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I'm only happy when it's complicated
Monday, 11 April 2005 12:01 pmIt rained all night, with occasional grumbles of thunder and left-over lightning flashes scurrying to catch up. I keep thinking of the Ted Hughes poem "Wind", possibly my favourite ever - "This house has been far out to sea all night". Today Cape Town is a mad medley of wind and gusts of rain, and those characteristic CT bad-drainage mini-lakes at intersections, through which cars plough with a satisfying fan of spray. The Foreshore this morning was really windy, to the point where, pausing at a Waterfront roundabout, I couldn't work out at first what the low roaring was. The wind in the palm trees sounds like distant dragon's breath. Steering on the freeway is quite an experience, necessitating a quick ransack of Arthur-Ransome-reading memories to work out how to tack.
It's amazing how the rain has changed my mood. I triumphantly vanquished the car license renewal problem this morning, spending all of three and a half seconds in a queue, and scoring a rather nifty plastic license holder thingy which the salesman swears won't perish in the sun. In celebration, I headed out to the Waterfront, following a tip from Neil, nice man, who had spotted the third Lemony Snicket in Wordsworth. Not only did I snaffle the last remaining copy of Book 3, I also found the last copies of Books 4 & 5, plus a Patricia McKillip missing from my collection (Winter Rose, a rather beautifully done faerie one). I am forced to conclude that people like me should not be permitted credit cards, since I have the approximate dignified self-control of a rabid stoat, assuming stoats were particularly bibliophilic as a species.
Another weird dream, this one very clearly about my career, academic, lack of. Spent the night in a confusing succession of old wooden corridors filled with self-absorbed students, trying to find particular academics who were crammed two or three to an office. Found my own office (shared)and left a bunch of personal possessions on a desk, only to discover, on return, that the room was now a lecture theatre, with someone else lecturing a room full of students, and that the desk had turned into a wastepaper basket, in which all my possessions were now sitting. Enlisted help of two ex-students of mine to pick the stuff out of the bin, very quietly, so as not to disturb the lecture. Woke up with a horribly stiff neck. My subconscious really doesn't like my career.
For those who were dying of curiosity (not), the submachine gun left by my mother in a supermarket was in fact a GM15, the Zimbabwean-manufactured equivalent of an Uzi.
It's amazing how the rain has changed my mood. I triumphantly vanquished the car license renewal problem this morning, spending all of three and a half seconds in a queue, and scoring a rather nifty plastic license holder thingy which the salesman swears won't perish in the sun. In celebration, I headed out to the Waterfront, following a tip from Neil, nice man, who had spotted the third Lemony Snicket in Wordsworth. Not only did I snaffle the last remaining copy of Book 3, I also found the last copies of Books 4 & 5, plus a Patricia McKillip missing from my collection (Winter Rose, a rather beautifully done faerie one). I am forced to conclude that people like me should not be permitted credit cards, since I have the approximate dignified self-control of a rabid stoat, assuming stoats were particularly bibliophilic as a species.
Another weird dream, this one very clearly about my career, academic, lack of. Spent the night in a confusing succession of old wooden corridors filled with self-absorbed students, trying to find particular academics who were crammed two or three to an office. Found my own office (shared)and left a bunch of personal possessions on a desk, only to discover, on return, that the room was now a lecture theatre, with someone else lecturing a room full of students, and that the desk had turned into a wastepaper basket, in which all my possessions were now sitting. Enlisted help of two ex-students of mine to pick the stuff out of the bin, very quietly, so as not to disturb the lecture. Woke up with a horribly stiff neck. My subconscious really doesn't like my career.
For those who were dying of curiosity (not), the submachine gun left by my mother in a supermarket was in fact a GM15, the Zimbabwean-manufactured equivalent of an Uzi.
