Ordinariness

I seem to have got out of the habit of trying to convey something of the ordinary detail of my life. Some bloggers are brilliant at this. Humorous and self-deprecating, they find stories in the mundanity of everyday living. I like that. Me? Just recently I have been drawn to newsworthy matters well outside myself – Madeleine, Darfur, Kentucky Fried Chicken v The Tan Hill Inn etc.. It’s time, I think, to get back to the ordinary stuff.

Well last night Mick the warehouseman and I were up at “The Prince of Wales” tackling the Monday night quiz. Our other buddy – Mike - was notable because of his absence. He might have known the fifth club that Alan Ball played for – it was of course Bristol Rovers! Suffice to say we didn’t win but the new landlady who keeps touching my arm and calling me “flower” said she’d give a prize for the best team name. For the second week running, we won! Last week it was “Rebecca’s Wreckers” after the new landlady herself and this week it was “The Ember Members” because “The Prince” is now part of the Ember Inn chain. The prize was some Argentinian red wine.

Google Image Search - "Ordinariness"

Our garden is looking good. I tamed it at the weekend, hairdressing two hundred feet of privet hedge with my lethal JCB hedge trimmer. Then it was pruning and sweeping up, cutting the bottom lawn, making a bonfire. I love that knackered feeling after hours of physical work. So different from the tiredness that overwhelms you after days of working with adolescent “scholars” (ha!) - many from deprived council estates and broken homes. And oh lovely – I learnt at 5pm today that the dreaded OFSTED inspectors will be coming to call on my department in mid-June. The slime-balls with their travel claim forms, hotel receipts and superior attitudes – if you’re so goddam clever why don’t you get in that classroom and show us how it’s done! But of course they don’t.

Physically, I have always been outrageously fit and healthy. I have never missed a day off work for illness in thirty years. Can you believe it? Thirty bloody years and not one solitary “sickie”. I have soldiered on even when my body has screamed “Stay home you stupid git!” But just lately time has threatened to catch up on me. I have longterm toothache in spite of the expensive interventions of three useless dentists. Somehow I have damaged my knee – unless it’s just wear and tear. The other week I was limping like a twat and I can still feel the bugger now. As a consequence, I have stopped bounding up three stairs at a time like a twelve year old. And then there’s the cold sore at the corner of my mouth that refuses to heal and oh, my eyesight – I refuse to wear glasses but sometimes the words on the page blur as if they are under water. Fortunately the gout in my left big toe has disappeared but for how long? I am starting to feel like a Ford Mondeo that’s done 150,000 miles and is ready for an engine change. Thank God the two most important parts of my anatomy are still working fine.

I am reading “The Book of Dave” by Will Self at the moment. Just getting towards the end. It is a very challenging read as it moves between the here and now of London taxi driver Dave Rudman and a far off future where people have a new god called Dave whose taxi driver philosophy guides their lives. It is very weird indeed. Well that was that. I hope this post has been ordinary enough for you… zzzzzzz!