this morning on the train

This morning on the train there were no people reading Jodi Picoult as far as I could see, leading me to believe that I was/am the victim of a hoax to delude me into believing in some kind of picoultzeitgeist when in fact that grotesque book which I heard was the only actual artefact produced under the dread name of Picoult. Although I did see another of hers (another courtroom drama apparently) in Borders Highpoint yesterday. I am still really outraged at Perfect Match from its shabbily-conceived title downwards. The problem with an audio book is that you hear the reader’s interpretation in your head, so the whiny voice of the protagonist typifies that book for me. Also the baby voice of the child.
I was at Highpoint to get a new laptop from Myers. The 2002 Acer laptop I am writing this on and which I never actually paid for (it was a by-product of my first real research project post-PhD) has served me well but it is developing a bunch of unusual lines across the screen (see fig. 1) apart from the fact that the screen itself has long been in shabby shape, because of the way it makes contact with the keyboard when I shut it, it left impressions.

Fig. 1 the computer screen

Hey, it’s March and it’s coming up to my favourite time of year, March. April really. I am on the train going to work and enjoying myself.rambling. I am essentially ready for the first day of teaching and essentially is the state you’d want to be most times isn’t it. I am riding on the train in the dark which is nice. It is a good temperature outside too. It is a big shame that holidays come in summer when we’d all much rather be inside being sheltered from temperature extremes.
The train has stopped at Essendon and many people have got on. They all look wrong, particularly the guy with one of those under-chin smooth demon beards, like facial hair was a fungus found on the part of the face where the sun don’t shine. He also has a slightly gothic (but intensely mainstream) design on his windcheater. Oh no! The next station is Moonee Ponds.
At least The Mentalist is on tonight. I think that show jumped the shark last week, what do you think? When those two characters whose names I can’t remember, said they’d been secretly having a relationship, and everyone said they already knew. I think that’s about it for The Mentalist, which can’t be that great a show anyway because I’m always relieved when it’s not about the murder of a young girl but it often is. I always hated The Bill (haven’t watched it for years though, but that’s not the point) but at least all the crime wasn’t murders of young girls like the plucking of flowers.
Alright it’s true, you forced it out of me. I have nothing to say at this point. I can’t help it. Sometimes people just don’t. It’s like being a fallow field. The promise of future hope or, perhaps, the hope of future promise.
Oh, incidentally though, Mavis’ funeral was last Saturday. It was nicely low-key and as someone said she wouldn’t have been embarrassed by it. My sister Tamsin had a picture of Mavis and her three siblings in about 1916 standing in a row in order of height with their hands on each others’ shoulders, and she got all of Mavis’ great grandchildren (ten of them) to do the same, well, Alice had left a little while earlier so 9/10, and it was very nice and also funny, with little Will the baby of six months or less and looking very grumpy right at the end, behind Florence who is only 1, and Mitchell up the other end, a man.
Thank you to all who have expressed condolences I really appreciate it. I will miss her very much but I know she was tired of being alive. She was an atheist by the way and a St Kilda supporter. I don’t know how firmly she held to either of those beliefs.