Back in Highgate. Went straight from Heathrow last night to the Jerusalem Bar off Oxford Street, for Lea and Gemma’s wedding party. Much dancing and a little drinking, my teetotal rule allowing champagne for special occasions. Just have to stop myself becoming a Special Occasions-holic.
After that, I managed to get me and my suitcase home on a packed late tube amid all the Saturday night revellers, including a bevy of pink-cheeked teen boys who’d clearly just been to a gig by Cajun Dance Party. They were all in the same matching band t-shirts.
Typing this on the Sunday morning, sitting in bed, as tired as a rat. Which is one of those family catchphrases, from my Dad’s side (says Mum, whom I’ve just spoken to on the phone). All families have their own catchphrases, proverbs, sayings or similes. Phrases can be heirlooms, or even a kind of DNA passed down, like words running through sticks of seaside rock. Just Googled ‘tired as a rat’, and the only place it appears on the entire Web is from an 1896 novel, Sir George Tressady, by Mrs. Humphry Ward. Which sounds like I’m making it up, of course.
Was hoping to update the diary in Stockholm via my laptop, but couldn’t, for the simple reason I forgot to pack one of those Euro power adaptors. The ones that turn a UK three-pin plug into a European 2-pin plug. The hotel didn’t have one, I couldn’t find any in the touristy shops within immediate walking distance and I wasn’t keen to spend hours travelling about the city looking for one. Not for a 72-hour jaunt. Helpful hint: keep your foreign adaptors packed in your travel case. There’s no need to ever unpack them once you’re back in the UK.
And next time (which may be next month – see next entry), I must pack a Swedish phrasebook. It was my seventh trip to Sweden in eight years, and I think there has to be a rule about how long one is permitted to remain the rude English monoglot. First trip, fine. Second and maybe third, okay. But if kind people from a foreign country have paid your fare and board and invited you over to do something you enjoy (music, interviews, photos) for the seventh time, I really think you should attempt a respectable amount of phrases in the local language.
Poor Mum – she just phoned to ask me about the trip, and of course I found it hard to know (as with clutter-clearance) what to mention and what to leave out. So I gabbled out a monologue for about ten minutes on the phone. My mind tends to get into ‘which reminds me…’ mode, and I start talking about something else by way of context, illustration and explanation. You have to be your own brutal editor, whether it’s going through boxes of old letters, or answering a question. Only write for the reader, and only speak for the listener.
Which is another reason why I started this diary in the first place. To slow down my gabbling thoughts, take a breath, make sense of the chaos, bring order to the whole, and edit it down to what the reader might want to know. That’s the difference between writing and typing; as Capote said unkindly about Kerouac.
