Quite relaxed

It is another cool, damp day. In fact we have had 12mm of rain since I last Blipped, which feels like a recent record. There is as much again, and possibly more forecast over the next five or six days. 

So the stove and the study are likely to be seeing much more of Bean and me than usual. (It is pretty miserable gardening in this weather.) And there are no complaints from either of us. It means we both relax quite a bit. 

Unsurprisingly Bean wins the prize for most naturally relaxed animal in the study today, while I have been writing, juggling a few admin tasks and sorting out fabrics for the next patchwork project.

I was chatting with a friend this week about how quickly the facts of an event can be misrepresented – either by chance or by design – by people who communicate that event to others. It happens all the time. And it happens with the first telling.

We are all responsible for interpreting events in our own way; putting emphasis on certain things, omitting others, and embellishing more still. It makes all stories somewhat untrustworthy, especially those oft-repeated like the recounting of ‘history’, and it means that as much attention should be paid to the personality of the presenter and their sources of information, as to the events that are described.

For instance when I recently re-read Churchill’s “History of the English Speaking Peoples” I was acutely aware that I was learning as much about the author himself and the times in which he was living and writing, as I was about the events of the deeper past. It was fascinating.

Thinking more about the bias of the story-teller, I realise why I go round the metaphorical houses when I’m telling a story (which incidentally makes my ability to tell a story in an engaging fashion absolutely rubbish). It is because I’m trying to cover all angles, to give a balanced view, trying not to provide a biased account of events.

This is unlike people who are really good at telling stories: they miss out so much nuance that it is often skewed in a direction which serves the teller, but tends to make it a less than impartial description of events. I wonder at what point a twisting of the truth like this becomes lying? Probably the definition of that particular line in the sand is fraught with difficulty, and is utterly subjective for each of us. I shan't go there!

Mark Twain’s comment “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story” has some foundation. And accordingly I suspect I shall never let a good story get in the way of trying to tell the truth, in all its intricacies. 

That notwithstanding, I won't be offended if you treat everything I Blip about with a pinch of salt.