I walk a lonely road, the only one that I have ever known...

...so I should probably get some friends, preferably with a Melways or GPS.

Last week found me anxious. The reason for this was that I was being visited by a very old, very unnatural friend. He’s a draug, which is best described by saying he is a water-logged spirit, with a personality to match. Given the dismal weather, he was out for a stroll (for him that’s more like mopping the floor with your feet), and came calling. Historically it’s very bad luck to not humour a draug. Mostly because he’s a spirit. So there we were, Pete was warming himself on a plastic sheet in front of the heater and I was feeling awkward. I started mucking about in the kitchen, re-organising things that probably hadn’t been touched (or organised) since last time Pete had been here. He grumbled when I got to the spices rack. He’s not a fan of salt.

When I get anxious, I do house work. It’s true. As the current state of my socks will attest, my anxiety rarely gets to this level, but when it does a domestic rampage of small room proportions breaks out. I become a whirling dervish, with the feverish skills of Mr Sheen combined with the dexterity and focus of a frenzied orang-utan. This particular Sheen-Monkey fit had me dissecting boxes to allow them to fit in my recycling bin. (It’s one of those small, you-can-risk-not-putting-it-out-one-week-but-at-your-own-overflowing-peril sizes.) With scissors deftly slicing the sheets into smaller sheets, I was quickly turning the coffin-sized boxes into child-sized coffin-sized sheets, and then small child-sized…you get the idea. As this continued, I threw down the scissors in disgust and relied on the strength of my own bare hands. This quickly paid itself off when I tore a chunk out of my hand. The blood ran free, and the monkey froze.

(I’m the monkey)

Blood is an intriguing substance, and one that has played quite a role in the last few days. Apart from my massive injury detailed above (the gash ran across my hand, and must have hit at least half a dozen major arteries), a number of thoughts and events have also starred the burgundy broth, which makes me think – is there a message? Did the horrific mutilation that resulted in my entire arm becoming little more than meat have a deeper meaning? Was amputation really my only option? Pete seemed to think so, although he was pretty ambivalent about wounds and the spilling of fluid – after all, he did that all day every day.

(learning to deal with being right-handed will be a constant struggle)

As I am often want to do, I research a topic starting at the ancient and racing through to the modern. This way I find I can avoid the constant “duh, we know that” feeling you get when reviewing something ancient, like the theorising of gravity – of course things fall down. Duh!

Firstly, they say that blood is thicker than water. This has been traced back to a German idiom, which like many useful german inventions, has spread worldwide. (As blood is international, this does make a level of sense) Ostensibly, the phrase means that the bonds between family are stronger than those between unrelated people. But as we know the ancestry of this particular piece of prose is Germanic, it has to be considered that the Germans are nothing if not practical. In that respect, it has to be considered that maybe the phrase was initially a passing statement on the constituency of blood rather than a cryptic comment on the family structure. Yes, I mean SCIENCE.

(warmed draug smells like a wet dog slowing cooking, liberally garnished with stagnant water foam)

Basic biology would support this twist (but oh-so-very Germanic an interpretation), as blood is comprised of plasma and cells. Plasma accounts for about 55% of any volume of blood, with 90% of that being water. Numbers aside, what this results in is a magenta mess that is irrefutably thicker than water. The Germans weren’t being witty, they were being practical and knowledgeable, if not out of context. I find this is a problem with many traditional sayings, we say them out of reflex without any understanding of what they actually represent, and even less of what we may be committing to via this utterance.

“Too many chiefs, not enough indians” – this is invariably used in situations where there are statistically speaking an extremely small percentage of Indians present. Strangely enough, “too many chiefs, not enough indigenous people of the Americas” never quite caught on. It’s also racist, but I’m not going there.
“Fools rush in where Angels fear to tred” – the rusher is not necessarily a fool. As with our blood-above, the key thing here is to think about the reality of it - Ever seen any pictures of Angels and their get up? They don’t wear anything on their feet, thus everything from crushed glass, boiling water and hot sand would be an area that they wouldn’t even consider tredding in. But the common man, our pre-judged “fool”, if anything like the majority of the population who do rush around, is wearing SHOES.

(pete is burbling away to himself. I think me might be boiling. He’s a fully grown draug, he knows when enough is enough)

This kind of inaccuracy in our language makes me sceptical of anything that is now said to me. Then again, my grandmother used to accuse me of not having the brains I was born with. This is biologically and literally true – my brain has indeed grown, matured and is not the same organ it was. Sounds to me like this same explanation can be applied to our language and it’s intended use.

My grandmother doesn’t think much of the English language, either.

Q: How do you like your cars? Like I like my coffee - hot, fast and with all leather interiors.
Song for the day: "Fancy Pants Manifesto", by Lemon Demon