Who hasn’t been on one of these, particularly if you have an older brother or sister, and they have nothing better to do than give you a hard time.
You know what I mean, going on a mission to find or do something, knowing full well that you won’t find it, or complete it because it was a lost cause to start with.
Yes, it goes very well with another saying, a dog chasing its tail.
We’ve seen that, too, watching the poor dog go round and round without ever achieving anything.
Sounds like my day today.
And it doesn’t stop there, the pointless search could also be described as ‘searching for a needle in a haystack’.
That is, to my mind the very definition of a living nightmare.
The origin of the idiom, well that’s a little more complicated because there isn’t just one definition.
The first:
Coined by William Shakespeare, but not necessarily in the sort of language we can read easily – it’s a bit like my ability to translate Spanish to English. It does, however, refer to a ‘wild goose chase’.
The second:
Refers to, of all things 16th Century horseracing, and because I don’t have a time machine I can’t go back to fact-check. However, it refers to the other riders following the leader around the course, in much the same formation as geese flying through the air.
…
My little story to go with it:
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If you are good at your job, and that is beginning to be noticed, your boss will find one of these ‘wild goose chases’ just for you, in an effort to make you look bad.
It happened to me once: my task was to search the basement, where old records were stored, for a folder that a former employee had thought they had filed it in the wrong storage box, a supposition supported by the fact the folder was now needed to clear up a clerical error and the file wasn’t in the specifically marked storage box.
My job was to search every one of the other 765 boxes stored haphazardly in the basement until I found it.
It was, I was told later, sitting on his desk the whole time, and when I couldn’t find it, was going to swoop in and say he’d found it.
Of course, it went missing before he could, so he got a bollicking for not storing the files properly, and I got the job to clean up the basement. I’m not sure who got the worst punishment.
I’m back home and this story has been sitting on a back burner for a few months, waiting for some more to be written.
The trouble is, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritising.
But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.
Was I working for a ghost?
I sat in that room for an hour.
I had no doubt someone was on the other side of the mirrored wall, watching me, analysing my body language. I hoped I hadn’t given any indication that Nobbin was a name that I recognised, or knew, but I was still new to this game, and as much as I tried to perfect it, I still didn’t think I had a poker face.
More than likely I had a ‘tell’.
There was something else I had to worry about, and that was what approach this Dobbin would take. For instance, did he know that I had met up with the man in the alley, and stretching that big if, did he know who the man in the alley was, and was he one of ours.
Of course, that was another problem I had, and that was recognising who ‘ours’ were. It seems the people I knew, were not the same people who were really running the place.
Or, paradoxically, were these people, interlopers, trying to get intel on the group I was supposedly working for. But they hadn’t disavowed me, so I must be working for someone they approved or knew of.
An hour and a half, and I was beginning to think this might be another game by my previous interrogators. I was glad not to be on the other side of the mirror, trying to work out what I was ‘telling;’ them. Once, I’d got up and stared directly into the mirror, thinking I might be able to see who was behind it. I also thought of tapping it to see if I could get a reaction.
And, in fact, I was about to do that very thing when Nobbin walked through the door and closed it behind him.
I saw him do a quick check of the room, from the floor to the roof, and stopping briefly at the mirror, before sitting down.
“We probably have an audience for this discussion,” I said, inclining my head towards the mirror.
“You might be right, but I did ask for a clean slate, and if anyone is considering recording or viewing this interview, there will be dire consequences.” Looking at the mirror, he added, “I made that very clear at the highest level.”
He then looked back at me. “Your name, I believe, is Sam Jackson?”
“Yes.” My current working name, that is. Once deployed to the field we started using aliases, and my first and current alias was Sam Jackson. But how they made the passport look old and used for that legend was interesting, yet not a question anyone would answer.
“You were recently assigned to a surveillance team, for this man.”
He’d brought a folder with him and pulled out a photograph of the man I’d cornered in the alley.
“Is that him?”
Was there a right or wrong answer here?
“Yes.”
“Who was leading this operation?”
“A man named Severin.”
“Describe him.
