the new emotional blackmailer's handbook

Friday, January 13, 2012

Thursday, January 12, 2012

before i took this picture, i had just been giggling with one of my favourite customers because one of our night workers must have had a spot of sleepy finger trouble and the chef's invoice was charging eight times the going rate for two kilos of cheddar slices

he and i speculated that the gods themselves must have milked a golden cow on the slopes of mount olympus

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

howard jacobson on reading dickens, with reference to the bbc's recent travesty of great expectations

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jan/06/charles-dickens-bbc-howard-jacobson?INTCMP=SRCH

Sunday, January 8, 2012

a small sample from the recent present to myself ...

Saturday, January 7, 2012

i shouldn' t smirk ...

the loved one and i travelled back from the big hospital in a comfy taxi and i have been promoted to part-time butler/male-nurse for the time being

she requests the use of her laptop so that she can wirelessly watch her favourite hospital saga, "holby city", using the bbc i-player

half way through the episode, ( which i cannot watch, mostly for reasons of snobbery mixed with delusions of cultural grandeur ), i hear her voice rising in a kind of panic ...

"no, no, no-o-o-oh !"

the television doctors are re-setting a dislocated shoulder, just like hers ... with realistically scrunchy sound effects

very thoughtful of the guardian to issue this leaflet today ... pity the hospital haven't considered the difficulty of finding a nail varnish to match that velcro

file under "gratuitous over-use of the credit card"

... arguably necessary as this book is stuffed with wonders

http://www.spectator.co.uk/columnists/all/3454556/and-another-thing.thtml

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

news of the screws

i was sitting besides a trolley in the accident and emergencies circus this afternoon when a prisoner with head injuries was wheeled in to the next bay

the prison officer who was keeping an eye on things and remained next to the trolley pulled out a packet of crisps and ate them noisily

then he swaggered over to the bin that was clearly labelled for re-cycling only, and re-cycled the empty packet

Monday, January 2, 2012

insomniac's consolations ( i )

i've been awake for almost a week with a heavy cold that likes to shift itself from one uncomfortable part of the body to another whenever i imagine it vanquished

i've always struggled to read methodically ... i'm rarely truly comfortable with larger books, i have a poor attention span and an itch to skip a few pages, and a kind of laziness with small print, especially in long paragraphs

not only did the loved one discover a lectern in a charity shop, but she also she went out and bought a huge "daylight" lamp, the Lumie Brightspark, which is transforming my experience of reading into something more intense and rewarding

now i just need to catch up on all that lost sleep

insomniac's consolations ( ii )

the loved one bought Paintings in Proust for me a couple of christmasses back

on this christmas eve she arrived home from the library with Proust's Overcoat, and it was only after deeply enjoying this little christmas jewel that i noticed it had been translated by the same writer

happy new year mister karpeles, and miss foschini, i am deeply indebted