The Importance of Being Idle

A Matter of Life and Death

I've been thinking about my Gran all week for some reason. Well, not for "some reason", it's not exactly rocket science to work out that it's almost a year since she died, so I suppose it's not entirely unexpected, it's just... well, why now? Why haven't I really thought about her so much for the rest of the year? It's not just her either, it's her and Grandad, and he died twenty odd years ago, and that makes me think about clearing out their house, and ultimately I think that's what I'm thinking about: what's left behind.
In particular my mind just keeps wandering back to that morning when we cleared the house, and the moments when me and my Dad were clearing out Grandad's old tools and just talking about stuff. And I can't help thinking that somebody else is living in that house now, that house that'd been in my family since it was built, that house that we'd had so many good times in; the Christmases, the Sunday visits... things the new people, whoever they may be, will never know. I don't know what I'm trying to say here, if I'm trying to say anything at all. All I know is that whenever my mind is left to it's own devices it inevitably wanders over there, and I sit and think about taking those bits of wood out of my Grandad's shed and it makes me miss them.
Over the past few weeks I've also started to notice that the company I work for now, is essentially, a Bad Corporation. I'm already heartily sick and tired of trying to explain to people why the pensions they've invested in are worth less than the money they put in, or how we've managed to make less for them than they would've received from merely putting the cash into a halfway reasonable bank account, or in some cases just taken all their money and used it all up. That's making me wonder what I'm doing there, and even if it's possible that working for such a business is what's making me ill; after all, Righteous Livelihood is one part of the Eightfold Path and I'm not convinced there's anything even slightly righteous about what I'm doing right now.
And I have been ill this week, to the point that on Monday Ronnie took me into work and esentially said that if they wanted to be so bloody stupid and short-sighted as to fire me then they could, 'cos I wasn't capable of coming in to work in this condition. Which was pretty cool! The boss relented and let me have an "emergency holiday" which was... well, it wasn't really kind of her, 'cos they know damn well that there's something wrong with me and that so far it's controlled rather than treated. It's only because I have this ridiculous special probation that they have to go to such lengths. Still, it's only for another month now, and then I'll be a bit more difficult to fire.
We took a trip into London on Friday, 'cos Ronnie wanted to go to Camden Market. In fact she's been wanting to go on a trip there for about as long as we've been going out, but this was the first time we've been able to afford to go. It was a fun trip, even though I felt like death for a large portion of it, and I was wearing massively inappropriate boots too! But it was a nice warm day, and there was plenty to see and do; I even went to a comic shop I haven't been to in about 15 years, and bought lots of comics! When we got back we wobbled off to the Verve and hung out with our mates for a bit, before we finally had to head for home and feed poor little Archie, who'd been left by himself all day! Still, it was nice to be able to go to London and not have it try and kill me for a change.
Ronnie's at work today, doing her last ever shift at the Falcon! Yay! I've not been up to much so far, just wobbling about doing laundry and washing up. And watching Tron, which was cool. It's funny, 'cos these days I don't see it so much as a movie about little people living in computers as I see it as a metaphor for belief. Which I'm fairly certain isn't what was intended at all, but that's what I see: a world that exists purely in the high technology which is nonetheless populated by beings of faith. I don't know what, if anything, that means, but that's what I see. Oh and light-cycles too!
Wonder what we're gonna do with our day off tomorrow?

posted by BadMonkey @ 2:54 PM