Too Much To Declare

I want you there,
to avoid despair,
an alibi
so not to cry
a comfort toy
a deep sea buoy

but maybe I can swim

In the eighteenth century, I'm told, when people had orgasms they used to shout out, "I die, I die!"

Which, of course, would be hardly fair on her

I don't want to go all Not in Leeds on you again (an in-group reference for veteran BCUK bloggers), but I have decided, after some reflection, that I do not want to go to a Blogmeet - wherever it's held.

But, basically, everything I say here is true

In the last 10 years in the UK, ten walkers have been killed crossing fields by stampeding cows.

How do I know?  I have been reading the Guardian from cover to cover, waiting in vain for - say 8 - important phone calls

correction: This morning I am not attending a funeral of someone I barely knew.

This morning I am attending a funeral of someone I barely knew

Every Garden Gnome needs a door to enter their home. We are pleased to offer a great addition to our Garden Gnome collection.

Yes, it does happen to me sometimes...

I'm exhausted, emotionally off line

"Are you pregnant, miss?" Lindsey, bright but alway trouble, asked from the back row.

Cecilia Thompson, a teacher in her second year at St Kylie's School for Girls, had been dreading this moment. She had known one of her pupils would be the first to notice.

'Macbeth: Act 3', she announced, unconvincingly. 'Alison, please explain to us the role played by Banquo's ghost.'

Cecilia had been avoiding the staff room for weeks, and wearing a winter coat for Assembly. It would now be only a matter of time before the Headmistress, Devina Bradshaw, summoned Cecilia to her office and demanded to know the date of the wedding.

St Kylie's was a very strict school.

It felt so unfair. Cecilia had only slept with three men in her life; unfortunately, she had slept with them all on the same weekend.  Worst of all...

How could she have got herself into this terrible mess? Jonathan...

[your turn]

All my fine writing... cutting wit... startling insights into the human psyche... Forget it !

An illustration to accompany the last part of the post below:

It should be illegal for days to be so short, for occasional flacid sunshine and everlasting cloud.  England should be illegal for five months of the year.

If I were a pharmachologist, I would invent a pill that could put me to sleep from the day the clocks go back to the day Summer Time begins again.  Naturally, the pill would be designed - with fully organic, Fair Trade, non air-freighted ingredients - in such a way that the patient would not age during the months of hibernation.

Of course he'd use an assumed name to make sure she turned up.

Today, I didn't have to go down to my mother's, because her sister is staying with her this week.  Day carer helping out as well.

Since then I have been very lazing

(continued from previous post)
not like my father in every respect, of course.  please, no.
here is a long post from about 18 months back...

The the theft of the Grandfather Clock was, as it were, the last straw.

My father was coming up to his eighty-first birthday, living in the gathering mist of senilescence. That is, he could still, after a slight pause, remember who we all were; some of his mind was still working. But he had lost interest in philosophy, politics - and his financial affairs, now I had taken over managing them. None of the family could believe that the principal passions of his life had just... gone.

Dad still had an interest in sex, though.

Ever since he became an invalid, he'd had women looking after him. At first we had employed a series of middle-aged housekeepers with some nursing experience, but he kicked up a terrible fuss, bad mouthing them at every opportunity. He hated being "mothered". And employing a man (we did try once. Dad's sulk was epic) was out of the question.

By now he needed help 24/7. So my sister and I had to recruit a harem, maximun age 23. Language studentsor refugees, from Eastern Europe. Many passed through over a period of more than 3 years. Most were hardworking and sweet to him. The house was certainly more cheerful with them there.

But the one who stayed longest was a strange, disturbed young woman, who, I suspected had suffered a nervous breakdown during the horrors of the Yugoslav civil war. She never left my father's side, at least when i was there. I wanted to talk to him gently, father to son. We had a lot off issues between us - not all "private" - but Tania's presence and conversational interventions made it impossible to talk intimately. She wasn't good at taking hints.

Much worse than that, though, was the way she encouraged my father's fantasies. He was losing it - but slowly. So when he asked "where am I?" I thought it was a good idea to tell him the truth: a house in West Kensington he had bought ten years ago. Tania had another approach. On my arrival he would tell me "Today were are flying to New York. In this room!" My father looked pleased at the thought, but confused. They would build up the fantasy together,the house spinning over the Atlantic, miles from reality and me.

