No More Drip, Drip, Drip

The hot tap in the kitchen has been dripping for months and since it's not worth any plumber's while to turn out for such minimally-rewarded work we've just had to put up with it. My eldest son offered to have a go but since he couldn't guarantee the outcome I said, "thanks but no thanks."

Our handyman changed the washer yesterday as a minor item in the much larger scheme of work we have laid out for him. Ailz says that if he did nothing else that one little job would be worth the two and a half thousand pounds we're paying him.

Just So Unnecessary

I know this is frightfully English of me, but I don't see why we can't debate our differences- and do it stringently, wittily, hilariously- without having recourse to personal insult. What do you gain by calling someone an ape? Or for that matter banging on about small hands and peculiar hairstyles? Nothing that serves your cause.

Insult raises the heat, widens the gulf, lowers the tone. And sometimes- as Roseanne Barr just found out- your carelessly aimed stone can bounce off an opponent's tin roof and strike you full in the gob.

A Reason For Writing

One of the reasons I write is to find out what I really think.

This afternoon for instance I wrote a longish screed about war poetry but didn't post it because something about it didn't feel quite right. I left it up on the computer and walked away and did something else- the crossword, I think- and when I came back to it and re-read it I could see that it was really very wrong. I tinkered about a bit and then wiped it because the wrongness was beyond tinkering.

If the form of a thing I've written is inelegant and badly proportioned- as this post was- I've come to realise it's almost because the thinking it embodies is inelegant and badly proportioned too. Not everything I'd written was bad- and maybe if I go away again and think some more I'll find my thoughts falling into a more elegant pattern. If they don't I'll know it's a subject on which I have nothing worthwhile to say.