Wednesday 30 September 2009

Geoff Dyer and me

I've been thinking what might have happened if the person who pointed me in the direction of Geoff Dyer had sent him my piece on Bruce Lee. Would Geoff now be reading me and thinking of the strange resemblances between two writers of different ages and islands.

Not every earthquake produces a Tsunami but alas yesterday's shake did. Our thoughts are, as always, with the victims of sudden tragedy.

Who I'm reading this week ...

... while not writing: Geoff Dyer, that's who.

Once I wrote a piece which had a similarity of style to Geoff's But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz

I'd never heard of Dyer but someone who read my piece about Bruce Lee gave me an excerpt of But Beautiful and that was me hooked.

His current release is Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi

That's all folks.

Saturday 26 September 2009

Fly me to the ...

better not quote more for fear of litigation.

Just sitting here reading about Nabokov's last and unfinished novel when I turned my head to speak to Polly and noticed what I thought was a spider on Polly's shoulder. Closer inspection proved it to be a fly - a pale fly, an anaemic looking thing. Polly said she had seen a couple more today (she'd kept that quiet) and that they might be a recent hatching from a dead rodent in our loft space - heard, poisoned but not seen. As she said this another pale drifter emerged from a crack in the ceiling. The glory hole is too high to reach without a ladder I am happy to say as I did not want to stick my head up into unknown territory and perhaps be attacked by flies desperate to escape.

I stood on a chair and sprayed some dreadful insecticide along the ceiling crack. We trust this will work.

When we lived in Donegal this happened to us: our boy cat, the late Master Samuel Beckett, must have allowed a mouse to escape, which crawled injured into a crack in our stone floor behind a potato crock. One day we were treated to a horde of dozy flies emerging  as if by magic from a dark corner. Ain't nature wunnerful?

Sunday 20 September 2009

Risin' early

Rubbish collection day is here again. Yippee! A great start to the week I feel. Getting up, rain or shine, to cram the miscellaneous bits of rubbish into the black bag, then ambulating fluidly down the hill to the communal collection point. Why can't I leave the rubbish outside my house? I don't know why. Probably for the same reason that our mail is not delivered to the house but to a mailbox at the end of a side road. We live on the main road. There is something not right here. I think we have inherited a set up from previous tenants of the property. Ask an anthropologist. They'll tell you. A set of circumstances pertains to a particular time and with usage, even when the circumstances have changed, there is a reluctance towards modification.
I thought after the first week that I would test the system by leaving our blue recycle bin outside our front gate as per instructions from Dunedin City Council's own website. The worst that could happen I reasoned was that the bin-men would drive on by. No big deal then, just carry the bin down the hill the following week. Have I been able to do this? No. I feel like the Master in his mystical prison under Sunnydale Library. I am confounded by the advice I was given by the landlord. I am unable to advance beyond this advice and put it to the test to see if it is valid.
I'm made of sterner stuff - I'll try again next week, eh?