I did.
It evoked no reaction. Nobbin had a poker face. In fact, I was beginning to think it was etched in stone.
“Do you know who he is?” I asked.
“No. But we will find out. Thank you for your time.”
He stood, gave me one last look, and left the room.
I waited a minute, and then followed him out, where a security officer was waiting to escort me out of the building.
On the steps outside, security pass returned, I wondered if that was then end of my tenure with that organisation. Or whether I actually had any tenure in the first place.
This book has been sitting in the ‘to-be-done’ tray, so this month it is going to get the final revision.
And so it begins…
…
Heading into the second week, the statistics are telling the story, in one sense.
After 8 days, 16,685 words, an average of 1,853 words a day, an average of 1,515 words a day to meet the 50,000-word target, and to do that I will be finished on schedule.
Of course, that would be true, but who writes a novel that is exactly 50,000 words?
It would be novel (pardon the pun) if you could do just that, it’s worth a moment’s thought before discarding.
The words finding themselves having been grouped into chapters are now making a lot more sense on the second run-through, and the story is taking shape with the first section almost done.
Day 8 has seen the start of the second section, and all I can say about the theme is be careful what you wish for, in more ways than one!
Nearly every city has a high building, a tower, or a large Ferris wheel.
London had the London eye Paris has the Eiffel tower The Galata in Istanbul The CN Tower in Toronto The towers of San Gimignano Pisa has a leaning tower
We’ve managed to see all of the above bar the Galata in Istanbul. One day we might get there.
But, on this side of the world, there are two, the Sydney Tower, and the Sky Tower in Auckland, which we just visited recently.
It’s not a tall tower, but it definitely gives great vies of Auckland, particularly to the north
The mountain in the background at the top of the photo is of a volcano on Rangitoto Island. When we were visiting, there were reports that it might become active again.
To give a height perspective, it didn’t seem all that far down to the apartment building and gardens nearby.
And when I woke up, I realised that I had just had a very bad dream. Or don’t they call bad dreams nightmares?
Can you diagnose yourself as having depression?
Of course, if you were to tell someone else, in one of these very serious tones, “I think I have depression” they will ask you what you’ve got to be depressed about.
It’s a good question. My first answer would be, “why did the doctor put me on antidepressants?” You know the stuff they give you, some derivative of serapax,
Then, if you tell anyone you’re on that stuff, they turn around and tell you just how bad it is and get off it right now.
That’s all very well, but you tell them you still have depression, and so the argument goes on.
But…
These days, they use low doses of antidepressants to manage pain, and in my case back pain. The first pill they gave me was Lyrica, which slowly took my memory away so that I couldn’t remember what anyone had said earlier in the day.
I thought I had early onset Alzheimer’s, or worse, dementia.
So I got off that, got the pain back, and moved to antidepressants. Now I’m seeing things.
That might help with the imagination for writing stories sometimes, but telling people you see the patterns on tiles moving is not a good start to any conversation.
Back to depression, though. It might be caused by being locked down and not being able to go anywhere, but that has never bothered me because I hate going out.
It might be a result of my childhood coming back to haunt me, and, believe me, you would not want the childhood I had, but it’s a maybe. A lot of old people find their past creeping up on them, and what happened 60 years ago seems more relevant than what happened 60 minutes ago.
You might think you’re badly done by, that everyone else is responsible for the mess you made of your life, if it is indeed a mess, but no, that isn’t true. My life is exactly what it’s meant to be, though how I got here remains the biggest of mysteries.
It’s why I’m writing the autobiography of a very ordinary nobody.
OK, that might be a hint, thinking I’m a nobody. After all, when I go out I always feel like I’m invisible.
A friend of mine tells me he always cries when there’s a sad part of a film on, and that’s his determination of depression.
I do too, but I don’t think it’s that.
After all, I did psychology and should understand the nuances of the human psyche, what makes us happy, what makes us sad, what makes us us.
So, rightly or wrongly I’ve stopped taking the antidepressants.
If suddenly my blog suddenly stops, you’ll know I’ve made the wrong decision.
