My holiday pretty much starts here, although there are bits and pieces to get on with in the week and I am going to be giving some thought to future projects, but I've only got one brief gig on Tuesday and am going to make sure I get some time to read, relax and exercise.
I went out for a run this afternoon and my fitness levels are definitely on the up as I managed my six and a half mile run with reasonable ease. I managed to read a book at the same time, kind of, by listening to an audio book of Frankenstein. I wasn't sure this would pump me up enough to keep me running, but it largely worked at distracting me from what I was doing. And I could pretend I was running away from the monster as I went. I don't think I have read this book before and I was quite surprised how quickly the demonic creature was created, with little explanation (and of course no bolts through the neck). I guess I got around about halfway through the book and enjoyed the way that Frankenstein is putting all the guilt for the monster's crimes on his devilish creation. But I guess he knows it is his fault really and he was a bit dumb thinking it was good that the monster just disappears as soon as it is created. But in the case of the woman hanged for the crime that is entirely Frankenstein's culpability. He could have stepped in and exonerated her, but didn't want people to know about the crime against God that he has himself perpetuated. It seems a bit odd that he so quickly turns against his creation and also the narrative is a bit half-arsed in places, rushing on a bit quickly (didn't she write this pretty quickly though?) and although the Monster doesn't understand how his senses work at times, he does know that he should put on clothes.
And of course I am only halfway through at the moment, so who knows what will happen next. It isn't like the Munsters made out anyway.
Tonight I made another attempt to tidy up my attic and make it a fit place to work. It's hard to get everything in place and there's loads of stuff I should chuck out, but I am too sentimental. My first electric razor (a Remington) is up there. I was going to put it in the bin but it seemed wrong to. I couldn't quite work out why. Similarly I came across a box of old cassette tapes, most if not all of which I have on my iPod. Yet still they held too many memories to be binned, even though I doubt they will ever be listened to again. There are very few of them - I didn't like music that much back in the mid to late 80s, but they remind me of college and school and hey, they don't take up much space. I will leave them to be chucked out by a less sentimental older me, or by the people who clear my house when I am dead.
I also found a box of photographs, which just like cassettes seem like a thing of the past, though most of these covered the decade of the 90s (before then I would fastidiously put my photos in albums) and although a few are from the early 2000s after about 2001 I clearly got a digital camera. It is strange and sad and slightly wonderful to look through this random jumble of pictures. But disconcerting when all order is lost. And terrifying to realise how long has passed since some of them were taken. My weight fluctuates wildly - and for all those of you who think I have got fat I was properly fat in the year 2000 - my face is like a balloon. But it was bitter/sweet but mainly sweet to look at the younger me, to think what a twat I was mostly all of the time (and alas still am) how little I knew, how much life washed over me, how little I was aware of how quickly it would pass. Lost loves smile out at me, babies have become adults, a few people are no longer with us. Perhaps the oddest thing though are the photos of me laughing with people that I no longer have any recollection of.
It seems like another lifetime that happened to a different person, but my life has been a lucky one and most of it makes me smile, if a little wistfully.
There were a few great shots, but the one I liked most is a photo of me and my mum which is quite badly composed - the angle makes it hard to tell who is wearing the rucksack and we look like a strange two headed creature from the angle that my dad has taken it. But the expressions on our faces are wonderful. It is taken at Bristol Airport in June 1986 and shows us looking out on to the runway. I am about to get on a plane which will take me to American where I was going to spend the summer working on a summer camp. I am 18, my mum a youthful looking 48. It's not the first time I had been away from home, as it was towards the end of a year off that had seen me hitchhiking round the UK and interrailing round Europe, but it's the first time (I think ever) that I was going in a plane and the furthest I would ever be away from home and in this moment where we are both caught off guard, lost in our own thoughts you can see my trepidation and fear and my mother's awareness that her youngest son is now ostensibly a man and the nest is empty.
It's taken me a quarter of a century to see this and understand what secrets this unexceptional and yet amazing photo holds.
And then there's me about 2 years later (I think) holding my nephew and godson Andrew proudly in my arms. How can he have changed from that to the hulking, glass smashing idiot that he now is?
Our lives wash over us like the tide and we realise too late how ephemeral it all is. But, oh... those summer nights.
