journal of a writing man

Sunday July 31, 2005

“I hereby declare this to be a holiday, Dolly,” I said, standing in the kitchen doorway contemplating a damp, drizzly, rather chilly and miserable day.

Dolly was too busy sleeping to answer. She’d already delivered her verdict on the day.

And, really, it wasn’t a day for doing much. Certainly not for going out anywhere.

I did do a couple or three necessary things. First, I had two difficult business-type letters to write, the one’s I hate and will put off if I possibly can. These I couldn’t, so I gritted my teeth and sat down to get them done.

Then I picked up the journal photographs archive task, finishing the uploads and going on to organize them, roughly, into ’sets’. The results are [were: the page became defunct when we left Lincolnshire] to be found on my Flickr page and, barring accidents and serious omissions, bring the project to completion.

From now on I intend to use Flickr to display future photographic projects as I work on them. When I have time I’ll put a ‘recent photographs’ box in the side bar of my front, blog-style page, not on the individual journal entry pages. My impression is that hardened journal readers prefer those pages to be as clean and clutter free as possible. There’s another advantage in that, should I change my mind about a side-bar entry, I have only one HTML page to fix. I haven’t quite decided how to continue with my photoblog but I’m working on it.

My computer work done, I took advantage of the lull in what has been a series of busy days to make up for some neglect in my piano practice. I’ve been doing the daily exercises all the way through, but not with the full diligence I ought. I’ve not had time for working on more advanced stuff at all, so today I made up for it. I can now work through Bach’s Minuet in G major, BWV 114 without errors, though at a stately, slow pace. I find presently that I can’t manage anything faster than a rather slow Allegro, the sort of thing that an accomplished contemporary pianist might describe as Lento Molto. My fingers and wrists simply aren’t up to anything faster and it may be that fast is something I’ll have to live without.

This is something that discourages a lot of folks, I’m sure. We all have the most incredible, devastatingly beautiful professional musical performances available to us at the touch of a button and, if you let it do so, you can give up your own efforts in despair, thinking you’ll never be able to match them. That attitude is the most dreadful shame and has, over the years since I was a kid, led to a decline in home music making that’s now reached almost terminal proportions.

Of course most of us will never be able to match the skill and artistry of the great musicians of our time. Doesn’t matter a damn. There’s nothing quite like the feeling you get when you make your own music, no matter how faltering and imperfect your performance. Can’t play it at the marked speed? Doesn’t matter. Play it slower; if you look at original versions of Bach’s keyboard compositions I think you’ll find he didn’t put tempo markings on them. He was a realistic old guy and I’d sure he’d nod approvingly at anyone’s honest efforts to play his music, saying something along the lines of “Do the best you can, but do it.”

Finally, sitting down in the evening after dinner, watching something really rather dreadful on TV, I got hit by one of those stray poetry particles I love so much. To my great joy a genuine poem formed in my otherwise empty head, and went on to find its way on to paper with very little difficulty. I’ve put it through one revision, and may do some more but to be honest I’m so pleased to find that my poor over-used and neglected muse has forgiven me and made a showing once more that I’m taking the Bach approach: “Do the best you can, but do it.”

I should perhaps hasten to say that the poem has absolutely nothing to do with today’s picture, which comes from a completely separate creative stream altogether.

A boy and his dog Pencam photo<br

Saturday July 30, 2005

It’s been what I call a bitsa day. You know, bits of this, bits of that.

I fear I may have started out by getting the car salesman into a spot of bother. When I phoned to see why he’d not returned my call from yesterday he wasn’t there and it was his boss who picked up the phone. I told him the problem. “I’m sorry about that.” he said. “He will call you the minute he’s back in the office.” Sounded stern. About the same as I’d have done if I’d picked up a similar call in my business days.

In a remarkably few minutes the phone rang and there was my salesman, slightly ruffled by the sound of him, telling me the handbook was on his desk ready for me to collect. I felt a little sorry for him but all the twerp had to do was return a call. Oh well, he’ll learn. Or not. It’s not my affair.

