It's Been A Long Time.....

Well hello there. I haven't written a blog post for what seems like ages, but what is, in reality, about a week.

You'd think that I'd have an abundant flow of ideas for highly interesting and humorous posts, all the things you know me for, and be itching to get back to LLD and regale you with them. Sadly no, I've only got five, maybe thirty nine if pushed, ideas and none of them have even hatched into eggs yet, let alone draft posts.

There's an ongoing saga of K and what looks to be her first boyfriend. Should I tell you all about that or should I keep quiet? If I tell you I can guarantee you'll chuckle more heartily than a heart specialist at Apollo when he writes out his invoices for the week. But, there's the risk of K finding out about the post at some point in the future and then she might kill me. Or worse, she might give me a lot of grief. Not just any grief, I mean teenage girl toward her Dad grief, officially classed as the third wost type of stroppiness in the world.

What are the other two types RD? I hear you bellowing. Well the first is what's known as ex wife about a year before you separate grief. It's not nice, take it from me. Obviously the worst grief to face is something I'm reluctant to mention and put out in the universe. Even though my own one is floating around in Sri Lanka at the moment I know that these things can travel and hit a fellow right between the eyes when he's least expecting it.

Yes, at number one is Sri Lankan mother grief. PG Wodehouse wrote about aunts as the epitome of scariness, all well and good but he didn't have a Sri Lankan mother. Which would also explain why he wasn't called PG Samarasinghe and his first name wasn't Peter and everyone called him by his nickname of Panky. Or didn't call him by that name, you know what I mean.

In general it's fair to say the RD jury's currently considering its verdict on whether to tell you about K's adventures with the opposite sex yet. Well, the one boy, not that I want to even consider adventures, but, as a chap who used to be a boy, I can well imagine what adventures a fourteen year old kid might want to go on.

Reading. The act of, not the nondescript town not too far from here.

I've been enjoying the new Kindle, the e reader I told you about, big time. I look at the debates about e readers and e books with a sense of smugness. I've noticed that people who have an e reader rarely get involved in these arguments. We just get on with reading our devices and any of the many hundreds of books we can cart around with us everywhere we go. People who haven't got an e reader talk about the smell of books, the colour and the fact that e books will never replace proper books.

I agree with them wholeheartedly. But I don't think e readers are there with the aim of replacing paper books. I like both. But, fuck me, and I mean it, though not in a sexual sense, an e reader is such a fanfuckingtastic way to read fiction, as long as it hasn't got the Thompson Twins and a few Sansoni photographs involved.

And, on the matter of reading, I've started to read the Guardian. It's a newspaper, a slightly left of centre one. After more than twenty years of being a Times, sometimes an Independent, man, I've switched allegiances. Why? It's more fun, it's as simple as that. I reckon I've got to a certain level of maturity in which I'm nearly capable of filtering out opinion from fact.

Next week I'm off to Barcelona with C. This is seriously exciting, a load of firsts together. Our first flight together, my first time ever in Spain to name two of them. I've been practicing saying all the English words but adding a phlegmy throaty sound from the back of my throat. I'm told that's pretty much the basis of the Spanish language. If in dire linguistic straits I'll just shout, that usually does the trick.

And I booked a summer holiday for me and the girls. We're Serendib bound and I can't wait.

That's my news, I promise to write and tell you about it very soon.

RD