So… dreaming weekend was the usual mix of jaw-dropping awesomeness and frustration that I don’t make things clearer, so that walking the path through one’s own stuff becomes inescapably obvious. Except mine, of course, which I can comfortably ignore… Or not. Still, we had enough rain to be terrifying, and enough not-rain to be heart-warming and I am always in awe of the work people do and in hope of the possibilities.
On the way home, we saw one of those incidents that reminds me why Scott’s First Law of Veterinary Medicine still holds true (99% of the population should be forcibly prevented from owning anything with eyelashes - and I’m quite happy to be the one who decides on the remaining 1%). Travelled home with a Friend who’se one of those amazing people who can engage with the dreaming fully and yet also let it go and be a friend when the circle is closed. We stopped at a small country store to get some water and watched a family of mother and 3 kids walk in from nearby village. Smallest kid had a particularly nice looking border collie pup on a bit of string - about 16 weeks old, still gangly, short coated, pricked ears, black and white: gorgeous. Kid stands outside store. Pup has no lead training - zero - and so is pulling to see things. Or simply to escape from monster kid. Kid yanks string. Pup pulls harder - now definitely to escape monster kid. Kid yanks twice, then starts biffing it round the ears. This is the point where, if I had any backbone at all, I’d get out of the car, relieve kid of the dog, put dog in car and come home to find it a good home. Instead, I watch with my blood pressure soaring and we drive away with me wishing that the world was rid of people like that, and realising that just wanting it doesn’t make it happen, and that there’s this thing about being the change you want to be, and that wanting to take a machine gun to monster-kid and its entire family isn’t quite where it’s at. I blame my reading of ‘Junior Officers’ Reading Club’ which is the most compelling call to war I’ve read in quite a while, but actually, I’m just not on the side of the monster kid, however much the Monster Mother quite clearly treated it exactly as it was treating the pup. I just shudder to think of the life that pup is going to have for the next 10-12-16 years until it manages to escape.
Back home to an evening’s peace and gosh, isn’t it nice to come home, but now we have the eco-builders coming for an unspecified length of string - sorry, time - to insulate blog-cottage as well as is possible for a 14th century wind tunnel, short of taking the roof off an laying a blanket over the structure and putting the roof back on again. We did get a quote for that but it was so laughably far over anything we could have afforded that we’ve had to go for the most basic of solutions.
Which is why my office is now empty (there are things I’ll never find again now that they’re in a heap on the spare bed with a blanket over) and I’m about to dismantle the computer and put it away in a cupboard.
And then we’re off to Wales. Where it’s wet, I gather, but then I’m taking the laptop to work on the script, so that’s OK. Andt at least the office should be done by the time we get back.
So - nothing from here until Saturday. Unless I am so very bored that I manage to find a broadband connection in the depths of wales and the laptop decides to play ball and let me access the blog. Don’t hold your breath…
