About nothing much in particular.

Posted by Pointman on August 27, 2017 · 13 Comments 

This article is going to be about absolutely bugger all, so you read on at your own risk of wasting your own time. My woman has gone off with her sisters for a long August bank holiday weekend which is about keeping what the Irish call the month’s mind after the death of a love one.

They have so many childhood memories of their last uncle, who was a fine man, I’d feel like an intruder. I’ve seen very distant strangers nobody’d ever heard of turn up at funerals or a month’s mind. I never liked them to appear at the wake of ones I truly loved. There was always a sniff of scroungers, thieves in the house or will contesters about them.

It’s formal mourning ritual that’s a thing that happens in Ireland, which is a luxury I’ve never had. People just die on me and I get slowly and deliberately drunk while writing out details of my love for them while it’s red and raw. They tend to go into the ground in cardboard coffins the county has paid for. That seems to be the fate of the brave ones who won’t compromise.

There’s a lot of anger there because I always feel they’ve betrayed me by leaving me alone. Such pieces rarely get published. It means something to me, so I can never take the anger out of it for a blog. I allow myself a few sherberts at the wake and know from the non-recognition of the stories by the strangers, they never knew him at all, so my anger stage of loss can pop out very easily, which is not a good thing for a grieving family.

He had a good long run and was in my experience a gentle and kind man who deserved the honour. There was an element of strictly strictly girly stuff about them all getting together to reminisce, so I’ve left to their own devices. A man who’s been married to a woman for a lot of decades should know well when it’s appropriate to retire from the field, as should she to be generous enough to know your reasons without pushing it into some rubbish about endangering such an old firm relationship.

That’s two weekends on the trot which I think is a little selfish of her. I get to do useless things like clean out my wallet for want of anything better to do, which I still think of it as my escape kit. Anything with money in it is always useful.

There’s nothing more useless than an already completed emergency crossword.

Mostly it’s fairly baroque currency but you never know, it might be useful one day. I’m the sorta guy who has a lot of plan B’s. I’ve seen plan A fail so many times. Plan B’s can be useful at times. It’s like that saying about having a gun. Nobody wants them around the house, but once in a while they can come in quite handy.

The nice thing is I get to do the naughty things like playing Wagner full vol amp 11. Everybody in the house except me hates Wagner. I’ve never understood that or perhaps it’s just me. They think of it as all a bit Nazi, but it’s just lovely, so there you go. It’s related to me going languages which my wife hates. Suddenly you’re a foreigner to me, which she doesn’t quite like. She doesn’t like the immediate transition, without some sort of pause. I try not to do that around her on holidays.

Perversely, instead of Wagner, I find myself listening to Brahms, a much neglected composer. Go figure. I know a little too much about him. But I discover a new pianist Helene Grimaud. She’s actually very good indeed. Pretty damn good actually.

I once knew a woman who was a fine pianist who’d at some point started to mouth words that were only there for her. It was one of those extras women bring to the musician’s banquet which makes you fall in love with them. Such beautiful creatures. I’m sure men have certain virtues, but women tend to walk it when it comes to stuff like that.

So talented and lost and you love her all the more so. It’ll be the background to this weekend I think. Brahms first piano. Not commonly thought to be one of his finer efforts. He was more of a violinist as Clara Schumann knew.

She is of course horrendously talented, the concentrated professionalism it takes to play one hour of a Brahms piano concerto is well beyond the call of duty. The first piano is not normally considered to be one of his best efforts, he was a violinist after all. That little smile she gives at the end of the hour-long ordeal is quite revealing. She’s more in her zone with Rachmaninov. She slays the second piano but that’s a personal opinion I know.

I’m listening to Catherine Ashcroft playing the eillen pipes. Only the Irish could invent such a horrifically over complicated instrument. Only a ginger could play it with such intensity. Red headed women are a very dangerous breed. You go near them to your delight or peril. I stepped out with one once. Never again. She lived up to their reputation and was a bloody nightmare, but at the same time she had something about her, if only the makings of a jazzy weekend.

Anyway, I’ve been living on takeaways and micro-nukeable food left by my wife. Lasagne with thinly sliced Jalipino peppers artfully concealed under the upper crust is both a delight and a pleasure. That’s her own particularly addition to the dish, but she’s so freestyle when it comes to cooking, you get used to such surprises.

Any man out there should consider it to be a pleasure in finding stuff in the fridge which is a mere 60 seconds on 100% microwave power away from an easy and delicious fork in meal, as you watch some crappy war movie illegal download.

©Pointman

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