Doc Barbara is offered company

 Doc Barbara was walking briskly around her local park, constantly on the alert for new fabulous exploits, when she paused by the newly erected table tennis table. Pausing but briefly to wonder why there were so many "tables" in that sentence, she then considered whether or not she could play the game with only herself by pinging from one end, rushing round and ponging back at the other side.

Even she could see that this would be impossible and indulged in a moment of sadness that she had no-one to play with. Doc Barbara does not normally do black bile but is more phlegmatic and sanguine. The best combinations of the four humours. This unique melancholic interlude was interrupted by the arrival of a medium-sized dog, which sat in front of her, looked affectionately into her eyes and raised one paw,  It then wagged it gently from side to side as if to forbid any attempt at this new-fangled game. This motion dejected Doc Barbara even further until a gentleman arrived, claimed the prescient hound as his own and recognised her. It was indeed Professor Ramsbottom-Thrutch, eminent sociologist, he who found her when she once went missing. Here he is investigating the effects of his wearing a plastic crown on 10 people in a dentist's waiting room, waiting to have teeth extracted. 

The Prof wore the crown- not the patients.

After exchanging greetings (along with other phatic conversation), he revealed that he had been given a massive research grant to record (on an international database) the reactions of dentists' patients all over the world to such an apparition. This would be of immense benefit to other sociologists - if no-one else. But, the dog would not be able to go with him and he could find no suitable arrangements for it. He thought it would be uplifting if Doc Barbara could adopt Darwin, a wire-haired pointer mixed with other unknown genes. The animal, he promised, is wise, loyal, quiet and pleasingly old-fashioned in outlook. Was he being economical with the truth? Time will tell on this gripping narrative.

The dog's smile could not be recorded on camera because it was in a dream. 

Doc Barbara agreed to consider this, despite her famed preference for invertebrates. That night she dreamed about Darwin, paw poised in kindly advice, and was sure that he smiled at her. The decision was made and she informed the Professor that his beloved dog would find a perfect canine Eden in her humble abode - for as long as was necessary. 

Doc Barbara and the Bard

 Doc Barbara received a good education with plenty of emphasis on subjects that some consider to be of scant value in modern life. Yet, as she isn't truly a part of modern life, she disregards this snag. Naturally, she studied Shakespeare but has recently started to empathise with the wrong characters. In Macbeth her sympathy reaches out to the witches who hang about either on the blasted heath or in the wings of the stage waiting to come on again clutching the toe of a frog or the leg of a lizard. Do they draw lots, she wonders, for who has to hold the most grisly ingredient? Her grasp of the difference between art and reality is tenuous.

Gadzooks, but I am fed up of this blasted heath. I'm out!

This is her mental image of one witch getting so cheesed off with the blasted heath that she pops into the wings for a cuppa.

Once, during a performance of Cymbeline, (and what a performance that turned out to be!) she had totally lost the plot by Act 3 but kept awake, unlike the rest of the audience who were enjoying a quiet snooze, although less than silent in some cases. Her ancient hearing aids let her down at the line: "Thy mistress, Pisanio, hath played the strumpet in my bed". This is because she had had them expensively adapted to block all rude words which might offend her delicate sensibility, The result was perfect sense, however, much better than the original in her opinion. One letter can make all the difference.

Doc Barbara's new orchestra

 Doc Barbara, as we have heard, has an affinity with lowly creatures. Sceptics have been know to opine that this is because no-one else relates to her but this is not true: she has at least 3 friends: me, Belinda Twaddle from the days when her fabulous exploits were recorded in The Monmouthshire Mouthpiece, Professor Ramsbottom-Thrutch from that same era -and someone else who does not wish their name to be mentioned in connection with our heroine.

Her main love is invertebrates (as can be seen from the picture below when she forgives the worm his erroneous Italian) but she welcomes spurned creatures with spines because she feels at one with them. Recalling the myth of Orpheus (she received an excellent education and is fluent in Latin, with a particular love of the ablative absolute) she decided to reverse the ideology and teach animals to create spell-binding music.

There were, of course, teething problems, even with the toothless worm, but Doc Barbara soon licked them into shape (not literally, of course - even she has some boundaries) but they were soon adept and played for hours in the grandstand of the local park to the delight of all.

I cannot show you an image of the awestruck and rapt individuals, because they were so overcome with joy that they had to go home to lie down in a darkened room for several days, taking their unusually silent children and dogs with them.

Doc Barbara attempts Mindfulness

As we have seen in the past, few people - if any - want to hug Doc Barbara. Although this is painful to her, she compensates by hugging and embracing whatever she can in life, be it worms or Tai Chi. (Even the worms were reluctant). When she heard of Mindfulness as a panacea, she decided to give it a go, although there is nothing wrong with her that is curable.

Many readers have asked what Doc Barbara looks like but she is indescribable and too modest to be photographed. I applaud this wise decision. If she were to become an influencer, it would be worse than that butterfly flapping its wings to cause chaos. All I can do is show you the tights she favours. I do not think they would go viral on Tik-Tok.

Doc Barbars's Strumpfhose

If they look unnaturally long to you, it is not that Doc Barbara is super tall but that she wears them pulled up to arm-pit level, which somehow seems to fit the German word better. She says it gives her a sense of security. 
At first she misconstrued the concept and thought she had to fill her mind. Thus she recollected the Walrus' talk of shoes, ships, sealing wax, cabbages and kings - but soon became discombobulated by so many disparate objects. Overlooking the fact that Mindfulness is therefore a misnomer and desiring to do it properly, she donned her thick Strumpfhosen and went to her local park - which promptly emptied of peace-loving families and left her in solitude.

