Mechanics

It is bewildering the pace of change.
Occasionally when seated in deep thought I have been startled by the sound of a runaway marble rolling down a metal tray. It turns out to be the last 4 or 5 feet of the toilet roll spontaneously making a last desperate run for freedom leaving the inner cardboard tube bare.
Several times I have tried with pencil and paper to work out the mechanics of this phenomenon, unsuccessfully.
Let me digress. When I was doing my degree with the OU one of the great memories is of the time when we all constructed our own mass spectrometers out of a razor blade, a small lens and the cardboard tube of a toilet roll. To see the spectral line of sodium with an instrument two thirds of which could be found in our bathroom really was a proper use of the word amazing.
Anyway this morning as I retracted the last couple of pieces of paper I suddenly saw that there was no cardboard tube !
My first thought was could I get another 24 rolls of toilet paper out of Morrisons for this obvious product defect. But then the sad truth dawned It was intentional.
It was part of the same process that causes chocolate bars to shrink.
This does not advance the cause of civilisation.

Recap on a day

So let's recap. Today I produced a smutty translation of a piece of graphiti found on a toilet door circa 1955 into french. 

Had an argument with Daily Telegraph subscription department about a renewal which I had not authorised. 

Continuing the scatological theme visited the pharmacy in Talgarth and brought back tablets and a large box of Laxido, which I always think deserves a chorus " raring to go, go, go".(like Texaco)

Watched an hour and a half lecture on Wittgenstein.

Posted a moan about broken Britain.

Noticed some small sign of life in our old cherry tree which I thought had died. Nevertheless resurrection is out of the question even though Easter approaches'

Now started on the wine.

C'est la vie.

The day is not yet over. I was speaking to my friend Krishna Bhatt the writer in Nepal on Messanger as I watched an elderly man assisted with two sticks slowly advance down the drive. When he got to the door and I opened it he said he wanted to give me a leaflet for the liberal democrats. I said "I am sorry but I am far right adjacent" . He said "Far right !!" not recognising the 'ajacent' reference, "You don't mean Reform do you!!?". I said "Yes Reform" . He said "Jesus Christ" and shuffled back up the drive faster than he came in

Pinkie

Speaking of the Raj , we had living in the village a widow called Marjorie Joy and her little black poodle called Flossie.
She often wore pink, Marjorie I mean. She and her husband had spent years in colonial service out east somewhere and I imagined them every evening in the English club at the bar. With Ann , much to Ann's annoyance I used to refer to her as 'Pinkie' partly because of her colour preference and partly I imagined her in the imaginary bar having a preferred tipple of 'pink gin'. "I say Pinkie steady on old girl, that's your fourth".

Mr Garforth and the Joke

In 1961 I started my first job at The London & Manchester in Finsbury Square in the non-marine department. It was there I met Ann. All of the files were in the basement, and kept in boxes. It was dark and dusty and was tended by one person Mr Garforth. He seemed very old at the time but could have been between 50 and 60. He had I think spent a lot of his life up until then working on the railways in India and although he wasn't indian there was something about the way he moved that seemed very indian. He was always chewing as if he were having having a problem with a set of false teeth. I also remember some of his address because the name intrigued me. It was Half Moon St . He was very excited because Deni his young friend  was coming from India to live with him. I found that slightly odd at the time but couldnt say why and in any event I liked him. Anyway he told me this joke. I cant remember the exact words he used but remember the form and the punchline.

It  was about some great white Bwana addressing a tribe in Africa about how he was bringing civilisation to the tribe. He told of the mighty railroad they would build. He promised them breakfast clubs and everything and after each statement he heard a mighty cheer and the tribe raised there spears and banged on their shields and shouted in unison "Umbala!, Umbala!"

He was over the moon at the reception his speech received and turned to his interpreter  and said " That went down well - but what does umbala mean?"

The interpreter said "When you go back don't go through that field its full cowpats and you will be up to your neck in umbala"

He's Failing

Just had Morrisons delivery. Did not realise how weak I had become. The deliveryman was a girl in her early 20's and slight of build. I had ordered 6 bottles of wine and a load of frozen stuff.

She handed the tray over to me and it was all I could do to pretend casual competence as I nonchelantly strolled inside with it my poor thin little wrists threatening to snap at any moment. I think I made it although when I handed back the tray I fancied I glimpsed the faintest hint of contempt in her smile.

Modern Life

Modern life is bloody awful - nothing works, nobody does anything. businesses are unreachable , proliferating ai employees are retarded.

Police are social workers , the law itself is an ass. Kier Starmer is ahead of his time we are all rushing headline towards

this figuehead moron.

Solepstistical

I look at my hands. Notice nails are growing . Used to bite them. Stupid thing to have done . The novel pleasure I get from scratching and picking up small fallen objects like a toothpick or a valueless coin of the realm......
Still no news of Zonfeld. (Thought in the accent of Richard Burton)
Changed the name rather stupidly really if there actually is nothing outside.
But is there?

Teetering on the edge

Ann's mother Olive loved that attraction in an amusement arcade where you roll pennies down a ramp and they build up close to a ledge until they provoke a fall and you collect your reward. 

I am still here, the lead penny on a trembling bridge of pennies jutting out , by some fluke over the abyss.  I don't really want to be. My mother and my grandmother died at 82 so that is something to look forward to.

I am obsessively recording the ons and the offs of the central heating system which I suspect is developing a malevolent intelligence.

Come the Spring I will get an engineer in to strong arm it into obeying me or face the consequences. 

Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough...

Saturday 8th February and in my final year , I hope. I would like to see the sun though, but however warm the sun might be I don't really think it is going to work even briefly in bringing me back . I feel or sense that I am not going to have to do something , that the Earth will be hit by a passing asteroid  or some moronic politician will press a button and do the same job. I don't care. This blog is like a derelict school on a 1960's London bomb site I once wandered through. There are bits here and there that might mean something but overall its abandoned , empty and waiting final destruction. 'Swarm over death'

Still here....

But  down to my last Monkee. They started off with 4 and are down to 1. I think of them as a kind of alternative time scale to my life. I have returned to this fossil I have created to prod it  in order to give it  the appearance of life and maybe delay Google from expunging it entirely for a while longer.

Attended wedding at Crag y Nos on Valentines day. Woke oppressively hot. Got up. Put on dismally dimmed bathroom lights not to wake Ann. Great sultry gloom descended on me. Felt I was in an M R James short story.  Returned to bed.  Laid down but started upright as I saw the shape of a great head like in the Munch painting but with no facial features. My spine really did tingle and this occurred 4 or 5 times before I got to sleep. just before thatI did  I noticed the room was now cold.
I claim nothing for this encounter which may have been between me and  a couple of bottles of red  except that it was real.

Morris round about life number 3

I remember tales of Morris’s earlier lives and the one I liked was when Morris’s owner’s daughter was coming back on the school bus when she noticed their beloved pet mowed down in the gutter. Worse than that, those evil Gudsell boys, the ones who used the Church clock for target practice when their stupid parents thought fit to arm them with firearms, the ones that bent Anns Church warden pole with the brass cross on the top by throwing it about in Church and wrote obscene comments in the visitor’s register, those malevenant little sh..s were prodding the lifeless body of Morris with a stick like some dreadful re-enactment of Aslan’s torment. . The lifeless body was respectfully recovered in plastic bag and taken home by the girl and placed in the garage.
Later in the evening she returned to the garage and was like Lucy genuinely awestruck to meet Morris/Aslan nonchalently strolling back to the house for his evening meal.
Wrong big dead ginger cat.
That is why there are 4 cat graves at Morris’s house even though only three cats have ever lived there