2008 — 25 August: Bank Holiday Monday
Fast approaching midnight, and oblivion looms yet again. So to tonight's picture of Christa. I thought it's been a while since we last had a chance to admire both her smile and her hair curlers...
G'night.
Updated butterflies... dept.
My regular reader probably already knows about Butterflies and Wheels. Today's email "tipsheet" brings me an ironic set of juxtaposed links to ponder ("What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?" — WH Davies, of course.)
Deep breath, and keep your hands inside the vehicle at all times... First up, a former church chappie who's essentially lost, or shucked off, his faith; news that Catholic leaders in Scotland have agreed to schoolgirls getting the HPV jab providing the girls will "not receive any accompanying advice on the need to use condoms to protect themselves from other sexually transmitted diseases"; Afghan women ending up in jail because they have been raped; ITV rejecting a comedy sketch ("The iman of Dibley") by a comedian who's also an Oxford theology graduate. I defy anyone to make up stuff as bizarre as this. Or to read about it with unraised blood pressure.
It's enough to put a chap off his breakfast, let alone make yet another cooked one for his Big Bro! But it's 08:58 and, having been brought my morning cuppa, I suppose time and bacon wait for no man, or no iman! While he scoffs I can continue to contemplate the ineffable whichness of the why. Why (for example) is the sky so grey in the middle of summer? Why is the BBC Radio 3 announcer telling me about bog-snorkelling championships in Wales? Why am I crying? (That last one's all too easy, but the brief storm has now passed.) This grief process can be a real bugger, I tell you. The tears weren't even for poor old Aunty Peg. What a strange business.
Easy to cheer up, though, with such marvellous pieces as this further examination of Samuel Pepys. Snippet:
There were, as we learn with fascination from the diaries, comparable tensions in his private life, in that his desire for regularity and doing things his way was not fully shared by his wife, with whom he had fallen passionately in love and married when she was fifteen years of age and seven years his junior. The struggle between Elizabeth and Samuel, which is one of the great interests of the diary, continued throughout his married life; unlike the contest with the Whigs, it had no clear winner.
I don't think I've ever seen the sublime 1066 and all that described as a revisionist exercise before! Well, it's 10:02, Bro is abluting, I'm breakfasting and then it's heigh-ho for the open road (or, at least, the open M3) as I trot him up to Sunningdale. Dear Mama has been phoned (I find it helps if, after putting down the phone to find her specs, she picks the damn' thing up again before resuming what I suppose can still just about be classed as a conversation). She sent Bro her love but was less sure whether I was included :-)
Mothers, heh? Merciful heavens, she's just rung back to say cheerio to him. Wow!
Tripping the flight fantastic... dept.
It's now 13:58 and while I wait for the oven fluffy chips (serves 2!) to attain the same state of thermal bliss that the tuna steaks (serves 2!) are now rapidly cooling down from so they can join the potato side salad and merge with their chef, I just have time to observe that a quick whizz up and down the M3 for 100 miles or so now seems almost like a little local hop. If Christa could see me now, what on earth would she say, I wonder? Oh well; ever onward I guess. Forty minutes later the inner man is now more than somewhat pacified. That "serves 2" may just as well have been "serves 3." A second cup of my nearly universal solvent brew is now needed.
Tipping the chair elastic... dept.
A couple of days ago I had to replace one of the office chairs in my study after (I estimate) less than 1% of it had worn out. The new one is installed, and I've just taken the old one, more or less in bits, to the tip. Another first for me in this new, rather lonelier, lifestyle minus Christa. No big deal (I'm fully aware) but actually getting a bit of junk out of the house represents a tiny bit of positive progress. Bro did ask if I'd emptied her wardrobes yet; had he been a closer student of this diary he'd have noted all I've done in that direction (so far) was bundle up all her shoes and move them out of the hallway. I think the time is now ripe to tackle the unrestrained jungle in the bog garden. Who knows what lurks within? But there's another green bag collection coming up...
That should take me neatly up to tea-time, don't you think? It's 17:30 already, for gawd's sake.
And it came to pass... I've filled the green bag with comically little effect on the jungle. I actually took a couple of photos before I started, fully intending to post a "before and after" shot, but I don't have the nerve to until I've made at least a vaguely visible inroad into the undergrowth. Christa would be giggling, I have to say. It's not as if I've got green fingers; the garden is just so, so, ... fecund is the only word for it. In another first, I've eaten the rest of the tuna cold, and it doesn't seem to have killed me. Christa loved the stuff (but we were, in many ways, chalk and cheese). At this rate, I may even start to eat coleslaw. (During yesterday's lunch, we each simultaneously offered the other our portion of the ghastly stuff.)
From the sound of the traffic news just before 19:00 I seem to have chosen my travel time rather well today. Including the little diversion out to the tip, I've clocked up just a smidgen over 600 miles (about two thirds on motorways) since picking Bro up last Tuesday evening. Some people have done that much, it seems, just in the course of today.