Paper Planets

I’ve no time for reality,

There are other places I’d rather be.

Lost in the intricacies of complex plots-

Hiding the world behind slivers of tree,

Submerged in the silver screen

Or eating from the smaller crueler box

Or my own creations; day dreams, stories,

Pretend friends.

When I look out of the window

It is grey and raining

When I close my eyes

I am walking along the water’s edge

Of a tropical tripical paradise

Come back! Come back!

What to?

Back to back to back meetings

And emails

Telling me what to do

Fluorescent strobes of supermarket,

Responsibility.

No, let me travel in my mind

Let me, let me

Set me

Free.

Getting Perspective

They’re ripping the lampposts out of my parents’ road. They did this on our street and now our old warm orange rays have been replaced with cold efficient light that illuminates our bedroom to such an extent it may as well be daytime. Don’t get me started on insomnia and sleeping with weird eye-masks.  Is it wrong to rage against the light, to lament the utilitarian design or the councils that don’t comprehend that something softer, something more sulphury may be more night-timey? My main upset is saying goodbye to the old lampposts; the swirls and twirls of ironwork, the gothic mouldings and palimpsests of a thousand paint jobs. They tell a story, they are art. They are in ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.’

Mister’s old band had a song, ‘I live in a Lamppost’ and I bet they meant a pretty one, not one that really belongs on a motorway. I always pictured the one outside my parents’ house when singing the line from that carol ‘And in the dark street shineth the everlasting light…’

I moaned all of this to my Mum as we walked past the re-lamping of my childhood street. She shrugged and said it may have upset her once but now my Dad is ill she couldn’t care less about lampposts. There are more important things. 

 

Poorly PC

My PC is sick of me. I’m not good at looking after things, unless they demand my attention (Take me for a walk! Please can I have a cup of tea?) so my poor little passive laptop has just been used relentlessly, not nurtured, not defragged, shit, not even regularly backed up, and now it’s got sick. I knew it was getting old, five must be 103 in PC years, and I should have been a bit more caring. But the only symptoms were that it took a long time to turn on (familiarity caused me to not to take this too personally) and the “U” was temperamental (I assume there is a crumb or dead spider underneath it).

Now I’ve had to do emergency surgery on it. Safe Mode, Administrator, Copying Files. Eating my precious weekend away. I’m currently copying a folder that will take ‘about 4 hours and 17 minutes’ to move and this is one of twenty. I only wanted to do my blog and then stick Radio i-Player on while I tidied my room. I hope I can resuscitate it; the idea of being forced onto Windows 8 is  a very horrible one. The insanely irritating thing is I’ve just read IT’S MY FAULT. Apparently corruption was caused by me closing the thing while its antivirus was running. Ironic, eh?

Oh Darcy, oh Darcy, oh dear!

Oh no, Darcy is not sexy! Rereading Pride and Prejudice is upsetting me greatly. I first read this book during the BBC series when I (and every other hot-blooded heterosexual woman) fell in love with Austin’s haughty hero, played by Colin Firth. Colin Firth is not actually sexy, (Think about it, have you ever fancied him in any other role?) but he is an amazing actor, and oh boy, he could smoulder. I sprinted through Austin’s words and fell in love even more. I can’t attribute it to the age I was because I recall an elderly aunt talking about manufacturing a Darcy doll which would have a button to make him wet (If you don’t remember that scene you haven’t seen that adaptation.) I imagined a Barbie-sized doll, but on recent reflection maybe my octogenarian relative was after a sex doll, and who could bloody blame her? But now I read and he no longer appeals. He is awkward, shy, tentative, boyish. Maybe Colin Firth was the person that brought the sauce to this character, and oh yes he could smoulder.

I still enjoyed my reread, I do so love to reread. Some cruel lecturer some 20 years ago (with a wonderful Rochesterian scar) maliciously tried to sabotage Austen for his students by forcing Mansfield Park upon us. I remember being quite trepidatious about Pride and Prejudice but Elizabeth Bennett was quite the antidote to Fanny Price. And I still like her, even if I am no longer wooed by Darcy. And books affect us in different disparate ways. Sometimes call my dog 'Mr Bennett!' in the park, a permanent memory of both book and series. 

So to my next prescribed read, Longbourn. I hope it bodes better than its first page. I hope it does more than swim in the wake of the Sargasso sea.