They’re Shooting Geese These Mornings

In the mornings surrounding my house, at around 6:45, and some twenty minutes before sunrise, the banks of the river bristle with rifles.

As I run past on the opposite bank, the geese rise up, shots ring out and one or two dark figures contort and spill to the ground.

I wonder if my running disturbs the geese into the gunfire, so I try to run as quietly as possible, to still my breathing and muffle my footfall off the path onto damp verges, but as the sky turns light they’re going to fly anyway. Even if I walk quietly, that’s about the time they get up and head towards the farms.

I have developed a trick of running until I hear them take off and then calling my dog as loud as I can to get the geese to change their path and give the hunters a worse shot. Sometimes it works and other moments it turns them only towards the guns.

I wonder how I’m make things worse, or better, and whether being in place and that time means it has to be one or the other.

In the podcast this week we looked at whether or not god exists. Me and Angry bought scratchcards, just to make certain and settle the argument once and for all, judging by how things turned out. It’s a comedy podcast, but there’s a serious point there.

I don’t know what or who god is. I mentioned Mahalia Jackson, possibly the greatest singer who ever lived. She influenced everyone who influenced everyone else, but she sung only gospel. She said: “When you sing the gospel, you have a feeling there is a cure for what’s wrong.”

And maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s in the humble apology of someone who has done you no wrong, the grace and fortitude of hard work. The difference between hope and a gamble. Maybe it’s seventeen minutes and thirty seconds into Appalachian Spring, Z Cars at 2:55, the lovely repetition of stairs, the smell of my kids when I get home, or it’s that one tree off the M40 on your right when you’re heading west, where the hills roll away that stands like it’s frozen in a gust of wind.

Maybe it’s butter pecan ice cream.

Perhaps it’s the moment of acceptance after I walk into a room and my dog sighs contently, knowing it’s only me, and for then at least, that’s all he needs.

These are the things you can call what you want.

I believe in a deep acceptance of the way things are, and while you know there is something better, it needn’t to be for you.

I believe in the feeling that there is a cure for what’s wrong.

I don’t worry about where I’ll head off to when I die any more than I worry about where I was before I lived.

All these things are not going to extend your journey, but they will upgrade you to a better class of living.

And the geese are going to fly anyway, and they will be hunted.

Have a great weekend.