The Christmas drive to my sister's house

takes us past Biggar and the famous Hogmanay bonfire which is in the middle of the high street and positioned alarmingly close to buildings. A few days ago, I stopped to take a photo of the not-yet-finished fire pile and spotted someone who looked local so I asked him if there were ever any problems


Not really but we board up the windows of the big house just in case 

Here's a lovely account of Biggar bonfire naughtiness 

wishing you all a peaceful, happy, healthy and delicious 2018

It was a family Christmas

in Bonnie Scotland.  My niece created her 'Occasion Outfit' by repurposing a neck warmer, a cake box and wrapping paper. 

Celia Pym mended my vest

Last month I took the vest into the Victoria and Albert Museum in Kensington. Celia had put out a call for members of the public to bring in items for mending as part of an artwork. I thought the moths had eaten my vest very artfully and I wanted to frame their artwork.

I love the basket stitches she has used and I love the way the darns look like raining clouds and I love those pink patches on the outlier holes around the hems.

On the bus in London yesterday

I sat facing the long bench seat at the back of the bus. There was a man at the far end of the bench, next to him there was a family - a little girl in party clothes huddled in her mother's lap. At the next stop a jolly man carrying a saxophone in it's case took the seat next to the family and directly opposite me, he smiled round at everyone and leant into the child, making a comment about her rosy cheeks. The child shrank back - the waft of alcohol was strong from where I was sitting. The mother explained to all of us that they had just had to leave a pantomime because the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk frightened her daughter. We all commiserated and saxophone man took a bottle of whiskey  from his pocket and sucked at it. At the next stop the family got off and saxophone man pressed me for information about where I was going and what I was doing in London, I gave a polite amount of response and declined his offer of a go at his whiskey, there was silence and then he said 'It's hard being human isn't it?'

We're just about getting on top of the cleaning

A month ago builders came to smash down a stone wall outside our back door, as there was nobody inside the house they didn't think there was any need to shut the back door while they were working, so when I arrived home two weeks ago our home had been turned into the Sahara with drifts of sand reaching up to the top of the house.

Last week The Man arrived from Mongolia with bags of torn trousers and many types of thermal underwear, including woolly longpants  so heavy that I can't lift them on my own. These articles have been in a production line of washing and draping to dry then sorting into drawers or piles for mending.

I might have already mentioned that I am very keen on mending. I have a Massive Fan Girl crush on Celia Pym who currently has work in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Celia is a textile artist who specialises in visible mending, she also trained as a nurse, inviting hospital staff to bring loved but worn or broken items to the anatomy department, she mended them and this became an exhibition.

Visible mending shows the patterns of wear, the way that our clothes work with our bodies, how these and our bags, shoes or clothes become extensions of us - if these things are good at keeping us warm/dry/comfortable/happy then, like a beloved body part, they should be maintained for as long as possible.

It's going to hit minus twenty five degrees in Ulaanbaatar

Mongolia. The Man has travelled one thousand and a bit miles beyond Ulaanbaatar which I guess means one thousand and a bit miles even colder. He has been looking for snow leopards and for the last two months he has remained unshowered, unshaven and layered like a Baklava in silk thermals and camel thermals and woolies and fur-lined boots all topped with a long Mongolian Man's Coat with a special-sash-that-you-have-to-wear-with-these-coats-or-it's-Bad-Luck.


Once a week there was an underwater satellite call during which I could just about grasp that he's walking really far and up lots of hills carrying really heavy things and he tells me facts like every Mongolian he has spoken to has admitted to inadvertently licking a metal thing in this fierce cold and needing help to get separated, also Goat Fat Stew is delicious and alcohol made with fermented mare's milk is 'quite nice but tastes like goat'.

The Man reckons that the walking and the weight of the kit and the weight of the clothes combined are reducing his body weight but he can't tell because in all these weeks he has never unwrapped those layers. That's two months without a shower - and I get to welcome the smelly hairy marvel home tomorrow night.

In other news
a film about ants and Sir David Attenborough will air on the BBC on 8th December Xmas -ish - look out for it if you can, I shall probably mention this again. 

It has been a very sad week

on Monday we held the funeral for the wife of our friend who died earlier this year. This woman was my neighbour and a very kind friend, she looked exactly like a Modigliani painting come to life. We used to take tea in her elegant yellow lounge and she would invite me to join them for delicious family suppers and we used to go together to look at art and other lovely things.

