The Final Eleven O’Clock: Coffee Beans & A Phonecall Monday 30th June, 2025

Each day for the remainder of June, I’ll post The Eleven O’Clock and aim to answer the following three questions in short sentences and/or very short paragraphs.

1. Where am I?

2. What am I doing?

3. What am I thinking about and feeling?

Of course, I would welcome any comments, humorous, poignant, serious, or otherwise.

1. Kitchen

2. Grinding coffee beans and finishing conv. with daughter No 1. Mutual feedback on matters retreating to housewarming

3. Thinking. Multilevel, multi subject matters…mentally multitasking: spin off matters from daut No3’s text, real-time issues raised by No1…also the excellent content of some posts on a writing blogsite I write for once a month (More than Writers) and my replies. Also mundane thoughts regarding grinding coffee beans. One bean escaped the spoon three times and needed to be hunted down and dropped beneath the spinning blades.

Feelings. Even on this final post, I’m finding it difficult to figure out what I’m feeling as opposed to what I’m thinking and doing. In conversation with No1 I did speak about my sense of social awkwardness in some moments over the past party-oriented 48 hours: a couple of friends who spent quite a bit of time ranting about subjects – including conspiracy theories - no one had asked them to comment on…and wondering how many times I have done the same thing…and wondering what that is all about? A surplus of energy? A need to speak about pet subjects? Anger? The need to be an expert? Insecurity? Or a conduit of news and views others need to hear? Where’s there a psychologist when you need one?

But how/what I was I feeling at 11 o’clock? Relatively pacific. Aware of tidal patterns and surface ripples as an analogy of friendships – each has its own rhythm.

So, I apologise for ending The Eleven O’Clock with a deliberately obscure comment about tides and ripples, but some things are best left unsaid.

What better than to close with the Wisdom of Solomon:

There’s

A right time for birth and another for death,
A right time to plant and another to reap,
A right time to kill and another to heal,
A right time to destroy and another to construct,
A right time to cry and another to laugh,
A right time to lament and another to cheer,
A right time to make love and another to abstain,
A right time to embrace and another to part,
A right time to search and another to count your losses,
A right time to hold on and another to let go,
A right time to rip out and another to mend,
A right time to shut up (!) and another to speak up,
A right time to love and another to hate,
A right time to wage war and another to make peace.