So I pitched into the morning house clean routine, left all neat, tidy and sparkling clean, and took myself and the little silver Ford off to Boston. Oh. Boy. It was a muggy, ultra-humid day so I slapped the air-conditioning on, set it to recirculate, and within a couple of minutes I was revelling in dry, cool air. It wasn’t a fast run but even so I was almost sorry when I pulled up at the dealer’s, turned off the engine and stepped out. That was when I got the payback for my shameless, self-indulgent comfort-fest. Getting out of an air-conditioned car into hot, damp air was something I’d quite forgotten.

However, the salesman met me, handed over the owner’s manual that he’d forgotten to give me on Thursday, and we shook hands and parted company in good sorts. He could have done with some air-conditioning, that bloke. His hand-shake was as limp as ever but even more damp. As clammy as three-day-old salmon, you could say.

Hey ho. Honour was satisfied. I’ve checked carefully all over the car to be sure there’s no other unfortunate omission, so I hope not to have to revisit the dealer until October when I take it back for a thorough re-check to be sure all the nuts and bolts and mysterious adjustments are in good order. By the time the first real service is due, in July next year, we should be back in Somerset and I shall be able to take it to White’s in Taunton, not more than a short stroll from the County Library, and only a few steps further on to Starbuck’s. That’ll please me.

So, off to Tesco’s where I had my wicked lunch of the week—sausage, chips and beans washed down with black Assam—and picked up my provisions for the next three days. Walking through to the food aisles I passed a display of low-price audio CDs and decided to blow four quid on a Don McLean ‘best of’ album with which to start my in-car collection. I’ve never used a CD player in a car before so it was a strange feeling to feed my new record into the slot, and even stranger to hear the music start. American Pie is the first track on the album. Haven’t sat and listened to that properly in a lot of years. It was much like being in a time machine. Air-conditioned car, my own master, and American Pie. I sang along all the way through, finding all the words still safe in my memory after all these years. Then, Vincent, and I sang that, too, and wiped my moist eyes, just as I used to do.

And that’s the way the journey back home went. When I got to the turn off to our lane the album was still only half-way through and it was awfully tempting to carry on until the music stopped. Silly thought, and I didn’t follow it through. Instead I came home, unpacked, locked the car up in the garage until the next excursion, and went indoors to stow the stuff away, make coffee, and settle down to the computer to carry on uploading photographs before taking my afternoon nap.

I was just getting to the bottom of my wake-up coffee when the door bell rang and there stood the guy who’d viewed the house yesterday. “Do you think we could have another look?” Darn right they could. I let them have free run of the place while I made coffee and we sat and chatted for a while, going over what was included and what was not. They were wise enough not to say whether they’d be putting in an offer but said instead that they were going home to Suffolk to think it all over and would let me know one way or the other on Monday. I waved them off down the lane and thought, privately, that the odds had moved up to 70/30 in our favour.

Ah, well. We shall see on Monday. I intend to be standing outside the agent’s door when they open, to be sure that they are not going to charge the same fee for a sale at the lower price, and to re-state, to the boss’s face, that either they arrange a firm sale by the end of the contract or I’m taking my business elsewhere. I don’t care what they have to do to sell the house. What I do care about is that they should jolly well earn their money.

A quick conference with Graham, and then I went back to the computer to finish the upload of all the journal photographs I care to re-publish, and then going on to start the task of organising sets by subject. Flickr is getting better, with fewer interruptions, but even so I shall be glad when the job is done. Then I shall be able to turn my thoughts to the way I want to handle photographs on the Internet in future. Apart from a few flurries of intense activity I’ve been almost as fallow on the photography these past few months as I have been and still am on the poetry. I intend to rectify both failings.

And that was my day. Bitsa this. Bitsa that. You know how it goes.

The day the music started over

Friday July 29, 2005

This morning I almost fell into the trap of wishing for quieter times. Three major tasks in my to-do list, all of them involving difficult telephone calls. Not my favourite activity.

