Too Much To Declare

• It's been suggested to me that the best cure for my recent habit of waking up at 4 or 5 am and not being able to sleep again is to stay in bed until at least 6 am.

• After a few nights you get so bored doing this you sleep on to a more reasonable time.

• Now I haven't had a joint for 10 days, but it's much too early to talk about my former addiction.  Except for a few short holidays abroad I have smoked hash every day for the past eighteen years - following 20 years or so when my use was less regular.

But my smoking wasn't the odd evening, and I did it less and less in company.  I have never smoked a straight cigarette in my life, so part of the buzz probably came from nicotene.  Also, I started smoking on a daily basis at about the time I was advised and then discovered for myself that my health and digestive system suffered when I drank alcohol. I've never been particulary fond of booze and hate feeling drunk, so avoiding it has been easy.  On the other hand, I'm no puritan.  Reality on its own often felt dull.  Why not smoke my way to the land of fantasy?

I rationalised it thus: all my life I had thought too much.  I had been to practical, so self critical, so - and regular readers will know I am tediously often writing about this - so aware of my Mother.  Smoking would obliterate my Mother.  But, of course it didn't.  In fact long term dope smoking (even at the relatively low levels I maintained - five to ten joints a day) makes you paranoid.

No, I'll stop here for now.

I got a hostile reception in the Freeholder's Meeting last night.

Someone else:  Why don't we schedule the work oveer three years, so people can manage the payments more easily?

Oh, screw them.  If being sent to Coventry is the price for outmanoevring someone who was trying to sell me a flat for too much than here we are.

Oh, look.  I have slept until half an hour later today.

Yippee!  To celebrate my first three months here in Brighton, I needs must go to my first Freeholder's Meeting of all the flats in this block.  It will combine excruciating boredom and social embarrassment with crucial decisions about necessary massive building repair work...

I met someone the other day who claimed she was never affected by the weather.  Rain, freeze, or shine made no difference to her moods.

Some people are driven by their hormones. I'm driven by sunshine - and the moon when relevant.

Forget sleep (see below).  I have spent the last two hours researching off-the-shelf, self-assemble book-shelving.  Mostly office type stuff which is ugly.

Well, you didn't expect me to do it all on my own, did you?

Here I am, half past four again, already awake for... well, to begin with I try not to open my eyes and check.

That way, insomnia can sound almost glamorous.

It's so much easier to go round and round in circles than break out in a new direction... I might get lost, I might get hurt.

The fact is after a long, long time I am breaking a habit (illustrated below) that became an addiction and then a drag.  It's not proving easy - I've just spent a week without smoking a joint, and something comforting feels missing.

Dear Mr Easton   ,

S. Crabs
Customer Services

possibly asleep

Your search - "angels flying off with her" - did not match any documents.

Aged nineteen, with a couple of friends, I spent four months driving to eastern Iran and back in a Land Rover. (one of my friends had a Trust Fund).

Our first proper port of call was Istanbul.  We stayed in the YMCA.  Although we were used to dormitories from our years at public school, the YMCA dormitory was a whole new experience.

For a start, talking did not stop after lights out - in fact, it got louder.  Loudest of all was an opinionated Australian - the first ozzie I had ever met, and at the time there weren't many on films, radio or TV.  His voice went on and on and on.  Whenever he stoppped, some meek idiot - maybe scared of the silence - fed him another question.

2 am, 3, 3.30...   "Oh yeah!  Methodists can do it six times a week, but not on Sundays, for religious reasons.    But the Pope only allows Catholics to have sex once a week on Thursdays, and then only with permission from their priest. Jews can do it all the fucking time. "

"BULLSHIT" contributed a hitherto unheard American voice from the bunk below me.  Momentary silence.  Soon after that I fell asleep.

The next day we had a meal with the gravel-voiced American, maybe a drink in a hotel bar.  Four young men.  The American was clearly the most experienced.  He'd spent over a year in Europe chatting girls up. "English girls are really easy," he exclaimed, shocked we didn't know.  (I'm sure he'd included Welsh and Scottish girls in his participatory observation). 

