World Without End

This is “I Met The Walrus”, a brief interview with John Lennon by a 14 year old who snuck into his hotel room in 1969. It’s been animated, and it’s extraordinarily lovely. Makes me sad and happy and bitter and sweet. Peace out. (It’s actually much better in full screen – here.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmR0V6s3NKk

My wife took the kids to meeting, and I stayed behind. I sat down for a couple of minutes before tackling the washing up – this resulted in my sleeping from 10am till almost 3pm. I daresay I needed it, but it hasn’t achieved a whole lot.
I wonder why accounts of meetings attended by other [...]

I feel helplessly bad for our nearest Big Issue seller, who’s out from 9 till 6 every day in the vicious cold. Tried to ask after her family, tell her about a job going in a cafe. Couldn’t make myself properly understood. My wife speaks a tiny bit of Romanian but not, apparently, enough. [...]

My son observed sadly that the Christmas tree in his nursery has gone. He wants it to be Christmas again. I tried to jolly him along, but I floundered for a bit looking for something else for him to look forward to. His birthday’s not till September.
My little brother’s birthday was in September too, and [...]

I catch the eye of a woman and child in the cafe. There’s something familiar and quite desperate and tired about her. I recognise something.
After a short wait it dawns. These are her last few moments of child access. She overdoes her last play and boils with hurt as her ex arrives to pick up [...]

You must understand that my family is perfect. You understand that, right? We never interrupt one another, never get cross, never fail to pursue intelligent, constructive solutions for everything. Both children were born toilet-trained, too.
Well, maybe not, but I am glad to have them. They make life nice. I am also surprised to find that [...]

Learning Gaelic is a far more powerful experience than I had expected. It’s not a language, it’s a whole culture – and a community. We sent our daughter to the city’s one Gaelic school, which raised a number of eyebrows among our friends. Most of my initial reasoning was vague: kids who grow up bilingual [...]

THING ONE
possible reasons for me getting lots of silent phone calls
1. am being stalked by serial killer
2. am being stalked by random idiot
3. am being stalked by random idiot serial killer
4. am being dialled by robot selling computer (which makes breathing sounds)
5. am calling self from the future to warn of impending catastrophe, but repeatedly [...]

There’s a side to my wife that I don’t get to see very often. It’s like living with two different people. One is a busy happy bouncy woman, full of childcare and hormones and hassles and all the usual stuff. I live with this person most of the time. She and I get on, usually.
The [...]