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:

no: 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.

(does sap rise slowly in an oak tree?)

sap.

it's the wasted time I feel most angry about -

will feel angry, when the sap rises,

on the way to leaving me.

Is he famous?

Perhaps he just looks like John Bird, who works with Rory Bremner.

No, he looks too - well preserved.  Not enough irony.

Why is he looking at me?

Perhaps he thinks I'm famous.

I look away, to preserve the illusion.

Maybe I've forgotten him from school.

He's checking me out again.  Perhaps he fancies me.

Is he wearing make up?

Why don't any women look at me like that?

And he knows I'm not famous.  He left without giving me another glance.

Fickle.

But no one seemed to hear.

"Need to do some networking" I explain to my companion.  "I'm hoping he might get me a part in a movie." 

My companion doesn't know who Danson is.  "Cheers?  Do you remember Cheers?"  He doesn't.  "Friends?"  Oh yes, perhaps he remembers him in Friends.

I go over to Ted's table.  He is as jovial as he used to be in the Boston bar, but he looks as old as my companion who didn't know who he was.  He gives me some encouraging advice but no introduction to a Hollywood producer.

And now, the evidence of madness and impending catastrophes is there for all of us to see.  It's more comforting not to notice.

By the way, I'm not only referring to global warming.

Take this example of madness. In a report which the BritGov only published today because of the Freedom of Information Act, consultants argue that creating  drug free prisons is too expensive to be a practical option.  Also individual drug tests are pointless because "clean" inmates can sell their urine samples.

So - what is the point of jailing drug addicts?  Certainly not to cure anyone.

To change the subject...

Dolphins have been dying in large numbers off the coast of North Cornwall.  No one knows quite why, but the likely cause seems to be underwater explosions carried out by the Royal Navy, which the Navy - of course - deny although several unparanoid, unpolitical local fishermans and residents heard loud, almost earth-shaking bangs.

Meanwhile, deeper at sea, the US Navy is playing "music" to whales - against international treaty, because it interferes with whales' own communications with each other - in order to develop new weapons.

Is life possible without irony?

So what else is new?

You are not responsible for the world's stupidity.

There's little you can do to make it less stupid, however much you would like to thiink so..

It's not worth even one single heart beat to get worked up about it.

The wedding is still two months away but she looked white with tiredness and maybe second thoughts.  Twice she referred to her bridegroom  as - well, er "the bridegroom".

My head in a book, I cut out most of the details about the number of bridesmaids and the separately mounted video operation.

But what did strike me as worth of passing on to you was that because the blessing ceremony (the actual registry office business having already happened off camera) was happening inside a church temporally and inconveniently encased in scaffolding, the external photographs of the wedding couple and entourage were to be shot outside another, prettier, unscaffolded church on the other side of town.

What a fucking bore.

(with apologies to znethru blue)

I will admit that, this morning, (and there was an electricity-meter-reader subplot which I will not describe) I began to feel very sorry for myself.  Nobody to help me, I shouldn't havd been forced to sell the house etc.  Some of the boxes had been marked "books from front hallway" and reminded me how much bigger my Hammersmith home had been.

Now I'm feeling more positive.  It's a chance to throw away stuff I really don't need (to start with, there is a pile of 10 duplicate copies of books, which will soon grace the shelves of a secondhand shop down the road) and re-own what I do want to keep, (Incidentally, dozens of interesting-looking novels yet to be read). Also reminding me of sides of my life (eg acting) I have put in abeyance for too long.

So it really is, at last, the new beginning I have been longing to have ever since this blog began.  This and all the other things that are happening.  For better or worse, I am here and now.

Strange that the main event she wants to sharewith me  each Saturday is a large meal of which she eats little..

Strange that, whenever I have tried to go on a diet, she has questioned its efficacy, and essentially undermined in her cooking.  In her opinion the only way to lose weight is not to exlcude harmful foods but eat virtually nothing.  Strange that this method makes me bloat and fart.

Strange that no one else, medical practioners included, think I am particuarly overweight.

Strange that my mum seems to believe she will live on this earth for ever, whatever her Catholic religion says.

Maybe it's not the same everywhere - but Brighton seems to be permanently hazed in a cloud of nicotene.  Pubs' tables spread across the pavement.  Men and women emerge from the back of their offices to exercise their Magna Carta rights to puff in the face of passers by.  Parties sit outside cafes expecting to be served - although the legislation was mean to protect bar and catering staff from smoke in the first place.  The railway station is virtually impossible to enter without encountering the smokers surrounding the entrance like a posse of ticket touts.