50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.
They all start with –
A picture paints … well, as many words as you like. For instance:
And, the story:
Have you ever watched your hopes and dreams simply just fly away?
Everything I thought I wanted and needed had just left in an aeroplane, and although I said I was not going to, i came to the airport to see the plane leave. Not the person on it, that would have been far too difficult and emotional, but perhaps it was symbolic, the end of one life and the start of another.
But no matter what I thought or felt, we had both come to the right decision. She needed the opportunity to spread her wings. It was probably not the best idea for her to apply for the job without telling me, but I understood her reasons.
She was in a rut. Though her job was a very good one, it was not as demanding as she had expected, particularly after the last promotion, but with it came resentment from others on her level, that she, the youngest of the group would get the position.
It was something that had been weighing down of her for the last three months, and if noticed it, the late nights, the moodiness, sometimes a flash of temper. I knew she had one, no one could have such red hair and not, but she had always kept it in check.
And, then there was us, together, and after seven years, it felt like we were going nowhere. Perhaps that was down to my lack of ambition, and though she never said it, lack of sophistication. It hadn’t been an issue, well, not until her last promotion, and the fact she had to entertain more, and frankly I felt like an embarrassment to her.
So, there it was, three days ago, the beginning of the weekend, and we had planned to go away for a few days and take stock. We both acknowledged we needed to talk, but it never seemed the right time.
It was then she said she had quit her job and found a new one. Starting the following Monday.
Ok, that took me by surprise, not so much that it something I sort of guessed might happen, but that she would just blurt it out.
I think that right then, at that moment, I could feel her frustration with everything around her.
What surprised her was my reaction. None.
I simply asked where who, and when.
A world-class newspaper, in New York, and she had to be there in a week.
A week.
It was all the time I had left with her.
I remember I just shrugged and asked if the planned weekend away was off.
She stood on the other side of the kitchen counter, hands around a cup of coffee she had just poured, and that one thing I remembered was the lone tear that ran down her cheek.
Is that all you want to know?
I did, yes, but we had lost that intimacy we used to have when she would have told me what was happening, and we would have brainstormed solutions. I might be a cabinet maker but I still had a brain, was what I overheard her tell a friend once.
There’s not much to ask, I said. You’ve been desperately unhappy and haven’t been able to hide it all that well, you have been under a lot of pressure trying to deal with a group of troglodytes, and you’ve been leaning on Bentley’s shoulder instead of mine, and I get it, he’s got more experience in that place, and the politics that go with it, and is still an ally.
Her immediate superior and instrumental in her getting the position, but unlike some men in his position he had not taken advantage of a situation like some men would. And even if she had made a move, which I doubted, that was not the sort of woman she was, he would have politely declined.
One of the very few happily married men in that organisation, so I heard.
So, she said, you’re not just a pretty face.
Par for the course for a cabinet maker whose university degree is in psychology. It doesn’t take rocket science to see what was happening to you. I just didn’t think it was my place to jump in unless you asked me, and when you didn’t, well, that told me everything I needed to know.
Yes, our relationship had a use by date, and it was in the next few days.
I was thinking, she said, that you might come with me, you can make cabinets anywhere.
I could, but I think the real problem wasn’t just the job. It was everything around her and going with her, that would just be a constant reminder of what had been holding her back. I didn’t want that for her and said so.
Then the only question left was, what do we do now?
Go shopping for suitcases. Bags to pack, and places to go.
Getting on the roller coaster is easy. On the beginning, it’s a slow easy ride, followed by the slow climb to the top. It’s much like some relationships, they start out easy, they require a little work to get to the next level, follows by the adrenaline rush when it all comes together.
What most people forget is that what comes down must go back up, and life is pretty much a roller coaster with highs and lows.
Our roller coaster had just come or of the final turn and we were braking so that it stops at the station.
There was no question of going with her to New York. Yes, I promised I’d come over and visit her, but that was a promise with crossed fingers behind my back. After a few months in t the new job the last thing shed want was a reminder of what she left behind. New friends new life.
