… my magnum opus at long last. And magnum is hardly the word. Having slashed the music as much as possible (out of the thirty-two acts that appeared at Woodstock I have included a mere ten) and written as little as possible to accompany it,, I am now looking for suggestions as to how to fit one hour and forty-four minutes of programme into a one-hour slot.
Had I done the “essential Woodstock” as I was planning to do, I would have ended up with probably about four hours.
Anyway, that will be Saturday night’s dictation and I can wrack my brains on Sunday as to how I am going to do it
It was a very weary process though today, not helped by the fact that I was up until late again. Another good concert came around on the playlist and that kept me up while I listened to it. I had to switch off the computer rather hastily once it had finished just in case something else interesting came around.
And last night I tried a novel experiment. I turned the heating in the bedroom right down, to see if that might improve the situation about all this perspiring.
Once in bed, it took, as usual, an age to go off to sleep and then as is the case these days … "??" – ed … we had another turbulent night… "!!" – ed … when I was tossing and turning from one side of the bed to the other. Not perspiring as much though. Maybe the room is too hot.
When the alarm went off I was fast asleep, walking through Chester and having an urgent need to go to the bathroom. I dived into a café where I knew the toilets were. The waitress moaned at me so I said that we’d sort out the coffee later. “When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go”. I dashed downstairs but took one look at the bathroom and decided that I wasn’t going to waste any time in that place. What was interesting was that the WC had a view through an open window right across the river where anyone going past on a boat could see what was going on.
.
Between 1972 and 1974 I had a couple of happy years living and working in Chester, finding my feet after leaving school and running away from home. I should have made much more of my stay there than I did but hindsight is a wonderful thing. Surprisingly, there are things going on in my head right now where Chester actually does figure quite considerably, but the World isn’t ready to hear that story right now either.
After a good wash and scrub up I went for the medication and then came back into Ice Station Zebra where I turned up the heating and listened to the dictaphone. There was an athletics tournament taking place in Scotland. The winner of the tournament was the town of Edinburgh and so Edinburgh announced that it was actually going to re-partake in some kind of national competition again because this was the forty-fourth time in succession that the town had actually finished top in events like this, measured on the performances of the athletes compared to the athletes of other towns that were in this particular competition.
Forty-fourth time in succession? Sounds like TNS winning the Welsh Premier League, doesn’t it? Penybont have blown up spectacularly after leading the table for a while and if they carry on at this rate Hwlffordd could well overtake them into second place, something that seemed most unlikely six weeks ago.
Did I dictate the dream where I was with someone and my apartment needed tidying up … "no you didn’t" – ed …. Some guy and his young daughter came round and decided that they would spend a whole day helping me. She used the Welsh term ysbridoli – “a spirit” or “to inspire” – to describe how they were feeling when her father said that they had set out really early in order to have a really good day at it.
Wouldn’t it be nice if someone would come round and tidy up my apartment for me right now? Tidying up is not my strong point, as anyone who has been anywhere where I have been will tell you. Ezra Pound once said of Ford Madox Ford "Put Ford naked in an empty room and within an hour behold total chaos" and “Fordy” is not alone in this skill.
Finally there were two friends who lived next door to each other. One of them was married but the other friend was having an affair with his wife. This had been going on for some time. Suddenly the other guy found out about it, didn’t say anything but waited until the man said something to him that he and the wife wanted to run away. The married man pulled out a revolver or was it an automatic, and waved it around in front of the guy’s nose. The guy said “you can’t be serious about this?” so the guy just pulled the trigger and shot him. He had then to dash into work because he was late and had to think of a way of making sure that people thought that he was at work. He waited until a delivery lorry came in and then spent all the morning helping them unload the delivery lorry. The police though were quite suspicious of him because someone had put some rubbish into the waste bin earlier that morning when at the time he was supposed to have been at work but wasn’t. They didn’t know who it was who had done that and suspected that it was him
The things about which I dream are sometimes really weird and have no explanation at all that I can see.
Isabelle the Nurse was late again today. She didn’t stay long, but was in quite a good mood. She’ll be here tomorrow but on Sunday she’s off for a week Carnavalling. I reminded her to show me the photos afterwards.
Once she’d left, it was breakfast and BOOK time. Today, our author has spend about fifteen pages waxing lyrical about the South Downs, how the butterflies are fluttering in the gorse and baby lambs are baa-ing from the hedgerows and stuff like that, nothing whatever to do with any earthworks at all.
As I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … I’m not sure exactly who his audience is intended to be. It’s certainly a very restricted circulation and he seems to be casting more and more people adrift as he goes along.
And then back in here I began to finish off the radio programme.
There were the usual Friday interruptions, such as half a slice of flapjack, my cleaner coming around to do her stuff and then the disgusting drink break. However, by about 18:00 it was all finished – at least, as far as I can for the moment until I start the editing once it’s been dictated.
But what do you leave out?
That was always my problem at University – “write 5,000 words on …”. How do you do that? I just used to write out what I had to say, which was probably three times as long, and then ruthlessly edit it down to something approaching the total because it was the only way that I knew how.
However, my editing was never ruthless enough, and when it was, you’d end up with these strange remarks from your tutor, like "you should have fitted … in"
"Yes" I replied. "Where should I have fitted it? And what should I have left out so that I had room to include it?"
Strangely enough, the tutor would never give you an answer to that.
But that’s the trouble with being an older (I won’t use the term “mature”, so as to avoid all kinds of ribald comment) student. I was studying for pleasure and interest, not because I wanted a job, and what I was doing only ended up having the vaguest relevance to what they wanted me to study. So I wasn’t all that concerned about following the rules slavishly.
What’s the point of a word count anyway? The only way that it makes any sense at all is to spare the tutors some sleepless nights as 30 equivalents of WAR AND PEACE drop onto their desks.
Meanwhile, I digress … "again" – ed …
Tea tonight was air-fried chips with falafel and a salad – a small helping. And no pudding either. I’m really not very hungry these days.
So I’m off to bed to make ready to go to dialysis in the afternoon where I’ll hatch the football and read through my notes ready for dictation. But it’s Dydd Gwyl Dewi so I have leek soup to make. That will be tea on Saturday night, with some freshly baked bread.
But seeing as we are talking about Dydd Gwyl Dewi … "well, one of us is" – ed … I once met a Welsh woman who was complaining about the fact that she had seventeen children
"Didn’t your husband ever take precautions?" I asked her. "Does he know about ‘French letters’?"
"Ohh yes, he knows about those" she said "but he uses a ‘Welsh letter’"
"What’s that?" I asked
"It’s a French letter with a leek in it."