Monday 25 August 2008

Very heavy, Switzerland


Boyo has annoyed some very powerful people, so Arianrhod and I are enjoying a girly Bank Holiday at home - filing nails, attaching them to the wheels of the tricycle, etc.

I glanced through the Radio Times - a publication Boyo says he subscribes to for the Radio 3 listings, much as Americans read Playboy for the John Updike interviews.

I found a preview of "Mutual Friends" another BBC "comedy drama" about the mid-life crisis of mid-Brit people - boney, grinning men and flat-faced blondes.

"How do you embrace your mid-life crisis?" asks the chirpy accompanying article.

"Reluctantly, and only after he's showered,"
I thought.

Then I laughed.

Monday 18 August 2008

An Occurrence At Malmesbury Bridge


No Good Boyo was very excited when I proposed a romantic weekend break in the Cotswolds. His enthusiasm wavered on the morning of departure when I said I was coming along too, but he still managed to negotiate the M4 through his tears.

It was the turn of my heart to sink on our arrival at a rectory that had been converted into an hotel, and not only because the nearby church had not undergone a similar fate. Boyo pointed to the welcome note in our room and sniggered: "Dogs are welcome".

Just as his father believes hedgehogs can sing if you tickle their bellies, Boyo is convinced that the English invented the country hotel for the exclusive pursuit of coitus with canines. He cites fellow Celt GB Shaw to the effect that all the Englishman's pastimes bar gambling and smoking can be shared with a dog.

The result is that he spends our every weekend away in speculating on which of our guests wants, as he puts it, to "canoodle with the poodle".

I chose not to join in, and reflected instead on comments by Gadjo Dilo and Kevin Musgrove - the Brains Trust of Boyo's circle of little electro-friends - on the ephemerality of life.

In brief, Gadjo had an antiquated relative who held that the world might have ended in about 1918. Kevin opined that this may have been true, and that all of our subsequent existence is a group delusion.

This ties in with my view that Boyo and his web-fellows are merely projections one of the other. The thought that we are in fact all but the dying dream of Europa is a comfort to the Spengler Within. Bolshevism, television, congés payés - all a passing nightmare.

If enough bloggers state this "simultaneously and at the same time", as the Welsh have it, will the world awaken from its slumber and finally die?

A consoling thought to get you through many a bad night.