I would have sacked her. But my sister thought Tania was wonderful - sis always puts herself out for the underdog - in this case, the underbitch.

At last Tania went back to Croatia. We had three girls then. One afternoon, we all had tea in the main downstairs room where my father lived and slept. I had my back to one wall, my father, flanked by the girls sat in a line opposite. Dad touched one of the girl's knees and then exposed himself (it was easy, wearing pyjamas, but I'm sure it wasn't an accident.

The girl on the other side of my father covered him up. The girl he'd touched looked embarassed but didn't complain even when I talked to her afterwards. Maybe it was a regular occurence, but I don't think so. I think my dad wanted to show me he was still a sexual contender.

Our relationship was fraught and as complicated as relaiohsips can get. I'll have to write a lot of posts as long as this one even to begin to sort it out.

The harem was falling apart - the worry, the logistics, the cash to pay them, clearing up after dad incontinence. and I was in a pretty bad state as well, though at least i had my own flat to retreat to.

Then, a few days into the New Year, someone smashed the front door and stole the Grandfather clock in the hallway, worth £10,000 and uninsured. He/she/they went into the main room and saw my father in bed (he saw them, too, too confused to be worried) They were probably planning to strip the ground floor of anyhting they could find.

Next morning the police came round, with the CID to follow. One of the girls did a bunk, probably because she had visa problems, but we couldn't be sure.

After this there was no real choice: my father had to go into a Residential Care Home. He lived there just two weeks, and then died - three days before my birthday.

I am just like my father.

Oh, well. In the past, the mere fact of bogging about something that's bugging me has helped it go away - so here goes:

No alcohol or drugs, but the righthand side of my screen is going uphill.  So is my desk.

Or is it happening to all of you, too?

45 thousand square miles of forest are lost across the world each year

The energy demands of developed countries such as the United States have increased by 20% in the same period

Source: Global Environment Output 2007

12.  A cockroach can live nine days without its head, before it starves to death.

My ex-acting coach phoned this evening.  She wants me to accompany her to the funeral of a former colleague next week.

After five minutes we had a pilot episode!  Brilliant.  But of course nothing will come of it

Today, at last, ignoring an arm-long list of cosy reasons why not to yet, I began the process of throwing out stuff I have nor room or use for when I move from this house.

Extraordinary to relate, I am finding the process fun and definitely therapeutic.

by James Randerson in today's Guardian

The return to GMT this Sunday may help us get back in tune with the natural rhythm of night and day, according to research by German academics. The team found that the Central European equivalent of British Summer Time interrupts people's natural sleep cycle and claims that the spring time-switch may have adverse effects.

The team used data on the sleep patterns of 55,000 people in Central Europe. During the winter they found that wake time on days when people were able to wake up freely followed the contracting day length. Subjects rose just after dawn on average and rose later as the days got shorter. The mid-point of their sleep cycle was also in train with the dawn.

But this link was broken during the summer months. "The minute you introduce daylight time in the end of March, it stops following the dawn signal," said Thomas Kantermann at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich. "The social adjustment does happen, but the adjustment of the internal clock does not follow the seasonality any more. The internal clock is irritated and does not follow its natural stimuli." The team report their results in the journal Current Biology.

The team also carried out a more detailed study on the sleep and activity patterns of 50 people in the four weeks before and after a clock transition. While most people were able to quickly adjust to the clocks going back in autumn, in spring the activity pattern of the subjects did not adjust to the clocks going forward. And the changes were particularly difficult for people who prefer to be active in the evening rather than first thing.

It's come as quite a shock to me to realise that lots of people are both stupid and devious.  Somehow I thought the two failing cancelled each other out.

How silly of me

... not in god exactly, but all sorts of things I'd rather not.

and.
what right have you to be happy?

(continued from below)
When I got home (and could use a phone that worked) I found (on the other end of the line) that my mother was in a terrible state, marooned upstairs and unwilling to consider using the stairlift again.  (one of the bannisters she used to hold on to had to be removed for the lift to be fitted, so she has no way down)

Of course, this all means that my mother will have to have a live-in carer for the rest of her life, but that is a worry for tomorrow.

For me, today has been a bit like a Shakespearian play - most of the action off stage.  A Shakespearian farce.