Unguided minds

Jo(e) showed impossibly neat bookshelves

on her blog. Here's one of mine. Would you

say Homerically untidy? Tell the truth I'm

a tiny bit proud of this lack of organisation

PJ PRACTICE At what time of day may one decently change into pyjamas? The Reagans (former White House residents) thought 6.30 pm was OK but then he was already snoring by 9 pm.

A more cogent point is: what are we risking? Are pyjamas a sign we prefer sleep and/or preparing for sleep to being awake? Intellectually we've given in? Some people cloud the issue with talk about pyjamas being "comfortable" but what does this say about the clothes they normally wear?

I was very conscious of the Reagans when I first changed into PJs while it was still light. Now Wiki tells me that Ronnie departed the presidency at age 78. And I am six years older than he was then.

Drinking booze while wearing PJs. There's another tester.

SCREENING Skyping the family is now a routine. And we've widened the circle, Professional Bleeder has joined us. For a few seconds we were even wider: Darren, Occasional Speeder's husband, could be seen tentatively cutting grandson Zach's hair, leaving him with a Half-Monk.

When VR joins me we're a foursome and you realise the need for a workable protocol. None of us is good at guessing when others have stopped talking. Interruptions become endemic. My facetiousness is now a burden to me as well as the others. There's a two-second gap before laughter is signalled and this gets on my nerves. More so when laughter is not signalled.

I have plans for our next session (6 pm today) for which OS has said we should all have a drink (s?) in advance, and then drink steadily and visibly throughout. This could alter the goalposts.

DEFINITION The question: What's posh? arose. Daniel, Ysabelle's partner, said it depended on having two or more gravy-boats. That went down well.

I did it my way

Tell the truth: I thought these guys were
better dressed then those in front

On Saturday I had a choice: wall-to-wall TV coverage of the Windsor Castle nuptials or the UK (soccer) equivalent of the Super Bowl. In fact that's not true, the choices were as wide and as varied as my imagination: I could have learned to bake a Linzertorte, rehearsed my warm-up scales BUT WITH ATTACK, watered my newly planted plants, cut my toe-nails (Always a light engineering project getting to that twisted-round small toe on the right), dozed following my toast-with-egg-mayonnaise lunch, resumed my fifth novel Rictangular Lenses; the world you might have said was my oyster.

Instead I faced the void by preparing Lasting Powers of Attorney for (a) financial matters, and (b) health/care. In short allowing VR and/or my daughters to take over the materialistic aspects of my existence when I snuff it or lapse into ga-gaism. VR did the same assuming she is overtaken first. It's like a will but with wider, more pragmatic aims.

The UK government does its best to ensure all is kosher. Under Preferences and Instructions I have the option to tell my attorneys (Not real ones who would fleece me into poverty; ones I've ordained) about what I wish for and what I insist on. There's even a style guide: Use words like "prefer" and "would like" or "must" and "have to".

Best of all: "Most people leave this page blank." Chat being preferable.

The questions are easy, the signing process (For another day, thank Mammon.) tortuous. My impression is this: my death and/or descent into living oblivion are serious matters. But only for OTHER PEOPLE. I will inherit permanent darkness or physical incompetence, true, but also a complete absence of forms to fill in. That’s a plus.

But will I be such stuff as dreams are made on? Got an opinion?

On furlough from oblivion

Beyond VR's head the bright numerals say 6:21. Four minutes from do-nothing to do-something; the time of day when I am supposedly at my brightest.

A timid transfer from horizontal (back, shoulders, bum) to vertical (left hip issuing osteo-arthritic signals). The carpet is rough to the soles of my feet as I unhook my fleece dressing gown (US: robe) from the en-suite door. Quietly in the dark, since VR is, or was, asleep.

In the dark study I flick switches marked Canada, USA, France and other distant exotic places. Outside, dawn is perhaps a quarter-of-an-hour  old. In a month's time I'll be doing all this in the pre-dawn blackness.

Downstairs, an old man's right hand gripping the bannister, straight to the old man's comfort room - the downstairs loo. Carefully targeting.

And now an additional task: drawing the heavy French window curtains at the rear of the house, then reeling up the seven blinds and letting street light into the lounge.

