Month: February 2025

If you are old and gloomy enough, you may catch yourself thinking ‘This may be my last tube of toothpaste; the last time I hear John Renbourn or Fidelio or Blue Trane.’ That might lead you to worrying that you might miss that final episode or promised sequel. That is unfortunate, but it probably won’t keep you awake for long or haunt your dreams while you’re still here.

But you might also worry that you’ll never kiss or hug your favourite person again, or tell them that you love them. That’s more distressing, but it can’t be helped. You can only kiss and tell as often as possible without becoming embarrassing, because one of those times will be the last.

The saddest, though, is not to kiss or tell the person you love most because you’ve never quite got to that level in your relationship. Perhaps you’ll never reach that level, because if you get that wrong, you’ll only carry embarrassment and disillusion with you into the Great Mystery, Haunted beyond the grave by failures induced by pathological shyness or stillborn relationships that died somewhere between the heart and the tongue. .

David Harley 

Little Donny: “Father, I cannot tell a truth. I did not chop down the cherry tree.”

Old Fred: “Well done, son. How much did you get for the wood?”

[Yes, I know that the six-year-old George Washington is sometimes said to have damaged the cherry tree with his hatchet, and by other  sources to have actually chopped it down. I also know that the whole story is usually assumed to be a myth, perpetuated because it was included in a biography by Mason Locke Weems and subsequently in McGuffey’s Readers by William Holmes McGuffey, as well as an engraving by John C. Macrae. But the dialogue above is a parable, not historical fact.

What I didn’t know is that Trump’s father was actually named Frederick Christ Trump. I have no further comment to make about that, but Woody Guthrie might have… He wrote at least two songs about Fred Trump, and was definitely not a fan.]

David Harley

It was close to midnight when Ralph had the idea. At first, he thought it was just an attractive fancy, a vision of a golden future for mankind that would end all the superstition, the greed, all the lack of empathy and humanity that was driving the human race into the blackest of tunnels. He didn’t think it was actually achievable.

Yet, after several sleepless hours, he had unearthed the barest bones of a way in which it could actually be made to happen.

Over the next few days, he cautiously disclosed his idea to a very close friend. George, a little at a time, and eventually persuaded him that the plan could work. That same day, George took him to the White House. Ralph was astounded: he’d had no idea that George moved in such elevated circles, or could pull such golden strings. Nor would he have believed that it be so easy to get access to the most powerful man in the world. Yet, apart from the pair of marines who accompanied them, all the gatekeepers and barriers seemed to melt away at their approach.

Were they really standing outside the Oval Office? Yet before one of the marines opened the door, his courage deserted him, and a horrible realization began to dawn.

“Look, George, it was just an idea. Perhaps it would… Couldn’t we just pretend I never thought of it?”

With just the barest, saddest shake of the head, George pushed him gently through the door that did not lead to the Oval Office, closing his ears to the muffled suggestion of a scream from the inside.

“If only you really hadn’t had the idea. Or at least kept it to yourself, rather than infect anyone else with it…”

The six-foot-something marines parted to let him past, and George followed Ralph through the door that did not lead to the Oval Office.

David Harley