2010 — 28 December: Tuesday
I still have electricity1 and am looking forward to hearing from Diana Athill on "Woman's Hour" as I munch my not exactly early breakfast. It's +3.5C and the rain overnight got rid of nearly all the compacted ice.
I shall probably use this visual evidence of high winds in NZ today ...
... to express the hope that Big Bro's BBQ smoke doesn't get in his eyes. Ian B's Landrover had been parked under this errant oak about 30 minutes earlier.
It bemuses me how...
... often things "go missing" in this house, and indeed how many. Somewhere there's a little LED headlamp with headband that would have been jolly useful last night. Can I find it? Do me a favour. And the thing is, I can only blame myself these days. Mind you, "the thrill of the chase" often turns up other unexpected (and usually distracting) delights. As does my strangely unretentive but fully content-associative memory.
For example, while searching the shelves for what was Dad's 1962 copy of the British Cartoonists Album,2 my eye was caught by the volume I mentioned (here) as having mislaid and, then, as I replaced it, I suddenly noticed above it the LED headlamp. Result! (Providing I can find a fresh set of batteries, of course.)
Before you know it, it's 13:08 and time for lunch. [Pause] And then it's 17:04 and I'm recently back from my latest (somewhat dispiriting) visit to dear Mama. This time, though she still recognised me, my name had evaporated. Still, Big Bro's name vanished beyond her ken several months ago, and the news that he's currently in NZ fails to elicit so much as a flicker. Her world is imploding much as her thought processes are (I was going to put "seem to be" but there's no point in denying the reality).
Intelligent Design at its finest, if you ask me. [Pause] Time (19:10) for my next batch of calories. [Pause] It's 21:25 and having fired up the iMac for something entirely different, I'm trying to decide if "Book of Silk" (Tin Hat Trio, 2004) is depressing me or cheering me up :-)
Further motherly ruminations
It's quite funny: I seem to have given up altogether on broadcast TV, whereas dear Mama now claims to have begun watching it. Though the little wall-mounted LCD flatscreen TV in her room is invariably switched off at the power socket when I see it; nor do I recall seeing where its remote control was on today's visit. Many of the other "denizens" (at least, those along her corridor) have their TVs on — some very loud — but the glimpses I catch through the doorways suggest little or no active viewing is taking place. She also spoke today of "going back into England" but I couldn't begin to say what, if anything, she actually meant by that.
She also said that "everyone will come running" when she dies; I mildly observed that, as she rapidly approaches 94, she's left the majority of her peers (as it were) in the dust, or perhaps turning to dust.3 This is, in some respects, every bit as horrible an "end game" as Christa's, though rather more stretched out. It's more than enough to make a chap doubt the benevolence of a chap's creator, I tell you.
Tea, Mrs Landingham. I need some fine Assam, and soon!
Coloured round objects...
... or where the BBC wants to get to, allegedly:
Phew! I'm glad that's clear. (And it's very foggy outside right now, too.) [Pause] I've just stopped my DVD of "High Fidelity" at not quite the half-way point to do the dishes. It's also becoming clear, at 23:36, that despite the start of "Late Junction," I have a growing need for some sleep, and also will need to stuff my next crockpot tomorrow morning. Now there's something to look forward to — one should always have something to look forward to, don't you think? :-)
Not counting the BBC's forecast of wall-to-wall fog. G'night.