Bagpipe music

The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever,
But if you break the bloody glass you won't hold up the weather.

Or in other words, I just counted: there are four five companies or crews or individuals out there who owe me money. The big one, the main one promised to give me a verdict on a book "by the middle of next week", but that was a month ago. The others are either late, or have sent the wrong amount (and I will leave to guess in whose favour the error lies), or just aren't responding to contacts, or have lost my address. Twice. While I undergo the worst crisis of the last dozen years, and literally do not know how to pay next week's bills. I have always, always danced on a knife-edge, but I do believe I've lost my footing finally.

And right now someone really is playing bagpipes in the park, and I do believe they're channelling Louis MacNeice.

Bagpipe music, redux

If I had batteries in my camera, I could take a picture, just to prove him. As I don't, you'll have to settle for a description. He's in his thirties, give or take. He's wearing a white T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, trainers. And he's walking up and down the nearest path in the park over the road, parallel to my windows. There are literally square miles of moorland behind him, where he could move pretty much out of human earshot, but no.

He's not a bad performer on the pipes, and he has a decent range of tunes - but he has no stamina. He plays for thirty seconds, forty-five max; then he pauses, then he plays something else. This constant on-offedness makes it impossible to tune him out. Which makes it impossible to work.

If I had a sniper's rifle - well, if I had a sniper's rifle I would be in prison by now, for more significant murders than his. But. I wish he would stop, or go away. And what I really resent about this is that I am fond of bagpipe music, as a rule: definitely not one of those people who finds it antisocial by nature. Just, he has caught me in a really sour mood, and I would like to lose myself in my work, and he's preventing me.

Also, right now, he is playing the Skye Boat Song. Which is an offence against nature. I can haz that sniper's rifle nao?

Eek!

In which the boys conspire to stop me dwelling on stuff...

My house has more stairs than seems feasible, given its smallness. Specifically, there's a flight up to a half-landing, from which two further flights ascend, one at right-angles to the first and the other doubling back on it. This means that the top landing has a looong drop down over the banister to ground, at the foot of that first flight. My cats have always enjoyed jumping on and off that banister; Sophie-cat used to use it as a halfway point to jumping onto my shoulders. I became quite blasé about their blaséness. Ahem. The boys exist to shatter my complacency.

I have a chest of drawers on the top landing, which stands a few inches higher than the banister. At the moment there is a couple of ficus trees on it, in big pots. Both boys like to hang around there, shredding the leaves and ripping off the branches (I do not believe the trees will survive this season) - and playing tag around the pots, pouncing viciously on each other.

When they do this, if I'm watching, usually one of them will back away. Onto the banister. And go on fighting. Above a fifteen-foot drop. The banister is varnished, rounded wood, and its poor footing is evidenced by the quantity of deep scratches in that varnish, where cats have found themselves hanging on for dear life.

Eek.