Tuesday, April 10, 2007

The public face and the self

I’ve just turned the computer on at 11.10 a.m. Recently I’ve been delaying my start up time, as M has been complaining that we’re using more day time electricity than we used to. He blames it on my almost constant use of the computer, without allowing for the fact that on the days when he’s at home in a state of semi-retirement, he watches repeats of Keeping up Appearances, Last of the Summer Wine, Poirrot, Only Fools and Horses, etc. ad infinitum. I can take the latter, but not the first two. (He says that Hyacinth reminds him of me, particularly when he’s driving.) In any case, I’m not with him when he’s watching day time TV.

However the master has gone off today to a job. In his usual eccentric manner, he loaded a trolley, or would you call it a barrow – I’m not quite sure – with a fold-up ladder and got the whole lot in the back of my car so he could go by train to Croydon. I took him to Guildford Station this time, as he had to collect some additional parts, and called in on the way back to our mobile phone people, as my current phone – a very fancy electronic thing – kept crashing. They’ve given me a temporary one, which is much older technology, but which I already prefer. Perhaps they’ll let me keep the old one.

Fortunately, there were no smart young women at the mobile shop, as I was feeling very fat, spotty and middle-aged. The spots are due to acne rosacia, which I’ve had for many years, but can disguise with a layer of makeup, or Polyfilla, as M describes it. We were too much in a rush for that, though. The fat thing is a pain. A year or so back, I had the will power to turn away from chocs and cakes when I was carrying a bit of extra weight. Now I don’t seem to be able to. I’m not actually fat, but the weight collects in two places – my stomach and my face. I listened to a programme about plastic surgery yesterday, and could well understand how one might be tempted to have that extraneous fat sliced off. Whilst I had no sympathy with the lady whose had £180,000 worth of surgery, (Real Life Barbie, I believe she calls herself) I’m not judgemental about people who had a snip or a tuck. I’m just not brave enough to go through unnecessary surgery.

We’ve had a couple of lazy days and I’ve been reading 1984 the current reading circle book – meeting later this week. George Orwell was surprisingly prophetic about some things, apart from Big Brother – telescreens, for example, which are just coming in now. But I think the main focus of 1984 – the end of individualism – is probably incorrect. If anything, everyone is screaming to have their own trivial life or world displayed to the rest of us. Me included, as this blog demonstrates.

Irene (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/blacks.house/ ) and her other half came to dinner on Sunday night. I had forgotten the shops would be closed and, as it was very much a last minute decision, had to forage in my freezer to find some earlier creations. In my usual state of disorganisation, I arrived at the table, having brought all the food through, then discovered I had not provided plates. M informed us that the tablecloth was made of rice paper.

Irene, who is coping very well with her broken arm, brought over a CD of the draft for the next Goldenford book. (http://www.goldenford.co.uk/) It describes her successful and eccentric purchases and sales through E-Bay and is a fascinating read with great photos. Unfortunately, the CD crashed nearly at the end of my reading and I thought I had lost all the comments I’d made during the last couple of hours. By some combination of chance and luck, I looked at ‘Recent documents’ and found a recovered version there. I copied the notes to a new file, just in case.

Got some office work to do today – two quotations, dictated yesterday, to print out, and the end of month statements to send (somewhat late in the day.) And it’s VAT time again, so I’ll be starting on that. But hopefully will also find time to get my latest story sorted out and sent to Writers News. On the writing front, I was very pleased to see Cathy’s http://cwnotebook.blogspot.com/ comments on The Fruit of the Tree (http://freespace.virgin.net/jackie.luben/fruit.html). When you have made the decision to self publish, in effect, saying that conventional publishers don’t know what they’re talking about, it is so gratifying to have someone enjoy that rejected piece of work.

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