journal of a writing man

Thursday May 31, 2007

I put my clippers back in the drawer and wiped down the counter top surface carefully one last time, and then I texted to Graham:

Not surprisingly, the phone rang shortly afterwards.

“You daft old coot. When you say ‘all’, what do you mean exactly?”

“Oh, fear not. I’m not bald. I left half an inch to an inch all over.”

“What’s it look like?”

“What I can see is fair to middling. I used the scissors to tidy up the loose ends. I suspect you’ll need to correct the back for me, though.”

“Can’t wait to get home and tackle quite a lot of loose ends.”

“Me neither.”

It really does seem to have been a long week and there are still a couple of days to go. We’re both of us finding these separations hard, me from being home alone and Graham from being away from home when there’s still a deal to do about the house and garden.

We shall have to see how the summer goes.

Apart from correcting the slide into my long white-tressed Walt Whitman mode I’ve also tackled another bit of the general downwards slide. I looked at my bottle of wine this evening, sighed, and put it back in the fridge for another day. I’m cutting the booze out for a while. It’s mostly because of my spreading girth–there are an awful lot of calories in a bottle of wine–but also because I have detected in myself this past couple of weeks just the teensiest degree of dependence. I’ve been down that road once before, many years ago, and have no intention of going back there again.

Managing the process of growing older is almost entirely a matter of keeping control of the general downwards slide, turning it from a headlong rush into a gently undulating plateau. It takes hard work and determination and, or so I imagine, the older you get the harder the work becomes and the more the determination is needed.

I’m confident I’m still safely on my own personal plateau but I do acknowledge that the path has been undulating rather more than usual this past couple of months. During times like this I keep the words of the old song in my mind:

There may be trouble ahead
But while there’s moonlight
and music and love and romance
Let’s face the music and dance.

Between the two of us we seem always to be able to find a lyric that fits the situation. I do the golden oldies and Graham handles most of the newer stuff from Marc Bolan onwards. Not a bad team when pitch comes to shove.

Wednesday May 30, 2007 

I’ve been over at the caravan with Graham all day so Dolly was ready for a bit of a fuss and a lot of water when I got back.

The first thing she demanded was a good long drink of water. She has three sources of water, in order of preference (her preference): the water feature in the garden; the kitchen tap; her stainless steel water bowl on the floor, scrubbed clean and refilled every morning and almost never touched. Guess which one she wanted.

Did you guess the outside water feature, all bubbling, fresh, and ready for the slurping? Sorry. You got it wrong. She poked her nose out into the garden, caught a scent, the merest whiff of rain, and ran back in as thought the floods were about to descend upon us.

Cats, as Lewis Carroll said, are mad…

She is perfectly capabable of jumping up to the counter unassisted, and always jumps down on her own. For some reason she demands a lift from a passing monkeyface to get up, though.

So, I lifted her up, turned on the tap, poured myself a mug of coffee, and stood there, click-clacking on my phone’s keyboard to tell Graham that all was well:

Wandering around the garden to check that yesterday evening’s thorough watering and today’s showers have been sufficient to keep things going through to tomorrow–they were–I marvelled at the way almost all of the plantings have taken and leapt into growth.

Only one exception. A twiggy shrub whose name I do not know has sat there being twiggy since the day it was planted. Not a single new leaf. Graham says to give it a while, that it’s probably building a new root system. I say that if it doesn’t buck its ideas up it’ll soon be compost, and a new, different plant put in its place.

Then, the evening getting really rather chilly and the sky getting ready for another heavy shower, I came back inside, popped the cork on my evening wine, and slammed my dinner in the oven.

The only thing on TV was the start of this year’s Big Brother, which I did not watch.

Tuesday May 29, 2007

“Well, this is the morrow, Dolly,” I said. “Let’s see if it’s brought us anything interesting.”

The sun was peeking round the edges of the blinds, so that looked promising. I opened the door onto the patio and stepped outside. Bright, but chilly and a little breezy. Didn’t look as though it’d rained overnight, though, so I tried the grass with my bare foot. Not quite dry enough, but it’ll get there.

Dolly came out just then, testing the air. Too breezy for her, so she went back inside to yowl for me to lift her up to the kitchen counter for a drink at the tap, out of the wind.

“You are turning into a right wimp of a cat, Dolly,” I said, doing my duty and turning the tap on just so and leaving her to it while I poured my first coffee. I stood by her, sipping my wakeup juice and gazing out of the window. The garden looked good but otherwise there wasn’t a lot going on out there, not at five-thirty, there wasn’t.

“I don’t reckon the morrow has got round to morrowing yet, Dolly.”

It didn’t all day, either. Not much of a morrow at all, really.

I did get to cut the grass and collect a ‘well done’ from Graham, though, which was gratefully received. I suspect that a morrow with a ‘well done’ in it is about as much as I can expect right now. In the circumstances.

Monday May 28, 2007

I don’t think there’s going to be an entry today. I’ve scanned my notes for the day and, although it’s been a happy day, and busy, I don’t seem to have done, seen or even thought of anything worth reporting. Just a standard, dull, British Bank Holiday.

Who knows what the morrow may bring?

Sunday May 27, 2007

It’s raining out there. There’s a single blue balloon tied to a railing down the street proclaiming Happy Birthday! but if there’s any other sunshiney jollity in my view I can’t see it. Not even on tippety-toe can I see it.

So, I’m going to spend the day alternating between old photographs, the food cupboard, and my couch.

The blue balloon has burst. Not too surprising given the battering it’s had in the wind.

And still it rains. The wind is blowing up now, reminding me of earlier Somerset days when Dolly and I had a senior colleague to keep us in line.

The wind is building up now, sending lighter objects bouncing across the patio. And it’s getting prematurely dark. I’ll be drawing the blinds very shortly, ’shutting the day out’ as my mother used to say. Then, tomorrow, it’ll be Monday. If the wind stays and the rain goes we’ll have a fine drying day tomorrow.

Not long after I drew the blinds the wind rose to howling levels. The rotary washing line I’d folded up and stowed in a corner of the patio was blown down to crash against the french door and onto the decking step. No harm done except to Dolly’s dignity as she was woken so rudely from her fugue state nap, looking out at the weather from behind the curtain. I nipped out quickly to pick up the wayward contraption, untangle the line, and wedge it away more securely.

And, throughout the evening and right into the small hours and beyond, the wind blew, the rain fell, and Dolly and I sat comfortably in our nice brick house. You can’t really hear the wind much, not in a nice brick house you can’t.