Tag Archives: Sunday morning

Sunday Morning, Seed and Song

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Sunday morning. I marked the occasion by going back to bed and didn’t switch the computer on until just after 9.00. The spellchecker just tried to claim that I marred the occasion.  Can’t really blame the machine as I should have spelt it correctly in the first place.

Next I checked emails. Nothing of interest. Then I started peering into the lives of people who I follow on WP. Gardening, cycling, concerts, watching baseball . . .

Fascinating stuff.

Breakfast. We had a cereal delivery last night so were back on cereal with fresh fruit. I like porridge and sausage cobs and crustless breakfast quiche (we ran out of cereal three days ago, in case you were wondering – logistical and conversational breakdown. Cereal and fruit seems like it is a better choice, though I worry about the amount of calories in the fruit.

“Worry about” and “have cut out” are two different things. I could go onto plain wheat biscuits but I mentally group that with “gruel” and “bread and water” – a punishment rather than a breakfast.

I’m back at the computer now. Next task is to order more sunflower seeds for feeding the birds. The last lot are nearing the end. They have been very popular and 20kg has lasted eight months. It works out at about £1 a week, which isn’t bad. A second class stamp (if I ever want to send a letter)  is 87p these days. At least we have birds every day – under the new postal system we only have letters alternate days.

I note that I have just had five emails – one is confirmation of the bird food order. Three are unwelcome and unnecessary and one is telling me about a sale on clothes for big men, which may be slightly interesting. All in all, though, email is pretty useless. The spam box is even worse – prizes, special offers, parcels for delivery, schemes to help me become rich at the press of a button . . .

This is all done with the assistance of China in Your Hand going round in my head. I heard it on TV a few days ago and it has stuck with me. Click the link to You Tube and you can have it too. No need to thank me . . .

 

November 1st 2010

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I started the day by throwing back the bedclothes, shouting “It’s grand to be alive!” and running about in a frenzy of activity. Now, with my teeth cleaned, my hair brushed and my cheeriness at dangerously high levels I am sitting at the computer and preparing to blog.

Well, a blog can be many things, and if I want to start the day with a touch of fiction what is to stop me?

The truth, as regular readers may have guessed, is slightly different.

I actually started the day by peeling back the bedclothes and muttering “2.32 and my first trip to the bathroom.” This was followed by a couple more trips, a ten minute stint writing notes for a haibun idea and finally, by noticing that my clock said 7.47.

It seemed like an auspicious time to start the day, and as my night had already been fractured. I decided to get up. There wasn’t, to be fair, a lot of frenzy involved. Now, sitting at the computer with my teeth gleaming and my hair looking like I’ve just had a shock, I’m preparing to blog.

I currently have my levels of cheeriness under control and they are unlikely to pose a threat in the near future.

Do you sometimes wish you could write yourself a new life?

I was thinking this a couple of days ago when idly daydreaming of that elusive lottery win.

My first action on winning would be to rent cars and park them in front of the houses of people who have annoyed me with their inconsiderate parking in the past. In particularly annoying cases I may even fill them with concrete after parking them.

After that I move on to the good stuff, where I see myself as the anonymous benefactor to friends, neighbours, family and local charities. That often results in moral tangles about who to help and how best to do it, or if I should even try to help at all.

As an example – you give someone money to buy a decent house and bring their family up in a nice area with good schools. Do you make their decisions for them? Or do you just give them the money and set them loose. In five years time, after they have spent the money on drink and drugs and the kids are all in care how do you feel then? Or when a robot comes back from the future to kill you just before your big win because it turns out they used the money so well that they sent all their kids to Oxford University and they went on too rule the world in a despotic fashion? It could happen. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a documentary about it. Though it might just be that I fell asleep whilst watching Terminator. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell.

Tricky stuff, helping people. I may just buy a private island and live in sunshine for the rest of my life. I’d feel guilty about being selfish, but at least I won’t have ruined any lives.

Alternatively I could carry on buying a lottery ticket now and again and failing to win anything. As plans go, that one seems to be progressing quite well, and is definitely on target.

One person who seems to think I am already a lottery winner is my car insurance company. I’ve been nowhere this year, I’m way under the mileage I insure it for, and yet the cost seems to have leapt up. Again.

 

Confessions of a Bad Husband

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I thought I’d get up early and do some writing before Julia rose. She deserves a rest after her exertions yesterday, and I though I might evade her for a while as she lay in the arms of Morpheus, as they used to say. I wasn’t sure whether to say that or not, but it seemed more appropriate than the more accurate ‘snoring’. On looking it up, I find that it is considered a ‘pretentiously classical allusion’. It’s a cliché

, an anachronism and overly-flowery, but is it really pretentious? Am I pretending anything? I think the writer of the free dictionary should read his own product.

Anyway, it didn’t happen. At the first hint that I might be making  a break for freedom, she woke up, sniffed the air, sensed a disturbance in the force, imitated a questing Dobermann and said: “What are you doing?”

“Putting my socks on.”

“And then?”

“I have some writing to do.”

The air crackled with tension.

As things stand, I am, as you can probably tell, writing. There is a time when a man has to put his foot down and tell his wife “This far and no more!” This is, I believe, a paraphrase of Job38:11 “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further:”, though, unlike Bertie Wooster, I did not win a prize for Scripture Knowledge in my youth so have to admit checking it up on the internet. I have, of course, used the King James version.

This, however, was not the time for me to use those words. I have, sneakily given her a lift to the laundrette, and returned home. She thinks I am sorting books for disposal.

Books for disposal, one of the saddest things I have ever written.Anyway, can’t stop for sadness, or more discussion of my craven capitulation, as I need to make the best use of the next half hour.

blur book stack books bookshelves

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