This week's cat

is small and sleek and nervy

sometimes she pees against the wall

The disadvantages of MDF skirting boards has become most apparent in the kitchen where the compressed sawdust has expanded to create a beige and fluffy edge between floor and wall

I cycled to school today

It was the first time and I was so nervous cycling through That London.

I tagged on to some other cyclists which felt safer so I carried on following them, we were like ants in a Game Park scooting alongside herds of migrating vehicles and I lost track of exactly where I was but I was cool in the bike pack so I figured that they probably knew the best way to go.

Unfortunately this meant that I took a very long way to school and I'd have got there quicker if I'd walked.


When I got back to this week's lodgings I walked into the living room and discovered that this week's cat had used her bottom to draw a long skid mark all along the arm of the fat white sofa - it's like a child with a box of brown crayons came to visit.

Ushing for a living

I am employed as a some-time usher at an institution that hosts public events. Tonight we debated the question of  ‘Are Things Getting Better or Worse?’

The two main speakers were a gentleman with exquisitely sculpted hair and excellent trousers and a physicist with a pudding-bowl haircut and floppy leisure pants. The physicist said things are getting better because we know more stuff and will make really good robots to fix everything then the well-trousered-gentleman said things will get worse because of all the ways people could easily use technology to do bad things and anyway climate change and population growth.

I had to dart around with a microphone so that the audience could join in. An orange-haired woman pointed out that better and worse is not at all a clear-cut issue:

there could well be people here who want London to be a clean city full of bike-riding vegetarians - this is my idea of hell

At the end of the talk I stood smiling at the door as everybody filed out or stopped to complain, there was a lady who’d had to sit next to someone eating a muffin and getting drunk and another with deaf aids who couldn’t hear a thing but had hoped for a bit more philosophy.

This week's cat

has pale blue eyes and maintains a posture of permanent outrage, she is the hairiest cat I've ever looked after. I've had to zip all my clothes inside my suitcase except the outfit that is the least cat-hair sticky.

She's very vocal - her language mainly sounds like when you dial the knob across the stations on shortwave radio at night but she also mixes in the sort of noises the girl with the swivelly head made in The Exorcist.

Once in a while she clambers her way up on to the table, it means that she wants to be brushed -  I do this and she rumbles in a way that suggests she could explode at any moment.

top deck of bus

adolescent girl with strong east end accent keeps up constant stream of chat to woman sitting beside her

... when i grow up i wanna be an actor but if i can't be an actor i wanna be in the acting area, like if i have to be a set designer i'll do that or a director that's telling people where to stand 

i'd be a good director

woman realises that pause is for her response but she's been thinking her own thoughts for last 5 minutes

director ... at a marketing company?

an acting company

My home

this week is in the far depths of London - so far away that I'm not even sure if it's still in England.

to get to school I take a bus then a train then the tube and a change on the tube and if it all goes well I can do it in one hour

but there's always a thing.

today when I was nearly there the tube got stuck and stopped. I got out and walked and got lost until I found a bus going in the right direction and the whole operation took two hours.

when I get back to this outer sphere there are two pretty grey cats waiting for me. One is fine-boned and affectionate and  slightly camp, the other one is stout and won't speak to me during the day 

but he comes and sleeps on my feet at night

oooh i was poorly yesterday

heavy and slippy

new thinking new people new routes to new homes new ways for the worldwideweb to frustrate me

a heavy pile of new is sitting on my head

also

there are also too many things in my bag because i don't know what i need yet

brain heavy and shoulder-achey heavy

and it's raining and london pavements are slippy when wet

see that guy in the photo - put him on ice in rain - that's me




photo: John Paskievich

I am learning so much

my classmates are a lot younger than me - we were sitting together and they were talking a foreign language - the beautiful androgynous girl translated:

Tinder basically means sex whereas Okcupid means notnecessarily sex I like Fetster, that's for people who are into weird stuff like getting whipped or urinated on or eating faeces, with Fetster you can hook up for 'Munchies' which is usually breakfast in a public place so you're basically just meeting people who are into weird stuff without having to do anything

I lost Crunchy

In the people ocean

It was a blazing hot sunny day so I bought a slimy sandwich and sat on a wall to eat it

A person wearing skinny black jeans, black multi-buckled biker boots big black glasses, black duvet jacket and black leather flying hat with black side flaps came and sat next to me. From her big black bike panier she pulled out the biggest bowl of dressed lettuce in the world.

I thought she might be a radical vegan so I hid my sandwich and we got talking

she's nice

Second day new school

Young people in shiny purple satin sashes direct new students to their various destinations; crocodiles of shy jean-wearers following beauty kings and queens to get identity cards and sign their lives away.

I need to find a lecture theatre, the address is in a special code, I ask some sash-wearers but they need to be pre-programmed with a destination - they don't just know where things are. I can't decide whether this is dispiriting or exciting - this warren of buildings is forever unknowable?

I passed NewBestFriend Crunchy in the student ocean we were waving (or drowning) at each other - I called to see if she could take a break but she yelled back that she was on a fire drill and I had to go and be introduced to twenty million libraries.