A bit more planting today. Made a mistake of putting some plants in the shed yesterday – too hot. I think I managed to save them. But here comes a problem – I have so many plants at the moment. Prince Charles thinks we should talk to plants to help them grow, and who am I to disobey out future king?
But I always think the first thing you need to do in a conversation is exchange names. And my plants are not replying to me. So I need help in picking names for them. What should I call them? Of course one of the seeds I got from Germany I could call Heinz.
I remember a weekend retreat many years ago with between 50 and 100 people. We were all walking along a corridor to see an event, I think it was something Steve Hollinghurst was doing. I got talking to this guy beside me. We exchanged names, he was apparently called Steve Lawson. Then I caught myself half way through asking what he did for a living. We chatted about the question for a second or so and decided not to ask each other – to avoid putting each other in a box. He then went on to ask what colour my underwear was as an alternative topic – and later performed a song about the subject. An odd question – but it has as much to do with how we relate to each other as our jobs do.
We all have so many facets to our character and yet we often promote the same few and use them to relate to each other. This lockdown period has changed how we link with each other and in some ways has made us focus on different facets, different relationships.
I was chatting to a psychiatrist about this today – we both discussed how people seem to be discovering that their old lives had not been as sustainable as they thought. Running as hard as they could had stopped them from seeing they were going nowhere. We both looked forward to people finding that some of those other hidden facets were more important to them. To a society built on different values.
I have noticed some interesting changes over the last few weeks. In politics we have a conservative government promoting principles that have more in common with communism than conservatism. Today I watched a select committee where industry leaders were saying market forces should not be allowed to dictate how our essential infrastructure operated. I’ve watched some newspapers that had a healthy well researched criticism of the government become little more than hateful gossip sheets. Things are being shaken up more than I would have expected.
And on social media and on-line I see friends developing amazing new characters, I see people I hardly knew becoming important people in my life. I look forward to seeing more interesting aspects of people I know and people I don’t yet know.
But I still worry about naming my onions. I mean, are red onions male and white onions female, or is it the other way round?