Aintree NH meeting begins today and I'll be WORKING :-( Bad timing that but yes, the meeting starts at 2.0pm and goes through til 5.30 and I start work at 12.30pm and go through until 7.30 but NEVER MIND: there's always tomorrow and the Grand National itself on Saturday. The course is withing a mile or so of my home but I've only been once to the Grand National meeting; it gets too crowded, they seem to let anyone in, no I'll watch it on telly I think...

I wonder if horses have memories? I wonder if horses come to the National and think; 'Fuck me I ran round here last year and nearly got killed when I fell at the Foinavon fence... ugh!' But wouldn't a memory entail some kind of language? Or is it possible to remember JUST in pictures? What would a memory without language be like anyway? Try it if you can, try to remember what you did an hour ago but don't 'use' language in that memory. To me it doesn't make sense. An hour ago I had a bath. How could I envisage a 'bath' without the word 'bath'? If I come across something I've never seen ever before I still allocate it a 'name'. For example I'm walking in the woods and I come across a flower I've never seen before, but at least I know it's a 'flower'... what if I came across some totally new object? Well then I'd 'name' it 'a totally new object'. JUST to perceive it without language is impossible to me. So then, maybe horses (and my cat) have different kinds of memory; but what that might be we could only guess at.

On a similar theme my friend talks about her dog 'dreaming'. She concludes this because the dog twitches and makes low growling sounds with its eyes closed... my friend expands on this; she says things like; 'He chased a rabbit this afternoon and he's dreaming about that...' I look at her; but say nothing (she can sulk for Britain ha ha ha)... But all she observes is the dog, with its eyes closed, twitching and growling; ALL else is illogical supposition... but try and tell her that :-) I guess that she will die believing that the Mut dreams; mmmm Did someone once say; 'Where ignorance is bliss; tis folly to be wise'? Well if they did they are the biggest, dumbest, ostrich-head in the world!

To other meanderings: friends are arriving from the USA soon and I'm looking forward to that; Tom is an artist and a long time ago we shared many experiences together. I was married at the time and now and then he'd come round for a meal; one Sunday morning my wife and I woke to hear someone in the kitchen; it was Tom, weighed down with vegetables and meat and he cooked us 'hobo-stew' :-) He used to smoke a corncob pipe and as he worked on a milk-round he was up early and finished early; hence he was in the pub early :-) If I got pissed-off with work (which I often did) I knew that Tom would be sitting in the Commie and that often gave me the inspiration to say to the boss; 'I am jacking in now; if you don't like it shove your job up your arse!' Ahhh the good old days when jobs were plentiful and that sort of thing wasn't an undreamt off luxury :-)