I have often walked down this street before

I'm sure there is much to be told about my state of mind, from the songs I find myself singing as I go.

In this morning's sunshine, heading for the Lit & Phil, I got through as much of My Fair Lady as I know, which is most of it.

Then I sat in the Silence Room to read through this manuscript that I wrote nearly twenty years ago, and had to stop myself humming Freddy as I went. I might not recognise either the plot or the words, but the style is immediately and intimately familiar: this is indeed how I write. How apparently I have always written.

Needs cutting, mind. Radically. It might be quicker to rekey it, rather than my current plan to set up an old computer and see if I can track the files down on ancient Zip disks. Might be more honest, strangely: pass every word through the filter that is the current Chaz, rather than just hack'n'slash and cherry-pick...

I got a quarter of the way into the book before I remembered that I had more urgent and important things to be doing at home. So I dragged myself away, drifted around town for an hour buying things I don't really need, and walked back across the moor. Singing "Going to California in my mind..."

Friends are good

Because I am crap, it has taken me - how long? in weeks? - to manage the difficult task of lifting the telephone to ask a friend for help.

Because friends are good (and I sometimes suspect they talk about me behind my back; I think he was primed), I had barely mentioned the problem before he had seized possession of it; he was coming over to check out the bathroom floor for himself, and he knows just the guy to fix it...

And then he came, and then it all got a bit scary because he reckons the whole of the bathroom floor needs to come up, and all the joists replacing, and he really doesn't think I should be having baths in the meantime; but he phoned his guy and they might come round tomorrow, and he seems pretty much to have taken it on in a project-management capacity. Without my actually asking, because I never needed to.

Right now, I suppose I really ought to go and lift that lino and throw it out, with the last of the carpet tiles. It's got to happen, and none of it is going down again after, so...

So why am I so reluctant? Because I'm crap, and I have a hoardy mentality, and I hate committing myself to anything so final as throwing out a floor-covering, and and and. But I really should. Then I could drink more, and eat comfort chilli, yes...?

There.

Acting under instruction (thank you, instructive friends!), I have duly ripped out the nasty and disposed of same into the back alley, whence it will mysteriously disappear.

If I had done this fifteen years ago, I would have had attractive exposed boards all this time, and very possibly not rotten joists beneath them.

I suppose we live and learn. I do kind of feel I could have lived without this lesson.