This was the year Texas froze like nothing I've ever known. I've seen England freeze on numerous occasions, but England is used to it and has gritting lorries and warm clothing so it's not usually a massive deal. Here, in a city where we can somehow experience a power cut because it rained a bit, we were fucked. Nowhere was open. No-one could get around. Power went and pipes froze and it lasted about a week. Our household didn't have it too bad - aside from the lack of hot water - and once everything returned to normal I lagged all the pipes which seemed like they might need lagging and adopted the practice of keeping about a month's supply of tinned cat food squirrelled away in a cupboard just in case.
I didn't bother hoarding toilet paper during the pandemic because we produce only a normal quantity of poo, but we have an indeterminate number of cats - somewhere in double figures - so I'm reluctant to take chances on that score, not least because the cat food supply chain has been intermittent since September, at which point the pandemic slowed to a trickle.
No-one I knew well died this year so far as I can recall, at least no hominids. That said, we lost a rabbit around the beginning of the year. His name was Tony. He was only a baby and was our third rabbit to go in roughly the same number of months due to a combination of extraordinarily shitty luck and what happens when rabbits develop a taste for cardboard. We were both devastated and vowed no more bunnies for a while because it's too heartbreaking and they seem unusually prone to pegging it whilst in our care. We lasted until March, at which point the empty hutch in the corner of the front room became too depressing, then adopted Oreo who, already being five, seemed more likely to survive our hospitality. Thankfully this has turned out to be the case, so it seems that losing three rabbits in quick succession really was just extraordinarily shitty luck. Gus II, one of the feral cats who lived in our garden and whom I fed daily also passed away, which was similarly incredibly depressing. Being feral, she remained suspicious, but always seemed pleased to see me.
Inevitably, we've acquired more cats during 2021. First came the litter of kittens comprising Lucy, Luna, Lilly and Mr. Meow Meow, the latter of whom was given that name by the people who ended up adopting him. We kept the other three and have since added Ollie, Polly, and Otto to their ranks. Otto is the most recent arrival and is presently still a kitten. He has a German name because we watched the movie Cabaret followed by the first two series of Babylon Berlin. We tried the third series but I kept falling asleep and couldn't get into it as I had with the first two series.
We rescued a raccoon too. She was a baby found out on our porch, presumably abandoned during one of those pseudo-Biblical storms we have here from time to time. We gave her to a woman who raises raccoons, who named her Roxie.
In addition to Babylon Berlin, we watched Wolf Hall - thanks to my mother sending Bess the DVD for Christmas, Succession, the Sopranos yet again, and a ton of Wheel of Fortune. I'm sure we watched other things but nothing comes to mind right now, aside from a couple of episodes of Doctor Who which I attempted out of morbid curiosity and which were complete shite. On the other hand, I read a ton of books, the greatest of which were probably by Robert Moore Williams, Andrea Dworkin, D.H. Lawrence, Isabelle Nicou, and José Saramago.
I also published a ton of books, or self-published four if we're going to be pedantic. These were Golden Age, Missing Words, Bess News and The Bunker. Golden Age was my first science-fiction novel since 2013's Against Nature, and all sorts of enthusiastic noises were made, none of which amounted to anything - which was about what I expected.; Missing Words was yet another mammoth collection of previously published essays, and The Bunker is a found novel - as I'm calling it - which I spent two years transcribing from no less than thirty cassette tapes of testimony from a maniac of my former acquaintance. It's been an admittedly esoteric undertaking, but I feel it has been worth it, at least in artistic terms.; Bess News collects a series of newsletters my wife produced about herself when she was a teenager back in the eighties. Some person at her high school made a comment along the lines of if you're so special you should have your own fan club, which was intended as criticism but which she took as a challenge. Bess News reproduces all of the existing issues of the same - about thirty in all - in lavish full colour and is not available in the stores. In fact, having been put together as a Christmas present, it isn't actually available unless you know myself or my wife personally.
I've also been writing a novel, more science-fiction, and approximately a sequel to Against Nature, or maybe a response. It's called Inward Collapse at the moment and will be available from the same publisher as the last one, unless I'm somehow exposed as an admirer of Adolf Hitler and find myself subsequently cancelled prior to publication. It will probably be my final Faction Paradox thing on the grounds that I hadn't actually intended to make a career out of it.
Musically, I will have had a new Retirement Community EP out by the time anyone reads this, all going well. It features sonic tributes to Pat Sajak - the host of Wheel of Fortune, el Chapo - one of Mexico's most successful businessmen, and is much harder to dance to than the first record.
I've been painting too, at least on and off, mostly book covers but I sold the oil painting of the apples for a hundred bucks, so busy-busy-busy.
I'm older and I still don't have cancer.
We discovered a new palace to eat, El Potosino on San Pedro which is one of those Mexican diners which feels like it's actually in Mexico, and rural Mexico judging by the fleeting glances of confusion when we've gone in. This is a good thing because it keeps the white people out, even though we're white people, technically speaking. That sentence may not make much sense to anyone who doesn't live in San Antonio. Anyway, English is the lesser of the two languages spoken at El Potosino, and they have a deafening live Tejano band on Saturdays, complete with a fucking tuba, so the clientele rarely seems to include persons named Josh, Greg or Tammy and the food is astonishing and affordable.
I'm sure other things of note happened during 2021, but that's all I can think of at the moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment