Been thinking

About missing stuff (of which I have a great quantity)

I believe someone ought to invent a very tiny mobile phone extension which you could attach to your keys, glasses, wallet/purse, loaned book/cd/tape ……

It wouldn’t need to have any speaking abilities.  All it would need was to ring when someone phoned its number.  Surely, since it would be such a little piece of technology, it could be smaller than a credit card or even smaller than a sim card?   Then whenever you lost any of those small but important things you could just phone them.  True, all your other small important things would answer too but this would just add to the surreal delight of phoning your keys (etc etc).  I suppose you could have a different number for each one that you attached to things but I think it would be funnier to have a single one so whenever you lost your keys, all your small, precious things would answer, like saying “bingle bingle,  I’m here, I’m here!!!”

And wouldn’t it be funny, when you lost your keys, all your friends would be ringing you back saying, “hey I just realised I’ve still got that book/CD/credit card/(what???)/coat you lent me.  did you want it back?”

Imagine, if you like, entering a tunnel and seeing far away, the gleam of a distant light.  the deep echoing thump of your engine drowns out the sound of the approaching boat

but as you get closer and deeper into the tunnel, the light becomes bigger and brighter and the echoes have an echo

then you notice that as well as the sound of two engines, growing louder all the time, and the brightness of the lights, there’s another sound which gradually clarifies into a third beat, of a …. Rock band???

(There ought to be another photo here but it won’t upload)

Louder and louder, the beat of a different drum drowns out the engines and as you are still being astonished and just able to make out the gesticulating figures, attired in a decidedly anachronistic way,

it booms past you, rattling the roof ,

We had to admit, the tunnel was a very effective amplifier!

Dreaming Fart Day

I spent a lot of yesterday wandering around vaguely, like a fart in a dream, forgetting what I ought to be doing.  I’m very good at that.  So it was a DFD.

Today, however, I got lots of useful stuff done thus overcoming the inertia generated by several weeks of procrastination.   I don’t have a suitably silly expression for one of those days. Wind of something or other?   Tons of Nitrogen?  Jet Propelled Purposefulness?  TNT?   What is TNT?  I can’t remember – I’ve never been good at acronyms.

Barney has a talent for losing keys.  It’s one of his endearingly exasperating traits.  He is able to lose a set of keys while walking between the pickup and the sitting room door without pausing in between and it can be done in about three minutes.  Sometimes it takes even me several days to find them even though there are very few places he could have left them.  This is partly because he won’t keep all his keys on one ring and partly because many of his pockets have specially designed gaps so he can access more pockets inside them and through which things can fall between and out and down to the floor.  Anyway, today he lost the shed keys in the usual place, somewhere between the pickup truck and the dining room table.  We haven’t found them yet.  Isn’t it good that he has another set to lose use.

Meanwhile, I’m letting  the household machinery multi all my tasks for me.  The computer is downloading and installing an AVG anti virus update, the cooker is keeping something warm, the microwave is making someting hot and Ooops, it’s time dinner was ready!  I’d better save that ciggie I was making  (while everything did everything else for me) for later when I’m having a nice after-dinner read, lying on my tummy in the music room (which has a deliciously thick, soft, red carpet).

Well I was going to post a picture but WordPress did a funny and the picture vanished as soon as it finished uploading.  Eventually I persuaded it.*

And I was going to go to bed some time ago but I hate the computer to get the better of me.

I read a rather sweet book this evening, Temeraire by Naomi Novak.  It’s about a frightlfully decent chap who quite inadvertantly finds himself in charge of a rather nice dragon.  The book is almost a text book on how to be jolly decent and sensible and thoughtful and thus win the affection and respect of dragons and all kinds of less thoughtful chaps in the rest of the military dragon world and meanwhile win a bit of the old fame and a bit more respect in battles with Napoleon’s dragons and so on.  Really sweet.  In stark contrast to Fay Weldon’s ‘She may not leave’ which is positively wicked!  Gently and inexorably describing  the selfishness of a large number of people and leaving you quite breathless with the final twist which is too wicked to even think about.  I put it down and all I could say was “Well!”

