Well, Georgie, tomorrow morning I am catching train for Goteborg and then ferry to Harwich.

Perhaps you will not see this because you are sabbaticalling - never mind.

Soon we shall, I hope, meet.

Your Anna

Sabbatical

***********************************************

Sorry for the delay, Anna.

Thank you for sharing the childhood stuff – sorry about Fritz.

No, there’s nothing wrong. But I am taking a short sabbatical.

Will you contact me (via the old blog) when you arrive in Purley, and give me a phone number where you can be reached?

Safe crossing.

Looking forward to our reunion.

Yours as ever,

George

Once again you do not replay to my post.

Is there something wrong?

Anna

Now, please look here, my Georgie. First you say that you like relationship what has no expectations but like is just accepting what happening and not seeking more and such, and then you saying you don’t know anything about Anna’s childhood background and we was not close because of it. Why for do you need these things? Why can we not just be two persons what meet like the ships in the night (except we come alongside and throw the lines to each other - to use the nautical terms) but also we can cast off (other nautical term) when one of us wish to sail on.

And how closer can two persons get than putting part of one person into other person – like for instance tongue.

Anna does not do families. Excepting to say father was sea captain from port of Hamburg (this where I learn nautical sayings). Also my name not Paulsen. But of what relevance is this. I only such this name because common in Sweden like your Smith. (They say hotel registers in place called Brighton full of Mr and Mrs Smiths, well similar hotels in Goteborg full of Mr and Mrs Paulsen). My real name not important – never has been to me.

Did not your Mr Shakespeare say that the rose which might be having other name is smelling just as sweet?

Why cannot peoples just accept what they got already?
Always the questions they are asking, one of the other. Who? When? What? Why?
Does not man Jesus say - Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof?
This I learn form young church attendance which I do not now attend because they talking load of bollocks. But Jesus is talking wisely. This why they bung him on cross, because he tell the buggers what they do not want to hear. Just like the scientist I talk about previous who speaks wisely about drugs. Of course they do not stick him on cross – they just sack him because this all they can do. But if in olden days they probably burn at stake which is quaint old English custom.

But let us talk of other things.

I cannot believe these Egyptian peoples are stoking locomotives with dead mummies. Is Georgie pulling the leg of Anna?

Such spooking tale of ten-year-old Georgie on operating table having the cotton wool stuffed up orifices. What reason is there for all this medical emergency? (I am amusing myself with humorous effect of Florence Nightingale – I know from history books this woman live in time of Crimea War which occurs before Georgie gets born)

I am glad you not mad about Winnie, and are approving of our arrangement.

When next do you go see crazy Scotch woman therapist? Do you tell her about Anna? If so, what do you tell? Do you say we just good friends (which is British hypocritical slang term meaning we are at it like rabbits – not like rabbits good people of Stockholm are shoving in heating furnace, eh? Little joke, not in the good taste but I leave it in anyway.)

You need to take care when feeding aviation creatures. Do you not see famous movie what is called THE BIRDS?

Many girls do not know who is their father. Anna do not know whom is mother. Being reared by aunt who is sea captain father’s sister. This is what they are telling me, but when home from sea voyage father sleep in same bedroom as sister. And in this bedroom is only one bed. Which is very unhealthy incest and bad roles model for Anna and Sven IF she really is sister, but I do not think she is.

But like I say I do not want to talk about this family shit. Sometimes best not to know too much about people, is what I say. Why not people just accept what they given on plate and not say - when I have eaten this will there be some more?

But it is not only I who am of such opinion. Do you know of famous Native American Indian lady singer who is called Buffy… something? I hear this lady on old black plastic records (from days before they invent CDs) of Olaf (pharmacist) which he play to me in back room after he close shop and we have quiet glass of gin.

And lines from this song are sticking in head because they are well telling my own feelings. She says –

“Don’t ask why of me,
Don’t ask how,
Don’t ask forever –
Love me, love me, now”

Do you know this song, Georgie? Because I think you are from same period in history as Olaf, only you are wearing better. Because Olaf like to experiment with chemical substances which he make in shop. I think this is why he change so quickly from nice man to nasty man – just like in story Mr Jekyll and Doctor Hyde.

I do not partake in these substances even though Olaf offering to me saying “Come Anna. Let us take trip together.” But I say bugger off you crazy chemist. And I just drink his gin. Which comes in bottle from London so I know is okay.

But this is like I am saying. Olaf has his needs, Anna has her needs. What is wrong with that? I am asking.
Of course Olaf and Anna do share certain needs, so this is good also.

Little brother Sven is clever one in my house. People say he will go far. He will make something of himself (I think he just make fool of himself but I keep quiet)
Anna is pretty, they say. What need has she of brains? But still, little Anna pass exams and go to good school – from where she get chucked out as I tell you previous because of activities with ice-hockey team.

