Read Online Love for Now by Anthony Wilson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Anthony Wilson
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Tats-type panic over my keys, suddenly missing. They were at the library all along and I thanked them for saving my life, which is still the kind of thing I am allowed to say, even without thinking.
Bumped into Vince and Fiona in town. Vince said ‘You looked a bit gaunt this week, I thought. I nearly ran you over to finish the job off.’ Is it just me or is doctor-banter different class?
Sim and Is came by on Friday, stayed about an hour, then left. We sat a few minutes in the sitting room before steppingup to the café for ‘the best lasagne I have ever tasted.’ It’s lovely being with them, their warm companionable universe where nothing is really harmful, or too much trouble.
Sim told a great story, which could very well be made up, ‘from my days in telly’, when he got to sit in on the overdubbing into Arabic of the Eric Sykes film
The Plank
. The plot (‘It either makes you laugh or it doesn’t,’ interrupted Is. ‘It doesn’t for me.’) apparently involves Eric Sykes walking through a village with a plank on his shoulder. Hilarity ensues every time he turns to talk to someone. Many windows are smashed also. ‘We laughed so much in the booth, my friend and I, we got chucked out. This was in Beirut, you know. It’s all digital now.’ ‘But doesn’t someone going ‘aah!’ when they’ve been hit by the plank sound more or less the same in Arabic?’
‘No. In Arabic it’s more of an ‘urgh!’ To his credit he said this with the straightest of faces.
Monday 6 March
Sitting up on the bed admiring the sunlight and feeling slightly headachy after my mid-morning coffee.
A poor night, waking at 3. I crept into the telly room and watched French football (PSG vs. Marseille). I did more or less the same on Saturday night, which was a toss up between boxing,
Conan the Barbarian
, weak comedy on Channel 4 and a John Mills Black-and-White where every accent was Mr Chulmley-Warner. I flicked between a dour lower-billed fight and the weak comedy, whose point was to make fun of rap music. A bit of an open goal, that, but you have to remember, it’s post-pub, raging-munchies telly, so showing 50 Cent videos and asking archly ‘Does rapping make you attractive?’ is probably all you need to do to be thought of as incisively hilarious.
I switched to a documentary about volunteering at Glastonbury. They followed four young people, all doing their bit for, variously, Greenpeace (running a Free Love i.e. BlindDate service), Water Aid (‘Flushing out Poverty’), Oxfam and the hospital tent (‘After the festival Jamie also signed up to do Reading’). They all looked sunburnt and very attractive. The Oxfam-guy was a steward on Gate 7, about a mile from the main action. One of his jobs was to bring tea out to his colleagues on the perimeter fence, then relieve them, at dawn. The camera expertly sat back as they swapped stories of people trying to get in brandishing knives. ‘I was like woah, man!’ He held his hands up, palms out, in front of him. ‘You know, like, we don’t need that kind of trouble.’ ‘Did they get nicked?’ ‘Yeh, the police piled in and got him,’ he shrugged.
Next up was another volunteer-fest, telling two very different stories of confident Caroline and camera-shy Carl. Caroline (have a guess) was blonde, wore skimpy clothes and (guess what) got to massage people (really) in an occupational therapy ward in the gloomy European backwater of Barcelona. Cue lots of shots of her cooking in her flat and clapping along to her housemates’ guitar playing. Carl ‘had a number of issues at home’ so got to work on a Norwegian commune with disabled people. ‘They get you doing all sorts,’ he sniffed. ‘Cooking, cleaning, you know. But it’s the wood chopping I’m best at. I build, you know. By the end of the day I’ve built a stack of wood and that makes me feel I’ve accomplished something. It’s a good feeling.’
I couldn’t decide who this was aimed at.
Bumped into Vince and Fiona in town. Vince said ‘You looked a bit gaunt this week, I thought. I nearly ran you over to finish the job off.’ Is it just me or is doctor-banter different class?
Sim and Is came by on Friday, stayed about an hour, then left. We sat a few minutes in the sitting room before steppingup to the café for ‘the best lasagne I have ever tasted.’ It’s lovely being with them, their warm companionable universe where nothing is really harmful, or too much trouble.
Sim told a great story, which could very well be made up, ‘from my days in telly’, when he got to sit in on the overdubbing into Arabic of the Eric Sykes film
The Plank
. The plot (‘It either makes you laugh or it doesn’t,’ interrupted Is. ‘It doesn’t for me.’) apparently involves Eric Sykes walking through a village with a plank on his shoulder. Hilarity ensues every time he turns to talk to someone. Many windows are smashed also. ‘We laughed so much in the booth, my friend and I, we got chucked out. This was in Beirut, you know. It’s all digital now.’ ‘But doesn’t someone going ‘aah!’ when they’ve been hit by the plank sound more or less the same in Arabic?’
‘No. In Arabic it’s more of an ‘urgh!’ To his credit he said this with the straightest of faces.
Monday 6 March
Sitting up on the bed admiring the sunlight and feeling slightly headachy after my mid-morning coffee.
A poor night, waking at 3. I crept into the telly room and watched French football (PSG vs. Marseille). I did more or less the same on Saturday night, which was a toss up between boxing,
Conan the Barbarian
, weak comedy on Channel 4 and a John Mills Black-and-White where every accent was Mr Chulmley-Warner. I flicked between a dour lower-billed fight and the weak comedy, whose point was to make fun of rap music. A bit of an open goal, that, but you have to remember, it’s post-pub, raging-munchies telly, so showing 50 Cent videos and asking archly ‘Does rapping make you attractive?’ is probably all you need to do to be thought of as incisively hilarious.
I switched to a documentary about volunteering at Glastonbury. They followed four young people, all doing their bit for, variously, Greenpeace (running a Free Love i.e. BlindDate service), Water Aid (‘Flushing out Poverty’), Oxfam and the hospital tent (‘After the festival Jamie also signed up to do Reading’). They all looked sunburnt and very attractive. The Oxfam-guy was a steward on Gate 7, about a mile from the main action. One of his jobs was to bring tea out to his colleagues on the perimeter fence, then relieve them, at dawn. The camera expertly sat back as they swapped stories of people trying to get in brandishing knives. ‘I was like woah, man!’ He held his hands up, palms out, in front of him. ‘You know, like, we don’t need that kind of trouble.’ ‘Did they get nicked?’ ‘Yeh, the police piled in and got him,’ he shrugged.
Next up was another volunteer-fest, telling two very different stories of confident Caroline and camera-shy Carl. Caroline (have a guess) was blonde, wore skimpy clothes and (guess what) got to massage people (really) in an occupational therapy ward in the gloomy European backwater of Barcelona. Cue lots of shots of her cooking in her flat and clapping along to her housemates’ guitar playing. Carl ‘had a number of issues at home’ so got to work on a Norwegian commune with disabled people. ‘They get you doing all sorts,’ he sniffed. ‘Cooking, cleaning, you know. But it’s the wood chopping I’m best at. I build, you know. By the end of the day I’ve built a stack of wood and that makes me feel I’ve accomplished something. It’s a good feeling.’
I couldn’t decide who this was aimed at.
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