Knowing the foolishness of wishing for quiet times, however, I set to the first task and called the estate agents to deliver an ultimatum—reduce the asking price to ‘x’, re-advertise, and sell our house before the end of the contract or I shall terminate. I was at my best, cool, assertive self. Sometimes I’m grateful for those truly dreadful assertiveness courses I suffered when I was a working manager. The reception was coldly polite and I put the phone down thinking the message had arrived but no-one was home to hear it.

Then the Ford dealer, reporting the missing owner’s handbook. The salesman dealing with me was not available so another of his breed took my message and said they’d call me back. They didn’t. Another firm, assertive phone call heads my to-do list for tomorrow.

Finally, to the bank, speaking to the team that handles my accounts, asking for their help in a minor problem area. That was, as I expected, handled professionally and swiftly. Perhaps they should send car salesmen to banking school. Yes, I did say ‘banking’. I doubt they need additional practice in an alternate spelling of the word.

Then I sat back, congratulated myself on a job well done, and resumed the increasingly tedious job of loading archive photographs to Flickr. Their servers are still being tediously slow and subject to long intervals of non-availability. It’s clear that they know they have problems because for an extended period the whole site was down, showing a message to tell me that ‘Flickr is having a massage’. Highly droll.

All I need to make me a happy customer in these circumstances is a straight forward message in plain English saying that, yes they have a fault, it’s caused by ‘x’, and they’re working on it, hoping to be finished by ‘y’. Like most other Internet service suppliers they don’t do that. I tried to find out more on the forum page where, in the middle of tediously repeated help requests from users, they have a staff member monitoring and, occasionally, responding; sadly, that page was ‘not available’.

It’ll get better, I know that. Flickr is recently become a part of Yahoo!, and they have the resources to solve any problem. Currently, Flickr is getting wide, and appreciative cover in the popular technical media. Yahoo! would not appreciate the loss of that good publicity.

Just as I was taking a late morning coffee break, the phone rang. It was the estate agent, telling me that they have a couple wanting to view the house. Hallelujah! I confirmed the time and put the phone down, reflecting on the effectiveness of thinly veiled threat when applied to the gel-haired estate agent breed.

That was when I panicked, and embarked on a two-hour intensive house-clean and making-ready-for-viewing session. Haven’t worked so hard in a long time, and I was perspiring heavily when it was done. The house sparkled, though, was well-aired, and smelled fresh and inviting.

Nice couple. From Suffolk, they told me they were sold, under pressure from their buyers to complete, and in need of a fast transaction. I told them that I’d have no problem with that and could easily make a mid-September completion. The body language behind their enthusiastic reception of that obliged me to conclude that they were being economical with the truth. Nevertheless, I waved them off down the lane feeling reasonably optimistic that they might just go ahead. I give it a slightly better chance than 50/50. I’d be delighted if I were proven to be wrong.

Following on that, a conference with the local couple wanting to buy our house, informing them of the drop in price and the increase in urgency. They were delighted, and set to the job of re-instructing their estate agent accordingly. I’d really like to sell the house to them and they know that. They are realistic, though, and do not expect me to hold up any deal for their sake. A little later there was a flurry of activity from their house and garden, with much cutting of grass, sweeping, and cleaning of windows. They’re a decent, hard-working family, and I like them immensely. Not to the extent of delaying any possible alternate sale, however.

And, finally, a quiet evening, playing with Flickr when it was up, and enjoying a background screening of Twister—one of my favourite movies for easy viewing.

When I hit the pillow I was happy and relaxed, and deliciously tired, dropping off to sleep almost immediately. Can’t complain at that, even though I had been obliged to deal with both car salesmen and estate agents in the course of a busy day.

Thursday July 28, 2005

I’m a sentimental old fool. Not saying that as a complaint, or to gain sympathy, just as an observation of fact.

