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On the eve of his committal, this came to me. I tried to sum up what I learnt from this wise and funny man. I will see you Every year someone flings primroses all over They hurl them with abandon and leave them thickly scattered Like litter. I shall see you in the yellow-green primroses. Every year the miracle of the bluebell woods Catches my breath And nearly make me cry. In the dear woods, carpeted with azure mist, I will see you. I shall see you on the I shall see you when, on the rounded hills, the wind blows and the rain falls. When a squirrel runs across a green The trees bare, You will be there. When my heart beats, I will hear you. And in all the richness of the wonderful world, and all who it inhabit, I will see you.
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That's all I wanted to say really. Good luck with the hospital treatment tomorrow. Keep us posted. By the way, saw your entry about Beachy Head: we were on the Fire Hills outside Hastings this weekend and they were deserted Anyway, take care and speak soon xx | ||
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. Keep telling you that you should pop over.
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| I said once that the art of blogging is what you leave out rather than what you put in, so there's loads of interesting stuff that I'm not going to tell you, mostly because I can't, although I'd love to. I may have to start another blog somewhere else, in some remote corner of the web which no-one will ever read, and so it's risk-free and I can post whatever I like. So. The weekend. It goes like this: Friday night - janiep was in a tired heap (due to it being Friday night). Saturday - janiep was in a teary heap (due to blocked drains and broken hoovers). Sunday - janiep was in a drunken heap (due to football and beer). Monday - janiep was actually chilled out and quite contented, and couldn't accurately be said to be in a heap at all. It was May Day in Hastings which brings motorbikes, morris dancers and people with their faces painted green. As is traditional, it was wet and windy. Post Luton and Camden Town, someone suggested that fish and chips would be the thing to have today in my seaside haven, and this burnt into my brain so much that by the time dinner time came round I was panting for them. But with the thousands of bikers there wasn't a cod fillet left to be had in the town. They baint be from round 'ere! Come all this way on them thar nasty smelly machines and eating all our fisheses! Well those geet poofs of fishermen at the end of the road better gan oot tomorrow and come back with full nets. I call them geet poofs because: 1. The lifeboat keeps having to go and get them. 2. Last summer in "Hastings Week" (not to be confused with "Hastings Old Town week" or "Hastings Carnival Week" - oh yes, every week's a carnival in Hastings *rolls eyes*) there was supposed to be a fancy sail past the pier of all the fishing boats all decorated up. There was a TINY gasp of wind in the air, and the MEREST SMATTER of a drop of rain, and they cancelled it. Oh hear us when we pray to thee, for those geet soft as shite poofters in peril on the sea. That's all folks. | ||
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| Hello there, Well, that's how he always starts his blog, so I start similarly in tribute. We have more news people: surgery doesn't seem to be an option so it's chemo. He's probably home for the weekend, so we don't get to do a mass SMB hospital visit - goddarn. I was looking forward to turning up with lots of fellow idiots from here and the lads trying to take sly pics of the nurses. But the good news is you'll doubtless get to hear direct from the man himself before the long weekend is out. In janiep news, I've been running and am shattered, so this is a brief entry. Bye for now. | ||
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Well, he can't write his own blog at the moment, so I'm using mine to give all Hazey's latest news. In fact, I'm going to use his words! (I think you'll recognise which are his and which are mine.) Unfortunately, it was confirmed today that it really is the big C. It could be one of two types, one of which is even more cunty than the other but even the cunty one has a few treatment options available. It also seems to be just the one lump, which is better than lots of lumps. But the best thing is, he feels loads better now he knows what it is, and they've put a name to it . He says he feels hugely optimistic now he knows there's treatment "so rock on" as he puts it! | ||
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| This song has been running and running in my head the past two days. In my case, I could tell you, but the art of blogging is what you leave out rather than what you put in, so I won't. In any event, the only things I really want to say right now are: 1. It's bluebell time in Sussex. 2. We all love Hazey. | ||
