13December1997

13 December 1997
My dear folks,

I have only bits & pieces to report after two weeks of intermittent night shifts. I sneaked into a music shop a few days ago & bought a couple of cheapie CD-packs of oldie favourites, the kind that are periodically recycled for the shrinking band of old swingers. I’ve been working my way through them, listening to some with nostalgic affection & zapping others with the “next-track” button. They were all allegedly once at the top of the hit parade – which doesn’t say a lot for the hit parade. The third of four pop CDs has proved disappointing. “Throw it away,” Jones urged me & I shall. At the price I paid, I can do so with a clear conscience. I indulged in a John Denver (RIP) double album at the same time. It wasn’t going cheap but they’re great songs. Jones says I’ve got too many CDs but that’s because they’re spilling off the shelf behind my desk. They work hard for a living.

The last of my night shifts for 97 ended on Friday morning. We were just winding down when news broke of the fire at Heathrow. It was a story that leapt in 15 minutes from “a small fire in the roof of Terminal One” to diversions, gridlock & chaos. Members of the incoming news team were trapped on the paralysed freeways & hadn’t appeared when we finally got away an hour late. I had a last glimpse of a hassled airport spokesman saying no planes would be going anyway for hours, if only because the aircrews, like most of the passengers, were hopelessly stuck in the frozen traffic. It could have been two weeks later with Jones & me on our way to Germany & we breathed grateful sighs before I hit the bed. The only people who rubbed their hands appreciatively were Eurostar who suddenly found themselves overwhelmed with requests for the last available ticket through the Chunnel.

Friday p.m. Jones came with me to St Thomas’s hospital across the river from Parliament for my biannual visit to the dermatologist who zaps the little nasties that are the price of growing up in the South African sunshine with a sensitive skin. It was one of those rare perfect winter days with tourists snapping one another on Westminster Bridge against the stunning skyline. The palace of Westminster is impossibly lacy & delicate, a glorious creation. We walked halfway there & all the way back, stopping in St James Park for a cup of coffee, in Belgravia to bank a cheque, & in Hyde Park to admire the full moon. We passed some of the elegantly discreet hotels & plush hairdressers where no one would stoop to display prices. It was all you could do to find the name of the establishment. But judging by the line-up of Jags & Mercedes, this was not a problem for the people who patronised them. I promptly fell asleep in the TV chair on my return; out like a light for an hour. We joined Stef & Herman for supper. He’s a gifted cook & prepared a pasta & fish supper that would have graced a five star restaurant.

Saturday also dawned cold & bright. We took a two-hour tramp around Hyde Park - lots of kids running around, rollerbladers flashing down the avenues, dogs chasing squirrels, swans gliding past in flotilla, Canada geese grazing the lawns, pigeons flocking around picnic tables. It’s like a Lowry painting come alive. On the way home I dropped into Oddbins for some wine while Jones peered into the next door boutique which was proclaiming reductions of up to 50%. She’s been looking through the window for weeks at the attractive range of cotton clothing inside. Jones is a great peerer but a reluctant buyer. Unlike me, rather than pounce on what she likes, she’d rather go back five times, even if it means finding the item she’d set her heart on, gone. So I gave her every encouragement to get a pair a trousers that she liked & that looked good on her. So did the matching top that the owner was only too pleased to provide. The woman spoke in the strangest accent. We guessed at Eastern Europe but she turned out to come from Oporto; we were as surprised at her confessed origins as she was at our smattering of Portuguese.

Earlier in the week I spent an afternoon with two colleagues who have just acquired a PC. They were as mystified as I so clearly remember being myself not very long ago. So it was a very useful afternoon, for them at least. For my part, I’ve finally received a software patch from the manufacturers of the Oxford Compendium & am delighted to be able to use the updated version that I bought six months ago.

For months, I’ve been exchanging emails with them about the problem. They tried emailing the patch but it appeared as pages & pages of computer code. I had absolutely no idea what to do with it & said so. Finally they sent a floppy disk that did the trick. The programme hovers in the background & leaps to whatever word you type in. Jones & I had been wondering about the differences between a few similar words (tolerance & toleration, admission & admittance, candidacy & candidature.) In an instant, the distinctions are revealed. The programme contains a dictionary, a thesaurus & two books of quotations & is a constant handy reference. I haven’t yet been able to tempt Jones near the computer but she says she wants a CD ROM version of a Portuguese language course. That may be the carrot to help her overcome her aversion.

Monday Evening:

It’s cold. There’s a wicked blowing all the way from Siberia. So we are very grateful to be living in a cosy flat. We arrived back from Brighton mid-afternoon after celebrating an early Christmas dinner with Gary & Fregs. Jones had gone to enormous trouble to prepare it, spending much of Saturday p.m. in the kitchen & rising again early on Sunday to continue her labours while I slept late. The back seat of the car was covered with baskets & pots, which we unloaded in Freg’s 2nd floor flat, just off the sea front before parking the car in the adjacent underground park.

Fregs & Gary took us around to the local, a pub run by two gays & patronised by a great many more, as well a fair sprinkling of “straight” customers. The place was packed. I reckon those guys have themselves a gold mine. They certainly earned their money, doing the rounds, making sure customers were happy while a couple of waitresses tried to keep up with supplies. Having stocked up, we took ourselves on a long walk down the promenade. It was the loveliest afternoon, warm enough in the thin sunshine to entice dozens of couples on to the shingles. The west pier, just below Fregs’s flat, is derelict, awaiting restoration. The east pier is filled with amusement arcades and we took ourselves several hundred metres out to the end where a roller coaster was busy hurling passengers around its spidery coils. Jones speculated that I needed my German nieces to entice me on into the funfair but I quite content to watch.

Fregs had booked us in at a sea-front hotel right beside his apartment. It was very low season, which suited us fine. Apart from two cats & a cigarette smoking assistant who didn’t know how to operate the credit card machine, there was little sign of life. We were given a big room with a view over the sea. I tried to read the Sunday paper but promptly fell asleep. Jones woke me for a bath, with the water just hot enough to be comforting. Then we strolled around to the bar at the Grand Hotel, a block away, scene of the IRA bombing in the early 80’s that nearly did for Maggie Thatcher. The place has been restored within an inch of its previous appearance. It remains “the” hotel to visit in Brighton. We sipped our drinks slowly because a round cost a whisker under £20 & we reckoned one round would have to do.

Thence back to the flat for the Jones culinary experience, smoked salmon & shrimp starters, magic duck for the main course, a salad interlude & an ice-cream wind up. The cheese platter remained untouched. We took ourselves on a 30-minute circuit along the deserted beachfront afterwards. We needed it. It was our third “grand dinner” in three nights. On Saturday Penny & Richard had done us proud. We’ve got in the usual walks in-between times, around Brighton’s “Lanes” (ye olde shopping arcades); to the bank, the fruit shop, the nursery – Christmas trees being sold on every second corner. The season bears down on us. So does a huge blizzard that threatens to embrace much of western Europe over the next couple of days. Enough from me. Tomorrow I work.

Blessings
T