weddings and dogs and books

Well as you can see, it was a happy wedding despite the torrential rain that started falling just after N and V took their vows, a good omen people assured me repeatedly. I believe it too.
There are other photos of course, but I will start a new Wedding blog for interested parties. Huh. That's a joke.
Anyway, the wedding was wonderful. Hats off to Vicky for meticulous planning, right down to the placing of guests at tables which turned out to be the most difficult of all as there were two fathers, one stepfather, two mothers and one stepmother to be placed at dinner. It wasn't at all a Four Weddings and a funeral affair, much more a When we were...??? (that Joyce Carol Oates book about reconciliation?) and I still have that lovely feeling in the pit of my stomach, memories of a beautiful and healing weekend.
Right! Now for the dogs. The cute puppies have turned into greedy monsters who bite and scratch. Nearly 5 weeks old, they now eat, eat, eat, eat, sleep and play, in that order. Great fun. I want to do this again.

And, books? Quarter of the way through Wally Lamb, a leviathan of a book focused on the Columbine High School massacre but wandering along through all sorts of byways. I don't know what I think yet as am reading it too slowly. Finished all the Simon Gray I can handle for now and have his plays to dip into.
I'm a rather dismal reader at the moment actually, preferring by far to play Solitaire on my phone. How pathetic is that!

about saying goodbye to Simon Gray

I'm in a rising panic. I've reached the last book of the Smoking Diaries, number 4, called, appropriately, Coda and I can see that the last page is coming up and I don't want to get there. So today, in the expectation of finishing Coda (and what after all can come after a Coda?) I went to the library and got out about 7 plays and two more memoirs by Simon. This last book has been a painful read. Deliberately avoiding listening to a prognosis, Simon and Victoria are plodding along with his cancer until some silly doctor blurts out that he has a year max. The book takes a funny turn after that - this is why I am finding it so fascinating - one can read as if in real time Simon's shock and inability to focus on his writing. Nothing means anything. How could it with his death sentence staring at him. In the end, it wasn't the cancer that killed him, despite the awful treatment (why do people persist in having it?). He died of an aneuryism. Coda becomes almost unbearably poignant with this knowledge. At each stage, there is some wishful projection into an imagined future - will I make my next birthday, is this my last swim in Greece? Oh dear. I am writing this to stave off reading the last few pages.

About Agaat and puppies

Three weeks old. Our two males, held by Steve.

This is a lonely business, blogging. I hope Ilovenotcamping is going to log on soon. However, here are my latest thoughts on reading. or not reading Agaat. Yes, I must confess, I have given up on Agaat. Sorry Trace. Sorry Karen. Sorry everyone. I tried hard. Perhaps its just not my time but I have been thinking that it's more than that. There is something unfinished about Agaat, something too raw and 'in your face' for my liking. While it's almost Joyceian in its flow, I couldn't actually admit to enjoying reading it. After bribing myself and performing other tricks, I have decided to shelve it for another time and gratefully fled to Exclusives yesterday to buy the final two volumes of Simon Gray, The Last Cigarette and Coda. Want a taste of him?
2005
I'm still in Suffolk, where it's a typical August afternoon, cold and damp, with England losing a test match in Birmingham, and things can't go on like this. I say that, but how can they change? Well, I can make them change by stating categorically -

that intend to give up smoking.
I've left out the 'I'. Do it again, with the 'I' in it.
I intend to give up smoking.
There. I've put it down. It's legible, in firm, blue ballpoint. There's no getting away from it because it's plonk in the middle of the page, and to tear it out would be cheating.

And so it continues, anacoluthically and quite wonderfully. Now this is what I call good writing. See?

Oh, and I also read Hotel de Dream by Edmund White, which I bought a long time ago for the Bookclub and gulped that down with gratitude. Magical stuff. You can keep the South African farm fiction.

New Year Pup

Here is one of them at two weeks' old. Just finished feeding. Picture of satiety. Love it. Not that any of you will see this, numskulls that you are, forgetting passwords, forgetting self's name, etc.