Not a lot to say. Or, perhaps, too much of the unsayable. One’s beloved offspring are busy, busy with creative projects (good), dealing with the slings and arrows that life inevitably throws (necessary) and fielding the rogue bastard elements that snake their way into the garden that is the sphere in which they live and have their being (ouch). Not to mention that one particular offspring’s group has got through to the next stage of a certain televised competition but the powers that be did not feature them at all, probably on account of their not providing enough televisual material in the way of weeping and hand-wringing (just as well, all considered, but disappointing for them).

I have M.E. Did I mention this? Yes, well I’ve had to mention it a couple of times recently in the context of Shrink sessions on account of him being a bit, shall we say, ignorant about it all, and following a conversation that went something like:
Signs: Do you actually believe in M.E. – you don’t do you?
Shrink: I don’t know.
Signs: Fuck.
But to his credit, he has been prepared to read stuff downloaded from the wonderful Hummingbirds site (on my sidebar) and taken it on board.
"I want to know what it means to you," says Shrink. I have given the short and the long answer. I could, I suppose, say – as some reality TV contestants are fond of doing – that it Means Everything. But strike me down with a sledgehammer if I do.

I am missing the services of the person who usually comes each week to vacuum the carpets, clean the kitchen/bathroom floors and change bed linen. She has gone away until September and it felt like too much hassle to try and find someone temporary to take her place. Lugging a vacuum cleaner up and down the steep and narrow stairs of Signs Cottage is out of the question, changing bed linen and cleaning kitchen floor are both difficult but possible if I choose the right moment. So Mr. Signs does the first and of course there is the option of allowing standards to slip a little, or a lot, here and there. It would make me happy for the house to be clean, but happier still to have written a new poem or story.