Today is May first,
And from all on the planet
Comes the cry "M'Aidez!"
-- Haiku for May 1, 2020
Friday, 1 May 2020
Things going along quietly as usual (with the exception of the day I caught my foot in the extension cord and nearly yanked the power point off the wall). The weather was halfway decent, so I took a tray out into the garden.
While I was eating, I was reading on my Kindle, having decided to dip into REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST during the month of isolation. I was only part of the way through the first chapter when I felt a presence. I looked down and the goose was standing next to my right foot. He stared at me until I gave him a bit of bread from my sandwich.
Afterwards, the wind was a little cool. Before I went out for an afternoon walk, I put on my wool scarf which has been hanging on the hatrack since last winter. I suspect Proust would have made at least one chapter out of today.
Sunday, 3 May 2020
Went out briefly to get groceries, particularly cat food. When I came home, I spent five minutes sneezing. Since I don't know a virus with a 15-minute incubation period, I'd say it was the cold night air rather than the pandemic that was to blame.
While I was out, picked up the latest NEW SCIENTIST. The cover story this week is "How to protect your mental health in the time of Coronavirus." Thought maybe I should read that.
Monday, 4 May 2020
The weather, with its usual unpredictability, swung round so that we had a nice sunny afternoon -- quite a contrast to the windy and gloomy weekend. I quite enjoyed my 20-minute walk after lunch, strolling along musing on the chapter of Proust I had been reading while I ate in the garden.
As usual I sauntered across the old railway bridge, my thoughts turning back to the year we had a mouse plague at my house. Julie had purchased a humane mouse trap, and nearly every morning there would be one or two mice alive in it. So each day I w0uld walk down to the railway line and release them there, bidding them to hop a freight out of town. (How many mice did I exile in this fashion? Don't know, I stopped counting at 60.)
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Tuesday, 5 May 2020
A fine and settled day. I lazed away some of the morning in bed till I had to stir myself to accept a delivery of essential supplies. A late lunch in the sun, while the cat wandered around my feet. Then out for my afternoon walk, zig-zagging around the district so as not to endlessly walk the same streets as previous days.
At sunset, spent a while with Marcel Proust, whose words have a pleasant effect on the mind, filling it with a nostalgic longing for impossible journeys through the realms of time. (His words, not mine!)
In the evening, watched THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY: A COPPER'S TALE, a riveting 2013 docu-drama about the police squad that tracked down the train robbers. Very good on the atmosphere of 1963 England.
When from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls, ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. (SWANN'S WAY, chapter 1)
FLIGHTPLAN (2005) -- Mike's movie moment
Good looking thriller set on a transatlantic jet starring Jodie Foster. The plot keeps the audience guessing to the end. The film-makers, consciously or unconsciously, use as their template Alfred Hitchcock's pre-war film of THE LADY VANISHES.
Saturday I had to go out to fill a prescription and noticed there seemed to be a lot more traffic on the road. Guys, the announcement yesterday said that they would be easing restrictions soon, not that they'd already done it !
Call from the office of my endocrinologist. My appointment this month will be on the phone rather than in person. I had been half-expecting that.
A friend has been trying to recover some stuff that she wrote years ago and is stored on a floppy disc. We tried everything I could think of, but this morning we discovered why we couldn't read the data -- the files were created on a Mac. Reading it on a Mac was simple. The one thing we never thought of.
The BOLD television channel has done it again - this time they skipped the whole of the fifth season of NCIS NEW ORLEANS. Not one of my favorites. but it's not really a great way to treat your audience.
Tuesday, 12 May 2020
Tuesday I thought I'd slip out and get my quarterly blood test done. It should only take about twenty minutes, I thought. And I would have been right, except for the fact the place where I usually go was closed for the duration of the pandemic. A sign on their door referred me to an alternative site at Calvary Hospital, and I spent a good 45 minutes going around the hospital searching for the right office before I found it.
Once I got home again, I kept busy sorting out some old boxes from the laundry. Mostly junk and clutter, unless you were agog at 10-year-old news magazines, but I did find a couple of gems. One was an old greeting card addressed to me and still containing some birthday money - ca$h ! The other was an old sepia photo of Julie's house from way back; I knew the photo, but I hadn't realized it was in that box of bric-a-brac.
When I showed the photo to a friend she took a picture of it with her phone. Then she zoomed in on it to see the details better and discovered there were two women on the side verandah that I had never seen before. Isn't modern technology wonderful?
THE MAN AT THE CARLTON TOWER (1961) Mike's movie moment
A brisk little B-movie based on an Edgar Wallace novel, starring Lee Montague and Maxine Audley. An ex-policeman sets out to track down one of the cleverest crooks in London. One of the supporting characters is played by Nyree Dawn Porter, who would become a global star just a few years later in THE FORSYTE SAGA.
Wednesday, 13 May 2020
After clearing out the laundry yesterday, a stumbling block to doing that big load of washing I had planned for today. What did I do with all my clothes pegs? A quick trip to the supermarket before I could hang out my stuff to dry.
Read another chapter of Proust. I hadn't had a chance to read any the rest of this week -- I need to be in the right mood to tackle those long sentences.
Later, did my homework for this evening's on-line Bible study. I'm sort of used to this now but it did seem strange at first. Before I go to bed I need to complete the menu for the next three weeks of home-delivered meals. I know, First World problem.
Friday, 15 May 2020
I had to stay home Friday waiting for a delivery -- not exactly a novel thing nowadays. It was a nice sunny day so after I ate lunch in the garden I went for a short walk down the street. When I got to the corner, it was so pleasant that instead of turning for home straightaway I just leaned up against a wall and basked in the sun for a while like a lizard on a rock.
At home I was happily settled down soaking in the ambient music from last week's Hearts Of Space podcast, until Keith rang -- he wanted to let me know he had the copy of the Miss Fisher movie (CRYPT OF TEARS) that I wanted. He also said that he'd found the Blu-Ray player he bought a couple of months ago -- it was behind a pile of books (no surprise there).
I'm now 20% of the way through SWANN'S WAY, the first of the Proust series. I have learned to love those long, long sentences and the way he devotes thousands of wordsike to describing his weekly visit to church and its architecture as seen from various angles.
