For The Best

Mum was taken to Tameside General Hospital yesterday, which was a bit of relief to all, I think. She's deteriorated alarmingly in recent weeks, according to John & Maureen, and from what I can hear for myself in my now daily phone calls. Her short term memory has really gone and that's created havoc with her taking her medicine. So a hospital bed is obviously the best place for her, for now, at least.

It also takes a bit of pressure off my sister and brother-in-law who've been holding things together heroically. John had managed to get Social Services in with various helpers over the last few days, but it's not really been systematic enough for the intervention to be all that effective. Remarkably, the number of times I've phoned and Mum's managed to sound if not exactly cheerful at least almost normal has been in the majority.

I'm just hoping she realises this is the best thing to do - though I can't imagine she'll be best pleased not being allowed to have her cigarettes.

A Man Of Distinction

Sometimes getting home you've just got to bang on Steeleye's Below The Salt and morris dance around the place to Maddy Prior giving it a bit of the Spotted Cow.

I suspect I'm the only resident of this island capable of writing the sentence above and meaning it - and, possibly, understanding it. As to whether that's necessarily a good thing…

Oh, The Intensity

19.39

I will be suffering through the MasterChef final tonight. It's just kicked off next door. Don't get me wrong, Noi's favourite programme is illuminating and enjoyable - but very intense. Who knew cooking could be so stressful? (Probably most cooks, I suppose, but I didn't prior to watching this.)

20.26

And the Mansion favourite, Mat, was the winner, which was great, except that Andy and Chris didn't win, which was sad because their stuff was obviously first rate. But there can only be one winner, which, of course, isn't really true but helps to provide entertainment.

All three guys looked like crying at the end, and I don't blame them one bit.

On Time

I've just set my wrist-watches to the 'right' time (GMT according to the World Service), followed by the timer on the DVD player, and finally the timer on the VCR in the back bedroom. By wrist-watches I'm referring to my prized (but cheap) Casio digital watches, one I that regularly wear on my wrist, the other - exactly the same brand (the one without a strap because the attachment broke beyond repair) - that resides on my bedside table. The one on the bedside table gains a little. Having not reset it for some three weeks it had gained three seconds. The one I wear loses at a faster rate. Today it was out by eleven seconds. The DVD player loses even faster and needed to be adjusted by half a minute or so. The VCR gains at a phenomenal rate and was around three minutes ahead today, but then I don't always include it in the ritual re-set, out of sight being reasonably out of mind.

Clearly there's more than a tiny measure of the obsessive about all this. But I find it useful, and not excessive. The usefulness lies in the fact that I find it comforting to foster the illusion of having some control over the temporal flow, and being on time for the odd bits of things you're expected to be on time for keeps life running reasonably smoothly. (Notice I associate being on time with the setting of the clocks. Possibly these activities run on different processes, but they feel the same to me.) And I'd argue it's not terribly obsessive as I don't feel the need to set the clocks every day, or even every week. Indeed I'm prepared to let the VCR clock run rampant - for a little while, anyway.

However, I'm keenly aware that not all the world shares my mild obsession and there are times I envy the bit that doesn't. It could well be that a healthy portion of sanity lies in that direction. But I suppose I'm too far gone to change - until I finally, irrevocably, inevitably, become unstuck in time.

Conclusions

Finished Julian Barnes's Arthur & George the other day and wished I hadn't, it was so good. A sweet, autumnal ending, with George attending a sort of mega-séance for Arthur, at the Albert Hall. I thought we'd get something about those obviously faked fairy photographs that Conan Doyle got himself mixed up with but Barnes didn't bother with this embarrassment in his novel at all. I suppose the whole spiritualist movement thing was bad enough as it was.

So finally it was a novel about what we think we know and how we think we know it - good for TOK, but a touch too indirect to be all that useful.

