Navel inspection

 

These days I get out more, meet new people and – as with the unchanging spots on a leopard – I ask them questions. Initially to help me get work done; latterly, when I’m impressed by the quality of the answers.

I’ll call S a charity worker even though that’s inexact. What’s true is her work demands a sense of vocation, certain aspects would put off someone less sympathetic, she immediately gets on with people and she’s well-informed. Her husband is also “not exactly” a charity worker but is much closer to being one.

The obfuscation is intentional.

S’s answers to my questions were not only factual but reassuring. I didn’t want to waste her time but the atmosphere suggested a couple of minutes’ chat wouldn’t go amiss. “Just suppose,” I said, “you and your husband were faced with an unexpected day off; how would you ideally spend it?”

“Reading,” she said.

Break for stage directions. Journalistic questions are not plucked from the ether; many are intended to provoke a foreseen (possibly revelatory) answer. But not in this case. I had no real idea beforehand. If I say I was surprised by the answer it might imply I’d seen S as a non-reader. Perish the thought! I was, in fact, delighted. End of break.

I do a lot of reading, myself  (less so in old age, I fear). Mainly when the mood takes me. But am I such a devoted print-lover as to allocate a whole day to a book? The answer must be no. Am I missing out, then? Might there be bigger rewards if I were?

A situation that had me – agreeably – questioning myself.

Pure gold.

Gather ye comfort where ye may

This post does not break the vow I made under "Which?" It concerns me, not VR.

I visit her regularly and find myself comparing my current way of life (Lonely but free to do whatever I wish) with hers (Seated and surrounded by inarticulacy and/or other forms of suffering associated with this terrible illness). 

Leaving me feeling guilty. The manageress of the nursing home says: "You are not alone".

Both my daughters are distant and I am regularly in touch by phone. Both are immensely supportive. I mention this feeling of guilt but point out the word is inexact: guilt implies self-blame and I am not responsible for VR's illness. Wouldn't "grief" be a better word, one suggests.

It would. And, strangely, this greater precision helps me. The joy of getting language right.

**** And, with almost unbelievable timing, an email arrives from a local computer repair service which used TeamViewer Host software (ie, temporarily taking over the running of my PC from an office three miiles away) to cure a connection problem. At the time I was impressed by this very civilised way of doing business, and said so. Would I therefore write them a review? I would, but, I told them, it would not take the form of most reviews - apparently composed by the company owner's sycophant. 

Quite, quite different. I was surprised they posted it. But they did and they say it attracted over fifty viewings. Lessons learned: Stay clear of clichés, think before pressing the first key, revel in language's ultimate potential.

The authorial maze

I started writing my current novel - Rictangular Lenses - in early September 2016. There have been year-long gaps to the point where you might have thought I'd lost interest altogether. Brother Sir Hugh pointed out I started learning to sing the same year (early January) and there is no doubt I was absorbed by this new turning-point in my life. On the other hand I've been writing fiction since I was 11, the year 1946. Do the forties have any resonance for anyone who reads Tone Deaf?

I may not have written RL continuously but its existence nagged at me. In Lindsay I'd created the toughest of all the women who dominate my other four novels. She gives men hell and I've loved devising these torments; perhaps, deep down, I'm an unrevealed masochist. There was no way I'd let her drop into oblivion.

During the last six months I've resumed writing RL and I'm up to 75,181 words. For those who can't envisage what that means, an average medium-length novel probably tops out at about 100,000 words.

But here's a thing: creating  RL has stretched over a decade and there's no doubt - even discounting learning to sing -  during that period I've changed as a person and, thereby, as an author. I'm not sure I ever knew how RL would end but I've just completed a totally unexpected conversation between Lindsay and a concert pianist which must surely change the plot in a big way. How? I'm not sure. But then I'm kind of sure.

Am I being irritating? Cast your mind over the biographies of all the novel writers you've read: many have been downright peculiar, some close to criminal. It's not a job for healthy minds

WHICH?

Veronica now lives in a nursing home. Yesterday I visited her there for the first time. I do not intend to write directly about this matter again.

Not because the subject is too raw, too difficult or too personal. I’ve written for a living and I’ve tackled those adjectives before. Rather, because it would be pointless.

At the present core of our 65-year-old marriage is a dilemma, a word that’s often misused. Too casually. It is much more than a sticky how’s-your-father. Google puts it rather pungently:

A challenging situation requiring a choice between two or more equally undesirable, unfavourable, or mutually exclusive  alternatives… often… a  ‘no-win’.”

Occasionally, at three o’clock of a morning, I reckon I’ve cracked it. But it’s fool’s gold. One cannot do anything about the passage of time, whatever H. G. Wells postulated. To explain the dilemma would be easy enough, if wordy. But, as I say, pointless. And that’s what Brits call a full stop and North Americans a period.

A rather sadder message

Veronica, my wife of 65 years, now lives in a nursing home. I find myself incomplete and must get used to another kind of life.

Best kind of New Year Message

 Click image to enlarge

AI helps out and I'm amazed

This year’s Christmas brought modern-day magic but I was merely a bystander. Here we go.

When it comes to sound reproduction Chez Robinson I’m incredibly finicky. Not surprising, really, given that most installed TV loudspeakers are about the size of a packet of cigarettes. Not much hope for the music generated by, say, a double bass. So I have a pair of triple-speaker hi-fi units properly spaced for stereo reproduction.

But that’s just a start. I also have a set-up which electronically improves the signal that is the heart of the music, or whatever I'm playing. Step up the Marantz amplifier which cost me £500 ($676) fifteen years ago. And, no, this amp doesn’t just make things louder or quieter, it compensates for poor quality of live broadcasts and for recordings made in riveting shops. Also, in my case, it adjusts itself to the different circuitry of the smart TV, the DVD player, a Dell laptop (fed by a chip on to which all the music from my old LPs and CDs was transferred) and two pairs of hi-fi stereo headphones. Plus lots of other stuff which I can hardly spell.

There is a price to pay for all this adaptability; the Marantz is shockingly complicated to use. As was confirmed when one of our Christmas party used their smartphone to control the amp. Yes, it did that all right but getting it back to normalcy was an absolute bastard. Hours passed.

This was Boxing Day (December 26) and the night before had ended round about 4 am. Finally, daughter Occasional Speeder, who’d mumbled that she’d got “some ideas” re. the Marantz, awoke from a deep sleep and addressed the problem. It took some time but finally the sound system blared. But how?

What could be more fashionable than AI? Even so it was pretty slick work. The initial problem with the Marantz was spelled out by OS on her phone screen. Then OS merely photographed the phone screen and presented the image – as a request for help - to something like ChatBot. And AI then recommended the next step. Step taken, another photograph and another recommendation. And so on. Things weren’t all that easy at first but AI sensed OS’s difficulties and urged her to “Keep on trucking”. She admitted she was grateful for this

I reckoned OS deserved the best Southern Rhone red I had in my wine rack