Oh dear, where did the time go? Just frittered away on real life, I suppose.
Since my hiatus I haven't quite slotted a blogging time back into my routine. If I went to the pub regularly I could reallocate that time more creatively, but I haven't been to a pub for weeks and weeks. If I went to the gym I could cut that out, but I don't ever go. Gyms make you ill, it's well known. And if they don't make you ill they make you poor. Or sweaty, or give you knotty muscles, or something.
I suppose I could claw back some time out of sitting on the loo reading, but I'm reluctant. I am probably in an 'input' phase at the moment, so blogging, as part of 'output' has suffered. You'd think I would know by now, but blogging is like cucumber: those who do not learn from it are condemned to repeat it.
And yes, it was warm on our holiday. Zoe won the mini golf (as usual) and we found Co-op pesto at the third attempt. The people of Hastings and surrounding caravan parks seem to have lost the taste for it that made it so ubiquitous for the last couple of years. Shame.
As it turned out I spent much of the Saturday afternoon of the trip on an emergency trouser hunting expedition in Hastings town centre. My last trouser spree was in London, about six months ago. It was hailed at the time as a great success, only to be reassessed as a disaster a few weeks later when the zips in both my cheapo cheapo acquisitions downed tools and became unlined pockets. I got by for a while with two previously acquired pairs until I got paint on one. That left - yes - only one pair.
We were doing all right, me and the black kecks from Zara, until radical new ventilation systems were installed, automatically, in the crotch area. This happened on the Friday before our trip to the seaside. Urgent action was called for. Bending over on the mini golf course had become too dangerous to contemplate.
So it was that on that Friday I set off, of necessity, for the shopping area of Peckham, an area where goods are transferred from shops to consumers. This formal consumer area is in the middle of Peckham, quite close to the informal consumer area, which is less well lit, where goods are exchanged between people who have bought them and people who haven't.
I started the quest for the trouser-grail in the relative safety of Primark. Let me say at the outset that I don't much care for Primark. When times are hard I sometimes wonder whether I might get a job there as a floor stacker. Things were no different on that day. I looked around in bewilderment at the heaps of unclassified clothes hanging from overstuffed racks and towering up from overburdened carpet tiles.
It seemed easier to browse through the stalactites, so I elbowed my way to within grabbing range of the jeans. I then tried to select something that might a) fit me and b) not make me look like a hip hop farm hand. Why do they sell clothes that actually look dirty before you put them on? Gah.
Eventually I made some choices (the largest on offer) and with my two selections in hand I scrambled over the leisure-wear Alps to the changing rooms where a ten minute period of semiformal hover-queueing ensued.
Basically I have lived too nice a life. I had forgotten what it feels like to be treated not only as if you might be a criminal, but as if you definitely are a criminal. Shoplifting is so plainly on the minds of the staff that it is clearly assumed to be normal behaviour. Part of me responded by feeling it to be almost obligatory, that perhaps they actually wanted me to steal, as if their only possible source of job satisfaction might be to catch me, or more directly it would be a way of justifying and preserving their jobs. What if nobody stole anything for a week? Whither then, these custodians?
I osmosed to the front of the queue, clutching my two selections, and wishing I was far away, on a beach in Sussex, say. The man shoved a sweat shirt into my hand. "I don't want this," I protested unhelpfully, wary that this might be some job preserving temptation of his own devising. He shoved a plastic token into my hand with the number 3 on it. "We haven't got any 2's," he snapped. I began to feel institutionalised. All my autonomy drained away. I stumped off to the cubicle and spent a miserable sixty five seconds realising that both pairs of trousers were waaay too small. If I were Mr Bean I would have dragged the whole thing out with hilarious grunting and gurning for at least another five minutes, but there were shoplifters aplenty queueing behind me and I thought it considerate to move on. Defeated and demoralised I did consider stealing the sweat shirt as consolation, but refrained. My willingness to preserve the warden's job had largely evaporated.
£6 for trousers in Primark, but unwearable. I walked out and along Rye Lane to a trendier shop I once patronised a few years back, as a younger man. They had jeans. I searched for a price tag. Not a good sign. In Primark they have really big signs saying "£6". They make a virtue of it. I suspected bad news. After some riffling about, and no help offered from the immaculately dressed staff, I found a written price. £135. For jeans. O tempora, o mores, o blimey.
