Thursday, 12 March 2020

More Strangenesses.

I was thinking earlier about how much I dislike washing things. I dislike washing the dishes. I dislike washing the car. I even dislike washing myself. I do it, of course, because I also dislike bad smells and disgusting skin conditions, but I always do it under protest.

I think this might hark back to the time when I was a baby and my father was bathing me. My mother had to snatch me out of the water because it was too hot, or so she told me once. I suspect it might have made me a little suspicious of water, so now I can add aquaphobia to my treasure chest of neuroses.

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And Bertha Rochester keeps dropping into my mind lately, insisting on being heard. I imagine somebody asking me who Bertha Rochester is, and having to explain that she’s a woman with several unconventional personality traits, not the least of which is pyromania. ‘What’s pyromania?’ I am further asked. ‘The taking of uncommon delight in setting fire to things,’ I explain, ‘most notably things which were never meant to be set fire to.’ Once I’ve got to that stage, my mind is then free to move onto other things.

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Like dreams, for example. I had another of those uncomfortable ones last night. My car broke down on a lonely road close to a wooden shack, and so I took refuge in the shack while awaiting assistance. I stood there looking out of the window at a railway track which ran alongside the road. A train came by and I saw my work colleagues going home on it. They were standing in the carriage watching me as they passed by, and waving to me sympathetically. And then I was alone again.

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I wanted to say something funny in this post but couldn’t think of anything.

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