The trouble with life is all the stuff that goes with it. Household repairs. Irritating, upsetting, unsettling letters saying you have to do someone else’s job for them to sort out a mess they’ve made on the basis of their assumptions and if you don’t it’s your fault and no, don’t ever ring them again because they aren’t going to answer the phone. And that’s just the tax office.
It gets in the way. I haven’t written anything for weeks. It’s making me wonder who I am. Was the book any good? I was told the other day it was boring.
‘But you said it was well-written?’
‘Yes. It is. But it’s boring. Nothing happens.’
And then you’re straight into I don’t think that’s true and it’s not supposed to be an action-thriller and sometimes stuff happens when things don’t actually happen and I’m not walking out on you I’m just going for a cigarette and would you like a drink when you get back. All that stuff.
And getting my first radio show ever in the world and learning to work the decks (I know. Get me. And my posse, as I believe it’s called). And going for interviews to start a training course and finding I liked the one I didn’t expect to like much more than the other one, which is much better in some ways and has a better reputation but also has a much higher commuting bill attached to it.
And going to a wedding. I’ve never met the bride. I last saw the groom five years ago or thereabouts. He was something to do with a tango show in Yeovil. A girl I had one date with 15 years before was there. I didn’t recognise her now she was 40 and dressed in weird woolen clothes of a style I’d only seen in Miss Marple films. Odd.
So all of that stuff and other things and the end of summer and what to wear to this wedding which isn’t in a church. It might have been better if I hadn’t picked up the shirt I was going to wear just after I’d fixed an old bicycle I was out riding this morning.
It’s still sunny, just cool enough to make cycling brilliant. The roads were empty, this rural Saturday. A peaceful, calm morning and the promise of better weather to come. I hope the wedding is the same.