He'd dance with them - and after a few steps would whisper "let's fuck" in her ear.  Some would walk away, some would pretend not to hear. "Let's fuck".  Usually. he claimed they agreed the second time...

BULLSHIT.

Mind you, I have never dared try this technique.  And this was in 1962, before we'd been told there had been a sexual revolution

It was probably his American accent that the britettes found so seductive.

The Duchess of Devonshire yesterday recalled having tea with Adolph Hitler, while on a Bavarian motoring holiday with her mother and one of her sisters, Unity Mitford.  "The towels (in the bathroom) had 'AH' embroidered on them - and somehow that brought to mind an ordinary person you might meet anywhere."

No wonder some of my friends think me weird.  Must take my towels to the embroiderers in the morning.  Or should I design a special 'AW' monogram first?

Oh, come on!

it has to mean something

is nothing sacred?

..... ¶

Meanwhile, he sits, silent, at first facing a direction I have still to decide.

Sometimes I feel like a vegetarian alligator, arraigned in front of a War Crimes Tribunal (aka my family) for breathing too loudly.

"Don't be paranoid," the tribunal's chairperson says, anonymously.  "We can give you Life for paranoia, without parole."

Sometimes it's easy to forget that Dubya's still there. But  we've got 8 months left of him.  And, let's face it, the guy will want to make its mark on history. End his Presidency with a Bang not a Whimper.

The Washington Post reports

Before the 2nd World War, the Daily Mail used to cheer people dressed in all black uniforms.  They were called fascists, who were neither polite or litter conscious.

Unfortunately, I feel the need to mention 'my' plumber again.  The one I slaughtered - but only, sadly, in fantasy.

At the time I thought his motives were psychological, possibly because I had the wrong, posh accent. Class war, ha, ha.

Why am I awake?

I am the warden of my own prison.

I am not being as forthcoming as I could be at the moment.

When I can only guess half-truths about you?

The art of business, even more than the art of politics, often involves getting other people to take the credit for things which you yourself have thought up or negotiated.

Thank god for my pseudonimous blog!  I can breifly assert my bragging rights without running the danger of upsetting the deal.

Today I will wear a mask for most of the morning.  And it's only partly to avoid cigarette smoke at the entrance to Brighton station,

Actually the electrician and his apprentice are both friendly and intelligent.  The main man (mains man ha ha I didn't sleep much last night give me another triple espresso) is lying on the floor behind me, taking photos of inside the cavity wall where he's got to feed a cable.

Which makes me a bit self conscious about writing (make that a quadruple espresso) anything at all.

Stop bullying me.

I hide under the sheets, a shaking child, failing with fingers in my ears to block out the hatred.

Or do the opposite of what the bully wants, however sensible - the opposite, like a teenager fumbling for a better way of living.  Do it wrong, so the bully can feel righteous.  Ball me out for the chaos.  His anger, though, is far more chaotic.

I wish I could stop thinking so much.

Even 24 hours without all that kind of thought would be magnificent.

It is 5 am.  I've been awake for 40 minutes now, and - if recent precedent serves - I'll be lucky if I sleep again.

Still tonight (although by now it has to count as early morning), the wind is moving, bubbling.

"The great thing about being 40" my aunt comforted me on the birthday in question "is that from now on you needn't (or won't - it's some time ago) care what other people think"

Unless my mother ever manages to pay a visit.

#
February 1969. I am having a torrid, off-the-cliche-shelf adulterous affair with a researcher working for me at the BBC.

The marriage in divorce, too much later

Wow!  This, I am assured by the decidedly unsatirical L.A.Times, is Hillary Clinton's latest - and probably last - official election poster:

On the long and winding road to self-publish my novelette Low Life Games, I had one firm date in my diary - today's, 17th May 2008.  A self-publishing conference, possibly the UK's first, to be held in Brighton, my new home town.

