Greece is the word

  ... Greece was the word on our plane tickets at the end of September. We didn't want to be obvious and visit an idyllic island with sweet blue-and-white houses, charming windy streets, fairy lights and jolly tavernas that would slap down a fresh fish soon as look at you. No we went to a part of Greece with an unusual amount of mattresses and unwanted toilet bowls by the roadside. A part of Greece where the only 'taverna' had a chalkboard outside promising many different sorts of fresh fish but in actual fact only ever had frozen shrimp and things made with a lot of cheese.

We stayed in a stone barn in the middle of olive groves, the view out over the blue blue sea and the islands beyond made us forget about the mattresses and too-much cheese. Also a lovely dog called Susie adopted us. Susie slept outside our bedroom on the balcony and accompanied our morning walks (past the wayside mattresses and toilets) to the beach and the bakery.

Also there were chickens, we cooked with their eggs and they offered endless entertainment, best was the evening show as they climbed or tried to fly into their roosting tree, then jostle and do that happy chicken noise as they found the right branch suitable for them all to settle down side by side for the night.

September students

It's a startlingly sunny day, I'm on my lunch break and take a seat to enjoy the unusual warmth and the sight of dazed-looking freshers just arrived from Planet Zog, trying to figure out how doors work and what a potato is for.

A young man joins me on the bench and after a while asks if he can ask a question, he's careful with his words, he's trying out a whole new vocabulary

Where do I get wash tabs?

For clothes - laundry? (he nods) Any supermarket will have them

He looks puzzled and I can't quite get his accent, I'm guessing he's from eastern europe - or maybe further afield

If you go to the top of this street you'll see a Sainsburys, big orange sign, they will have a range of laundry products including tablets. 

I went on to explain about supermarkets as he didn't seem familiar with the concept, then I asked where he'd come from ...

Wales

Where did August go?

Too fast that's where it went...

The month featured a tale of two cats, one of them - an old friend - died, we will have her wake tomorrow. The other started visiting us at Gin O' Clock every evening, she accepts a piece of salami and then uses our garden as her personal bathroom.

My father is very ill I have been visiting as often as I can. He's actually very calm and comfortable, clearly at peace with the prospect of an ending but we are all in fear at the idea of a world without him in it.

 

Conversations with strangers

My work involves me spending time with people in a waiting room, sometimes they're quiet, other times they really want to chat. I've got PTSD from some of the things people tell me, yesterday I was just confused.

A woman arrived, accepted a cup of coffee and told me how furious she is at the government's announcement about stopping the £500 winter fuel payment to pensioners, she told me how her mother found it difficult to  cope. I sympathized, then she moved on to the joys of a clothing resales app called 'Vinted'.

Mum's a shopoholic, she just won't stop, her house is full of bags of clothes still with all the labels on. Every now again to make room for the next lot she'll take a load to the charity shop and I said - Mum! look you could make money on this stuff. I put some of it up on Vinted last week, 6 dresses, 10 pairs of jeans - all brand new, never worn - I got £35 for it !

My Lovely Horse

 

 

July is the month for horse-cleaning.  I join in with the annual re-whitening of the Uffington horse in Oxfordshire. The horse was created possibly three thousand years ago by digging a 2 metre deep trench and then filling it with chalk. It's hard to express my wonderment at this monument, how did they dig those trenches (probably slaves). How was it designed, the horse is so big that when you're working on it it's hard to remember which bit of the body you're on. 

 

Is the creature actually a horse? there's whiskers on it's face - referred to as the  'beak' which only makes sense when you hear that an excavation in the '90s revealed that the whiskers had originally been a metre longer. The 'horse' has changed over the millenia by encroaching turf which is why the beak isn't very beaky. It had been noted that the rate of turf-encroament meant that the lines around it's head would disappear completely in a few years. Which is why this year we helped an archeological team to restore the lines to an earlier width.

One of the team brought along horsey tattoos for us all - I might make mine permanent.

Meatstick Queen

 

Been looking after this cat lately, she has a tiny head and ears that fold down onto her head, she is very keen on 'meatsticks' - a cat product I'd not heard of before - is this a job, making-up made-up food items?

I've not been dead these last few months, just lumpen, and waiting for something nice to happen but here's a recap

February - worked all month at a foot-scraping clinic: part of my job involved helping clinicians remove moldy toenails, the other parts seemed to involve being abused and not being paid much so I didn't stay.

March - interviewed by two adult schoolboys for a clerical job at the eye hospital, they couldn't remember what questions to ask me and had to keep nudging each other and pointing at bits of paper.

April - mainly rain

This is what a cat who wants 'meatsticks' looks like
 

Conversation piece

January has been a bit draggy, scraggy and irritating... a bit like me 

At the beginning of the month I started a conversation with a very beautiful woman, I asked her what she was expecting for this coming year. She said that after more than 40 years of marriage to a beautiful but awful man - who'd made her feel worthless and ugly, she'd just finished divorcing him. She'd walked away from the beautiful house and beautiful garden, the beautiful cars and she was quite detailed about the beautiful furniture she'd left behind. Interestingly the one thing she'd kept was his beautiful name, which had been the thing that had made me start talking to her.

