Hymn

Saddle

A friend is doing a preposterous cycle ride for charity.  A million miles up and down sheer cliff faces or something equally perilous and foolhardy.  I warned him about his saddle and he’s duly obliged, confirming it with this picture.  “I’m very pleased for your testicles” I commented.  Now, there’s a sentence you don’t say everyday.

Secret

There’s a girl who catches the same trains as me.  Sometimes we speak.  I’m often surprised by what people tell me. Turns out she’s a spy. 

I could tell you more.  But then I’d have to kill you.  Sorry.

You and Me

I saw this, this morning:  a carefully constructed sign adorning an anonymous junction.  "YOU AND ME" it says.  With the 'n' the wrong way around.  Letters constructed from plastic bags, I think.  The sentiment isn’t damaged by the use of throwaway materials or the central mistake.  Someone made it for someone else’s benefit.  Who is it for and what does it mean to them?  I’m not sure, but I think it’s a message to You and Me.

Get Down

Shared a table with an interesting guy on the way home tonight.  A quick game of Snap with our computers got us talking.  He’s a young DJ on one of the national radio stations.  I was quickly out of my depth on the music front but I didn’t let a little thing like that stop me.  His Saturday night show is all about Techno or Electro or Meccano or Amaretto or some such music.   Mostly ‘Asian’ although, refreshingly he hated the counterproductive and ghetto-ising label.  Still, it didn’t take long for old chameleon Reeve to get down with the Street.  Yo Yo I am a cool Mo Fo.  And I was living it, man.  And keeping it real.  I asked him to lay a phatt one on me. 

He moved seats.  Wicked.

What's Left

The house is slowly emptying: first Grandad died, then so did Nana’s heart, she’s not long moved but the rooms are dusty for the first time since 1936 and the flocks of sparrows in the garden are no more.  It’s just the objects left.  Stuff soaked in memories; some mine, some theirs.  The furniture I transformed into spaceships as a child, battered board games from Sunday afternoons, crystal cruet sets for our salad teas, flickers of images of staying over.  On my own.  In ‘my’ room.  And her hats and pieces of jewellery and his paintings and silver cigarette cases and lighters (he smoked?!) and pristine implements and utensils from the 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s, 40s, 30s, wedding gifts, all still shiny and in perfect working order, the mangle, the Singer, the boxed electric iron sitting next to the entirely solid one, a steel, two coronation’s worth of memorabilia.  And the private things, the photographs, her scrapbooks of greeting cards and the cards she’s kept that proclaim a lifetime’s devotion: always starting “My Darling Wife” and closing “Your Everloving Hubby, Reg xxx.”  And we sift through what’s left, looking for the important things, the things that matter and we’re profoundly disappointed by the inadequacy of them to represent that Home.  Just ghosts.  Just echoes of our lives there.

Happy Talkie Talkie

I had a real conversation with S today.  We talked, in a fashion.  She coo-ed, I answered.  She burbled, I responded.  All the time we both smiled and laughed: we were playing a storytelling game.  For quarter of an hour we chatted.  And it was one of the most magical fifteen minutes of my life.

Bird Feed

I find them mesmerising.  Simple things.  This morning I watched as my garden became a flying circus after the rain.  Full of new families.  A family of sparrows, the hungry young as plump as their parents.  A couple of not yet black blackbirds.  A juvenile robin looking like a blushing speckled sparrow.  And a flock of five long tailed tits and three or four Great ones.  A tiny wren. 

And a big ginger tom, licking his lips.

Silence is...

S is starting to sleep through the night.  And that means uninterrupted nights for us too.  Except it doesn't.  We checked on her seven or eight times last night and T lay awake for an hour at previously established  'feed time.'  Suddenly silence is weird.

Hairy Scary

They don't normally worry me but this one looked like a cow-killer.   It must have squeezed through the cat flap or perhaps crawled in when we left the patio doors open.  Either way it was now sitting on the third step of the stairs and blocking our path to bed.  We don't generally kill bugs in our house and besides I didn't really fancy my chances one-on-one without the assistance of some heavy calibre weaponry.  And we've not long decorated. 

Some spiders are long-legged but spindly.  Not this baby.  Oh no.  Big fat hairy legs and a body the size of a football.  It stood a proud two inches across, toe to toe.

I captured the beast using a large mug but my nerves weren't settled by the sound of it tapping on the inside of the china.   I managed to lift it off the ground but it stepped effortlessly out of the cup and jumped to the floor.  It ran in one direction and we ran in the other.

After a fitful night of hairy dreams, I half expected to see it curled up asleep on the sofa when I came downstairs this morning.  It wasn’t.  It was somewhere else.

Standard Class

They get free newspapers in First Class.  I have, allegedly, had altercations with Guards about my movement of said papers from First to Cattle class.  I sometimes nervously retrieve used copies in the morning for my later reading pleasure.  Also, allegedly.  So tonight it was with some glee that I watched a man brazenly strike a blow for us Little People.  He wore a suit.  I think that confused the Customer ‘Service’ automatons.  They stood as guardians protecting the doors to luxury travel with armloads of clean fresh evening papers.  Our hero strode boldly towards the door, as if to enter, and took the Evening Standard obsequiously offered.  And then, as though he considered this carriage not fine enough, he turned and walked up the train.  All the way to us cheering proles as the end.  When the Revolution comes, we won’t even need suits.