Blasted

Well - to WOMAD Granny went, had her ears rather beautifully blasted and came back to find herself blasted by wind, rain, winter - Lanzarote style; obviously not as heavy as London winter style but she does rather miss London central heating and is wrapped up in a lot of wool while writing this. Good rain though, at last. Neighbours all out planting.

Better sun today and WOMAD is dreamlike in her head. She was supposed to meet up with other people in Las Palmas, but for one reason or other - sick mothers, lack of hotel rooms - noone else turned up which meant she did not have to worry about other peoples' taste in music/sore feet/hunger/not hunger/desire for sleep/desire not to sleep, etc. And that poor woman due to share her room was not kept awake by Granny's snoring when she lies on her back. (Beloved turns her over, but newish friend probably would not like to do that.) So that was all alright and Granny could jig happily to extraordinary, heart-lifting, body-lifting music by Tanzanians, Malians, Afro-Peruvians, Irish, Balkan gypsies etc etc, without any concerns whatever, apart from mild desire to beg puffs from joints being passed round all over. (She didn't quite dare.) And apart from rather less mild wish they didn't have to turn the bass up so loud at these things. IT HURT. She'd had enough, finally, around 11.pm on Saturday night when she trudged over to stage where very camp Israeli counter-tenor was giving concert of music based on a synagogue cantor's chants. The beautiful high wail echoed all over, briefly, solo - then took on like everything else a backing of heavy metal sounds plus the dread bass. Granny does not entirely dislike (good) heavy metal, nor is she either homophobic or anti-semitic; far from it. But by this stage it was all TOO MUCH. She is old or something. So she trudged hotelwards. And next day flew home to Belovedless, dogless, catless, heatless house, to be battered all night by wild wind and rain - more erratic than HEAVY BASS, but at its worst almost as disturbing in the high room she sleeps in. She could hear drip drip drip behind her where the rain comes in through the skylight. About which, apparently, nothing can be done.

And back to her book. Going Mental. Which is driving her mental just now. Right now she is full of doubts. Not to say blasted. Is it going anywhere or just trudging on the way she trudged at times round Las Palmas: aimlessly? Is she really getting at what that place was like or failing to? Are her own interjections/discussions mere platitude? She doesn't know. This happens with books, but it's always disheartening.

Trudge on. Trudge on.

On Thursday she has to head back to London to prop up Beloved in his trudge round medical stuff. All of it coming out clear but tiresome as it involves him sitting around in the Big Smoke, which, unlike Granny, he hates. (These kinds of alarms happen more as you get old.) There maybe, she will print up everything she's written so far and read it through.... all 170 odd pages of it. That might cheer her up. Or it might do the reverse. Let's see.