April is The Cruellest Month....

After many moons another blog. Not because there's been nothing to say - just that the effort required to book space on the computer means I now write on the back of an envelope instead of on the back of the internet. Same difference.

So here we are five months later. In a pixilated economy, with our new best friend Obama trying to tidy it all up and re-freeze the ice caps like lime flavoured ice pops after they'd left the fridge door open. Increasingly I'm feeling like I'm in a really bad disaster movie. For instance, only last night my neighbour knocked on the door with reports of a smell of gas rising through the pavement. Stand back it's gonna blow. Soon the house was swarming with fluorescent jackets and bleeping bleepers. We'll be back in half an hour to drill up the pavement they said at 11.30 pm on a Friday night. A decided to have a bath before they switched everything off. Went to turn it on. A beer and a little look at a bicycle parts website later.......Drip drip drip. His bath had come to him. Through the kitchen ceiling next to the light socket. Stand back it's gonna blow. But no. They couldn't afford the special FX, so all that happened was we mopped the floor and the gas people drilled two tiny holes outside then drew yellow chalk round them.

Vacuuming dust coils from around drum kit in boys room I muse upon missing Trivial Pursuit cards and Teenagers Lost Watch. Recent sleuthings convince me that watch has been sold and cards have been used for roaches. Dare not mention to A who is is now the Dad from Quadrophenia despite his Irvine Welsh Glasgow years. Raise loose floorboards searching for stash and own lost marbles.

In this fickle time between winter and sun, April is chucking cold blossom on the pavement. The small children are big. And the eldest is away to the woods. A mental spring clean. A paradigm shift. Remembering always that truth is stranger than fiction. Remembering to look - but not too closely. Clean those windows.

I think I have to go. And it will be more Shawshank Redemption than The Great Escape.
(3 film - and 2 literary references in one blog indicate a winter of hibernation.)