Things I learned this year

for me in  2023 there was

rather too much dampness

sad intervals 

and toothache

a weirdly hot 1st week of September

a new king 

 

the nice bits involved swimming and Christmas cake

 

I learned about the Japanese expression Kuuki wo yomu -  'reading the air' 

This is not simply an ability to 'read the room' 

In Japan this is an extreme and excruciating mind game, mainly used to establish and maintain hierarchical structures, the underling must become telepathic.

Kanako illustrated the concept with a story about when she worked for a small fashion company - her boss liked to perform the idea that his employers (the women) were his equals. Every day they would all go out for lunch together. Every day he would ask one of the women to say where they should go to eat. Each woman dreaded her turn to say because it was all about guessing correctly where the boss wanted to go  - the inability to 'read the air' has it's own specific and derogatory term - KY (like being called 'backward') and is apparently a career-killer 

 

The Sneaky Leak

That rain water flood that crashed through our roof in August - huge and dramatic - a Niagara event  

Hadn't noticed the silent, secret river seeping though the house - has been for several years 

Didn't notice til November -  going to write something on the calendar,  talking on the phone at the time, not really looking what I was doing but could feel pen slipping rather than writing so paid attention - water dripping through the ceiling, onto weird art calendar, making it even more grotequesly baroque  

Several days progressively tearing the house apart - moving heavy furniture, dismantling shelving, sawing through plasterboard 

Found rogue section of bathroom plumbing, sealing tape eroded, steadily weeping into wall of bedroom.

Weeks later less wet - still damp

Removing storage though - lovely spacious room.

Embracing dampness

The Wee Willie Winkie Robber

Our house is situated on a crossroads, halfway down a hill. A wonky street light outside our gate is where people gather to sing songs, gossip and plan criminal activity. Over the road is patch of grass where general noise-makers like to set up shop and opposite our house is a big high wall - last year, a car of pink balaclava'd drug-stealers drove a stolen car into it and smashed it all down.* 

There's a squeaky front gate then a little patch of concrete before the steps up to our front door, by the side of the steps is a little nook to get to the side gate, Here's an inaccurate picture of our house

Dogs and people like using the little side nook as a toilet, to do drugs and have sex. The wall by the nook has a thick thatch of ivy where burglars like to park the tools of their trade, best scores so far are several bolt cutters and a heavy duty iron trolley.

Outside our squeaky gate the ivy rampages up the street light sending out prongs of vegetation to attack people walking by. Last week while giving the ivy a trim my shears hit tinny metal, I pulled out a brass candle holder, like the one Wee Willie Winkie used, it had a candle stump in it. I've bought it in and cleaned it off - it's a cheap, scarred little thing, it doesn't look like the spoils of a heist so I'm wondering if it's another burglary tool - maybe an old-school cat-burglar who hasn't heard about modern torches yet.

* two weeks ago - exactly a year after that the wall was smashed down - a bobble-hatted man and a skinny lad, turned up and built the wall back up. It was finished yesterday, a shiny big car pulled up next to it and a spivvy character in a suit and dark glasses got out, inspected the wall and signed it off as satisfactory.

 

Apple Time - Slug Time - Brazilians

Mabon is the pagan celebration of the autumn equinox, the image associated with this holiday is a fruitful apple tree. My apple tree was fruitful to a ridiculous degree this year, I can't collect them and give them away fast enough so the slugs have been pouring into the garden. Going into the garden at the moment is a squidgy affair.

After the Great Flood I needed help - mainly to fix the electrics and the roof. The electrician offered to send some Brazilians my way, they had just finished working on a big building project and were looking for employment.

My current Brazilian is very attractive, last week he was making things nice up inworking on the roof, he speaks barely any English and we both have enough  Spanish to ensure a continuous stream of misunderstandings. He arrives in the morning, I suggest 'Te o Cafe?' and he beams nodding enthusiastically 'Chocolat - si si si!!!' 

At midday Alejandra brings down his packed lunch and I make myself a sandwich then we sit in the garden looking at all the apples and slugs and he tells me about the numerous offspring he has seeded around the world, he sees my face and beams  'I can't help, I Brazilian...'

An actual god-sized bathtub of water tipped over our house last saturday

 

it came right into the house like the roof didn't even exist 

the stairs became a waterfall

what couldn't wait to come down the stairs squirted itself through the light fittings

I had that look on my face like Carrie after the buckets of blood dropped on her at the prom

 

Apart from that August hasn't been my favourite month this year.

Kanako returns!!!

The lure of bacon baps, donuts and quirky tableware was too much and she returned from Tokyo to come and stay with us for June and July. 

She tried swimming in the murky chilly water of the Bristol Channel, we also did Art and Musical Theatre but the main event for Kanako was a thorough investigation of England's cafes, cakes and charity shops. 

Accumulating pretty plates, tea sets that look like cottages and royal souvenir mugs during her visit - Kanako's homeward flight to Japan included a hefty clankage  of ceramic goods.

I miss her!

Battling

 

I've not posted this month because I've been waiting to ungrump but it's clearly not going to happen before tomorrow. 

I had a tooth out, then attended a dear person's funeral and then someone was horrid to me, then I spent a day in a hot traffic jam and all year my hormones haven't been working nicely.

