JOURNAL - 2000 - MAY

29 May 2000

On Eurostar, with the battery of this portable likely to give out on me before long. I’ve worked for nearly two hours, so I suppose we must be approaching Lille. The sun is shining at the moment, but, over the last few days, there has been so much rain that my garden has been puddling. I’ve already lost my potato crop due to waterlogging, I don’t want to lose my beans and spinach and early lettuce to the same problem. This has certainly been the wettest spring I can recall, at least since moving to Elstead.

I did my calf in at volleyball about a month ago. I didn’t realise until the following Sunday - it seemed to be an injury that only revealed itself when playing. I stopped for two or three weeks. Then, last week I threw myself around so wildly (without ever saving a point) that I scraped and bruised both knees and elbows. In itself this was not unusual, my joints usually recover by the following week. This time, though, I seem to have done something horrible to my left elbow, because, if I lean, on my desk at a certain angle, a violent pain streaks through the arm. There is no pain otherwise. I wonder if I’ve chipped a bone, which is sticking into the flesh somehow, but there is no evidence apparent on looking at it. Otherwise. my general health is holding up.

My 48th birthday yesterday.

30 May

Yes, the battery did give out. I had about two hours use of the portable, all simple text writing (i.e. hardly any hard disk access). Two hours is OK, it’s worth taking it on the Eurostar trip - but it wouldn’t be much use on a transatlantic flight, or a ferry trip somewhere.

Mum got the flu last week, and wasn’t well enough to come visit. I was also afraid of picking up her bug - I can’t afford a week, let alone two, of illness before August. On Saturday evening, the night before my birthday none of us could think of anything particularly special to do. I had thought to drive to Brighton for a walk on the beach and a drive - in my new Mondeo (L reg, 80,000 miles, £3,000 quid - bought, by chance, from my ex-accountant who lives in a place called Christmas Pie) - but the weather was awful, and I couldn’t quite get up the enthusiasm for three hours driving. Instead, we drove to Petersfield and walked around the town centre in the rain for a few minutes and then came home. We ended up watching ‘Chinatown’ on TV. I’ve seen it a couple of times. I do not rate it that much. Nicholson gives a rather hollow performance I think, and although the plot is good, it is rather jaggedly put together.

On Sunday morning, Ads brought me in a cup of tea, and a

31 May

I don’t why I was cut off on 30 May. But right now I am back on Eurostar and likely to be shut down by battery failure in a few minutes. I’ve spent over an hour writing a story about ecopoints in Austria.

On Sunday morning, Ads brought

June 2000

Paul K Lyons

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