Before I get on to my confession of yet more evidence of what one may, with kindness call eccentricity, with realism dottiness, I learn from the comments added to the last post - no irony intended - that I have risked some confusion. The shoe horn in the bed: there was a shoe horn in the bed because I tend not to strip and remake it at the weekend. Mattresses are a bit heavy if you have a dodgy back. And I do old fashioned sheets and blankets which need to be tucked in. I don't do duvets. (I sleep too restlessly to keep a duvet on the damn bed, if you really want to know). Anyway, the bed is remade only on days when a kind person comes to help me with the housework. I sat on it in order to put on my lace-up shoes and simply put the shoe horn down in/on the open bed after I was shod: simple, no? The other query was about the role of the Nanny who let her little Princess- charge run about in the restaurant without control. I think it may be difficult to know who should be doing what if both parents and Nanny are in attendance. When I encountered the females of the group in the Ladies, the Mother was removing the nappy, (diaper, if you are over the pond), and the Nanny was passing the wet-wipes. My instinct is that Mother is not often on bottom, or any other,duty and rather enjoyed the opportunity. Nanny may have been unused to sharing and not sure about the way the hierarchy worked. Anyway, that's the best I can suggest.
Dottiness: You may recall that I have been doing the occasional stint as a Myster Shopper. You know, a sort of spy employed by an agency whose clients want to know whether their employees are doing what it says on the tin. Casinos were among the more interesting I have told you about, see below. This time, I was asked to take two bus tours around London and a river cruise on the Thames. I picked up the first bus at a stop I had identified before and took it
as far as the pier where the river cruise was to start. I cruised to the Tower of London and back and alighted to find the bus for tour number two which I had been told would be right there. I had, however, and inadvertently, got the wrong boat back - wrong company, that is - so was not disembarked at the same pier. Therefore, there was no sight of the right bus. Resourcefully, and rather hungry by now, I took a taxi to where I knew there would be a stop for the right bus and also a couple of adjacent cafes. So far, so good. I then took the right second bus tour to finish my assignment. (With me still?) By the time I had done and seen and heard enough to fill in the report forms, this elderly lady was somewhat worn out. Like a good person, though, I staggered home and immediately started by filling in, on line, the 15 page report form for the tour on bus 1. Dear Reader, the Wizard of Cyberspace was at his worst. Three times I lost it all and had to start again. Then, when I did manage to complete it and move on to fill in the form for the river cruise, I neglected to press 'submit' and lost it all again! I know, I know; shouldnt be let out on her own. The Guru, appealed to by text message, actually took the rare step of responding with a call. He told me to do nothing until he got home. I ignored this, not really understanding what he meant, and proceeded to the form for the tour on bus 2. to do "in the meantime". Of course, when he did get here, there was no way he could retrieve what I had lost because I "had changed the web-site". No, I didnt understand how that worked, either. Anyway, two and a half hours after I had started I was back to the beginning, doing bus 1, yet again. This time, half way through, one of the questions that had rolled off my eyeballs the other times leapt in to relief and, wait for it, I saw that I had boarded the wrong bus for tour 1, thus done the wrong tour number 1 and was completely f....d. The only thing to do at this point was feed the Guru, grab a bite and retire to a dark corner to think dark thoughts about encroaching dottiness. The whole fiasco had taken from 10.30am to 9.30pm., from leaving home to switching this machine off. But, and it's a big BUT, I came to see that the Wizard had actually been trying to warn me by wiping out all the early efforts and, if he is that aware of my state of mind, there may be a way in which he is actually my Guardian Angel in disguise. See you soon.
P.S, I did the right number 1 bus tour the next day.
