A moment of gratitude

A pleasant day in which I worked on my new poem did a few bits of admin (including emailing the people who'd offered me work on Monday) and took myself for a long early afternoon moochabout in town, browsing happily in secondhand bookshops and popping into Waterstones where I bought a book by Umberto Eco and Jean-Claude Carrière, called 'This is not the end of the book;' and a collection of essays called Literature and Evil by George Bataille.

After a walk by the sea I found myself in Kemptown where I stopped at a little 'cafe bistro' called Figaro's in a sidestreet. Here I ordered tea, and the man balked as if I had requested a unicorn, for it was an Italian place priding itself on its coffee. I was presented with a cup with a dirty saucer with the teabag floating in the milky water, and minutes later the worst all-day breakfast I've had this century, complete with a noxious ratburger. Thinking about it even now makes me want to retch. The charms of the place rounded off by a screaming baby.

I had downloaded Midnight's Children from Audible which wouldn't play. I emailed them and was phoned twice by a pleasant woman in Jamaica who solved the problem, and called me the next day to check it had worked. It makes me a much more loyal customer -- a pity more organisations don't get this simple truth.

Home and cooked a veggie stir fry to atone for the ghastly lunch. Lorraine had an exhausting and upsetting day, with one of the parents of a child at her school dying.

Spoke to Mum and Mas. Mum off to Prague to see her pal Jana for a few days. She's really looking forward to it. Also she said, that she has one last check up to go in six months time, before she will be considered all clear of the cancer she had almost five years ago now. This is splendid, and leaves me feeling very grateful to medical science and the forces of good.

Below a grey day in Brighton, with the sea flat as a millpond and the murk lurking. I liked the way the colours on the side of the fish pedicure huts worked perfectly with the murk; tourists and idlers still abounding on the pier. I noticed the fortune teller's hut was open again, intensifying the already Ray Bradburyish atmosphere of the pier, and a murky view to the remains of the West Pier.



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