Why This Is Hell

So I go from Florida time to GMT to BST within about five days, but my body clock is probably more bothered by the post-3am bedtime followed by 7.15 getting up last Friday, because I had one last session to teach. ( WTF? )

N came round just before 2 to finish the fencing. The first thing was to check the dry-in-fifteen-minutes concrete footings, but they are still damp. The ground is saturated and it rained over night. Frankly, I suspect an underground stream - that end of the garden is soaked.

We started with the easy bit, fitting the fence panel in that was flush with the two posts. The ground needed a big of redigging to make it flat, but the clasps nailed onto the posts with little difficulty. Then we had to fit the weatherboard in. Instinct would be to lower it in, but it's hard to lift a 6'x5' panel five foot in the air when there is a tree overhead. There was enough give in the posts to fix it in.

The second one was more difficult, given that one of the posts is 30 degrees from the line of the fence, and a foot shorter. We had to hammer the clasps much wider, and then hope they didn't sheer when we hammered to flush to the board. Thankfully I took the opportunity to dig up and move the camelia to a place where it is hopefully less likely to fry in the dawn's early light, so we had room top swing a hammer.

That much took an hour or so and leaves a two foot gap in the fence behind the shed. We repaired the boarding that was there before, pro tem, but we need something a bit better. "How about a gate?" suggested N. Yeah, sure, take the fence down and move it two foot along, why do I need a gate to the back of the shed? I thought about the wheelie bins, but I don't fancy such a trip with kitchen rubbish there. But I had considered having the composter there and it is clearly damper back there. So a gate it will be, eventually.

And one day that concrete will dry.

So we got to the fencing a fortnight earlier than anticipated, although we only had a window of about two and a half hours to do anything in. The old posts were clearly rotten, and so came out with a little persuasion. We had the cunning idea of using the existing footings, which have holes the size of a post in, but unfortunately my repeated comments that the new fence was a foot taller than the old were ignored and we hammered the first post in too far. We were able to retrieve the post and footing, but not to separate the two. We reburied this and tried to concrete it all in.


That left us enough time to fix the poorer of the two second class weatherboards, and both look more than presentable. If the gods are with us then we can affix these to the posts tomorrow, somehow. We have the fixings. And a two foot gap.

It is damp and claggy under foot so that 1) the concrete that dries in 15 minutes is still wet 2) the lawn is ripe for a recreation of the Somme and 3) my few bits of carpet are now mud coloured. But progress has been made, ahead of schedule.

I unexpectedly ate at N's place whilst we sorted out his passport, and I figured I needed some veg with the cauliflower cheese bakes and the crispy pancakes (the latter being no better after a break of twenty years or more since I last ate them). I just so happened to have some brussels, carrots and mushrooms with me.

Microwaved the brussels for three minutes (which was slightly too long) and shallow fried them with baby mushrooms and a dash of soya sauce. I reckon it needed sesame seeds, but it has potential as a side.

On Friday I went up to the cinema on the hill for an early evening showing of The Prestige. Giving the timing, I wasn't sure which bus to catch; it's a twenty minute journey (though see later) but you need to allow for the inner ring road at that time of night. I left the bus station about five, and got there about 5.25, not bad, and strolled from the new, less convenient, bus stop to the screening. I bought a ticket for the the film, and got one for Pan's Labyrinth at the same time.

When I got to the bus stop, I realised that I would have half an hour wait until the next service. So half hour wait, fifteen minute journey, ten minute walk. Or walk for about half an hour or so. I set off to walk, going foolishly but right down a fdootpath I've never used before, through a housing estate and up to the Westgate. Along the way I get a txt from N, telling me he's in the pub, and I request a cup of coffee. The walk turns out to be just shy of forty minutes, but is mostly downhill.

N and I were both going up to London on Saturday so we make the arrangements; I offer to ring him to make sure he's up. My suggestion is 8, but he wants longer, so I ring him when I get up at 7.15. He sounds pretty awake, and so I decide one phone call would be enough, as I'm not his nan. I get to the station in time to buy my ticket by 9 and wait for him to be late. Sure enough, he rings me at 9.15 - he fell asleep again. I can either catch the train without him, or go up to his place and catch the next one. Hey, it's only half an hour. Naturally we miss that next one as well, by 30 seconds. I'm now an hour behind schedule.