I'm attempting to keep to at least one post a month so here it is.

Next month had better be better

Here's an employment opportunity

Battlefield Architect

Join our Future Battlefield Capability team ... You'll be developing new concepts such as Battlefield Effects Management and next generation open fire control systems in the context of large scale Digitised Battlefield Infrastructures.
You will be responsible for ensuring the integration of MBDA products into the wider battlespace. By interfacing with our customers directly, you'll identify their future capability needs, conduct investigation on potential solutions, and assess their feasibility as future products.

 

'Battlefield  Effects Management' sounds like it'll be basically working on something Star Wars or Marvel, it's all sounds Huge Fun doesn't it?

Exhibition alert!

I lurk around noticeboards, if you click on the 'small ads' tag at the end of this post a host of posts around the subject will arrive.

These public notices are short stories, often poignant, sometimes funny, sometimes sad -  they are an illustration of our society, describing loneliness and need. They show us who is vulnerable, and how labour is valued . 

There's a lot of everyday sexism in these places. I've not yet seen an ad where a woman offers a man a place to sleep in return for managing her home maintenance and social needs.

I've done an exhibition about this

 it is on in London at postROOM,

41 Ecclesbourne rd N1 3AF 

open from Thurs 25th May - 17 June

open thurs - sat 2-6pm

more about this project can be found on my other website

Smelly Cat

I was in London last month looking after a very hairy cat. My temporary home was a flat with  living room, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and 'another room' I guessed what this room was for and tried to keep the door to that room shut but the latch wasn't strong and the cat could easily push it open and loved going in there. 

My mother paid a visit. She noticed the cat scratching at the 'naughty' door

What's in there?

Nothing much but the cat loves it and her fur gets very smelly in there.

Mum opened the door and took an investigative sniff - ah - cannabis - she's getting high in there

Offensive Waste Driver

 = Top job in my feed today - not sure how offensive they want but I'll give it my best shot.

 

I've recently been keeping company with  Belcher, a fat snorey old cat who lives in Cornwall

Cornwall  is a land of diverse residents. On leaving the main road to Lands End I follow signs to Gnome World then Screech Owl Sanctuary then Indian Queens,  I drive on past these delights - my destination is a pretend old village built by our newly Kinged Charles III.

Belcher is not impressed by the amount I feed him and is highly suspicious of me - if he's not giving me hard stares from his food bowl he stands sentry under a plant-festooned coffee table. On the rare occasions that I do feed him, I'm rewarded by an extensive and close-up washing ritual, his plumpness makes this difficult so it takes a while.

This is a drawing of last nights dream

 

Yesterday I drew a circle around a 'situations vacant' ad for a  'Senior Odour Consultant' 

Then I went to our local pub and  overheard someone explaining about biometrics, that her sister has a car that she can open without a key because the door handle can read her fingerprints, the person listening looked puzzled - So how does she start it up, does she have to lick the steering wheel?

 

Knitting and drugs

 

 

This morning our local church hosted the Community Keeping Active Christmas Luncheon*.   

For the luncheon I made a stack of salmon and cucumber sandwiches and carried them carefully up the steep hill to the church hall, I was a little late and the room was already buzzing with ladies in lavender twinsets arranging platters of quiche and sausage rolls. The men were all in properly smart suits with ties and Good Shoes. Here I learned quite a lot about the French and English yarn industries (genuinely fascinating) and  also more than I needed to know about badminton and exercise schedules.

After lunch  I went back down the hill, beyond my house and further on down until I arrived at the very glorious tattoo parlour where Frank, my current houseguest is working, I had been invited for a tour and was not going to turn down this educative opportunity. Frank used to be female, he has a lot of tattoos and  an impressive reputation for his work. He's not too keen on doing the sort of tattoos that people want him to do** but we all have to make a living.  Artwork was pinned up around each person's work station - someone was very keen on scenes depicting Egyptian sphinxes and Aztec gods overlooking landscapes of brightly coloured limbs climbing out of holes bearing bodily organs.

My afternoon learning was mainly about which drugs inspired what sort of artwork and also to be careful  about getting too popular for the work you do during the more transient phases of your life.

 

* I am currently living my life backwards: last week the church hosted the Community New Year Party  

**  wolves howling at psychedelic moons,  weeping faces ....

Drug Drama

Our plane back from Turkey landed at midnight, it was after 3am by the time the taxi dropped us home and we sleep-walked the last few yards to our front gate so we only partially registered the sea of scattered rocks in the road outside our house.  

Waking in daylight, the view outside our bedroom was alarming. We live on a steep hill at a crossroads, the house opposite is considerably higher than us and a tall Scots Pine dominates the space in their little front garden. This massive tree is surrounded and supported by a chunky stone wall and is a much-loved feature of the neighbourhood. The downhill part of the supporting wall was now collapsed, stones, shrubs and earth spread over the road and pavement beneath, the tree looking very precarious.

