The Savagery of Self-satisfaction

I think that was the first ever Easter during which I didn’t have any chocolate eggs of my own. I didn’t buy any for Liesel either. But over there in Cheadle, at 6 o’clock in the morning, William bounded into his parents’ room announcing that the Easter Bunny had been. He and Martha enjoyed their egg hunt in the garden on a glorious Easter Sunday.

Liesel and I next met up with the family for a walk at Alderley Edge. As mentioned before, this is quite a mountainous terrain, compared with the pancake that is Northenden and Wythenshawe. The views from up on high are quite spectacular. There is one rocky outcrop that must have been designed with photo opportunities in mind. I asked Martha to pick William up and hold him up high, to replicate that scene on Pride Rock from The Lion King. She declined using the excuse that William was too heavy.

There’s plenty of opportunity for scrambling and climbing and more than once, Martha said that she wanted to be a mountaineer when she grew up.

And I don’t think William will be too far behind.

At one point, the path split into two, with short flights of steps going up to the right and to the left. Liesel went one way, and I went the other. From behind, I heard William say “Oh no, Grandad’s gone the wrong way.” Why did he assume I’d gone the wrong way and not Oma? You can go off people, you know!

William’s not being left behind on purpose, but he won’t take ten steps when a hundred will get him to the same place! He will, however, stop and pose for carefully selected photographers.

The children returned to school the following day. In fact, this was the first day of term but the teachers had an Insect Day.

Liesel had reasons to be in Gatley so she dropped me off and I walked back home from there. I wasn’t expecting to see the Ukraine flag, but that’s why walking in different places can be so interesting.

Walking through Gatley Carrs, I was approached by a trio of ducks.

Well, sorry, ducks, I had no bread nor any other inappropriate food to hurl in your direction. According to the sign, there are several other species of birds here, but I didn’t see or hear any. I did hear the hum of the nearby motorway though, it’s quite hard to avoid sometimes.

The Wednesday walking group walked along the river to Didsbury and back this week. And then we stopped for a coffee at Boxx 2 Boxx.

Oma and I picked Martha and William up from school, and we were not expecting them to provide their own transport: William had his scooter and Martha rode her bike.

Martha comes out of class fifteen minutes after William, so while waiting for her, he said he was going to play in the mugger. This is a fenced off basketball or netball court. We’d not heard the term ‘mugger’ before, so we guessed it must be a northern term. But no. After several hours researching in a dusty old library, I discovered that in fact the term is MUGA, which stands for Multi-Use Games Area. This makes sense: there are markings on the soft playing surface, although no actual nets for any games. But it’s a good place to scoot around fast without having to worry about other people.

We brought the children back to ours where Martha indulged in some craft activities, while William went back in time and played with the stacking beakers that he used to play with in the bath. It’s always fascinating when you can see their brains ticking over. He counted as he placed the beakers on top of each other. Nine. But he knew there are ten in the set. A metaphorical scratch of the chin and he tried again, this time remembering to count the first one, the one that wasn’t moved, that wasn’t stacked on another.

What else is new? Well, it’s a joy having Liesel back. Her fried eggs are so much better than my own. I still don’t know what she does differently, but some of my own efforts were just embarrassing. I’m glad nobody else had to witness their existence. Yes, of course there are a million other reasons why I’m glad Liesel’s back from her long trip to Alaska, but the fried eggs, mmm.

The new laptop is great. It’s lovely being able to use a computer within a minute of turning it on. I’m sure it’ll slow down with time, but I have to turn the old one on on Tuesday if I want to use it on Thursday. (Slight exaggeration.) Also, what I do mostly at the moment is record and edit audio for my radio shows. And it is so fast. I can’t wait to start processing photos as well, that was another painfully slow process on the old desktop PC. Yes, there are a few things about Windows 11 that I don’t like and wish I could change, but so far, so much better. I won’t leave it as long the next time I need to upgrade.

I also have a new set of headphones. They’re not noise-cancelling but they do keep out a lot more extraneous noise than my very old, cheap set. And I’m hearing things in songs that I’d not noticed before. What have I been missing all these years?

Speaking of radio shows, I recorded two this week. Like I said, the new laptop is fast enough to let me do that. This week’s show features songs that have titles not reflected in the lyrics, such as Bohemian Rhapsody, Lazarus and so on. Wythenshawe Radio broadcast my show on Friday at 2pm but you can miss it again by ignoring this link:

You were asking about the title of this post? Well, I don’t remember the dream but that phrase, The Savagery of Self-satisfaction, was in my head when I woke up one day this week. Is it a book title? Is it a song? I had to look it up. And I was pleased to see it looks like the invention of my own weird and wonderful nocturnal mind.

It reminds me of the olden days of Googlewhacking. And don’t get me started on Antegooglewhackblatts!