The last few days have passed in something that could loosely be described as a confused fug. George realised during the middle of last week that we had actually managed to miss our second Wedding anniversary (technically, it’s the anniversary of us getting married in Gretna Green before our actual wedding in October), so we spent Sunday having an impromptu belated celebration (after I had gone to see STORMBREAKER, which essentially played like an Enid Blyton version of James Bond. It’s not dreadful, but neither is it particularly outstanding…) where we ate like kings and watched possibly the loopiest Wedding Anniversary double bill we could manage- the beautiful strangeness of MULHOLLAND DRIVE, followed up by the magnificent popcorn fun of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN. I then, rather daftly, managed to screw things up mercilessly on Monday by, essentially, getting worked up about something and peeking at some of George’s mail without asking her. I have what could be liberally described as ‘trust issues’, and after telling George what had happenned, getting upset and apologising profusely, I did what seemed like the sensible response. I baked a cake, iced it, and left it ready for her when she came home from work. She was terribly happy and very pleased, and it was only later that I fully cottonned onto the fact that (a) George is trying to lose weight at the moment, and (b) if she eats too much flour-or-bread related products, she ends up feeling ill as she has a problem with wheat. Still, it’s the thought that counts… (At least, I hope it is…)

I’m now counting down the hours. At twelve o’clock tomorrow, I hop on a train. I get to Dad’s at about five o’clock, I’ll get an intensive evening of briefing about the entire house and what to do in case of a meteor strike, and then at five o’clock the next morning, he, Linda and Tom head off to New Zealand, and I’m on my own for the next twenty six days. The mind boggles. Whatever happens though, I am not wasting this opportunity, and I’ll try to keep this blog as up-to-date as possible on my strange hermitage in the wilderness.

I’m discovering some of the delights of YouTube- including the fact that there’s no limit to the kind of strange stuff you can find. In particular, there’s this wonderfully strange video to Portishead’s song “All Mine”, which I was almost certain that I’d dreamed. The low quality means you don’t quite get the full effect of the blurry, sixties-style live broadcast video look, but there’s still something seriously unsettling about it, like a transmission from a very concerning parallel universe.