What’s this? I’m back in London, at the Hole in the Wall pub, near Waterloo Station, surrounded by work colleagues, warning me that something odd has happened to the boss in my absence. And next morning, at the wine shop, the aristocratic Charles greets me wearing a red velvet dress, high heels and a curly blonde wig. Part of a procession of brief inexplicable episodes. It was the one with the bottle-throwing folk singers chasing me through deserted Tube tunnels that finally woke me.
I was relieved to open my eyes and totter downstairs into the wintry Swiss sunlight. Truly relieved.
A weekend lie-in is fertile ground for dreams, but I rarely treat myself to one these days — and haven’t done so for years. This morning I had little choice. After three late nights, including a 5 a.m., I was woken this morning at 08:15 by the great Sweder, reminding me that he had to be on the train in 14 minutes, or he would miss his plane back to Blighty. The gruesome sight that must have met his bleary eyes on pushing my bedroom door open is not a thought to dwell on, for either of us.
We were on our way. Just 3 minutes separated my coma from my car. Another 9, and he was hauling his suitcase onto the 08:29. We even had a couple of luxuriously idle minutes on the platform to discuss my objections to the word “awesome”, and why the roots of that grievance lie in a sachet of ketchup located close to the Grand Canyon.
Based on the random fragments of data that could be retrieved from the weekend’s battered hard drive, we agreed it had been a memorable 2 or 3 days. Or rather, a series of brief inexplicable episodes.
As I traversed the station underpass, on my way back to the car, and to my bed, I kept a cautious eye open for bottle-throwing folk singers, and mused that we are often unsure where these edges meet.
7 comments On Hard drive
For me too Antonio!
Who were the bottle-throwing folk singers?
What exactly happened to the Grand Canyon sachet of ketchup?
Sounds like a great first page for a book.
Very difficult to understand for me.
Very interesting.
Funnily enough the use of ‘very’ and other faux adjectives came up in some recent corespondence I had with Andy. There is a time and place for it, however. ‘Very’ late, for example, is just right to describe a) our night up watching old football matches and b) our departure from Chez Gordo on Sunday morning
@marathondan Indeed, it’s part of a bigger problem with misused or superfluous superlatives. I don’t even like “very” much. What does it mean? Nothing much anymore. It’s usually better to leave it out. “He was a good and loyal friend” is much stronger than “He was a very good and very loyal friend”.
Kind of with you on “awesome”, although it can at least be used in an ironic, faux-naive, post-Wayne’s World way with some degree of charm.
My current pet hates, which have penetrated as far as Radio 4 (i.e. there is no hope), are “incredibly” (no, you mean “very”) and “fresh” (you are not cool – just say “new”).
Your dreams are telling you to get running again or there’ll be bottles thrown. Erm, bottles thrown by guitar-strumming train-spotters. Ah, maybe that’s a bit too literal. But you know the answer.