liadnan

Well, I'm back in London for the week and pottering around aimlessly trying to do some work. I'm not really achieving much, and am frankly feeling more depressed now than I was for the last few days, when I was at home with the rest of my family and concentrating on practicalities.

Many thanks to all who've emailed etc. I haven't replied to most of them, for which I apologise, but I am grateful.

(Edited to add: that shouldn't be taken as any form of criticism of people who haven't said anything of course. I never know whether to say anything and if so what in such circumstances either.)

My brother rang an hour ago. My father suffered a heart attack this morning and is on his way into hospital. It seems unlikely he will survive today.

I feel I should be on my way down. But I have a complicated winder this morning which I don't think I can properly push off to someone else, given I'm more wearily sad than in bits.

I don't really know why I'm posting this, save for something to do.

ETA: shortly afterwards my sister rang to tell me he had died.

You know, I could have sworn that was a Kipling line. Perhaps it is, but the only answers Google can come up with are the Goons (which I knew, indeed it was hearing the Goons episode that prompted the search) and John Lennon.

It's twenty past midnight on a school night and I'm playing on the interweb and drinking whiskey. I have no real excuse. Well, the whiskey is currently the only anaesthetic that works on my arm and shoulder, which otherwise becomes unbearable in the evening, and I stayed up because Joey was on and I wanted to see what I made of it. Currently, hmmm. It has good gags but I don't yet see the staying power Friends or, more directly comparable, Frasier had from the first moment.

And earlier, a weird and morbid ER episode. (Incidentally, they have done real-time stuff before, haven't they? Or maybe I'm just imagining that.)

Frankly, I'm not well-equipped to watch such things emotionally at the moment. I was at home all weekend seeing my father. The man who taught me to appreciate the Goon Show, and Kipling, amongst half a million other things.

I wrote a long paragraph here and then deleted it. Fuck it. Stick with the words of a man my father knew, in a particularly appropriate poem:

Dust in sunlight and memory in corners
Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land

I've just returned from the wilds of Hampshire, where it was Really Cold incidentally, and seeing my parents plus Sister2 and sprog. Good weekend, but parents.. really. Why does it take my mother, having already asked whether I'm coming to mass and received the answer from the depths of my duvet of a firm "no", ten minutes to tell me that they now usually leave at 9.30, that is, in ten minutes, and then to ask me to turn on the oven, light the fire, and buy the usual papers before they return? I'm not exaggerating, I had one eye on the clock. K. claims that I am long-winded, but I maintain that this is utterly different, I merely have a lawyer's attention to detail and a historian's concern for context. Anyway, when we were together it was always a cause of concern to me that she and my mother agreed in all details on the manifold ways I was running my life badly.

Dad's no better. I have a specific and pessimistic reason for trying to go down every six weeks or so. It depresses me more than I can express to see the way the man who taught me to read, criticise, think, and appreciate art in all forms has been reduced. For which reason I shall say nothing more about it.

Another Sunday evening in a cold Primrose Hill flat, still awaiting the mythical day of Spring Cleaning (2003)... another Best N Whatevers programme, or A Touch of Frost if you prefer. Which I don't, as Frost can never match up to the insane gibbering that is Midsomer Murders.

Oh, I suppose I could watch a documentary about drunk driving, a documentary about Rwanda, or Demolition Man but I think I'll pass on all of those right now, thanks. Since I can't find anythiing I particularly want to read lying around, (and yes, I know I'm behind with my mini-reviews, but "Ive got it writted down on a piece of paper") I'll stick with the Best Ofs... pop stars by singles sales, presented by Smashy and Nicey. And this rather good bottle of whisky.

( Mind you, they're banging on about the Everley Brothers, at 42. )

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A Momentary Lapse of Judgment

Entries tagged with dad

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Waiting in the Pre-Dawn

There's a Little Yellow Idol to the North of Katmandu

In Which I Comment Aimlessly On TV and My Parents (written Sunday evening)

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February 2022

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