Our next-door neighbour had seen the whole episode, he'd been at his upper window the day before when a car rocketed over from the road opposite, smashing into the wall with a force that rocked our houses. Two men in pink balaclavas were trying to get out of the front of the car and yelling to each other about 'getting the f***ing food'. The cars air bags had inflated which added comedy to the scene. People were coming out of their houses trying to offer help and the drama was further enhanced when a large gangster-looking chap strolled down the road from the direction the car had come, the balaclava boys clocked him and ran off in opposite directions. The big guy went to the car, took out bags of what must be assumed were the 'f***ing food' and headed back in the direction he came. 

My neighbour tells me that 'Food' is code for drugs - his interpretation of the scene is that the balaclava boys had stolen a car to pull a heist on our friendly neighboorhood drug baron and it had hadn't really worked out for them. It didn't work out for the poor guy whose car was stolen either, nor the tree, nor the people in the house with the tree.

PS: The  BBC tv comedy/drama series called Outlaws was filmed in our neighbourhood, we were quite grumpy about the disruption at the time but loved the series and seeing our house in the ariel shots.

Seems it's on Amazon now - here's a trailer

Turkey

After the queen's funeral, the Man and I took a holiday. We stayed in a sleepy town on the Turkish coast,  lodging with our friend Selma in the pension she runs with the help of her three daughters. 

The town is notable for having a mountain that has been perpetually on fire for ever - one can walk up a path at any time of night or day and come to an area where flames are burning out of holes in the rock. These flames are visible to boats on the sea. People thought it to be the breath of a Chimera - a fearsome snakey-goaty-lionish creature that lives inside the mountain. 

Every evening, large tour groups follow men with flags to see the flames, where they roast marshmallows, and drink beer at sunset.

We went to the flamey mountain before dawn, the route involves meandering uphill for a couple of kilometres, then a steep kilometre of increasingly impressive stone steps, it was still quite dark when we turned the corner and saw all the fires dancing on the rocks ahead of us, - and completely magical. A cat had followed us to the flames and we'd noticed bobbling headtorch lights much further up the mountain path but at that dawn moment we were just the three of us being in awe of the phenomenon.

Once the sun was up the debris left by the marshmallow revellers from previous evenings became apparent, the headtorch lights ahead had gone, there were now voices and then young people with backpacks.

The young people were Russians, Putin had announced a partial mobilisation a few days previously, it seems that few were prepared to fight his war, everyone knew what happened in Russia if you put up opposition and the young are trying to leave in their tens of thousands. These people told us about the limited options for ways out - most borders are closed, their homes were now abandoned and they didn't forsee that they could ever return - whatever might succeed Putin was not likely to be any better.

When we  returned to our pension we started noticing all the Russian cars and started meeting other young Russians, they had also backed what seemed like the only viable alternative - Navalny -  apparently now very weakened by continued torture in detention, there is little faith that he will be allowed to recover.

Our Queen died last month

Maybe it was the declining state of our Prime Ministers - thinking that things could get no worse after Boris, she then welcomed Ms Truss and decided that enough was enough. Either way we were all sad/reflective and a large heavy coffin was taken from Scotland to Windsor with a few stops on the way, the longest pause was in Westminster Hall, where the Queen lay in state for a week.

We were all mesmerised by that coffin, it was so big and heavy, she was tiny, birdlike - was she really inside? - and what was she wearing ... a crown, her best nightie, slippers..??? From my time in the funeral biz, I've dressed people in all manner of outfits (and none). Also people like to bring in things to be put in in the coffin with their loved ones, these have included toys, letters, dead cats and drugs.

MAria Maria

 

Soon after my last post Maria came to stay.   

 

Everything about Maria was twice life size - her hair, her smile ... and her suitcases. A dazzling array of outfits and accessories were stuffed into a massive heavy suitcase plus some smaller ones. The accessories included leather harnesses and belts and several pairs of clumpy footwear.  

She arrived at 1 am,  struggling to control her suitcase entourage. The biggest suitcase was a replacement for the one she had flown in with from Mexico, that first suitcase buckled under the strain during airport transfers, two cities later this new massive suitcase had lost a wheel and was visibly frayed around the edges.

In August temperatures were in the high 30s, Maria brought a double dose of sun in her smile and personality. Every single day she dressed like she was about to star in a musical and set off on a punishing tour of Bristol's cultural highlights, then came home to tell me all about it. By the time she left we had become mother and daughter and I suffered from empty-nest syndrome for the rest of the month. 

 

She did leave me a keepsake.

Maria bought a replacement  massive suitcase for the second broken massive suitcase, this one is currently languishing in our bike shed waiting for me to find someone to help me load it into a large car and take it to the dump.

Ice Man Feet

I'm at my favourite swimming place, eavesdropping as usual and this floats through

... he made the most delicious ice cream ....

my ears prick up and I intervene ..who, where???

Old Giorgio he was by the pier but it was really slow,  his ice cream was all at the other end, far from the counter and he'd shuffle backwards and forwards with one ice cream at a time, there was always a really long queue, he did so much walking he literally wore his feet out

 

I've missed July, here's a summation of that month

 

covid.feeling.ill

very.very.hot

covid.still.ill

make.paper.vegetables

even.more.hot.

cat.sit.london

plenty.cold.bath

dental.pain.owch

feel.better.festival

 

I've rediscovered What Three Words - the app that gives your location in three words - perfect.for.poetry

 

Jubilee Celebrations

precipitated a plethora of Jolly Events at the beginning of the month. Inhabitants of my parent's village show their love for all the queens by having a scarecrow competition.

