Cold War

Well the sun has just come out and I'm feeling better already. I have to say that (as well as recent online and offline events) this constant windy, rainy grey weather we have been having over the last few weeks - months! - of the summer has been getting me down.

I saw on a news item yesterday than 'forecasters' - who ever the hell they are - are predicting heavy snow for the UK starting in October. I should really take this with the proverbial pinch in the same way that I do when some goon predicts a long, hot summer as they do every year, but I have a sneaking feeling that the weather is being affected by the economic climate as well.

I have been using every valid and invalid excuse in the book not to finish the horrendous work I am currently engaged in which can only be done outside in clement conditions, and now every other mason I know that is not in prison has run out of excuses as well, so I am on my own again.

It - now I look back on it - has been an absolutely horrible few weeks for me psychologically, but not as horrible as it has been for others if I am honest. I will soon be able to tuck myself away in a cosy workshop and continue with some very pleasant and gentle carving, which includes translating the above motif into a six-foot wide, stone panel for a huge fire-surround in the 17th century style - once I have got this other bloody job out of the way.

I asked H.I. to make a drawing like this for me, and left her some examples of the period genre to refer to, as well as drawing out the oblong to scale that it has to fit into. I returned home that evening to find she had made some very nice drawings of pears from life, but I explained to her that I knew what pears looked like, it was the rest of it - the flowing shapes and vine-like structure of the branches, etc. - that I needed to be able to scale up and use for the carving, then did it myself the next day. She - as you know - is a brilliant and gifted artist, but she just does not think in a decorative, 17th century way. Very funny, but I am sorry that I wasted one of the last days of her summer holiday on it.

My usual avenues of escapism have turned into dead-ends in the last couple of days, and - once again - I am reminded that it is quite possible to conjure up ghosts simply by talking about them, so I am not going to use the 'G' word any more for the foreseeable future, nor am I going to think about the impending financial disaster that I thought we had already been through, which is the number one (two, three, four, five, six) topic on every media news channel in the mornings right now, in every country in the world.

There is one route out which we are going to take tonight, and that is to go to the cinema to see the latest film adaptation of 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' from the book and TV series by John LeCarre.

No doubt I will find myself mentally basking in the warmth of the good old days of the Cold War.