And after some consideration “Well really!”

There.

And finally, just to complete the strangeness of a day in which I got lots of useful stuff done, the dog got up just now, had a large drink and then, without bothering to pause and bother me, went out to the utility room and neatly and carefully – and extensively – peed in the cat’s litter tray.

Well!

Well really!!!!

I’m a bit stuck for words as you can see.

I shall go to bed before I start repeating myself too much.

But really!!?

*Or maybe not.  It comes up ok if I click on it but doesn’t at the moment, appear in the blog.  Perhaps it will tomorrow.

*Oh well.  It hasn’t appeared today and the computer got the better of me after all.  You just have to take these things as they come.  Or as they don’t come.  At the moment, flickr uploader is refusing to upload some more photos.

Look, look what I got given!!!!

Isn’t that just the nicest thing : )

And what’s more I got a postcard!!! From LA

I am so lucky to know the people I do.  Particularly this person ((((((((((( I )))))))))))))

I’m currently deeply involved in finishing the holiday photo sorting and making an idiot proof list of instructions for a very nice sounding man who’s going to put all our holiday, party and wedding mini tapes onto DVD for us.  I don’t think it is really idiot proof but he sounded very sensible and promised to contact me if he didn’t understand anything so maybe it’ll be enough.

Anyway, what with the drizzle, the cold, and the inevitable results of having procrastinated too long, far from finding it hard to confine  myself to one photo a day, I’m finding it hard to take any at all!  Tomorrow I’ll look through some older ones, but tonight I’m just going to say

Sleep well.

In which I take a photo

Fireworks going off all over the place tonight and having been warned by the neighbours that they were letting off some for their grandchildren, I carefully checked that both cats were safe indoors.  Only little black and white Tosca sneaked out about two minutes before they began.  So I just hope she’s no where near the road.

Worse than children!

Speaking of which, we had a wonderful evening with all three of ours and their two partners.  (Sadly, Eldest and his lovely Northern Lass have split up, but amicably so we hope that we will occasionally see her again).  Even so, it was one of the nicest times we’ve had as a family for ages.  We ate a huge meal and then all went to the pub to play cribbage.  Then came home and stayed up, probably far too late chatting and arguing happily.  Certainly Eldest and I stayed up too late the evening before when he arrived but then we don’t see him often so it takes a while to catch up.

They are a most lovable bunch and their company is a delight.  We are so so lucky to have them and privileged to spend time with them.

One of the things Eldest and I talked about was photography and he suggested that I should confine myself to one single photo a day  (for a week perhaps).  As a challenge and as a way to hone my technique and sharpen my critical eye!!!! (Something like that anyway)

So there is only one photo of the evening taken by me, though Youngest was very keen to avail herself of my unused camera and did a lot of snapping.  While mine, which I decided needed to be a family photo, came to grief since, being in a slightly merry and uproarious state, no one paid attention to my instructions and they all started saying surely it can’t still be taking a photo and waving their arms around and turning their heads in mid-exposure.  As a result, my posed photo ended up as a collection of blurry arm and head movements with an impressively sharp, clear and detailed table in the middle of them all.  So I learnt some useful lessons!  You can tell who was listening to me by the fact that their faces are more or less in focus.

Ah! well you can’t because it wont upload.   Hmm.

Aha!  but the black and white version will.  You’ll see that Mr Middle’s head appears to be entwined with a lamp.  This was not deliberate on either part and seemed not to affect head or lamp significantly.  Mr Youngest and Mrs Middle clearly did believe me when I said the shutter was still open.  Barney and Youngest obviously felt that if they stopped waving their heads around they’d still be in the shot even if their previous arguing and gesturing were too in a ghostly form.

Well, I’ve just looked at the rest of the photos and I see that Youngest has taken some good ones.  So that’s ok.