This month I was a theatrical landlady, a doting daughter and a Cornish-cat sitter for one lazy cat and his lively sister. The lively one pissed on my bed the day I arrived and then decided that I was probably ok and spent the rest of my visit prancing around and testing my bath water.

 In my capacity as landlady, I hosted a wardrobe mistress from Singing in the Rain - thirty cast members  and they all get wet at the end -TWICE a day!!! That is a lot of dustbin-fulls of sodden clothing to lug upstairs to the laundry.

My Ma is in better spirits, I will post about our spot-the-queen walk next time

Monthism

He said: May is my favourite month  

I thought you liked September, September is definitely the best month

September's ok but May is better, although I like April even more and March is pretty good, I like June but not keen on July. I hate August, August can f**k right off, September's nice but October is better  

That's me told

My sister has been staying with our parents, Ma has been ill and the doctors say she has to increase her fluid intake, she phoned yesterday 

Your sister has been making me soup and all sorts of drinks, she made me one of those things where you whizz up all the fruit ... a what do you call it ... a selfie ... anyway I didn't like it and I don't want another one

There are Young Men in my house

 

They are on tour with the Lion King - a cause for huge excitement around here.   

Offstage man is slight and seemingly quiet, he nibbles on the edge of a pizza or takes little bit of ham sometimes, he has set up a keyboard in his room and before they set off for the theatre he belts out a show tune to set the mood

Onstage man eats like a carnivorous horse, cooking up huge quantities of chicken at midnight to power him through the next 24 hours, he tells me he undergoes 20 costume changes at each performance of which there are 9 per week.

Last week I was given a ticket so I could see where all that chicken gets spent

The performers come on and off stage at a dizzying rate wearing costumes that range from spray-on-almost-nothing to magnificent puppet-costumes with people balancing inside a towering construction on uneven stilts or bouncing around in lumpy body bags with spring-loaded heads. Sometimes a person will stroll across stage pushing a little animal-trolley like they're delivering in-flight drinks 

The finale consists of a triumphant parade, colourful paper birds swoop overhead as the animals assemble singing heartily, making it all look fun and easy. I can see my boy half-bent over inside a giraffe, his face framed by a circular hole in the animal's neck, the grin on his face looks like his life depends on it.

Modern Funeral

 

Last week I travelled to Staffordshire where I attended a funeral. I had met Uncle Lewis a couple of times in my life, both times very briefly. I knew almost nothing about this man but had the impression he'd been quite naughty in his time and was intrigued to hear what the memorial tribute would reveal about him. 

Uncle Lewis had arranged the disposal of his body with the Co-op, they let us know that his body was at the local store should anyone wish to go and visit him. 

Lewis's eldest nephew arranged the memorial service which was held in the boardroom of the assisted living complex where he had spent the last few years of his life. Guests were invited to get themselves a nice cup of tea and take a seat around the conference table. Several care staff were in attendance and a 'Room Safety Officer' who made sure that no more than 15 people were in the room, Lewis had had several domino chums and was popular with staff, I was there with some of my cousins and we soon exceeded the allowed number, latecomers had to peer in through the slightly opened glass doors.

The celebrant was a woman with a broad midlands accent, red lipstick and eyes sharply accented with black wings that pointed straight up to her eyebrows, she had discovered little about Lewis beyond a childhood near-drowning, some senior dominoes games and the fact that he liked to make his own bed. There was vague mention of travel and one precious memory offered by someone

he liked animals, he got butted in the back by a ram once and banged his face

Siberian wardrobe problems

 

I sat next to a woman who told me she was from Siberia

Two Siberian clichés crashed into my brain, I made a pinchy face, she was defensive

It is not just very cold it is also very hot,  we only have extremes, six months very hot, six months very cold and very great difference over one day - it can start at minus 20 degrees, then later in day zero degrees - so it really fucks with our blood pressure and people die from that, but really big problem in Siberia is that we love British trench coat - every woman has trench coat but weather is either for fur coat or little small top, there are precisely two days every year when  trench coat is acceptable so we all live with trench coat in wardrobe. 

This prompted me to think about an over-sized, new-but-vintage toffee-coloured cashmere coat I bought in a charity shop last year. I had to have it but it looked like I was wearing an actual wardrobe so I got it altered by an expensive tailor. As long as I wear it over a big chunky jumper, accessorised with substantial footwear and headwear it looks fantastic. Mimsy British weather is never cold enough for this outfit, obviously I must relocate . . . but Siberia . . . gulags, chilly . . .

My next post might be from Norway 

Access all areas.

 

Earlier this year I was getting ready to head out to work when there was a knock on my door. I opened it to see a young woman backing rapidly away while talking to me through her mask. She was out-of-sorts maybe not sober maybe upset, I didn't think I'd seen her before (but I have poor facial recognition skills and regularly blank old friends in the street). 

What with the mask and the distance she had put between us and her distress and my confusion, it took a while to understand that she was asking to borrow a ladder because she was trying to get into a flat in the house next door and her key wasn't working. I live in a row of tall old houses which have a storey below the front pavement level.  Spear-tipped railings  along the front of the houses protect people on the pavement from falling 20 foot into this cellar well. 

