hairless, wireless, pèreless, fileness, office, eyeless, planless and G-Planless

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This is something I didn’t get on eBay. Just as well. But they’re very beautiful and mysterious, aren’t they?

I’ve spent this first anniversary of my father le Duc de Baroque’s death sitting quietly in front of the computer – the new computer – the one that now sits in my boudoir, I mean my little office area – turning it into something I can work on. I worked out how to network it to the one in the living room, the one that exists these days mostly as a conduit for the Mlle’s teenagey chat, and transfer the entire contents over without use of external devices. Look, Ma… The other computer was down to less than 3Gb free, i.e., it was getting a bit iffy about downloading the soiftware updates; it now has over 18Gb. Let the kids have it; I only need it for the Photoshop now. This one has 267.5Gb free. That’s a hell of a lot of iTunes, I mean poems, I mean books, I mean high-profile professional activity.

Oh, and there will be more. Planning the virtual book tour of Me and the Dead. Soon you won’t be able to move on the internet without running into me (and the dead). I’m finalising my takeover strategy; you’ll never recognise the place.

I guess I don’t mind saying publicly at this particular juncture that I’ve been at a bit of a creative impasse, a crossroads if not a crevasse or impala, lately. What do you do with all this stuff? It was all going very nicely, I was feeling my way to some sort of memoir treatment, writing about my dad (le Duc Difficile) and the various other relatives, and then he went and died. I saw the ashes myself, unless it was a hoax. I imagine the writing was a way of processing (to use the argot, if not the argent) what was happening, and that once it had happened my interest was transferred to an effort not to think about it much. All that old excess doesn’t seem so accessible any more, the amusement has faded to morosement and parked in the abasement.

I think the pictures might be the only way to do it, now. Or, worse, I’ll actually have to figure out what it is I want to say. I mean, tell.

The pictures, and a new sideboard. Oh yes. I expect it to fill me with the peace that surpasseth all understanding, except it will also be quite exciting. It will go along the foot of my bed, like a footboard with my grandmother’s work ethic. I mean, it’s not enough for it just to provide a barrier for sliding eiderdowns. It has to store files and papers and provide 67 inches of useful, soon-to-be-book-piled surface, right in the middle of my boudoir. (Yeah: my bed’s nice and big.) I’m “eBaywatching” one, Danish, teak, with two cupboard doors and four drawers, and if I don’t get it it’s all right because there’s a sweet one on reserve as we speak down at Past Caring, with two sliding doors and three drawers, and two inches taller so more space. But not quite as dazzling. I think the Danish teak one will rocket upwards though, and I’ll be left holding approximately enough cash for its legs.

By the same token I fear I will be forced to forego the G-Plan coffee table with ends like a carriage bed and a thick glass top. That would have simply transported me to Nirvana and I could have had tea with my dad. (Not that we ever once in my entire life “had tea”, you understand.)

Anyway, whatever I do get it won’t come till next week – so that’ll be another day of sorting out &, with any luck, throwing away, rationalising… And I think I’m just going to be sitting here at the screen all weekend. I can’t go in the living room because the Urban Warrior is now living in it 24/7 (though I do hear he’s planning to go to Brighton)  and there’s nowhere else to go, except the coffee shop – and you know what I do in there… (I think I could really do with having something to look forward to, but I can’t imagine what it might be. Certainly not Christmas.) So in any case here’s hoping I actually get something done this weekend! But what?

Look at those doll faces. I know they have no eyes, but look at their expressions. Marvellous, aren’t they.

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Filed under Life, Living With Words, le Duc