Had to drive my partner to get something from a different town. I'd already got the dog food. Yesterday kipper and his two dogs had stayed over the night which was good for Dook. Shep husks are pretty basic dogs. Not far off wolves so they lack a lot of dog skills. In a group of mixed dogs they want to be leader of the pack or fight it out. Our sleep,was only broken by a single fight on the stairs.Dook is the hardest if the daftest of them all. We took them up the fields and let them run wild, tumbling over each other at speed as our boots and trousers soaked .
Back home I'd promised a freind a lift so kipper was gone by the time I got in. I knocked myself out for the long day ahead. Various favours meant I didn't get loaded up till after twelve and drove to London , already tired.
I recognised the artist who answered the door from previous jobs who looked none plus send at a joiner arriving to unload stuff for a days work at 4pm. After some negotiation we broke the ice and I unloaded. A fireplace top, a tiny job that due to scale had somehow found its way to the back of my priority cupboard needed completion so the painter could complete his job. Them London tradesmen, arrive at 8am but they're off home by three. So I hope I left it all fit and ready for him.
As the artist wanted to be out by 6 I just unloaded all the component pieces of a bookcase in French oak. I'll assemble it in a week once the carver who, despite my leaving messages and generally coaxing him on has failed to deliver the top detailing. Mastercraftsmen sometimes permit themselves a more flexible adherence to punctuality.
The drive back was a smooth 3.5 hours. Dropping in to collect some bits for a freind.
No rest for the wicked so I knocked myself out with a pair of beers only to hear my partner shout up at threeish that her surrogate mother had died. She'd been on the way for some time but the shock is never diminished. I got up to comfort her and me, her and the dog took a drive to special places. The night roads empty somehow seem right. It'll take time. She visited her up in Inverness in a psychic imperative a couple of weeks back. A series of strokes and now Midge is gone. Original hippy, Isle of Wight festival, saw Hendrix, freind of peter Gabriel and a thousand other tales. I only knew her in her later years but she had lived a condensed life. She was loved.
Where she came in to our story, well my girlfriends, was as a saviour on several occasions and as a surrogate mother. Some teenagers and mothers just can't get on and my girlfriend found herself homeless. Sleeping in barns, then living in a tent, trying to complete her schooling. Her life could have been so different if she could have found a way to bridge that gap from school to college because she surely had the talent. These years of homelessness were brought to an end when some New Age travellers took her under their wing and taught her how to build benders, scrapping and other ways of getting by on nowt. Sadly drugs were creeping in to what was once the new Albion. Thatchers war on these medieval brigands saw their caravans smashed up and torn apart. It was from here that Midge took my girlfriend in and tried to educate her in the rights and wrongs of hippydom.
I won't go on as these aren't my stories. But it's now 6.30 and were awake and drinking tea. Sleep. Please bring us a few hours oblivion soon.
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