The woman wanted access to the first floor flat and had a mad plan of balancing the ladder from the railings, across the deep drop and up to the windowsill of the flat that she wanted access to.

She looked a bit frail. I always seem to think I am obliged to do everything that is asked of me so I realised that I couldn't just hand over the ladder, I'd have to do the death-balancing thing and the breaking-in thing because somehow whatever befell her would be my responsibility.

To stall, I stayed at the door listening while she kept talking, going over her story and I realised that I wasn't convinced - had she been locked out by a dastardly lover or was she a burglar with an unusual MO? maybe her story was a bit true - there was definitely something else going on and I really didn't want to pull on that thread. I said I didn't have a ladder and suggested she find a locksmith, I wished her luck and continued on out to work, the image and the mystery of her went with me.

Last week I answered the door to a woman asking to borrow my ladder to gain access to her flat because 'her key wouldn't work', she was the same sort of age and hair type as the first woman but this woman said she lived in the basement flat I remembered chatting with her through the hedge in the summer when we were both outside gardening but we were hidden from each other by all the leafiness, I remembered she was called Martha and Martha's plan was to lower my ladder over the railings into the basement, her boyfriend would climb down and hope he could access though there. I gave her the ladder, the boyfriend tried, failed and was stuck in the cellar until a locksmith came.

Yesterday afternoon I answered the door to a young man in a towelling bath robe. He wanted to borrow my ladder to get into the first floor flat - he had locked himself out. His plan was a lot better than the first woman - he said that he had no idea who she might have been, he seemed sober and he knew Martha, Martha had told him that I had a great ladder and would hand it over to anyone who asked for it.

Kittens

 

The beginning of November was spent in London in the company of a kitten doing all the adorable kitten things including sneakily creeping into cupboards and drawers then getting stuck inside.

The sea temperature has plummeted, I'm still swimming and wanted to share the experience but it's harder to draw myself encased in a block of ice than I imagined*, enough to say that the commonly used term for the lobster red colour of the swimmer's raw flesh as they haul themselves out of the water is 'The Clevedon Tan'.

*I post about chilly swimming with a monotonous regularity, the web view of this blog shows tags that could lead you to more swimming-related posts - this one is typical

My Garden of a Thousand Bees

I am married to a bee-fetishist*, he is also an insect-botherer and a garden-stealer . During the last eighteen months (the Lockdown project) he has been indulging all of these passions by stealing my garden to make a film about all the bees and other insects that live there. PBS are streaming the movie which is titled 'My Garden of a Thousand Bees' 

 obviously it should've been 'Lulu's Garden of a Thousand Bees' but apart from that error I have to admit the film is perfectly decent and, judging by the comments on PBS's site, so do quite a lot of other people.

This blog started with an account of filming insects in France, anyone new here and wanting more hymenoptric content could check out some early posts

I just revisited this post  and only now realise that the garden theft started in earnest 11 years ago

This post  about a disastrous attempt to film a bee hive   is from 2009

 

*he refuses to take my surname so we have to call him Martin Dohrn, he's worried that if he becomes Martin Labonne people will think that he's related to Duran Duran

 

 

image credit: Jack - Thank you Jack

September

 

is my birthday month:  

On the evening of 31st August I stepped on a  Pacific Oyster while paddling in the sea, slicing an eye-watering amount from the underneath of my foot - the first half of the month involved a lot of hopping

back on both feet by mid-month and off on the Grand Scottish Birthday Swimming Tour: 

swim 1

my little sister lives next to the Kingdom of Fife which has a beautiful coastline. We drove out to a windswept and out-of-season-empty village with a fantastical tidal swimming pool created by the natural rock formations on the shoreline. Wanting to jump in but spooked by the lack of people we spotted a silver Airstream caravan/coffee bus with two young women inside, we went over and asked

do people swim there?

Ooch aye, it's usually rammed, they all go in with balloons on their backs* it's a wee bit cosier in there than out in the sea

 *fluorescent towfloats used by sea swimmers 

swim 2

west highlands, visiting a friend. She took me to Loch Maree, reknowned for being 'spooky' with a haunted burial island in the middle of it and for having 'black water'. At the edge of the loch the water is copper-coloured and the mossy pebbles below glow like gold.

swim 3

skinny dipping on the westernmost edge of mainland UK - Sanna Bay - a series of soft white sand bays and sand dunes, the water crystal clear

swims 4, 5, 6 ...

The Ardnamurchan Peninsula: rain showers and rainbows coming fast and furious. I'm staying in a converted barn called 'The Folly'. 

By walking a mile uphill along a tarmac road. I come to a farm gate, with astonishing views of mountains, the outline of Mull and all the weather coming and going across the vast sky. Far below is a sandy bay, reached via a zigzag path through bright green fields. Sheep stop and stare as I squelch past them. There are Bronze age burial sites and standing stones in the fields. When I finally arrive at the shore a congregation of cattle hurry over, jostling to point and laugh as I wade into yet more water.

 

Doggy talk

I've been staying near Oxford for the last two weeks, dog-sitting for an elderly greyhound, here he is sleeping on a stripey rug. 

