2009 — 6 October: Tuesday
I'm yawning again. Another picture of Christa during our September 1974 holiday in the homeland just before we got married:
And then bed. It's already 00:41 and the BBC is repeating the new Lynne Truss reading that I caught 15 hours ago. G'night.
The rain. The rain.
Suddenly hibernation seems like a good idea. But first, I await the plumber's visit. Does delaying the State pension by a year really save £13,000,000,000 per year? I didn't realise the State was that generous. Still, by the time 2016 rolls around I should be used to living on a pittance. Heck, I may even be used to living without Christa! :-)
Time for a cuppa. It's 08:39 and chucking it down out there. I never knew that "a glance at a modern moon map reveals some thirty-five craters named for Jesuit clergymen". (Source.) I like the idea of a magazine called the Walrus... I assume it comes from the Lewis Carroll poem.
Mr Fixit...
... has been and gone and fixed the drip. I now have zero heat in the bathroom, but zero water on the floor tiles — a reasonable trade, methinks. Longer term, I shall be replacing the remaining radiators and the boiler, with all the horrible upheaval that will entail. (I put this off during Christa's final illness in 2007 though we'd pencilled in exactly this refurbishment for the second half of that annus horribilis.) Brian the plumber tells me he's lost count of the number of systems that develop problems shortly after being power flushed. (Now he tells me! It seems only the rusty grunge keeps the systems' joints together after a couple of decades.)
Time (10:37) for a spot of breakfast. At least the rain has more or less stopped.
Alan Plater is a class act. Here he is explaining what grandparents are for:
First, the grandparental relationship is unconditional. All parental relationships — even good ones — are speckled with asterisks and footnotes to do with bedtimes, hair styles, tattoos, body-piercing, loud music, choice of friends and the age-old question: what time do you call this? Grandparents are exempt from all this baggage. The relationship, if handled with sensitivity, should be a conspiracy against the parents.
Second, keep it simple. Last summer, I spent a whole afternoon in our garden with our then two-year-old from Crouch End, blowing bubbles and discussing them in great detail: their colour, texture, direction of travel and likely destiny. We made up stories about them because, as everyone knows, all bubbles are different even though they are born equal.
Just tell me why I kept this article when it's now available in the online archive?!1
Magnific(h)at
I got back from an unexpected lunch invitation (at the "East End Arms" — the one owned by the former bass guitarist of Dire Straits), set another few bits in motion from one of the PVRs to a DVD-R, and have only just noticed a squishy parcel that had been pushed through the venetian blinds. It contained an "XL" version of Big Bro's magnificent Australian leather hat that I admired (and hinted would make a fabulous present), sent over in good time for my (shudder) upcoming 58th birthday. It's 16:30 and time for a cuppa.
On the way home, by the way, we spotted (and stopped to photograph) a pretty amazing lump of edible fungus...
... growing about twelve feet up a tree trunk. It was about eight inches across. So, thanks to Bro and Lis for the hat, and to Peter for the lunch and the use of his camera.
Our first footnote
Christa and I are now (in its first draft, at least) the first footnote in Martine's presentation on Angela Carter's "Vampirella" I mentioned here. Cool!
This paper is dedicated to David Mounce, who kindly and spontaneously sent me a recording of Carter's Vampirella, and to Christa Helene Mounce, his beloved wife who was an early admirer of Angela Carter's work when it was not in fashion.