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.