under another sun

Day started at around 4 am with disturbed cats. The black and white bastard had let itself in and was busy spraying the place and eating all the cat food. It fled as I went downstairs. Our cats traumatised. Locked the door of the cat flap, which is not working properly, and returned to bed, and lay awake trying to decide how to murder the black and white cat. Lorraine utterly awake too. Eventually we put on a meditation tape and fell asleep to it.  One of the dispiriting consequence of yesterday's account bonanza was realising just how much money I was paying for broadband. Lorraine found an enormously better deal from Virgin, and I applied for this. Then phoned up BT to cancel my account, who then countered with an even better deal than Virgin, which I accepted, and then had to have interminable conversations with Virgin to cancel the order I had made an hour earlier. All calls to these telecoms companies requiring at least 10 mins of waiting before you could speak to anyone -- fo...

Morning started with a cup of tea from my lovely Lorraine, followed by Calliope vomiting up her breakfast near me as I got dressed. Felt a sudden wave of stress this morning, so bad I had to make a plan to get to grips with it. First item was go for a brisk walk first thing, which helped a great deal. Home, and found a tax demand on the mat, the one from last year which only came to light when I called the tax folks the other day. I am due a couple of payments from clients in the next few days, so hopefully I can pay that down. This morning my apple devices were suddenly no longer receiving email. I then spent over an hour having a screen chat with a man at BT who deleted my email accounts my computer and iPhone, but was unable to reinstall them. He then announced it was an apple problem and bailed. Had lunch, spoke to Mum who was stressed about the land registry papers connected with her house. I phoned the solicitor in Brighton and briefly talked this through with them. They we...

Hot again, blue cloudless sky. Resumed my Monday desk with a song on my lips, but the melody quickly snatched away by BT internet. I could send or receive no email till the evening, and wasted time on futile conversations with people at BT, too time-consuming and dreary to go into.   Ordered tiles for the bathroom. And was watchful of Brian who had I think been in a nasty fight the night before, and was moping about but seems to be not physically harmed. Perhaps it is just his pride. More Philip Roth. The Anatomy Lesson  is full of kvetching* and not thought of as his best, and quite amazingly self-indulgent. It is one of three semi-autobiographical novels about the consequence of having written a semi-autobiographical novel. It did make me laugh when the main character, Nathan Zukerman, (an author of a famous semi-autobiographical novel) is on a plane talking to the man next to him, and telling him that he is a pornographer, and going into incredible detail about his imag...

New Kenny Towers a place of industry. I made a Guernsey beanjar, to christen the house with my bean-based aromas. A BT guy arrived to connect our wifi, as three men arrived with our new washing machine, which is now in the dungeon, as Lorraine and I have dubbed the cellar. Later other men delivered was a dishwashing machine, that I thought I might be able to plug right in, but came with a many instructions, regrettably none in English. My throat now very sore and my neck puffy with swollen glands, and foot still hurts, so today's painting, scraping and rebuilding my office a slog. Lorraine doing governor training, but not too late. Beth back for a few hours too, before zooming off to look after Anton's house while he is in the US, and we all snapped down some beanjar. In the evening, the previous owner helped us decode the mystery of the washing machine plumbing. It means we have to take apart a substantial kitchen unit, and pass the outflow pipe from the washing machi...

Woke up after highly detailed dream about a colony on Mars, and how its occupants felt when the annual connecting space ship flight left for Earth. It seemed on waking that I had the plot for an entire Space Trilogy in my head, but this soon got replaced by the simple pleasures of lapping up a cup of tea. Not long up before a random northern oaf arrived from BT arrived to install our new wifi with a free upgrade. Naturally he couldn't find the place. Phone rings: Where are you? Also he unplugged my external hard drive when it was still running and asked me where the main terminal was and repeated my answer that I didn't know in a frankly insulting manner. Pleased to see the back of the lummox. A decent spate of writing, then off into town to pick up some printer paper and gulp down some fresh air, and buy some chilies. A man on stilts with a clown face walking down Sydney Street, but this being Brighton nobody batted an eyelid, even when he attempted to coax people between...

Meringue At work fairly early on some new stuff my pharma client sent me and I was done by midday. Then my computer's email connection died and I spent two hours on a single phone call to BT to try and sort it all out. Having a shoulder full of claws from the rather clingy Calliope while on the phone to India, and trying to follow faint or intermittent instructions was enough to test the patience of a saint. The phone line was so bad I could only hear about 50% of what was being said. British Telecom I kept repeating to myself. Eventually after almost two hours, the fourth person sorted the problem inside 2 minutes. Left reflecting how my last three days had been eaten by plumbers, vets, IT crises and extra bits of work. Agreed with a slightly heavy heart to go back to London for another bout of MS and wounds next week, having achieved little on my skeleton work. Walking to Lorraine's house this evening, I decided I needed a holiday, which suddenly seemed a penetratingly brilli...