… of a day this has been.
For some reason or other, I just haven’t been able to get going at all and I don’t know why. Possibly with all of this doom and despondency, I dunno, but I feel rather like the Lady of Shalott (although where I’m going to find the Lady of Shalott at this time of night is anyone’s guess) and “the curse has come upon me”. And if I can’t find the means to snap out of it sometime soon, the curse really will be here and it will be more than the mirror that will crack from side to side.
The day started so well too.
As luck would have it, I did have my early night last night and, even more luckily, I was up before the third alarm too. Well before it in fact.
And that is something of a surprise because when I looked at the dictaphone after my medication and saw the distance that I had travelled during the night, I was surprised that I made it back in time.
Talking about a blast from the past I was studying history last night and in the same class as me was a girl who I haven’t seen for almost 50 years and about whom I haven’t given a passing thought even when I knew her. So what she’s doing coming with me on a nocturnal ramble I really don’t know at all. That’s the kind of thing that can only happen in circumstances like this. But I digress. She was struggling with her lessons so I was going to make a suggestion that the two of us study together and that was I could get to know her rather better (and why I would really want to do that I don’t have any idea either). But something had happened and she had upset a couple of people, a couple of young black guys and they called her out. Feeling that this could turn rather nasty, I followed. I didn’t want her to be in any kind of danger. As for how all of this worked out, I really don’t know because it reached a point where it was so stressful and distressing that I actually forced myself to wake up (I did too, and that’s probably what is the most astonishing thing about the whole affair) rather than sit and witness it. It was so disturbing and I really didn’t know why.
And a bit later on it involved something similar with Steven Stills of all people making an appearance but I awoke again before that too got out of hand
I was with a former friend of mine last night and someone else, and this other person – we were in an old mini. We’d gone into Stoke on Trent and my friend had gone to fetch an Indian meal. We were waiting, we other two, in the mini. The guy with me said “I have to go to the loo – the bathroom” so we set off. My friend was still in the takeaway so I made a gesture to him “5 minutes”. We drove and first of all we came to a petrol station but we couldn’t find anywhere in there. Then there was the abandoned railway station. But that was locked up and we couldn’t even work out which was the station building where the toilet might be. Then I found a hedge that looked suitable that he could go behind but it turned out that there was a housing estate behind it. We were now on somewhere like Chell Heath and all the ground had been disturbed. These were called “arths”, where the frozen ground beneath had melted and bubbled up and pushed up the soil. We were talking about these and all the time this guy was being extremely flippant about all kinds of things and wasn’t taking the slightest bit of notice about wanting to go to the bathroom again even though that’s why we had pulled away and why we had left my friend in this restaurant and that was about an hour ago now and I wasn’t very pleased about that.
Somewhat later again I was at a Crewe Alex football match watching the game. I saw both goalkeepers make some pretty good saves. Strangely enough it was Garratt in goal for Crewe and the stadium was as it was before it was modernised back in the 90s. Someone was talking about this fitness coach – they’d signed a fitness coach from Melbourne and asking if it was a good idea. I made some comment about his age. Crewe had this player playing, n°25 or 26, I dunno. His name was Ralston. I didn’t recognise him at all so I was keen to know how come he had ended up at the club because he wasn’t one of the players whom I would normally see there.
Later yet again, I was with a couple of girls and we were planning on moving somewhere so we were packing. Something about an object that they had – I’m not quite sure what they had to do with this object but it involved that the only way that they could do this was to unpack it from their bag and put it in a separate bag ready to take with them. And that was when the alarm went off, at that moment.
That was some night, that’s for sure.
After breakfast I made a start on hunting down digital sound files. And after I’d done one, I broke off for a shower, a change of clothes and a clean-up.
At LeClerc there weren’t too many cars on the car park but there was a queue around the side of the building. They were just letting 50 people in to start with, then then one in as one came out.
It took me 10 minutes to get in and I wasn’t there for long. There were a few things missing – out of stock – but nothing of any great importance. Just a few different varieties of tinned stuff. Nothing at all like the UK where they say that it looks as if a flock of locusts have descended on the place.
The only thing that inconvenienced me was the lack of pizza rolls – good job I always have one at home. There were none of the cheap pastry rolls either but the next one up is vegan too. And they had some beautiful-looking blackcurrant jam which, I reckon, will make a beautiful blackcurrant pie like my jam pie last week, so I bought a jar.
This week I spent a little more than I usually do and while I haven’t been panic-buying at all, I’ve been making sure that I’m one week ahead of where I normally would be.
Back here I finished off the digital files – another 4 albums have bitten the dust today, and then I edited that sound file for the Grande Marée that I had missed. What was 03:42 of rambling conversation is now 02:40 of hard-hitting action.
After lunch I carried out another task that I’d been putting off – redesigning one of the home pages for one of my browsers. I don’t use “favourites” at all on web browsers – I wrote several web pages with all of my favourite sites on one or more them as clickable links and use each one as a home page for each browser that I use, depending upon the purpose for which I use the browser. One web page was well out-of-date and needed revising.
But it was round about here that I ran aground and ended up doing nothing at all for the rest of the day and that’s a disappointment and no mistake, with so much that needs to be done.
Nevertheless I found some energy to play the guitar for an hour and to make tea. Pasta and veg in tomato sauce with a burger, followed by the last of the jam pie with vegan ice cream and chocolate sauce. I’m sorry to see the last of that pie because it was delicious.
The evening walk was a shambles tonight.
There’s nowhere for me to go really and the high winds disrupted my running. At one point a huge gust of wind stopped me dead in my tracks. When I stopped to catch my breath I was by the Richard Anacréon Museum of Modern Art so I took a photo of it.
And then I came home to sit and vegetate again and do nothing except to listen to some excellent music.
But I really do need to snap out of this lethargy soon and push on. I don’t have the time to waste doing nothing and I wish that I knew what the answer was.
What I’ll have to do is to write off today as a failure and start again tomorrow.
