A nice thing
A nice thing happened to me today. This is good, because it has been a week of horrid things. Burglar break-ins, niggles, and work that won’t bend to the will of a restless brain.
But the nice thing was very nice, and reminded me that whatever the world has to offer, the people are the bestest thing of all.
Some of you might already know the saga of the plastic bag. I won’t bore you by mentioning the details again - apparently I was becoming obsessed.
Probably.
I can never decide whether my obsessions are a good or a bad part of me. But they are very much a part of me, so I like to think they’re not all bad. This blog is becoming an obsession. As was the plastic bag. I got obsessed with Scrabble once. And knitting. And pavements.
Anyway, the plastic bag contained two signed poetry books by Julia Darling. I got them by skipping off naughtily in the middle of a Tuesday (or it might have been a Wednesday) to hear / see / absorb her reading the poems out loud. And she was full of vitality and presence, so much so that I can hear her exact intonation in my head as I read them back to myself.
Read them back? How can I read them back? Surely a hapless cleaner threw them in the bin by accident? Well yes, she did. And as soon as I discovered my loss, I sent Darling, Julia an email headed something like “A minor tragedy”. I needed to qualify the “tragedy” to prevent her thinking something bad happened to a person, instead of a book. Because books are important, but people are importanter.
Then Julia got quite ill, and I thought she was probably too bogged down with it all to be arsing about signing new books. And I kind of hoped she wouldn’t worry about it, because I didn’t want to be any trouble.
You’ll have guessed the punchline by now. An envelope, on my desk at work. Which mystified me, because I didn’t think I’d given her an address. But then I remembered the sign-off that foots all my work emails... and hey presto, a miracle sent by a Darling angel in a white Jiffy bag.
She says I have verve. In capital letters: VERVE.
I like that.
But the nice thing was very nice, and reminded me that whatever the world has to offer, the people are the bestest thing of all.
Some of you might already know the saga of the plastic bag. I won’t bore you by mentioning the details again - apparently I was becoming obsessed.
Probably.
I can never decide whether my obsessions are a good or a bad part of me. But they are very much a part of me, so I like to think they’re not all bad. This blog is becoming an obsession. As was the plastic bag. I got obsessed with Scrabble once. And knitting. And pavements.
Anyway, the plastic bag contained two signed poetry books by Julia Darling. I got them by skipping off naughtily in the middle of a Tuesday (or it might have been a Wednesday) to hear / see / absorb her reading the poems out loud. And she was full of vitality and presence, so much so that I can hear her exact intonation in my head as I read them back to myself.
Read them back? How can I read them back? Surely a hapless cleaner threw them in the bin by accident? Well yes, she did. And as soon as I discovered my loss, I sent Darling, Julia an email headed something like “A minor tragedy”. I needed to qualify the “tragedy” to prevent her thinking something bad happened to a person, instead of a book. Because books are important, but people are importanter.
Then Julia got quite ill, and I thought she was probably too bogged down with it all to be arsing about signing new books. And I kind of hoped she wouldn’t worry about it, because I didn’t want to be any trouble.
You’ll have guessed the punchline by now. An envelope, on my desk at work. Which mystified me, because I didn’t think I’d given her an address. But then I remembered the sign-off that foots all my work emails... and hey presto, a miracle sent by a Darling angel in a white Jiffy bag.
She says I have verve. In capital letters: VERVE.
I like that.
6 Comments:
I'm so glad there was a happy outcome to the bag saga. I like the sound of Julia. You could tell she was a poet, I think, by her selection of 'VERVE' to describe you. Perfect.
Was it your home that was burgled? Did they take much? Hope it didn't freak Felix out.
Rob
Nah, didn't take much. Well took quite a lot, but nowhere near as much as they could have. Worst thing was a bag of Ally's CDs. His favourite ones, largely - cos it was his DJ bag, so they'd all been recently played out.
Felix not too freaked out - I think we mostly managed to disguise what was going on. Dipsy was very freaked out, though. She's the dog. She was the only one in the house when it happened. We suspect she saw them on their way with a good hard lick, and a vicious wag of the tail. But yes, she was freaked out.
Still, spilt milk and all that. To be perfectly honest I was much more bothered about the loss of the plastic bag!
i'm sorry to hear about the burglary - that is never nice.
but the good news is about the books! at last, no more tales of woe over a plastic bag - now what are you going to write about ?
Zoe, I have an enormous list of things I want to write about that are not plastic bags - like being invited to "be an author" in York, being run over by a bus, being bisexual, Dr Who parties, hypnotherapy, yoga, synaesthesia...
...but there is no bloody time! I have lists falling over themselves to come out of my ears, nose, throat and fingers, but really I should be doing a whole load of other far less interesting stuff - although to be fair Novel II is in there in the mix, and that's quite good fun.
Anyway. I shall probably ignore the list altogether and write about two-toed newts when you least expect it. ;o)
No one ever expects the Two-Towed Newt Writings!
But that certainly was...darling...of Julia to help out.
By the way, I seem to have lost a couple of pencils, would you perhaps have seen them anywhere?
Burglars - boo, hiss.
Poetry books - Yay!!
Pavements????? ...and I thought I was bad!!!! Shurely Shome Mishtake?
It reached the stage the other day when I was out with friends and said "....er....I'm sure there was something I was going to say...." and one of them immediately responded with "It's ok - they don't actually need to know anything about postcodes!" There again, I was talking to someone today, who I could very easily fancy (well I do, actually, except there's probably no point 'cos I'd be too old for her to be interested) and found myself eulogising about different types of brick and explaining that the ones we could see from the window weren't dirty, they were just the type known as "Engineers' Blue" which are supposed to look like that. (They are, as far as I can tell, no relation to the "Norwegian Blue" ('beautiful plumage') as the bricks are, of course, already crawling up the wall to meet their maker ... as was I when I realised how boring it must have sounded - not exactly one's best chatup line!)
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