Gustave Doré, 1886.
In a good mood, then, I leave my wife dawdling over the pram in the more sanitary side of town and duck into the supermarket.
Our sage bag of tricks has piled on one and a half lbs in the course of one spare week. Something less by metric alchemy.
I do not find what I am looking for.
"DOYOUDOSUSHI?" I enquire. Karaoke out a Can. Barry Sheen, after a stroke.
We kick-start the pram and travel in caravan to the park at the top of the road. By the time we get there I could eat a horse. As it is, we prowl around in search of a dry bench and fall upon the sushi. Devouring every shard.
It is all right.
I do not care for George Osbourne. I do not like him at all. An 18th century engraving of a man divested of powdered wig and rouge. Ankle breeches. Buckled shoe.
Give his coalition seven more months, and there will be a poor house back on every corner. Jacobins swinging in Tyburn.
We take a meandering route back home past vast Georgian houses hugging avenue and circus, a puzzle of lanes. This part of this city I am largely unfamiliar with. An adjunct to its commercial heart. Among the nursing homes and divided lets, an odour of squandered wealth persists, blackmail, sculduddery; under quarried flagstone and vans deploying fibre to the curb; out of rockery and reclaimed wind.
When Gilmour's charge did dandle, Parliament Street did blush;
Should Lutyens' stone be littled, with swords brought forth be hushed.
We open the door on mail forwarded from our old place.
A solicitor's letter on behalf of the utility company demanding £154 on top of all we fed in to its niggardly prepayment meter in the course of this year past.
This, despite a credit carried over in that last quarter of some £56. Plus a £20 late payment surcharge; £30 court fees; £50 solicitors costs. Oh, and £1.14 statutory interest.
Just one more reason we are forever in debt.
▼ THE FALL: I AM DAMO SUZUKI from "This Nation's Saving Grace" LP (Beggars Banquet) 1985 (UK)
2 comments:
Good to see you are starting out the new year with great energy. Amusement and mystery - as often before. Your postings must be read and re-read - deciphering - patterns, clues or pure coincidences, decoded and interpreted or, well, for an ageing non-synchronous mind, quite mind-bending.
Poor old Don Quixote, in the midst of a delirium, not from civilised drinking I suppose, or fighting the demons? Out Demons Out!
Damo Suzuki > Can > Vitamin C > Vitamin e > as from fish > as in sushi > as fall upon the sushi > The Fall > Damo Suzuki > this small circled closed. I remember those times, walks with the pram - the nucleus family at it's purest and best. And Beefheart? Well, Dore could also predict the house were the haunted Captain rehearsed his young Magic Band, using cult like methods of extreme discipline and subordination. Years before that, young only child Don Van Vliet's spoiled behaviour was tolerated by his parents who believed he deserved it, since he obviously was a kid genius. A warning to all us parents! Have a good day - free from pecuniary problems - just filled with love! Still Anonymouse
Your comment very nearly felled me with a greatfully received blow, Still Anonymouse. Flattering not just to be be read, but re-red. And subjected to the mill.
Coincidences abound. It's sometimes healthier to let the demons do their stuff without resorting to gymnastics, maybe. But equally good to find somebody ball spotting from the bleachers.
The Captain's parents may have much to answer for. Spare the rod and spoil the ever expanding head. Well. I fluctuate constantly between a skewed sense of egalitarianism and the rabid totalitarian always lurking just beneath the skin. Potholes in front of my feet from where the lightning corrects.
A fear of stripes.
Better to stay drunk, than wrestle like Don Quixote with the absurdity of it all.
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