Making stuff today...

Of puff-balls and 'near-enemies'

On the rainy golf-course yesterday morning, I picked this. From a little way off, it and its fellow-fungi looked for all the world like golf-balls that have been chewed up and spat out by those drive-on lawn mowers they use up there...

But no, it is fungi...and I am convinced it is a delicious puff-ball.

Almost...

Puff-balls, it appears, like so many edible fungi, have a near-enemy - a poisonous fungi, masquerading as the real deal, and out to make you very sick...

One of the many lists in the Buddhist world I am exploring consists of:

Loving-kindness (metta)

Compassion (karuna)

'Joy with others' (mudita) and

Equanimity (upekkha)

Each of these lovely things, called the Four Brahma-Viharas, have their opposite of course - their 'far-enemy'.

But fascinatingly they each also have a 'near-enemy' - masquerading as the real deal...

The one which particularly interests me today is Karuna (compassion), whose far enemy is of course cruelty, and whose near-enemy is sentimental pity or horrified anxiety.

So when we see scenes of starving children in the Yemen on our tv screens this week, we can react by turning off the news (do we not have enough problems?!)

Or we can react with horrified anxiety, wringing our hands in useless and helpless sentimental pity.

Or we can respond with compassion, explore what we can do or give, and do so...

Loud things...

The three baby seagulls...Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton-tail... who are keeping us entertained in the gully between the two roofs opposite. Squawking for their breakfast...elevenses...lunch...

The wind in the trees at the top of the golf-course this morning - we were early and there was NO-ONE about, so Kitty got to have a really good rampage...

The smoke, heat and CO alarms around the house that it my Sunday afternoon job to test...someone has turned the volume RIGHT UP...!

In other news...

... I visited an audiologist yesterday for lipo-suction (or some such) on my ears. SUCH a kind and helpful bloke, quite restored my faith in humanity.

And he removed OCEANS of wax too...we won't need to buy a new can in order to rewax the floors!

Only joking - we have already rewaxed the floors! But seriously - OCEANS of wax!

The high-pitched, shrieky whine of the tiny vacuum cleaner (like the rug-fringes getting caught in the 'hoover') was disconcerting tbh - but I've had plenty worse experiences...

Today was wet and windy, and I had a quiet day as A. was off windsurfing.

I played with paint a bit...

People you meet...

In the last couple of weeks Kitty and I have several times met a quite striking man, while out walking - elderly and spry, with a flowing white beard and a white turban. And shining, spotless white shalwar kameez. We have said 'good morning' and 'fine day again', and Kitty has refrained from covering him with mud...

But today he was wearing similar but different coloured  'robes' and I plucked up the courage to ask if there was any significance in the change (thinking, I guess, of the Anglican seasonal changes, or the Buddhist shrines, different colours for the different Buddha manifestations as well as seasons).

He was ... twinkly is the best word I can think of, and explained the turban, beard and robes were to venerate and emulate Mohammed.

And the colour? No, he just wore them for a couple of days and then put them in the wash and wore clean ones...as you do. 

We both kept a straight face....

iplayer...

... can be a fun thing, when you're Home-Alone for the evening and STILL don't feel like sorting through the box of dvds (one of the Lock-Down jobs that has never made it to the top of the list)

A day or two ago I binge-watched the whole five episodes of 'In My Skin' - with horror and fascination, and a few tears.

Set in a deprived secondary school in Cardiff, I described it afterwards to A. as 'Gregory's Girl''s dark twin.

Interestingly it was billed, I read later, as 'a comedy drama'...whatever makes you chuckle, I guess.

SUPERB though it was, and I highly recommend it, there was nothing remotely funny about it as far as I could see.

Though I freely admit to having no sense of humour.

Little amusements...

Alistair, mending his windsurfing sail with tooth-floss, having finally run out of the thread he bought twenty odd years ago:

'And it comes with built-in cutter, so you don't even need scissors!'

Today, unaware that the paintcan he is carrying has a hole in the bottom:

'I may run out of paint...'

(He did...)