The days are the same as they’ve been for these many years – walks, shopping , housework, gardening, paperwork, showers, cooking – you know, the normal sort of things which normally occupy the waking moments of normal, well-balanced recluses. But then the darkness falls, the curtains get closed, the meal gets eaten, the dishes get washed, the floor gets its daily vacuum, and I settle down to the fun time.
It starts with an episode of Buffy. I’m now into the final season and it’s becoming unremittingly dark, dangerous and debilitating. Then it’s onto the latest section of the movie Remains of the Day based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. Like all Ishiguro’s works – at least the three I’m familiar with – it explores the tragedy of unrealised potential which evokes a frustrating sense of the downbeat and the agonising question of what might have been. Eventually it’s all change again when I invoke the spirit of YouTube and watch a 50-minute episode of Jeeves and Wooster, in which a group of feckless and hopelessly incompetent rich young things become embroiled in romantic and other difficulties which have to be resolved by the erudite and resourceful Jeeves the butler. (Those familiar with The Admirable Crichton will get the general picture.) Fun at last, but frothy fun in stark contrast with what has gone before.
Honestly, I don’t know what world I’m living in at the moment, so how on earth can I apply myself to its issues, injustices and idiosyncrasies?
I think I need a night nurse, but how do I go about acquiring one of those? All the average recluse is likely to attract is a visit from some wandering succubus which would be both unwelcome and ultimately pointless given my lamentable physical condition.
Roll on the balmy summer evenings, I say, when I can replace all this with tea and biscuits on the terrace. If I’m still here, that is.
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