The superb gates to her local park.

It was fortuitous and serendipitous that she found some extraordinary fungi growing around a sawn-off tree trunk and composed herself on the grass to contemplate them Mindfully.

The chosen object for contemplation

She was still there when the park gates had to be locked for the night and the keeper led her away in kindly fashion, repeating: acorn, oak apple, hardwood leaves, wood worm. (Doc Barbara, not the keeper, although there is often a problem with transference when she gets going). What this experiment will do ultimately to the mind of our eponymous heroine remains to be seen. Or to the rest of us. Beware of transference.

Doc Barbara and the lonesome frog.

Although Doc Barbara's heart goes out (not literally of course - although you never know with her) to invertebrates for the most part, she has the welfare of lowly, spiny creatures very much at the centre of her core ethics, which are, let us remind ourselves: free speech, democracy, pure living and thick tights. She noticed that my frog was lonely and gave her acumen and mental stamina towards fixing the problem. What kind of chum would be therapeutic? 

He is doing his best.

At first, she provided a tortoise, thinking that slow, agreeable and undemanding company would buck him up, but he still looked very lonely.           

                               

A light bulb moment happened to her: diet. An epiphany. Flies are, perhaps, insufficient for a frog and bananas might be better. She recalled the saying:

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

It seemed to her fraught with undecipherable meaning and so she provided a bunch. Doc Barbara is accustomed to the world's seeming impervious to rational decoding. 

He does look a tad more cheerful.

Still she was not satisfied and wandered around the local ponds in her thick tights looking for more ranine companions. For the frog, not herself. Finally, she encountered a few chatting amicably together and, with Ciceronian rhetoric undiminished by her epic struggles, she persuaded them to move camp. Here is ours, rejuvenated and un-depressed with his new friends.

•                                    A merry group of frogs, with two babies for him to sing to.

Doc Barbara: my alter-ego or doppelganger

 Doc Barbara has grown older since her last major exploit but her mind is as active as ever and her key beliefs are untarnished: free speech, compassion for worms and thick tights. She is often to be seen in the local park examining fungi or surreptitiously having a go on the swings and roundabouts. The latter she holds as an emblem of life: circling and circling but never arriving at anything sensible. 

You all know what a roundabout looks like but have you ever seen a fungus like that? Rhetorical question. 

She has since joined up with me in real life and will insist on helping me create my bog garden or look after my snails. 

I did not invite her and I cannot decide whether she is my alter-ego or my doppelganger. Sometimes she springs up inside me and compels me to go and buy 6 galvanised buckets to grow organic clover for the snails. Her indomitable will always prevails.

Sometimes I seem to meet her appearing externally in order to block my saner enterprises so that she can substitute an off-piste idea of her own. Ignore the imagery: no-one would ever let her within furlongs of a ski-slope.

I cannot shake her off and have grown to be quite fond of her: anyway I can blame all my mistakes, failures and eccentricities on Doc B.

Doc Barbara embraces Tai Chi

Doc Barbara has observed sadly that people tend to back away when she advances to hug them but, undaunted, she has devoted herself to embracing Tai Chi with enthusiasm. Our fervent readers will recall her initiation into Yoga and Pilates and her bewilderment at discovering that she has some things called glutes. Now, after 2 years, the shock has diminished and she still wants to become more bendy. Tai Chi Qi Gong seems the answer and she is learning to perform the movements wearing these nifty shoes which she believes help her Chi rise from the earth and fix itself where it should.

  However, she is now in a state of trauma having been told that she has something else of which she was unaware and which is called a Dan Tien. This is located near her navel and we are printing an exclusive photograph as our Spring scoop.

  It is hard to see the relevant energy storage organ as Doc Barbara is modest and refused to take off her cardigan, dress, copious underwear and thick tights. Readers are therefore required to use their imaginations - but not too much. She is entranced by the names of the poses and likes to practise The Golden Rooster Stands on One Leg wherever she happens to be as it is improving her balance slowly. The customers in the check-out till at Asda wish it would ameliorate more speedily as she has a tendency to wobble perilously near their overloaded trolleys. When reproached, she replies that she has given up Fighting the Tiger in public areas because of the ensuing panic and that is enough sacrifice.


   Now that she is improving she wants to equip herself with some of the fetching silk pyjamas as worn by her favourite exponents of the art: Brett and Fontaine. This peerless couple performs with a background of rampant potted plants behind which they occasionally vanish for prolonged periods. During this interval, Doc Barbara invents some exercises, the best of which she has called: The Cocker Spaniel Raises One Paw a Little which Tesco has allowed her to demonstrate in their wider aisles. Less successful was: The Centipede Lifts All its Legs Simultaneously which resulted in her immediate expulsion from Sainsbury's.

  Where, you may ask, is Belinda Twaddle, her intrepid helper? When asked to accompany Doc Barbara to Waitrose to spread the word and her White Crane's Wings, Belinda decided that she would go in search of some vibrant silk pyjamas instead. Once again we fear she has gone off piste in her enthusiasm. We phoned Doc Barbara to ask her to come to the editor's office for an interview but she declined temporarily, explaining that she had both legs entwined inextricably whilst performing The Snake Creeps Low (she thinks she may have crept a tad too low and also conflated it with another posture - Beautiful Woman Crosses her Ankles Twice) but she promised to work on the issue by our next issue [My word hoard is depleted by mental overload: Ed].