I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself today. I mowed the lawn recently, which I consider to be the sort of achievement that lasts for weeks, and I've finished two articles over the last two days for my distant Indian masters. Apart from polishing off the odd Kakuro there seem at present no further worlds to conquer. As I type my wife is bringing me a slice of Co-Operative sponge bought recently in Hastings. Ah, if only everything else were so co-operative.
Best of all - I mean really best - is that I received a royalty cheque this morning for stuff I did ages ago. Woo hoo! We shall, in proper Railway Children fashion, be having buns for tea! Except it won't be for tea it will be for supper, and it will be a bottle of burgundy.
The long holidays are over and the summer, as the Incredible String Band once put it, has spent its fortune. Normal life seems to be reconstituting itself after the desiccated months and that seems to include blogging. So over the next week or so I intend to record my impressions of our summer wanderings.
Cultural update. I seem to have read a fantastic amount of books recently and I could review them but they are all about history and probably don't deserve it, having rubbish predictable plots and a lot of characters who seem to have appeared in other books.
I liked the Simpsons Movie.
I no longer recognise anyone in the posters on my daughter's bedroom wall.
Health Update. I have had mild heartburn since we came back from our holiday in Cyprus. I put it down either to a week's worth of eating meat, or airline meals. I wrenched my shoulder in a water park. The morning before we went I was viciously tackled, while bare legged, by an IKEA mini step-ladder and I still bear the scars. It was lucky to stay on the pitch after that. All I am asking for is some consistency. In fact it was lucky we don't have bonfires and only a small fake coal effect gas fire because I was in sufficient pain afterwards to have had a full-on proper Mary Tudor moment and little Steppy could have been the first of the IKEA martyrs. Must find a catalogue and find out a) its religion and b) whether it's called Haak or Trypp or Chøppå or something, something that might have warned me.
Hmm. Perhaps supper is a liiiitle too long to wait for my 'buns'. Will end here.
Mornin'. This is sort of the equivalent of that little girl with the doll and the blackboard. Hum to yourself as you read and the illusion will be nearly perfect.
The post below has received about 150 spam comments. So. The rest of the blog world may continue to feel complete without me, but for purveyors of spam I am unmissable, a veritable A-lister.
No news about anything much. Summer is y-cummin in and I am y-stayin in reading about Indian history. Four more pieces to write. And then we shall have sugar buns like in The Railway Children.
The last holiday/break was very nice except that it rained all the time. Jake got good at fishing and caught us a couple of suppers. He even gutted one fish himself. Handy with a knife, that boy. Perhaps I will stop winding him up. We attended our annual football match while up there and watched the mighty Carlisle United thrash Newcastle 1-1.
Our next entertainment is a week in Cyprus starting in about ten minutes. We have equipped ourselves with exotic new sun defences including UV resistant shirts. Whatever next? T-shirts in a tube? Zoë's spectral emo style, in particular her penchant for lacy half gloves and black eyeliner, will come under harsh examination in the oven heat of the Levant.
Anyway we expect it to be sunny and so my long established pigeon chest will be on regular display, rivalled only by the jutting of my new pigeon stomach.