Night Lights

Too Little Too Late

I just wanted to say:

A heartfelt thank you to anyone who has clicked on this blog and read or looked or left a comment. Nearly all of those comments have been lovely and have meant a great deal to me.

I did at one point receive a flurry of weird/mildly offensive ones which made me feel a bit odd about blogging but I expect that's all part of it.

The reason I'm writing this is because lately a lot of people have stopped following this blog which has made me think about a few things eg., content. (Obviously those who've already left won't be reading this so if you see them, perhaps you'd pass on the message.)

I get a small pang of sadness when people move on, especially those whose blogs I really like.

The feeling doesn't linger too long though, unlike the smarting on my lower gum that came from ramming my toothbrush into it during some enthusiastic teeth cleaning two days ago. Have you ever done that? It really hurts.

Here's a picture for you. It's been like high summer in England today with temperatures at around 16ºC (68ºF). Almost balmy.

I hope you have a lovely week end.

Nothing Personal

Lucy is at home searching for the phone so that she can call her mobile. She usually keeps it in her coat pocket but it isn’t there now. It’s also not in the next most likely place it could be – her bag, or the one after that – on the kitchen counter.


There had originally been two cordless handsets but one of them fell behind the living room radiator. Lucy tried to free it by shoving it upwards from underneath with a wooden spoon. She had also attempted pincering at it from the side with barbecue tongs and levering it out with a martial arts stick, but every effort to retrieve it seemed to wedge it in even more tightly.


Having turned over the ground floor of the house, Lucy finally locates the landline phone under the sofa cushions in a garden of raisins, popcorn kernels and general detritus. She wipes the dust off the phone, keys in her mobile number and waits for the ring tone.


A dulled buzz vibrates on the desk within arms length of where she is standing.


Lucy lifts up a woollen hat, picks up her phone and sweeps a fingertip across the screen to unlock the handset. She questions why she still uses a password when it was cracked months ago by the resident code breaking co-op Cagney, Lacey & Holmes Inc., App Downloaders Extraordinaire.


Messages – none. Texts - none.


Lucy goes to the kitchen, switches on the kettle then returns to the living room to boot up the computer.


She neatens the pile of mixed paperwork: drawings, correspondence, bills and so forth, forgets about a drink, forgets the kettle sometimes gets stuck on ‘boil’ and sits down at the desk.


In the corner of the room a green light flickers on the router. Lucy takes hold of the mouse and directs the cursor to her web browser and clicks. A line of bold red text stretches across the milky white screen and tells her:


YOU ARE NOT CONNECTED