17January1996

My dear folks,

I guess your fascination with my sleeping habits is beginning to wane. After all, there’s only so much interest you can take in the sleeping patterns of a distant relative however well regarded. So let me be suitably brief. With only brief awakenings, I slumbered solidly from 20.30 to 08.30 - and I put in another two hard hours this afternoon, ready for the first of another series of overnight shifts tonight. I feel quite human. It’s so nice; so’s the weather been, another sky-blue day after morning mist.

As for the day, it’s been thoroughly domestic. Mid-morning we took our neighbour, Stef, to Sainsburys where Jones raided the food shelves while I compared the available wines with the best buys in a wine book. We returned home with the loot & then set out on foot for the shops at Queensway. I wanted to change a dud CD I’d bought yesterday (it ran silent in the middle of the pizzacato for Britten’s Simple Symphony) & we both needed the exercise. Jones’ need to get several miles a day under her feet is already well known to you. She took herself off again after lunch while I got my head down.

The most exciting moment of the day has been the TV News coverage of a service at Coventry Cathedral to mark 100 years of the motor-car & express the community’s thanks for the blessings it has brought. The service provoked the wrath of the anti-car lobby, more conscious of its curses, who turned up to express their feelings. It was a present-day Lady Godiva who stole the show, her objections writ large across her torso. No shortage of blessings visible there! The constabulary, looking as if they ushered naked women out of church every day, produced a suitably modest coat & led her to the door. A fierce debate on the blessedness of the motorcar followed.

Also fascinating - while I’m on the subject - has been the daily coverage of attempts to build a bypass around the heavily-congrested southern English town of Newbury. This inevitably involves felling trees & messing up the countryside, both heresy to the scores of anti-road protesters who’ve turned up to block the project. Many of them built houses in the trees themselves. Each day brings a battle of wits & sometimes of brawn between the security guards drafted in by the builders & the protesters. The police turn out in some force as well, to arrest those who break the rules - mainly objectors. The cost is enormous. The government is playing dirty by declaring that people who are up trees are not in a position to accept take on available jobs & thus cannot claim the dole.

Last word on the news - the lead item this evening. The Queen, no less, has declared that she (or is it, She?) will no longer bail out her divorced daughter in law, the Duchess of York, whose luxurious lifestyle is said to have run up debts of a million pounds. The report gleefully detailed her spending on clothes, holidays & staff & noted that her 1994 income of £300,000 was a small fraction of her outgoings. For the Queen to declare any such thing is quite extraordinary & can only be seen as a warning to the community not to welcome further orders from the Duchess. I guess we live in extraordinary times.

I have exchanged Mavis’s ordinary sunlamp bulb for a red one that heats him without lighting him. He approves & no longer sleeps paw over eye. I tried placing a much smaller cardboard box under the lamp in the place of the large one he’s been using. He made his feelings clear by sleeping in the large one on the floor instead.

Blessings ever!
T