Too Much To Declare

Gave up all sleep attempts at 5,

Have been ordering the last bit of bookshelves I need, reviewing my diet, sending e-mails..

On Saturday.

The day I take a chicken to my mother and cook it for lunch.  Satursday is mother's day.

She will be devastated...  and will I make the next (hourly) train?

This is my nightmare - or my wish fulfillment!

Suffice to say I am having to sepnd another morning waiting.  According to Amtrak (I thought they ran a few express trains in the U.S of A, but Amtrak are  (also?) the firm responsible for this delivery fiasco) the parcesl will arrive by midday.

Waiting.  I forget what jobs I have to around the house, what phone calls I need to back (oops, better held back on those in case there is package-delivery related phone call.)  All I can think of is what shopping I need to do, how nic it would be to go down to the sea... and the longer I wait, the less I think at all...

Waiting is the mother of apathy.  Everything energetic and happy about me is on hold.

No, I haven't gone back to smoking wacky backy.

I have now found the tracking site for my package delivery, and someone is claiming that I was out when they tried to deliver to me at half past four.

At the time, I was standing less than two metres from the front door, talking to a friend.  We both have excellent hearing.  I have a noisy front door bell.

At 6pm, none of the three phone numbers I had answered to tell me why I have had no delivery - and none had answerphones.  On the bookshelpf company's website, it told me "Your order has been sucessfully completed!"

Yeah.

Still, it's 6.30 now - not even a late running delivery driver is going to come now - I can leave the house...

I have to stay in for two packages to be delivered - components of a shelving system.

They will, apparently, arrive today.  According to the logistics company (ie parcel deliverer) they left the Brighton depot at 7.04 this a.m.  But this is where their super efficient tracking system has them, supended in space and time.  The firm's drivers, I am told, don't have mobiles ha, ha.

Is it a beautiful day?

I long to go out.  I keep thinking of yet more things I could and need to do that involves leaving the apartment.

She is dreading that, in the final, "her" Federer may lose to Nadal whose biceps are too large.

She is dreading Venus or Serena will win, and doesn't like he fact that Sharapova has muscled up.

She dreads Andy Murray being vulgar and winning.  (Brother Jamie, though, is almost the perfect gentleman.)

She dreads her eyes getting too tired to read the Commentaor's words on Ceefax sub titles.

That means that it is definitely caused by speculation then.

The Saudi Conference has been called to calm the markets, aiming to bring about an oil price drop.

We can be pretty confident that when the conference is over, oil will cost more.

It's their cardboard colour that gets to me.  Suicidal Brown.  Premier Brown.

The colour and the contents - books, half sorted and remuddled when they were packed, together with an occasional postcard from my dad or piece od sculpture.

Decisions, decisions.  What do I keep?  Do I need more bookshelves?  Will I ever get round to reading that?  Will  secondhand buy these?  How will I get them there?

Some of you may remember I was sorting books back in December, January, long before I moved?  I offered you, free, my undergraduate philosophy texts...  They are still with me, with no space to put them , one of many reproachs that there are careers and interests in my lifr I will never now follow...

I'm getting absurdly sad (the long forgotten dedication in the flyleaf of a book of poetry "My everlasting love, Sue"  Three years before our divorce.)

The hopes and fears of all the years...

I have spent so much of the last year sorting my past. passing judgment of every aspect of it as I endlessly unpack.  Last year?  I can barely remember a time when I wasn't doing it.

But life isn't endless.  I long to live.

Yet Ihow can I start until I've unpacked the last cardboard box.

I gently express the opinion that, perhaps, she should drive any more (in practice she hasn't driven for a year).  She says she feels safer  driving than walking, I point out, as tacfully as I can, that driving is more likely to involve the  safety of other people...  Eventually, sobbing in the rather srtificil way she has, she agrees it might be better to call it a day on her 75 year driving career.

Of course not getting a licence is a symbol of the end of her life. (and has expensive insurance implications for me - a non car owner for 12 years - driving her car)

Anyway, at this moment, my sister - who does far more for our mum than I do - turns up.  And although she is, in conversaion with me, if anything more horrified than I am at the thought of her ever driving again, she looks annoyed that I have confronted mother with an inconvenient truth.

Apart from a mortgage which appears to offer you only a limited chance of possessing negative equity of your property in the short term, you appear to have no major loans or accumulated Credit Card borrowings owing to us or any other financial insitution.

We realise this over-prudent banking position (OPBP) may be a reaction to the complete cockup you made with your financial affairs a few years ago, a cock-up which made us a lot of money.  We have therfore decided to give you one final chance to once again become a vlaued costomer of our bank.

But unless, by twelve noon on the 23rd June 2008, run up credit card and other debts of at least £32,000, we will be obliged to close your accounts.  Because of the Prevention of Terrorism (Bank Greed Amendment) Act 2004, this will of course mean the seizure of all your assets held by our good selves.

Have a nice day.

or rather a very very light one:

beetroot

pineapple

pumkin seeds

omega oil

beetroot (I know)

water,

and of course no alcohol and absolutely no coffee.  In fact I'm not even allowed to walk past Cafe Nero (product placement) because the mere smell of coffee will upset my metabolism.

I'm allowed the occasional egg yolk - and sometimes butter, although no bread to put it on.

Last weekend I had a holiday from my regular visit to my mum's, which seems to have done me no end of good.  But we speak on the phone - and that means finding things to tell her about.

Stupidly last night,I mentioned I had found a new doctor.  After all, I have been here for almost four months, it did seem time to register.

"Why did you see a doctor?"  She sounded alarmed, and wanted to know every detail of the ten minute consultation.  I resisted as usual except for generalities.  Her medical questions always feel invasive, often perverted even.  I mean, is it normal for a sixty-five year old son to provide his mum details of the state of his stool?

In fact, in her spare time (she can't read for long at a stretch, and Radio 4 has its limitations... plus another of her friends died this week, there are so few left) she has obviously been worrying about my health and possible premature mortality.  And facts never stand in the way of a good, bleak fnatasy.

It made me smile.  I have a soft spot for Graham Greene and all his writing, for personal as well as aesthetic (and poltical) reasons I might expand on another time.

One of his most famous novels (and the first truly convincing one) was Brighton Rock.  If you've never read it, get a copy from a car boot sale, library, seconhand bookshop. (and the movie, Richard Attenborough's firat starring role) while not great, is not half bad, either.

Anway, as Graham Greene rumbled east down the Western Road I noticed that all Brighton's double deckers are named after famous people who have some connection with the town (and, er, Hove, I suppose)... actors, writers, a few Sir whose-thats? - presumably local politicians, which does reduce the glamour of the system somewhat.

Three days to go till the earlest sunrise. the latest sunset.

Then the days begin to get shorter. And shorter.

I hate it when that happens.