Advocat for breakfast

I need to go shopping.


This morning I had gateau and half a tumbler of Advocat for breakfast. And I need to do some washing. If you went into my spare room you would think the Chinese laundry had packed up and left the building.


At the door the Chinawoman stands forlornly, a bus ticket to Beijing in her left hand. “I’m leaving you. IT’S TOO MUCH.”


And I’m not even the kind of person who changes his clothes every day. I can’t afford the goddamn water and environmentally friendly non biological naturally resourced detergent doesn’t go on trees (does it?).


Besides we over-wash. I read it on Green Weekly.


I’m saving the planet, that’s what I’m doing.


In my house only one light is on at any one time. When guests are round the logistics become complicated as we troop from room to room, negotiating arms to manipulate switches. Let me tell you it can get crowded in my tiny bathroom!


I’m kidding you.


I never have guests round.


Actually this lack of shopping is evidence of a good thing. I’ve become a writing junkie again. The proofs to Me and Mickie James are finished and ready to ship, annotated in blue and red. And I’m 20% into the next edit of The Penguin Variations.


I’m loving it. I can spend hours and hours on the same few pages before moving on.


As I was writing I bookmarked hundreds of pages I thought I might need later for research. This week I’ve read about Icelandic Christmas - the book is set around Christmas and in Iceland. The reading might mean that I change only one or two sentences but I am happy with that.


Adding bits. Shuffling sentences around.


But I should go shopping.


I’ve just finished reading ‘Comrade Rockstar’. This is about Dean Read, an American singer who espoused Communist ideals and made it big behind the Iron Curtain before it was melted down for scrap.


Towards the end of his life (in fact at the end) he was found dead in a lake behind his house in East Berlin. The book is an American writer’s attempt to get to the truth behind his death.


In pretty much the first chapter she crosses to East Berlin through Checkpoint Charlie and goes to a record store. She picks up a basket and finds that, due to the small size of the basket, almost nothing in the store will fit into it.


For her this is a CATASTROPHE and from here she extrapolates everything that is wrong with communism.


Jeez!!


It’s funny how we can judge a system without thinking of the faults of our own. In the West we can push trolleys the size of tankers around supermarkets the size of space stations gorging ourselves on transfat until we balloon ourselves to an early grave.


Well, some of us can. Those with cash.


Those who car adverts at aimed at. And plush sofas. And hanging gardens.


I just want a cat.


I would like a supermarket with small baskets. I would like no choice of fruit. Or only one kind of tin.


I would like one day to find an Egyptian selling black market oranges from the back of a peripatetic souk. I would buy a sackful and I would visit all the people who can stand my company for just a little while.


“I’ve got an orange,” I would say. “I”VE GOT AN ORANGE.”


Then I would say, if they were nice, “Would you like one too?”

Currently reading - The Gum Thief, Douglas Coupland

Currently listening to - Peter Bjorn and John

‘Father and Daughter’ - A fabulous animated short.