faustus | Entries tagged with small murphies

I stood in my back garden - as opposed to dealing with bins or the shed roof - for the first time since November or October.

I felt something lift.

Current Mood: elated

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I am practising Zen calm,** so the woman who jumped the queue in the surgery when I was invisible behind the tall man who was immediately before me only got a Paddington Bear Hard Stare rather than a brace of sarcasm.

The Guardian, with its how to write kiddilit section (http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/sep/26/howtowrite - why does Michael Rosen look like Gollum?) had a free Starbucks offer so I spent an hour with the paper and a large Americano.

I felt strong enough to hobble to the cancer shop where there wasn't the Ian Rankin I wanted (but I'm sure I do have that one, somewhere anyway) but there was a Shaun the Sheep mug and the calculator I've looked at for a couple of weeks that I keep not buying.

Glutton for punishment I went down to Oxfam and got a John Connolly I didn't have, the third of the Neal Stephenson doorstops, a book on fantasy whose title escapes me and a couple of feminist duplicates (Dworkin on porn, New French Feminisms which would be a third copy if I didn't have the feeling I lent the second to someone).

Meanwhile, I was almost literally struck by how large motorised wheelchairs are getting these days - and how these are becoming much more dangerous than bicycles on the high street.* One of them seemed to be housed in the size of tent that you used to see next to holes being dug in the road, and latterly of scenes of crimes, in which the great British workman (and plod) presumably makes his tea. It's possible these evolved from Victorian bathing huts and could be driven into the sea. I seem to recall my grandfather having a fair turn of speed in his manual wheelchair, and not just on the way back from Lincoln cathedral. (Seated on the prom at Herne Bay earlier this year, it felt a little like Brand's Hatch.) I'm sure these are all fine people who have to overcome all kinds of difficulties on a daily basis but I object to being cut up on the pavement or being quite so driven at. A couple of times I've had to leap into the road to avoid being run over, and was lucky not to be run over.

* The community police are cycling on streets that uniformed officers have told me off for cycling on. I have yet to point this out to them.

Edit: ** One day I hope to get better at it. Obviously.

Current Mood: reflective

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small murphies

Sat on the top of Botany Bay, and a small child cycles up to me. Can't have been more than three or four. "Do you live on the streets?" he asks.

"No," I reply.

"Well, you look like you do."

Kids play the hand they're dealt. The beard is relatively kempt. Perhaps I looked a little windswept. But I had just walked there from Reculver.

I'm always twitchy when friends are impressed by my being published. Part of my job, I say, no big deal. On the other hand, I'm impressed by friends being published. That's my mate in The Guardian telling you how to deal with slugs. He is the author of The Little Book of Slugs and The Organic Garden.

Finally an email via Friends Reunited from someone I went to school with and whom I lent Glory Road and Stranger in a Strange Land to in the ... er, mid-1980s. I never got the latter back, which I'd forgotten. But apparently reading Heinlein got him into reading. Coo.