Eldest’s hat appears to have been a favourite subject.  It’s a very good hat.

That’s me in the middle – with Mr Middle.

That’s himself, I have no idea what he thought he was doing.

Now I have to go to sleep so I’ll go bedwards.  This is not the best place for sleeping.

‘Night  :)

Update:  In case you were worrying, little black and white Tosca reappeared later with a butter wouldn’t melt expression, apparently unconcerned about fireworks or anything else.

A minor inconvenience

Toothache.  Minor.  Right.

Actually, last time I had this particular form of toothache the dentist said you’ve got a bone infection (!) and I’m trying to remember if that was before or after I had that (this) particular tooth crowned.  Because I did and if that was what saved it last time, it won’t save it a second time.  And I really need this tooth!

So after a day of brutal attacks with all the vilest tasting mouthwashes known to me and feverish scrubbings and soakings at every opportunity and the largest possible number of the strongest painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs I possess it seemed, if possible to be raging rather more.  When I went to bed, heavily dosed with paracetamol (having consumed as much nurofen as my stomach would handle), I swore at it and promised it dire treatments if it didn’t shut up and settle down (feeling sure the dentist would oblige on this if it didn’t).

When I got up this morning it was definitely worse.  So half way through the day, I gave in and phoned for an urgent appointment  (not available till Friday).  Then took some more paracetamol, and ate a scrambled egg – very carefully, no chewing- before embarking on some more soaking and scrubbing and cursing.

Then, thoroughly wound up by the wrath and imprecations I’d been hurling at my mouth (this is difficult in as much as the imprecations and most of the expressiveness of the wrath were coming from the very direction in which I wished to hurl them – mirrors and voice throwing were used together with a lot of imagination), I tackled one of the tasks on my enormous list.  When the paracetamol was in  mid-effectiveness it was possible to ignore all the horrible imaginings and throbbings coming from my jaw and even easier if  I found something else unwelcome to think about.

Later, feeling quite reckless and completely sure that the offending tooth would shortly be dragged out, leaving me with not enough teeth for any kind of sensible eating ever again (and nowhere left to which dentures could be attached), I made myself soup for dinner and looked longingly at Barney’s stew.  Then I drank several glasses of wine (which is undoubtedly a Very Bad Thing To Do in cases of infection).

Then I fell asleep watching several unusually interesting programmes* which I enjoyed dreaming about even if I didn’t quite follow what was really being shown.

Funny thing is, it seems to be settling down now.  Perhaps I was over-reacting?  I hope so because I’ve run out of oil of cloves.

Well I was going to sulk because Eldest is coming down for the weekend and Youngest and Mrs Middle and most of their partners are coming over for dinner.  I hate the thought of struggling with toothache when Eldest is around (I need all my wits around me when he’s here) and Youngest will certainly bring some really nice wine on Friday and if I go to the Dentist he’ll probably give me antibiotics so I won’t be able to drink it.  Maybe it was that thought that drove the toothache into hiding.  Maybe it’s even fled altogether.  Maybe I was just making a huge fuss over nothing much?

Or maybe it’ll be back **

Two moons

 

See you later : )

 

*Wildlife on the Zambezi River around the Victoria Falls, something about Bison in North America and The Making of Modern Britain. (Or whatever it’s called)

**Update – not back – I feel sheepish : )  That’s fine, I can handle sheepish a lot better than toothache!  However, I’m still sulking a bit because the horrible mouthwashes mean I have no idea what the meals I’m cooking taste like.  And it’s really a pain (though not so painful) eating on one side!!

The 19th Wife is due back tomorrow!

Oops, nearly missed getting her back to the library.  Never mind, nearly finished reading  it.

Not sure how much I’ve followed it though.  It seems quite complex.  It’s about the Mormon sect which used to endorse plural marriages  (maybe still? This sect is not to be confused with Mormonism in general – it’s very much a splinter group)  and shifts confusingly from Anne Eliza Young’s story (19th wife of Brigham Young and written when plural marriage – polygamy – was practised in the mainstream Mormon religion) to a current day 19th wife, on trial at the time of the contemporary story, for the murder of her ‘husband’.

