Back on the chain-of-thought-gang

Something of a break since I last updated this, no? Why? Thinking mostly - wondering how to progress with this series of self-questionings, about Freud and why I did the course etc?

What gave me pause for thought were comments posted on my last posting. (You can look them up a little further down the page - and add your own views if you want.) They were smart and intriguing and worthwhile comments and questionings of what I'd written. They raised really interesting points, some of which I felt I could answer easily and others which I thought would inevitably raise other questions - which, in turn, might be best resolved with more evidence etc.

Which is what gave me pause (nearly a month of it) for thought. It wasn't that I wasn't willing to engage in the discussion and debate. I was fine with it. Relished it, in fact. As anyone who has known me for more than, oh, thirty seconds can confirm, I rarely shrink from an argument. As some gamblers will bet on raindrops progress down a wet window, so I'll easily slip into a debate on why that might be happening. Too easily, I guess.

And that was the trouble. As much as I itched to get into a nitty-gritty, down-on-the-mat, punch-them-in-the-kidneys 'discussion', I knew that, very soon, there would be no one left in the room watching or listening. It would alienate just everyone - except car-crash fanciers.

Which led to another problem. I thought the questions raised deserved to be answered. I didn't want to seem to be avoiding them. So . . .

That's why I shut up for a bit. And?

Rather than not answer the questions, I'll just not answer them on the blog. I'll do it either directly on the comments - which means you can have a look if you want but it's not in-your-face. Or, if I think it's too detailed/boring even for the comments section, I'll answer my inquisitors directly. (They are not unknown unknowns. They have previous. They are, of course, friends of mine.)

Meanwhile, I'll just plough on with answering my old friend's challenges here on the main page. Which is what I'll be doing next here. Well, almost. First, there will be a little something else . . .

Next up A visit to the motherfucking theatre

Meanwhile some diversionary moments . . .

DM1 The scent of a man

DM2 The magic of a woman*

DM3 The rottenness in the state of Denmark

DM4 Home is where you park your jetplane

* Despite her name, she's a Londoner, by the way - and a serious artist, too, of course. Which puts me in mind of those great chroniclers of modern manners, Chas 'n' Dave:
'I've been to the east and I've been out west
And I've been the world around
But I ain't seen none come anywhere near
The girls from London town.'