Cryptic

Hello Sweethearts, you miserable lot forsaking me. How am I supposed to keep going without fuel? Never mind: A weed is a plant in the wrong place and, if lucky, either a cat will nip you or you’ll die unnoticed.

This minute I have surprised myself. I do this periodically by clearing up my desk. My god, here is Ms Perfection personified, or so I was told a long time ago, and I find a handwritten note of a telephone number. Unfortunately there is no name with it. That’s the optimist in me. I will write down anything – on hundreds of little bits of paper – deluding myself that I will know one week on what they mean. I truly love myself on that note alone.

I also have so many notebooks I can’t find anything I noted. But when I do I am surprised. For the amateur psychologists among you this can only mean one thing: Before my first sibling was born, and in between being entertained by my enchanting grandparents, my mother and my uncles and their then respective fiancees, I entertained myself. Old habits die hard.

I love my handwriting. I love it I love it I love it. When I see my handwritten notes (Staedtler Noris HB2 with a rubber tip in case I want to erase something) I am reminded that I exist.

Yes, you can tell can’t you: I have just tidied my desk. Which amounts to tidying AWAY myself. Whenever my desk is tidy I feel I am my father’s daughter. He is anal about his desk. It’s quite awful really. He used to call, probably still does, his waste paper basket (huge) “File No 13”. Naturally, it was always full. To be emptied promptly. I don’t know how my mother lives with him.

Yes, so everything is in order. Post it notes stacked, pencils sharpened, staplers refilled. All I need now is some action.

U

Doolally

Brief update:

Despite your assurances and my total and utter character defect of not knowing when to give up I can now confirm that red Bambi has gone to the big wide heaven where all staplers meet their forestaplers. On the upside I have found pages 489 to 490 of my Paperback Oxford English which will now allow me to look up and use words like monocolyledon, mop, mood and mother country. Mountain ash being a rowan tree.

Magpie being a continuing source of disappointment to me denies all promises he made to translate wisdom of Graf Herr von und zu Klutter, Monsigneur de Clutteur – the most noble of many a ghost in the loft. As I neither have a loft nor a cellar (not even a broom cupboard) I have now turned into my father’s daughter and am so organised, sorted and recylced I have just started tackling the last bastion of anyone staring their last will and testament in the face: Old letters and photographs. Oh dear. Phoned my mother this afternoon, inquiring whether it really was necessary to send THREE congratulatory cards on occasion of arrival of her grandson no.  3 (Apple of my Eye). Her being in grip of acute tooth ache I was not able to extract coherent answer. Did you know (how would you) that my maternal grandmother was one of the first female dentists in this country? Oddly, and my four year old self was baffled by this, when that ghastly drill went the way of her own mouth she immediately needed to go to the loo. It was my first introduction into the – to me – fascinating subject of how soma (body) and psyche connect and use each other to express mal content.

U