I'm abed, it’s still dark but I glom (Is this US verb still in use?) my light-up wristwatch. Today’s Tuesday and Julie, our formidable cleaner arrives at 8 am. VR and I need to be snugged down in our respective studies when this happens, leaving the rest of the house to Julie’s ministrations.
Last week V, my singing teacher, wasn’t able to Skype me as usual on Monday and asked if Tuesday was OK. So I found myself rehearsing the tricky bits of Weep You No More Sad Fountains (actually, they’re all tricky) to the accompaniment of Julie’s vacuum cleaner out on the landing.
Still ten minutes to go and dawn is silvering the Malverns. This is the time of day when my brain works best, when I’m least vulnerable to the troubled wakefulness that has replaced sleep in my circadian rhythms. See! It reminded me of “glom” and now of “circadian”, both five-dollar words.
As I type this I’m testing ideas for my novel, Rictangular Lenses, which I recently resumed. The passage I'm considering revolves round familiar office-work procedures. Dull, dull, you say, but any novel’s a form of life and life includes the humdrum as well as the sublime. And it’s my self-imposed task to turn the dross of telephones ringing, appointments made, and memos composed into the pure gold of a potential Nobel Prize. Well, sort of.
My day? I sing, write something original, eat a proper lunch since Tuesday is not a diet day (Black pudding sandwich with raw onion slices), read The Guardian, strive but fail to avoid dozing. Mid-afternoon the creative juices have dried up and it’s passive pap from then on. TV or a DVD and the knowledge I’m only half the geezer I was.
Ave atque vale.
Test comment from blog author
ReplyDeleteYep. It still works.
DeleteTom: Oh wow! A commented comment is a bonus. I'm getting down on my knees and... finding them wet.
Delete"Still ten minutes to go and dawn is silvering the Malverns." I love that sentence. It is a beautiful one line poem, a perfect image without a photo.
ReplyDeleterobin andrea: I wondered if the few people who read it would know what the Malverns are. Not that it matters. They could be a line of factory chimneys
DeleteMore about "Julie, our formidable cleaner," please!
ReplyDeleteZu Schwer: I'm wondering about this. Whether I'm entitled... I'd want what I wrote to "warts and all" but would I first have to get permission?
Delete"Still ten minutes to go and dawn is silvering the Malverns." Like Robin, your Shakespearian phrase stood out to me. It reminded me of one of his Hamlet lines, when Horatio says:
ReplyDelete"But, look, the morn, in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon high eastward hill"
That has stood in my memory since we studied Hamlet at school.
Avus: I'd prefer it to be known as a Robinsonian phrase. After all I wrote it and I was careful not to do so in iambic pentameter.
Delete