SUNDAY, SUNDAY...

A long Sunday with drinkers. Some just sipped, some got through bottles and some had a big glass in one hand and a big cigar in the other.
I sat for interminable hour after interminable hour resisting filling a glass - and the terrible thing is that its only wrong to have the first glass; after that you are 'definitely doing the right thing..!' - and what took you so long..!

A Dreadful Addiction...

Confronted the proprietor of a place in Hammersmith today, told him what he was doing was worse than selling crack and I didn't know how he could sleep at night - it was, of course, a second hand book shop..!

I have a whole bookcase marked, "TO BE READ BEFORE ANOTHER ONE IS EVER BOUGHT".

The endless days go on...

Had a tooth out today and, as I said on Facebook, I was sorry to see him go, we’d been chewing the fat for a long time now...

I’ve got a bike cam and my first helmet ever. I've tied the camera on the side and eventually will put my cycle diaries up...going abroad for a while!

I’m going to miss all the newspapers, especially the Evening Standard. Against that I get the company of three cats and a dog...

Say what you like about Adolf, but he knew how to do a good wedding..!

Weddings are big business nowadays - but sometimes an informal wedding under difficult circumstances, can often somehow end up with that special pizazz...! Take Hitler's; he insisted on organising it himself, not only because he was a control freak, but I suppose, after getting the Second World War so wrong, against all the odds, he wanted something right to go out on - and it did go with a certain zing.

In the morning he had his brother-in-law shot (I suppose he was trying to clear the succession), then he poisoned his dog. It was a big German Shepherd - well it wouldn't be a Polish or an Italian Shepherd, would it..? and anyway he didn't really like big dogs, actually preferred chihuahuas but Goebbels said they'd never look right on top of a Tiger tank.

Then they got married, him and Eva. It was a simple on-site civil ceremony with a local notary - had to be because even if he'd been inclined, the Russians had already turned Berlin Cathedral into a branch of Kwikfit.

Then the personal bit - and you can't argue against it as a solution to marriage apathy - he got to poison his wife and lose the war, before shooting himself! Come on! Adolf, honeymoons aren't that bad..!

And it was Fuhrer weather - a beautiful day; which says that weather as an omen isn't necessarily reliable - but the kicker was; on the confirmation of the his death - do you know the first thing everyone did. They all lit up! Yes, they passed the fags round...

It's a funny thing....

Men, the dirty lying bastards are constantly cheating on woman - ask any woman and she'll tell you this - and in more indignant detail than you might think necessary..!

Clearly it can't be a couple slappers in Slough or Wrexham taking care of all the boys, can it? There is the simple logistical problem of travel, for a start - so really it can only be with an equal number of other (local) women - unless the bastard is running two or three; which then neatly upsets the parity, MORE women than men are out there cheating...but of course, the liar isn't letting on about the other woman/women - that's it, they haven't a clue so the girls are all in the clear... Right!

In another and unassociated thought about how the women are far cleverer than men, they can multi-task while displaying a forensic intelligence that makes Sherlock look like the village idiot's dim cousin - while men; don't get me started, most of them find scratching their balls and breathing at the same time, PHD stuff..!

Funny how all these clever women can be taken in, en masse, by such a bunch of knuckle draggers...makes you think (no it doesn't..!)

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday...

Went to lunch today at the Club with an old friend, Philip Brody. He'd emailed earlier in the week saying he wanted to treat me. Anne came with her German friend Giseleau - since meeting a few years ago, they've become friends and she's over here for a week to visit Anne.

Giseleau was very happily married when at the age of thirty seven - and with no warning, her husband died. She went into decline but with a son to look after, had to go to work. And she then worked too hard, fourteen hours a day holding two jobs down until she cracked up. She been beset with mental problems ever since - but a nicer woman you would not expect to meet...

Anyway Phillip bought me lunch while I pretended to buy the two women their lunch - Anne idea; she's going to pay me back. And it was okay, three courses for eighteen pounds fifty. It was good and the conversation was pleasant and only Phillip drank a little, a glass or two of wine.

Mike and Kim were at another table out in the garden with a couple of old friends...It started to rain while we were inside at lunch and when it got less heavy, I left and cycled home.

Bought the Sunday Times on the way back and later put my feet up for half an hour after Miffi got back. She'd spent eight hours today with Clive at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital - he's dying of Parkinson's disease...Nothing on television tonight and so that's it - Sunday 5th June 2011 - another fairly featureless day.

Saturday Afternoon...

Was 'dan the club' this afternoon, drinking water and successfully pretending it was as good as wine, when Rod passed and remarked that the Derby (biggest flat horse race in the UK) was starting in a few minutes.

Went in to the Ladies Bar to watch and it was an absolutely forgettable race until the very end. Then a tall French kid pushed through the ruck of other horses, and mistaking some early fence post for the finishing line, stood bolt upright on his horse and while pulling it back, went into convulsions of triumph - and seconds later crossed the real finishing line first, still celebrating and still trying to pull the winner back!

Dear Diary 2nd June 2011

Met Mandy and Jasper at the Arts Club. I got there first to sign them in, Mandy was going to be late anyway as she was first going to the Saachi Gallery with Duncan, her new computer date. Jasper was also going to be late as he was going to a different exhibition, one of Tomasina (his wife's) late grandfather's paintings. I declined to accompany him after a (long) seconds thought. They were evidently all big abstract paintings of crystals.

I sat out in the garden - it was a nice day, and read some of the Club's newspapers - well, the Guardian because I can only read it as long as I don't buy it* and the fucking Mail because it had a headline about how American hedge fund traders had bought Britain's biggest care homes (for the elderly) company and then, after stripping it of its assets, had driven it bankrupt.

Jasper arrived first, then Mandy and eventually my girlfriend Anne. I made a joke about Anne's newly acquired weight, acquired since we got back together again, asking her was she pregnant - She wasn't amused.

Anyway the conversation got round to poor Ina Granger's funeral (Jasper had gone) and what a total cunt her husband Ian was - which then got on to the past and to Jasper's father, Tony Hawker.

We eventually all had to go, Mandy back to Brussels and Jasper to the cinema. The rest of the evening I spent in a deepish depression; either from talking about Tony (Jasper's father) and the past or from Mandy correcting everything I said - no wonder she has, despite being beautiful, trouble finding the right man - right as in having to tick every box on both sides of an A3 sheet. See the very bad pic of Mandy below, snapped on skype.

 Stopped reading *The Guardian after about fifty years, when I was finally pushed offside by a creepy New Labour columnist called Kettle, suggesting that Peter Mandelson should be the new head of the IMF. Mandelson should be doing time - for me he's the maximum reading on any public corrupt-o-meter.