It is already well into my evening, but I want to try and make a post regardless ─ it won't be too long.
Early last evening I finally got around to phoning Sandra W., a longtime 'girlfriend' of my old friend William G. He is in residence in a full-time care facility over on Vancouver Island, and I have not seen him since sometime in the 1990s.
He and I have known one another for maybe 58 years. I don't expect we shall ever see one another alive again. However, Sandy is familiar enough with the staff of the facility that she will occasionally phone him; and just recently, she said, they had some FaceTime together for maybe 15 minutes.
The facility staff have to mediate these phonecalls because Bill is mainly bedridden, and consequently the arrangements are made with them or else she would be unable to reach him.
Anyway, all is still as well as can be expected ─ he is 74 years old, and has long defied my expectations for his lifespan.
After I was talking with Sandy for maybe 25 minutes, I was certain I heard my brother's cough downstairs ─ it is more distinctive than either of my two stepsons' tussis. Yet the time was not yet 7:30 p.m. ─ he has not been home that early in some weeks from wherever he has been drinking.
So Sandy and I wrapped up our conversation, and I promised to get in touch again before Christmas.
It looked like I would be trying to spend some evening time watching T.V. with my brother, so I went downstairs to quickly put together a reasonably small supper ─ my brother was largely out of sight, seated at the dining table. He must have brought home some fast food for his own supper.
I took my fare into the living room, quite sure that as yet my brother was unaware that it was me who had been in the kitchen, and not one of my two stepsons (who were both home).
Nevertheless, I had grown suspicious of my brother's state, so I ventured a cautious peek to where he sat.
Sure enough, he was seated with his head sagged down onto his chest, overcome by the meal and his hours-long beer-drinking.
And so I had myself another early evening ─ exactly what I like. I think that I may have gotten to bed ahead of 8:30 p.m.
Of course I was up again in the earliest a.m. hours when everyone else had retired for the night ─ I rose soon after 1 a.m. It was heavily pouring rain outside.
I probably remained up until nigh 4:30 a.m., if not later. If I maintain my recent pace at adding content into the very first post I am drafting at the brand new version of my website Thai-Iceland.com, I just may be able to finish and publish the post by the 21st.
The day has been largely marked with rain, if not entirely so.
After I rose in the morning around 8 a.m., I had a bath; and then around 10 a.m., I went downstairs to join my brother for some morning T.V. ─ I had in mind the 2017 Saoirse Ronan movie On Chesil Beach.
"What's it about?" he wanted to know.
He tends to like movies set in the past, as well as UK and other non-Canadian English-speaking 'Commonwealth' movies, so I somewhat tempted him by prefacing it with the information that it was set in 1962 at an actual beach that exists in the Dover area of England and which has geological significance.
I truthfully said that I don't like reading a movie's full plot, so that was pretty much all that I offered.
Fortunately, he became sufficiently interested in the characters that he watched the show without further murmuring. I knew enough about what was to come in the movie that I correctly figured that by the time the movie got around to the fateful 'wedding night' scene, he would become quite caught up in that unfortunate event and its aftermath.
A young man's hurt pride set him and the love of his life on separate trajectories that took each of them through the remainder of their lives in directions neither would have ever imagined when they were young and in love.
It certainly was not a 'happily ever after' movie. However, I definitely enjoyed it.
Incidentally, when the movie was finished, I tuned in the series finale of Game of Thrones (i.e., the episode "The Iron Throne"). We've slowly been working our way through the series for about a year or more, so we're both going to miss it. When a series lasts that long and a viewer faithfully watches every episode over a period of time (and not on some binge), the investment placed into some of the characters and the actors playing them really does become enormous.
I think there is going to be something of a gap in my entertainment life after this.
As my brother observed, there could easily have been four or five spin-off series as the main surviving characters more or less went on their divergent paths. It feels a huge shame to just be dropping every single one of them, never to be enjoying them again.
By the way, I was eager to see now-tyrannical Daenerys finally 'get hers', so that was satisfying for me. I was leery of her from the time she had her own (albeit impossible-to-live-with) brother put to death the way that he was. For anyone who may have missed witnessing the scene, she had molten gold poured all over his head as he screamed in agony, entombing his head in the metal and essentially cooking his brain, I suppose. All of the flesh surrounding his skull would have burned away.
And she was quite satisfied with the job.
It is already after 8 p.m. ─ I must call a halt to this post, for my brother could arrive home at any moment. I need to be set to get myself to bed.
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