… tell you all a little story. And it’s really down to the insistence of one of the regular readers of this rubbish.

It’s something that I wrote to myself late one night about a week or so before my final voyage across the Atlantic Ocean came to an end.
—-

Wind the clock back to 1969/70 when I was studying Latin … “well, puer amat mensam” – ed … at Grammar School and having to translate – either from the English to the Latin or vice versa (and if there’s any vice involved, you can bet your life that I’m in there somewhere!) – a Roman myth or legend.

For reasons that I no longer remember, I chose the story of Castor and Pollux, and I can recall the story quite clearly even to this day.

Leaving aside all other kinds of myths and legends concerning Castor and Pollux that people might think are quite apposite, and other names by which they might have been known, which may be even more apposite to some, I’m referring to the fact that one of them (Castor) was a mortal being and his twin Pollux was the creation of the Gods, fathered by Zeus who having disguised himself as a swan, came down to earth and seduced Leda, wife of Tyndareus King of the Spartans and who were the mortal parents of Castor.

Therefore Castor and Pollux were in fact half-brothers.

Cutting a long story short … “for which we are all grateful” – ed … and missing out quite a few very relevant thoughts, including the phenomenon of St Elmo’s Fire (canwyll yr ysbryd or “candles of the spirit” as it is known in Welsh) and which has more of a bearing on this story than anyone might imagine, Castor the mortal died, and Pollux, the immortal, was heart-broken.

Pollux pleaded with the Gods and eventually Zeus changed things around so that half of the immortality of Pollux was given to Castor.

This meant that they took it in turns to be immortal, so that whoever was the mortal on any particular day was in Hades and whoever was immortal on that day was on Mount Olympus, and they changed over on a regular basis.

To whichever bank of the River Styx Charon the boatman had taken you, whether to Hades or Mount Olympus, you would only ever see the one and not the other until they alternated. For the casual observer, whether you were in Hell or in the Paradise of the Gods, it was really exactly the same situation and the same circumstance as in the other place but on different days depending upon who was the immortal God and who was the mortal being on that particular day.

A schizophrenic’s delight or dilemma, you might say. And I should know all about that of course.

So there are things going on right now that I don’t quite understand. And maybe I ought to understand them, I dunno. But right now I have a couple of quotes going round in my head, and seeing as we are on board a ship in difficult seas a nautical metaphor is appropriate. It’s an exchange between Peter Ustinov and Mia Farrow in Agatha Christie’s “Death On The Nile”
Ustinov – “You are embarking on a hazardous journey in troubled waters. You face who knows what currents of misfortune”.
Farrow – “One must follow one’s star wherever it leads, even unto hell itself”.
Such is the price of loneliness, boredom, inaction and, most importantly, curiosity.

—-
I hope that you enjoyed that little story.