Oliver Sacks

I am grateful to Mary Colwell for drawing my attention to THIS article from the New York Times. One paragraph in particular resonated with me:

[QUOTE]
I have been increasingly conscious, for the last 10 years or so, of deaths among my contemporaries. My generation is on the way out, and each death I have felt as an abruption, a tearing away of part of myself. There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate — the genetic and neural fate — of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.
 [UNQUOTE]

What didn't you say?

I can remember being asked if I would give a presentation at a forthcoming conference and I declined. When they asked me why, I said it was because I had nothing to say. They looked baffled, but it was true: I saw no point in talking for the sake of talking. Things are very different in my scrotage: nowadays it's difficult to STOP me talking.

Haddenham, Thursday, 5 February, 0630

[In order to pass the time between sneezes, I just composed and posted the following email to my grandchildren, who are variously in Auckland NZ, San Diego CA and Florida]

As predicted, the snow has returned. Haddenham is a whiteout again. Fortunately I ordered a large quantity of salt last winter so I can keep vital pathways clear, though it's never difficult to find an untreated icy patch on which to slip, fall and crack a kneecap.

It's not surprising that "fenitis" has set in: you wake up in the dark, it's dark again by late afternoon; when the sky is overcast, it's even dark during the day. The weather is unpredictable, but the chances are we will have one or more of the following on any day: precipitation, cold, nasty winds, plagues of frogs.... Even when the sky is blue and the sun is showing, the brass monkey sits in the porch fearing for its masculinity.

The bonus of all this is that at least you know you will not escape nasty aches and pains, and, if you are really lucky, a cold or a bad chest infection, leading to a visit to a doctor with a name like Ngondo or Jalfrezi, who will agree that you don't look well and prescribe a course of tabasco, paracetamol and little coloured beads.

I am not going to ask you lot how you are, because I know how you are: tormented by warm pleasant days, balmy nights, wall-to-wall sunshine.

I will write again soon: I don't see why you should escape my misery.

Grandpa/Grandad

PS I lied about the plague of frogs. The rest is, of course, entirely true.