Sunday 7 November 2010

The Hearth

Sunday night in wintry Streatham has brought warmth in bed in the shape of a hot water bottle. I have done my usual ritual of sorting out a few more of my dad's things.


A few more papers have been consigned to the recycling and the room that was a mountain of stuff a year ago is a bit smaller. The middle child wanted the music stand he had for his saxophone and there was also a metronome. This is all for her saxophone lessons. She's pursuing it diligently. The sax was left to her. The boy gets the trumpet and the eldest has the piano thing.

I don't see them forming a band.

Maybe they could perform before I go and play football of a Saturday morning. Got back into action on Saturday and missed a good chance to make it 3-0.

My how I rued that as the opponents came back in the second half. It finished 4-2 to our shufflers. The ribs that were happily crunched a few weeks back survived in tact. But I do fear for my right ankle. It is not a happy area after the game.

But that is probably all psychological. What wasn't in my mind was the searing cramp in my left leg on Saturday afternoon as I was watching the tennis on TV,

The strange thing was the pain in my ankle had gone. I'll have to pursue the theory of internal dispersal. Must avoid pain in my brain though.

Perhaps I should stop reading the Time Traveller's Wife.

The Review

The joys of being past the bawling baby stage on the Eurostar. I could look at the couple with the toddler sprawled over the seat and the babe in a harness wrapped round the mother’s neck

And I could rejoice that I’d passed through that voyage. Every day seemed to be a trial to get through.

And now the bairns are older, there’s wistfulness that they’re no longer the little cuddly cuties of yore.

Essentially I must stop reading books that provoke the contemplative side. It’s not good for my health.

Have started reading The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Quite what brought me to purchase such a tome is beyond me.

Perhaps it was my future self that did it. Because it seems inconceivable that my past self would have had any yen for this kind of novel.

As far as I can make out by page 60, it’s a cross between Highlander and Back to The Future.

For all the action of the Highlander film, there was a loneliness to the character who watched friends and lovers grow old and die while he continued.

I sense the same is in the offing in this one.

I shall avoid reading it on the 1013 out of Paris and concentrate on more immediate things like the economic gloom enveloping Europe.