Monday 6th June 2011

And on the Sabbath the rain did fall from the sky, and those who had not built arks did drown upon the face of the flooded earth.

Or thats what it seemed yesterday as the day began grey and dull and just got worse. But the afternoon the rain was falling steadily and did not stop. There was no point in going out, as the weather was just so rubbish, and so I ended up being really quite bored and watched Touring Cars and then Tennis. Lets give thanks that Bullseye is no longer on or I would have been tempted.

we can say, as we are of a certain age, that the garden needs the rain, and it saves me the trouble of going out and watering. And then in the evening we watched more TV; Antiques Roadshow and then the new Jason Isaacs thing on BBC1 which was really quite good.

By this time the itching had begun; for the second time, a long walk along the cliffs had resulted in me being bitten by insects to buggery and I was scratching.

A lot.

I took pills, I dabbed lotion on the affected parts. The itching got worse. and then at bed time it got unbearable. I slept fitfully, and was awake in time for the dawn chorus, but I might have drifted on again.

As soon as the shops opened in Ramsgate, I walked into town and bought lots of drugs and downed pills and the like, dabbed lotions and potions on, and then felt like sleeping. But it was not to be.

As I had a webinar to watch.

Yes, a webinar; imagine an infomercial, but with none of the production values, with laid on refreshments that you can't have because the webinar is coming live from Denmark, and you watch folks eating pastries and sipping fresh coffee whilst you sit in your office scratching. and then there is the sound, which could be someone reading the football results from round the u-bend, or not. and this woman getting those 'lucky' enough to actually be there make sounds like motorbikes. This was entitled 'find you hidden tiger'; mine is clearly sleeping. I wrote mails and finished off a report rather than listen. Or, I did try, I tried to configure the headphones that connect through USB and means I han hear the system sounds of when I click the mouse and so on, but actual media and music; not a chance.

Tomorrow, I can't put it off any longer; travel expenses and more meetings, and maybe look at the two projects which I have to fisnish this month rather than the one for next month which was easy which I completed today.

Sigh.

At least the BBC has more Jason Isaacs tonight, and before, literature and the railways. That's why I don't mind paying the licence fee.

This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.

Dawn freshens, the climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends
Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs
Men long for news.

Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or visit relations,
And applications for situations
And timid lovers' declarations
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to Hebrides
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

Thousands are still asleep
Dreaming of terrifying monsters,
Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

W H Auden

Toot toot.