My uncle's house in a village on the south west of the island has at last been sold. (Exchange of contracts today)  With a lot of tactful prompting from me, HSBC's Probate Dept managed somehow not to muck up this second sale (I wrote about their incompetence last year)

The money is shared among seven cousins.  Most of my share will go straight to my sister - the money she lent me to get out of the Vanessa fiasco (tags ad nauseam)   And then my only debt is to the mortgage company.

But it is sad -  the last link going with my uncle, my aunt (she died in 1997) and the Isle of Wight, where I love to walk - on the hillls, on the seashore.  Their house was lovely - and the three acre garden magnificent.  Most of all I love walking round the garden, sitting, looking, breathing in the peace.

I would have liked to go back for one last time, on my own.  But because of the HSBC Probate Dept (in Sheffield!), I'd have had to be accompanied by an estate agent.

Considering my grandfather was an estate agent, and he made the family most of its money (although he pinched a lot from his father-in-law), I suppose that might be considered by some to be appropriate

Because of my mother's illness I delayed going to the dentist, and when I eventually got there she pronounced gum disease and prescribed antibiotics before the tooth could be removed.  In the lowe jawr right in the middle.

A friend suggested a second opinion, and today the second opinion bound the loose tooth to the next, solid, one and took the loose tooth's root out.

The something about the new dentist I don't like.  Maybe it's because he looks like a potato and is similarly humourless.  Maybe it's because he's private, but located in the Fulham Badlands,..

But most of all, I missed the NHS practice I've been going to for twenty or more years.  For some reason the fact that several dentists are practicing in parellel cubicles.  I became almost-friends with the dentists; one of them used to double up with laughter when he told him another slice of my life. 

He's left now.  His replacement is introverted and ridiculously young.  Still.  It may sound ridiculous, but my Camden Town Dental Practice has a nice vibe to it.

And Mr Potato Head's practice doesn't.  For the first time for years I felt uptight in the chair.

Plus he insisted I saw his hygenist (6 weeks after the last time) for a cost of £59.99 extra.  Nice to save the penny, I guess

Technically true - albiet only in my head.  But is it the first paragraph of a book I actually want to write?  Where is it going, where will it end?  Is it pure self indulgance?

My writing career has taken so long to come alive partly because I wrote a lot of first paragraphs without knowing what came next.  Each one of my projects toook ages to sort out in the editing and rewriting.

So this time it might be a thoroughly good idea to work out the plot first, and a list of likely chracters.

I don't want to write autobiography, but I do want to draw on my own direct experiences more than I have in Low Life Games.

One favourite fiction-writer's trick is to take a scene from real life and interpose a made-up event, or character or situation. For example make my mother my father and my father my mother. (No. I am kidding)

Sometimes I fancy writing a sort of detective story, but I'm not that much on forensics, not being able to get Five.

Science fiction perhaps?  I mean really weird, what if stuff....  well, if I can't explain my idea easily here, it's not likely to work.

What are these eyes telling you?

She started the business especially to help women frustrated by male geek-talkers, but her latest client is the most famous spoon bender in the world, who you may remember is male

Whatever.  Aged nine, I thought FUCK was spelt F-O-U-G-H.

I bought her the wrong kind of custard.

I pruned the Rosemary bush too drastically,

Fear of what?

Disapproval?  Death, annihilation?  Judgement, ridicule?

Of being abandonned?

Fear of imagination, nightmares?  Tunnels and small rooms, open spaces heights drowning fires

Fear of anger?  Mine or Yours?

Fear of fear?

My mind (and yours, too, dear reader) is one huge, complicated mental bureacracy.  Like all bureacracies is thinks it has the answer to everything; it believes it is in control because otherwise it thinks it would have no reason to exist  It makes decisions which the body sometimes grudgingly accepts or just as often rebels against. (Go on a diet; phone your mother; choose someone suitable to share your life with).  It plans the future, usually with little success.

It's prinicipal role, though, is to rationalise.  Our Minds Civil Servants rush around in huddles, desperate to come up with Reasons for our bodies errant, unpredictable, illogical behaviour - why we can't give up smoking just yet, why we left the pan to burn dry, why we are suddenly a bit of a success. 

The Mental Bureuacrats - like their counterparts in Government - a good at apportioning Blame.  Often the accusing finger is pointed at others, or Bad Luck.  But the Mind likes to blame our body too, or our weak Willpower.  It plays countless If Only games.  It makes new resolutions, comes up with new theories, explanations, hopes.  It will consider any possibility - except that we would all be better off if it stopped giving orders and listened instead.

Sadly, I can barely remember a single detail of them; but I sense they are more interesting than anything in my waking life, and they all fit together.  I've created a world I forget each time I wake up.  Inacessible but exciting.

I suppose it's possible that dreams are reality, and our waking life is merely a way to get tired enough to have more of them.

