under another sun

Beth and James returned at midday having got up at the crack of dawn in Wales, after what was a brilliant wedding. Lorraine bathing Enzo in the bath this morning. A very splashy business indeed. Enzo had been clearly missing Beth and James, and perhaps because we were talking about them, he kept looking at the door. They crept in just as Enzo was waking from a late morning snooze, he burst into tears with happiness, and Beth picked him up crying too. A lovely reunion. Soon they drove off to be home. The house suddenly quieter.  Lorraine much improved today so all well.  Called the Tobster and spoke to him and Mike, and Toby came here in late afternoon. Roast Chicken, and salad, and the World Cup Final. A bizarre game with Spain utterly dominant, and Argentina resisting and defending and playing their dirty game. Spain won in extra time, which was pleasing. The Argentinians then began physically attacking some of the Spanish players. Very poor behaviour. A long drawn out game, ...

Recording with Robin this morning, nice to see her, virtually at least. She is about to lead her own Steps class, starting tomorrow night, and is fully booked. I find this deeply impressive, but she's always had that streak in her. Then, having found an appropriate folder, having just given up looking for it, I sauntered off to the post office to send off my manuscript. One Day Forever is about examining memory and was inevitably focused on the past and time and so on.  I want to turn a page. My next project to be more forward looking and perhaps a bit lighter. Nature abhors a vacuum, and half formed ideas are nudging forwards for attention. It's actually quite exciting. If only it weren't so energy-snappingly hot I'd bloody get on with it.  Popped into the photo shop, and sent pictures from my phone to a printer in the shop to be collected later in the week, via a screen in the shop with QR codes and so on.  Lorraine busy and took Maureen out to a hospital appointment...

A phone call at 3:30am and Lorraine had to drive to Stratheden Court. There was no point me going too, but then I couldn't sleep, so I was up till when Lorraine got home an hour later.  Another heatwave scorcher, though the air was slightly cooler this afternoon and at night. An omen of the coming catastrophe. Feeling powerless to change anything is the disease of the age. In W.B.Yeats's lines 'The best lack all conviction, while the worst / are full of passionate intensity'. Still, mustn't grumble, eh? Otherwise a perfectly nice day for us, after we got up late. Heat lethargy and disrupted sleep meant we didn't do much. Breakfast, and sitting outside in the shade and breeze. I tried to do some writing, but I find it very hard to concentrate for very long. Mum and Toby went to Hampstead today, though the train line to Hampstead wasn't working for some reason. Probably to do with the heat. They are busy next week till Thursday, so I will go up, and I will ret...

Very hot. Enervated by the heat, and not up to much. Wished Romy a happy birthday. I did stuff about the house and garden first thing. Carrying compost and moving the withered potatoes out of the sun. Then as Robin had sent me some useful feedback on my full poetry collection, I um-ed and ah-ed about this for a while. The working title for a while has been Did This Happen? and I've been increasingly disliking it. Robin agrees it doesn't do it justice. So I am putting it into the airlock and opening the space doors on it.  Into the studio this afternoon. Lorraine pottering about. Me experimenting with things. Had a bit of a funny turn sitting by the window, when my eyes suddenly had double vision. Drank lots of water and everything came quickly back into focus. Naturally I thought the worst, but Lorraine was on hand to radiate calm. It was very hot in there. Drank lots of water afterwards and felt right as rain. Rebooting tonight, we spoke to Adele and Patrick, Guy, Debbie and R...

Unprecedented scenes this morning, with Lorraine and I watching TV over breakfast: highlights of England's unexpected victory over Mexico at the Azteca Stadium. I felt sorry for the Mexicans, having met many nice ones on a trip to Mexico deep in the last century. A couple of hours editing this morning, almost finished editing the interview now. I notice hesitancy is contagious, and Will and I were setting each other off. No problem, as it all comes out in the edit. I liked him. At lunch off to Brighton by bus to get a haircut. Stacy in what Innis calls monkey mind mode, asking questions but barely listening to the answers. He never takes a holiday, and looked shattered. About to board a 12 back to Seaford, when a speedy 12x came on the bus stop board as being just three minutes away. Waited for the 12x which, being a phantom bus, never appeared. A long wait, reminding myself of my lifelong commuting credo: a bus or train that's actually here is better than a possible one. The g...

