Too Much To Declare

For lo, I am in the process of composing my next post, when there is a knock on my front door.  A man in a tweed jacket, and a woman hovering behind.  They are, he says, doing a survey of my street.

"Do I think the future of the world," the tweeded man asks, "would be different if we descended from Adam and Eve or from monkeys?"

Now, it crosses my mind to argue evolution.  After all, Darwin claimed that monkeys and ourselves have a common ancestor, not that one evolved from the other.  You might as well claim, say, that I am descended from the Duke of Edinburgh.

But the guy in the tweed jacket doesn't look much of an intellectual.  Besides, I am decidedly undercaffeinated.

My nose is blocked,  my eyes are running, I have a small sinus headache.

The fact is, the ventilation in this "maisonette" is awful, although it has taken me a long time to work out that this was causing my sleep problem.  By about 4.30 am, despite a fan, my bedroom appears to run out of air.

This probably sounds ridiculous.  But this flat, the only one on the ground floor, is part (20 flats) of a hillside building designed originally for offices - and, I would guess - air conditioning.  The windows don't open wide and are in the wrong places.

For weeks i have been trying to find a ventilation engineer - although I expect "he" will tell me I need to spend 1000s of $£€.  I'll probably have to buy a portable air con unit, but on the other hand....

Until Monday, in effect it only existed as a whole in binary form.  As well as in my head, natch.

I almost forgot that this reading-through-on-paper stage was necessary.

1 I thought I had found a suitable cleaner - a friendly waitress from Ziggi's, doing it on her day off - but she withdrew at the last moment (no, oh cynics, even before she saw the scale of the problem) There is so much initial cleaning to be done - with sensitivity.  After that, I  just might be able to manage on my own.

2 My builder - so efficient and helpful before - keeps failing to deliver his promise of coming back for a final day's work.  Most of the remaining work is 'handyman' stuff, so I may have to find a suitabe person 'blind' from local e-pages.

3 There are still many, non junk, things I need to get rid of, but not throw away.  I don't want dozens of visitors casing my home when they come ot look at what I've got.  Office stationery, a heavy, decent hi-fi compnent stand, a big desk.  Not much is worth selling on e-bay (again, this is the sort of thing I am bad at doing on my own).  Will I have to give up and take everything to the tip?

4 The flat's (lack of) ventilation.  I'll come back to this some other time.

has 742 google entries.

Probably 743 by now.

However,

I-am-a-nerd + insomniac

produces a mere 367

(at 0345 GMT 27-08-08)

Well, nothing to be done.  I know it happens to a lot of people all the time.  It just happened to a long post I was pleased I had written, and which - anyhow for now - I couldn't possibly write again...

"Colour"? it queries.  "Color" is the correct spelling.

"Color" my arse.  Except the "correct" spelling is "ass"

My Word spellcheck, unused for a few months has defaulted to CRETINSPELL, aka U.S. English.

No panic.  Repeat procedure  "U.K.English"  OK.  Now reboot Word, restart spell check.... and we are still imprisoned in the land of Bush.  Next it will be suggesting I write pants instead of trousers.  Mow the lawn in my yard.

My Microsoft Word is smugly stuck in its default mode.

I hate them, I hate them.  They can spell how they like, and write their dates backwards, but how dare they impose it on me!

Please, somebody who knows about these things, help me get back English spelling.

Still, things are going well...  Who knows, I may soon even manage a succesful, sexy, loving relationship.

Yes, Carruthers.  Granted.

* *** ** * *.  ** ** * * * * ****

* ***?

Yessir.

Good God, man!  Why in heaven's name didn't you tell me before?

My novel Low Life Games is - at long, long last - approaching its self publication. I have a friend who has designed a brilliant cover.  All it lacks is some juicy quotes.