Anyway.  I’ll finish it tonight and I suspect I’l  be none the wiser.  I never thought polygamy was a good idea anyway. At the very least it meant confusion, humiliation and despair for a great many women.

That would be last night and as a reward for paying attention very hard and trying to make sense of all those wives, I read Dodie Smith’s ‘I Capture the Castle’.  No dalmatians but a very very charming and likeable narrator.  I remember reading this a very long time ago (hoping, I suppose, for a hundred or so more dalmatians) and being slightly disappointed that there was only a love story and a single but lovable bull terrior called Heloise.  As a grown up, I found it beautifully written and satisfying and now I want a castle of my own please.

Barney keeps taking time off.  Which means I keep getting interrupted in whatever I was planning to do.  Since it takes me half a day to get myself on the move, this is quite stressful and stops me in  my tracks while I make cups of tea and conversation.  So today, I took myself off to do some shopping and drove into a patch of sunlight.  I could see it from a long way off and it seemed to be bang over the middle of town.  Very satisfying.

Then I looked back and I could see the rain I had just left behind, surrounding the town and even a rainbow, somewhere in between.  After this enjoyable stereo weather, I briefly caught sight of a man who struck me as being decidedly nautical.  Trying to work out why I thought that, I realised that the silvery hair, striped sweatshirt and hobbling gait had brought a sea dog stereotype into my head. (whereas if you think about it, he could just as well have been a middle-aged computer nerd with an unfortunate passion for bungey jumping.  Or an elderly gay gentleman, very natty dresser,  who had recently, narrowly avoided running over a baby rabbit and had fallen off his bicycle in so doing.  Or a spy hiding in full view by being very obviously not what a spy looks like.  Or a bloke who got drunk last night, fell over, twisted his ankle and was so hungover this morning he needed horizontal stripes to stop himself falling over sideways.)

And when me and my friend went swimming, we found three people determinedly filling up all the space for up and down swimming so all our conversations were conducted across and round the sides of these people (for some reason, it always seems to be us who veer from side to side to avoid mid pool collisions).  Triple-type obstacles.

Meanwhile, I was struggling to imagine where I might have misplaced a number of objects, like, my holiday notebook for India and Peru, all my receipts and invoices for card sales in 2008, the details of next year’s canal holiday and a tape with part of the India trip on it.  That’s quadruple-type missing objects.

The dog tells me that even though Barney has been at home all day, he hasn’t been out AT ALL!  Not once.  And that it’s up to me to rectify this terrible omission.  (It’s not true – I took him out before I went out and again when I came back.  He has a short and highly selective memory)

I also have a memory which is selective but of variable length.  So I remember this from my trip into town (and subsequent diversion to the Discovery Centre in Thatcham)

And this which was nice because there were two skies, a cloudy, golden-brown one and a blue one

Now I’m going to finish cooking dinner and sulk – I’ll tell you why in the next post.

Small town – large shops – no potatoes.

I needed to get some potatoes today for Sunday dinner, like you do.  (Not quite sure how I managed to run out of potatoes but there you are).  And a few other bits and pieces.  I did notice the car park was unusually full and indeed the shop seemed very busy.  Normally it’s all rather genteel and quiet.  Today it seemed to be heaving and also rather full of people who seemed a little disoriented.  Soon I joined them.

There were no carrots.  Odd.  I followed a small group of people from  the plain carrot shelves to the organic carrot shelves and then to the special flavoured carrot shelves.

There were no beans and only two brocoli crowns.  There were NO POTATOES!  (Well there was a choice of new potatoes, small new potatoes and miniature potatoes – hardly suitable for a Sunday Roast).  Ok so I got some new potatoes.  then I thought I’d pick up some coconut milk and a jar of pickled chillies.  Uh uh.  Run out.  Not surprising  really when I found the bread shelves were empty.

