Thaw

I WOKE TO MORE MUMBLING than usual this morning. I've been falling asleep with the radio on recently and it doesn't seem to bother Cailean, so I've allowed it to continue. There's something very pleasant about drifting off to sleep to music, or a book at bedtime, without fretting over switching the radio off at some last moment.

There's a temporary female presenter on the Radio 2 early morning show, her name is Sarah and she doesn't seem to be young. Normally it would be Sir Terry Wogan who is definitely not young. In any event, this Sarah is taking requests for show tunes. I wish I could recall what today's featured song was, I can only recall it was sung by Jimmy Durante. It was pleasant, cheerful.

At seven o'clock I was still in bed, waiting to hear the news headlines and the brief run through of the front page stories in the daily newspapers. Sarah tried, again, to pronounce paraskevidekatriaphobia … a word meaning fear of Friday the thirteenth. Today is one of those days.

And the headlines:

A commuter plane has crashed into a house in Buffalo, New York, with 49 deaths. Remarkable that only one person on the ground was killed. And I thought to myself, again, that I'm glad my travelling days are done with.

A regulatory body is investigating the financial services products division of AIG in the UK. I tried to figure out just how worthless my AIG shares would be now if I still had them. A bit like the currency of Zimbabwe.

A thirteen-years-old boy has had a child with a fifteen-years-old girl; the boy was just twelve when he did the deed. The commentator on the radio had the benefit of a photograph of the proud father. "He looks young for his age…" I wondered if the child might be guilty of rape. The baby and its young mother are living with the mother's mother on a council estate somewhere. What a world, babies having babies and scrawny Madonna flashing her crotch in music videos at fifty and bidding for babies in fifth world countries with other celebrities. Ugh!

A Dutch politician with a name somewhat more muddling than paraskevidekatriaphobia tried to visit England yesterday to present a seventeen-minute film he has made, to be aired in the House of Lords of all places. The film, apparently, is anti-Islamic. The Lowlander believes that the Koran should be outlawed as terrorist material. He may be right. The Old and New Testaments should go on the dung-heap too, if that is the case. The point of the Dutchman's odyssey was to toy with our freedom of speech laws. He was put on the next flight back to Holland. So much for freedom of speech in Britain. Does MI5 read my blog?

Prince Harry has to go on a course to brush up on his social skills because he made some sort of racist remark years ago. Harry called a fellow soldier a Paki, meaning, I think, the other soldier was of Pakistani heritage. Poor Harry: His heritage, parentage, is a never-ending source of comic comment. Yet nobody leans on the comedians when Harry is the butt of jokes that must be hurtful. I'm a little torn on this matter, not really believing in the Royal Family business. Prince Philip notably referred to some oriental folks as slitty-eyed some years ago, but has not had to do a refresher course in polite speaking.

Cailean started getting restless about then, and out into the snow we had to go, me in my Bermuda shorts and t-shirt. A fashionista would have a field day.

We had several inches of unexpected snow on Thursday, yesterday, causing the usual chaos. I'd walked Cailean early in the day, though it was snowing before we got home. Cailean made a snowman of sorts for the first time with very little help. I made a fist-sized snowball which Cailean then rolled about with his nose, and it grew and grew until he couldn't push it further, larger than a football. Cailean loves the snow.

Today, after my news headlines and the coffee that gets me going, I padded along the street for a few groceries. There's not a cloud in the sky and the temperature is finally above freezing. The snow is melting in the sunlight. The rooftops facing the south have water coming down over the guttering as the heaped snow is melting so rapidly. I was quite spattered with water by the time I reached the butcher's shop. There was something most pleasant about it. The icy water might have been the trickle of sweat on one's neck on a hot summer day.

I cannot be one hundred percent sure, but this feels like the thaw … at last. All will be spring from now on.

Friday the thirteenth … Lucky for some.