I enjoy extreme weather- just so long as it's not so extreme as to cause damage...

Yesterday, for instance, we were shopping at Lidl in Polegate and got caught in a terrific downpour.  I ran for the car, pushing my trolley, and it was if someone was chucking gravel in the air and it was falling on my bent back. A bit daunting at the time but it turned an outing that would otherwise have been routine and forgettable into a Proper Experience- a pleasure to remember- and then to write about. 

That downpour was localised. We drove home- a couple of miles- and found our part of town had experienced nothing but a passing dampness. 

Since then it has rained on and off. Just now the sun is shining on us but the sky to the West- where most of our weather comes from- is very, very heavy.... 

 After spending a couple of afternoons listening to a friend tell me about his unhappiness I chanced upon the following couple of videos.

In the first Mitchell and Webb were playing therapist and client, with Webb's oleaginous therapist going, "That must have been hard" and "what did that make you feel?"- which is pretty much what I had been doing. 

And in the second Eckhart Tolle was telling us in his ever so quiet way how people love their pain and resist all attempts to have it taken away because it's all they have- which pretty much explains my friend.

They say the last thing you should do is tell a sufferer to "snap out of it" but I've snapped out of things in the past and I'm not sure there's actually any other way of getting free....

 I went and stood in the street at a spot where i knew I should be able to glimpse the rising Moon but while there was clear sky to the west the east was heavily clouded- so no eclipse for me. Pity. 

I received some compensation this morning when I drew the curtains and there hovering over the hills was the full Moon- all big and yellow- on its way down to the Americas.....

 Ah, the roar of the chain saw, the bang, bang, bang of the nail gun!

The conversion of our garage into something more like a bedsit proceeds slowly. Over the past two days a couple of skylights have gone in. Damian says the electrician will be sorting out the wiring on Monday.

We are training ourselves to say "annexe" not "garage".

Here's a picture of the interior as it was yesterday. The timber uprights will support the walls that will divide the bathroom and utility room from the living space and one another.....

P.S. Can you spot the cat?

There's always a cat......

 The least efficient way to seek inspiration is to sit at one's desk and stare at a blank screen....

So I get up and make a cup of tea and the ideas start to present themselves. 

 Picture Diary 102

Goodbye August. Hello Autumn.

I was the hospital yesterday for the follow-up to some eye tests I had done a month ago. The chap I saw explained that I have a condition that could lead to something that isn't macular degeneration but might just as well be. However it seems it t's getting better all by itself- and I walked away from the consultation feeling twenty years younger.

While I was waiting to be seen I couldn't help overhearing a doctor in a nearby cubicle trying to explain to a woman who wasn't listening that he was an eye specialist and she'd have to see someone else about whatever it was she was bending his ear about. I could hear from his tone of voice that his patience was being tried. "you're going round in circles," he said as she started up again about her eyelids.

I don't particularly fear physical deterioration (though I'd rather hold the tide back for as long as possible), but what I really don't want is to turn into the sort of silly old fool for whom allowances have to be made.....

You know how it goes.....

"He can't help it." (Pitying sigh.) "It's his age....."

 This is what Remembrance of Things Past looks like



Whole lot of reading matter there.

Should keep me going until Christmas.

 I got a letter in the post from the local council telling me "a local resident"  has lodged a complaint about me "feeding large birds". It informs me that feeding large birds isn't against the law but would I, please, desist- for various reasons. 

Oh, OK. OK....Next time I see a swan or a heron in my garden I'll chase it away.

Shoo!

I assume that this is the latest move in a campaign of harrasment by our next-door neighbour- the Seventh Day Adventist.

But of course I can't be sure....

All of us are afraid of losing control of our world and some of us are so very afraid that we resort to curtain twitching and lodging anonymous complaints with the authorities. 

Such a shame.....

 One of these days I mean to read Poust. I'll know the time is ripe when I come across a cheap secondhand edition of Swann's Way- in English of course, because while I have a little French it doesn't stretch much beyond newspaper articles.

Until I get that sign I'll read other things.

Once upon a time I maintained that there were too many books in the world still unread for me to waste time on old favourites, but now most of the things I read are things I've read before. At the moment it's the Allan Quatermain books. I'm reading Child of Storm (which I think the best of them) for the third time and after that I'm going back to the beginning with King Solomon's Mines. It's not just about comfort (though that figures) because re-reads can reveal things you'd overlooked or not been equipped to see earlier. For instance I find Rider Haggard is deeper, smarter and trickier than I'd once have given him credit for. On a sourer note I tried to re-read one of Iris Murdoch's later novels- one I used to love- and found it quite insufferable. All that dinner party philosophy! I know the intention is partly satirical but that stuff and the people who spout it interest me so little now that I'm not even going to stick around to laugh and point.

Have I reached the end of the shelf of books I want to read? Not quite. Because there's still A La Recherche du Temps Perdu....