Lockdown Diary - Saturday 3rd October 2020

Who turned on the sprinklers? A very wet early morning shopping trip with son #1.  Quieter than I expected, which was good, but there are clear signs that toilet roll madness has taken hold of shoppers.  Plenty there, but the choice of brands has diminished significantly. We live in mystifying times.

We had breakfast on our return, once we'd put all the food away.  I have washing to do but there's no rush - I'll not be hanging it out!  Washing is soul-destroying at the best of times but when you can't get it dry outside, it's even worse. I hate wandering through the drying jungle.

Took a break and read some of the papers whilst enjoying my first coffee of the day. Coffee and a good read. Nice! (To be said in the style of 'Jazz. Nice!') That's a strange thing, thinking about it. If I was listening to music, I'd never reach for coffee, it would have to be a cold drink or alcohol - especially in a live setting, even more so if I was planning to rattle my bones.  I'm not sure I could actually dance stone cold sober, unless I was taking the mickey out of something. My sons always love it when I dance to the some of the music they listen to. Not! Sometimes I just can't resist: their reactions are too good to miss.  I think I've digressed. Slightly. Where was I? Oh yes: to close this off, further thought has made me realise when I write, which I do a lot, not just here, coffee or alcohol work fine, though I'm more likely to go off on one under the influence of alcohol, but coffee will do - my brain does the rest.  It has it's own supply of stimulants 😂🤣😂

I was chatting to the lunchtime carers about something I find mystifying: after coming shopping and having breakfast with me, son #1 went back to bed, to sleep.  He'd actually got up, showered, got dressed, yet still went back to bed.  I was saying that I can't do that: once I'm up, I'm up.  There are only two reasons I'd go back to bed in the daytime: because I'm ill.  The carers were 50:50: one agreed with me, the other said they might go back to bed for sleep during the day. If I'm sleeping, I feel like I'm wasting my life, which sounds a little hollow these days, but anyway, in theory at least.  As one of the carers said, this is a huge turnaround in son #1's life: barely 6 months ago he was often not surfacing 'til 4 p.m. I am proud of the progress he's making.

After the final carer visit of the day I got set up to listen to music. Tonight's choice was a mix of Radiohead, Easy Star All Stars and Royal Bangs.

Listening was interrupted by son #1 letting me know they'd decided we'd have celebratory takeaway tonight and we were going for Turkish food.  Placed the order then set up to watch a film. It was my choice tonight, and I went for 'Magnolia' which is over 3 hours long. We had to start this early to have any chance of finishing it and me finishing it awake, late drugs or not.

Dinner was delivered and was rather large! The Turkish spicy salad, Ezme, was particularly good, though it was all good.  Next time I'd skip the chips! 

Watching 'Magnolia' again I was reminded why I love the film.  It's a sprawling tale and the seemingly disconnected stories play out until gradually the strands of people's lives come together after unravelling in messy ways.  Like life, some of the story strands don't get resolved, they just move out of view.  Great acting by Julianne Moore, Tom Cruise and Philip Seymour Hoffman, to name but a few.

I've been listening to this album off and on since it was released, but Radiohead's 'Weird Fishes' brought me back here again today.  Son #2 noticed I'd been listening to her on Spotify and said, 'I didn't know you liked that sort of thing', which I rather liked: I'm glad I can still surprise him. I do like a lot of soul / R'n'B / urban (WTF???), or whatever label gets applied to it. My music collection includes a decent amount of it. Anyway, back to the song, the 'her' in question is Lianne La Havas, which is also the title of the album.  The song in question is 'Bittersweet'. It grows on me every time I listen to it. 


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