These are always a problem, especially if the author is not well known.  Critics don't like to read of Word Files, PDFs or manuscripts.  On the other hand, the printing only a few copies of the book without a quote from a ecstatic review, to show to potential critics who may hate or ignore it, could well be a waste of time and a pain to the soul.

Anyway, there's a new service.  A new website called Blurbings.com.  For $19.95 (their bargain basement package) they guarantee you 10 enthusiastic revews written by their readers (I think they are gauranteed to ecstatic).  Their readers get something out of the deal and will read in PDF.

What a racket.  Still, my Friends, maybe some of you can help me.  Passers by, too.  Send me  a quote I can use on my front cover.  Something arresting, even if negative.

Oh, you want to read the book first?  Well, an earlier version of Low Life Games is still there on my other BCUK blog, Where the Rainbow Begins, in installment form.  But frankly, you don't have to bother to read it to write something like "I can honestly say this book changed my life forever."  Or...  Insults are fine, but they need to be witty.

She got married 70 years ago.  Divorced in 1950.  Her husband, my father, died in February 1996 (having married and divorced again)  I can't ever remember ever saying an affectionate word about him.  But it's the principle.  She is a convert catholic.  She is married to him for ever in the eyes of God.  Even after her ex-husband's death?

Last Saturday, my sister took her to the jewellers - forgetting that on Saturday you can't park outside.  So my mum had to walk much further than she's used to.  Yesterday she still felt exhausted from the effort.

The jeweller managed to remove the ring.  Now he is enlarging it so she can put it on again.

I will see her today and be nice to her, and yes some of the time enjoy her company, be glad she's alive.  But this business about her wedding ring makes me angry.  Sad, very sad, that she wants to go on wearing a symbol that has been a lie for almost 60 years.  Sad and delusional.  Enough is enough.

Whenever she refers to im in my hearing, she doesn't use his first name, or even "my husband".  He's always "your father", as if somehow it was me that brought them together.  A son repsonsible for the sins of his parents.

This much is true.  The staff of Ziggy's cafe have been instructed by the chef of adjoining Ziggy's restuarant to write the name Ziggy in balsemic vinegar on every bowl of soup they sell.  Ziggy is the name I have here to the "celebrity chef" who has lent his name to the whole enterprise. 

As far as I can tell, the standard way of becoming a "celebrity chef "is being photographed being hugged drunk by various celebrities - say 1 A list, 2 B, the rest Zds.  And having your name written in balsemic vinegar on soup you didn't cook.

Anyway, Ziggy's recipe or not, the soups are good.  And today, the assistant manager, a mate of mine and about to go off shift, told me he was going to write - as a joke - my name, not Ziggy's on the soup I ordered.

Now this is the losing-touch-with-reality bit.  I imagined him writing a balsemic "Alec".

So when the soup arrived with my real, birth, name on it, I almost felt disappointed.

It's not often I overhear strangers lieing.  In her twenties, she looked dressed up for a part in a play - a smart, schoolgirl-like suit, but not sexy.  Also too much foundation on her face, over-rouged cheeks.  Under film or stage lights, she might look fine.  Her only bag was an outsized rucksack.

At the start, just after she lied, the phone conversation had sounded formal, but soon she was chatting in a relaxed, happy way.  Then her voice tightened.  Suddenly she "had to go".   But why?

Any seasoned traveller on the line would have known we were about to reach a tunnel, where the mobile signal fades.  Of course that happens on buses, too - but maybe she had a guilty conscience.  How do I know?  I'm not writing fiction, so I don't know her motives.

From the outset, I have been a great user of tags on Too Much to Declare.  They are a good way of finding posts from the past which otherwise could lie permanently cyberburied (or, zn, would cyber-buried be better?) 

Unfortunately, some time back, BCUK restricted the number of tags listed on our individual sites - now to 200.  I had a far longer list than that, which meant it has been to find the posts with lesser used tags.

I fear death, you fear life.  I don't, at first, what you fear but I sense you are afraid - and it's catching.