Tag Archives: life

The Christmas of Multiple Malfunction

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All within the space of a few days …

1. The shaving mirror light. Not the end of the world – the main bathroom light casts enough light to shave by, even if I do have to probe the razor into the deeper crevasses of my rugged features guided by little more than guesswork.

2. The boiler pump. Considerably more tedious: a trickle of warm water into the hot water tank and nothing at all into the radiators. But we have enough electrical heating devices to keep us warm, even if it does mean we can’t move about in a comfortable ambient temperature; rather, nice warm room through sub-arctic hallway into nice warm room again. And it inspired us to work out how to bleed the flat’s ancient and idiosyncratic system of wainscot radiators.

3. The renewed living room leak. Very, very, very, very, very tedious indeed, not least in its sense of timing – first detected by Bonusbarn shortly after midnight on Christmas Day, meaning he never got to see the end of that classic slice of festive cheer, Scarface. Just like in the glory days of a couple of months ago when the builders were battering and clattering in the flat above, thread-like streams of water were trickling down the outer wall of the living room. From previous experience, this means they will also be trickling down the wall of the kitchen in the flat above, but invisibly, behind the plasterboard and newly fitted cupboards. Most baffling of all was that it had rained heavily the previous day (and many times over the last month, of course) and nary a drop; now, out of a cloudless crystal sky, it came. A bit like those horror movies where the walls inexplicably start weeping blood, only in this case it was water. After baffled wails of “why now?” and putting out the buckets and towels, I emailed the flat’s owner in the childish hope that he would read it early on Christmas Day and have the rest of the day spoiled, which is exactly what happened, so there. Rather satisfying was his response: he’s also baffled, and annoyed because he has recently paid off two roofers, arf. My current theory is that the freezing weather had undone something that they did. It leaked again overnight between Christmas and Boxing Day, and is now in full trickle as a result of 24 hours of sleet and rain.

The Daily Bread Bible notes for Christmas Day concentrated, perhaps a little predictably, on the birth of Jesus as recorded in Luke 2. I liked the point they made that Mary, having been so obedient in everything according to the divine plan, might reasonably have asked why she now had to travel 100 miles on donkeyback and give birth in a manger – but, she trusted. Things like this help you trust if you’re open to learning. I hope we’re learning. I think we are.

But apart from that, a lovely Christmas, thank you. The main meal on the 25th was mostly vegetarian, simply because of the large proportions of vegetable: roast potatoes, sweet potatoes and parsnips, plus a very large helping of stuffing provided by Ex Mother in Law in Law, and Delia Smith’s red cabbage and apple recipe, which Delia says feeds four but neglects to add “for a week”. And of course the Christmas pud, set alight with the help of Tesco’s Three Barrels VSOP brandy, which is one price tab up from Tesco Value Brandy and does at least come in a proper brandy-shaped bottle. Then to my parents and now back here again, finally settling into one place so we can do things like call electricians and gas engineers.

Before setting off to my parents we put aside the new DVDs received for Christmas, so that even if we returned to an uninhabitable living room we would still have something to watch as we moved into hotel accommodation / in with friends /whatever. And that, I think, is what we will go and do now.

Even a broken clock gets it right twice a day

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I remember once reading a short story featuring a boys’ school set on a spaceship. The ship was travelling from (probably) Earth to (probably) some colony world. Scientific accuracy was not rigorously enforced: witness the fact that the ship had no artificial gravity (so far, so good) and so everyone on board wore, um, weighted boots. In fact, I think one jolly schoolboy prank involved surreptitiously unlacing one boy’s boot so that when he tries to come up to the front of the class his foot and leg float upwards, to general hilarity.

I must have been about 7 or 8 and I’m pretty sure it was included in a collection of similar gosh-wow boys’ adventure tales. I’m guessing it wasn’t a forgotten gem by some big name author.

But chiefly I remember a wonder material called, I think, viviform. As I recall this was a putty-like substance that could be moulded by hand and would then set diamond-hard. Useful for almost anything, really. I’m sure it played a key part in the plot, though I can’t remember what or why. I didn’t know it at the time but my generation was probably the first that really reaped the benefits of things like blu-tack and silly putty, and so viviform made sense. Much more than the school on the ship – which was essentially a terrestrial classroom; no prophetic visions of learning technology or anything like that – or the weighted boots, I know this made me think “yeah, why not?” Which is a very important think for a science fiction writer to have.

Why do I mention this now? Because someone seems to have invented viviform, that’s why.

Random Park Lane-centric musings

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The Swinford toll bridge at Eynsham sold at auction yesterday for £1.08m. I have forked out many a 5p to cross this – it’s often been a handy short cut to get between north Abingdon and Witney without having to come round the ringroad to the southern A34 junction – but I had no idea I was contributing to an annual income of c. £195,000, nor that the bridge has its very own Act of Parliament (1767) exempting it from all kinds of tax. Cor. Nice little earner – though as the report does point out, maintenance of the bridge also has to come out of that £195k.

I’m going to go out on a limb and bet that the salaries of the spotted youths who sit shivering in the tollbooth day in, day out make a very small dent in the £195k indeed.

Apparently the auction was done in Park Lane. I was in Park Lane yesterday, as Marble Arch is one of the drop-off points for the Oxford Espress. I could have popped in and made a bid. I was however in the area for the much more important Random House Children’s Authors Christmas Party, off Berkeley Square. Had a nice chat with John Dickinson and this year finally did get to tell him that his father gave menightmares when I was 10. He seemed delighted to hear it and told me about the nightmare his dad had, of being burned as a witch, that inspired The Changes in the first place. I also met a couple of fellow ghostwriters: one for someone I have always suspected of being ghostwritten but had no proof, and one for someone I had no idea was, um, writing at all. Officially. We all shared a slightly baffled but gratefully smug bemusement that ghostwriting is actually legal. I mean, it’s lying! To children! (Which is not always a bad thing.)

A childhood spent playing Monopoly means I can never quite feel happy in Park Lane. I have a lingering fear I will make the wrong landing and go bankrupt. My cousin’s childhood Monopoly strategy was to eschew all properties except Park Lane and Mayfair. Sometimes it paid off richly but it was a high risk strategy with a lot of attrition on the way. I doubt he kept this up for long.

I must have passed it often before without blinking, but for the first time I noticed that Park Lane has a quite large war memorial – certainly larger than a lot of the ones you see for humans – for animals who died in conflict. The statues show pack animals like donkeys carrying machine guns: the engraving on the wall states “they had no choice”.

Well, true, they didn’t. I would however say they had more of a choice than the people who made them carry the machine guns. A donkey that refused would probably get sworn at. A man that refused would get shot by his own side. That is what I would call having no choice.