Of course, as we're changing trains at F so he can get his local service, all of this has added ninety minutes to the journey in return for making the time pass more quickly by having company for the journey. Hum ho.

Meanwhile three quarters of the Prefab Four are being crap or the trains are and it's not certain when they will be in town. They want to do the Tate Britain slides, so having done the Patrick Hughes exhibition at Flowers I head down south of the river. The queues for the slides at t'Tate are ridiculously long and I can see us getting very discontent. I text them warning them this, and so they decide to go to the British Museum instead. OK, back to the tube and back north to Russell Square.

The signage is lousy from the tube, and I very nearly head off in the wrong direction before I recall a journey from the BM to there with lamentables and abrinsky, reverse that in my head, and find the back entrance in Montague Street. I take charge for the first time that day, and award myself a cup of coffee before I txt the others of my arrival. At least I found a Yo Sushi in the Brunswick Centre, the latter having been transformed beyond recognition since June.

We eat sushi, and go to the Clarke do, and I make my way home on the last train from Charing Cross to West. I get in at 00.15, which gives me time for a couple at the Bell& before retiring, about 2am. I'd read most of The Observer on the train; it always feels like a bit of time travel to read a Sunday paper on a Saturday.

Tonight I should be out of the cinema at about 10.50 - I'm not sure when the next bus will be but I suspect another half hour wait. Or another walk.

Edit: Yes, film finishes 10.50, last bus was 10.45, previous film finished half an hour before so they could have started earlier. This time I ended up walking down Tyler Hill, having still not located the lit pathway which would take me more directly to town. I got to the Bell& for 11.15, and could have made the Doves for closing time.

I see Pan's Labyrinth has a having it both ways ending - although of in the real world the fascist win and Franco rules Spain for another threee decades. Does the fate of one girl make any difference?

I had a txt Monday night about 6.30 from N asking if tonight was still on; this crossed with one asking him if he was still coming round. The paranoid part of me asks itself if that meant there might be a reason I wouldn't want to see him or more likely vice versa.

There is a gap in the early hours. I clearly got home, although I seem to recall a long way round, I clearly opened the front door, clearly locked and bolted it, clearly got to bed, but left out that getting undressed part, and proceeded directly, do not pass water, to the oblivion fully clothed.

With shoes on.

( New Year's Eve )( New Year's Day )( Tuesday )( Wednesday )

I dragged myself out of bed sometime during Desert Island Discs (how come if he's the most successful living composer, I've never heard of him? And what about McCartney?), may have had a bath, and wandered down to the Doves to see G, who was working a Barney and hasn't been at the Doves for weeks. N was there already, looking a little worse for wear, and Amanda was sat at the bar, looking radiant as ever. ( Read more... )

It has been a while since I did the Maze at Crystal Palace Park. The summer is ending, and besides, N is about to move back here at the end of October. And yet, with a certain amount of negotiation, and a following wind, we decided that this last weekend would be the day of the next trip - to Hampton Court Palace. And yet as always it feels as if the trip to the mazes is as full of twists and dead ends as the maze itself. ( Follow the left wall. )

I've never been much of a gardener, and as is traditional, Gardener's Question Time is turned off faster than even sports coverage. Mostly it's been the lack of garden to do it in - and I don't believe in Blue Peter-style lifestyle porn. Someone, sometime, bought me some Stripey Tiger tomato seeds, which I grew in a large pot on my attic kitchen table in the Louis Street flat, and which was planted out when I moved back in with the Aged Ps. It was too late in the summer for them to ripen and so I was left with green tomato, fodder for chutney.

Last year, with a reasonable garden in Henry Court, I created myself a little patch of earth and grew a couple of tomato plants and some brussels. I got a few tomatoes off the tomato plants, but the brussels never quite took.

( It's so deeply true, don't you feel? Tomato soup is so dreadfully eternal. )