Jottings on My Evening.

I find it a little odd that a man of my advancing years should spend an hour and a half sitting in a chilly room watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and half the Richard Gere/Winona Ryder movie Autumn in New York. It’s probably because I have nothing better to do, although I’m sure I could find better things to do if only I could be bothered to either think what they might be or do them in the event of coming up with something.

Buffy has no jokes in it at the moment. It’s all deep, dark, disturbing, dramatic stuff. I suppose the sight of knights in mail tunics chasing a camper van along a dusty road like Cherokees riding down a covered wagon was maybe intended to be humorous, but it didn’t fit the general mood and was merely irritating.

As for the film, Mel mentioned it recently for some reason, and since I have a generally good opinion of both Gere and Ryder, and since the plot echoes a couple of episodes my own life, I thought I’d give it a go. Mel didn’t think it would be to my taste, and after watching half of it I’m erring on the side of agreeing with her.

But I did have a visit tonight from Tennessee and wondered whether it was from my old correspondent, Andrea (aka Peanut.) I liked Andrea. She had an engaging personality and gave good advice on how to get into hard drugs (which I never took, much to my shame.) Her husband shot her, you know (with a gun), and so Andrea has the distinction of being the only person I’ve ever known who was shot with a gun (or anything else for that matter.) He didn’t mean to, of course; it was an accident, so I didn’t hold it against him.

I can’t get warm tonight. It might be because the house feels more frigid than ever, or it might be that my heat control system is developing cracks just like everything else in this increasingly dysfunctional world. (Mrs Murphy expressed the opinion to me this morning that the western world is heading for some sort of apocalypse. I didn’t disagree.)

I just had a hot mug of coffee from a freshly opened pack. Coffee is really scrummy when it’s fresh, isn’t it? I’m startlingly apathetic at the moment.