It had disappeared from my Bookmark's list - or the site had been rewritten.  I googled the appropriate words - and the only relevant entry (at number 2) was my own post on the subject back in March.  At the time safriz commented

Eating out for the nth time this week (kitchen still not functioning), the empty brasserie is suddenly filled with merriment, show business-looking people presumably down for the Brighton festival. Some know each other, some don't.

Er?  I know he's an incompetent idiot - but exactly why do we need a Prime Minister who is good at mustard cutting?  It's about the most stupid proverb ever

Even allowing for the fact that mustard is not only that stuff that gets up your nose and is wasted on a plate - but also one of the brilliant yellow-flowered plants that bloom so exuberantly in the Britricide at this time of year - isn't it best cut by farm machinery, as badly illustrated here?


Personally, I would never describe  a tractor as something that "really cuts the mustard"

I have low and unispired ever since the builders moved in to my kitchen on Tuesday. 

Meanwhile, I'm keeping my madness to myself.  And to you, daer blog-diary

I get up to check if my hair has gone white while I have been trying to sleep.

Good news.  On my pillow, every last strand has fallen, dark as it ever was.

This is my 2000th post on Too Much To Declare, since it began in October 2005.  Several repeats, but many more deletions.

I enjoyed doing it, so no doubt I can plead insanity.

"You need a new sink," the plumber said with triumph.  Because neither or his boss were  around he'd taken another half hour break.

Uber-macho bastards.  Only happy when they have made me feel I don't belong in my own house. 

Sometimes I feel the world would be a better place if all men, bar me, were gay.

There it goes again -
The bleeding obvious.
Betray me, baby,
Then at least I could sing an aria.
Or pontificate and scream
Let me feel the energy
As you try to scratch my eyes out.

Isn't it beautiful?  I suppose I should finish clearing the kitchen, ready for the builder tomorrow.

But, you know I can't be bothered.

At last the Big Day has arrived.  Athough infact it arrives tomorrow.

(4) The sun is out.  My shorts are on.  The world is sensual.

¶ I guess, for a guy, I cry easy, but let me try these on you. 

I can't shake off my mood of desperation.  Not Sunday blues, but because of what happened yesterday with my mother, some of which I described here.

Anyone feel like playing the Agony Aunt?

Today was a partucuallarly frustrating day with my mother.

The place is like a middle class thing-Vaizey. I eschew(spelling?) all physical violence.  Still, I do hope, I get, one day to the gates of heaven sp I can bribe St Peter to treat my mother's village as a Puitainical Gomorrah and turn each and every inhabitant into a pillar of salt.

reprise

A romantic dinner for two.  They have reached the point in the meal when normally he would order a second bottle of champagne, but this evening he feels uneasy, upset.  To be honest, a little angry as well.

•

This afternoon, I had a 77 minute phone call with British Gas on an 0845 number.  I stayed very calm - resistance is useless, I thought.   At the end of which I had been told:

How much an hour can I charge British Gas for my time?

Now, I want you to take a deep breath and close your eyes...
...........................................................................................

(until I get round to making a podcast, I guess you'll be out of circulation for a while)

The couple I set next to at Bertolucci's tonight were very dreary.  Flat voiced teachers in their fifties.  In their dotage.

General merriment.  It's probably the closest they'll get to sex for months.

Oh what a beautiful morning,
Oh what a beautiful day!
I've got a wonderful feeling,
Everything's coming
(or going?)
My way.    (¶Rodgers and somebody)

Or not.
time of the month, time of my life, freak weather conditions, good intention paving, road to damascus not that one again, nineteenth nervous breakdown that's more like it, cue for a song, happy, horrendous, confused to the nth degree, over the rainbow, over the edge, too much to declare, over the top, wet dream epiphany, past my sell by, juveline delinquent, out of it, full of it, deflated, hopeful, hopeless, how do you spell that? culture clashed, High Noon, this postcode is illegal.
Mayday, mayday.

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The fact is, I had a wonderful, happy morning having a Pilates lesson (I wanted too write all about, but see below) then walking along the front, stopping to gaze into the sea...

