Skid Marks on The Duvet

 

Five days to go

And I’ve morphed into a cross between Bridget Jones and a sweaty wombat 

A wombat with a five day old T shirt on.

It’s not a pretty sight.

I FaceTimed a friend yesterday who asked me when I had eaten avocados

That was 2 days previously.

If I put the t shirt in hot water, I’d make soup! 

It’s time to get a grip

I need a bath, a shave and a change of clothes 

I did wash the pots this morning, only because I had run out of spoons

But the only person I’ve seen today is the postman 

He’s the cheerful one that either calls  me “ Bud “ or “ John” depending on his mood

Today he asked me if I was ill

“Track and Trace “ I told him in way of explanation

He looked at my odd socks, grey tracksuit bottoms ( the ones with the paint stains) and nodded Sympathetically 

“I ve seen a few of you the last few weeks” he said

“ Some people never get out of their pyjamas “

I’m didn’t tell him I don’t own pyjamas

I had a pot noodle for breakfast, I found it at the back of the cupboard next to my emergency flour reserves.

The jigsaw still lies half finished on the kitchen table and I’ve only just finished the Julie Walters autobiography 

My friend David told me that I had let myself go yesterday when we talked on zoom.

You look like Joan Crawford in Baby Jane” he confided and when I admitted at not brushing my teeth for two days concluded that I was a very poor example of a homosexual male and that I should be ashamed of myself 

I flipped him the finger and had another coconut macaroon, the last of the ones Hattie Delivered the other day...

I decided to get a “ruddy grip Ruby” and thought to myself what Thora Hird would have done at this moment of personal crisis 

Yes, she would have had a strip wash at the sink, spat and cleaned her glasses and put on a fresh pair of pants, there was no space for slatterns in Thora’s world.

So....I ve ran a bath and filled it with some Imperial leather Polynesian Moonlight bubble bath 

The T shirt has been discarded into a very large pile of To do washing 

And Dorothy’s skid mark has been buffed from the corner of the duvet

Well I hope it was Dorothy’s 

from Going Gently https://ift.tt/3ehywSb

Skid Marks on The Duvet

 

Five days to go

And I’ve morphed into a cross between Bridget Jones and a sloth 

A sloth with a five day old T shirt on.

It’s not a pretty sight.

I FaceTimed a friend yesterday who asked me when I had eaten avocados

That was 2 days previously.

If I put the t shirt in hot water, I’d make soup! 

It’s time to get a grip

I need a bath, a shave and a change of clothes 

I did wash the pots this morning, only because I had run out of spoons

But the only person I’ve seen today is the postman 

He’s the cheerful one that either calls  me “ Bud “ or “ John” depending on his mood

Today he asked me if I was ill

“Track and Trace “ I told him in way of explanation

He looked at my odd socks, grey tracksuit bottoms ( the ones with the paint stains) and nodded Sympathetically 

“I ve seen a few of you the last few weeks” he said

“ Some people never get out of their pyjamas “

I’m didn’t tell him I don’t own pyjamas

I had a pot noodle for breakfast, I found it at the back of the cupboard next to my emergency flour reserves.

The jigsaw still lies half finished on the kitchen table and I’ve only just finished the Julie Walters autobiography 

My friend David told me that I had let myself go yesterday when we talked on zoom.

You look like Joan Crawford in Baby Jane” he confided and when I admitted at not brushing my teeth for two days concluded that I was a very poor example of a homosexual male and that I should be ashamed of myself 

I flipped him the finger and had another coconut macaroon, the last of the ones Hattie Delivered the other day...

I decided to get a ruddy grip Ruby and thought to myself what Thora Hird would have done at this moment of personal crisis 

Yes, she would have had a strip wash at the sink, spat and cleaned her glasses and put on a fresh pair of pants, there were no space for slatterns in Thora’s world.

So....I ve ran a bath and filled it with some Imperial leather Polynesian Moonlight bubble bath 

The T shirt has been discarded into a very large pile of To do washing 

And Dorothy’s skid mark has been buffed from the corner of the duvet

Well I hope it was Dorothy’s 

from Going Gently https://ift.tt/3ehywSb

Testaments

Thirty four years. That was the time gap between the publication of  Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale" and its sequel "The Testaments". Between the contents of the two novels there is another time gap. Fifteen years.

And as we are thinking about time gaps - the space between me finishing "The Handmaid's Tale" and starting to read "The Testaments" was just one week.

"The Testaments", like the earlier novel, is set in the strange patriarchal nation state of Gilead. Women serve different functions. Some are Aunts, some are Marthas, some are Wives and selected younger women are Handmaids - designated for procreation. Gilead draws its structural guidance from "The Bible" but  interpretations are puritanical and lacking in basic  humanity. 

It is never clear how big Gilead is nor how many people live there. It is located somewhere in New England and relations with nearby Canada are strained. It is extremely difficult to get in and out of Gilead though missionaries called Pearl Girls are sometimes seen on the streets of Toronto seeking new recruits.

The novel unfolds through broken testimonies that are delivered by three residents of Gilead. I found this device awkward at times because it was not always clear who was speaking - Aunt Lydia, Agnes (aka Aunt Victoria) or Nicole (aka Daisy, aka Jade). In my opinion, that could have been helpfully spelt out in the chapter headings.

What we are looking at in this novel is the beginning of the end of Gilead. Its moral certainties are eroding. Like "The Handmaid's Tale", the end section concerns an academic symposium held long after Gilead has been buried in history. Once again I found this bolted on post script odd and somewhat unnecessary. It was a distraction from  the main body of the text.

I enjoyed "The Testaments" and wanted to turn each of its four hundred pages. I finished it while sitting in Silver Clint up at Redmires Reservoirs yesterday afternoon.  There were quite a lot of other people up there - because of the schools half term and  COVID Tier 3  travel restrictions.

In an afterword, Margaret Atwood referred to some of the places in which she had been to write the novel - including  a trans-Canadian train brought to a halt by a  landslide. It's funny to think of where writers write and where readers read. We are rarely stuck in the same location throughout.

Finally, here's a choice quote from Aunt Lydia in  "The Testaments" to give you a flavour of the writing:

My larger fear: that all my efforts will prove futile, and Gilead will last for a thousand years. Most of the time, that is what it feels like here, far away from the war, in the still heart of the tornado. So peaceful, the streets; so tranquil, so orderly; yet underneath the deceptively placid surfaces, a tremor, like that near a high-voltage power line. We’re stretched thin, all of us; we vibrate; we quiver, we’re always on the alert. Reign in terror, they used to stay, but terror does not exactly reign. Instead it paralyzes. Hence the unnatural quiet.

from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/2JnHkL4

Treat

 Cuddles 

With the pup

A blanket

Mozart

And my favorite sweet treat

from R's rue https://ift.tt/3oD1UqO