Back to a little on the side this morning.


It's very hard to choose my weekday breakfast venue. Based on recent experiences, I'd be more-or-less equally happy:

• at my office desk,
  


• in the Bogota Café,


• at a little on the side.

but I have a feeling alots won't be working with me for that long so I'm enjoying it while it lasts. I might go to alots 2 or 3 times a week and see how it goes.

Probably they'll have a change in chef, get taken over by more commercially driven management, change to later opening times, or just become unreliable in some way that will make it a less attractive proposition. After all, I was completely happy at Toby's for a while, but then they decided to use ordinary crap raisin toast instead of Fuel bakery fruit and nut toast, and I've never been back.

So I'm psychologically prepared. I feel a bit like heathery_t - just going out and having fun with wild abandon, but fully expecting it to end abruptly and come crashing back to earth. We're both "screwing around" (although I'm hoping I'm somewhat less at risk from STDs in my partnership with alots than she is with her selection from the on-line dating world!).

When the let-down happens to me I'll just revert to the principle: "if you want something to happen, do it yourself..." and I'll go back to making my own toast and coffee and sitting in relative solitude. Hmmm... you never know, heather might end up doing the same thing; and we won't be the only ones in the world either.

I'm sitting here feeling very pessimistic and wondering what the future holds. Tomorrow morning I'll be catching the bus to work because I'm too sore to even walk there. I appear to be degenerating rapidly....I wonder what the future holds?

It's still June (just!) and although we've gone past the shortest day, the Bureau of Meteorology tells me that the worst is yet to come in terms of the temperature when I'm out and about:


However, my garden tells me that there can be hope, despite a worsening outlook. A brave daffodil and a team of snow-drops poke their heads up among the weeds.

I came across this dead body last night, dimly lit from the minimal street lighting.

He/she nearly made it into rat-heaven - a drainpipe. Or was he/she ejected unceremoniously from the pipe? Or was she/he placed in this position by some person or animal unknown?

This isn't a theological statement, it's a simple reflection of my own experience.

Today's experience:
I'm sitting alone in the early morning. There's blue sky I can see out of a little corner of my window. I'm reading a book which is drawing me in to the lives of its characters. I've just finished my Bun Fair Trade, Organic, Shade-Grown Rainforest coffee, and I'm working my way through a slice of toasted Fuel Bakery fruit & nut bread. I'm feeling pretty good.

...then the radio starts playing J.S.Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D-minor. I turn it up loud....now I'm momentarily in heaven.

The music stops. The news comes on - more trouble in Zimbabwe. I hear the boss arrive behind me.
Well, I had a glimpse of heaven anyway.

Yesterday daiskmeliadorn arrived bearing this box:

During my run to work this morning one of the things I heard on the radio was Schubert's Rosamunde Quartet, played by the Belcea Quartet. In introducing the piece, the presenter, Julian Day, read (part of) this quote from one of Schubert's letters, which Day said* corresponded to around the time the Rosamunde Quartet was written:

In a word, I feel myself to be the most unhappy and wretched creature in the world. Imagine a man whose health will never be right again, and who in sheer despair over this ever makes things worse and worse, instead of better; imagine a man, I say, whose most brilliant hopes have come to nothing, to whom the joy of love and friendship have nothing to offer but pain, at best, whose enthusiasm (at least of the stimulating kind) for all things beautiful threatens to vanish, and ask yourself, is he not a miserable, unhappy being?—"My peace is gone, my heart is sore, I shall find it never and nevermore." I may well sing every day now, for each night, I go to bed hoping never to wake again, and each morning only tells me of yesterday's grief.

(quote taken from: this web page)

"...extinction...."

Having contemplated Dylan Thomas' approach to his father's old age, I offer an alternative view. I responded to Thomas' poem because it stirred up feelings and thoughts from the past. Philip Larkin writes more about my present experience.


Philip Larkin - The Old Fools

What do they think has happened, the old fools, To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools, And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose, They could alter things back to when they danced all night, Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September? Or do they fancy there's really been no change, And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight, Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming Watching the light move? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange; Why aren't they screaming? At death you break up: the bits that were you Start speeding away from each other for ever With no one to see. It's only oblivion, true: We had it before, but then it was going to end, And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower Of being here. Next time you can't pretend There'll be anything else. And these are the first signs: Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power Of choosing gone. Their looks show that they're for it: Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines - How can they ignore it? Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms Inside you head, and people in them, acting People you know, yet can't quite name; each looms Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning, Setting down a lamp, smiling from a stair, extracting A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only The rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning, The blown bush at the window, or the sun's Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely Rain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live: Not here and now, but where all happened once. This is why they give An air of baffled absence, trying to be there Yet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leaving Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear Of taken breath, and them crouching below Extinction's alp, the old fools, never perceiving How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet: The peak that stays in view wherever we go For them is rising ground. Can they never tell What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night? Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout The whole hideous inverted childhood? Well, We shall find out.

I like that phrase:

I had thought I'd solved the mystery of what was eating my pears. The local theories (mice) were scuttled by the capture of the image a large fat cockroach dining out on some left over strawberry.


But now, with no signs of pear consumption (except by yours truly), new evidence has deepened the mystery.

(Note: An error in this post was corrected, thanks to Geowench's reply. I originally thought Broadstock had written the poem. Shows how much I know! ...Note to self: Read some Dylan Thomas, educate yourself!!).