Then the penny dropped.   Aha!  Sainsbury’s is closing for a week sometime round about now.  Perhaps Waitrose was failing to cope with the refugee shoppers!  Really they ought to have foreseen this.  Actually so should I!

Anyway the roasted new(ish) potatoes were very nice.  And it’s interesting to learn that Sainsbury shoppers favour carrots, broccoli, beans, potatoes, coconut milk, pickled chillis and bread for their Sunday shopping.

Well when the new, enlarged, refurbished Sainsbury’s opens it’s going to be much better.  I know this because it says so, all over the shop (I go there sometimes to get stuff that Waitrose doesn’t sell).  It’s certainly built itself a very large, ugly and obtrusive multi-storey car park where once there was a reasonably large, open car park with trees growing in it.  They’re obviously not so confident of their approaching improved state that they expect people to walk there.   It’s odd how all the unattractive shops around town seem to be growing out of all proportion to the town itself.  Also how places that used to be rather pleasant are turning into assorted complexes and malls at a time when we’re told that shoppers can’t afford much spending and while the existing shopping malls are all turning into ghost malls because no-one can afford the rents and everyone is using the supermarkets.  Sorry, Superstores.  How much superer are we going to get I wonder, before everything closes down and there are food queues in the streets?

And will we still be able to buy potatoes?

(I do apologise to the person who left a comment on the previous post if they’re not spam but “I don’t have the required plug in” so I can’t read it.  The arabic script is very pretty though.  And it looks like a very nicely laid out web page)

Love them and lists

So me and my fiddle teacher are chatting about our surviving parents (her Mum and my Dad in Law) and I said of course we love them….?  And we both said, simultaneously, with a kind of snarly grin and gritted teeth,

“Love them to bits!!!” and then laughed at ourselves.

Curious phrase eh ?

I have made myself a big, long, comprehensive list of Very Important Things to DO.  Soon.  Today.  Well perhaps tomorrow maybe.  This/next week anyway.

Like filing all the stuff I’ve been putting in the filing heap and

Throwing out and sorting all the summer and winter clothes and

Getting half a dozen camcorder tapes made into DVDs and

Looking up the stuff I need to tell the accountant and

Finishing the holiday photo sorting* and

Changing the cat litter (oops, I meant to do that yesterday) and

hoovering the fly room (they’re back**) and,

and ,

and

……………

So I’m just having a quick procrastinate while I decide whether to start one of those jobs or go shopping.  Got to do that too – we haven’t got any potatoes for heaven’s sake – what have I been doing all week???  (rhetorical question, ok?)

Er, considering water again?

And I did get through a few hundred holiday photos – more water

A fountain in Stratford on Avon – lots of water there.

‘Consider water’ is one of the few sayings I’ve ever memorised.  It comes from an SF fantasy by Sheri Tepper called Jinian Footseer and is advice given to Jinian by the elder wize-ards in her coven when she finds herself in sticky  situations.  I’ve found it a wonderfully soothing displacement activity.

I’m told this is an old joke.  I still love it : )

A group of kindergartners were trying very hard to become accustomed to the first grade.

The biggest hurdle they faced was that the teacher insisted on NO baby talk!

You need to use ‘Big People’ words,’ she was always reminding them.

She asked John what he had done over the weekend?

‘I went to visit my Nana’..

No, you went to visit your GRANDMOTHER. Use ‘Big People’ words!’

She then asked Mitchell what he had done

‘I took a ride on a choo-choo’.

She said. ‘No, you took a ride on a TRAIN. You must remember to use ‘Big People’ words’.

She then asked little Alex what he had done?

‘I read a book’ he replied.

That’s WONDERFUL!’ the teacher said.
‘What book did you read?’

Alex thought real hard about it, then puffed out his chest with great pride, and said,

‘Winnie the SHIT’

Oh!  Well I’ve procrastinated so successfully that I need to go shopping NOW!