Thursday, 12 August 2010
Sunday, 1 August 2010
Princesses
Last night, in the middle of the night, coming back from a necessary pit stop,(comfort stop if you are not in to motor racing), I came upon a shoe horn in the bed. I had been in bed something like four hours without noticing this intruder - or even extruder - so I am forced, as you will be, to accept that I am no Princess. Now, supposing your childhood was very different from mine, I had better draw your attention to the nursery story which tells of a young girl
who tries to impersonate a Princess who had been kidnapped by witches when she was a baby. This chancer was by no means the first comely young girl to have had a go at the deception, so the Palace authorities had devised an infallible test: under several mattresses in the Royal Bedchamber was secreted a pea. None of the pretenders complained of discomfort so each, in turn, was discounted as the real thing. Eventually, of course, after many adventures, the 'real thing' does find her way home and is very soon belabouring Housekeeping for the carelessness of the bed-making. There was joy and celebration throughout the Kingdom. The lost-one had finally come home. She goes on to marry her fairy-tale Prince and live happily ever after. However, there the similarities with my situation stop, at the pea in the bed.
The Guru and I treated ourselves to Sunday lunch in a restaurant today, rather a nice one since, for reasons which are really irrelevant to the current topic, we deserved a treat. Also lunching was a small girl, about eighteen months old, who was a little Princess of the first order. Although initially imprisoned in a baby chair and pretty escape-proof to my eye, she very soon prevailed upon the three adults with her to let her out. By prevailed, I should explain, I mean screamed so loudly it was let her out or let the rest of us out. She was attractive in her own right, though, and scarcely her fault that she was border-line out of control. She proceeded to run, unchecked and a loose cannon, through the restaurant and under the waiters' feet. I did wonder what the legal position would be if she tripped a waiter up and was injured by falling china or even glass. Does any of you know? Being a gossipy nosey-parker and having turned those characteristics in to a way of earning my living, I soon set about deciding who was what to whom. The three adults were a man and a woman no longer young and a much younger woman. The man had an oriental appearance echoed in the lovely chocolate eyes of the little one. The older woman put me at the disadvantage of being half behind a pillar so it was hard to check a resemblance. There could, just about, have been a resemblance with the younger woman but she didnt seem close to the others. If she were the Mother, where was the Father? I concluded the young woman was the Mother and the older two were the parents of the missing oriental father, no doubt away on business elsewhere. However, later, meeting the females in the Ladies', it began to seem more likely that the young woman was the Nanny. Rings on fingers were no help and even I held back from actually asking. Anyway, where is the detecting fun in actually asking the protaganists?
Dear Reader, in the end I cheated and with the collusion of a possibly indiscreet waiter, ascertained that the older couple were, indeed, the parents and the younger the Nanny. I should say that this information was gleaned while the said waiter, who does know me well, it has to be asserted, was wielding a brush and pan to clear up the bits and pieces habitually left by little Princesses - and Princes, for that matter - under the table in restaurants. I would not be surprised if you all know of little Princesses having grown up to be big Princesses, who continue to achieve what they want by shouting and running circles around the people close to them, but I doubt if any of them has gone to sleep with a shoe-horn in the bed. See you soon.
who tries to impersonate a Princess who had been kidnapped by witches when she was a baby. This chancer was by no means the first comely young girl to have had a go at the deception, so the Palace authorities had devised an infallible test: under several mattresses in the Royal Bedchamber was secreted a pea. None of the pretenders complained of discomfort so each, in turn, was discounted as the real thing. Eventually, of course, after many adventures, the 'real thing' does find her way home and is very soon belabouring Housekeeping for the carelessness of the bed-making. There was joy and celebration throughout the Kingdom. The lost-one had finally come home. She goes on to marry her fairy-tale Prince and live happily ever after. However, there the similarities with my situation stop, at the pea in the bed.
