Saturday Night and "Le Weekend"

Incomprehensible, the human heart. I just looked at the sofa where the cat should be and my eyes welled up with tears. She's not there; the sofa is empty. She was there for ten years, immovable, and now she's not. My mother is not here. My father long gone. I am thinking about loss.

Why this, suddenly, when I'm listening as usual on Saturday night to Randy Bachman's Vinyl Tap - the brilliant "Bohemian Rhapsody" right now - and dancing around the kitchen? No idea. Spring is slow in coming; it's still grey and cold, unpleasant, outside, depressing everyone. And so much is happening here so fast. My life, a sliver of my life is out in the world, in people's hands, and I don't know yet how it's being received. It's the strange limbo in the life of a book and the book's writer, when the work has been launched but before there's word on what people think. Of course, not hearing makes me think that everyone reading hates it and doesn't dare say so.

So to cheer myself up I just found the original video of "Bohemian Rhapsody" and spent a great half hour watching the divine Freddie Mercury. So incredibly talented. And then I think of all the losses to AIDS and get sad again.

One of those nights.

And my city still held hostage to that disgusting cretin, and my country to the other cretin. However. This too shall pass; they too shall vanish.

Went this cold afternoon to a movie: "Le Weekend," with two incredible British actors, Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan, as a British couple who go to Paris for their 30th wedding anniversary in an attempt to rejuvenate their marriage. A powerful script by Hanif Kureishi, superb performances and Paris - what more could you ask for? Thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking.

Last night, not so - Wayson was poking around in some second-hand bookstore and found a DVD of a mock-documentary called "Desperately Seeking Paul McCartney," which we watched after a sushi dinner last night. It hit a bit close to home - about an obsessive fan, a silly middle-aged woman wanting to get near to Paul. Hmmm. Let me put that one out of my mind.

And so, back in the routine of home. Last Saturday at this time I was watching "Matilda" in the West End of London. The Saturday before that, I was in Sorrento on the Amalfi Coast with my dear Bruce, the one before that with Lynn in Paris, the one before that with Lynn and Denis in Montpellier. And now, here I am, looking at the empty space on the sofa, missing my crabby pussycat and mourning Freddie Mercury. Welcome to my looney tune world.