List of things to do today:
email friends
have a walk in the garden
drink Pimms & lemonade
phone beloved people
try on clothes for wedding
listen to the cricket
smile
read Jeeves & Wooster
eat a biscuit
be grateful for my life 🙂
There was a couple in the DVLA reception, both middle aged and both needing a crutch. The man seemed to have trouble walking, while the lady couldn’t get out of her seat, so they filled out each other’s incapacities – he lifted her and steadied her, then supported her once vertical, while she was the recipient of his leaning as they wobbled back to the car. AAaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh …
What I especially liked was that they clearly really enjoyed the very cuddly manner in which all this played out 🙂
God, make a fresh start in me,
Shape a Genesis week from the chaos of my life. [Ps. 51:10]
8.03pm
"Never call a midget a midget," says Ed, standing outside a bar, having a smoke. I’ve asked him what lessons he’s learned from living at the Centre of the Universe, and that’s what he’s said. Never call a midget a midget.
"Those little guys, they don’t like being called little guys. Or dwarves, Or midgets. You gotta call them ‘little people’. I know that now, because I got myself in trouble one time."
"Why?" I say. "What did you say to a little person."
"I didn’t know I had to call him a little person. I didn’t know what to call him. I panicked."
"What did you call him?"
"I called him a gnome."
"A gnome?"
"I called him a gnome," says Ed, taking a drag. "Yuh, I called him a gnome."
"How did he react when you called him a gnome?"
"He looked a little pissed."
I nod my head.
"That’s gnomes for you," he adds and stubs out his cigarette.
[from Danny Wallace and the Centre of the Universe, a very funny little book]
[It’s weird to write when you’ve not been able to for a little bit, but here goes …]
My cat (Amber) got hit by a car a couple of years ago, and we had to have his tail amputated because it was basically paralysed – pretty harsh for a cat. But since then (and since my parents have got too super-busy Saving the World to brush him), Amber’s grooming habits have pretty much gone downhill, which is not a good thing for a long-haired, thoroughly outdoor kind of creature. I’m not even sure if he can bend far enough to reach his hind quarters, and in the meantime is walking around with huge chunks of fur mercilessly scissored out of him (he’s bald on one side) as a last resort. Poor thing.
If the Ancient Egyptians saw my cats, I don’t think they would worship them.
You wont read that book again, because the ending’s just too hard to take…
I’m listening to the new (& hopefully last) Johnny Cash album while writing this, and it’s wobbling me on the inside, in ways that music just doesn’t usually. There’s this dynamic of death & love, coupled with a weakness & helplessness, that really kicks to death all the bits of me that think they know what life is about (Cash had just lost his wonderful June, and he’d die very soon). I feel VERY young and inexperienced and unknowing and unjaded, listening to this voice.
Got on my dead-man suit… I got a song to sing!
It’s a slightly recurring theme this week, as my sister & I were listening to John Bayley’s account of his wife (Iris Murdoch) as she went from being a fully functioning love-of-his-life to an Alzheimers-suffering care receiver. Heart-filling, and heart-breaking: it’s amazing the love in his words, but day by day, little by little, he was losing her a little bit more.
It’s hard to know: she’s gone forever. They’re carrying her home…
I don’t know what else to say. I don’t really feel sad or anything; I am being wobbled by the depth that life can have, I think. It makes me think about the reverence that some cultures still have for old people, wishing I ‘got that’ a bit more. I don’t even know how to listen! At a wedding in March, the bride & groom bowed to the wife’s parents (it’s a Korean thing); I didn’t get it, of course. But I’d really like to, y’know?
The tears and the laughter are things that we share,
Your hand in mine makes all times good.
a stone in the road 