It's the little things . . .

The incipient cold that is nagging at my nose and throat refuses to be subdued by swimming. One would have thought that energetic exercise would rally the good microbes in one's body to a decisive battle against whatever it is that actually causes colds. My home city of Cardiff has a centre devoted to all things cold-related and has been working steadily (and one fears unsuccessfully) to consign this socially embarrassing aliment to the history books. I am presently adopting the strategy of pretending that I do not have a cold. This is intermittently successful, especially while in the actual act of swimming, where the mechanical processes of keeping afloat, moving and alive are usually enough to restrain any of the more obvious aspects of the illness – and anyway moving water has a certain ability to wash away evidence!

So I am well. And to prove it I am going out to lunch with Irene and talking, much like swimming, has a way of making me forget mere bodily infirmities.

The Open University course is taking we hapless students deep into the (fascinating) world of single point perspective. Something which I have been told about often enough, but something which also does not seem to stick in my brain. There is a great deal of mathematics, or so I believe, in the working out of single point perspective – especially in the depiction of buildings – but I firmly believe that some airy-fairy citing of the theory and practice will suffice for most of the work that we have to do. I particularly like the part in our text books which seems to indicate that the artists of the Northern Renaissance used single point perspective when it suited them and adapted it when the artistic circumstances demanded. If that sort of thing does not give an arts student wriggle room, then I don't know what does!

Tomorrow is my now customary lesson in Padel – that strange mixture of tennis and squash which possibly originated on cruise ships, and British cruise ships at that! I am reluctant to claim this as yet another British sport given to the world as there is convincing evidence to suggest that it is nothing of the sort.

The nice teacher who gently introduced me to the sport has now deserted me and I have a youngster whose teaching style is best described as relentless. It is probably doing me good and is something which I have to get used to – and anyway it takes my mind off the fact that I still do not have any copies of The Book to hand. Or my phone. Or my watch. Nor any thing that I have paid for and which should be with me by now! But I try not to be bitter. Or somewhat worried. And I'm failing in that latter category!

I am working on a new poem the inspiration for which started innocuously enough with one of my staple (some might say hackneyed) provocations to creativity – autumn trees and falling leaves. This has turned into something altogether stranger with my reversing the leaf fall and transferring the shedding to humans. At the moment I think there are about three poems in one and although they are all linked, they are also fragmented. I like the central idea but its working out is much more complicated than I expected it to be. Also, the exposition is proving to be a problem as well – and that is one that I am nowhere near to solving. Still, that is why I enjoy writing, finding what, at least for me, is some sort of solution to a linguistic teaser! It may be that nothing comes of the poem at the end of my efforts, but I hope it does because I have found myself thinking about the subject for a few days now and I really want to know what I have to say!

Toni is deep into his course and is finding it time-greedy and difficult, but I have total belief in his eventual ability to sort things out. Its the duration of eventually that is the wearing part of watching the struggle!

Both of us are trying to get ahead to allow for the delightful distractions that will beset us from the 21^st onwards! Bring it on!