Who are they all!

Horrific is the only adjective to describe the maelstrom of irritating bipeds who deliberately throw themselves in the path of a poor little shop visitor during the weekends!  One of the major joys of retirement from the treadmill of earning your money day by day rather than getting back some of the vast sums that you have thrown at the government for almost forty years, is that during the day you are surrounded mainly by your fellow retirees.  Admittedly there is a period round about lunchtime when the younger element and their irresponsible generators range widely but it is only after the witching hour of half past four that the untrammelled forces of screaming plenitude start swarming and simply taking up space.

A trip to Gava for a few necessaries ended in confusion today as we retreated in confusion from the ludicrously long lines to glum looking non-retired slaves waiting with that trip-wirely edgy look in their eyes.  We will wait until Monday.

Even the limited shopping that I did do necessitated my moving from queue to queue as the usual suspects of incompetent idiots showed their usual ineptitude when it came to displaying a basic understanding of the difficult transactional skills necessary in finding their wallets, producing a credit card, putting it in a reader, entering their number and taking their goods.  I know that sooner or later I am going to snap and attack some hapless cretin who puts their card in the wrong way round and upside down for the umpteenth time as I wait in line.  And I will surely get away with it with any jury of my peers!

And Monday will be the time when I have to go to the garage when the quarter window will be replaced.  I am still inclined to think the worst of the people around me, but Toni is slowly convincing me that it is more likely that the break was an accident possibly done by someone bringing some rubbish to the bins near which I had parked.  Possible but not likely.  Though it was possible through the broken window to gain access to the dash and there were things worth stealing and they weren’t, so it might be an accident.

I will be interested to see how much I end up paying for this bloody irritating drain on my reserves.  I am comprehensively insured but that means bugger-all nowadays with the various limitations that insurance companies write into the small print.  We shall see.

The writing continues for the course with my enthusiastic participation in all aspects.  I hope that my present attitude is one which is going to extend for the whole of the duration of the course and that I will be as enthusiastic at the end of it as I now am at the beginning!

The exercises that we are supposed to be doing at the moment ask for unstructured, impulsive writing aiming for more of a flow-of-consciousness approach rather than the more structured methodology that I feel comfortable with.  I am not alone at finding the exercises difficult, but I am persevering and producing stuff which is interesting, effective, rubbishy and insulting.  That is what we are aiming for – a lifting of the usual filters and finding what is lurking underneath the stone of the conscious mind!

I continue to write my daily Haiku with the last one being one of the more fluent, getting to what I regard as a satisfactory conclusion after only a few drafts!  Probably I will find the next almost impossible to complete – there is usually a sort of equilibrium of difficulty about these things.

The basic book for the course is referred to as The Big Red Book or the BRB and is generally treated like our bible.  It is a practical workbook with various exercises that can be extended infinitely.  This course is going to be very expensive in terms of my writing instrument of choice: the blue ink Pilot disposable fountain pen!  Experience has shown that this is the writing implement for me.  That and a pencil.  I will have to buy an electric pencil sharpener.  I am sure there is something wonderful waiting for me on Amazon!

I have decided to keep taking the two puffers for the rest of the weekend and, if I am not substantially better than I intend to go back to the doctor and demand something more effective – I really am not used to this extended period of being not well.  I don’t necessarily count this as “illness” as I can move about and carry on much as usual, but it is not what I want and expect!

And there is my flu injection waiting for me in the ready hands of the nurse in the health centre.  I hesitate to have it at the moment, as I am not sure what unholy mixture the melange of medicaments I am taking will have.  But it should be pushed into me this month to be effective.

It looks as though tomorrow is going to be sunny.  I intend to make the most of it.

And write about it afterwards!