Monday, May 19, 2008
Put it like this, the lime flavoured vodka I reached swiggingly for a few minutes ago to judge by my reaction to sighting some art head in the corner that was "oh dear God" and further such thoughts on viewing the ethno-mosaic vase with tartan ribbon trim on the other side of the room must have gone to my head.The reason I reached for the never diminished vodka - I helped both owners move more than once and recognise the unchanging bottles hence they either won't notice the drop in level, will assume it's evaporation or possibly natural atrophy of under-used spirits or I can top it up with water and both never be found out and generously make it taste nicer - was because I got here at ten to nine, moved the car to non-residents parking half-a-borough away at about nine, having spent the usual time getting through the inner front door (Dan & Cue will recognise this door, hunger having lashed it fast to their courgette tinged memories), then wandered back and happened to loiter outside the Beethoven-the-one-from-Clockwork-Orange wipe-clean fluorescent-lit tube station just to, you know, see what the current residents look like. And then between about ten and quarter past eleven I was trying to get in the aforementioned door, was cursing the freeholder replacing the front windows with something that can withstand an AA card (my pockets contained flat keys - useless for original function as well as impromptu ones, house keys - half-ditto, car-keys - too valuable to be risked, a mobile phone - lacking anyone useful to ring, a wallet with not much money in it and nothing suitable for unscrewing the plate round the jammed lock, an A-Z and couple of bits of seaglass. No cuddly toy unfortunately). There was a brief break to bewilder a friend of my brother and resident of the same general area to check if they had functioning spare keys. Predictably the idea has been mooted but remains pending. So instead I revert to an equal mix of trying to break the door down, trying to break the will of the lock down, trying to break through mangled European mobile networks long enough to get my brother's or future sister-in-law's (headline on magazine to my left "82 rings"; that is one heck of a lot of breached promises) phone to actually ring, wondering how easily I can break the meshed glass transom window (if the putty had been on the hall side that would have been my way in half an hour earlier) and breaking down myself.
By some fluke of electrons the SIL's phone rang in thoroughly peculiar way, and an odd sounding voice answered it. It was after about a minute of me explaining too much that I realised that the Penelopes (I can't spell the proper name and the checker thinks I mean "Openness") might not be on GMT let alone BST, and so the incomprehensibility of the voice might not be solely attributable to her Scotland-is-a-different-country (in much the same way as the past is) accent. That'll do their jet-lag good.
Our own private Hermes chose that moment to visit Hades and so I sighed to crossed legs on the floor, waiting for her to ring back when she puts the words I'd been saying into the sentences they were contained in. And then I begin to wonder if she'd just rolled over and gone back to sleep, thereby impaling my brother with an errant elbow, when a text bongs into being. It is magical for using the method contained therein it takes me less than five minutes to get in, which is a personal best for that door.
And so the vodka, and putting the milk in the fridge, and having my father ring while typing the reply (how does one spell "practice" on predictive text because I kept not) thus allowing my phone to effortlessly erase my barbed apology, thence to blogging and staying up too late (but if it's an hour-and-a-half earlier, as it would be if the spare key worked like the other keys, it's not that late).
Anyway, I've sort of lost where this was going, think the vodka's worn off and am not sure whether to attend to hunger, tiredness or coldness first, so better stop.
Yours with steel-scented callouses,
Anyhoo,