Trickier stuff in the dark kitchen. I scissor open a foil sachet and use the moist fragment of fabric to wipe my eyelids free from blepharitic crud. Bathe my eyes. An old man's emergence.

Upstairs the monitor glows with promise. Study door closed I am able to switch on the desk light. The cursor flutters over LiveMail.

Hello! Does anyone remember me?

Blest Redeemer (revised), 141,758 words

The Catford flat lasted much longer than Judith expected. During her six-year stay she changed her job twice, welcomed and dispatched half a dozen women who helped her pay the rent, planned and supervised the loss of her virginity and ceased to be a teenager without necessarily becoming an adult.

A loathing exorcised

Sonnet to a waterlogged vegetable

(together with its brothers: pumpkins,

marrow, courgettes, cucumbers, zucchini)

This bloated alderman with face aglow,

Smooth cheeked, smooth arsed, smooth tongued (if it could speak).

Empurpled egg, a sort of status quo

Hiding a sponge-like alimentary freak.

Its contours promise much, but then again,

Is it true food or fraudulent display?

Or worse? Puce pelt that passes through, and then,

Returns below in products of decay.

You can’t hate that, it has a gentle taste,

I’m told. But sodden anonymity

Is proof along the line that taste’s debased

And I was born for greater piquancy.

It is a blob and now its meaning’s overlaid

Who wants a fresh cut slice of meter maid?*

* See French dictionary

Canada goes for gold

I read The Guardian. Here's one reason why.

Two years ago the newspaper described the Vancouver Winter Olympics as "the worst Games ever". With this in mind, and in true Olympic spirit, The Guardian invited Harrison Mooney (Vancouver Sun) to return the favour by writing about the present London Olympics.

Today: "We learned that the authorities lost the keys to Wembley Stadium (one of the Games venues) last week, an admission of incompetence that serves to explain why the police were never able to catch Benny Hill."

On Monday: "The London Games is looking ugly, and I mean that literally. It started... with the unveiling of that painful logo... (apparently) inspired by a Nike catalogue. It resembles either Lisa Simpson performing a sex act or a child's illustration of the breakup of Pangaea."

On Tuesday: "The North Korean women's football team were greeted by the wrong flag - nay, the wrongest flag possible - before their opening match. There is, I would remind London, a great difference between North and South Korea and the implication that 'once you've seen one Korea you've seen 'em all' is not going to fly."

I have no opinion on the Vancouver Games. But I do applaud paying a foreigner to be nasty to us.
As GB's medal tally rose, Mr Mooney started getting nastier.

Long live Le Grand Boucle

I find myself part of a paradox. For twenty years I’ve enjoyed a minority UK enthusiasm, watching the Tour de France on TV. In 1995 I saw the Spaniard, Miguel Indurain (five consecutive TdF victories) beat the Swiss, Tony Rominger, both head-to-head, white encrustations round their mouths, in the Alps. Bjarne Rijs (Denmark) finally beating Big Mig, The beginning and end of the Armstrong (USA) era – seven TdF wins. I’ve applauded wins by Andy Schleck (Luxembourg), Cadel Evans (Australia) and, on Sunday, Bradley Wiggins (England).

I never proselytise on behalf of the TdF. Those who approach it casually see a boring, long bike race redeemed by helicopter coverage of French scenery. They miss the fact that some bike racers can go well uphill, some against the clock, and some in savage sprint finishes – but none can do all three. That the TdF is broken down into stages which favour these three disciplines. They are unaware that the concept of accumulated time imposes special demands and special stratagems. They cannot appreciate the implications of team riding. Fair enough. The TdF is a complex proposition and there is always soccer which is more easily understood. Snob that I am I’ve taken comfort in the TdF’s international cast list, its minority appeal in the UK, its Frenchness. Also that those who avert their eyes would react similarly to chess, and for roughly the same reasons.

But all that changed on Sunday. Suddenly I’m one of a crowd. Don’t get me wrong: Wiggins, Froome and Cavendish are part of my Pantheon, but then so are Indurain, Armstrong, et al. And in the end what matters is the Tour itself. Not vox pop interviews about beer drinking from fatties waving the union flag on the Champs Elysées