Good Things # 2 - I thought that the sun rose in your eyes

AJ is a good thing. Look – I found a picture of him. I didn’t realise I had any in digital format and he is very reluctant to be photographed. I can’t imagine why; I think he’s rather lovely myself. Every morning he wakes me up by jumping on the bed and singing Good Morning from the musical Singin’ In The Rain or if that doesn’t work Get up by REM. Occasionally he changes the lyrics or improvises a whole new song about his terrific thirst. The one thing AJ pretends to be useless at is making a cup of tea. Apparently I am really good at this. So I make all the tea. He prepares all the food and does almost everything else. When I am really sick, he will brew up as well, but he makes such a bad job of it so I’d rather do it myself. AJ often goes out into town late morning, but we always have lunch together and I tell him about any really important News items. AJ avoids the News, with the exception of Radio Four’s The News Quiz, BBC One’s Have I got News For You which our friend Vic records for us and the occasional copy of Private Eye. AJ is very wise; most News stories are designed to provoke maximum (usually negative) emotional response, usually about events which we have no control over whatsoever. AJ says he has enough to deal with in his own life and the lives of his friends and family. Part of me would object to this, but it is not as if I do anything useful with all the information I absorb. Of course this gives me incredibly power when our postal ballot papers arrive as he relies on me to summarise the main parties’ policies, which I do with my usual creative flare. He was quite outraged to learn about the present government’s policy of trying penguins as terrorist suspects. Often I become heavily involved in his projects and vice versa. Yesterday he was an absolute angel while I was priming some wood; he got everything ready, gave me a short lecture on how to use a paintbrush (!) but then washed the brush between coats. I mean, how cool is that, having someone to wash one’s brush between coats? However, in exchange I was obliged to apply my weary brain to dreaming up a title for a game he is developing, which involved a rather strenuous and ultimately inconclusive brainstorm (I still think “Beastie Feast” is a great name). I also have to participate in the development of the game by being the side that is destined to lose while he works out how to make it an even match. We have what AJ describes as a synergy. We make things possible for one another which would not be otherwise possible. There is nothing I have done in the last six years which feels entirely my own and when I look at things he has done, my fingerprints are all over them. AJ can be deeply critical, honest well beyond the boundaries of tact, but even when he thinks I am making a big mistake with something, or even when he thinks I am destined for failure, he will do anything to give me the best opportunity at success. He criticises but never attempts to control. He washes my brush between coats, for crying out loud! On the rare occasions he does congratulate or compliment me it is worth ten times anyone else saying the same thing. He does tell me that he loves me a lot though, and you know, the other, I mean, pretty much every day. AJ’s hobbies include trying to be the world’s quietest and yet most annoying musician. This involves practising the bass guitar without an amp - creating a fairly monotonous low-frequency noise only just within the range of human hearing – and playing the electric drums with the head-phones on so all you can hear is the gentle yet persistant thudding of the pedal. He has been hankering after a saxophone for some time, and I know from my brief fling with the clarinet that it will make a very bad noise at first, but frankly this would be an improvement. We often watch a film in the evening. We used to play a hell of a lot of Chess, Scrabble and what I can only describe as Aggressive Backgammon but we have to have complete silence while he is thinking and I tend to fall asleep in between moves. We’ll go back to this when I am feeling a bit better. Last thing at night he tends to become disorientated and talks a lot of nonsense. “Good night, Crimplesoup.” “What did you just call me?” “Crimplesoup. Angus Crimplesoup – that’s my new name for you.” …or of course, having been watching The Fast Show earlier yesterday… “I was just thinking what it would be like to be stuck down an ’ole… in the fog… with an owl!” Fortunately he tends to forget such exchanges and if I mentioned Angus Crimplesoup now he would be as baffled as I was at the time.