2011 — 15 December: Thursday
The festive spasm1 is, it occurs to me, thundering down the track and I don't think I've ever felt less prepared to be festive in my life. Mind you, I'm not short of things to do, including nip out for some longer-lived-than-usual supplies this morning — in a few minutes, in fact — to keep me going next week and get as much petrol as I can squeeze into the Yaris ahead of tomorrow's expotition up to my cousins in Birmingham for the weekend. And, before that, I've got to see the Matron at the care-home this afternoon and even, with luck, fit in a relaxing cuppa with Roger and Eileen.
Still: look on the bright side. I don't have to remember to buy Christa a birthday card for tomorrow. Better get started...
I'm not sure if...
... one of my favourite publishers (Benedikt Taschen, bless 'im) quite grasps the reality of my post-industrial financial situation. I snipped these from his latest email:
And I smile to remember that my bookshop buddy Bunty (who worked in Hammicks in Windsor) only charged me £3 for a pre-Taschen first-edition hardback of Helmut Newton's "Sleepless Nights" way back in December 1978 on the grounds (as she smilingly put it) that if they couldn't be bothered to print a price she could sell it for whatever she chose to. Nice woman. Somehow I seem to have accumulated a string of bookshop buddies over the years — can't think why.
It wasn't until I...
... opened my front door this morning that I discovered yesterday's unannounced Amazonian delivery. Either that or I was even more deeply engrossed in dear Mama's paperwork than I realised and simply didn't hear the knock. So I gathered in these two goodies...
... before my pre-breakfast supplies and petrol run. I know it says "DVD" but that's only because the DVD Len lent me is better printed than the rather shoddy artwork of the Blu-ray I actually bought. Mere details. It was quite busy out there, by the way. Do they know it's Xmas?
As I sit here trying to warm myself up with a cuppa (rather than turning up the heating, closing a window, or simply adding another layer of clothing) I've just enjoyed the fourth Twiglit film companion, which has (as expected) only served to whet my appetite2 for the film, and I've been listening to my favourite William Orbit album: his 1993 Strange Cargo III...
What it is that makes it so endlessly listenable I can't really say, but I find something new in it each time. Quite remarkable. Not sure about the font, though. Even if the cover illustration brings to mind Arthur C Clarke's wise and witty 1960 prediction of the likeliest use of satellite broadcast TV technology in "I remember Babylon". Time for lunch, methinks.
I don't have a cat, because I don't react well to the little bloodsuckers that tend to hop off them and make a beeline for my arteries. However, people who divide their lives between cats and computers may well smile as broadly as I did at the pics here. (Thanks to 'Word' magazine's weekly email.)
The bureaucracy of...
... infirmity, it turns out, has its own set of colour-coded forms (akin, no doubt, to the 'green form' needed by Christa's funeral director). In this (anticipatory) case, dear Mama's GP has to fill out a 'purple form' stating that dear Mama says (or, in this case, the nearest thing she has on the planet to a sentient living relative asserts that she says) that she does not wish3 to be resuscitated in the event of serious age-related medical gruesomeness (or whatever the official bureaucratic euphemism is for that).
Since she has spent the last year telling me at least once per visit (and often more frequently) that she hopes to die in her sleep, or wishes she could "go to sleep and not wake up", or simply "take a pill and not wake up", I think she's managed to make her feelings on the topic perfectly clear. I popped in on her while there, of course, but she was sleeping peacefully so I left her to it. She's still on a second round of antibiotics and won't be taking part in any Olympic field or track events in the near future.
I'm just left idly wondering what other colour forms exist, and for what other pieces of State business. [Pause] And I was just finalising the preparation of my evening meal when the GP rang. Since she'd not yet talked to the Matron I quickly recapped our conversation, and the GP (who said, basically, "that's very helpful") thanked me, and is even now filling in all the necessary forms to take over to the care-home on her next visit. She seemed to be in complete agreement at every step, so I'm as delighted as one can be, I suppose, in this sad (but natural) situation.