Am I looking for omens? For if I am, then I must beware. I should know, I’ve been an oracle keeper for too long. One needs to build up to a Question, frame it properly, craft it, polish it, offer it, in order to get an Answer. When tired and stressed and trying to surmount difficult things, it is easy to slip into interpretative mode when things go wrong, seeing doom in every misfortune, imminent failure in every disappointment.
My PC Doctor in Camden called Christos, who is a lifesaver usually, (if only because he does business like my father and I felt perfectly safe dropping my precious laptop into him last week without even asking for a receipt) rings me and says he’s got bad news, my laptop is really too expensive to fix. Its screen is cracked like a finely-woven silk tapestry of light rent down the middle, flashing in a strobe-like fashion. I can barely see the top-right corner. It was, apparently, unable to withstand being squashed (while in its case) in my hand luggage on a short flight. No bumps or drops, just one pair of socks too many, squeezed behind the zipper, a slow but deadly pressure. Who knew? £500. Ridiculous, considering I forked out £250 a couple of months ago for a new hard drive. Money down the drain. I’m writing this on my old desktop computer, that was given to me when an office was being emptied of its obsolete hardware. The cathode-ray-tube screen is so old it gets noticeably darker every day. But I’m grateful it’s here.
So, new laptop. I can’t afford a new laptop. What will I write on in Italy? A pen and paper? OK, new laptop it has to be. Then Ryanair email me and say that the flight I had booked for Pisa has been cancelled and would I like to take the 6am flight instead? (Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I remember a strike at Boeing being the cause of this.) A 6am flight. Lovely. No sleep the night before, then, I’ll arrive in Italy such a charming man.
Sometimes it’s just that life is awkward. It doesn’t mean anything. OK?