The Guru and I treated ourselves to Sunday lunch in a restaurant today, rather a nice one since, for reasons which are really irrelevant to the current topic, we deserved a treat. Also lunching was a small girl, about eighteen months old, who was a little Princess of the first order. Although initially imprisoned in a baby chair and pretty escape-proof to my eye, she very soon prevailed upon the three adults with her to let her out. By prevailed, I should explain, I mean screamed so loudly it was let her out or let the rest of us out. She was attractive in her own right, though, and scarcely her fault that she was border-line out of control. She proceeded to run, unchecked and a loose cannon, through the restaurant and under the waiters' feet. I did wonder what the legal position would be if she tripped a waiter up and was injured by falling china or even glass. Does any of you know? Being a gossipy nosey-parker and having turned those characteristics in to a way of earning my living, I soon set about deciding who was what to whom. The three adults were a man and a woman no longer young and a much younger woman. The man had an oriental appearance echoed in the lovely chocolate eyes of the little one. The older woman put me at the disadvantage of being half behind a pillar so it was hard to check a resemblance. There could, just about, have been a resemblance with the younger woman but she didnt seem close to the others. If she were the Mother, where was the Father? I concluded the young woman was the Mother and the older two were the parents of the missing oriental father, no doubt away on business elsewhere. However, later, meeting the females in the Ladies', it began to seem more likely that the young woman was the Nanny. Rings on fingers were no help and even I held back from actually asking. Anyway, where is the detecting fun in actually asking the protaganists?
Dear Reader, in the end I cheated and with the collusion of a possibly indiscreet waiter, ascertained that the older couple were, indeed, the parents and the younger the Nanny. I should say that this information was gleaned while the said waiter, who does know me well, it has to be asserted, was wielding a brush and pan to clear up the bits and pieces habitually left by little Princesses - and Princes, for that matter - under the table in restaurants. I would not be surprised if you all know of little Princesses having grown up to be big Princesses, who continue to achieve what they want by shouting and running circles around the people close to them, but I doubt if any of them has gone to sleep with a shoe-horn in the bed. See you soon.
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
More semantics
Considering the difficulty most of us have in commuicating accurately with one another, it continues to amaze me how closely related but diametrically opposed, (nearly typed "diabolically") some words, or the use of them, can be. On the other hand, it may be the meaning with which we imbue the words that is the challenge. Example: recently, I was charged with the sin of vanity. Heaven forbid; I assure you, I have no grounds whatsoever on which to base vanity. What is really going on when I show over-concern for my appearance or curse the wind which has blown my entire morning's work in to a haystack, is a lack of confidence. I do feel more confident tackling a challenging world with tidy hair, don't you? When I put this to the Guru, who was detained on one occasion behind my despairing clutch of the mirror at the front door, he was generous enough to admit that this was the case for him, too. Now, those of you who have been kind enough to keep up, may remember that I was rushed out of A and E and on to a ward at the local hospital because his exceeding good looks were distracting the busy A and E nurses. He has much to be vain about. However, this is not how he sees himself. One example does not constitute a thesis, I know, but think about it. Real vanity must involve a degree of confidence that over-rides all doubt. It may even go against the view of the rest of the world with regard to the attributes of the vainglorious. That makes me think of pride. It must be permissable to have pride, even in one's appearance, without being vain. Mind you, no-one can be held responsible for his/her looks. Surely, they are a gift of Nature, or whatever you happen to believe in. You can take pride in keeping things in the best condition you can manage, but is that vanity? As it happens, I can see that I am vain in retrospect. I promise this was not the case at the time, but, now, I am vain about the figure I lost too many years ago. Dear Readers, as we speak, I am 'D' shaped. I am much the same shape I was carrying the last - and the other - of my children. Well, there you are. Next time you disparage someone for vanity, look and see whether or not he/she is afraid of the dark, addressing a meeting or going to a party made up largely of strangers. If so, you are very probably looking at a lack of confidence.
Similarly, (is it?), I am exercised by minding one's own business. How do you feel when you have been asked a question that seems intrusive or impertinent? Affronted, you may well respond: yes, indeed. But, a big but, what if your interlocutor's interest in you was a loving and concerned interest, not at all prurient ? You have to see that there is an essential difference. For instance, were I to ask a young woman of my acquaintance whether or not she, herself, had had too much to drink at a party she had described as totally out of control and 'neighbour-call-the-police' debauched, she may well reply it was none of my business, angry with it. The situation could be diffused if I were to point out that the question in no way sprang from judgementalism but from a loving concern in her well-being and an interest in how she lived her life. It is still none of my business? No doubt many people would agree with you. Subtly though, the shades of semantic difference are what makes for good relating: Prurience and judgement are not the same as benevolent interest. "Life's too short", I hear in the ether. Life is never too short for a precise and varied use of language. What do you think?
