Tuesday 29 April 2008

Fitting into unknown possibilities

For some reason Bessy was inside the wine bottle we had emptied last night when I woke this morning. She was mouthing something to me that I took to be a kindly and cheery welcome to another day. At some point during the night it would appear she took up a challenge, promulgated by a Norwegian belly dancer by the name of Oop, to arrange herself in a way that suggested there were no options in life. At least, that was Margaret's interpretation when she finally pulled the hound out of the bottle by the ear and had Oop (not sure how she got in) to confess.

Mornings that start like that are hard to follow, which often makes me want to just press 'hold' and wallow in the pleasantness that is waking and thinking , 'what is my little world going to put before me today?'.

Well, Felix knows how to put a bean before an ant and predict its immediate movements. He demonstrated this as we sat drinking tea this morning looking out over the English Channel. The ant in question knew how to put a question before an unsuspecting audience and, I have to say, I was wonderfully amused by it: in asking what the point was of behaving as expected, he avoided the bean altogether, placed a leg on a tiny stone and peed. Wonderful but, sadly for the ant, just as Felix had predicted.

George had been diving before he turned up for work and was, as a consequence, full of bravado. This is a regular event for George, as he is quick to remind me. At some point in the past he used to dive up chimneys in an orchestrated global attempt to replicate the waste of energy through open holes in roofs. I'm not sure anybody else took part.

Cookie had created a beautiful arrangement of syringes on the surgery wall that made Mr Callonthewrongpersoninthemiddleofthenight jump as he entered the surgery. It would appear that my nurse was attempting to lure patients via any one of a hundred open needles into the world that she had recently discovered in which all beings were of inordinate well being and graciousness. With an eye on the 2.2mL cartridges of local anaesthetic attached to the needles, I asked if people felt constrained in this place she had found. She said it was a principle of any place she went that no one should fool another into losing something without knowing it, which left me and Mr Callonthewrongpersoninthemiddleofthenight a bit stumped. Not that it mattered.

Which is where I seem to have started and where, no doubt, I will be tomorrow: confused, but pleased with how things never show up until it's time for them to do so.