joe bloggs

They buzzed about me ... I must have been four?

The bee tree was full of yellow flowers.

One stung me. On my thumb.

The bees buzzed louder. I watched them.

The bee tree swayed in the summer breeze.

Late. Warm. Golden. Young.

Someone called from inside the house.

I don't know, too long ago.

I sat on a bench with a toothbrush, aged three, chirping radio in the background.







is it time for a nap yet? i think so

There is a fly one foot to my left, walking around the rim of the sugar bowl, which is on the table, because you never know when you will want a cup of tea.

Tne sugar bowl has a lid. So the fly cannot get into the sugar bowl. Which is probably why it is walking around the edge.

It just lifted up and away. And now it has landed on the milk jug. The milk jug has two blue bands around it, a typical English ceramic piece with traditional colourings. A beautiful ceramic piece, rare to find.





is it time for a nap yet? i think so

This happened a year or so ago. I thought my blog was dead. (And the others.)

They weren't.

What is happening is that they take ages to open and then no comments are available.

It's happening again, but I can't remember the solution. Of course, I'm hoping Blogger is going to post this. Here goes:









is it time for a nap yet? i think so

One of the greatest pop songs ever written crept quietly up the pop charts in the spring of 1977 when the world was young and I was not yet 21.

Year of the Cat - Al Stewart.

She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolour in the rain

The break is led out by sad cellos mourning loss and then introducing a sweet crying guitar, dripping notes like tears on a broken heart.

They parry sadly together for a few bars, like lovers parting.

Then a searing slide guitar note splits them like a hot knife through butter and rises to a crescendo of pain and defeat; before a sax takes over, mournful again, sweetly nostalgic, a little the wiser, but sad nevertheless. Sad like only a sax can sound.

The sax dies away like love's last and Stewart takes the song out to the end.

Forget the lyrics - there's a story to break your heart right there in the ninety second instrumental break.

Well, she looks at you so cooly
And her eyes shine like the moon in the sea

*

1977. Some time in spring.

The sun streamed in through the north-facing loungeroom window of my one-bedroom flat and pooled on the green-carpeted floor where I lay; half awake, half asleep, newspaper cast to one side, cushion under my head.

My one year old son was gurgling happily in his cot in the corner. A breeze stole in through the screen door and gently ruffled his golden hair. His mother was taking an afternoon nap in the bedroom.

The radio in the corner was low, as if playing to itself.

A song came on - Year of the Cat, by Al Stewart.

But the drum-beat strains of the night remain
In the rhythm of the new-born day
You know sometime you're bound to leave her
But for now you're going to stay

in the year of the cat



is it time for a nap yet? i think so

Why didn't he just call himself Pope Joe?

It's not as if his first name were Mercury:

'The first pope known to have changed his name was John II in 533. He was previously called Mercury but thought the Christian pontiff should not have the name of a pagan Roman god.'

Quite frankly, I like the sound of Pope Mercury. Or Pope Pluto for that matter. Pope Uranus, probably not.




is it time for a nap yet? i think so

Pack up the vacuum cleaner and the first thing you will see is a conspicuous piece of fluff on the carpet.

When children put away their box of Lego blocks, there is always a sharp piece left on the floor to be trodden on in bare feet.

After you shave and leave the house, there is always one damn hair left near your ear or on your neck and it will bug you like crazy all day.






is it time for a nap yet? i think so

Who decided there had to be a letter 's' in the word 'lisp'?




is it time for a nap yet? i think so

Chandler had an eye for fakery.

This Raymond Chandler website, maybe a genuine fan, I don't know, maybe a pretender academic, lists the following 'famous quotes' from Chandler's works:

"The minutes went by on toptoe, with their fingers to their lips." ---The Lady in the Lake (Chapter 1)

"I'm an occational drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard." --"The King in Yellow"

Toptoe? Occational? Quotes around the first title, but not the second?

Maybe Chandler wouldn't turn in his grave.

Maybe he wouldn't give a shit.














is it time for a nap yet? i think so

The old song from some theatre musical went 'I danced with a man who danced with a girl who danced with the Prince of Wales.'

Now it's 'I linked to a blog which linked to a blog which linked to someone else's blog.'




is it time for a nap yet? i think so

Small talk can be difficult.

It's hard to know whether the barber or the dentist is really interested or is just asking questions for the sake of it. Well, you'd get bored too if all you did all day was snap scissors around people's heads or plunge your hands down their throats.

So I went back to the dentist. A bit of tooth fell off, nothing major, you wouldn't even know to look at it, it just felt a little sharp.

He's a funny guy. Asks questions while both his hands and half the equipment in the dental surgery are down your throat.

'How's life?'

Urgle-urgle.

Then he asked, what have you read lately?

He had his hands out of my mouth for a moment so I replied, well, I've just read everything Raymond Chandler ever wrote, wondering whether I should have just said, oh nothing much, just the papers.

'He only wrote eight,' the dentist immediately replied.

Click!

It was one of those moments. The guy knows what he's talking about.

Then he left me for dead. Damn. I hate that. I'm the customer - I get to be smarter, don't I? It's in the rules, isn't it?

He started telling me how I should read Roth and Bellow and how they had been inducted into the Hall of Fame or whatever it is they have for famous American authors.

Christ, I haven't read any of those guys.

Then I thought I had him. He mis-pronounced Saul Bellow's name as Bellows. HA!

I didn't call him on it. Well, I couldn't, half his dental surgery was back down my throat. Fortunately. I found out next day - in the obituary - that Bellow's real name was Bellows.

My dentist is a genius and knows everything about everything.

He fixed my tooth as well.









is it time for a nap yet? i think so

... or is Jack Johnson driving anyone else crazy?

What the hell is he doing with his guitar?

Slapping it?






is it time for a nap yet? i think so

And failing miserably. So far.

I guess every book is a failure until it is published.

I should console myself with the thought that, even when published, some books are rubbish.

Hmmm. I just thought about that for a little too long and it is not a consolation.
















is it time for a nap yet? i think so