First…the coat in all its glory!

I have hardly had it off, for the weather has been crisp and cold and it’s been perfect. I just love it. I wore it to see the literary agent who is looking at ‘the trapeze’, I left her with ‘the highland games’ and she wants to read the Banyan Tree…she says she wants to hear my ‘voice’ and it’s weird because in each book I sound completely different. I am just a confused person trying to get out. I think she was dazzled by my coat though.

My basal cell carcinoma was chopped out, by a jolly doctor with limited sewing skills….the plastic guy who did my face did 12 tiny stitches that left an almost invisible scar…this guy did 4 whoppers in blue thread. Hmmm. He also zapped another ‘old friend’ with just a quick slice…I nearly had a canary…it wasn’t even life threatening (as indeed the bcc isn’t either)…but a warning before he cuts is always good I would have thought!

Final humiliation this week was kneeling on a massage table in an outsize man’s running shorts, which reached nearly to my calves. I was being taught some mighty exercises to help my absentee core muscles to perform, so that they can begin supporting my spine, with all the dodgy discs. I see King Abdulla of Saudi Arabia is suffering a similar affliction. I leave all my vanity and self esteem on the dreich pavement, as I go in to meet my trendy young and very attractive physio. He exudes ripples of exuberance and health, as though he had just attacked the summit of Everest. Talking of which, I am very proud of Mike and Tod who have just had a brilliant expedition to the said mountain…big wows.

Friday night began as any other…full tummy and TV, curtains drawn, soft lights and the ‘channel changer’ at hand. Imagine the surprise to find Leonard Cohen in concert for nearly three hours. Unseen footage, gleaned from 4,000 cuts from his tour in 1971-2 and then followed with his world tour in 2009…I was in heaven…and I hummed to Suzanne, and remembered the angst of those growing up years with the Songs of Love and Hate. Seeing him now, aged 76, so classy, with trilby and suit and no tie, his back up singers in sedate waist coats and not a sequin in sight…his music has touched us all, his words echo many of our hopes and fears and I was so sad, seeing his progression to an ‘old’ guy yet I felt so proud of him. Yesterday I felt flat, maybe all those ‘Birds on a Wire’ or ‘Sisters of Mercy’ ‘So long, Marianne’ and the ‘Chelsea Hotel’ got to me…and the rain soaked my duffle coat and I felt lost in a world of  yesteryear. Sniff.

Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free

BUT we have a royal wedding to lift us all! Oh the joys of it all, and our news is full of rings and dresses and venues. So sad to see the memorabilia from previous occasions…Fergie and Andrew’s thimbles are selling on ebay for 25p. WHO would buy them? Actually I find sewing with a thimble very constraining, not to mention annoying.

Bought the most beautiful sofa yesterday from an antique shop…its Victorian, and recently been refurbished, it even smells new with new feathers and horse hair or whatever (can’t imagine how they get a lot of hair from a horse…would it be the tail? It must need a lot of tails.)  It sat in all its blue glory amidst gilt mirrors and ancient clippers and schooners and a giant aeroplane propeller…the owners have their own passions it would seem. Well it’s to arrive on Monday evening, and I am very excited about that….I am now officially a BLUE person…I am going through my blue period, (as Jilly Cooper once stated. HA HA!)

Just a final thank you to daughter, Natasha.I found two of her pastel studies of apes that she did once upon a time. I popped them into frames…AWESOME!  Much more value than Fergie’s thimble I would say!

Now I think I will go and listen to ‘I’m your man’.