The Journals of Everett True

Sunday May 14

More cleaning and moving around of stuff. The spare room looks like a shaken-up snow-scene from a tourist paperweight. (Sorry, Sean.) I keep discovering remnants of a distant, more opulent, more sharply focused life. Old copies of The Stranger, all crunched up to fit the space. Spice Girls figurines. Gaudy toothbrush containers. Radiators which haven't cooled down completely for three years now. A framed Jad Fair papercut - back in its pride of place on the sitting room wall. Six feet tall blue cabinets for my toy collection. (C says that it's sad, and I'm hardly going to disagree with her. She says that if only I'd had more toys to own when young, I wouldn't be like this now. Yeah well. We all spend our lives over-compensating for the follies of our youths, don't we?) Unplayed CDs. Unread comics. Several plumped-up pillows.

In the afternoon, my mother and sister Alison appear. More excuses for showing of photos and reading of diaries. We visit Tescos, way out of town, and the sight of its warehouse-style aisles cheer me momentarily - until I see the bill. Three hundred dollars! Aargh! And one can't find a decent chilli sauce or fresh salad anywhere. I buy all the ingredients to make one of my famed chicken pot pies and spend the remainder of the afternoon making same, thereby missing out on another frenzied burst of vacuuming.

J and T reappear from London, and immediately hide in J's bedroom.

In the evening, I decide it's really time I started accessing my e-mail and try to connect myself to the Internet via one of these ubiquitous free discs that shops give away over here. (The provider is free, but the phone calls most certainly are not.) Bad mistake. I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to rectify the damage that first nationwide.net, then virgin.net CD inflicts upon my computer. (The warning message when I shut down now tells me that my Volume Bitmap is Incorrect. I am seriously scared.) In the end, I succeed in having a computer that still works (sort of) - in direct contrast to the one I left behind for Jon, Which Does Not. This would be OK, except it contains about three years worth of files and correspondence which are irreplaceable.

Out the blue, Stephen Pastel calls - enthusing about (a) my writing and (b) the web site it is appearing on. Suddenly, it feels good to be back.

© Everett True 2000

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