Life has been reduced by a heavy cold. The sort people who've never had flu say is flu. I once had flu, a near-death experience; heavy colds are unpleasant but nowhere near.Going outdoors becomes a struggle. VR wanted - post-birthday - to buy a summer jacket and we went down to Hereford by bus. I made one outrageous suggestion after another and the project foundered.
I played music by Hovhaness and John Ireland, to prove my intellect was intact. The stool (see pic) allows me to sit at the mini-computer, browsing through 8046 tracks that form the extremities of my musical taste over sixty years. Previously I'd have shuffled back and forth on my knees, looking at CD spines. Now the CDs are in the attic, their content transferred to the mini's hard disc. Let's have no nonsense about the presence of CDs being a comfort.
Once I'd have eschewed drugs. But I'm old and these days I'll reach out for any solace. Day Nurse followed Night Nurse and I was disturbed by a highly charged nightmare about lost luggage. We share a bottle of champagne but I fret because VR doesn't consume her glasssfuls quickly enough.
I recognise pathos in Donald Trump. Earlier he described Alec Baldwin's Trump-parody as "unfunny" despite TV audiences roaring with laughter. When his infamous healthcare bill was withdrawn a day ago he seemed distrait, drumming his fingers and saying there'd been "no help from Democrats", as if this was surprising.
Handkerchiefs. No, I’d better not go into that.
My blocked-up sinuses create a novel, resonating cathedral nave inside my noggin. This allows me to sing entirely plausible low notes without effort. But are these notes for real? I record them on to a CD for playback on V’s machine. More later.
How utterly annoying, though you've written an entertaining account I hope you feel much better, very soon.
ReplyDeleteOh dear, gute Besserung, may things improve rapidly and sinuses clear over night.
ReplyDeleteWe have just reinstalled a record player and dusted all these vinyl round things. Takes up a lot of space but great fun.
Beth: I see it as my bloggish obligation to transmute the base metal of ill-health, old age, political reverses, crowded supermarkets, stuffed-shirt BBC news anchorman Huw Edwards, a garden demanding TLC and the irrevocable severance of cultural links with mainland Europe into the platinum of faine writing and etiolated thought. I find RR to be an unending source of parody and risibility and am prepared to mine him from dawn to dusk. I know he secretly reads Walter Pater.
ReplyDeleteSabine: There comes a time in life when the task of choosing a CD ("Should it be this or that? The variables are just too much."), detaching it from that irritating gripper in the jewel case, dropping it precisely on the player's transport mechanism, and pushing subsequent appropriate buttons becomes an intolerable burden. As to LPs, dusting isn't enough; the vinyl is electrostatically charged and the dust, in obedience to certain immutable laws of physics, remains in situ. You require what used to be called a Dust Bug with its little bottle of fluid, and even then the clicks sound out like machine-gun bursts during the ppp passages.
Hence the mini-computer.
I've always found that I could hit lower notes after a cold, sometimes for weeks. I was not aware that humans were capable of discerning notes lower than the ones you handle regularly. Trump and his bologna took a tough hit. That's good. We much appreciated the visit from Merkel, the leader of the western world.
ReplyDeleteMikeM: I meant to say the lowest notes I can usually hit without a cold. DT refused to shake hands with Merkel - what a gentleman!
ReplyDeleteGesundheit! And I mean it ... try Umcka Root (the only thing they had before penicillin was discovered) ... just be aware of the blood-thinning effect.
ReplyDelete