Penury!

I am not one to dwell on imagined or real slights. I scorn to harp on about injustices that I have suffered. I shrug at hardship and adversity and much prefer to get on with the positive aspects of life.

Well, as an aspiration, the previous paragraph sounds OK; it’s just a pity that it doesn’t, even remotely, apply to me.

I am still reeling after paying £700 for my car yesterday: a service; MOT and replacement brakes. Except that the very efficient people in Nationwide Autocentre in North Road in Cardiff didn’t manage to include my new MOT certificate in the “Thank you for choosing . . .” guff that they gave me after ripping £700 from my shocked account. I only hope that they were a little more efficient in the way that they have treated my car!

I was, to put it mildly, pissed off because I had to return to North Road to collect my MOT before getting my tax disc. I have now spent the best part of £1,000 to keep my car on the road: and the insurance is due in a few months time! O tempera O mores!

[I have just moved my position to escape being oracularly involved in “’Celebrity’ Big Brother”. Some things ask too much of a relationship!]

Not that it is playing in my mind; but did your last service bill have separate charges for the disposal of oil, brake fluid and ‘other’ fluids? Did it? Liar! It is, surely, only the grasping mechanics of Nationwide Autocentre in North Road who charge for things like that (including, might I just add, a charge of £10.75 for adjusting the beam of the headlights!) I could weep! I really could!

Anyway, money is, after all, only money.

What the hell is that supposed to mean? It comes to something when I catch myself trying to give myself therapy by vacuous meaningless cliché! Things have reached a very pretty pass indeed when such attempts to soothe my moneyless state misuse words in this way. Let me turn to things real and more important.

Today was the housework day. I cannot pretend that I have found Zen contentment in the quotidian tasks of maintaining a normal household. Hoovering does not calm me; washing does not lave my spirit in balm; polishing does not soothe, and cleaning glass is just amazingly difficult and frustrating.

Indeed I think that cleaning glass and mirrors is the nearest that we come to experiencing a fifth dimension. I have tried using lint free cloths; ‘Windowlene’ impregnated disposable tissues; various unguents whose garish graphics clearly state that their whole raison d’etre is to clean glass; newspaper and a sponge – and none of them actually ‘do what it says on the tin.’ No matter how painstakingly you apply cream, lotion, spray, vinegar, soap, water: none of them leave the whole (that adjective is important) window or mirror clean.

If you look a mirror clean in the face (so to speak) you can tell it is clean; but, move a fraction to one side and the smeary, smudgy, pock marked true surface of the material is cleanly apparent. Clean from that direction, until it is pristine and sparkling, then move back to your original position and, hey presto! everything is dirty again! What has changed? Only your ways of seeing. It reminds me of the Berger book which was so fashionable at once time, and was one of those worthy volumes spawned by the BBC which made you believe that you were an intellectual – I loved them! This is yet another volume safely packed away awaiting shipment in the walk-in wooden packing cases. I hope.

Tomorrow I want to read. I have read nothing today except what has been essential to keep the day going. Tomorrow I want to get further into ‘Winter in Madrid’ and relive the frustration of the Civil War in Spain.

I also, more importantly, have to repair two parts of the fence which have blown down recently. With Brian in Span we do not have access to the van to bring new sections to the house and so I will have to perform magic with what is left to produce something which looks in keeping with what is left. God help us all if I have to rely on my mechanical ingenuity to produce a seamless fence of matched sections. I could do before and after photographs so you could judge for yourselves. It’s an idea and an incentive rolled into one, together with the opportunity to exercise my artistic ability in taking tasteful photos of the destruction.

And its amazing transformation.

Perhaps.

We’ll see.