SLEEP ON SLEEP ON SLEEP ON

The gang had a heavy night last night - karaoke, which Im not into, so I indulged the rare pleasure of leaving them to their torpor and drove in to tidy Mum's plot - see that her grave is kept clean, like.

Jennie's eyes always glow when I leave early and i remember that Saki short story where 2 men are competing for some fragrant heiress and one of them with a job leaves and Munro quips that there is nothing more attractive than a man who leaves to do battle. 

When Steph joined Secker's, it took us a week to meet because I was always busy and when I got down to the Star & Garter, she was gone.

There'd been a connection from when she was shown round and I waved from my desk, on the phone as usual. We both admitted later that we yearned to meet: "I only joined them in the hope you'd arrive, then I had to catch my Hove train. I told Dad and he said 'so what's he like?' (she was engaged at the time). I said I dont know, he's always working.

And Dad wagged a finger at me, 'You watch that man. He's got his priorities right.'

"But i know there's a connection!"

"Watch him even more - he has his priorities right."

Ah, those days ....

Went down to the Cemetery (there's a first line there) and knelt down and scraped and troweled and weeded and tourists came by and of course there's the gravestone with Dad's title and his decor and they fall silent and then ask in hushed whisper if that was my dad and I look solemn and tell them that i'm actually tidying my mother's grave, just that we havent added her to the stone yet. 

"Went down to the Cemetery, down on mah knees, weed and trowel,
Whoahh, went down to the Cemetery, lord have mercy,
On my knees, weeded and troweled,
(What u think about that, Sonny?)
Was a bright sunny day but the tear ducts opened,
Just rocked back n forth, and mighty howled.

I'm just a motherless child ~ nobody now to care for me,
Whoo, just a motherless chile
Who in this world ... care for me?
I go down to Lidl, i can buy coffee, I can buy tea.

Grubbing at the gravestone, tourists silent with respe't
Turning the sod over mama, strangers silent in respect,
'That your pappy you be honoring?'
"Mama, too, just not got round to adding her
Just yet."

They moved on, singin' n cryin'.

Hi, Mum, how's it going? Up there in your Heavenly groove?
Well I'm here and trying, crying,
Fix some flowers like you'd want me to,
Played the church fair yesterday, got myself on Youtube"

whoooo - play it Sonny.