Similarly, (is it?), I am exercised by minding one's own business. How do you feel when you have been asked a question that seems intrusive or impertinent? Affronted, you may well respond: yes, indeed. But, a big but, what if your interlocutor's interest in you was a loving and concerned interest, not at all prurient ? You have to see that there is an essential difference. For instance, were I to ask a young woman of my acquaintance whether or not she, herself, had had too much to drink at a party she had described as totally out of control and 'neighbour-call-the-police' debauched, she may well reply it was none of my business, angry with it. The situation could be diffused if I were to point out that the question in no way sprang from judgementalism but from a loving concern in her well-being and an interest in how she lived her life. It is still none of my business? No doubt many people would agree with you. Subtly though, the shades of semantic difference are what makes for good relating: Prurience and judgement are not the same as benevolent interest. "Life's too short", I hear in the ether. Life is never too short for a precise and varied use of language. What do you think?
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
Sticking plasters
In various places over my torso and on the front of my shoulders are some round and some square sticking plaster marks. I expect you will want to know why. Well, I have been strapped up to a monitor via a number of electrodes the base of which act as sticking plasters. In a way that proved a little challenging for this elderly lady, I was whisked in to hospital because my heart was beating about twice as fast as it was engineered to beat. These palpitations started about tea-time and I lay on the bed with my book patiently waiting for them to stop. I tried various ways of breathing around them but nothing seemed to work, so I relied on the patience. The Guru did his best to persuade me there must be a more scientific approach and that the sensible thing to do was to ring the Doctor. Personally, in all my three score and more than ten, I have never encountered a health crisis other than latish on a Friday, that is after Surgery hours, at a weekend or on a Bank Holiday. This one was no exception. After the poor man had been up the stairs about forty three times, seen his beautifully presented open sandwich rejected and reminded me this business had, by now, been going on for five hours, I did ring the out of hours medical service and was finally convinced my omnipotence in relying on myself may well lead to my being 75 not-going-on-anywhere. I fussed about the disagreability of waiting hours in A and E, (ER to kind readers over the Pond) but, as it happened, I did not wait long enough even to have found a seat in the reception area. A wheel-chair, double doors, a corridor, much noise and a few seconds later, found me in a cubicle surrounded by a group of people none of whom looking in the least like George Clooney. Forfend that I should risk boring you. Let it just be known that, after several what one may call homely methods had been used and failed to kick start a more reasonable heart rhythm, I was given an injection that actually stopped my heart. As you will have guessed, that was momentary and, presently, it started up again at 90 to the minute instead of 180. I know all this because the kind Guru had stayed with me in A and E, (see above if you are still on the other side of the Pond) and was watching the monitor with a degree of fascination possible only in the intelligent young. Hence the link: I and the monitor were married via the sticky electrodes and a quantity of different coloured whatsits.
Other than the rings and bruises from things stuck in as well as on me, I am my old self again. I cant recommend a night in hospital, but I can certainly recommend the A and E experience. The heart-stop bit left me feeling as unwell as I can remember, thinking death might be rather better, but it was only a minute at the most. Nor did I encounter bright lights, nor loved ones that have passed on. You know, it was almost fun and even provided the Guru with an insight he might otherwise have had only from the Telly. The staff were in such good spirits in spite of what you can imagine was going on in the middle of a week-end night: people having been drinking as if there were never to be another opportunity and, indeed,some of them having met with accidents that put such an opportunity seriously at risk. When it was decided I must be found a bed, the Registrar who had been attending me, said that, in any case, we had to get the Guru out of A and E because, being rather better looking than George Clooney, he was distracting the nurses. There was another lovely moment when a male nurse, middle-aged and pony-tailed, an ER bit-part player, having established that I was to be kept in, that is, was alive enough to be kept in, turned to go, and, light as a feather, dry as a bone threw at us " Ah well, another life saved"; lovely. As it happens, I am pleased to have been saved. I just wish I could get rid of the sticky rings and squares - and yes, I have had several baths since. Two more things: any ideas about how, and diolch yn fawr Guru.
