Iestyn Edwards Wonders...is it Lumpy or Runny?

  A medical student waiting tables at a Christmas corporate removed two of the cover settings from a table near the stage.  A couple (it was the woman's birthday) were shown to the table to find a festive centre piece and nothing else.  Certainly not the glasses of champagne that ought to have been just poured.  The woman demanded an explanation.  The waiter explained that the most up to date dinner service print out had said D.O.A. next to the woman's name.   'Yes, indeed it does,' the maitre d' confirmed.  'Drinks On Arrival...'   'Oh, but in a hospital D.O.A. means something different.'

...said somebody who's never had a St John's Donut.

                                              I would visualise and visualise Madame Galina on tour: London and Blackpool: wearing a fur, dragging a trunk, staying in old-school theatrical digs, being partnered by either Michael Nunn or William Trevitt.    About  to move back to London from Aldeburgh, I was walking past the Sue Ryder shop when volunteer Janet banged on the window.     She dragged a blue trunk out of the stockroom.  'Don't  open it till you get home.  Inside's for you to wear as Madame Galina. Thrilled you've got yourself that London residency.'  At Murray's Cabaret Club. 'My aunt forbade us girls ever to go on to Murray's in the sixties. "Filth goes in there!  The Krays, that Keeler monstrosity. Filth!".'   At home I opened the trunk.  Inside was a  rabbit skin fur.  ...

I'll be lone for Christmas You can count on that! 

In Coffee Link, Solar, Leiston. WOMAN 1.  And he's petite.  WOMAN 2.  Never used to be.  I saw some photos of him in the past and he was ever so tall! 

2.  Get to the work towards your main goal.   Oh, a couple of the people I researched go for cryotherapy or kiting on the sea before this.  I thought I might smash a crate of frozen lemonade bottles on the floor and stand naked in the gas that escaped.  Or hang over the Meare by a rope round my waist hooked over the boathouse clock tower.   I remembered early this morning that goal setting has been around for longer than you might think. Amelita Galli-Curci, the great nineteenth century prima donna, talked about putting on horse blinkers and positively moving forward to a goal, taking them off, waiting for her critics and rivals to start the carping, putting them on again. Less positively she said that when one of her rivals, Dame Nellie Melba, sang for example “Lo, Hear the Gentle Lark” you would think it was about a deafening, bloody big turkey.   I have more than one main goal at the moment, so I have a pad and a fountain pen with my plans for each go...

1.  Get up two hours before your first appointment. Immediately express gratitude.  Spend half an hour reading something inspiring, half an hour doing physical exercise...   I was woken up four hours before my first appointment today.  There is no soundproofing to speak of where I live.  When I first looked at this studio, number 8, number 9 was also empty.  I asked the letting agent to let herself into next door and sing, cough, shout, clap her hands, whatever.   Which she duly said she did.   Hm...   I was woken by the Sizewell engineer next door, who suffers with sleep apnea and who bellows at early dawn from within his Cpap-mask.  I reached for my Gratitude Diary: 'The Sizewell engineer goes home to Ramsbottom at the weekends.'   I read the Book of Job for inspiration.  In Out of Africa Karen Blixen wrote that her farm workers saw God in terms of both Job and Tales of the Arabian Nights - as a richly   ima...