming a terrible accident on their phones. I admonish them and wave my finger while they chew and take a step forward, watching me. Once home, it's the usual round of conflict resolution, international negotiation, boundary setting and outrage management.

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Walking Out

The garden had a hawthorn hedge and the dog (Dag) had one eye. He was a stray who came begging at the window, emaciated and afraid - and never left. Over the years, he grew round and content, lazily patrolling his territory inside the hawthorn hedge, then sleeping.

When the weather worsened, he came with me in the van, as it now took all day to go anywhere and he was company. Shops closed, there were frequent power cuts and there was much queuing, shouting and stealing. I saw a young man banging at a pharmacy window, the ATMs were broken, the roads flooded and - my particular tragedy as I was in pain - there were no dentists. If you called an ambulance, or even the fire service, they never came. The state's sub-contracted officials had disappeared. Dag waited patiently as we queued, and the strange little wink of his missing eye was just menacing enough to make my walk home safer.

Some still await their extreme weather. Even as they brace themselves for the terrifying impact - the one flood, the one storm, this heat wave - they should know it always ends with walking. People drive as far as they can, then drag their suitcases, then abandon their suitcases and then just stop.

From within our little compound, we tried to help the first arrivals who were hungry and afraid. But each day there were more, thickening into hundreds who camped outside the hawthorn hedge and gathered around fires. Their suffering was a continuous hum. Dag barked at them, but when the hedge burnt down people were suddenly in the house. They took everything and ate the dog. After that, I was walking too.

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Collective Addiction?

Despite his better judgment, and in the full knowledge that he was hurting himself, Calvin continued to take the drug and would do anything to get it. Addiction has particular symptoms; one being the compulsive repetition of self-destructive behaviour.

Often, he wondered if it made any sense to say, of a culture or society in general, that it is collectively addicted? On its face, such a notion was absurd, mere analogy: individuals can be addicted, but societies are completely different. At most, he managed to conclude that in some ways, mass self-destructive behaviour resembled his own daily desperation, tumbling through the world and grasping. He made the same decisions over and again and saw that, as a society, and despite our better judgment, we compulsively pursue dirty consumerism, casino capitalism and the burning of fossil fuels in ways that are directly against our own interests. We also seem addicted to primitive and toxic forms of leadership, to inter-group conflict and chronic inequality, to obedience.

Ruefully, Calvin studied the list of symptoms for individual addiction in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, lV, where he found the following:

1. 'Continued substance abuse despite damaging consequences

2. Inability to stop, compulsion, preoccupation, distorted thinking

3. Limit setting & promises to self and others regularly broken

4. Denial, irrationality, repeated relapse, remorse & guilt

5. Progressive, often fatal'

No mention of Collective Addiction, as neither Calvin, nor his world, had yet suffered enough.

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