Howard Hughes and I...

WE ARE CUT FROM THE SAME CLOTH... I have never seen anybody in a film who was so similar to me and the way I might have lived if I had vastnesses of money and the time, power and inclination to follow my own whims to a fault...

Readers who've followed my blog for a while and read my From Depressed Oaks childhood post will know that I grew up with pretty full-on OCD of the contamination-handwashing variety for a couple of years in late childhood (around the last year of primary school into the first year of secondary school; that kind of time...)

So viewing Scorsese's film on Howard Hughes last night I saw an awful lot that I've done. Not locking myself naked in a room full of films and peeing into specially aligned milkbottles (though I DID end up stashed in a room a metre deep in rubbish and rubble, convinced people were spying on me and listening to nonexistenct voices through the wall). No: what I'm getting at is the milder, earlier stages when he got the first fear of germs and contamination and had to wash hands over and over. I washed mine until ~ in wintertime ~ they chapped and bled. I couldn't pick up money from off the floor. Particularly copper coins with their dirty appearance and strong smell. Just like in the clip I could not leave a public bathroom unless someone else first entered (public toilet doors are the most filthily contaminated of all)... many doors at home I used to open with my elbows, causing, of course, lots of amusement. But better to be laughed at and remain clean than to be contaminated.

Many of Hughes's subtler moves I can't help wondering whether the average viewer even noticed, let alone got. E.g. when the senator serves him a glass of water; he has to edge it round and round so as to touch with his own hands those parts untouched by the servants' ... would YOU have got that?

Sometimes in days of ambition yet misery, I envisage myself, too, in a huge house cut off from the world. Though I wouldn't tape up strips of red tape all about, I CAN see myself turning into something of a recluse away from the nasty old world... and really, knowing how nasty and full of spite the world really is, who can blame anyone for doing so?



Oh I don't know. Having had this "cold" for a week, I spent the weekend feeling dismally low and tired. The most negativistic thoughts have been circling my head. I missed Sunday lunch at Mother Hubbs' yesterday, not because I was avoiding her but because I was so exhausted I simply retired to bed and missed everything until approaching 8pm when the most dreadful television impinged on my sorry consciousness... "you MIGHT be Nancy!" exclaimed Graham Norton... on a dreadful BBC "reality" casting show... putting together a West End re-run of that classic done to death my my own thirtysomething generation (we all sang the songs at school)... poor wannabes and hopefuls, full of varying talent being told useless factoidal advice like "you don't want this enough" (in other words you don't jump up and down like a slavering fool as much as I'd like to see, you keep your energy for performance like any professional with half a measure of nous)... and other such nothingnesses sayings...

... what was ON TOP of the television caught my eyes... yes! My mirrored roborovskery! They were all so lovely and so cute, little gremlins last night. Allowing me to rub their shoulders in sleep (they love that)... even Spherical did so... SO unlike the paranoid-pinging Spherical...

... then they woke up a bit more and took to pinging about like a tubby horse-race. I put them in the diggery for three hours and their fur's now sublimely well-tended.

On that note I'd better go. Valium Marilyn's threatened visit is taking place as we speak... her vivacious voice is hollering up the hallway!... and the longer you leave her, the louder she gets!!... Have a pleasant day everybody!!

;->...