I have an arthritic thumb joint

I've heard that turmeric can alleviate the inflammation. I wasn't sure how to make it a regular part of my diet until my recent stay in Stoke Newington - a neighbourhood with a lot of cosmopolitan green grocers. A couple of weeks ago among the cascades of plantains, yellow dates, and dozens of UVIs* I spotted some nice-looking fresh turmeric, I bought a few knobs and took them back to experiment. Hand-grated turmeric is not kind to the mouth.

Luckily Stoke Newington is also the sort of neighbourhood where people like trends, the juice trend is over and these monster machines are being thrown to make way for 'Nutrient Extractors'.  Walking around the neighbourhood looking at my bright yellow hands I thought - I need a juicer - and like magic there was one on the wall. 

This beast has changed my life,  turmeric juice can be added with beneficial effect to EVERYTHING (I make a batch and freeze in ice cube trays) - the mashed turmeric fibres in the outbox are good in flapjacks.



*Unidentified Vegetable Objects

sometimes when I open my mouth

  Margot Leadbetter from 'The Good Life' leaps out.




Last night, walking past my local trendy burger establishment, I looked in the open hatch where boxes of food are passed out to the delivery bikes and stood transfixed as a hip young man poured gloopy yellow cheese sauce onto chips then sprinkled gherkins and jalapenos all over it - this was what I wanted for supper - I went in and stood in the queue.

A whole vocabulary has sprung up around this particular sort of food place that I find off-putting - calling shredded meat 'pulled' doesn't make it any less horrible. The other popular word  is 'dirty' which I assumed meant putting 'pulled' meat or gravy on top. Standing in line in this hipster burger bar I read on the menus that they were offering 'dirty' burgers' and all kinds of other 'dirty' stuff. As I got to the front of the queue, I noticed the slogan emblazoned on all the take-away boxes announced 'Shakes, Dirty burgers, Dirty Chips'. Feeling the need for clarification I asked the man in the backwards baseball hat what they meant by 'dirty' 

it's like, unhealthy stuff

why aren't your shakes dirty? 

That wouldn't sound good

in a bookshop today

I was browsing and selecting a few greetings cards while the guy behind the till gave the girl stacking shelves an account of what kind of a wild party animal he is, it wasn't convincing and I zoned out until I got to the till and tried to pay for my cards, it took a while because they continued their conversation, he rang up the total and took my money without looking in my direction:

... so does she identify as gay or bi?

She says queer but she also says she doesn't actually like having sex with anyone

I haven't had sex in a million years so I think I must be asexual

me too 

he handed over change, then looked at me as if to say - are you still here?

do you want a bag with that?

I was minding my own business

at a café in London yesterday, I'd been there ten minutes before a Man-who-knows-everything came and sat next to me. He was elderly and, despite the continental-effect dark glasses, black beret and trench coat, he was clearly east-end-london born-and-bred

I know all the best places I do, wanna know the best value pot of tea in London?

turns out that it's in a café by the Hoxton peace mural

three quid for a massive pot and you can stay as long as you want

He did actually turn out to know everything and I have several good tips on things I must do this week - here are a couple that I'm willing to share:

a) get the best view of St Paul's
Marks and Spencer's on Cheapside, go down in the food basement at the end of the day, they'll be marking down all the food to stupid prices so it's worth going just for that, but wait till sun's just going down and there's no-one on the escalator and then up you go and St Paul's will loom into view in a very impressive way

b) see anything for two hours for free 
At the back of the BFI, sign in to the Mediatech at the back and it gets you access to an unparalleled film library - anything you want two.hours.for.free

The house has been crumbling with loneliness

while the Man and I have been away these last two years. I've been trying to attend to some of the issues and earlier this year I turned my attention to our very sad laundry room. I asked a builder to take away the remaining tilework, remove the radiator, take up the tiles, lay a concrete floor and set up a new worktop and shelving. There was the usual game - he said he'd come in April, finally making an appearance  in June - perfectly timed for me to progress from being fed up to sheer gratitude that he arrived at all. His work was mostly great - except for the bit about the floor. I'd asked for polished concrete but builder-man hastily dumped some screed (not quite enough) and left it looking like lumpy cookie dough. I arrived home before the floor was dry and spent several hours scraping down the lumps, I've painted it with a bold design in the hope that the uneven surface is disguised. The room was dark and dingy with a single tiny window but my cunningly placed mirrors have amplified the light - and do you like my jolly appliance-hiding curtains?