I don't know anything about the science of passive smoking - maybe the only effect is to make my eyes water occasionally.  Or maybe not.  To me, it feels like a dog peeing on my shoes a couple of dozen times a day.  And yet, no one, no one all - in blogging, in politics, in journalism, ever seems to mention it.

Now, I know it's hard to give up smoking (heavens, I'm trying to give up dope-and-fagsat the moment; although I almost always smoked in private, or at least in solitude)  And I've been tolerant of the smoking of friends and lovers.  If you want to smoke, smoke - and face the health consequencies - you probably pay enough tobacco tax to finance the  hospital care when and if it becomes necessary.  Just don't involve innocent strangers.

In Germany, I believe, there are special rooms where you can inhale and exhale to your heart's content (or otherwise).  I'm all for this.  Places like the old public conveniences - with the escaping nicoten recirculated for a secondary high - and a cancer clinic attached.

Still, this morning I manage almost until half past five.

An Army Captain is assigned to a remote dessert out post.

During inspection, he notices a camel tied up outside the men's barracks. He asks a soldier why it's there.

"It's the setup for a joke, sir."

"Well, lets hear it then, man."

 "Major Weston is re-writing it, sir, but he needs a new punch line."

In fact, so far very little has changed, post hash.  The desire to roll up gets less and less powerful, but I still often feel in a cloud, often of depression, and I still blog zany overnight.

David and his assistant Magic are efficient, intelligent, quiet friendly and inevitably Polish. David has even taken my answerphone off to a mate to see if it can be repaired.  He was recommended to me by new friend Anna who runs a local beauty salon.  Anna is far too busy to have time to consider romance, but I think she rather likes me.

Anyway, tomorrow the bookshelves arrive it kit form - and hopefuly David and Magic will erect them during my absence in London....

There is something of an end-of-term atmosphere in my head at the moment.  I can't concentrate, I've been snoozing all afternoon.  Although this transformation has taken far, far longer than I expected when I moved here on 29th February, now it is happening I can barely believe it.

In our garden, my mother's garden.  My father live somewhere else by now.

I am trying to join two pieces of wood together by driving a nail through both of them - although I seem to remember the task I have set myself is more elabourate than that.  Or perhaps it's just the fantasy surrounding it is more elabourate.  I can't recall the fantasy at all.

Have I ever watched someone hammer two pieces of wood together?  Certainly not my father.  The only manual things I've ever seen my father do were driving and gardening.  Probably lifting suitcases, too.  Anyway, at this time, I don't see my father often.

The hammering isn't going well.  Why won't the wood and the nail behave the way it should?  Why won't the two bits just join together?  I'm pretty sure the hammer isn't good enough, 'cos it's made of wood.  I start yelling with frustration.

Why won't Mummy help?  She's in the garden.  Or at least make suggestions?  But when she comes over, she mocks me for losing my temper.  The she says it will never come right if I scream and shout.  But how will it come right?  She has no idea, apparently.

Dare I hope I'm through the worst of the cold-chicken withdrawal?  Probably far, far too soon for that.  But, certainly, despite the disappointing weather, I'm feeling more optimistic about things changing for the better in my life.

I was sitting in the front of the upper deck of a double decker bus as it travelled up a dual carriageway.  Suddenly a van coming from the other direction turned right across our bows.  I braced my legs and lent bacwards. The bus driver reacted very quickly, swered, breaked and. we escaped an accident.  For some time afterwards I was all shook up.  Quite possibly, if the bus had hit the van, I would have been thrown through the plate glass window.

Anyway, I was on my way to a walk on the Downs.  About an hour into the walk, the woodland gave way a gash in the hillside where a wide road had been built - almost a motorway.  A pedestrian bridge had been built way above it - about a metre wide, with open railings.

To me, on my own, it looked kinda scary - and about a third of the way across I began shaking with panic.  I put my hand out to touch ne of the railings without going near the edge, and counted out loud until I reached the other side, where I listened to my heart thump.

Nothing like that has ever happened to me before.

At the supermarket I  bought Covent Garden Spinach-with-nutmeg soup instead of Chicken.  She thrusts it in the fridge as if it is - yes - toxic.

"The only chicken soup they had in a carton" I explain "was Prince Charles' which had leek in it."  She hates leek.  I didn't know she hates spinach.  Or is it the nutmeg?  "And double the price".

"Eaugh!"  She sounds weak with despair.  "Why so many bananas?"  She holds up a bunch of six as she might a dying cockcroach.