Anyway she grow up with her prettiness and attract lots of boys who do not expect her to be smart – nor wish her to be smart. So to please them Anna is not smart. And when she grow up Anna similarly please men.

But all would do well to remember that even if one end of person’s body is most active, this does not mean other end is numb.

My best friend in early times of life is Fritz. Fritz is dog. German Shepherd of my aunt. It is to Fritz I tell all my troubles. And Fritz listens. Nobody has ever listened to Anna like Fritz listens. I cry when he is dies. Veterinary man say he will dispose of body but I beg aunt to bury Fritz in garden which she finally agree to do. Sven and me dig hole then wrap Fritz in large cloth, which once used as table cover, and lay him gently into hole. Later we plant bulbs on grave.
Fritz nourish these bulbs and in springtime flowers bloom on Fritz grave. And I look from bedroom window and see Fritz lives on, in flowers. Which is how things should be.

But I do not wish to talk of things which make me sad.

I now have money for train to Goteborg – Hoping they not bunging dead rabbits into firehole of train, eh? (This is joke because Swedish trains are latest technology of the electric and travel at immense pace). I need to earn some more money for ferry. This will not take Anna long. Perhaps four weeks at most.

So I am looking forward to seeing my Georgie. Everybody need something to look forward to – even if it never happen.

But our meeting WILL happen. This I know.

Your ever-loving Anna.

Oh, I just see comment from Mr Adams. Ignore this man. Do not seek bus-driving job. You already have many jobs. You are writer, poet, artist and much more.
Anyway, when Anna get there she keep you plenty busy, eh?

This and that

*****************************************

I am lying on a trolley thing. All I can see is the ceiling. I am in a corridor; there are lights in the roof. What a way to be spending Pancake Tuesday.
I am not afraid. I just feel a sort of detached curiosity. Of course they’ve given me some medicine to make me feel like this. But that’s fine by me.

Voices above my head. Female voices. Nurses.

“Do you think we should take him into theatre?”
“Oh, it’s cold in there.”
“Yes, but Mr Bennett-Jones doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
Crunch of tyres on gravel.
“He’s here.”

A face appears. Large and round. A man’s voice. Accusingly.
“Why didn’t your mother call the doctor earlier?”
“I don’t know.” I whisper, guiltily.

I am pushed through rubber flapping doors and lifted onto a table.
“We’ll just fasten these straps around you, so you won’t fall off.”
Fine by me. I am still in some happy drug-land. Until. A man – I see his face looming over me – places a large tea-strainer with a folded white handkerchief in the bottom over my nose and mouth.

Suddenly I’m choking. It’s like cotton wool is being stuffed up my nostrils and down my throat. I panic. I thresh about – or try to: the thoughtfully placed straps hold me firmly to the table.

A man’s voice commands. “Blow it out. Blow it out.”

Desperately I try to blow this awful stuff out of my moth. I hear my own breathing, louder and louder. Blowing, blowing. Everything is going dark. Then nothing.


But all this happened a long, long time ago? (The reason Mr Bennett-Jones was annoyed was that he had been dragged away from Florence Nightingale’s leaving “do”.)

Well, I’m really telling my therapist. She asked me to write down any event I could recall that I felt had a high level of stress or trauma – especially during childhood (I was ten years old at this time).

Anyway, I just thought I would ‘share it with you’ - as they say in the best therapy circles because I was thinking that I know so little about your childhood; in fact so little of your background at all. You just ‘appeared’ out of the blue, in response to my advert for an au pair. You said your surname was ‘Paulsen’; I never really believed you. But so what? You filled the bill in all respects. Still, I’ve often thought that although we have been intimate, we have never really been close. I mean at that deeper level. And it is to that level I would like to go.

I is our childhood that shapes us (you did mention that Sven had not had an easy life), and although we can change, I believe it is only when we understand and accept our past history. Only when we can say: “Yes, this did happen”, without seeking to apportion blame – on others or on ourselves – can we move on.

Now, about ‘Winnie’: yes it would have been nice if you had told me from the start that you had been communicating with him. I really would not have been angry; I am not angry now. I think the arrangements are most admirable: it will certainly save on hotel bills whilst in Purley.

And, as I told you, I have arranged accommodation for the two of us – when you eventually reach Swindon - but for now, I want to keep it a secret so that I can surprise my Anna.


Yesterday I was feeding the swans, and assorted fowl of air and water, and I could see that there were bullies, even in the avian world. This confirms my theory that there are only two classes of people: the good guys and the bad guys, (okay, call them ‘psychological types). And you find them in all groups, classes, cultures, from the tennis club to Al-Qaeda
It is a pity the good guys don’t wear white hats and the bad guys black, like in the old ‘B’ movies of my youth.

It makes things so complicated.
Of course, governments try to simplify it for us, and group them together conveniently so we know who we are supposed to fight (depending upon the political (economic) demands of the moment): Nation; Culture; Religion; Political Creed; Moral Principles; slice whichever way to achieve the desired end.

