22.21 Sunday Night.
I am ashamed to say that the weekend is now ‘Strictly Come Howsyourfather’ then more rubbish with ‘X Factor’.
The weather was so lovely this weekend,but still the old git and meself had to go shopping in TWells to buy a new dehumidifier, however lovely the weather is the cellar smelt like a shitake farm.
We bought the last De Longhi humidifier from ‘Comet’ on the industrial estate.
After a coffee and egg mayo sandwich in the sun, opposite the new butchers on The High Street, we drove home. Jim fixed up the new machine and I set about organising everything around it. I had watched a film about a stairway in Sweden that has been made into a piano. More than 66% of people are dancing up the piano rather than use the escalator, old, young, fat, thin, single or paired it seems we all like running up and down the scale. The Swedes are changing peoples habits with fun.
I spent all day looking through my moth eaten, damp smelling music for the Scarlatti piece that was used on the films soundtrack. When I found it the slow cooked lamb, that had been cooking since the day before was ready to fall off the shank and be eaten.
The ‘oosbind and I tucked in as I relaxed in the knowledge that all my music is now carefully stacked on shelves and the piano all shiny from my polishing efforts. I had to find a little nozzle to put on the broken top of the spray can. The spray went all over my fingers and some on the piano. But now the room smells less of porcini and more of polish. The fingerboard is so shiny I can see my reflection when I play the delicious piece by Mr. S.
Indeed when I was 7 it was the reflections in the fingerboard of the grand pianos at the Proms that made me want to play the piano in the first place. Like a magpie I was attracted to the shiny pictures in the polished wood.
Anyway after doing the ironing and spraying the cellar with a spray to take away the fungal smell, I vacuumed the bathroom and bedroom then got dressed whilst the actor vacuumed down the stairs.
We tickled the cat, looked at the garden that is about to be taken in hand by Anna a horticultural student, then loaded the car for London.
Each weekend is the same an intense relaxation then its back to the Smoke. If Jim isn’t working I stay Sunday night in my big, bad bed. But Jim is workshopping at the ‘Young VIc’ so for the next few weeks we come back Sunday night. The weekends aren’t long enough I love the smell of autumn in my garden, all faded roses and crumbly earth, wet leaves and full blown apples hanging on the trees, mind you if I turn off the new dehumidifier I can have the smell of damp humous all year round.
The boot was filled with half a loaf of bread, two trees of broccoli, a carton of soup and the last of the lamb-shank-slow-cooked-supper.
We arrived at the flat in time for me to shout at the roomie, unpack the food, put on the washing, watch the X Factor and tolerate ‘Emma’ which is tedious to the point of boring despite Michael Gambon and shiny skinned actresses, hang out the washing in the hot utility room – a sign of winter when the boiler goes on – and settle down to Ms Audrey Neffeneggers ‘Fearful Symmetry’ book.
Last week Jim and I went to the book launch in Highgate Cemetery. We met a publisher whose family had owned the publishing house in Abermarle Street since 17 something or other. Byron burnt his poems in their fireplace, Dr. Livingstone was entertained their, I presume, Sir Walter Scott and Darwin were published by his relatives. Jim and I looked up to him, literally not metaphorically he was at least 6 inches taller than both of us. We listened with awe as he regaled us with tales of the great-ful dead as we supped our wine and tucked into the canapes whilst the dead people lay around us cold in their damp, loamy beds.
In the end it doesn’t matter who, or what you know, we all go out with nothing leaving everything behind.
The roomie is staying out tonight then she’s moving on to Greenwich, I will have a spare room once again. Now my friends can come to stay again and I can eat my breakfast in the buff.
Ah! The joys of maturity.