Other than the rings and bruises from things stuck in as well as on me, I am my old self again. I cant recommend a night in hospital, but I can certainly recommend the A and E experience. The heart-stop bit left me feeling as unwell as I can remember, thinking death might be rather better, but it was only a minute at the most. Nor did I encounter bright lights, nor loved ones that have passed on. You know, it was almost fun and even provided the Guru with an insight he might otherwise have had only from the Telly. The staff were in such good spirits in spite of what you can imagine was going on in the middle of a week-end night: people having been drinking as if there were never to be another opportunity and, indeed,some of them having met with accidents that put such an opportunity seriously at risk. When it was decided I must be found a bed, the Registrar who had been attending me, said that, in any case, we had to get the Guru out of A and E because, being rather better looking than George Clooney, he was distracting the nurses. There was another lovely moment when a male nurse, middle-aged and pony-tailed, an ER bit-part player, having established that I was to be kept in, that is, was alive enough to be kept in, turned to go, and, light as a feather, dry as a bone threw at us " Ah well, another life saved"; lovely. As it happens, I am pleased to have been saved. I just wish I could get rid of the sticky rings and squares - and yes, I have had several baths since. Two more things: any ideas about how, and diolch yn fawr Guru.
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
More Keeping House
And another thing, how often do you think one should wash one's net curtains? I do have several, I confess. They are not so much to peep from behind to see what is going on in the world of the neighbours. They are more to stop the neighbours from seeing what is going on in my world. One pair is internal and covers a glass door between my little guest room and the room in which I used to work. Finally, there are some covering a window on a half landing. These serve as a sun-shield, otherwise my little house would be a little oven before you can say over the horizon. Governed as I am by the mores of another generation, another way of being in the world, I do feel the need, eventually the guilty urgency, to take the damned things down and wash them. You will of course, have gathered that, physically, I am not the most flexible acrobat in the circus. Picture it: I am up a ladder, two steps are all I can risk, trying, with arthritic fingers, to extract some miniature hooks from the tentacles determined to grab on to them. The door bell rings. What to do. Clamber down from the ladder, replace my shoes and totter to the door? I could pretend I haven't heard - not unreasonable, my hearing is deteriorating as we speak. (When the Guru rings with his office voice I have either to behave as if I have heard and end up making a dinner he has rung to cancel or bellow at him to speak up. A conflict erupts between office decorum and old lady reality.) Or I could prepare an abject apology for taking so long to answer. You've guessed; he/she who was there is no longer there, anyway. Take off my shoes, again, clamber back up the ladder, feel for the little tentacles, again, and so on and so on. Do you remember the Gerard Hoffnung story of the builder and the bricks going up and down in the hod? Well, you are well on the way to visualising my grubby- curtain dilemma. Last time, I prevailed upon the window cleaner to get them down for me, since he was up there, anyway, and definitely more flexible than I. I did have to put them back, myself, but what the H..., who ever said getting older, in housework terms, would be easy?
Far, far more serious: a tissue infiltrated the washing machine. The Wizard of Cyberspace has allies, his trainees, the laundry fairies. They eat socks, too. But you know all this. You will be wondering why I didn't check all pockets for whatever. I swear I did. This tissue got in disguised as a handkerchief. Are there any fellow sufferers out there? Tissues in the washing machine are like blood, milk and cat litter: they get everywhere when spilled. I shook, I swept, I took the cat-fur remover to everything and then I sat down in a darkened room until I felt better. It's all very well, but the Guru is supposed to look the part when he's at work so bits of unidentifiable white on his professional apparel are totally unacceptable. What's more, one of the duties of the no longer young is to look pristine: eccentric is fine, scruffy is out. So please, Wizard, would you be so good as to ask your apprentices in the laundry to move their plague of white, clingy bits to the machine of my worst enemy?
