Random Outpourings

Today there was more driving. It was disastrous.  I tried to build on yesterday’s success with the drugs, and convince myself that the calmness I achieved could be accessed by the power of my mind alone.  This turned out to be blatant rubbish. Hence me snivelling in Waitrose car park while Jason and the children went in and bought Green and Black’s dark chocolate ice  cream to tempt me back into the driving seat and home where bowls and spoons awaited us.  I shall just have to accept that the drugs are a useful crutch, albeit a temporary one, and get on with it.

In the mean time I am creeping forward with my studies, despite the fact that my heart, and head, are just not in it.  I have been disciplined and chipped away at a little each day. I will start the actual essay writing tomorrow, and I hope that forcing myself to focus on this stress it will take my mind off all the other stresses.  I want it in by Saturday at the latest.  I then have plans to research and write the next essay in a fortnight.  It may sound unrealistic, but the next essay is about picture books. I have already read and studied both of the books before and so it is not beyond the realms of possibility.  If I can do that I have then given myself three weeks to write the next essay.  After that the plan goes a bit pear shaped.  I have a four thousand word assignment instead of an exam. It has to be in by May 28th.  I am going on holiday from 25th March to 29th April. I cannot see how I am going to get it written before I go away.  But I figure if I can get the reading and planning done before I go away, I can still go on holiday with no academic books to read, and get it written and in in the month left after I get back.  This is feasible, no?  This is what I am telling myself anyway.

Amidst all this personal angst, Jason has developed the world’s most grotesque man cold and is trailing about in his dressing gown leaving clumps of snot encrusted tissue hither and yon in the manner of a particularly vile ticker tape parade.  He has the trots from drinking fourteen gallons of orange juice, and can only sleep propped up on pillows, which then give him a cricked neck.  Despite this he has helped Tallulah to learn how to count in twenty five’s, which is not half as easy as this sentence makes out.  He should definitely be awarded some kind of medal for patience above and beyond the call of duty.  Just listening to it was excruciating.  He has also nursed me through my driving hysteria and put up with me weeping all over his dressing gown.

I have helped Oscar with his nursery homework, which consists of recognising and drawing oval shapes.  He was particularly taken with the idea of chocolate eggs and had to be persuaded, after having drawn fifty seven of them, that there may well be other things in the world which are also oval shaped, although admittedly, not half so exciting.

We have played with the flash cards which I demonstrated in an earlier post.  We derived much satisfaction from creating surreal storylines and seeing who could make the others laugh the most.  Oscar’s approach is novel.  If he doesn’t like your sentence, he sweeps all before him, shouting ‘Nooooo!’ and scattering the cards to the winds.  If he does like it, he grabs the juiciest words, holding them clasped to his bosom and refuses to relinquish them.  It is quite trying, and I can see why most novelists do not use the cut and paste approach to writing, nor have a small, fierce boy as their editor.  Eventually we were left with the words ‘fish, apple’, which he didn’t care two hoots about one way or the other.  I feel that publishers are unlikely to be starting a bidding war over it.  And my career as a top flight novelist stalls in the starting blocks once more.

In other news, I have discovered a Simon Schama audio CD which is actually read by Simon Schama.  It is something to do with slavery and America. I don’t really know. I don’t really care.  I renewed my search for audio Simon after having fallen asleep to two different episodes of A History of Britain on the telly only the night before last, and thinking that it was worth doing a little more digging, given his magical somnolent tones.  I failed to learn anything about the English Civil War or The Great Fire of London in spectacular snore-o-vision.  He is a genius. A true genius.  I await his delectable tones with marked impatience.

I am getting on particularly well with reading  for pleasure recently.  I just finished ‘Greenery Street’ by Denis MacKail, which is utterly delightful.  Another winner from Persephone Books.  It’s sort of like reading the fluff on the top of a cappuccino, delicious and untaxing.  It’s the story of Ian and Felicity Foster, upper middle class newly weds and their first year of married life in a house on London’s Greenery Street.  It is funny, charming and totally of its time.  Imagine Evelyn Waugh or Nancy Mitford, but without the sarcasm and all the wonderful social nuances left in.

And now I’m half way through Ian Rankin’s Exit Music.  It is very good, and I am very sad.  I have had this book for over two years now, and have been putting off reading it because it is the last ever Inspector Rebus book and I don’t want them to end. I love Rebus and have read him from the very beginning.  I don’t feel I can put the end off any longer because there is new Rankin afoot.  I am hoping that it will be as good.  My heart tells me it won’t be.  I am hoping that reading my first Henning Mankell which is on my bedside table, might take the sting away a little. I hope so.

All of which has made me think that I ought to do a book post on crime fiction.  So I might.

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