Spain was delicious

the hothot sun and shinyblue sea were wonderful, but the day after returning home my skin reacted with fury to the fresh British autumn chill with an outrage of hives and I've been looking like a red crocodile for the last week.

I made a bit of effort

before heading into town yesterday. On the bus I sat near a man about ten years younger than myself. He was missing several teeth and his ears were stuck on to his head in a startlingly perpendicular manner. His eyes were a bit swivelly and I could see he was having a job pulling focus -  finally he managed to stabilise an image of me and held my gaze for long enough to say

Cor - you must've been right glamour back in your day

It's all done

Two years of planning and scheming to get on to a post grad in London, how to arrange finances to live/study in one of the world's most expensive cities

Two years of books and lectures and arguing and writing and exams and papers

The chef d'oeuvre was handed in on Monday -  the rest of this week I've been like one of those astronauts who falls out of a rocket and has to spend the rest of his life slowly spinning round in space.

It's my birthday next week, I'm heading off to a Spanish beach for a few days for perspective readjustment therapy

beach art by Jamie Harkins

I've cocooned

What Do You Call A Fly Without Wings? from Ammonite Films on Vimeo.

I'm like that bluebottle larva locked in a hard shell shuffling my molecules around trying to make something of myself.

That's what writing the the Big Essay feels like.

I'm staying in a dowdy ground floor flat on a busy road, the weather is dreich and there's a gloomy fat cat who doesn't move - he's like a furry companion cocoon. 

it will to stop soon and I can go home.

This week it's Clapham

with kittens in a flat where the rooms in the building amplify every shuffle and sneeze to the point that a person walking around in a normal manner sounds like a drunk elephant and a man in the flat upstairs is bellowing his story about trying to have drunk sex last night in the car outside his home. I listened to the full account ...  she was hot ... having to run into the house to get condom ... not finding it ... breaking a few things ... going back to the car ... waking the girl up ...   

at last ... they were in a tangly undressed mess on the back seat 

and his phone rang      

and he answered it    

it was his mum  looking out of his bedroom window and wondering why he was still in his car and when he was going to come in

Nigel and I are getting on famously

I know he likes me - last night he turned up in my bedroom in high excitement and spent an eternity arranging the back half of a mouse perfectly centered on the carpet - all ready for my breakfast 

Today I'm showing him how to use the kettle and tea bags

We picked puffball mushrooms

bigger than a big man's head. I thought they'd be fluffy and full of air but they were surprisingly heavy and wet. As many as possible were sliced and laid out on sheets of newspaper in the hot wooden summerhouse, the nearly-dry slices now threaded and strung across the windows, they look a bit like chicken breast until you touch them and then they feel like polystyrene. 

The house is permeated with an earthy, trufflish odour

Puffball goes golden yellow when fried. Circular pieces fill the pan, like crepes, these cooked are layered between greaseproof paper and are now at rest in the freezer.

My holiday is over 

I have returned to a fancy-pants part of London to finish my studies with Nigel-the-cat in a large modernist house. We have a banjo and Beautiful Art and a view-to-die-for - what could possibly stop me writing?

New Cats

the excitement's died down and I'm back at my Cat Woman day job in London with two fat boy cats - a cross-looking-black one and an anxious black-and-white one.  The anxious one nibbles things in other people's gardens which can result in an allergic reaction in the form of a swollen lower lip which makes him look a bit daft.

I'm in Brixton, which is one of my favourite bits of London and really great for not reading the academic tomes or writing the big essays that I am supposed to be doing RIGHT NOW.

Today I went touring fabric shops with Pam where we got lost in shiny things, she bought several metres of silver embossed plastic tablecloth which she might use as wallpaper in her new bathroom. I bought a metre of silky silvered fabric because the-man-at-home  wants something like tough silver cling film to make a 'sound camera' and this might be the stuff to do it.