Oh, and about the ‘bunny burning’: I personally think it is a great idea – as you say ‘ecologically sound’. Did you know that in the late nineteenth century millions of human mummies were used as fuel for locomotives in Egypt? Wood and coal were scarce, but mummies were plentiful.

I say, I say, I say. Was Tutankhamen a mummy’s boy?
No. His mummy was too wrapped up in herself.
I don’t wish to know that – kindly leave the pyramid.I hope that isn’t racist.

I do believed there are national characteristics. But, are the British hypocrites?

Look how we “took up the white man’s burden’ in the nineteenth century (yes the same century the Egyptians were firing their locomotives with dead people).
Now, some may say that we became the ‘black man’s burden’, but that is a slur, based only on the benefit of hindsight. We exported our religion and civilization and all we asked in return was a bit of gold here, some iron ore there, a few diamonds – that sort of thing….

But I am not a political animal. Although I am an animal; let us not forget that. A member of a species of particularly clever monkeys: Homo sapiens. But, surely I am more than that… aren’t I? There is no evidence to suggest that I am.

Sometimes I get this weird feeling that my life is a novel. And I am reading through it, and I am up to this particular point in the story – but the end is already written. BUT THAT’S DAFT.

I do think Jung was right about the ‘collective conscious’, though. I dream a lot and sometimes (only sometimes) I feel I am tapping in to some larger ‘mind’, of which I am part. Perhaps dreams are a ‘portal’ to this larger mind. Like the wardrobe in C. S. Lewis’s story.

But what ever else it is, I think that Life is an enterprise in itself: a grand adventure, as Ronnie Laing said. And that it needs not other justification.

Sometimes I am acutely aware of my nose. I don’t mean that it’s big or anything (well, it might be a bit big – doesn’t spoil my looks though, eh, Anna). It’s just that it feels in need of wiping – when it doesn’t. I wonder why that is.

I was in Sticky last night. Borrowed the salt off a charming young lady. I had just one pint of bitter. I was depressed.

I think I need the company of a nubile
young woman – possibly of Swedish extraction.

Peccadillo. This I see from dictionary is minor sin. Well, I got a lot of these, except I do not believe in sin. Sin is invented by church to make us feel guilty. Talkers about sin are Pecksniffian people. I know this because of same page in dictionary what show peccadillo also show this other word, which I now know, and it means “affecting high moral principles in a hypocritical way”. Interesting is not it that these two words should appear on same page?

I am not saying you, my Georgie, are hypocritical – well not any more than normal Englishman (though you are not normal – which I am meaning in good way, not bad).

But you ask me why we in Sweden are burning rabbits. This is happening only in Stockholm where parks are swarming with the little buggers and so authorities have to have cull now and again. So why not put to good use dead bodies to run heating plant? This is sound ecology.

Anyway, at least rabbits are dead before burning – unlike some of people you English burn at the post because they spouting wrong religion or perhaps kick with left foot, and you do not do this to run heating plant because you do not have one in olden days. This what I mean about hypocritical English – they making snidey comments about “burning bunnies”, conveniently forgetting terrible history record of own ancestors. Not to mention abdominal way you kill that ancient king with the red-hot poker! So I won’t mention it.

Like also how you afraid to make legal the prostitution, instead pretend it is not happening until some nosey neighbours complaining about lowering district with tarty women walking up and down all night and putting themselves in danger. Whereas if you have licensed brothels with regular inspection and everything clean and women pay taxes like good citizens and not sneaking around park like common criminal which they are not, everybody would be happy.

Same as with drugs are you hypocritical, like your government sacks top scientist who speak truth of his studies and evidence and tell you tobacco and alcohol more dangerous drugs than the old wacky baccy and the ecstatic pills. But government not making any money out of these so they chuck him out and look for some other man who will find what they want him to find.

Do not think I am slogging off your country. You have some fine traditions - which I cannot think of at present time.

Some while ago Sven gives me mobile cell phone number of Winston which is only to be used in emergencies but I think I should try this number out in case comes an emergency and this is what I do, and so I have spoken to Winston and we have got along like the house which was on fire. So when you suggesting I come across I speak to Winston and he says he will be delightful to see me (he has been asking me for some time to visit) and I know nightclub for which he is bouncing person and it is called DISLOCATION. Also because he is such hard worker and good at frightening people so no trouble occurs in club, owners let him use back room as flat. This is very pleasant room says Winston with comfortable bed which he would let me use while he sleep on mattress behind bar because he respect my dignity.

So that is what I am wanting to tell you. Perhaps I should tell you before when I first talk to Winnie (as he lets me call him) but I didn’t so no point now in trying to back the horse in through the stable door what has already been closed.

I am longing to see you and therefore prepared to go to all these troublesome lengths which I am hoping you are appreciating.

I await with racing heart to hear you will still be loving me in all the ways you done before.

Anna