I have just realised that we are very near my Mother's birthday. This may well explain my rush of housewifery. She has been in mind. She was a very good keeper of her house, and mine, come to that. When I was at University in London she would come up to see me with, I jest not, some rubber gloves and a couple of dusters - oh, and a pinny. The most embarrassing aspect of this was subjecting my house-mates to the sight of everything drying over the shower rail in the communal bathroom after she had done her worst/best with them. And yes, she did get me to take the curtains down and held the ladder while I did so. Back to work; it's never done.
Far, far more serious: a tissue infiltrated the washing machine. The Wizard of Cyberspace has allies, his trainees, the laundry fairies. They eat socks, too. But you know all this. You will be wondering why I didn't check all pockets for whatever. I swear I did. This tissue got in disguised as a handkerchief. Are there any fellow sufferers out there? Tissues in the washing machine are like blood, milk and cat litter: they get everywhere when spilled. I shook, I swept, I took the cat-fur remover to everything and then I sat down in a darkened room until I felt better. It's all very well, but the Guru is supposed to look the part when he's at work so bits of unidentifiable white on his professional apparel are totally unacceptable. What's more, one of the duties of the no longer young is to look pristine: eccentric is fine, scruffy is out. So please, Wizard, would you be so good as to ask your apprentices in the laundry to move their plague of white, clingy bits to the machine of my worst enemy?
I have just realised that we are very near my Mother's birthday. This may well explain my rush of housewifery. She has been in mind. She was a very good keeper of her house, and mine, come to that. When I was at University in London she would come up to see me with, I jest not, some rubber gloves and a couple of dusters - oh, and a pinny. The most embarrassing aspect of this was subjecting my house-mates to the sight of everything drying over the shower rail in the communal bathroom after she had done her worst/best with them. And yes, she did get me to take the curtains down and held the ladder while I did so. Back to work; it's never done.
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
Love
How presumptuous, I can hear you say. I did think long and hard before giving this post that title. I started by envisaging everyone who had written on the subject, from the inception of the written word. It was a funny thought. It was soon an hysterical thought as the examples tumbled over one another and ran in pairs along my inner eye. However, I don't intend to define love, I intend just to chatter on about it for a paragraph or two. It all began when my cat was sitting in front of me at table, the other day. (This is not a Health and Safety discussion, so you can gloss over that bit.) We had both just had breakfast, she on the floor this time and me at the table, just to clarify what you are picturing. She was staring me in the eye and miaowing, her long 'you-havent-got-it-yet' miaow. There were fresh food, fresh water, clean litter, what could I have overlooked? So I told her I loved her, as often I do. I got the tail-flick response I have come to expect when she hears those words but still, and also, the miaows, which got longer and longer and longer. She must have been a mezzo-soprano in another life; in that the case, she has certainly retained the breath control of a professional singer and her voice is quite low compared with other felines of my acquaintance. Anyway, telling her I loved her was not what I had not 'got'. Then it came to me that one cannot live on love alone even if that were what my beloved cat had been asking me for. So, of course, I got up and found her a little something more to supplement and pacify. Guess what: the miaowing stopped.