Decidedly cold again. A bit hungover and had a bacon and egg breakfast, then off to the outskirts of Steyning along Maudlin Lane to Paul and Dawn, who had looked after our garden plants for weeks.  We hefted most of them into the car including the two acers in big pots, and then were taken inside to be given cheese toasties and coffee, and sit near the fire for a bit. But as Paul was working, and Dawn had to go out, we were soon driving home, with the pots clinking and shifting about as we went round roundabouts and so on. Then home and more hefting, and then after a smidge of writing, with neither of us feeling particularly lively, we watched football, which I really enjoyed: Brasil losing to Croatia on penalties, and Argentina beating the Netherlands on penalties. The games looking great on our new TV.

Monday. A grey rainy day, and cold. Working online with Keith and feeling cold in my study. We put on the heating in two or three one hour bursts to keep off the penguins. A meeting with Pat today too, meeting background kept making his long hair disappear and reappear as if flapping in a high wind   Happy to have Lorraine busying herself around the house, doing things with sourdough and sorting bits and pieces, it being her first morning home since Friday. Once done with work, Lorraine and I assembled a bathroom cabinet. Surprising how warming screwdrivers can be. Lorraine, not having been here for a couple of days, getting flashes of unreality about this being her home -- and it is not a holiday from which we will have to return. Cocooned on the gold sofa tonight, eating a warming chicken and vegetable stew and catching up with Deep Space 9.  Meanwhile in an alternative universe the football world cup started in the UAE. England won their first game 6-2, which was rather imp...

A slow start, as is customary for us at the weekend.  Roused ourselves to be off early in the afternoon to pick up Janet and Ken and Lorraine drove us over the downs to The Sussex Prairie Garden , which is unexpectedly beautiful, decorated here and there with rusty profiles of buffalo. We walked to the gardens past a pen of two Gloucester Old Spots, and Ken told me, after snorting at them, that he had pigs when he was a lad and Digging for Victory. He was having a bit of trouble with his legs today, and we bought some tea and sat in the tea garden for a while, before Janet, Lorraine and I mooched about in the gardens for a while.  I loved the way it had been planted. Janet and Lorraine having cryptic plant based conversations. Then back to see Ken, Janet chatting to a pal she met there, as well as the owner of the gardens. A very pleasant couple of hours. I wasn't sure about why the Prairie business, but Ken told me that it was also a term used in old English.  ...

Another recovery day, I am - touch wood - inching back towards health and every day without a flare up is good. Small amounts of work done but little physical or mental energy. Consequently little to report other than receiving the score for A Return to Sarnia by Chiara Beebe, a very accomplished 22 year old born in Guernsey. She has used my poem A Return for what looks to be, with my rudimentary score reading skills, a rather beautiful piece that also quotes the song Sarnia Cherie. The song is going to be performed in the Guernsey Sinfonietta's Terra Nova concert of modern and new music on, I think, August 6th. This of course made me feel quite cheery - with the prospect of whipping over to Guernsey to see it, thrown in for good measure. It will be good to meet Chiara too, who seems very switched on and sorted and, all being well, to see the bronzed and Italianate Flemings. Finished The sense of an ending by Julian Barnes. I found it very enjoyable, despite its contrivances...

Able to get on with admin and a bit of writing quite well this morning. Not in pain any more, but wrung out after a month of assorted ailments. Able to walk to the post office, buy a bag of cherries and so on. (Cherries are my friends apparently.) Still sleeping loads. This year's Summer Suck really is going for it. Thanking my lucky stars I do not have to commute to London at the moment. Listening to a Julian Barnes book at the moment, called The Sense of an Ending . A quietly wonderful book. Concise but packed with interesting ideas about memory, loss and life. Sparking lots of things in my head, including not so cheerfully memories of a friend I had lived with at university, who had died some years ago. Lorraine home briefly and we walked through the meadowy flowers in the park for ten minutes, before she went out for a salad supper with the governors of the school she was a governor at till recently. She missed perhaps the most astonishing game of football in world cup hist...