Cats and peaches. We have too many of them. There are cats and peaches in buckets. Cats and peaches rolling on window ledges. Cats and peaches always under our feet. They are soft and furry and everywhere you look.
And as if that wasn’t enough…
Yesterday, while we were taking the dogs for a (different) walk, Simon and I paused to admire the weird-and-wonderful Heath Robinson creation installed a couple of days ago by the local farmer, to carry water from his newly installed field tap near our house, to the distant reaches of two vast fields on the opposite side of the lane. No neat pipes through the ground for this farmer. Oh No. So much more fun to slice off multiple tree branches, wedge a few long pieces of bolted-together metal rail very high up, between two trees either side of the lane, and then route a Very Long Hose across it.
Simon considered the contraption with a knowing look. “Come winter, that’ll freeze.” he declared. I considered Simon with a knowing look. “Come winter, he’ll have all his cows inside, so he won’t need to use it anyway.” We are country folk indeed.
And then I heard it. “Shhh…listen! Who’s that miaowing in the bushes?”
So, suppose I am living in a simulated reality. Does it matter? All realities are relative anyway, and since this one seems real enough most of the time, and overall is pretty enjoyable, I guess I can go along with it. However, I suspect that the sentient machines creating it may have got wind of the potential for rebellion caused by my routine-related ennui, and have decided to run the Distraction App. Someone has clicked the Change Cats icon.
I suspect that, like Neo, I am living in a simulated reality. I wonder if the world that I perceive is actually a simulated reality created by sentient machines to pacify and subdue the human race, while the heat and electrical activity of our bodies are used by them as sources of energy. This is clearly the most obvious explanation for my constant lethargy and chilliness, and the fact that so many aspects of my daily life seem so absurdly repetitive.
Well, actually that’s an exaggeration. But recently antibiotics have been pretty central to my life, and now Valentine the llama is joining me in the dubious delights of amoxycillin.
I am in England at the moment, spending a few days in the Strange Land of Suburbia. It is early on a quiet, sunny Sunday morning, and from my son’s kitchen window I can see a distant view of the hill near Kedleston Hall where we used to take a younger, fitter Max for long and happy walks. In these few moments before my son emerges from his bedroom to fill his little house with the usual air of complaint, or my daughter rings to warn me that she is on her way over with my not-very-well-and-very-cross-about-it grand daughter, I am revelling in an odd bout of Derby-related nostalgia.