It made me think, though. If you cannot live on love alone, can you die without it? I think you can. You wouldn't just lie down and be, as it were dead, never get up again, you'd probably contract an illness which, although curable, somehow wouldn't be cured. Damn it! I don't know exactly how you would do it but it wouldn't be surprising if many ill people were, if the truth be unveiled, quietly fading from lack of love. I do know it is possible to be as if dead inside. Life goes on apparently unchanged, on the outside. A three dimension version of you operates without any noticeable inconsistency; rather like a Stepford Wife, in fact: a facimile of the real thing. There was a film along similar, but kinder and more profound lines: Lars and the Real Girl. Brilliant, see it. But much must depend on the cause of this death by non-love. Rejection will do it every time, wouldn't you say? Being subjected to a pretend love, particularly parental, would be another good way to experience it. We, surely, all know people who are so desparate for love that their lives become distorted with the effort to acquire it. You know, the Mother's Little Helper people who are the first at the scene in a crisis and who are able to devine - and provide - what you want before you are even aware you want it. Sainthood may arise from that very phenomenon. I'm not proud of the way that sounds. It sounds condescending and even pejorative. Forgive me. I don't like myself for interpreting/noticing a hunger for love in those whom I am fortunate to know as really kind people who will do anything for anyone. I don't believe it detracts from the value of what they do: it just serves, anyway me, as an explanation for why they do it. I can't see how I could have the gall to leave the subject there, but, for the moment I must go and check what my beloved miaowing mezzo wants now. If there is anything I can do for her, you would expect me to do it wouldn't you, craven seeker for love that I am.
It made me think, though. If you cannot live on love alone, can you die without it? I think you can. You wouldn't just lie down and be, as it were dead, never get up again, you'd probably contract an illness which, although curable, somehow wouldn't be cured. Damn it! I don't know exactly how you would do it but it wouldn't be surprising if many ill people were, if the truth be unveiled, quietly fading from lack of love. I do know it is possible to be as if dead inside. Life goes on apparently unchanged, on the outside. A three dimension version of you operates without any noticeable inconsistency; rather like a Stepford Wife, in fact: a facimile of the real thing. There was a film along similar, but kinder and more profound lines: Lars and the Real Girl. Brilliant, see it. But much must depend on the cause of this death by non-love. Rejection will do it every time, wouldn't you say? Being subjected to a pretend love, particularly parental, would be another good way to experience it. We, surely, all know people who are so desparate for love that their lives become distorted with the effort to acquire it. You know, the Mother's Little Helper people who are the first at the scene in a crisis and who are able to devine - and provide - what you want before you are even aware you want it. Sainthood may arise from that very phenomenon. I'm not proud of the way that sounds. It sounds condescending and even pejorative. Forgive me. I don't like myself for interpreting/noticing a hunger for love in those whom I am fortunate to know as really kind people who will do anything for anyone. I don't believe it detracts from the value of what they do: it just serves, anyway me, as an explanation for why they do it. I can't see how I could have the gall to leave the subject there, but, for the moment I must go and check what my beloved miaowing mezzo wants now. If there is anything I can do for her, you would expect me to do it wouldn't you, craven seeker for love that I am.
Sunday, 6 June 2010
Gaps
The wizard of cyberspace has been laughing all the way to the delete box. This time he surpassed himself. He took not only the blog but all the functions of the computer that needed the internet, plus the television service. In short, no service of any kind from my service provider . Naturally, this happened at a week-end and stretched in to one with a bank holiday tacked on. By the time the non-service provider had reached me on his list of frustrated and bereaved electronic dependants, a long time had passed. "No signal" was the fullest explanation the screens were in a position to furnish. At last, arrived an engineer who went back to his car with a visitors' permit to park and came back a very few minutes later to say he just wanted to check that all was well. "All is not well", protested I, wondering why he thought he was here at all. "Oh yes," quoth he,"I've fixed it." And so he had. He wouldn't tell me how so I am left with the imagining that he and the Wizard are allies and, together, had decided I had been punished long enough. I do know that I could have taken my laptop to a nearby coffee shop or found an internet cafe and, thus, blogged to my heart's content. Pause: do you really see me as a person who would or even could take all the wires out of the back of this machine and expect to re-assemble them in another location when I don't even enjoy coffee, never mind an internet cafe where I would raise the average age by about 5o years and have to ask for help even to switch the damned stranger on. No, of course you don't. Anyway, here I am and I hope not too many of you have given up on reading me ever again. (Mind you, I have one non-fan who informed me she didnt read my blog because she couldn't stand other people's on and onings; nice phrase, I've decided to acquire it.)
