Start to the Day!

Wednesday 2:00 p.m.
Slept for a full ten hours last night!! That never happens.

I started getting up at six in the morning nearly twenty years ago now to meditate before going to work. At first, I used to do some of Mr Iyengar's sun salutations before sitting, but realised in this climate that's a good way to get into hospital before breakfast. Then I just sat.

When things are going well these days, I usually pause for a while flat on my back and get into the bliss by doing yoga nidra. Then I sit up for a bit before moving out of the bed. This is a good way to start the day!

Today because I wasn't going to the jobbie, blah de blah .... I got up and was going to go for a paper first off. So there's a pile of book tapes the Domestic Bliss asked me to return to Stockbridge library. I didn't want to go out twice today then so I took the tapes and went to the library first. Still baltic out there. And I'm a bit crabbit since ... well, I just am! Dodging the Bulgarian gangster who's selling the Big Issue outside Scotmid, I got down to the library. It's closed. So I'll have to go back later, I think. None to pleased by any of this now. Turning away, I thought the basturns must have a letter box and I turn back to stuff the book tapes into the opening. With the last one in, the flap clamped shut like a mousetrap and got the middle finger of my left hand. We're talking blood here. I'll definitely lose the nail. So I'm dripping blood in the chemist shop and get elastoplast. £2:50 the basturns charged me for a roll of elastoplast!! £2:50. Basturns!

When I finally started meditating at half eleven, it went like a dream really. Nearly two hours straight off. A terrific meditation. I should have done that first of all.

Why didn't you do that first of all then, Hotboy? Stupid basturn lying thoughts, Jack!! It's really hard not to believe anything you're thinking first thing in the day!

For the last half hour I've been trying to get connected to the computery thing in the living room so I can start working on my new blockbuster.

Actually, I don't read blockbusters. The Dom Bliss bought one yesterday. If I was going to write blockbusters, I should try reading one sometime. But is life not too short to start with that sensible malarkey now?

I still have heard nothing from the agent about the last blockbuster. The only person who's got back to me about it is some old guy who likes nothing better than reading computer manuals. The folk who read most popular fiction are women of about thirty, I believe. So I can discount the first reaction. But if you're one of the women I sent this book to and you don't like it, don't tell me about it, please. Just keep mum.

I've been reading Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk. In three months I've got jsut over half way through it. Really good bit of writing. I think the sensei and reverend must have recommended it to me. Pop 1920 by Jim Thompson, also recommended by the sensei and reverend, was superb. Maybe the answer is just to write really well, but that takes a lot more time than I have right now. Even writing crap takes too much time. Anyway, I'm going to read what I've got of the new blockbuster now with a certain amount of despair in my heart. In an hour and a half I'll start meditating again. Hurrah!

Ice Warrior Photies Again!

Tuesday 9:30 p.m.
Waitrose sells bread flour for £1 a kilo, the cheapest anywhere hereabouts. Unfortunately, it aint stoneground 100% wholemeal and the loaves are not nutritious enough for a joe who, when there is no soup, lives on bread alone. I made a loaf with the stuff that comes in at £1:45 and took what was left of the first loaf up the park for the birds.

Feeding the birds up by Inverleith pond was one of the joys of having a toddler. Practically every day, I was up there throwing bits of bread into the air for the wee gulls to swoop on.

I got up today with a mild disease and decided not to go to the jobbie. Hurrah! I stayed in until it was getting dusky around about four and went to the pond and walked round the pond. That's where the photies came from. There were three geese maybe who got most of the bread. Anybody know what a goose with a red bill might be called?

Sometimes today I was a bit antsy with the nicotine withdrawals and clenched my teeth a wee bit. Allah Akbar.

Tapering Off!

Monday 6:44 p.m.
The best time I had over the holidays was two nights ago drinking beer and on the bloggy. Last night was very good since I was seeing some McDucks. I haven't seen the auld maw or anybody else from my extended family since before Christmas.

Facing down the Nicotine Dragon may make the next few days a bit of a bummer, but I'm most pleased to be doing it. Buying a packet of something that says it will kill you on the packet ... dearie me!!

Tomorrow I go back to the jobbie and the kiddo leaves for London to continue her scholarship stuff with the Worshipful Company of Glass Painters and Glaziers.