There was a river at the end of the garden and I took daily dips, it's a funny thing, swimming along chatting to people on their houseboats, I can't be on houseboats for too long because I get land sick when I go back onto dry land - I stayed on a barge once and by the end of one week I couldn't walk straight on a pavement which felt dangerous.

I like the effect that walking a dog has on other people, I've had some curious conversations, one lady asked me what breed my dog was and then noted how dog breeds have changed since when we were young - 'My Nan had a Jack Russell but you don't see the terriers any more, or the Lassie dogs, everything's some sort of poo these days'.

Seagull Attack - the return

 

 

Last time I visited Cornwall, a demonic seagull stole my ice cream - I wrote about it here.

 

Without noting the date* I visited the same beach last month, I was meeting a long-lost friend there. Telling her the amusing story - hahaha I said so let's not go buying any ice creams here 

 We went swimming and were having a lovely time and lost ourselves in chat and then she said I've got some lovely sandwiches will you have one? and I said yes please and we laid out a blanket and all the while that same evil seagull had been waiting for me and was watching us and when he knew we were good and stupid in our chat he swooped down with his knifey beak and sliced that delicious bun out of my fingers taking a good portion of my thumb with him

 

* it was exactly two years later - TO THE DAY

hot off the hook

 but not pressed yet

This double bed-sized bed-spread, it's on the grass getting a bit damp before I do the final finishing 

The month is bookended by giant squares

 

 

 

at the beginning of the month I made this metre-square patch from old pillowcases to be part of a giant patchwork covering a bridge in Wales 

This stitchy-stuff is in contrast to May which was mostly about inventing  puddings using different sorts of custard

I shall devote next month to gravy

Now we can go Out out I'm overhauling my look

 

Mask - check  

Cool shades - check

Snazzy earrings - check 

the hair's not behaving - Alice Band?

The Ears say No Way!!!

Low tide at dawn

 

London 

scrunching feet on  sandy-gravelly beach  

sounds of lapping water  

geese 

first visit here in over a year and I'm easing myself back   

 

looking after a cat that I first knew years ago  

her feline friend died while I was away

 

 

 

naked sunbathing

 

I'm loving all the gorgeous nude trees brandishing their limbs in the sunshine at this time of year. I'm particularly feeling kinship with all those feisty pollarded trees raising their knobbly fists in protest.

Today we are remembering Sarah Everard, a man kidnapped and killed her because she had the gall to go out walking by herself. In today's Guardian Marina Hyde wrote about a normal everyday walk to her son's school, a day that included the sort of encounter that has happened to me more often than I want to remember, Hyde describes how we usually deal with this kind of encounter

'... I genuinely forget about these things soon after they happen... Should have just tied a weight round it and sent it to sleep with the fishes, with all the other ones. The healthy option.'

Green shoots and shadows

 

I'm loving the impending sense of spring even more than usual and once again I'm making my annual attempt to get to grips with water colours,  the lesson I have to learn every time is that I go with far too many things,. My 'travelling' water colour set has a choice of tiny paint pots but my fidgetting keeps tipping the paints over and that makes me a bit sweary. 

I have finally realised that the future is monochrome. Last Sunday I went out painting with a solitary paint pot - my world became less blue and more green

Spider with Yumen Zed

Yesterday I passed a man telling a small boy that he was 'getting spider with yuman zed' -  my first thought was that this was must be a new and interesting foodstuff - maybe on the takeaway menu at Wagamama. Lockdown has made me obsess about food even more than usual so it was a bit disappointing to realise a few seconds later that the man was actually telling the boy that he would be getting 'a spider with a human head' and I think that sounds too big to eat. 

Maybe I'm just making up excuses,  I buy sheep and deer from the butcher, I hardly think a human-headed spider would be much bigger than these creatures, if they do arrive on the market, portion size is probably not going to be the main issue.

 

In other news

This morning I set fire to the vaccuum cleaner after hoovering up warm ashes - the smell was far worse than I could've imagined

I still swim in the sea but only for 5 minutes because it's reached the sort of cold that makes a person go completely crispy  - in the way of those lettuces that get stuck at the back of a fridge

A dog fox has been patrolling our neighbourhood every night for the last week making a noise that sounds like a queaky-toy

 

 

 

 

 

 

Food Foraging in the Time of Covid

is fraught with issues, I scope out shops with small queues. A bakery/coffee shop near my house sells sublime olivey-cheesy twists. Windows too fogged up to see inside,  I have to open the door to check the territory; two masked women clearly waiting their turn, to the side a man,  his queuing status unclear. My specs as fogged as the windows I ask him if he's queuing - no response,  the man is not wearing a mask but does have headphones, he stands,  swaying, mute and I realise that he must have teleported his mind to another planet.

Lost Ham

on the neighbourhood noticeboard a  heading  - 'Anyone Lost Their Ham?' 

 - a photo of two plastic packs of ham on a pavement and a location  

Responses to this included speculation that the items had dropped out of someone's 'hambag', a conspiracy theorist warned that the items might be bait for a 'hambush' and someone else reckoned that this notice should be considered 'spam' 

when the world is falling apart, we make jokes about pork and then we go swimming 

I drove to the coast as the sun rose this morning, past frosty fields and mist-filled valleys  

the sea surface was smoking when I arrived 

It was like swimming in fire 

Some things are best left alone ...

