2008 — 21 Jan: Monday again? Wasn't it Monday a week ago?

Well, it's 01:38 and I got back from Winchester¹ about 25 minutes ago, traversing a quiet motorway, and quiet suburbs, to arrive at a very quiet house. Although I'm getting used to this, I'm not altogether liking it. Cookie crumbles-wise, I guess there's not much more to be said. Speaking of articulacy failure:

What can one say?... department

I could describe — try to describe — the last day or so, but Leo Tolstoy (inevitably) put it better than I could at the start of Anna Karenina: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." I like to think the little family unit that was me, Christa, and Peter was happy. I certainly hope they both thought so. But the equally little family unit that is me, Big Bro, and our mother... crikey, what a difference a single generation makes!

I realise I have an introspective streak, trust me. But my mother has refined the art to positively obscene lengths, spending the 32 years since my father died going round and round a tight circle of thought and self-absorption that now acts as a complete prison wall around her. My brother understood this up to a point, I'm sure, but never so clearly (I think) as during yesterday's futile visit.² He, like all my friends and relatives, has now basically said "Don't worry about her. In fact, don't even think about her." It was, needless to say, my father who asked me (on his deathbed) to "look after your mother, son". An interesting conflict scenario given her refusal to accept Christa into the family unit. It seems no woman on the planet would or could ever meet the standards necessary for such acceptance.

By the way, I've stopped the series of (weekly) letters I'd been writing to her. I began those in 1995, shortly after she hung up on my weekly phone calls, twice running, over some slight (or imagined slight) I cannot even recall. In the twelve years since then I received precisely one and a half letters back from her. I suppose I think of myself as patient, but practically everyone else regards this as simple stupidity on my part in persisting so long. I'm forced to agree — I'm an idiot.

Well, let it be said. About two or three weeks before she died, Christa said to me (after yet another ridiculous phone call to her mother-in-law) "To Hell with that stupid woman. I've had enough!" That, dear reader, is good enough for me.

Blink, and you miss it... department

There are drawbacks to stopping my six-times-a-week fix of the Guardian it seems. Consider this snippet from a review of George Steiner's "My unwritten books":

As will be apparent, some of this is embarrassing and risible, not least when he describes "Ch": "When nearing climax, she would cry out, though in a muted register, the name Sankt Nepomuk the Lesser." Only a lover of Steiner, you feel, would ever do that.

Blake Morrison, in "The sex life of a polyglot"

Don't you just love that "muted register"? Shades of the exchange in "When Harry met Sally" regarding the impossibility of having good sex with a chap called "Sheldon". Oh well, it's now 02:41 and time for bed. Are you coming, Sheldon?!

Wow!

Pity you poor workers. BBC Radio 3 is right now (09:23) playing a Glenn Gould piece called "So, you want to write a fugue?" Totally amazing, and funny. ("The only way to write one is to plunge right in and write one!" "Never be clever for the sake of being clever for the sake of showing off.") Wonderful. Advice that applies equally to an online diary, of course.

Mr City Link came a'knocking a few minutes ago. It seems my blank DVD-Rs and my Humax dongle have both arrived. I am forbidding myself to open the package until a certain proportion of the constant maintenance administrivia has been tackled. And that includes some vital supplies shopping this morning. Off with the dressing gown! Get out there and start propping up the local economy.

Lunchtime O'Non-booze... department

Chores³ (mostly) chored. Dongle still uninspected. Off to meet Cathy and her niece for lunch somewhere, but the scudding clouds are saying "No walk today, (lack of) sunshine!" And a mini-adventure booked in for Wednesday with my main co-pilot opposite. We're retired, you know... "Somewhere" turned out to be a nice pub called the Royal Oak in North Gorley. And, thanks to the magic of Google Maps I can actually show you where this is:

I'm delighted to add that dear Mama actually paid for the lunches, not that she knows this. (She rang me literally as I was about to shut the front door on my way out. Said in a suitably frail voice she was "feeling lonely". I fear I was a little terse, though perfectly polite.)

Footnotes

¹  Thank you Mike. Thank you, Bryan. A lovely meal, and two DVDs, at least one of which ("Dear Wendy") gets my vote. I admit, I thought the "Fantastic Four" sequel was bad; and not in a good way!
²  I got this text message from him this morning: "Good morning. Another late night? Good writeup in the diary. Just sitting in lounge at Heathrow (which is amazingly quiet) and off at noon to the cold. Great to have a day's chat. Don't forget to let me know indicative pricing for business class NZ38/39 (via HKG) and will find some Amex points for you. Best John" To which I replied: "Thanks Bro. Was v good to talk". My son's response to the news that Mater refused to go out to eat with us was a masterpiece of concision: "I'm fine. If she won't eat with you, go home earlier." By the way, I did check on "concision" before deciding to stick with it. I found the following:
The state or quality of being concise: "a role made . . . dramatically accessible by the concision of the form" George Steiner.
Now how's that for a coincidence? Mind you, there's an eye-watering variant here.
³  I was warned recently, by one who knows, that "probate is society's way of keeping the recently bereaved busy". Yep!