journal of a writing man

Picture it.  Two blokes sitting on a bench in the sun, leaning happily on their sticks, watching the world go by.

“Coo,” said Graham.  “That bloke’s a lot thinner than me.”

“You’re not wrong there.” And, a little while later, “Gosh!  That bloke is a whole lot fatter than me.”

How life does change us all, eh?  There’s Graham and me, he looking for the thin ‘uns, me looking for the fat ‘uns.  We’ve decided to relish our conditions, temporary or permanent.  Life is too short to worry about trivialities.

“You’re not thin,” I said.

“Nope.  And you’re not fat.”

The new, non-fat me

I just now finished watching the animated movie of Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters.  Funny?  I haven’t laughed so much since this blessed series of Bank Holiday weekends started, weeks back, so it feels.  Not to worry.  This is the last Bank Holiday before the end of August, and it don’t seem a day too much.

I hate Bank Holidays.  Bank Holidays are for Jesus, Royalty, and the toiling masses.  Not for OAPs.  An Old Age Pensioner is supposed to be an aged grumpy, or to sit drooling happily in a corner, watching his marbles roll away.  Not searching about for buckets and spades, and celebrating Bank Holidays building castles on sandy beaches.

Mind you, it’d not be so bad if Bank Holidays were really for Banks.  And Bankers.  If all the Banks and all the Bankers were to go on a long holiday somewhere exotic and far away–like the dark side of the moon, for example, without a return ticket–the world would be a much more bearable place.

So, what’s been happening?  Well, we celebrated our 33rd anniversary back on the 20th, Graham has suffered a bit of a relapse, and I have, as you see, have been suffering from a mild attack of the rolling marbles.  As I write, Graham is recovering once more and my marbles are rolling back one by one.  All of them that I can remember, that is.

But there you go.  It could be worse.  Lots worse.  We still have our sense of humour and, like the lady with the mop used to say, it’s being so cheerful as keeps us going.

Sitting in the Sainsbury’s coffee shop yesterday morning, looking out at the heavy rain.

A great flash of lightning.

“One crocodile… two crocodiles… three crocodiles,” I intoned, getting as far as seven when…

KER-R-R-ASH!

“Oh, very good,” said Graham.  “But why crocodiles?”

“Dunno, really.  Something antediluvian about the scene, I suspect.”

“Oh.  Fair enough.”

Counting crocodiles

Then, this morning, looking out at all the hail and rain damage, an almost suitable haiku:

rain pressed azalea petals
on the pavement
– lipstick traces

The laburnums are in full bloom.  Beautiful trees that I have always loved but which, by their pollen, seem to have decided not to love me.  Oh, the coughing!  Oh, the wheezing!

Not to worry.  This is the last blast of the pollen season for me and soon it’ll all be over, leaving me to settle down to enjoy whatever kind of summer we may have this year.

I’ve been saying that we’re in for a good summer this time round, though my confidence was shaken a couple of hours ago when it came on to rain.  Great blobs and splots of rain.

“Did you know that every rain drop starts out as a snowflake?” I asked, all out of the blue, like.

“Good heavens.  No, I didn’t.  Where did you hear that, or are you making it up?”

“It was on a BBC documentary a little while back.”

And then, as if to lend veracity to my words, the rain grew heavier, the wind blew, and the temperature dropped.  Massively.

I was outside, smoking a ciggie at the time.

“Oh, be a dear and pass out my garden umbrella, please,” I said.

A folded rainbow of jollity appeared through the door.

“Ah.  That’s better, thank you.”

And, soon as I could, I stubbed out my ciggie, folded the umbrella, and came back inside, set on returning to my latest research project.  Graham was sitting at the kitchen table, working on the last stage of his own task–fixing up and cleaning an old record deck ready to sell on eBay next week.

“Aren’t we an industrious pair?” I remarked.

“Sure are.  A cup of tea would help, mind.”

Fixing an old record deck

I looked up from my IKEA breakfast to find the back of Graham’s Blackberry staring me in the face.

“Click!” It went.

“What on earth are you doing?” I asked.

“Trying to show you how grumpy you look.  Here.  See.”

I squinted at the displayed photograph.  “Doesn’t look grumpy to me.  This is grumpy.”

“Don’t pull faces like that.  You’ll frighten the children.”

“Oh.  OK.  Send me that picture as a memento of this precious moment, will you?”

“Click.”

“There,” he said just as my phone went “Bing.”  “Isn’t technology wonderful?”

“Hmmmpf.”

Isn't technology wonderful?

We planted three little clumps of thrift in our front rock garden last year, providing them with a nice little gravel patch and conditioning the soil underneath with coarse sand to keep them happy.  And happy they were, rewarding us almost instantly with their bright pink flowers and putting on a good deal of extra bulk.

When autumn came and they dropped back we trimmed off the dead flower heads and wished them a happy winter’s sleep.

Winter was beastly severe here for some weeks, and many plants succumbed to the prolonged freeze.  I was very sad to see that our thrift plants had changed, the foliage going darker and darker, and it looked to me as if we’d have to hunt around for replacements.

However, spring came, things heated up and lo! the thrift plants produced new flower buds.   Shortly afterwards, and it’s worth another lo!, the buds burst into bloom.  I’ve always said that thrift pays.

Thrifty planting

“I seem to have missed Easter this year,” I said as we settled to coffee and hot cross buns in Sainsbury’s yesterday.

“Does it matter?”

“Not especially.  I can always catch it in the repeats.”

Hot cross buns and coffee