Tuesday

Play Station 3 - and how I won't now be buying one.
So Sony have decided to abandon the backward games capability that they promised for those of us in PAL land. So my library of Burnout, Need For Speed etc games which I still enjoy playing on my PS2, I will not be able to play on my PS3. I am not interested in committing to a bluray device, I am not convinced that more Bluray films are selling than HD format and so I am waiting before I go for one or the other as a film playing medium. A PS3 that played all my own games AND gave me next gen HiDef films is one thing, the films are a bonus, not a reason to buy a PS3.
So I have today ordered a Wii, less than £180, and no, it won't play my old games either, but now I will have over £300 spare to spend on new Wii games, so how cool is that? Bloody cool I reckon.
So, I abandoned Nintendo and went to Sonysome years ago, and now, well, the world goes full circle and I have ordered my new Wii games console, which will be just a games console, and soon, when the world has decided what HiDef format it wants, I will buy a drive and shove it in my VISTA PC and connect that to the TV. Perfect. Horses for courses and all that.

Monday

Not A Moments Peace

It is now nearly two years since Catherine had passed away, her cross lived at my neck, her memories never far from me, her soul still intertwined with mine. I hide from view my internal anguish, no one sees me shudder when the word Cancer is uttered, and everyone is always pleasant to me. I don't think people show me pity, they just treat me as a single chap who loved and lost. But then I am luckier than they know. Catherine never actually left me, she is with me at all times and her love and laughter fills my life. True her body is gone to corruption and lies rotten in an oak casket in her plot, a beautiful white marble headstone polished weekly by me showing her current home, but that is irrelevant, her soul lives on and it is her soul that is her very essence.

Caroline has been an absolute revelation for me. She moved into the street about ten months ago, and so sadly did not know Catherine. I had helped her do a few things when she first moved in, prompted I remember when a white van pulled up on her drive as I washed my car. I like the independence that Caroline has, it is perfectly judged. She is not one of those silly women who just will not accept help from a man, nor is she so dumb that she cannot do anything on her own. And yes her hair is blond and lives mostly in a pony tail. The van pulled up and reversed on to her drive, and for a while, as I finished the leathering and started the soft cloth polish, she ferried 'stuff' from the van into her house. Then she came across.

'Hi' she said, 'I'm Caroline Deveraux, we haven't met.' Her voice was rich and had a melody to it even in such few words.

'Well hello Caroline Deveraux, I am Henry Baddersley, and I am glad now that I can mentally think Caroline rather than 'newbie' when ever I see you.'

'Well yes Henry, but then you could have always come and said hello, there is no harm in that now is there?' She laughed as she spoke as if to ensure that her words carried no venom or spite. Her finger had raised and pointed at me coinciding with the word 'hello' and all in all the presentation and introduction had been quite a dart through the introspection that I lived in.

'Caroline it is, perhaps, to my shame that I did not, but a widower knocking at the door of the new beautiful neighbour could convey the wrong impression. I knew that we would meet and be introduced, I just did not know when, and that meeting is when the first impressions would be exchanged.'

'Well Henry here we are, and truly it is second impressions for we have both seen each other before and have formed first impressions. How, I wonder, do your second impressions compare with your first?'

She was of course correct, it was a piece of logic that Catherine would have loved to tease me over, and I started to answer but she shook her head and waved her finger.

'No Henry I wasn't being literal, we can talk about that on another day. Today I have come across to ask for some help. I have just been to Ikea and bought some furniture, assembling it will be fun and take up many a happy hour, but meanwhile, some of the cartons are just too heavy for me to lift alone. Can I ask that you spare a few minutes of your time and help me into my house with them? I did see that you were washing your car, and had you gone from washing to waxing, then I would not have asked, but as you seem to have gone straight to a polishing stage I thought that your car may be interruptible and hence it may allow you to help me.' As she spoke her ponytail bobbed and seemed to weave a hypnotic spell, the tail appearing first at one side of her head and then perhaps the other, perhaps reappearing at the same side. Her voice sang as she spoke the breaths she took to power her request caused her chest to rise and fall and me to notice that it did so.

I forced my eyes away and looked her in the ace as I spoke. 'You should have asked me straight away and not waited to see what I would do next. I just fill my time away from work just pottering, I have so little to do, the house needs so little looking after, and I think that I must have the best polished car in Gloucestershire, and so yes. Yes of course I will be delighted to help you carry your cartons in, and, no , not because I am bored, but because I am delighted help, and yes, so that you do not have to ask, I will happily help you assemble your furniture, and no, Caroline Deveraux, I will not be offended if you don't ask me to help assemble.' It was strange. As I look back now and remember that first meeting I realise how much I spoke, probably longer sentences than to anyone else. I was very monosyllabic in those days, saving all my conversation for Catherine. There was no one else I needed to speak with apart from people at work, and that needed to be concise and perfunctory. My friends were all still coupled and I was always the odd one, and it was embarrassing to see my friends try by inviting an unattached female to be company for me at the dinner parties and other occasions that we got together. I always felt sorry for the woman. I could imagine the words that they had used.

'Oh do come, Henry will be there, he is a nice chap, widowed, and just too lonely for his own good. Come along and shake him out of it, you have so much to offer it's bound to work between you.' And of course what all these poor women took from this is that they were themselves sad and lonely, and that their friends were trying to fix them up with a sad and lonely partner. They failed to see that the only effect would be to put two sad and lonely people together and double the unhappiness. But I was not sad or lonely, I had Catherine, only they could not know that. I was comfortable in my loss.

I followed Caroline back to the van and looked inside. My goodness I thought, that'll take some shifting. The van was half full with brown cardboard cartons all of approximately the same size, all with their 'this way up' arrows carefully aimed at the van roof.

'Gosh, she's been busy' said Catherine quietly to me.

'Yes indeed' I said back, forgetting myself.

'Sorry Henry, I missed that' Caroline said, 'what did you say, it's not too much is it?' Concern showing on her face, perhaps that she had misjudged me and that having seen the size of the problem I would back away. 'I mean I can do it my self, I can open each carton and take all the pieces in to the house individually, it's no problem. It is just that if I can get the van back before six I will save a days rental cost, and I don't think I can empty it by myself in time.' She stopped and looked at the pile and then I think thought about what she had said. 'Oh look I am sorry, that came out all wrong, I don't want to pressure, I really did wonder if you could just help me. It would save me a bit of time, there is no worry, honestly.'

'Oh course Henry will help you,' said Catherine.

'Caroline, of course I will help you,' I said, needing no bidding from Catherine, 'all I meant was, yes indeed you have been shopping. Come on, let's get the boxes inside and then you can take the van back. I can follow you if you like and bring you back, save you worrying with buses and things.'