So downtown Hastings it was. Marks and Spencer. Lovely. Don't you dare call me middle class.
The holidays continue relentlessly.
I spent yesterday pretending to be ZZ Top.
I left my razor in Manchester.
A conspiracy has been unveiled. I always thought Naples was in south Italy, but apparently I was deceived and it's actually in the north. So says the Fugitive Blogger. No link. Just sayin'.
Off to Sussex and our semi-private pebbly beach for a couple of days. Perhaps some mini-golf and a taste of Co-op pesto. They say it will be warm.
An extraordinary couple of days in the world of British blogs - but never mind all that. "What has the kitten been doing?" I hear you ask. Well, not much, but getting a bit bigger, drawing a little less blood and learning to creep out into the garden - the 'no top' world of Harry the Poisonous Centipede.
In other non-quadruped news:
- I registered some software I have had for about a year and a half. What's the hurry? I know these products are meant to last.
- I had some music accepted for an album themed around 'gardening'. That was a biggie. There is still room for more, so I am dreaming up music to listen to on an iPod while mowing a very small lawn, 2 mins 30 max.
- I drank several bottles of wine in the company of my friend and benefactor F, screen writer, columnist and upsetter of traditional Indian attitudes. We discussed world events and actually managed, after bottle 2, to identify exactly where everyone else has been going wrong in global politics over the last few years. Unfortunately we identified exactly different errors, but we did both identify some. And that was the main thing.
Overall, Lent was a big success round here. The boy gave up fizzy drinks - for at least three days. Zoe gave up Mizz magazine, but I suspect some tactical acumen in her decision, as she continued with the consumption of Kerrang. This week's edition features a poster of a well known emo singer pictured with a dog. "What, is it dead?" I asked. Apparently not.
I, of course, gave up skydiving again.
We enjoyed the return of Doctor Who and I detect some real acting ability in the new assistant. As usual with the Russell T Davies scripts, last Saturday's episode was pacy, a bit funny and inclining to the camp. Who else could bring a leather fetish joke into the destruction of an emotionless, android killing machine?
More of a revelation was the ITV series 'Primeval' which we have been enjoying on DVD boxed set. Usually the words 'ITV series' fill me with dread but this was excellent, and completely passed me by at the time. Done by the people who brought us 'Walking with Dinosaurs' it was pacy, a bit funny and resolutely heterosexual. But with the scariest monsters I have seen for some time. I don't remember hiding behind the sofa from the Daleks as a child, but this week I definitely wanted to hide behind the sofa from the large spider/scorpion poisonous thingies inhabiting the Underground and biting people in the neck.
The singing key-ring was detached from the keys it was minding. Which led to to loss of both it, and the keys.
Today we are off to Manchester to beat up any Italian Policemen we can find to spend Easter with my mother in law. There will be no computers. I will not get to hear any more of the fugitive blogger saga till next week. I will bear it as manfully as I can.
Yesterday evening my pedometer read 163 at bedtime. That, I thought, can't be right. I shook it. It registered on the front. I wobbled at the sides. This drove me to reflect on my routine, the very routine that has made me the fine blob of a man I am now, and have been for years. I don't feel newly motivated and I don't feel I have gained either inspiration or insight.
I said "Damn". It said "All Bran", not for the first time. It also said 167. One of us is not doing our job. One of us has probably got to go.
Meanwhile another gadget has arrived in the house. Mel has had trouble finding her keys for years, and yesterday she decided to buy a responsive 'Find Me' key-ring. Sounded a bit New Age to my ears - a key-ring that had never been to Me. But I reckoned it would be all right if it didn't have to go to Tibet to do it. Time is tight of a morning here, y'know.
We tried it. We whistled at it across the room. I was reminded of lascivious builders hanging off scaffolding. Nothing. No response. We whistled louder and still the little coquette made no reply. It was only when we were about three feet away, and it was in plain view, that it lit up and found its voice. "Dee-dee-dee-dee. Dee-dee-dee-dee," it trilled, happier than Fotherington-Thomas on Prozac.
So, that's useful, I thought. An intelligent key-ring which only responds to sound when you can already see it.
This morning Mel sneezed in the bathroom. "Dee-dee-dee-dee. Dee-dee-dee-dee!" came a jaunty reply from something hidden in the bedroom.
Oh joy.
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Update: it has now been in the fridge, and a plant pot. Still it refuses to be silenced. We have named it Felicity.