Sometimes I maybe sound angry at the world and at all the Unfortunate Ones in it, but I'm really angry with myself.

There's something not quite right with me, Jack! If you know how to be happy, why don't you just do that, Hotboy? It's not other people who are stopping me, Jack. Other people are wonderful. It's moi!

We went to see our friend with the MS and her husband on New Year's Day. I've known these folk since they were teenagers. The man has had big problems with clinical depression. I don't think he wanted to open the door on New Year's Day. He was doing all the stuff over the holidays. No carers coming in. In some ways I hope his wife doesn't have long to go, but I wonder if he'll be here much longer than that. No bliss. Total saint.

I know I am a fortunate creature, Jack. This year I'm totally not complaining about other people, except on this blog!

The allotment shot was taken yesterday. The other two were today. It's fabulously baltic out there!

The end of this!

Monday 00:43 a.m.
So that's it over. There is no way I can explain to an Unfortunate One how much I hate this time of year. Because they don't have it. Bovine. And so am I. Bovine. But that's the end of it.

It's been a very good time for me this year. I only went out three times. Once was Christmas Day. Once was Hogmanay. And once was today. If it hadn't been for the threat of all the other things I might have had to attend, I might have had a good time. I might have felt in control.

So fung off! Fung off! Fung off! Fung off, you pondlife morons. I've got stuff to do! I don't have enough time in this life to spend what little I have left with you. I don't want to think when I am dying that I would have liked to have spent my time on this planet doing something better.

Than wasting my time talking to Unfortunate Creatures, the blissless ones, like you. So that's it. The end of socialising. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. There's nothing you can do with the too dumb to meditate. At least, nothing I can do. What a great time I could have if you would all just fung off and leave moi alone!

Is that it then, Hotboy? At the end of the season of goodwill ... fung off! Just fung off!

New Year Photies

Sunday 5:36
Photies were all taken today at the Botties or the park, apart from the one of The Mound taken on New Year's Day. This is my first day without nicotine for about a month and it's been okay.

The reason why

1:00 a.m.
The reasons why they are not as good as moi!
1) My mother is a wonderful person
2) My faither was a wonderful person
3) My sister who died just before I left the house was a wonderful person.
4) My Domestic Bliss is a wonderful person and puts up with moi.
5) I have arose in the midst of wonderful creations.
6) Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man. (That's Sophicles. There's been nothing new since Sophicles. Ibsen's nemesis.)

What a fortunate creature, I am! I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

Predictions for 2010

Saturday 8:37 p.m.
I suppose everything this year will be much the same as ever. I will try to give everything up and fail. I will try to pay off my debts and fail. I will try not to hope that the secret agent will get me a book published and he won't.

This should be imagined with the Jaw theme in the background. That's the bliss creeping up. The bliss is always a banker. The meditations are going to keep working.

Had a intimation of mortality when the Domestic Bliss got me a David Attenborough box set collection for Xmas. My deathbed fantasy has been lying in the bed, smacked out of my brain, staring at David Attenborough on the telly, and doing whatever bliss I can under the circumstances. The telly arrived about a year or so ago. Now, the David Attenborough DVDs. When she says she's going to buy a sofa that folds down into a bed for the living room (where the giant telly is!), then I'll know the jig's up. Bound to be soon enough.

I went out for a short run today, the first since we ran down to Cramond. A wee blizzard hit me as I came back through Inverleith Park. What a wonderful climate we have here in Chilly Jockoland! Obviously, if it's a beautiful bloody day every morning when you open up the curtains, you are going to suffer from soft belly moral malaise like they do downunder and in the bongo bongo. Ice warriors, so we are, Jack! Ice warriors!

10:09 p.m.

In response to a comment, here's a bit of Charles Lamb. There's an internety typo certainly after "exlaimed". Do we need some punctuation there? Here's a bit of Charles Lamb from about 1812 or so.


Of all sounds of all bells--(bells, the music nighest bordering upon heaven)--most solemn and touching is the peal which rings out the Old Year. I never hear it without a gathering-up of my mind to a concentration of all the images that have been diffused over the past twelvemonth; all I have done or suffered, performed or neglected--in that regretted time. I begin to know its worth, as when a person dies. It takes a personal colour; nor was it a poetical flight in a contemporary, when he exclaimed

I saw the skirts of the departing Year.