Friday 10 October 2008

wonderfully far and high

...a star shone over Bristol, wonderfully far and high...


I had a very Useful day yesterday; the tandem that we do the school run on had shed its chain the day before, so I had to do a bit of repair and adjustment. Then I painted the woodwork on the Trav with linseed oil, to keep the weather out. And repaired a drainpipe on the porch, which had been left unrepaired by the useless clots who had come in to repair the damage wrought by the rainwater that had escaped from the broken drainpipe... and when I came out of Wild Goats with the flour for the breadmaking, there was a woman whose bicycle chain had fallen off the sprocket and jammed. So I fixed it. She was happy, and bought me a couple of samosas from Wild Goats as a thank you. And most annoyingly, I'd forgotten her name by the time I got home, because I am useless at remembering names unless I go out of my way to create a mnemonic. And I really want to be able to remember names, because I think it's rude not to.

But I really should be getting on with Big Projects.

Richard has disappeared into the desert. He is wandering around somewhere in Israel, for purposes which will doubtless become apparent in due course. I think that there may be Anglicans involved. It all makes me think of Sir Walter Scott's The Talisman, which has got a Crusader stumbling upon a secret Christian sect in chapels and tunnels carved out of the rock under the deserts of the Holy Land, and is totally barking. Like, several days into barking country, if you see what I mean. I'm sure that Richard's experience will differ radically from that of Sir Walter Scott. Well, I hope so.



3 comments:

  1. You reminded me that I must clear out the gutters back and front. I don't like problems with bikes or cars. My dad used to get so cross if something broke.

    It would be interesting if he did stumble upon a secret Christian sect...

    Did you hear the programme on the Codex bible on radio 4 on Monday?

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  2. My father would get like that too. And he used to leave the tool boxes out in the weather so they all got rusty. I hate rust on tools.

    No, I missed that. I'll see if it's available on play-it-again. Funny how easy it is to access the BBC now. I used to tweak the radio dial optimistically in far-flung places and feel massively cheered when I heard "Lilli Bullero" crackling across the ether.

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  3. So thats how Lilli Bullero is spelt.

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