Tuesday 21st December 1999
You have learned how to stand up on your own! Before this you had to support yourself to get up, but now you do it all by yourself, clumsy as it may be. It’s been extremely cold and we are just freezing to death in this house. I just hate going to the kitchen or bathroom. It’s been a while since you had a proper shower. I have to wait until it warms up a bit again (it should do by Christmas eve)
I had the car serviced by the mechanic at the end of the road (Andy) early last week. On Saturday I went to do the weekly checks (oil, antifreeze, leaks etc) and the coolant container was completely empty. I just assumed that he had put antifreeze in the screen washer container and forgot to fill up the coolant (I was not happy as he had used all my antifreeze bottle). Then I noticed a leak on one of the hoses (one which was indirectly connected to the coolant). I then drove to Safeway’s on Sunday and stopped at the petrol station to fill up. I opened the bonnet to check how the leak was doing, and as I opened it, a load of steam came up. Not only that but the hose was leaking like mad! I was really pissed up with Andy, as he just made the car worse (There were no leaks before!). On Monday morning I went to see him (R. is working for 4 days this week doing a web consultancy job for a building materials firm! He’s getting paid lots of money for it). The coolant container was empty again so Andy tightened the retaining clip. He said I might need a new hose, but if I do I am going somewhere else to do it, as it was fine before he touched it! I haven’t had a chance to drive the car yet to check whether the leak is gone or not. It’s so cold I’m scared of black ice. There is frost inside the car, on the windscreen!
Well, it’s nearly the year 2000 and the whole world seems to have lost the plot. There are people everywhere speculating on how the world as we know it is going to end. There are the traditionalists who are waiting for the four horses of the apocalypse. There are the scientists who are divided between whether we will be hit by a comet or whether we will just self-destruct through atomic weapons. There are the naturalists, who see the end in the form of global warming: a slow, painful destruction. I’m somewhere between a comet hitting the earth and the global warming options. Although I really wish I didn’t have knowledge of any of the possibilities, as if and when the time comes there will be absolutely nothing I will be able to do, or anybody else (unless you really think that what happened in Armageddon was really possible).
As for global warming, I don’t see anything being done about that; just a lot of talk and not much action; and it’s getting too late to reverse the destruction caused already. Why am I even talking about this? Well, I am a very neurotic person. I am always worried about everything. Always trying to be ten steps ahead of myself, trying to think of all the possibilities. I wish I wasn’t that way, always scared, waiting for the worse to happen. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s a disease of modern times. I know other people feel the same way, quite a few, but most just hide it. I don’t! Always expect the worse and hope for the best. Given my past I should always expect the best. Nothing really bad has ever happened to me and I’ve always managed to get through whatever was thrown at me. I should have learned that whatever happens I will be ok. Somehow I haven’t. What’s happened to have made me this way? Well, I’m not sure, but I know that TV has had a great influence. All the bad things on the news (murders, fires, floods, accidents), all the violence on the movies, rapists, psychopaths, paedophiles. All the horror of this world that gets feed into my brain (and everyone else’s) on a daily basis. It is just so hard to be an optimist when everything around seems to be crumbling down. I am trying to be happy here but I can’t ignore what is going on around me, unfortunately. Other people can, and how do they do it? Are they just heartless or clever? Have they realised that there is nothing they can do about anything and convinced themselves that nothing will ever affect them?
Anyway, last night Francis decided to put a carpet on his bedroom and some shelves up on his walls. Unlike most normal people he decided to do it until way past 11 o’clock at night. Miraculously you didn’t wake up. R. asked Francis to close his bedroom door as the noise was travelling all the way up, but still there was the vibration. This morning, at around 11 in the morning, there were some really loud bangs on the door. It sounded like the police or the bailiffs. I was really annoyed as there was no need for all that. I opened the door and was faced with an exalted old man, holding a massive umbrella. He asked me who was it that lived in the bedroom next to the kitchen. I told him it was Francis. He asked me to tell him not to drill stuff so late at night. I told him I had but he just ignored me. He then asked me to ask Francis to go and see him (he lives on number 26A, Mr. Jones). I said I would do it with pleasure, as he might take more notice of his neighbours than he does of his flatmates. To make it worse Francis just threw the leftover of the carpet that he didn’t use on top of our bins, in a way that nobody can even put rubbish in the bins. How selfish is that? He earns enough money to live somewhere else (our housing association is meant for people who cannot afford conventional housing) and he treats the place like a dump. Now Evelyne has rescued the carpet and is laying it out on the hallway. She is doing something for the whole house, not just herself. A concept Francis has no understanding of.