the weekend vist

my father came over to visit me last weekend. i had been depressed before he came, bcz two days always feels like too little, but once he came we had a great time and i forgot about it. i went to glasgow to pick him up from the airport. he had been coming straight to edinburgh, but he missed his flight from manchester to edinburgh and had to come to glasgow instead. i was sure he wouldnt be able to find his way alone from glasgow to edinburgh, so i went over to pick him up. it was a mad rush. i came to know at 7pm. had to rush home to dump my gym things. then run from home to waverly, buy a ticket and literaaly run to the train and stumble in. luckily, a train was getting ready to leave just as i reached the platform pantin and i hopped in. reached glasgow at 10pm, ran to the buchanan street bus stn, got a bus to the airport. bus was empty. there was an old chatty driver in charge & we chatted like old friends all the way. he said his daughter lives in edinburgh. she's a doctor. when he suggests to her, he's not well & he might come over to edinburgh and stay with her for a few days, she tells him she will send him a prescription by post. he thought it was very sweet of me to come rushing to glasgow to pick up my dad on such short notice. i told him i hadnt seen my dad for the last 6 mths or so and then too for 2 days. and that id grown up seeing him on holidays. which made us all, as a family, value our time together a lot more. we were more friends than family. i reached the airport at 10:30. we took a bus and by the time we got back to the city centre, i knew we wouldnt be able to catch the last train back ... 11:30. so we parked ourselves at the busstop and waited for the next bus. we had to wait for one and half hours. the place was deserted. we sat on the floor in front of the coffee machine and chatted about everything. reached edinburgh at 1am. the whole of princes street was deserted but there were lights on inside waterstones and a long queue outside and lights in the castle across the road. it was for the release of the new harry potter. they had done up the castle as hogworths! it must have been wildly excited for the little potter-manics who visited. dadda thinks harry potter is a load of crp so we didnt spend much time discussing that! got home at 2 instead to a starkl empty fridge! had thought will busy some chicken on the way to airport but then he went and missed his flight. had a bad time explaining the logic behind my eating program. i live alone, so i buy everything into four. mondays i fast. weekends i eat out and go crazy! i have set menu which NEVER varies all week. it makes me feel secure having a set pattern to follow. over the next two days we cooked and ate the craziest things, went to every pub in town (or almost). got drunk. chatted till 4 am. watched sarkar. cried over our old, accepted problems. ranted against the unaccepted. laughed over old family jokes. talked about common concerns. its so nice to talk to him like this and also just to have someone i know in town to go out with and talk and laugh together with. it was a glorious weekend. we did so many little things that it would take for ever to catalog them all. we talked about my plans. rather my persistent dreams. he said i should really go for it. that he would be there for me, backing me. but i still dont know if i will ever have to guts to do it. go back now, in this old age, start all over again! we laughed over how ill be thirty this yr! its spooky thinking about it. i still feel thriteen at times. he left on monday, early in the morning. i dropped him to the airport and came to work after. worked in a daze. was half asleep. good thing just had some fairly mechanical stuff to do. not that ANYTHING i have to do at work can be called anything but. i feel at times like i studied architecture to become a tea boy on a building site. or whatever. i dunno. i guess its ok, this is what everyone does and id probably be cribbing whatever i did. i HATE application programming. always did. anyway, i was half asleep. skipped rowing in the evening. but im going out in an eight this saturday. its been a long while. im looking forward to it! its back to the grind. gym, french, work, rowing, and empty rooms with just my music and my books for company. teetotally boring. but not so bad after all. it could be much worse. im reading tender is the night. f. scitt fitzgerald. its good till now. these i cant read everything. once i could even ANYTHING. in india, we have paper packets made out of old newspapers. i have even read those in emergencies ... if u know what i mean. its like a smokers thing. addictive reading on the pot. but these days i cant read something unless i like it. definitely i can no longer even bear to listen to music i dont like. i think im getting cranky :)