Men and Machines

Took delivery of wife's new laptop today... hardware and wife doing fine. She asked me to open it start it and put programs on it for her cos she is a woman and she finds these things to be pointless and dull. I tried unsuccessfully to preserve an air of adult-like phlegmatism that should be my modus operandi now that I have A) a marriage and B) an adult. Failed. So sat hunched over 17 inch screen in stony faced ecstasy for an hour... or so. How dirty and used I feel now that it is all over. It's almost as if its a machine.

2007, August 28, 16.00 - A start

A cancelled Tuesday morning lesson for the English teacher working in a small German town but dreaming of Greece accounts for the start of this blog. 'Otherwise-ill-formed' because here I can finally find a satisfying solution to all those everyday epiphanies which would otherwise pass into the oblivion of forgetting... whilst deluding myself that I am actually 'communicating'. With such modest ambitions have I been drawn into this space. So a quick setting of the scene before the afternoon lesson... ... Arrived back from annual summer holiday 10 days ago. As usual, I feel gutted about having my idea of a life wrenched from me and replaced with, well, Germany. Who wouldn't? But as I surrender hope with every passing day, and as I accept the life that I had spent five weeks alternately deriding and forgetting, I am drawn back to the source of my only comfort in this grey, grey land.

My family... Verpflichtung calls