A Bit Of A Mess

Inky fingers were the order of the day, particularly those on my left hand. They were the product of a rather intense bit of work that I had no choice but to complete in a rushed manner. The work itself was fairly mindless, but the old fingers looked almost scholarly. Of course, it wasn't really ink in the true sense: the blue stuff came from something called a permanent marker, and the red splotches from a non-permanent marker.

The only marker we had when I was in primary school was the teacher who left red ink on your work. In fact, I remember filling little ink-pots and dipping short stubby pen-things in them around the time I was nine. It felt terribly grown-up, but it also resulted in some quite glorious messes. If I remember rightly, biros were frowned upon at the time.

And when I started teaching there were these wonderful things called blackboards. Somehow they were a lot more fun than the whiteboards of today. More organic, I suppose. I had a terrible habit of leaning back against them and covering my backside with chalk. And now I come to think of it, the chalk-dust got everywhere. It was difficult to deny you were a teacher in those days.

I like a good mess once in a while.

Elementary

The Arthur of Arthur & George is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Barnes paints a wonderfully penetrating yet sympathetic portrait. As I read I keep thinking back to how much I enjoyed the Holmes stories as a kid, and also, perhaps surprisingly, how much they spooked me. I found quite a few of them more frightening than the kind of horror stories I was exposed to as a youngster, but I'd be hard-pressed to explain why this was.

Their unnerving quality was captured in one or two of the Basil Rathbone movies though. Gosh, it's been years since I've seen one. The later ones in the series descend into caricature - but it's a comfortably comforting rather jolly sort of caricature.

I also loved Doyle's Brigadier Gerard tales. You don't hear about them these days but they were so often beautifully wrought pieces. In some ways the good brigadier is as archetypal as Holmes, and much more likable. For some reason I always felt very grown-up reading them.

The libraries I visited around ten years old had plenty of Sir Arthur on their shelves. I don't expect you'd see that nowadays - more's the pity.

A Bit Of A Fan

Reading Julian Barnes's Arthur & George at the moment and thoroughly enjoying it, to the extent that I realise I've become a bit of a fan of his work. It looks like he joins the ranks of Robertson Davies, Peter Ackroyd, J.M. Coetzee, Margaret Atwood and David Lodge - novelists who, as far as I'm concerned, can do no wrong, the sure sign of this being that reading their stuff is effortless for me - the only effort, I suppose, being having to slow down to relish the pleasure of reading. I don't mean that I consider all their books to be masterpieces, simply that I have a kind of automatic sympathy with their work that makes it unputdownable.

I should have realised this, with regards to Barnes, before, but oddly enough I didn't. And this despite relishing A History of the World in 10½ Chapters and Flaubert's Parrot. The problem is that I read Metroland years ago, my first exposure to his work, and just didn't get it. I suppose that coloured my view and afterwards I regarded the material I liked as 'one-offs'. Except they clearly weren't. It's nice to know there are plenty of treats in store.

Out Of Time

Enjoyed a distinctly Proustian moment earlier this evening. No, I wasn't munching on a Madeline. I'm referring to that bit in the opening of Combray where Marcel talks of the disorientation of waking up and not quite knowing where you are in time and space - or who you are even.

I think I knew who I was, but when Noi got back from an outing with Siew to find me crashed out on the floor and woke me, I had no idea of the where and when of things. It took me a couple of minutes to remember I'd been listening to Her Majesty The Decemberists (terrific album) and was waiting for Noi to brew the cup that cheers when Morpheus overtook me to deep effect. The ravell'd sleeve of care had most definitely been knitted up, I can tell you.

Isn't sleep a wonderful thing? I just wish I had more of it.

Just Visiting

Made it to Kak Kiah's today - our first Raya visit in this little country. Noi had to do the driving though. Still feel bad about not getting to Hakim's yesterday. I seem to have gone thoroughly native regarding the degree of importance that visiting friends and family post-Ramadhan now holds for me. I just wish I had the strength to do it.