Bye

* I’m on the last day!  Yay!

**I did a post some time ago about the ominous and creepy appearance of millions of flies in the eyrie (upstairs attic room) and now I can’t find the post  so this may be a trifle puzzling.  Don’t worry, it is puzzling it’s not your fault if you don’t understand what I’m on about.

I should remember to tag!

I am old, Father William

But unlike you,

I cannot turn cartwheels* while polishing shoes.

This piece of nonsense is inspired by Kate Atkinson’s novel, Emotionally Weird.  I am finding it hugely entertaining as it seems to include at least three intertwined stories, each writing themselves according to a different viewpoint.  At least one of which is that of a separate person.  Occasionally one of the narrators inserts a comment into one of the other stories.  One of the stories appears to concern a young woman at University in the 60’s and is soaked in the kind of surreal, disjointed confusion which I remember well from my own time at Art College and around Bristol University.  One of the stories is written by her as part of her degree course.  The third story is being told to her by her mother and promises to tell her about her birth and early life as well as her mother’s life while the first story is apparently being told, by her, to that same mother….

Given the waywardness of some characters and the amount of interference in the lives of others, it seems unlikely that any of the stories will actually arrive at any conclusions so I’m just really hoping that the main protagonist will succeed in getting her essays in on time in spite of  being distracted by dog kidnapping, temporarily abandoned babies and occasional accidental doses of whatever was in the chocolate brownies.

Confused?  Me too.  It’s great, especially as Kate Atkinson excels in showing you the absurd side of any event or interchange between people.  And as a result there’s a KA style narrative of my own,  in my head,  running in the background to sorting the washing and tidying the kitchen.  This makes the humdrum stuff quite unusually enjoyable : )

There’s nothing like being Lost In a Good Book, which happens to be the title of a book by Jasper Fforde thingie.  I read it a while ago.  It’s not very bad but neither  is it very good.  While it is both absurd and entertaining I feel Jasper Ff could have learnt a lot from KA.

Anyway, going back to Father William** and old age.  And music.  Like books, music will soak itself into my life and each day will be coloured by whatever I’m listening to.  These days, being no longer able or willing  to turn emotional cartwheels, I’m quite reluctant to listen to love songs (I simply can’t help thinking “Oh Yeah?” in a cynical sort of way whenever I hear people warbling about the trueness etc etc of their passions).  One of the big advantages of er, increased age is realising that now, I too, ‘can’t hear the words’.  Our parents used to complain about this as if it was a bad thing.  But it can be a very good thing – you can listen to the nice chords and melodies without being exasperated by the silly words

Also, perhaps more importantly, without being harrowed by the sad songs about unrequited love.  As a teenager, I wallowed in sad songs about love – not that there was much choice.  At times, you might have been forgiven for thinking there was no other emotion in the human repertoire.  Talk about brain-washing!  It took years to expunge the unfortunate impression I got from pop music that the only love worth feeling was the one you couldn’t have. I’m sure this is still what pop music is all about but now I don’t have to pay attention.

I imagine there was a time when other feelings and necessities loomed larger in the poular consciousness than unrequited love – or lust  Though obviously there is a certain age when nothing else is as important because it’s all tied up with biological imperatives which the teenage brain is naturally burdened with.  (With which the teenage brain etc etc I mean to say, of course).

Speaking of silly words, this is brilliant watching.  Is there hope for the human race d’you think?

*I always wanted to be able to do this.  Couldn’t though.  I don’t think I ever had very good spatial awareness.

**From Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.  His poems are absolute gems, full of delicious absurdity and, I’ve just discovered, wonderful parodies of poems that children of the period would have known by heart.  I’ve always loved Father William.

All in a day

Close up of the wonderful window

The bit when the dog came too, we saw a barn owl in here – looks about the right sort of place for one

And we decided not to go all the way up the next hill, one of us was getting tired!

: )

Last thing before going home

Sweet dreams  everyone.