10 January 2005

STATE OF PLAY AT THE END OF THE DAY   On balance, not too good…   10.21 pm. Reuben has got out of bed & is sitting on my lap watching the little black glyphs making their way across the screen.  He flaked out at 4.30 so this revival was inevitable.  Moment by moment, daytime energy is flowing back into his infinitely rechargeable power pack. This may be a long & unsatisfactory night… Tomorrow we start back at school.  My final Spring Term.  One to go after this.  Still this curious state of absolute equilibrium between the appalling prospect of the termination of a 38-year career in a position of executive responsibility & the exhilarating prospect of a third age of almost entirely self-generated activity accountable to no one but myself… 10.43. Reuben still in position.  A number of champion yawns, but the application of a will of iron.  Against the window a pebbledash of rain, driven by a wind that has already had power lines down in the North. Localised flooding is forecast again. Flash floods in the summer, flash floods in the winter.  Ah well, ‘twas ever thus. Except ‘twasn’t.  Our weather patterns are in disarray as the mighty engine begins to falter across the globe… 11.25. 35 minutes lying with Reuben in the dark. Eventually his steady breathing; my cautious raising up on an elbow; Reuben’s clear falsetto, ‘Mum & Rosie’, followed by the scramble down the corridor to wake them up.  The last time this enervating pattern was followed we got back to bed at 3.00 am… (Again the one-fingered typing. Reuben back on lap). I’ve just come to the end of the course of antibiotics & the bottom of the bottle of cough mixture scheduled to bring this now 16 day cold & cough to an end. Still I’m streaming away & struggling constantly not to yield to the glissandi from the Aeolian harp that sings ethereally every time I breathe in… 11.42. Just the sound of the computer fan within & the blundering of the wind without.  Reuben & I with a dwindling set of options before us & the world shrinking to the pool of light around this desk. That same sense of huge isolation in a stopped world that you get with insomnia… 12.12. Onwards into the night, Reubs & I, lost in our search for the Land of Nod…   12:13:26 AM    Mmm? []

© Copyright 2005 Dick Jones. Last update: 01/02/2005; 22:41:29.