 

Early September, I noticed how shabby the bathroom had become and gave it a 'good' clean. Limescale build up was removed from pipework and when I next turned on the faucets all the leaky spots were exposed ...

The more I fixed the faster the catalogue of broken things escalated ... 

 

two months later the bathroom is back in use.

Last Monday I did my most daring swim yet

 it was still summer back then.   

confident that I could make the distance to the next bay and knowing other people who were swimming at the same time, I set off at a leisurely pace on a slack tide, my swimming style is best described as a mishmash and I was enjoying myself switching around some flat out lazy floating with a bit of backstroke, a spot of crawl  and some sideways breaststroke (I've been told this last one is 'old lady swimming', that's because it's fun and it's the best one for admiring the landscape and chatting to a fellow swimmer). 

The last short section involves swimming under a pier, then making a sharp left to land on the beach. The tide had turned and I had underestimated the speed that the current picks up at by the pier, just when I considred myself home and dry, the sea dragged me off in the wrong direction and I had to battle my way to the shore. I made land in an undignified fashion, thoroughly puffed out. There was a warm sun to bask in and I had sequestered a block of fruit cake in my inflated tow float, soon I was good as new. 

The next day it was autumn.

I am still working at the funeral parlour

Sometimes we are amused/bemused by the choice of music that accompanies a coffin as it is lowered to the crematorium furnace, last week someone chose Carmina Burana - other popular choices are My Way, Je ne Regrette Rien and Ring of Fire
 

At the parlour we amuse ourselves by nominating our own 'committal to the flames' music, sometimes it goes in the direction of Screamin' Jay Hawkins other times it's more Simon and Garfunkel

 After my epic last-of-the-summer swim I nominate this

I visit my parents for the first time since lockdown

For the last twenty years my mother has made a daily walk around the village, equipped with gloves and plastic bags so she can pick up litter as she goes, her daily haul usually amounts to about one carrier bag full, I try to visualise twenty years of daily carriers bags full of rubbish. 

Mother's litter-picking has been discussed in the House of Commons which means that she is immortalised in Hansard. After her first ten years of picking, she was presented with a bouquet and a plaque by the local council and she made the front page of The Gazette

I ask my mother if she still collects litter on her walk

Yes but I wait until I've seen it lying there for a couple of days before I pick it up so that I know the Covid's worn off

On the radio a man tells a story of filming something with his cameraphone then failing to properly press the button to turn it off before putting the phone in his pocket and cycling on home. The phone continued recording - no picture but a soothing, creaking, rhythmic sound. The man is pleased with this new genre and has coined a name for it - 'Accidental Trouser Music'

Statue Wars

Last month, shortly after Edward Colston the Slaver was pulled off his plinth and dumped in Bristol's city dock the Mayor sent a dawn crew to dredge him out of the water and haul him off to a secure holding place. First thing the following day a fat concrete bloke, wedged in a wheelie bin was parked next to Ed's empty plinth. By dawn the next day the Binman had disappeared.

The weeks passed, no plinth action - until -  4am last Wednesday the famous sculptor Marc Quinn came down from London with a big crew and cranes and ropes and tv cameras to install a 3d printed effigy of Jen Reid, the woman who had climbed onto the plinth as soon as Edward Colston fell off it. The image of her punching the air had circulated around the world, Quinn and many others saw this as an iconic moment and this sculpture was christened 'A Surge of Power'.  All of Bristol was agog and flocked to see Jen and take pictures, to praise or complain and argue about whether or not this was actual history or just fake history.

By dawn the next day, the Mayor's crew had removed Jen, putting her alongside Ed and the Binman. Marc Quinn had not been invited to interfere with our plinth and Bristol should decide its fate democratically.

Good luck with that - but the bar has been set and I am looking forward to the next contender.

New Homes for Troublesome Statues

 



After years of asking politely for his removal, the statue of Bristol slave-trader Edward Colston was finally taken down from his plinth and dumped in the city dock last week. This action prompted people to get more vocal about not wanting bronze and stone effegies of murderers, looters and racists to be glorified in our city centres.

Once you start looking we have so many statues of awful people that I predict there'll be a statue-mountain and there's nowhere near enough museum space to house them and we can't just melt them down because apparently then we'll forget our history.

My proposal is to display the bastards all together in clearly signposted outdoor parks  'Bastard Parks'  so no-one is in any doubt that there's any glorification going on.

You're Welcome!

here's some links related to troublesome monuments 

One from a few years back

Banksy's  idea for Colston  

David Olusoga on the Colston performance

The Covid days have provoked

an explosion of creativity here in Bristol, local food suppliers trying to maintain their livliehood are outdoing themselves by redesignating themselves as caberet artistes/gourmet-food-deliveristes - I have ordered a wine delivery with added ukelele, there's a magic-trick vegetable person and ... my personal favourite - Disco Hummus, shiny bomber-jacketed folk in spangled flares, sound-tracked by Saturday Night Fever as they hip-wiggle their way up the street to deliver a vegetarian party