... and start all over again

THE BLOGGER’S RETREAT “I really like this pub,” said Plutarch and it was that kind of day. Elegiac, talk of families at the end. The pub has a name which Plutarch uses; for me it’s The Pub in Roupell Street. These days we repair there after the BR curry but decades ago we used to drop in on our way back to Waterloo station and thus it became a source of minor marital strife. It’s real-ale, plain, clean, has no music and the all-male clientele resembles us in the seventies: noisy, released from work.

We also talked of writing. Plutarch flattered me by recording an utterance so it was salutary to return home and find a letter from my agent turning down Gorgon Times (“original theme… has something to say… current climate for fiction is so dire… sorry for such a cheerless response.”) Mrs BB was sympathetic but, to tell the truth, my mind was and is on The Love Problem (77,232 words).

EVERYDAY MAGIC It’s obligatory to slag people using mobile phones. But consider this. To attend Diane’s funeral in Folkestone we picked up Younger Daughter who lives en route. Elder Daughter took a bus from Luton to Heathrow and walked to Terminal One. I mis-steered at Heathrow and ended in the cab rank. To which Elder Daughter was guided via mobiles. Impossible any other way.

THANKS Reading about Diane’s death HHB recommended Diana Athill’s Somewhere Towards the End, a brisk look at life (ie, gardening, sex, family relationships, appreciating painting) from old age. Excellent. On her late talent for writing: “I never knew (and this is literally true) what the next paragraph I was going to write would be.” Me too. It’s the act of faith that something will occur that keeps you alive.

The private place

Diane: in hospital and later
I would not have you prone, my dear, but up
And wiping plates, sharp-tongued, close at my side,
A kitchen critic, keen to laugh and slap
My washing-up techniques with woe betide.

Up from that narrow bed, to join lobelias
And ericas that may, we’re told, replace
Expensive box; then facing irises -
An auburn glow in cultivated space.

Dear, prone in bed is really not your bit,
For when you said “Well X is just a prat.”
Your head and shoulders helped augment the wit.
Down there they’re mute and now the wit is flat.

That was then. I wash dishes on my own
Untouched by auburn glow, the light quite flown.

The view from my chaise longue

Today’s an anniversary: my first post, three years ago. That initial headline was remarkably po-faced (Car door needs protecting from physics) and the single comment, from Plutarch, is so enigmatic I cannot decode it. The next twenty-four posts drew a total of seven comments: three from Plutarch, one from Lucy, one from a guy who wanted to sell something and two from me.

Works Well was hard core then, no faffing with weddings. My eighth post (Marvellous mathematical moment) was my most ambitious, demanded exhausting powers of explanation and is the best I have ever written. Only Plutarch responded. In arriving at the present total of 480 posts I moved away from stern prescription and was eventually lucky to find a select group prepared to indulge me. To them I am eternally grateful and virtually all are to be found on the links list.

Latterly my blog has competed with novel writing and there were times when I considered pulling the plug on Works Well – then drew back in horror. Doing so would be like walking out into the desert alone. I enjoy writing and I enjoy other voices. Novels usually don’t get published and their achievement runs perilously close to self-abuse. And blogging can be a rehearsal for what goes into the novel.

It’s insufficient to say blogging is dialogue – it’s civilised dialogue. It encourages a desire to respond and even re-respond. But it’s not without risks. Recently, through not concentrating enough, I’ve buggered up several posts and even more comments. In effect I’ve betrayed that word “civilised” and the penalties can be severe. People just stop reading. My namesake, a practical man, would say it’s my own fault. And he’s right. Blogging is also meritocracy.

Why my father is honoured in Folkestone

WEDDING, second tranche. The photographer was terrible; Mrs BB rose over this but I resemble a beached dugong, even here. Sparing use of the eraser reveals my awful haircut.

Recognising, no doubt, we were unbelievers the cleric concentrated on the mystical aspects of marriage and neglected procedure. Thus we knelt when we should have risen, triggering his angrily impatient hand-wagging. I failed to look Mrs BB in the face until told – too late – this was desirable. The cleric started to bind our wrists with his stole: this so alarmed me I lurched backwards.

In the vestry I signed the wrong box on the marriage certificate, then signed the wrong form of my name, then crossed out a correct signature. The cleric (Canon Hough – his name suggesting his favourite conveyance) became testy. My father, observing this, placed a large denomination note in the donations box.

I had prepared no speech for the reception despite speaking in public for the first time. My father, an accomplished public speaker, appalled by my increasingly desperate babble, decided to redress the balance. To wit: “At dinner (a month previously) I could tell she was the right woman for BB because she chose an excellent Bordeaux from the list.” Horror among the in-laws.

The Bondens’ many failings did not include snobbism. Nevertheless my mother-in-law banned all but the closest of her family from the post-wedding booze-up. This gave my father full rein with the conversation and the whisky bottle. During one peroration he fell asleep. As he woke, his hand descended unerringly to the spot on the floor where he’d left his glass. In-law horror turned to awe.

Oh, and by the way, it rained

Britain is presently in a wedding frenzy as Folkestone was fifty-one years ago - but for different reasons. After disasters, arguments and supreme errors of aesthetic judgement there was only one way the BB marriage could go and that was up. Which, I'm happy to say, it has.

Mrs BB, then Miss T, had wanted a registry office wedding with, say, a dozen closest. "Don't be silly," her mother (an atheist in everything other than formal CofE observances) said, "people will think you're pregnant." Miss T said she would look forward to proving such doubters wrong. But, as you can see, a church it was.

