Miranda July

is my big girl crush, I love her writing, her art projects are brilliant and she is very good at titles -I am particularly fond of  Eleven Heavy Things 


As we have both contributed to Sheila Heti's book Women in Clothes - I feel like we are colleagues if not actual friends.

Miranda visited Bristol last night to talk about her new book The First Bad Man (which is great!) and I have spent the last week suppressing my excitement in case it didn't happen*

Just in case she really did show up I resisted eating kippers for lunch as I hoped to get to speak to her.

She showed up, she was patient with the embarrassingly awful interviewer and she was funny, she also signed my copies of her books and was charming.



*last time I went to see a writer at this same venue he didn't show

Progress report

It might seem that not much is happening in my life but  I am actually being very productive:

Firstly: I underwent bicycle light training and have now successfully mastered 'switching the lamp on and off' and also 'blinking mode'

Secondly: I have received a package of moth pheromone strips to lure male moths away from the girls and into a sticky trap I also have some scented pads to strew among my rugs and jumpers.

I heard on the radio that when a pest controller comes to your house he uses a pencil to test if a hole is big enough for a mouse - I'm not strong enough to think about mice yet.

Thirdly: I have embarked on a new reknit - someone gave me a nude-colour cashmere jumper saying that the colour was ugly. It is a bit raw-meat-like but I can't resist the softness. It was also a bit small for either of us so I am reknitting the top part on extra big needles - if it ends up looking like chicken mince I shall have to dye it.

Giant, slobbery, affectionate dog lover required!

yet another job ad where I am simply failing to meet basic requirements.

This is a shame because if I was a slobbery giant I could be in a town which boasts major attractions:

Tesco Express, fish & chips, chinese takeaway, Dominoes, Indian restaurant, hairdressers, coffee shop and Vets are all within a 2 minute walk.

Today at the Brain Surgery

We remembered that the patient who was about to arrive had invited us (me and the Brain Doctor) to a Valentine party that was rather expensive and involved music we didn't like and was too far away and anyway we're not a couple...

we had discussed this party last week

... and we thought we could attend and enjoy the party if we were cross-dressed because he likes wearing women's clothes and wigs and I have always wondered what it would be like to have a sock in my trousers - not the sort I don't know about - that yesterday-sock that leaks out of the end of the trouser-leg but the sort I do know about that gets in the way of walking.

in the end we did not attend so as not to compromise our professional demeanor

I had another assignation with Rabbit

I like being warm but she hates it and she had arrived first so we sat in the draught.

I was late because my new bike light wouldn't switch off so I had to wrestle the whole lighting apparatus off the bike and hide it,  blinking on, in my pocket.

At the end of our meal the battery was exhausted so I had to push the bike home.

Video of the year

A neat gentleman

in tartan slacks waits to see the Brain Doctor, he's a visiting hairdresser and he always wears a particularly nice cologne.

we're talking about the cold weather and he asks to see my gloves

They're no good get down to the Pound Shop they do really good thermal ones

For a pound?

I expect they're from abroad

While waiting his turn in the Brain Surgery

a large gentleman talked about the pub across the road

It used to be an abattoir - my mum made me go and work there when I was thirteen she said go there and learn how to be a butcher and you'll never be out of work

Did you become a butcher?

No I became a printer, lithographers were very well respected in those days we wore bowler hats

Three bus stops up the road

from my house there's a prison and all around the prison are streets and streets of samey-looking houses.

One local nosey parker devised a scheme to get a peep into as many people's houses as possible, she suggested that the whole neighbourhood did art in their windows for three hours this evening and let the rest of everybody in the whole world walk around gawking into their houses

AND THEY DID!!!!

This evening I have been peeping into peoples houses - whole front rooms have been transformed into a disco or an aquarium, someone made several little illuminated boxes of glass animal scenarios and many children made Lego-worlds and cardboard Minecraft Worlds in their windows.

One house was bathed in a projection of flames - the house next door had a giant puppet sausage-on-a-toasting-fork tipping towards the flames.

There was a house that had made it's front garden into a beach with a punch-and-judy show and a beach hut and a flock of seagulls on the washing line guarded by a Cliff-Richard-singing-light-flashing dalek.

There were houses that looked like they were full of balloons or full of a forest and lots of people just left their curtains open so you could look at their stuff

and it was great!

knitted bedspread

All those charity shop jumpers have yielded tons of odd assorted yarn so I've used it to make a knitted patchwork blanket. It's all in thick ribby garter stitch which is very springy and lovely.

I made a cake with rapeseed oil

It was delicious and I have just eaten another piece

then I carried on typing and noticed a dark flake on my keyboard - thinking it to be a missed piece of cake I popped it in my mouth.

IT WASN"T CAKE!!!

horse-and-kangaroo eating cat. sitter wanted

I checked out the details but unfortunately I don't fit the profile;

... We are looking for a reliable animal lover. A single gay man preferred but not exclusively so. We are not looking for couples or families however, sorry. We would prefer someone based in Europe please.

 The female cat has a food allergy so she can only eat fresh horsemeat or kangaroo meat, ... You have to be OK with that and with keeping an eye on her so she doesn't eat anything she shouldn't...

On the train home

I looked for the quiet carriage and sat opposite two young women, an enormous pile of make up was tipped out on the table between us and one of the girls was picking up a succession of pots and brushes and attacking her face with them while narrating her endless anxieties;

...I'm really worried about being stuck in a taxi for - like - three hours with a random frenchman

Not in an 'I'm-scared-for-my-life' sort of way but in an 'oh-my-god-what-if-he-tries-to-talk-to-me' way

My niece has just learned to write her name