Unless I had an unconcious need to beat myself up for feeling so good in the morning.

Plenty of words in my head.

But they won't come out through my fingers

I could describe, hilariously, how I lost my mobile phone on Saturday, my attempts to phone 6 separate lost property offices yesterday (lets hear the cheers for privatised railways)  and my purchase of a new phone and SIM this morning which probably won't work for 2 days.

All you need to know is that after this frustrating, tedious, bureacratic day, I suddenly find myself feeling shockingly horny.

<< I am circular.  I am impervious.

Human beings are very interesting creatures

Interesting creatures are beings human very blah

In fact I'm arrogant but a little dim >>

Thank you, Uncle Google:

 
"This T-Shirt is designed to promote pride for God's standard of sexual purity."

 

Front:
Virginity Rocks

Back:

I'm Loving My husband and I haven't even met him

In most high schools in America being a virgin can be equivalent to being a loser. This is a lie that Satan has been telling forever. The concept of virginity is amazing. A person can actually love their spouse with their body before they even meet them. Living a pure life is both a defensive and offensive way of living. It is defensive for it protects our own body and soul from harm and offensive for purity shines in a dark culture of sin.

This is a bold T-Shirt, that makes a statement about your desire for sexual purity. If you wear it, do it with pride and also humility. You can have pride that Christ has made us clean and has protected us from being taken out by sexual sin, and humility that it is only by the grace of Christ that we are not as far into the muck as our neighbors and our friends.

Don't know how it is for you, fellow sufferers.  Years go by without me suffering, and I do feel for all you who have it an annual event.

As without glasses I can barely read the screen, this may be my last post for a while.

Some Sundays I lie in bed debating with myself what wonderful, life-changing things I might achieve during the day. Often I lie in bed debating until the sun goes down and there's no point in going outdoors or being strenuous.

This state of indolant bliss is harder to achieve in May than November

but there we are.

- and do you really think I'm going to do that?

Approaching the Close where my mother lives this morning, I see a man who looks like a pillock.  He is wearing khaki shorts and white socks, with white knees between them.  Nearby, one of my mum's neighbours who I sometimes have bland conversations with is loading the boot of a car.  I realise the man is her husband, Eric, who I barely know.

One day (I fantasise), probably after my mother dies, it will all release - in what may well turn out to be be the world's longest fart.

"Your place looks like a pigsty."

Anyway, I've got a ten hour holiday from all this.  Off to see my mum again.  Remind me to tell you about the chicken.

The optimum length for a blog post is, I have learnt, 102 words.

Full of the joys of early May,
Winter is so far away

Many years ago, a friend of mine suggested we went to see a new musical by Stephen Sondheim.  At the time I had not heard of him (unaware that Sondheim had written the lyrics to West Side Story, the only musical I had/ve ever 110% enjoyed). 

And today the sun was out, the sea looked brilliant, everybody seemed to be smiling... And I smiled, too.  Partly because of the weather and other reasons I had to be happy - and also because I remembered, x million years ago, the cast singing in boisterous chorus words that were not Stephen Sondheim's:
Full of the joys of early May,
Winter is so far away.....

Your search - joys-of-early-May - did not match any documents.

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The BBC tells me

 Royal fiancee changes her faith

The fiancee of the Queen's grandson has given up her Catholic faith - a move that allows her partner Peter Phillips to retain his right to the throne.

Autumn Kelly, who is due to marry on 17 May, has now joined the Church of England, Buckingham Palace said.

If she had not changed churches her future husband, who is 11th in line to the throne, would have had to give up his right to succession to the throne.

Or she would have to play Prince Charles, Will, Harry, Edward... you get the picture.

I'm actually feeling rather good...

That's it, really.  Still feel good.

This how it done

http://www.slate.com/id/2190275/

Today, another attempt to spend at least a few minutes of my day living moment by moment.  Unlike yesterday, though, I will not make the grandiose assumption that I will die at half past three.  Or indeed won't...

Well I suppose living in the blog-present is beter than being stuck in the past, or worrying about not paying a tax bill