As you know I go through phases and my current phase is to write short stories for the phone box that feature a character called Tuffin. In fact I have become quite obsessed churning out about one or two per week plus other short stories. I have been getting some fantastic advice from my siblings, my children and their partners and as a consequence, even I think I may be getting a bit better. I am very needy indeed, so if you like any of them let me know, but if you don’t, then don’t. As I get more into writing fiction my devil-may-care attitude of “Oh I don’t care what other people think” has started to wear away. This is most regrettable for all of us and particularly you, dear readers.
In think Tuffin is a version of me if I had not met Maria and had stayed in the house I was born in and emotionally rotted. He is both likably eccentric but also dislikably ‘locked in.’I suppose he is the teenage me made old. He lives an insular life, doing things that please him but that have no greater purpose or design. He observes people closely but really does not understand them, he thinks he does though. He likes toys and sets and collecting but not in a methodical way, just in a way that helps make sense of the world in his terms. He is 60 in the 60’s – an era I think I belong in. Anyway they are here, if anyone can be bothered https://81.136.203.155:82/wordpress/category/tuffin/
After 2 years the Teddy poem set of 12 is also complete and illustrated to my great joy by Pat McCarthy – but you will need a password to see them – send me an e-mail and I will let you have it – [email protected]. I am keeping them under wraps until the illustrator and I have decided what to do with them – so please don’t pass the password around. https://81.136.203.155:82/wordpress/category/teddy/
My health is excellent although my numbers get worse again cos I am off the drugs. The main thing is that when I need them, they work, be it that my misguided body seems to think I should pay for the privilege of survival by feeling fairly crap . There is new research on a treatment for my cancer that is centring on a molecule in Tumeric. It was featured on the Food Programme – sounds very promising – but as with all treatments it works for some and not for others. Interesting though. I shall be eating a lot of yellow food from now on. Course it may be a faddy nothing – my faith in anything but the strongest and most toxic man made compounds is limited probably to the annoyance of Art and Lisa.
Maria and I had a brilliant couple of days in Lewisham seeing one pair of my lovely boy and girls and their heavenly abode full of really interesting people leading very alternative and cool lives, followed by a great gig and a lovely lunch with my sister, her husband and Lisa’s dad. It was a really fun couple of days. I envy their very sociable lifestyle in theory but in practice I don’t think I could cope with the 24 hour commitment to sociability – I am much too grumpy and insular (see above).
Met some amusing taxi drivers. One knew all places I knew in SE London and Kent. He had my original Swanley school accent, the one I had before I got gentrified by Glyndebourne Opera and a lack of self-confidence. He knew the pub I had collapsed in as a boy drinker. In/ie really in, a urinal if memory serves. In fact I began to think he might be a relative or an old school friend. He even knew the mental hospital my grandma had been incarcerated in. Oh how we fondly reminisced. The other Taxi driver told some fine stories of how he threatened to ‘eat someones face and feed it to his wife’ for what, I could only figure to be – “being posh and living in Clapham where he used to live with his nan who was not posh but salt of the earth, you know a proper English Londoner.” I told him I was a member of the Labour party and was pro immigration and despite that I respected his opinions – which I didn’t at all – but he was pro Trump, UKIP and hanging so we bonded in that way that only fear of having your own face bitten off can bring about. A good healthy tip later, my soulless, cowardly sell-out was complete, but so was my face.
I have my Labour party poster up. Probably the only one within the Appleton Conservative getto. I am rather excited by the election now that it looks like less of a rout. I have some faith that when people look around and see what right-wing politics is currently doing to the world, they might just start to think about being a bit nicer and a bit less me me me.
That said, Dear Reader, bye for now from me me me.