My body is like my phone box. At each stage in the very long restoration and rebuild process I find box and body are either in harmony or clashing. Except, of course when “Marge,” as it is henceforth to be known, chooses to throw me from her lofty tower while I attempt to untangle (paint) her red tresses. That was more than dissonance, that was attempted murder.

At the moment all the bits of Marge and my body are ringing nicely. Not exactly sounding as they should, but not clashing. For example the prototype telephone (the actual Bakelite thing) can now send and receive sound, very scratchily. (That’s because the purist in me refuses to modernise the internal components, the carbon granule transmitter and the magnet with a metal skin-like actuator as receiver) – similarly I can sleep through the night scratchily (first time last night). Picking up the receiver currently sends a confusing message to the computer that the receiver has been put down. Not a serious problem, literally crossed wires, and in the same way I occasionally forget how many of the different drugs I have taken. This not a serious problem either as my dosage is now in steady decline so the odd crossed wire doesn’t count. Like my body the various cameras and sensors Marge relies on to give voice either over react,  – last night an alert was triggered, I think, by a leaf brushing Marge’s body flirtatiously, or under react, because of the low  sun in the morning the camera can’t see a thing and Marge didn’t respond when a very large red post van parked next to her – perhaps she wouldn’t grass on a fellow red-post-GPO-type-thing. Likewise my bowels, yes I am obsessed, either respond to Allbran as if we’re something to hold on to and preserve like a childhood stamp collection or something to be spat out as speedily as possible, like that mouthwash dentists prescribe that burns your gob. Don’t you agree it really does? Chlorosyl or something like that. Did you know it also turns your teeth black if you use it too often. More research needed in  this area perhaps?

Today there’s the promise of a sunny car boot sale a few miles away. Lovely Maria will have to drive me (she’s not a big fan), but once there I can test my standing up powers. I got up to about a solid hour before the accident so we will see. The carboot is good exercise. It involves walking, standing, kneeling and bending. When your flexing powers pack up there are a couple of those fairground type stalls that sell breakfasts and you have the pleasure of spooning your sugar into your tea from a mug of pre-used spoons standing in a grey/brown liquid (other people’s dregs). None of us complain. We all put up with it. Funny that? I guess if you didn’t like it you wouldn’t really like the car-boot sale ethos. Old stuff mainly sold by oldish people, some scammers, some virtually giving stuff away to make space in their new Barrett burrow, fairly rough people who project a non Corbynite persona, mixed with Henry’s and Jemimas, (who frankly do the same – where is he going to get support) load and loads of dogs, the odd rare ferret, – they don’t smell good and are not mad about being patted, (or is that just Yorkshire). My accent stands out cos it’s not Yorkshire, not posh, just southern. All this voice work makes me doubly aware of what a singularly unattractive one I have. No I am not fishing for reassurance it really is a mean, sexually ambiguous Australians voice. Cos of the voice I think some people see me as an Arthur Daley – southerner on the make. I really do wear the hat (for the sun actually) but maybe I should drop it. Anyway re the refreshment stall – It’s a comfy, if windy, scruffy, smelly sitting place. You know it’s windy because any empty chair is instantly blown over to lie in the litter. Come to think of it the whole thing is quite post apocalyptic, the last eatery before the nuclear winter.

So off I go. First of all Maria is kindly bringing me croissants in bed. There’s a culture clash.