Spoonfuls of Sugar

There's an old saying: "When life gives you lemons, unless you've got a shitload of sugar, you're gonna have a mouth like a cat's arse."
Today's been the kind of day to make me realise how sweet my life actually is.

My pal Sian, last time we spoke, was keen to impress on me the need for ready cash next Saturday, for the toll bridge into Wales, which with any luck we'll need to cross a couple of times. So today, we took our big savings-tin (shaped like a Pepsi can) of shrapnel-coins to the local store, where there's a machine that takes such coins and gives you real, useable cash in return. We raised a good amount, and picked out enough random silver besides to give us a bag of bridge-cash. Spoonful of sugar #1.

We popped to Argos, to return some unused boxes in return for, ideally, some replacement archive boxes. None to be had hereabouts, which pretty much put the kybosh on any packing progress we had in mind, Still, we got credit on a voucher-card, so come Wednesday I'll be able to pick some up in Kensington, and the packing can continue, 'for free' as it were, without forcing us to lay out more money for the boxes we need. Spoonful of sugar #2.

Then we went, full of dreams and schemes and the like, along to John Lewis at Westfield, and meandered for hours among the fragments of our future. We played 'which crockery would you choose?' and, unusually for us, found we were in perfect agreement. And planning the pieces that we like, and will have to save and work for, and will feel pride in our gradual, life-building accomplishments...Spoonful of sugar #3.

"By the way...you're looking very handsome today," said d out of nowhere. That's always sweet to hear in itself, but in my case, it's...something more. The object when I started all this was to become a Disappearing Man, but somewhere along the line, what's happened has been deeper and rather more profound. I've become something of a Metamorphosed Man. The making of peace with Merthyr, the seeming to grow into my skin at 40, and...something less definable, something to do with knowing who I am and what I want and how to get it, has made me someone who feels profoundly different to the man I was when I began. I haven't mentioned this before, because it's seemed too odd, but my clothes have grownup recently. I've always been a scruffy human being, and relished it as part of the Journalist-schtick. There's also been a fat bloke element there - my costume has usually been slogan T-shirts, because slogan T-shirts can be guaranteed to come in XXXL, because they're marketed at, among others, 'Comic Book Guy' from the Simpsons, and guys of a similar size who do nothing in the way of exercise and sit in basements all day playing World of Warcraft. But now they seem irrelevant and childish to me, like a skin I've sloughed. Of course, in one way, that's mightily inconvenient, as they comprise the vast majority of clothes I own. But, as it happened, today I was in a newish combination - polo shirt, Disappearing Coat, very newly-acquired 'man-scarf'. And clearly, d likes me as a moderately Disappeared Grown-Up. 'Since I am crept in favour with myself,' as Richard III says in the Shakespeare play, "I will maintain it to some little cost..." Which, in this case, translates as 'Holy Heck, I look like a Grown-Up now, and my wife likes it. Come pay day, time to invest in some Grown-Up Clothes that fit..."
Definitely, a big heaping spoonful of sugar there.

Spoke to my mother tonight, and things are going well with the new flat. More immediately importantly, my dad was prescribed a steroid treatment, and appears to be feeling much more like himself than he's been of late. Spoonful of sugar #5.

And then tonight, I went to say my own farewell to London comedy-going. Went to see a funny, picky, nerdy Irish comedian called Ed Byrne. Second time I've seen him in Hammersmith, first time in the Apollo. Great fun, including drunken particle physicists, inappropriate clothing on teenage boys, pro-woman, pro-fat-fuck routines, and the staggering inappropriateness of the phrase 'sleeping like a baby'. Had a great time, and resigned myself to shifting my occasional comedy-gigging to Cardiff with the greatest of ease, and came home, keen to see my girl's face again, and to share her space, and to snuggle by proxy on our individual couches.

Best spoonful of sugar all day, that coming home.

Of course, there's fun to be had with the idea of a life so full of sugar being owned by a diabetic Disappearer, but the point is, a day like today adds fuel to the fire, and salt to the taste of life. Which I'll admit to needing in the week coming up, because there's a Hell of a lot that needs doing, or redoing, in the next five days.

Mmm....suuuugar....