Thursday May 8, 2008
“Do you want the good news or the bad news?” Graham said when he called in the early hours.
I don’t much like this game. You lose whichever way you go. Even so, I played along: “I’ll have the good news, please.”
“Right. I think I made a mistake and told you it’d be Monday when I come home again. It’s not. It’s Sunday.”
“Oh, wow. That really is good news. Ok. I’m ready for the bad news now.”
“There isn’t any, not really. Unless you count the facts that I’m fed up with this lot and would rather be home.”
“I can understand the first. We can fix the second easy as easy. Shall I drive over now?”
Once we’d settled just how silly a suggestion that was we went on to dismiss my urge to go spend a couple of days on the cliffs. He can cope with me and Dolly. He can just about cope with the trannies. He gets doubtful at the thought of all of us together, though.
“I’m already getting all snappy,” he said. “Let’s leave it a few weeks.”
I’m a little disappointed. In compensation, though, there’s a heatwave blowing up and the caravan isn’t so comfortable when it’s really hot and especially when there’s a hot south-westerly wind blowing up with ambitions to become a sirocco.
“We’ll sit it out here, Dolly,” I said this morning as the house heated up.
She didn’t respond. Take energy, does a response, and Dolly’s go more sense than to waste energy.
Wednesday May 7, 2008
Graham is dug in to his commitment to keep the bar for trannie week. “They’ll all be gone on Monday,” he says. If it was me I’d be counting the days but he doesn’t do things like that.
I’m more or less adjusted to another few days at home alone with a disgruntled Mega-cat. I could go out for a drive but with petrol running up to £1.20p a litre I’m disinclined to use the car any more than strictly necessary. The electricity and gas bills that came in yesterday are helping me to think economy, too.
Dolly, of course and quite rightly, too, floats along in a furry cloud of immunity. It’s hot? No matter, stretch out and go back to sleep. It’s cold? No matter, curl up tight and do the same.
I have fixed my appointment with the breast surgeon in Weston Super-Mare (I’m afraid I’ve already started calling him the seaside tits man) for consultation (what I call a poke and prod) on May 21. For a ‘routine’ job that’s a gratifyingly fast response. I shall be pleased when this is done and dusted. My G.P. seems competent enough, and tells me there’s nothing to worry about, but there’s something ultimately reassuring about being given the message direct from the guy who’s going to have to wield the knife if surgery is necessary.
I’m wanting a bit of a holiday, or at least a short break from routine. I’ve been day-dreaming about the Norfolk Broads but it’s a long way. More immediately available to me is to shoot off with Dolly to bed down with Graham in the caravan tomorrow or the day after until he’s done for the week. I shall put it to him when we speak later today. Just a little break on the cliff-tops, listening to the sound of the sea. Do me a power of good, that would.
I knew I ought to keep a reference of those pesky Latin numerals that seemed like a good idea at the time.
These are the pictures I used in the July 2005 journal entries:
Tuesday May 6, 2008
Making slow progress today, after a fitful night, I found this quote in my entry for June 18, 2005:
“But I’d better say: I have no religion. I don’t need any, don’t practice any, I don’t pray, don’t meditate, don’t confess and don’t atone, I am no sinner and no saint, no eremite and no philosopher. I just live, amidst this colourful world, again and again enjoying the experience of the immediate nearness and the deep community with every thing existing, and based on the insight that everything belongs to one all embracing totality which becomes manifest in me like in all other things, and so gives me the security to live in the present, to enjoy day by day whatever they may bring.”
Yun-Men
It set me back for a bit, did that. Made me wonder if I ought not to think about it. I decided against:
A remarkably few years ago
I would say that I am such and such
and that I do thus and so.
Then, losing certainty, I relented,
forgot my such and such,
and stopped my thus and so.
Now, happy at last,
I find it doesn’t matter
either way.
–John Bailey
Somerset, May 2008
So, pottering in the garden with Dolly watching fondly from her favourite stepping stone in the sun, I picked up a few weeds, and sighed quietly over some slug-nibbled blossoms. And it doesn’t matter, really, either way.
Monday May 5, 2008
Rather busy here today what with one thing and another, not least of them returning Graham to the holiday camp and delivering him to his fate as barman to the trannies. I doubt I’ll be able to make a proper entry.
Until tomorrow, take care…
The author, webmaster, and minder of the cat