This ordinary looking bloke seems to have quite an interesting life story to tell.

Broadstock introduces Dying of the Light:
The media hype, hysteria and bigotry surrounding the AIDS virus has waned but the suffering of those who have contracted the disease continues. The title comes from a poem of Dylan Thomas and is a tribute and reminder that many HIV sufferers are still raging against the dying of their light, still fighting to maintain their health, their dignity and their humanity.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words have forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

When I first heard this, it was as a song, sung with great emotion by Jeannie Lewis. Takes me back to the beginning of my marriage - I think it was on her album Free Fall Through Featherless Flight (1974) which was lent to me by L. .

I'm sick of problems with Runstoppable. The software is fine and has all the features I want to record my running, but the database has been not allowing updates of my data for about 4 days. No one at Runstoppable responds to emails. Ever.

I've temporarily (at least) sought refuge in MapMyRun instead, after also trying WalkJogRun. They all use the same Google mapping facility so it's the extras that make a difference. MapMyRun has a decidedly commercial feel to it, and I suspect my email address will be bombarded with offers from 'partner' organizations. We shall see. Being the complaining type, it won't take much to get me to record my indignation if I feel I'm being exploited (although I have a feeling that my demographic is not a prominent target for sporting type sales, in general).

At the moment I'm going through a phase of trying to increase the length of my longest run so I need to keep careful track of distances, efforts, etc. to obviate the risk of injury. Today's run, 25 km, is the greatest distance I've ever run. I want to push this upper limit to at least 30 km by early August, but I'm very wary of getting an overuse injury.

I do want to use one of these run-recording systems. Apart from helping track runs to facilitate injury-free training, I find it's a good motivator to keep records and to compare my current performance with previous occasions.

I need all the motivation I can get.

The latest edition of news on an intruder eating my pears.

I went home on Friday night leaving an added attraction with a new sacrificial pear to see if my mystery intruder would be interested. A slice of strawberry was rescued from the rubbish bin - left over from the creation of a birthday cake for someone at work. PearCam was set up to take a picture every 5 minutes, with the strawberry slice just visible in the foreground. The movement detection mode was also turned on.
I couldn't wait till Tuesday (Monday is a public holiday - "Queens Birthday"), so I found an excuse to go in to work on Sunday morning. When I got there I found that the pear was completely intact - much to my disappointment - and the strawberry slice was still in situ. However, close inspection of the strawberry slice showed a round crater, 2 or 3 mm deep, near one edge!

I started scanning through the PearCam images. All were just the regular 5-minute-interval pictures; no motion-triggered images in between. I saw nothing much (I was hoping and even expecting, despite evidence to the contrary, to see a small rodent). But then I noticed, in three images, sitting in the same spot, poised above the crater area, a fat cockroach!

As an older (mid-50s), lifetime-English-speaking person, reading an English author, it's embarrassing to have to admit to needing a dictionary sitting next to me while I read.
Anita Brookner has added these words to my vocabulary...although my memory isn't what it used to be, and I have to keep checking on a many of them!

• evanescent
• inanition
• apotheosis
• decoctions
• maunderings
• decorous
• peregrination
• depredations
• refulgence
• deracinated
• fiacre
• simulacrum
• lubricious
• avidity
• nugatory
• recondite
• solecism
• solipsism
• ineluctable
• anodyne
• suzerainty
• mephitic
• artifice
• propitiation
• uxorious
• appurtenances
• complaisant
• incubus
• inveigled
• afflatus
• scansion

Looks like my education was sadly deficient. It was certainly poor in producing a well-adjusted and sociable young man.

I think I would have been better off reading Brookner in High School (well, the 1960s equivalent anyway) instead of all that Shakespeare (Macbeth, Hamlet, A Mid-Summer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet etc.) I think the school curriculum of the time suffered from a bad case of Bardolatry. Actually, I must take some of the blame. I didn't open a book to read for pleasure from age 10 to about age 50! I wonder why? Maybe it was the result of being forced to study literature I didn't like and didn't relate to in High School?

Ugg...I am getting morning headaches which are getting worse, I think. Took Ibuprofen+Codeine this morning.
Run was OK except right hamstring is niggling.

Runstoppable database is not allowing updates for the 2nd day in a row.

PearCam showed no action and the pear was not eaten further.

It's still wet and windy.

Hmmm....not such a good day

With the exception of the overnight failure of PearCam to detect intruder nibbling, it would have to be said that yesterday was up there with the best.

After the great pre-breakfast walk and near-perfect breakfast+reading session, the weather did close in and the rain became heavier and more continuous, as the BoM predicted. However, my afternoon was brightened enormously by having coffee with daiskmeliadorn. We sat in our usual place by the French doors which are normally open onto busy George Street but were closed against the rain.

It's probably not daiskmeliadorn's first choice, but it suits me!  We ate some smuggled-in toasted muesli sourdough bread (which I originally sourced from a dumpster located near home).

We had quite a good talk, although a lot of it was necessarily at the catching up level, rather than a deeper analysis. Her post-honours life is destined to be rather full and it was great to hear her plans and feel her enthusiasm. Ahhh...being young has a lot to commend it.

Damn! PearCam motion detection didn't trigger at all last night, but the cavity in the pear has now approximately doubled in volume :-(
Having now played around with the system, I have come to the conclusion that the motion detection may not be sensitive enough to detect this (presumably small) intruder.

So the score is now...

     old_black: 1
     intruder: 1

I haven't given up.