It was a grey, drizzly day, eminently suitable for my mood as I drove the little blue Ford on our last journey together, to the dealer in Boston. I should have given her a last clean and shine but time had run out on me and all I could do was to collect my in-car stuff into a black plastic bag—reminiscent of other melancholy days, leaving an office for the last time—and see that we had a smooth, safe trip. Can’t remember when last I drove so deliberately, so carefully…

The only vacant space in the customer carpark was right next to the new car, gleaming, all ready to collect. Oh, boy but that was a sad irony. My old friend looked so tired and shabby sitting there. I left a respectful distance between the two vehicles, gave the little blue Ford one last grateful pat on the roof, and stalked off into the showroom in search of the salesman.

That was when the fun started. Not. I had to sit there going through mounds of paper, signing this, checking that, agreeing to this, nodding to that. It took two and a quarter blessed hours to go through all the formalities. Goodness knows how long it takes if there’s credit involved.

I’m sorry I have to confess it but I don’t much like car salesmen as a breed. I’ll not malign this particular one because he was no worse and actually a helluva lot better than most. Even so, it was rather like shaking hands with yesterday’s cold salmon when we finally concluded the deal. That should be it, I thought, sinking gratefully into my lovely new car. I shouldn’t have to deal with another car salesman for a few years now, with luck.

Sadly, my luck was running thin because, late in the day, I discovered he’d forgotten to leave the owner’s handbook and service record in the car and I shall have to go back again tomorrow to pick it up. Or demand a replacement. Aw, shucks.

Anyway. I love my new motor. It’ll be known as the little silver Ford, of course. I don’t give cars names anymore. Bad enough when you come to part with them as it is.

And that was my day. Excitement and pleasure tempered with melancholy. Like I say, I’m a sentimental old fool.

Good-bye little blue Ford…

…and Hi-yo Silver!

Wednesday July 27, 2005

One of those strange, time-shifted days that happen when your sleep patterns are out of kilter.

I was up late last night, not feeling sleepy, and happily occupied with uploading photographs to Flickr. Graham’s working day doesn’t end until the bars close so his ‘goodnight’ call doesn’t generally come until shortly after one a.m. Normally, I am asleep then so it’s no more than a dozy exchange of all’s well greetings. When I’m up and about, though, it’s a more protracted exchange of news and gossip.

I went to bed shortly after that, no more than an hour afterwards, anyway, and woke correspondingly late. That shoved my shopping expedition back, and lunch even more so. More like tiffin than lunch.

My late afternoon siesta was interrupted by a call from Graham. He’d been thinking about the house sale position and said it’d be a good idea for me to contact the present agents urgently. “Give them a bit of a dressing down,” he said. I was reluctant, but couldn’t argue because he was right.

I made myself a strong wake-up coffee, and called the blighters, putting it to them that they were doing a less than acceptable job. The outcome of that and a subsequent exchange with Graham is that we shall be giving them a month more in which to sell our house at a considerably reduced price. If they fail, they will be under notice to terminate the contract and I shall then instruct new agents, on a much firmer basis. We’re tired of being kept at the bottom of some lazy gel-haired twerp’s file. Grrr.

Then, after a brief consultation with Dolly, I decided my siesta was incomplete. I turned the coverlet back, snuggled in, and went back to sleep. Bad mistake.

When I woke at ten to eleven in the evening I could not, for two or three minutes, work out where the hell I was, nor what time of day it was. It was dark when it should have been light and, allowing for a sleep-in, the bedside clock read 22-something instead of 08-something.

Oh, lackaday. Quite appropriately, really lack-a-day.

So, here I am, on a Wednesday that’s morphed strangely into a Thursday, just about to eat my dinner at a time when a late-night raid of the fridge would be rather more appropriate, and still needing to sort and assemble documents and stuff ready for the car exchange tomorrow. Except that it’s going to happen today.

If I weren’t feeling so good I’d complain about being confused. Oh, to hell with it, I’m entitled to complain if I want to. I’m confused.