Try as I may after yesterday’s hissy fit (I’m sorry about that, and deeply grateful for all the supportive messages) I simply can’t finish the bit of a poem I posted the day before. It’s a good bit, though, with some promise, so I’ll return to it some time in the future. For the moment, though, it needs a title, so:
~~
PORLOCKED FRAGMENT
And so the old men go to war
each approaching his end
in his own way and in his own good time
no matter the means, in flame, in soil, in lime,
dissolution, final or otherwise, is our last wide smile,
“Oh, yes!” our last flesh-based word.–John Bailey, December 2009
West Glamorgan, Wales
~~
Hey ho.
We were sort of planning to go out today to fetch DIY supplies for Graham but in the event an earlier than expected delivery of floor and other stuff persuaded him to stay home and resume work on the tiling he’d been obliged to suspend for lack of adhesive. Some products under-estimate the amount needed for a job, which seems a strange approach when the reverse policy, if not carried too far, would result in enhanced sales.
So the tiles advance row by row, laid carefully on freshly applied adhesive that looks like the contents of a baby’s nappy, and smells faintly like it, too. Dolly does not approve, and has decamped up stairs to take over a bed for her own.
Tomorrow the cable guy comes to fix us up with fibre-optic broadband, supposedly at 50mbs. It will probably come in at less, but anything will be an improvement after our present 0.75mbs connection speed. When it is up and running, and providing we find it reliable as well as fast, it is our intention that I should cancel our account with BT for both broadband and telephone. We both of us have mobile phones and I typically make no more than four or five calls a quarter, so there’s no justification for a landline connection. Apparently many other people are doing the same, so hopefully BT will get the message and start improving their service. I’d like that to happen.
Why do we need more speed? Mostly for online video reception but also so that surfing news, information and research material is smooth and uninterrupted. We shall have to see how it all pans out.
So now I need to catch up on blog reading. My mind was toxified yesterday, obliging me to turn off for half a day.
Funny old world, isn’t it?