Talking of gaps, I'd like to stretch the concept to include slots. My local Post Office, a grown up one with a site all its own, not shared with a shop nor anything else - those, nearby, having been closed by authorities running a competition as to who can boast the longest queues in the remaining ones - has closed the two posting boxes sited on its outside wall. This is for Health and Safety reasons anounces the unblinking appended sign. I enquired further, well you would wouldn't you, and was told this was because the post collector had to bend down to take the letters out of the box. I know, I know; when I was a gal, etc etc. But it does make you wonder where it is all going to end and whether those of us who still have a sense of humour can hold on to it in the face of the humourectomy apparently undergone by the rest of the world. During opening hours, one can post letters in a box inside the Post Office. Later, one must just find a red what used to be called pillar box. I can't see that they are any more back-friendly than those on the wall, but then who am I to bring logic to a strange and po-faced world?
A more interesting gap has been in my contact with a young, sort of related, man. I hadn't seen him for about eight years: from little boy to early man. He had the ethereal look I remember from his childhood and the hair and appearance of the University student he is, currently. I think we both found it harder to re-connect than we would have done had our statuses (stati?) been the same as when we last met: he a child and I less of an old woman. The progression made it rather more difficult. I had never met this young man and could only sense the child I had known well. I think we both found it difficult to communicate after the facts of the gap in time were filled in. He seems a man who plays his cards rather close to his chest so even I, who rather prides herself on her white witch self with a well-honed intuition, could'nt say whether or not he enjoyed the reunion and would be prepared to repeat it. I did enjoy it but was, later, assailed by a sense of the loss of the years in between. They can never be regained. The legions of little stories, and big ones, for that matter, which had influenced and interested him, formed him, were lost to our common history. I would love to have had a visual and audio diary of the little nonsenses and big momenti that we should, automatically, have shared had things gone differently. What can I do, at this late stage, to bridle my over-romantic idea of the continuum and importance of relationships with no gaps? Grow up, I hear you say. Life is full of no signals. Prynhawn da.
Talking of gaps, I'd like to stretch the concept to include slots. My local Post Office, a grown up one with a site all its own, not shared with a shop nor anything else - those, nearby, having been closed by authorities running a competition as to who can boast the longest queues in the remaining ones - has closed the two posting boxes sited on its outside wall. This is for Health and Safety reasons anounces the unblinking appended sign. I enquired further, well you would wouldn't you, and was told this was because the post collector had to bend down to take the letters out of the box. I know, I know; when I was a gal, etc etc. But it does make you wonder where it is all going to end and whether those of us who still have a sense of humour can hold on to it in the face of the humourectomy apparently undergone by the rest of the world. During opening hours, one can post letters in a box inside the Post Office. Later, one must just find a red what used to be called pillar box. I can't see that they are any more back-friendly than those on the wall, but then who am I to bring logic to a strange and po-faced world?
A more interesting gap has been in my contact with a young, sort of related, man. I hadn't seen him for about eight years: from little boy to early man. He had the ethereal look I remember from his childhood and the hair and appearance of the University student he is, currently. I think we both found it harder to re-connect than we would have done had our statuses (stati?) been the same as when we last met: he a child and I less of an old woman. The progression made it rather more difficult. I had never met this young man and could only sense the child I had known well. I think we both found it difficult to communicate after the facts of the gap in time were filled in. He seems a man who plays his cards rather close to his chest so even I, who rather prides herself on her white witch self with a well-honed intuition, could'nt say whether or not he enjoyed the reunion and would be prepared to repeat it. I did enjoy it but was, later, assailed by a sense of the loss of the years in between. They can never be regained. The legions of little stories, and big ones, for that matter, which had influenced and interested him, formed him, were lost to our common history. I would love to have had a visual and audio diary of the little nonsenses and big momenti that we should, automatically, have shared had things gone differently. What can I do, at this late stage, to bridle my over-romantic idea of the continuum and importance of relationships with no gaps? Grow up, I hear you say. Life is full of no signals. Prynhawn da.
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