Monday, October 31, 2011

For England

I have been writing a lecture and making a playlist today, which has taken me almost all day. By mid-afternoon I started flagging and watched a bit of Margaret Rutherford and James Robertson Justice hamming it up in a Miss Marple film.
It has been one of those days lived in limbo, where things have happened, but not with my active involvement. I have noticed that I don't look as overwhelmingly knackered as I did a week ago so maybe limbo-days have a purpose!
The weekend before last I was frantically filling in a funding application to run something for the students at the University of the East, and last weekend I was drawing illustrations for hours: I love that feeling of being 'in the zone'.  For days afterwards I can remember exactly what I was watching on TV (or rather, listening to) when I look at the drawings. Louis Theroux featured heavily last weekend, with his horror at the baboon's lurid backside and the exceedingly odd big cat sanctuary owners flooding into my mind at every scrawl and scribble.
Mercifully, I have been unable to do any housework as the painter Higgins is upstairs, sticking the ancient rickety windows back together with a coat of paint and half a ton of filler. This means I have been sitting dutifully researching and writing, with a cup of tea ferried upstairs every hour or so. I have been unable to go to the supermarket and buy a gigantic bar of chocolate, a daily habit that has not helped me to get into my winter trouserwear. There aren't even any carrots, so I can't have soup; just reheated stuff from sad little plastic boxes in the freezer.
You see? I can bore for England when I try!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sometimes that's just the sort of day we need - especially if it's chocolate free, when the trousers get tight!

MONTY said...

Was'nt there a Mike Rutherford in GENESIS. Margaret Rutherford could be his Mother! (or Auntie)