Daydreamer

Well, the technology strike’s over. I recommend taking a break from technology, even just for a day, it’s rather liberating. Saying that, I must add, don’t go on a strike from my blog (or from watching Heroes.)

If you’ve ever been on a technology strike, you’ll know that the best ‘legal’ replacement for TV and other technology related entertainment is reading books. It’s not that I didn’t read books before, but I read a lot more last week than I usually do.

Last summer I read Atonement, and even though I was holidaying on an island off Singapore (where there was plenty to do) I didn’t want to do anything but read. My point is, it’s a good book, and so - during my technology strike - I went and borrowed some of Ian McEwan’s other books (Ian McEwan being the author of Atonement.) The reason I’m telling you this isn’t quite as pointless as it may seem..... although there isn’t a great deal of point to what I’m about to talk about.

‘The Daydreamer’ is a short novel written by Ian McEwan. It’s about a ten year old boy (Peter) who often daydreams, the book mostly consists of his actual daydreams. As clever and funny as the book is, it’s also impossible to ignore how strange it is. In one chapter Peter ‘unzips’ his cat down the middle of its belly, the cats soul then rises out of the unzipped animal. To make things weirder, Peter ‘unzips’ himself to release his own soul. The cat’s soul then goes into Peter’s body, and Peter’s soul goes into the cat’s body. Leaving Peter to live life as a cat, temporarily.

Now. Last week I left you with a riddle. The answer to that riddle is in fact NOTHING. Because nothing is greater than God, nothing is more evil than the devil, the poor have nothing, the rich need nothing and we would die if we ate nothing.

There are problems with the answer to the riddle. Like: poor people don’t have ‘nothing’ because then they would lack everything including their lives. And, I’m sure that there are plenty of rich people who need things, even if it is just a wine glass holder for the jacuzzi in their bedroom.

But we ought not to look too deeply into the, apparently unquestionable, answer to the riddle. It’s probably best if we blindly trust the unknown source that gave the answer. We should forget that when we walk with our eyes close, we tend to bump into things. Things such as the walls of conformity, built by the faceless people who believe the riddle’s answer is correct merely because everyone else does.

Or maybe we should just move on and talk about last week’s episode of All Saints briefly. If you’ve been a regular reader of my blog since its creation, then you’ll know that Mark Priestly committed suicide a few months ago and although I tend to make my blog a place of light subject matter, I do need to mention him. Last week they played the last episode he’ll ever appear in. To rule out his character (Dan) from the show, they wrote the script so that he “moved to his family’s farm indefinitely.”

So Dan has moved indefinitely to the country, and Mark Priestley became indefinitely absent. The phrase ‘Indefinitely absence’ was a feeble attempt of mine to soften the truth (that he is now dead.) But it actually just rubs in the fact that when you die you’re gone forever, so it didn’t work very well. Much like when my dad said “how’s the..... liquid oozing from your nose.... problem, going?” to my sister, when she had a cold. This was – apparently- an attempt to prevent disturbing images arising in our minds, whilst we ate dinner. However, saying ‘how’s the cold going?’ would have been a lot less visually descriptive.

I mentioned Mark Priestley again because now that he no longer appears on TV, he needs people like me to keep his memory alive on things like internet blogs.

I shall post the next segment of ‘The End of Time’ tomorrow.... possibly.

Weekly Helpful Hint: Read ‘The Daydreamer’ by Ian McEwan. It will take you little over an hour.