Bench 2

Sorry about that, Simon.

It was a great party, with lots of talk & good food & drink. I enjoyed the dancing enough to need to cool off, so I joined the smokers outside around the fire. In my defence, it seemed as if there was space on the bench and we didn't know that this one was rotten, either. It broke beneath our combined weights, so it wasn't entirely my fault, honestly.

Oops. Sorry again, Simon.

:o/

Bench

Sorry about that, Lucy.




we were dancing, the room was hot and so were we, so someone had opened the window to let some air in. Once we had cooled down, it had to be shut again. The sash window wouldn't slide shut from the inside, so someone had to go outside to push it up. That was me. Mission accomplished, I turned to jump off the bench and promptly fell through the slats. Umm. As I was so relaxed by a tiny glass of red wine I didn't feel any pain from the scrape on my elbow, but I think that Matt may have some bench-mending to do. I think it was rotten anyway.

Sorry again, Lucy. And it was a great party.

:o/

:o)

Awake

It's somewhere before five in the morning, and I've been awake for hours. Last night, after a long cycle ride and an evening of food and banter with the Tuesboyz I slept like a log for ten hours; this evening I woke at two with a mind racing around like a ferret, thinking of everything yet nothing, and couldn't sleep.

I was convinced that if I got up, my life would change. One's mind plays games at this unworldly hour. So I did, craving (for some strange reason) a cup of nettle tea. I pulled on my djebellah in Rio's empty room, gazing out at the crystal black sky with Orion clear and bright. The lights of a single plane winked by in front of the stars, its contrail leaving them milkily obscured. I guess that it must have been a military jet heading for Lynham, as it was too high to be heading for Bristol and was off the flight-tracks for the London airports. Back from Afghanistan, I suppose.

While the kettle boiled for my tea, I went into the garden to piss and stare into the sky: Orion again, the Plough, Leo, Casseopeia. A shooting star: the first I have seen for years.

I returned inside, unsure of where the my future lies. My current job lies in the balance, Moonface told me that I should try to write. Perhaps it was that which led to my being awake: uncertainty about my future coupled with a suggestion of what I could do - and I remembered the germ of an idea for a story which I could tell. So I noted it down and came upstairs to write this while my drink gets cold.

Bed again, now.

:o/

Starwars Poetry

John Levett.

SDI

Ten miles above the tits at St. Tropez
A satellite’s remote, panoptic eye
Is tracking us and quietly waiting for
The gesture that could culminate in war;
You scratch your nose, I finish my ice-cream
And screw the silver paper in the sand.
Your milky skin is tanning like a dream.
That ultra-violet shadow is my hand.
The camera rolls on, its frozen lens
Picks out the agriculture of the Fens
Then swaps the filters for the infra-red
Cupolas of beleaguered Leningrad.

You shift and turn, your shoulder-blade could be
The smooth lid on some high-tech armoury
And fear stirs in the craters that begin
To open on my weakly bearded chin.
White clouds wind like a turban round the peaks
That top the Himalayas, and the sun.
Its compost of alchemical techniques,
Transmutes the globe and lets us focus on
Calcutta pullulating with its poor,
The psychopaths that bleed El Salvador,
The human tides of Tokyo and then
The terrifying silence of Phnom Penh.

The earth speeds up, its shrunken polar caps
Like parachutes tumescently collapse,
The tilting coasts of snow give way to ice
Then bergs of light on Asian belts of rice.
At eight you plan to have the hotel fix
Your hair and come to meet me in the town,
Its chill and its salinity that pricks
And tightens up a skin that’s nicely brown:
Those stars we hope to drink beneath tonight
Are pledged to North America, their light
An Ice Age brilliance turning even now
The obsolescent hardware of The Plough.

SDI = Satellite Defense Initiative, I think. Reagan's porkbarrel for the arms companies.

I found this poem quoted on the Singletrack site, of all places. They must be a cultured lot, these cyclists.

;0/

Oaf

Idiocy doesn't always pay.

Between our house and our neighbours' lie two paths to our respective front doors, separated by a brick wall which is ranges from a couple of feet to about four feet high on our side, plus a fair bit more on the Tibb's side, reflecting the slope and fall of the original hillside.

As I'm a yob at heart, when I'm in the right mood I enjoy jumping upon the wall and walking its length to the road as I set out for a walk or drive. Today, I missed, and I hurt.

As I leapt upon the wall, both feet together, my right toe caught the edge of the wall, plonking me face-down and falling across it, and I thought that I was about to plant myself head-first onto our neighbours' path. I experienced a dreadful, "Oh shit" moment, but somehow managed to catch hold of the wall with both hands stretched out behind me, and twist my legs over my head and body in a caricature of a gate-vault, landing gracelessly but safely upon my feet. The only damage was a pair of scraped hands, a bruised tummy and a loss of dignity. I need to be more careful at my age, or at least wear more sensible shoes for jumping on walls.


;-)

Nanny

Nanny's in hospital. Moonface's mother, Nanny, Midge, Margery, call her what you will. She's 87 and frail. Her hands are arthritic and she has had difficulty walking; last Saturday (while I was away) she fell at home and broke her hip. Fortunately one of her grandsons found her and called the ambulance to accompany her to hospital. She's had the operation to repair her old bones so she's now slowly recovering.

The poor old thing. She's probably not eating enough for her, and has difficulty raising her water-glass to her lips to drink from it. Her face is scabby and mottled with sun-spots, some of which we assume are cancerous. She's thin. Her mind is wandering: when I called in to see her yesterday she told me that Moonface has visited when I knew that she hadn't, and Midge thought that another relative had been three times although that woman hadn't been at all. She screams though her physiotherapy.

What can we do? Nothing. Just visit as often as we can and hope for the best resolution. I don't know whether that's a heart attack in her sleep or a full recovery. Whichever she wants, I guess.

Nanny's hospital ward is full of similar old ladies, sitting resignedly and uncomprehendingly by their beds, slack-jawed and vacant. It's sad. And now we will remember them like this rather than as their vibrant youths or healthy middle-ages. It was the same for Moonface's father, whom I now remember as a yellow hollowed cadaver lying in his hospital bed after his mercifully brief final illness, rather that the grumpy old man that we knew for so many years.

Give me the gift of a swift, painless and clean death, please. And not for a while yet. And grant Midge what she wants.