LtoR: BB's youngest brother (dreaming of becoming a magnate, which he did), BB's mother (Pleased to be separated spatially from ex-husband; rode from Bradford to Folkestone on scooter; writing a short story in her head), BB's younger brother and best man (Born to pit himself against the wild - a cliché he'll enjoy), BB (In £21 Burton's suit, garnished with worst haircut ever), Mrs BB's father (who inserted himself into all the photos in this manner), Mrs BB (smiling despite having her dress stood on during the ceremony), BB's grannie (92 and much happier than she looks), dear, dear Diane (married a year before, five months' pregnant and a wonderful advertisement for pregnancy), BB's dad (who insisted BB couldn't wear a red tie and, when BB returned with a green tie, said grumpily "From Communism to Fenianism.")

The groom went on to learn a valuable lesson in public speaking that day (I cringe at the memory) and the groom’s father became a Folkestone myth in the matter of toping. A sequel will depend on how many comments this attracts.

Number crunching

The Love Problem reaches 64,500 words (ie, roughly two-thirds distance) and I announce the figure as an encouraging mantra. Here comes another clunker. TLP is being written in MSW 2010, full to the gunwales with new if unlikely features, including the fact that Total Editing Time spent on the MS amounts to 23,149 minutes or 385.82 hours or 16 solid days. So now you know.

Chapter 10 exceeds 10,000 words and covers a single love affair set in Tucson, Arizona. I am now back in SW France and re-adjusting is quite difficult. One interesting discovery is that a real-life affair of the heart is not recyclable; for reasons unfathomable it all has to be made up. Perhaps just as well. Jana fascinates me but I don’t adore her as I did Clare in Gorgon Times. However, the emotional volcano which justifies the title has yet to erupt and will occupy the remaining pages. Perhaps I shall erupt then too.

POTTERY The huge new en suite wash basin whose taps Zach cannot reach was publicised two or three months ago. When I use it I am not at my most observant so it came as a surprise to find it has a model name: Utopia. This discovery brings the whole rickety process of shaving to a halt, as I reflect on the how and the why. Underwhelming ambition, surely. Nowhere near my strangest name for a porcelain artefact: an ancient WC in the Lake District called The Pike.

QUITE HUMANE Confirmation of a book ordered on HHB’s recommendation arrives by email: Your Amazon order has dispatched… Transitive instead intransitive or the other way round, I’ve given up punditry for Lent. Unless the meaning refers to what goes on in abbatoirs.

Out of doors, but not for enjoyment

No, wait, this is techno-horticultural. In Mrs BB’s left hand is a branch of unwanted Japanese maple, in the other a branch of acer for which we bought the pot. With a perversity which turned me into a nature-hater a trace, jot or tittle of Japanese maple took flight, descended on Chez Bonden and grafted itself (I’ll repeat that - grafted itself) on to the roots of the acer for which we paid good money.

I have watched enough horti-telly (usually in a glazed, crapulous condition) to know that grafting requires a ***shockingly sharp knife, a carefully selected position, an angled cut and some white stuff into which the cutting is dipped.*** Yet the above happened automatically, subterraneously, and the results must be extirpated. Speak not of Intelligent Design. As a gardener God’s an anarchist.

>DOO-DOO BLUES At midnight on Sundays I put out the garbage for collection on Monday morning, often before my glued eyelids have separated. The dustbin protects the bagged rubbish from seagulls, cats and, for all I know, nematode worms. Goodie-goodies who wake earlier than me to walk dogs, dropped their packaged doo-doo in my bin, missing the bag and leaving me to de-doo-doo. The painted notice (repeated three more times) stopped this. Now, one owner has encouraged his (I’m sure it’s a he) pooch to defecate by the side of the bin, technically complying with my exhortation. Land mines, that’s what.

MORE ANTI-GARDENING I recently re-housed a pot-bound camellia which is now moribund and will soon die. Its fate does not interest me. But cleaning my nails afterwards took fifteen minutes and still the job was incomplete. Nail-cleaning is wasted time, you can’t read and don’t feel like singing. Can this be defended?

*** xxx *** I am told, by one who knows, this description of grafting is entirely fallacious. Well, I did say "crapulous".

The futile spectator

Diane, Mrs BB’s younger and only sister, bridesmaid at our wedding fifty-one years ago, died of cancer. I wrote a letter which her husband read aloud and I’m told she smiled. That should have pleased me, but didn’t. I’ve written all my adult life. Such a small matter.

More usefully, I drove Mrs BB the 230 miles from Hereford to Ashford so she could sit on a hospital bed, hold Diane’s hand and talk for an hour about tiny familiar things. I sat further down the bed and spoke only briefly. I mentioned the name, Jana, I’d chosen six months ago for my novel. Told her I’d recently checked its roots and discovered it was a corruption of Diana, hence, Diane. As I kissed her goodbye I said clumsily, “Remember Jana.” She said she’d bear it in mind.

Otherwise I observed. On intense occasions it’s often the detail that counts. I learned that hospices are usually full and that the dying must qualify for admission. Learned that someone in pain can administer their own morphine via a syringe which feeds into the drip. Noticed that bedpans are now disposable and are made from a sort of papier maché.

My French teacher, a Quaker, does voluntary work at a hospice. She told me, “The dying is all right, I can assure you.” Meaning that the transition, as viewed by those standing by, lacks horror. And as far as they can tell the person they are losing is not suffering.

This post is intentionally about me, not about Diane; about being near someone who is dying. Trying to strip away confused instincts and imagined obligations, touching here and there on the reality. Some time, not now, I’ll write Diane some verse.