Monday, August 11
Playing Catch-Up
Righty, my computer (and by "my" I mean the family computer with Internet) has been an absolute bastard the past couple of days, and seems to coincide its frequent crashes with the times that I really want to do something on the Internet. Such as posting to my blog for all of you, my lovely readers. The preceding post is something I wrote on Sunday afternoon but hadn't posted due to the fucking bastard stupid computer. It's a little review / series of thoughts on a book I finished reading that day.
On the subject of books, I'm torn as to what to read next. I've picked up my copy of The Divine Comedy by Dante and read the introduction, which is another one of those ultra-scholarly essays on the text itself. This particular introduction, however, isn't as bad as the one which accompanies my copy of The Communist Manifesto, and it certainly describes well the context in which Dante was writing. My other choice is Made In America by Bill Bryson. I love Bryson's books, and I read this book some time ago. I saw it lying around in my kitchen today, which I guess means somebody else in my family is reading it. I read a couple of chapters whilst watching the cricket on TV, and really got into it. The history of language is something which interests me anyway, and I enjoy the style Bryson employs, so I reckon The Divine Comedy will have to wait until the end of the week...
In other news, it goes from bad to slightly better to worse with my parents. Things had improved since Wednesday's events, and we were at least on civil speaking terms during Friday and Saturday. Mainly because they weren't here for most of Saturday. They were out at a friend's house or something, and I had the house to myself. Sunbathing and watching football all day is a good thing. They went out that night too, to some fireworks / lasers / classical music outdoor thingy, so I inivited a few mates round for a couple of beers before heading out to the pubs. Everything was going fine, all having a good laugh and probably being a little too loud for the neighbours, but nothing majorly wrong.
That was, until I went upstairs to close all of the windows before we left. When I came back down, everyone was crowding round the little water fountain that stands on the patio in my back garden. Somebody (Jy!) had got some washing-up liquid from one of my cupboards and put some into the fountain. It wasn't foaming a huge amount, but there was some coming out. I switched it off, went out and thought nothing more of it. Then I got a txt from my sister around midnight to say "you're in so much trouble about the fountain." I was pretty drunk by this point, so I wasn't overly bothered.
Sunday morning rolled around, and I woke about 9am to hear from out of my window my Mum and Dad talking about how angry they were with me and so on and so forth. I was too tired and hungover to bother with them at that point, so I went back to sleep. By the time I eventually got up, my Dad had gone to work. I should explain here that my Dad has the kind of job where he's away for 10 days, then back for a week, ad infinitum. My Mum I can cope with, but I couldn't be bothered to have my Dad moaning at me again.
The upshot of it all is that I'm basically screwed. The rest of my family are off on holiday for a fortnight fairly soon, leaving me alone in the house. This has never been a problem before, and I always keep the house tidy / intact for their return. This time, they were quite happy for me to be planning a few barbecues and having a few mates round for some beers whilst they were away. They were quite aware that I was going to be doing this, and didn't have a problem with it. NOW, they've told my neighbours to keep an eye on the house, and to phone my uncle if there is any more than about 1 other person in the house. I'm basically confined to a hermit-like existence for that fortnight. And all because of one of my mates thinking that pouring washing-up liquid into the fountain would be funny. Bastard!
