Saturday, April 22, 2006
Huzzah!Ignore any vaguely miserable bits in the following; it was written pre-Firefox-prompted-illegal-operation. So after clicking "save as draft" and having everything hang (and what's it say about the systems people use that that there is a difference between crashing and hanging? Although having just checked it's actually a semi-hang; I can wiggle the mouse to my heart's content, but nothing responds), I was a bit upset, until on the third reboot I got through to Blogger and found the post had survived. Now all I need to do is figure out where the Valkyries were up to.
Ok, I've had enough of adultdom. I'm tired, I'm bored, I'm worried, I'm sitting inside on a very sunny day, feeling unfit, both underfed and overweight, looking forward to a glorious Saturday of more work and to top it all I'm listening to Wagner.
The last point is because Radio 3 did the whole Ring Cycle (think Lord of the Rings: less hobbitses) on Easter Monday, and the streaming thingy gets cut off on Monday, and I'd never heard it before. And I'm only mid-Walküre (and it's got less shrieking women in it than I thought. But if only radio came with subtitles; I can't understand opera singers when they sing in English, and can only occasionally tell Brunhilde isn't Italian). Of course, sticking on music I can only listen to on this computer does cunningly tie me to it and the room, stopping me from wandering off to explore unnecessary places or just popping out for a couple of hours to buy cards.
In the latter case it might have helped if I'd gone by tube not bus, and remembered which bus goes where and then not taken a little walk round Pall Mall, Green Park, St James's Park, Horseguards', a garden I never knew existed downstream of the MOD, across and down the southbank until I got to Tower Bridge, where I pondered the view east, through the fretful murk (well, it would be a fret if the buildings of London didn't generate and divert so much wind), wondering why I scarcely know any of it.
I also happened to notice that they have tours inside the thing, plus a photography competition (chances of winning that: not good. Chances of winning with a broken lens: well unless they think it's artistic...), and the the BT tower doesn't quite align with gap down the middle (how inconsiderate are some people?), although the pale hint of the corroded needle did seem terribly far away. It's also quite odd how much of what one thinks is quintessential London, isn't actually visible from the boundary of Roman London. How long before the slink means central London is in Richmond?
But having been back to the wilds (Wildes more like) over Easter, and been amazed by the variety of colour trees, and I just meant the twigs (here the trees come in black and yellow; yellow means they've been digging up the road upwind), the number and diversity of insects (and the different residues they leave when blinked upon) and the stampede of scents, I was also surprised by the smells of the city in heat (I know that makes it sound like something else, which isn't what I meant; yet given the number of interested looks I've been getting, maybe it should be). There's something about wet masonry warming, rain-doused roads slowly exfoliating, the way even the rust on cars can be smelt. And then there's mug of perfume which consumes the multi-tulipped parks I walked thorough. One may not think of tulips or daffodils smelling (ok, so I know they vaguely do), but plant enough of them under a sheltering mesh of twigs and suddenly the air is thicker the gauntlet zone* of A&N.
* So called because you have to run through it hoping to survive untouched or untainted. And they you discover they've sprayed the hand you put up to refuse. Oh to be American, and claim in a whiny voice that one is "smell sensitive" (memorably said by a guy wearing curiously pungent hair gel that made my eyes feel like I've just walked into a conifer) and so sue them for gross emotional distress, I mean, do I even look like an Old Spicer? Hello? That ain't even i-ronny.
That last bit is probably only funny if you've met this, like, one guy, and he's, like... infectious apparently. Outcast unclean! Black Eyed Peas downright icky!
Oh, a train has stopped outside my window; which as the station is a hundred yards back in the way it's just come... Surely the driver wouldn't forget to stop on what must be the world's slowest, scummiest and largely most boring railway line, would he/she/it?
Anyway, this is a bit of a ramble, just using this blog as a place to rant, to sprawl, to mumble beguilingly and nonsensically away. I ought to feel shamed by this, for not being the accurate, dignified, informative and generally good-me person that I ought to be and occasionally am; yet I'm not really. I'm just sagging back into what this blog used to be, before anyone found it and read it (I know it's scarcely changed, but it's the intentions which count). Partly it's hitting a stage of not caring (although being me it's partly hitting a stage of partly not caring) and partly it's slight embarrassment over the lack of posts; I have been writing them, occasionally, just never quite getting round to finishing them.
But I'd better go and cook, and ponder the joys of spring, which so far have included wandering parks beneath showers of cherry blossom; eavesdropping on numerous inappropriate conversations; trying very hard not to laugh at the woman, on the arm of her boyfriend, who decided to kick a slow moving duck out of the way. The duck flew off, as did her shoe, which narrowly missed the pond; realising the Gherkin will soon vanish behind a tree of dubious parentage (read: I have no idea what it is); discovering that it's light still at 8; and that it took us days to notice the heating is broken (I still haven't found this out for myself, merely been informed), and each of the people in this flat assumed someone else had drained the hot water tank before they got up, so it took three days of progressively cooler showers before we noticed the hot water was out too. And if must be spring if one can take a cold shower and be only slightly blue at the end, having failed to shriek at any point (gasping and other sudden losses of control over one's breathing don't count).
Anyhoo,
