I dropped the cupboard/wardrobe up to Chelmsford and in so doing I won my car back. “Are you sure your car is secure overnight,” I was asked a couple of days ago by my anxious friend. That led to me trying to imagine who would attempt to steal a vast cheap wardrobe the barely fits in the car. “Quick, mate! To me! To you! To me!”.
I dropped it off and got my legroom back. As I shook out the pins and needles I was begrudgingly given more or less exactly what the journey cost in recompense. I have noted clearly to myself that I am to avoid any further favours in that direction. It’s done, and I’m not out of pocket.
Bletchley in the evening and I got back in plenty of time for the show. A bit more carnage than usual playing Dilly. Beer got thrown all over my desk soaking many of the papers on it. The place has to be chaos anyway. Dilly is best when he’s scattered, but I think I found the edge tonight. Tomorrow I’ll likely look to tighten things again a bit. There’s medicine, Bovril, tea wine and beer all soaked into everything everywhere. It might be time for a clear out of sorts in that room, although I’d then have to deliberately generate more mess.
Now I’m back in Slough. The playing fields at Eton are just the other side of the M4 from me. Depending on who you talk to that’s either where the war was won or where the (lack of) thinking that led to tens of millions of unnecessary deaths was bred. I’m conscious of the proximity – the other place… I’m just letting the energy work.
On my lap, warm and fragile, one of the two cats is placed. Blue collar so I’m assuming the boy. We are sharing warmth and breath, as can happen with cats. The other cat is audibly snoring to my left, fast asleep up at the top of her scratch tree, collared in pink.
Over the last hour I cooked a butternut squash dahl, making good use of what must be the cat-parent’s wedding gifts: lots of beautiful Le Creuset cookware. I am feeling so happy and full now, after HelloFresh excelled themselves on the Daal. I’m not used to good quality kitchenware though. Right at the beginning of the prep process I tried to sever my left thumb through my cavalier handling of a vegetable knife with an actual sharp blade. Right through the onion it went in moments, and then into the side of my left thumb. Good deep cut. Ow.
The cat-parents are proper grown-ups despite being considerably younger than me. If you cut yourself at my flat, the plasters are in the 1840’s Oriental Resin box under the sculpture of Prometheus – the one that’s located by the Blue and Whites – just lift up the African hardwood busts to see the keyhole. The key is in the mouth of the desiccated crocodile I keep stored in the box of teeth on the oldest of those three mahogany sideboards. To find antiseptic you must first befriend the Frog King and complete twelve trials. Simple. If you cut yourself here though, the antiseptic and plasters are under the bathroom sink in a tin. With blood liberally gushing from my onionthumb, I found the plasters through swift application of logic, habit, shared memory… I looked where everybody else keeps their plasters. What a remarkable system. I had a clean bound wound in under five minutes and now I can write this without tracking gore everywhere. I went back to slicing onions and honestly I almost got my thumb again immediately. I’m far too accustomed to blunt knives.
Maybe I need to sharpen my Dilly performance now as well, and make him less bludgeon and more scalpel. One more week after this. The joy is in the experiment. The learning is in the precision for me here. I like to play jazz with immersive stuff. I like to try and make the bad note good, to listen, to play and to respond. But there can surely be ways to bring precision in as well… We shall see.
AlBarclay 