Thursday, November 22, 2007

tulip tree, help! gauze

A few leaves remain at the top of the tulip tree. This morning, outlined against buttermilk clouds and blue sky, they wave to me, stirred by the breeze, as I drink my morning tea.

Last night, I am watching one of our favourite sit coms - One Foot in the Grave. Victor Meldrew pursued by one disaster after another, is succumbing to his (and our) favourite expression of disgust: I don't belie.. eve it". Just then I hear a woman's voice in our house. It is not Heidi's voice. In the study, is a new land-line telephone. It is a replacement for a telephone, which I bought a few days ago, and which had gone wrong. I had, that day, been up to the top of the town to take the old phone back to the shop and pick up the new one. Just now, the new phone is supposed to be charging its batteries and is not connected to the phone line. I go to investigate. The voice is saying over and over again in a smug , don't -I- speak-beautifully-voice. "You have no new messages. You have no new messages." This must be part of One Foot in the Grave, being broadcast in the next room. I can't separate myth from reality. Have I become Victor Meldrew? I say: "I don't belie ..eve it." And find it difficult not to laugh.

A plane flies behind a small tangerine coloured cloud in the late afternoon sky. For a moment, it becomes a shadow behind gauze and then emerges intact again.

1 comment:

tristan said...

here's a new message ... i find it almost impossible to imagine you becoming victor meldrew ... for more than a minute