LAZYBONES

You may have noticed – although you probably didn’t – that nothing much new was created in Lesser Blogfordshire over the weekend. You might have thought that was because there was nothing new to tell, and, to a certain extent, you may even be right about that but, the sad truth is, it was less to do with that and more because I appear to have become a right old lazybones at the weekend recently.

I could make countless excuses about the close proximity of the games in the recent test match series devouring consecutive weekends and distracting me and, to a certain extent, that’s even slightly true, but I have approached several recent weekends full of intent to do the many things that really need doing about Blogfordshire Towers, but, when the crunch has actually come, lazing about doing very little has become the option of choice…

(“That’s like hypnotizing chickens…”)

It’s not as if I didn’t get up early or anything. At the crack of dawn I was rattling about before settling down for a bit of telly, and then I staggered on upstairs with the obligatory cup of tea, hit the mattress, switched the radio to “T.M.S.” and pretty much stayed put for the rest of the day, even dozing off from time to time, just to complete this picture of indolence.

(“Of course I’ve had it in the ear before…”)

Against my better judgment, Sunday followed pretty much the same pattern, too. I mean, I did manage to actually get dressed, and do some washing up, and we did manage to head over to the supermarket to do the weekly shop, but once we were home and the coffees and pastries had been devoured, “T.M.S.” was once again booted up, and another weekend evaporated.

At least Sunday saw another paperback vanish from the “still to read” pile, and I did manage to entertain myself by watching the bipolar weather front swing back and forth from glorious sunshine of the “could be hang out some washing to dry?” variety to horizontal monsoons every twenty minutes or so meaning that I got to wave the teffalone out of the window every so often and photograph the latest cloud coverage for my records…

Yes - A thousand and one pictures of clouds. What on earth would I need those for…?

I really don’t know where this persistent torpor has come from. There are those that will tell me that it’s a perfectly natural reaction to everything that’s happened in recent years, and that me referring to it as “lazy” is just because I was brought up to feel guilty about everything, when really I am badly in need of some proper rest.

But it’s hard to explain the general sense of fuzziness in my brain, or the strange sense of otherness I’m currently feeling, not least because I’m sensing that everyone else I know are getting their lives sorted out whilst I still seem to be staggering on aimlessly and without any true sense of purpose or achievement.

And then, of course, there’s that other thing. The melancholic malaise which accompanies the last Test Match of an English summer. When that last ball is bowled at the Oval and the happy tones of “Soul Limbo” fade away for the last time, there’s the definite sense of an ending, one which has come far earlier this year because of some damned weird scheduling, but still brings that sense of finality along with it, even though it’s far earlier than it would normally be.

If the last test is over, can Christmas be far behind…?

“Bah!” and, indeed (if I may be so bold) “Humbug!”

(“Lust for life… lust for life…”)