under another sun

One for his knob Home to feed Calliope who, after greeting me with relief for five minutes, exploded into a flurry of bad behavior including her signature shredding the toilet roll, forbidden ferreting inside the airing cupboard and sitting at my desk to bite into my sleeves and shake her head in the vicious way reserved for the slaughter of small rodents. It is hard not to see this as anything other than simple recrimination at my absence. Otherwise as my computer is behaving sluggishly, I spent hours running diagnostics, virus checks, checkdisk , defragging , freeing memory, backing things up up etc. all to no avail. Then I filed bills etc. and noticed how almost everything utility is going up next year. Then I took some some time to brood on the futility of life as an unknown writer. Much improved by returning to Lorraine's house at tea time, eating cold turkey with pickles (including Pat's favourite, pickled walnuts) and bubble and squeak. Cleared the table to play several...

Crib notes Off today to deepest Kent to visit Lorraine's folks Pat and Maureen in my capacity as fish consultant. After a nice cup of tea we went off to the local garden centre and fish emporium where I selected various plants and rock and bits of wood. Back home to set it up, and to be rewarded with roast beef, and roast potatoes cooked in goosefat. I like Maureen and Pat. After the aquarium business, they taught me how to play cribbage. Lorraine and her parents were able to add the scoring permutations in a flash, which made me feel slightly retarded. But I like playing cards, and crib seems a good game. I have spent countless hours hunched over hands like feet playing Euchre with my grandparents in Guernsey. My grandfather Dave, who Lorraine's dad reminds me of, was rather a good player, and played in a local Euchre league. After playing a hand badly, my Grandmother was frequently warned by Dave that if she'd done that down the club, she'd have left like a cullender....