We packed her bags, three out everything she didn’t want, a free trips to the op shop with stiff she knew others would like to have, and basically, by the time she was ready to go, there was nothing left of her in the apartment, or anywhere.
Her friends would be seeing her off at the airport, and that’s when I told her I was not coming, that moment the taxi arrived to take her away forever. I remember standing there, watching the taxi go. It was going to be, and was, as hard as it was to watch the plane leave.
So, there I was, finally staring at the blank sky, around me a dozen other plane spotters, a rather motley crew of plane enthusiasts.
Already that morning there’s been 6 different types of plane depart, and I could hear another winding up its engines for take-off.
People coming, people going.
Maybe I would go to New York in a couple of months, not to see her, but just see what the attraction was. Or maybe I would drop in, just to see how she was.
As one of my friends told me when I gave him the news, the future is never written in stone, and it’s about time you broadened your horizons.
We were staying at the Hilton and advised there would be a large cruise liner berthing next to the hotel. There was the Arcadia.
This is the view from the other side of the hotel. Where our room was, we could almost walk onto the aft end of the ship.
We were also told this was a rather extraordinary day because there were two cruise ships in the port. particularly because it was near the end of the cruising season.
The other ship was two berths along, the Sun Princess.
Not as big as the Arcadia, up close it was still very impressive.
It could be said that of all the women one could meet, whether contrived or by sheer luck, what are the odds it would turn out to be the woman who was being paid a very large sum to kill you.
John Pennington is a man who may be lucky in business, but not so lucky in love. He has just broken up with Phillipa Sternhaven, the woman he thought was the one, but relatives and circumstances, and perhaps because she was a ‘princess’, may also have contributed to the end result.
So, what do you do when you are heartbroken?
That is a story that slowly unfolds, from the first meeting with his nemesis on Lake Geneva, all the way to a hotel room in Sorrento, where he learns the shattering truth.
What should have been solace after disappointment, turns out to be something else entirely, and from that point, everything goes to hell in a handbasket.
He suddenly realizes his so-called friend Sebastian has not exactly told him the truth about a small job he asked him to do, the woman he is falling in love with is not quite who she says she is, and he is caught in the middle of a war between two men who consider people becoming collateral damage as part of their business.
The story paints the characters cleverly displaying all their flaws and weaknesses. The locations add to the story at times taking me back down memory lane, especially to Venice where, in those back streets I confess it’s not all that hard to get lost.
All in all a thoroughly entertaining story with, for once, a satisfying end.
This book has been sitting in the ‘to-be-done’ tray, so this month it is going to get the final revision.
And so it begins…
…
Heading into the second week, the statistics are telling the story, in one sense.
After 8 days, 16,685 words, an average of 1,853 words a day, an average of 1,515 words a day to meet the 50,000-word target, and to do that I will be finished on schedule.
Of course, that would be true, but who writes a novel that is exactly 50,000 words?
It would be novel (pardon the pun) if you could do just that, it’s worth a moment’s thought before discarding.
The words finding themselves having been grouped into chapters are now making a lot more sense on the second run-through, and the story is taking shape with the first section almost done.
Day 8 has seen the start of the second section, and all I can say about the theme is be careful what you wish for, in more ways than one!
Have you ever heard of someone rabbiting on, you know, endlessly rattling on about nothing?
That’s just one use of the word rabbit.
The most obvious is the animal, a rabbit. You know, that burrowing, plant-eating, long-eared, short-tailed animal that goes by the name of Bugs Bunny, maybe.
Nearly every child has a stuffed, cuddly one.
Of course, it’s of some significance at the moment because it’s Easter, and there are countless chocolate versions of the so-called Easter bunny.
Then there is that 6-foot-high invisible rabbit called Harvey, or not necessarily a rabbit, but a pookah.
We use the expression rabbit ears to describe those old interior television antennas.
There’s rabbit stew, rabbit pie, and white rabbit beer.
But my favorite is when the magician pulls the proverbial rabbit out of a hat. It’s an expression we also use for someone who pulls off an impossible task.
