Glimpsesofcolour

There is a poem by.. well, I’m not sure whom but it might be Edwin Morgan or some other practitioner of concrete or avant garde poetry – which simply repeats several times the line ‘I have nothing to say and I am saying it and this is poetry’ (and I have probably violated copyright even by writing that, though I only put it once). Actually it might repeat the line with a different word order each time, I don’t wholly remember.

Anyway, ‘I have nothing to say and I am saying it and this is my blog entry for today’.

The story so far: I realized yesterday that my 9.30 dental appointment (to be fitted with a mouthguard to stop me grinding my teeth at night) clashed with hubby’s and my appointment at child and adolescent mental health at 9.00. So what do I do? I ring up the dentist and shift the appointment to 10.45. Then I talk to The Grouch and he is absolutely convinced that the CAMHS appointment is not at 9.00 but at 2.00. Since the ‘9.00′ entry in my diary has a question mark by it, I accept what he is saying.

This means I have to reorganize my lunch date which is currently at 1.00pm. I email my friend and ask her if she can meet earlier. No reply yet but there’s time in the morning. Then – would you believe it – at 9.19 I get a call from CAMHS saying ‘Where are you? We had an appointment at 9.00′! So all the rearrangement was pointless, and to cap it all we have missed our essential appointment.

Fortunately the automated reply from friend’s office says she isn’t in till tomorrow. Hopefully that means she will be ignorant of my attempt to change the time, and will be there waiting for me at 1.00.

Gaaaaarrrgh!

In support of my ongoing quest to find obscure 60s tracks for my mp3 player, my helpful hubby has actually succeeded in digging up ‘Back Street Luv’ by Curved Air. Which isn’t as good as I remember it, except for the rather compulsive electronic keyboard (or synth?) riff.

He hasn’t however succeeded in finding that wonderful track ‘Dismal Swamp’ by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, engagingly described on their website as ‘progressive bluegrass’. The compilation album on which I have it on vinyl (the immortal ‘Gutbucket) quotes it as being from an album called ‘Pure Dirt’ but no such album seems to exist in their discography. However it is listed on their eponymous debut album, which sadly is out of print. There is a track called ‘Return to Dismal Swamp II’ on both their 20th anniversary and 30th anniversary albums but I fear it’s not my beloved original version.

Such are the frustrations of a not very well informed lover of some seriously esoteric tracks.

Blogging is quite definitely like marital sex. I know I mentioned this before, but it becomes more and more apposite. Lots of excited activity at first, then interest and energy tail off, and eventually you reach the point where you really can’t be bothered any more. Perhaps the answer at this point is to start a new blog? However I’m not very happy about the implications of this for the ethics of marriage…

Seen on one short bus trip between two areas of North London:

An organic off licence.
A professional snooker centre.
A Moroccan restaurant advertising Live Music Every Friday with Belly Dancing.
Three adult cyclists riding on the pavement and completely ignoring the very clearly marked cycle lane on the road.

Oh I do love living in London…

1. There is a natural low after Christmas due to the festive season being over and January weather, owing to global warming, being damp and grey rather than white, crisp and sparkling.
2. A general feeling of uselessness can be alleviated by large doses of 60s and 70s pop and rock, even on a rather crummy MP3 player (The Grouch got me a cheap one for Christmas, promising to get a better one if I ‘get into it’).
3. Listening on crappy earphones can be got used to.
4. A supplementary dose of the ‘Pop Britannia’ season on BBC-4 will enhance the cheering effect.
5. Jimi Hendrix is not, however, the greatest choice to play when one has a headache.

Yes, I went shopping in Enfield Town with my mother today. It is one of the few places other than Oxford Street that still has an old fashioned department store. Arrived with six wine glasses I didn’t want (she gave me them for Christmas) and left with a new red handbag which cheers me much more than wine glasses. She got a very nice charcoal grey skirt, though we couldn’t find a top to go with it. Also we had scampi for lunch, in a pub. All very pleasant. It’s a long time since I went shopping with my mother, and as her ability to stand around shops is now much more limited, it is a relatively brief and thus far more bearable experience. And she didn’t persuade me into making any purchases I would later regret. In fact it was probably the other way around – I persuaded her to buy the skirt. I have only realized in the last week that my mother actually takes some notice of my opinion. This is a new and strange realization.

Thinking about a friend whose birthday is today (I got her a present on my trip) and whose mother died on the day after Boxing Day. I know I should be grateful I still have a mother to go shopping with. And I am… I just don’t want to do it too often.

A select few friends, lots of Marks and Spencer food, mulled wine, Scrabble and fairtrade champagne at midnight – all adds up to a recipe for a moderately merry and generally enjoyable New Year celebration. Followed this morning (after a necessary lie-in) by watching the whole of the New Year’s Concert live from Vienna, with the usual mix of lots of Strauss, ballet and gorgeous shots of gorgeous Viennese buildings.

My parents did their courting in the Musikvereinsaal, where the concert is broadcast from, and every year while my Dad was still alive, they would turn on the New Year’s concert and waltz round the living room to the strains of ‘An den schönen blauen Donau’. I didn’t attempt to emulate the waltzing bit with The Grouch, but he did come and listen to the encores with me. I ate my last Thornton’s Continental chocolate to the accompaniment of the Vienna Philharmonic, which seemed appropriate.

Just to demonstrate how catholic my musical tastes are, have spent afternoon putting hits of the 60s – Beatles, Kinks, Stones etc – on my new MP3 player which Grouch gave me for Christmas (that and some new Bible software were the main presents).

Just as the Queen has two birthdays, as a Jewish Christian I am entitled to two new years! (in addition to the double Christmas we always celebrate, Austrian style on Christmas Eve and British style on Christmas Day. Greedy, moi?)