ISN'T IT ROMANTIC?

Royal Wedding day. You can't escape it. It's everywhere. Media coverage of propaganda intensity with only small dark chinks of questioning light. What can a republican do? Batten down the hatches, 24hour hermitage? It doesn't work. Red, white and blue is pervasive. A neighbour's side gate has become a Union Jack. Bunting, bunting, bunting. Egg-cups, paper plates, cakes. You know I could go on, so I won't. 


Can there be anything as anachronistic and divisive as the continued existence of a ruling class in a supposed meritocracy? It would seem there's a deference gene carried by a significant proportion of the UK population. But wait! An estimated world-wide audience of two billion people I hear. I can only hope that's a curiosity gene at work.


On the subject of mugs, the Steve Bell cartoon above has been put on mugs available from The Guardian newspaper. I guess this provides a mime show prop for more admirable national characteristics; defiant tea-drinking.


It's romance they say, but not as I know it. Romance as I know it is a far less arranged affair, lusty, dark and humorous, peppered with mundane tragedy and joy. On the pull, my story for week 15 draws on lives a bit different to those of Wills and Kate - I mean Their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (throw in Earl of Strathearn and Baron Carrickfergus for good measure). Bang goes my Knighthood. 




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MULTI-TASKING

With this post, I bring myself back on schedule. Fourteen weeks in and I've thoroughly confused myself with dates, week endings and beginnings. So I've gone for straight numbering now, in the expectation I can count from one to fifty without too much difficulty.
Work-life balance, that's what I'm after. Added to the writing, I have plans  for painting and a bit of jewellery making to compliment the beer brewing, plant growing, music listening, nature watching and reading. I don't have a quiet mind, there's always something going on in there. But all these things are life, or at least the kind I choose when I have a choice.
Work on the other hand, is a dense counterweight made of obscure big bang substance that defies understanding of its dark mass. I try to be Zen about such things - no light without dark, no life without death and all that, but find work to be a selfish, greedy partner in the duality deal and generally an all-round show off. The only thing I genuinely like about work are people. I guess without work, I would be perhaps unhealthily reclusive because whilst I like people, in keeping with the duality thing, I can empathise with whoever said (and variations are attributed to many) 'The more I see of people, the more I like my dog'.

Meantime, playing God with the written word, I can push Holly on to Vienna, where nothing that happens is for real whilst everything could be.

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WHY NOTTERY

So much gendering. Why shouldn't I dream of being rescued from mundane cares and worries? Where's the Prince of Publishing, dashing off cheques and plying me with champagne? Well, I guess whoever he or she is, they are perfectly happy as they are, wedded to many other talents.
Writing time is being eaten away by work and applying for jobs, seeds have been crying out for earth, water and a kiss of sun. The family motto needs changing - dolce far niente being my clear choice over the prosaic Recte et fideliter. Who would honestly prefer being just and faithful to the sweetness of doing nothing? However, I have to work my way up to doing nothing as it involves considerable effort because, it seems,  the path to doing nothing involves doing something first. So, in miserly fashion, I am hoarding my current creativity in the hope of it being bankable and drawing on the stash of Cowboy Heart for 50-50s. Why not? I like Holly a lot and I would like you to like him too or at least see something of yourself in him. In any case, I need to get on track with my self-imposed schedule and it's as good a something on the way to nothing as any other I can think of. So get aboard The Bonduca with Holly whilst I get back to waiting for my carriage.

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SUN SPOT INTERNET

Week 11 brought blue skies and warm, sunny days. Anyone who lives in the UK will know that this combination tests the resolve and self-discipline of most. What to do? Soak up rays or sit pounding the keyboard? Many have no choice. Currently, I do. So it's week 12 and I haven't completed my piece for week 11. 

'What me worry?' as the unfortunate-looking adolescent adorning MAD Magazine was wont to say. I can drag out the next chapter of the anathema Cowboy Heart. Not quite in the spirit of the enterprise but a pragmatic response to dissipation.

With the arrival of week 12 and departure of the sun, my broadband goes on the blink. Cue relocate computers, modem and router, run wires in trippable places so that my provider can conduct monitoring and tests to resolve a recurrent problem once and for all. Ho-hum. So come and save me Holly, on your journey Back East.

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TIME

Either there hasn’t been enough of it or I’ve not used what there has been very effectively.  

Kim began her two weekend exhibition of textile jewellery at 

York Open Studios last Friday - a lot of work but my, did it look good! I gave some help setting things up during the week and took leave from work to be at the opening night, joined by the family crew to give our support. Some wine and nibbles, some arty chat, then off to The Slip Inn. 

Because of work commitments, I haven’t been out on a Friday night for six months. I got hammered on Freddie Trueman Yorkshire Ale, ‘...a beer in honour of the great Yorkshire and England fast bowler and shite Test Match Special commentator, Freddie Trueman’ - to quote a fellow blogger. 

Then there was Mother’s Day  - hammered again. Ah! To be in the bosom of one’s family. Having put them before you dear reader, the week 11 offering is late and short. It would probably take longer to download it than to read it onscreen - so it’s onscreen, below.

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NO FIVE

One. He ran his hand through his hair, feeding his fingers through the rain-soaked strands, sweeping them away from his forehead and eyes. The rain was warm and heavy, weighty drops bursting the lonely street’s puddles. Gutters splattered, drains gurgled, neon hazed and sparkled the entire wet world, drowned in its watery soundscape. A car with a broken headlight went by, tyres making a sticky hiss. The door he was looking for was somewhere around here.

Two. He’d forgotten something. He didn’t know what it was yet, only that he had forgotten it. He checked his pockets, once, twice, haphazardly patting them, feeling for a tell-tale shape. He had a lot of pockets, jeans, jacket, inside, outside. Coins, keys, mobile, wallet, tissue, chewing gum. Those weren’t the shape. He checked a third time, systematically, emptying his pockets, turning them out, scrabbling deep into cotton lint, pulled out a folded-small, flat bus ticket. It was two-weeks old. That wasn’t it. What was it? What had he forgotten?

Three. The building was unfamiliar to him. It had a run-down feel. Not dirty but forlorn. The corridors had the kind of hard sheen that repeated mechanical buffing gave, a worn, scratchy diffusion of the overhead lighting - chainhung metalclad fluorescents of mismatched whites. All the doors off the corridor looked similar. Worn brown paint, reeded glass windows, grubby fingerplates and loose handles. The name plates on them ranged from screwed on brass to stuck on plastic in a variety of fonts and styles. He was looking for the one that read Dr Schapiro or was it the one that read EXIT? He stood in the empty corridor trying to remember but all he could remember was that he’d forgotten something.

Four. She looked stunning. The way she looked at him, with a steady drink-in gaze made him feel she had always been for him, always been waiting for this moment alone. So what was he doing there - the blonde guy in a blue suit with a cheesy grin? This was their moment, not his. She looked away from him, exchanged a knowing smile with the suit and unfolding herself from the couch said, ‘I better get ready.’ He watched her take her dress off over her head, hang it on the corner of a folding screen. She turned her back to him, showing a deep-set spine. Her shoulderblades shifted smoothly, as reaching behind her, she unclasped her bra, the reddened ridges of the straps left on her back. The suit smiled appreciatively at her front.

Five. It was still raining. It was still dark. The suit was empty. The red ridges were covered. If he hit snooze again, he’d be late. No five.