Root Wan Twenny Ate

Listening to She Hangs Brightly by Mazzy Star

A very fragmented list of thoughts today.

Forget The Da Vinci Code. I have been doing my best to persuade my wife that she will not like the film and if she must know the plot, then borrowing the book will be the path of least expense. Not that I need to do much after seeing the reviews; the one in The Guardian being very amusing.

I was cheered by the arrival of an instant message yesterday which simply said “mea culpa”. It wasn’t the fact that someone had admitted to something – I have plenty of things to admit to especially in this line of work – just that I actually know someone who uses the phrase casually expecting his audience to understand it. This sounds pretentious doesn’t it but it heartens me – lets me know that somewhere around there is decency and adherence to some rules of common sense. That link is probably clearer inside my head that I can put down into words but I know what I mean. Yours – Mr. Angry,

It is wet and wild around here today and it reminded me of our October Half-term holidays to Wales. We usually stayed in steep-roofed, clap-board house right on the beach at Llandanwg. It had one long room downstairs which overlooked the beach and the whole sweep of the bay from Barmouth to Bardsey Island. My memory has it raining most of the time we were there, with the wind battering the windows, mixing white noise with that of the surf which was always there. Going to sleep was easy because of this; the sound seemed to fill up the gaps where insomnia-inducing worries usually lurked. The major issue with this house for us children was the lack of television. Our dad used to tease us by saying that there was a television but that it was locked away. We would read or play cards or just look out over the bay from grey morning to dark night when the lights of the far towns flickered like the console of some giant computer. We probably hated it at the time – no TV is a big thing for an eight-year old – but as usual with these memories they transfer easily over the years, from nasty time-filling boredom to nostalgia. A few days in that long room with a pile of good books and good music would be most welcome. Of course we always had the radio, even if we did have to put up with some unsettling differences in the schedules due to being in the principality.

All the things I usually worry about seem to have fragmented into nothing, like that eighties video effect where the picture would suddenly explode into its individual dots which dispersed all over the screen. I cannot get a handle on what any of the fragments refer to and so they don’t seem to worry me any more. The point being I suppose that I don’t really have anything to worry about. As is always the theme, my problem is confidence in what I can do. A new project comes to me and I always think I will not be able to do it. It’s a bit like my telling people that it is difficult for them to break technology so just try pressing buttons and guessing at what something does. They seem afraid that some gadget will bite them or they will bet into trouble for making it go wrong. You need the confidence to try things out. What is the worst that can happen?