And my dentist, although she was standing in reception between appointments, refused to give me two minutes to discuss whether the extracted tooth could be attached, like a bridge, to its neighbour.  She refused to tell me if she could spare two minutes in a gap between appointments all morning.  Our conversation about whetherr or not she had time to have a conversation took well over two minutes...

She's either way scared of me despite my peace and calm, or she's a deep introvert.  (she looks barely older than Vanessa)  I can imagine her panicking if I suggested this bridging procedure.  Her predecessors - over 25 year period - actually liked me, and were prepared to use their skills to rescue my teeth, badly neglected in my adolescence.

This is a front tooth, and I'm afraid it'll weaken all the others.  So, reluctanly (and simplifying for blog-benefit) I'm having to go private.

Anyway, I walked from Camden Town to Baker Street, across the park, past lots of ble-flowering shrubs, and the Zoo, where last week the Apprentices made fools of themselves selling lolly pops.  Tonight is meant to be all about Fine Art....

Sleep is good.

Sleep is what I want more than anything elses in the world.  And nice dreams.

Listen. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. no good.

Macbeth hath murdered sleep, but he had a bad conscience.  Mine is crystal clear.

"Mr Jack Hungerfield?"

Police at the door.  He'd feared this half his life.  Jack was a changed man, but that wouldn't be enough mitigation.

"Can we come in, sir?"  Two females cops.  A pair of handcuffs dangled from the taller one's belt.

"Mr Jack Stanley Hungerford, Sales Manager at Haliford's Products?"

"Yes.  What's all this about?"  As if he didn't know.  They'd dug up the patio.  He'd been a fool to move.  Nowadays they could do anything with forensics. 

"What do you thinks it's about, sir?" 

Say nothing.  Deny everything.  At the time it hadn't felt particularly wrong, and Jack hadn't been a suspect.  He would never have killed his own wife.

"You are guilty of being too sexy!" the shorter one announced, unzipping her skirt.  They taller one turned on a Walkman with speakers.

A stripogramme.  It was Jack's birthday tomorrow.  They took off their caps and shook out their long blonded hair.  Soon they took off all their clothes except for the leather thongs.

"Wow!" he said, trying to enter the spirit of things.  He tremoved his jacket, loosened his tie, produced a sort of smile.

§ Contacted a longstanding good, graphic-designer friend about the book cover.  I've sent her a copy of the novel and we're hoping that one or other of us will come up with a suitable photogrphic image to photo-shop. (drawings are out of fashion)  The image has to arresting, subtle erotic - but not porno. Meanwhile

§Another (college trained photographer) friend is going to take some photos of her (girl) friend hoping to come up with something suitable.  If anyone reading this has any suitable images or suggestions, feel free to tell me about them.  I'll be paying a (symbolic) fee, and a credit.

§ The novelist who has read the last two drafts of Low Life Games (that's the title) is, for another fee of course, going to look at the manuscript as if she were the publisher's editor.  Maybe somebody's hair colour changes during the 35,000 words, maybe I need to explain something more, cut out a repetition, add more description, omit an adverb, that sort of thing.  It may be going to be self-published, but it ain't going to look amateur.

§ Hopefully a few other people will read it in manuscript form, too, and maybe make suggestions

§ Later this week I hope to talk to the friend who will help me with the publishing and one-at-a-time printing techniques he uses in his own business.  I have still to give a lot more thought to marketing and distribution.   Again, suggestions welcome.

§ Sooner or later I'll have to decide whether to use my own name as author, or Alec Weston, or come up with another.  (Incidentally, TKK, this is the main reason I haven't set up my own, independent blog site yet - which name to write under?)

How long will all this take?  god knows - but certainly less time than Virgin or Harper Collins (200 metres down the road from here) would take to publish my novel.

Dah?

Maybe hundreds of you have already reported this oxymoron, but I've been cut off from BCUK overnight and morning.  All other sites came up fast, but most of what I could see of Blog.co.uk was a whirring wheel at top right of phrame - no, frame.

Was everyone else cut off?  Apparently not.  BCUK came back by the simple expedient of rebooting.

At last my gum infection/incipient nervous breakdown seems to have lifted.  I'm feeling a lot anxious, a lot more humble - as if, for the moment, anyway - I'm not trying to be somebody I'm not.

Anyway, it was the first day I have seen my mother since she got quite a bit better, helped no doubt by her new anxiety pills. She can now hear a lot more, and that's before she gets her new hearing aid.  Her sight is bad, though.  She can barely read.

There is a big change in her - as if she is more resigned, more humble, too.  At last she has accepted that she may well have to go in a Nursing Home, soon.  It's very sad, and a great relief.

Everything I have previously said about her is true, but also irrelevant.  She is my mum.  We love each other, in a strange way - it would take a whole novel to define. (We hate each other, too - but I've written quite enough about that)

For the most part today we had a good time.

I drove back (in her car, which I have now to aid more frequent, easier visiting) over the Surrey Hills / North Downs - through woods full of bluebells, along lanes with hardly any other traffic.  T