The Decree

Creativity is supposed to flow during illness, says one line of literary ideology. Oh dear.

It's true that I've not committed anything to paper of late. But I have been productive.

I've generated samples on demand for various doctors and chemists. I have doused the sheets in rivers of sweat and as for my interactions with the toilet......


Still don't know what's wrong. I went to the doc on Thursday after a few days sleeping. She got me to walk through the waiting room with a little plastic beaker — which I did with a nonchalant dignity.

I offered some liquid into said beaker and walked back through the waiting room. People in waiting rooms have nothing better to do than look I guess. I decided it was the dashing pink Oxford shirt and light chinos combination that was catching their attention and not the hapless sap on the way back from his first instant urine sample at the doctor's surgery.

Today's blood test was more straightfoward. I dropped the boy off at creche. Forewent the coffee at Chez Prune and went into the lab. They had really good music on. Some classy jazz and there was a Nespresso machine available for general use just outside the cells where they deprive you of your blood.

I said to the doc as I left her cell: "You've got great music here. Please pass on the compliment to the boss."

She was genuinely pleased that someone had noticed. Clearly they must have had a recent meeting to discuss how people can be made to lose their vital juices in a much more harmonious environment.

The silky sounds of jazz.

"On the jazz" is a phrase often used in the A Team. It is supposed to denote a plan or series of schemes of impudent simplicity.

So the leader of the A Team, Col John "Hannibal" Smith, would often be praised for being "on the jazz".

And having used this opportunity of sickness to watch certain episodes from season 2, my only conclusion is that Stephen J Cannell, the co-creator of this particular 80s classic, has been on the jazz for many years.

Because I've been sleeping at times when I'm usually awake, I've been left awake at times when I'm usually asleep.

And for these junctures, I've wheeled out the Rockford Files starring James Garner. Recuperation is a joyous process.

The Rockford Files — which Cannell sired in the mid-seventies — are just such timeless vignettes of how to elude pomposity and venom.

Listening to Rockford talk his way out of a putative dead end has sent me off to sleep with a smile.

This bout of enclosure has also helped me solve a question which I posed a few months ago in parislondonreturn.blogspot.com and I think I have the answer.

The viewing of the Star Wars episodes has definitely got to be chronological even though I've just rewatched episodes IV, V and VI chiming in and out of consciousness.

True, because of this I've missed quite important slabs of denouement. But since I know the story quite well, I can safely decree the boy child — when he is of a decent age — will be shown episodes I, II, III, then after a day's rest— IV, V and VI.

I shall not turn.

If my present ailments do not allow me the force to actually perform this task myself, then it shall be put into my will.

Shares in houses and insurance funds are one thing.

Appreciating Star Wars is a matter of galactic import.