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I worked out how to plug the laptop in and turn off the firewall. I stagger myself. I must have caught some kind of technocompetency tonight from the family I was with, perhaps when the father of three looked at me sternly and said "you've never done Nintendo, have you?" when I observed I was having a slightly existentialist moment induced by watching his brood of very lovely children clap and hit bongos when the television told them to. Right. A wanderer's thoughts on the Motherland. I pitched up on the Quayside about 10pm last night and although knackered I was restless and decided a walk was the thing. It was strange at first - I thought "I know every crack of every pavement of this city and yet I feel like a stranger", but that only lasted about half an hour until the architecture of Newcastle got me in the gut as it always does. The built environment of this city all about height. From down here on the Quay the bridges are all up a height. Grey Street sweeps up to end in the monument piercing the skyline. The cathedral tower thrusts up, the Civic Centre tower thrusts up, and I've always felt this urgent reaching, thrusting, yearning said something about what used to be part of the character of the place but I am not sure is any more - a desire to build technologies that move onwards, upwards. It was Friday night so of course the magnificent streets were full of pissed, snogging, vomiting people. Last week I had an interesting discussion with an SMBer about North Eastern drinking. North East people drink magnificently. They have turned it into an art form. I sometimes feel however "is this the best you can do?", but he said he loves it because it shows a real kick for life, and he has a point. However, I still have some ambivalence: last night I thought it's like they started a wake for the old North East twenty years ago, and it's still going on. I collected the hire car today from behind Central Station and the fella said "going anywhere nice?" and I said "the Stadium of Light, and I'll have not a word from you". Whether it was because he felt sorry for me or because he liked my smile, he upgraded me. I mention him because he was typical lovely North Eastern; we had a bit crack about our respective football teams and the price of fish, and I left feeling warm. Londoners can do this too, but they do it differently and not so freely and generously. I defy even the most sentimental exile to feel romantic about their homecoming whilst on the Felling bypass. It wasnt' until I'd cleared the badlands beyond White Mare Pool and entered the outskirts of the Boldons that a wistful sigh or two escaped me. Unfortunately time did not permit a detour to Cleading or Whitburn, where I know that right now there will be a magnificent display of crocuses on the village green. Perhaps tomorrow. A quick coffee, then over to the SoL, where I met lots of wonderful people I used to know and a hugfest ensued. A very nice person gave me a red and white and green scarf. I watched the game, we won, I went for dinner with a lovely family. Tomorrow I have a car and the whole of the North East at my disposal. Shall it be Seaburn or Craster or the Whin Sill or Durham or Hexham or Allendale or Bellingham? | ||
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| On Sunday morning I went for a wander through the streets of Kennington, the architecture of which is all Georgian terraces with the odd fifties block in the middle of them, built to fill the bomb sites I guess. You're soon onto the river from here, which I joined at the Eye and then walked along the south bank to London Bridge, one of my favourite walks in the whole wide world. Got to Southwark just in time for the finish of choral Eucharist at the cathedral - good choir, singing Epiphany songs (because Christmas officially ends on February 2nd in the church, which I didn't know before now), including "Drei Konige wandern aus Morgenland" which we used to sing at school and I haven't heard since. Back to babysit, and the Bubs and I played a vigorous game of football which threatened his mother's ornaments, frankly, but that's our secret. Then later Swan Lake was on and he got utterly engrossed in it - does the same job as CBeebies I think, music and movement just keeps their attention. He was sweet and lovely all day and is really a very happy baby. Work has been climactic (cor!) as I think we may just have finished a project we've been negotiating for over a year, although I'll still have a bit to do to turn the agreed principles into legal drafting by some stupid deadline like Friday or something. To have reached agreement normally means a bottle of something, but I don't think any of us could even raise a smile, it's been such a ball-ache. And so to bed, and the joy of Wednesday to come, bringing as it does a trip to Manchester. | ||
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| Coming back from Switzerland on Friday the plane spiralled beautifully over Bromley on a cloudless night, and all the towers and lights of London lay before and below us. It was beautiful, but not as good as the time I took off in the early morning from Heathrow on a day of really, really low cloud cover. As we turned and flew back across the north of London, the cloud cotton wool fluff was pierced only by the towers of Canary Wharf and .... the Wembley Arch. The Heathrow flight path lies right over London flatmate's pad, and on summer evenings while on the phone to the IFKAMP I used to sit in her garden and time them coming in. About a minute and a half between each. She had pre-advised me that her block is easily spottable from the plane due to the red light on the clock tower and it being right next door to the Oval. Saw it easily last night. But my favourite "descent over somewhere I know" was flying back to Newcastle one night. I looked down at the Stadium of Light and they had the giant sunlamps on the pitch going full blast. I was struck last night by the sheer number of similar greeny-gold glowing rectangles visible as we came across London. They puzzled me for a while and then I figured they could only be floodlit five-a-side pitches. But there seemed to be dozens, and I reflected on the popularity of the beautiful game. I have decided to stay in London this weekend and do London stuff, including playing with the Bubs, my one year old Godson at whose birth I was present. Which reminds me of the night itself, Dec 4th 2005. St Thomas's Hospital operate a stacking system similar to Heathrow's. You cannot be admitted until a certain stage of labour, and you are hoyed out as quickly as possible after the birth. London flatmate's waters had broken and somehow I persuaded a cab to get us there, only for St Thomas's to threaten to send her home again. I was puzzling on how the hell to get her back home, then back again later, only for her to dilate for England and the Bubs to emerge in the mere blink of an eye. A one and a half hour labour. Enough already. In my next blog I will reveal the full hilarity of NCT classes. Meanwhile, London calls. | ||
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| Post just arrived. Package containing a stick of Sunderland rock and two pebbles from Roker beach, one of them with real barnacles. You know who you are and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I love the SMB me like. | ||
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| The training for the run has commenced with lots of vigorous walking. Up and down the seafront, to and from the station, and then nicest of all this morning, from Charing Cross to the office through the West End at one of its loveliest times, 8 o'clock of the morning. Sharp new sun flooding the city's Portland Stone facades, the shops and cafes just waking up, and Londoners stomping along in their usual sullenness, none of them seeming to feel the cheerfulness I felt. The weekend was more sociable than has been usual since the split from the Idiot Formerly Known As Mr P. The girls knocked on the door on Friday night and we went off to the pub, where lager was consumed in some quantity and a good time was had by Ms P. I am beginning to know people here. I have even got to the stage where I cannot walk down the High St without bumping into someone I know, the sign of a true Old Towner. In retrospect it was no good, simply no good, spending every weekend of my first year here locked away and loved up with the IFKAMP. It meant I failed to make friends. This must be put right, and I shall join every society going: the history society, the knitters, the walkers, the bonfire people, the Labour Party (eh what?), the Save the Pier people, the bellydancers (that one's a joke but yes they do exist), the creative writers, the allotment holders etc etc. Oh and the runners. In other news: shite patter has been locked and we're all very worried about Horley Chorley. | ||
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| Well I didn't actually, partly because I wasn't down on the beach on Christmas Day in the morning. But I was down there on New Years Eve in the morning. It was rough and blowy and wonderful, but shipless. Too much wind and swell I guess. Even the "busy shipping lanes of the English Channel" (as the local estate agent terms it, as well as describing every house in the Old Town as "having all the charm of yesteryear together with modern amenities") were empty. The sea and sky were grey but fresh and blowsy. I wandered into the lifeboat station (open for public viewing) and mused on the call-out chart. It was extraordinary and sobering to see how many times they are called out and how many times they actually save boats and lives, often of the local fishermen. I meandered back through the lanes and alleys of the Old Town and pondered again on this little gem of a town. Today I shall be cooking chicken and lighting a fire. Happy New Year everyone. | ||
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| ... but in a moment of randomness signed up for a blog, Was then gently nagged by Lord Gilwood to get it going, so here I am. Having concluded my final project on my archaeology course, this weekend will hopefully be a one of peace and pleasure in the P household. Have to pick up the hire car soon, the Corsa being my magic pumpkin carriage to get me to the ball tonight, i.e. Elaine's party in Tunbridge Wells. Then do the annual chore of Christmas cards, the most important ones of which are to my dead parents' friends. That doesn't sound cheerful does it, but it is actually. They are such lovely people who have such huge affection for my brother and I, because of who mum and dad were, i.e. the wonderful people they were. I look at my friends' little ones and hope that I too will stick with them for life, knowing how important my godparents and non-blood aunties and uncles have been to me. There's nowt like the death of your nearest and dearest to teach you a few important lessons in life. What a cheerful start to my blog, but I always ruminate on this at Christmas, and I think it's right and proper to make space for the past, but not to the total exclusion of the pleasures of the present and hopes for the future. The pleasures of the present have this week included a magnificent 7 hour lunch, by the end of which we were all behaving spectacularly badly, although I am assured that I did nothing to cross the bounds of modesty. The purpose of the hire car tonight is to keep me sober. I was assured by Mark (a fellow 7 hour lunchee) that what I really need right now is a Mercedes SLK, and he is I think correct. The mid life crisis may be approaching, and it seems appropriate to kick it off in traditional fashion, i.e. with the purchase of a ridiculous car. The trouble is, I have nowhere to keep it. My fifteenth century house was, bizarrely, built without parking provision. (I recently came across a 17th century byelaw which was enacted for our street: no parking of carts in the hours of daylight - pick up and drop off only. It felt surprisingly modern.) I would therefore need to sort out the hire of a garage, which may be taking the midlife crisis too far in terms of hassle to oneself. We have residents street parking, but this is not appropriate for a fine piece of German uber-engineering I feel. Lord Gilwood, will this do for starters? | ||
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