Italy: children

The first bit of Italy was Pontremoli which was full of children and ice cream, so delicious and so so sun-burny-hot I almost burnt my tongue and when we tried to go to the seaside there was no room in the sea and then when we did manage to sardine ourselves into the water between all the shiny hologram-and-tinfoil swimwear the children cried because their bottoms got itchy-salty so we had to squeeze our way out of the water and walk like egyptians along the sand among people WHO WEAR HIGH HEELS ON THE BEACH and stand in line to use the solitary shower.

the best ice cream that day was chocolate

During my Pontremoli stay we visited BIG BEN PIZZA an establishment that handed out extravagant amounts of Doritos to go with our fizzy drinks while we waited for the too-much-amount of food that gets ordered by people who are too hungry to think sensibly

the best ice cream that day was blackberry and peach

Italy - Genova

I took a train from Pontremoli to Genova - a port city. People live in  in vertiginous layers up the cliffs around the port - a network of funiculars swish you up to different levels. If you like, you can sashay back down among the palazzos on foot, along leafy, zigzagging footpaths

My landlady was Valeria, her home full of beautiful artwork and movie-set furniture. I spent a day on the funiculars and pathways and palazzos, then, next day, before heading to Pisa on the 2pm train I spent the morning with Valeria on her tropical verandah drinking coffee and eating bouncy smoked cheese from Majorca.

Italy: De'Coltelli's

My last evening in Italy was in Pisa, in a guest house full of large ugly artwork - the owner took one look at me and said

Forget the leaning tower - you need to go to the best ice cream in Italy, here is a map, this is the route ...

I visited De'Coltelli's twice before supper and once after, this is peach sorbet with pink grapefruit granita

I trapped myself in my Gina Lollabrigida dress

I thought that I was going to have to stay stuck and travel to Italy in it and wear the wretched thing all week and that would teach me a fine lesson or two about vanity and ageing gracefully and not eating so much ice cream ... but then a man turned up to remove building rubble and I was able to ask him to help - my predicament embarrassed him but I was too relieved to care.


Yes I am going to Italy - tomorrow at very-early-o'clock, and I was going through my 'Ideal-Me' box of frocks - just in case

still contemplating mortality

Now that Cheesey has vacated his shouting post opposite my house, all the other conversations are drifting back into my windows - yesterday morning I didn't quite catch what the child said but I did hear his mother's response

well - people don't die just because they've run out of breath

When I meet a new cat

 -  it is important that I put my bag on the floor so they can have a sniff and see what sort of thing I am.

Just as I've been pussy-footing around in London, The Man has been in Chile filming pumas - big grey cats who wear a lot of mascara - sassy cats. 

I watched footage from a recent trip - pumas in their hundreds were creeping up on the crew, a cameraperson might feel a whisker touching their arm then slowly get up to do a controlled crouch-ey backward walk away from dinner time.

This action looked great played backwards but nevertheless I was a bit alarmed - the numbers, the closeness !!!

I was assured there was nothing to worry about

They're just bag-sniffers, they're exactly the same as your cats

I dreamt my room was full of people

On Friday I returned from my London studies to spend a little time with The Man who was home in our house for  a brief moment between his filming trips. The quietness as I turned the corner near my home broadcast the fact that Cheesey was no longer occupying the tree outside my bedroom window. 

The Man left for Sri Lanka yesterday afternoon

While I slept last night a crowd of people wandered in to my bedroom and sat around chatting, laughing, drinking and arguing.  I woke up and challenged them about their intrusion - they said that they'd been doing it for years and had assumed I didn't mind. 

My head, clearly unable to cope with this new solitude, is re-peopling itself when I'm not looking.

my under-the-tree neighbour

continues to expand, there are extra tarpaulins, seating in the lounge area and chequerboard flooring has been installed in the shop where the prize item for sale is a pair of ladies boots. Cheesey's shouting hasn't abated, if there's no-one passing to shout at, he shouts at himself or he shouts across at callers to my house - broadcasting full details about whether I'm in or not - if I'm not in he lets the neighbourhood know when I left the house and by what mode of transport.

I'm at a difficult age

Wandering around a DIY store today without my specs and needing advice I spotted a luminous sweatshirt with a logo on the left breast area - not the sort of thing I imagined the young man in it would wear voluntarily - I  started asking him about paint

I'm sorry I don't work here  

Close enough now to see that the logo was from the zoo - I backed off apologetically

I'm so sorry, I could only see that you do work somewhere

Poopy and Sweary

Tarpaulins and pallets have accumulated under the tree opposite my house - also a few pieces of scavenged women's clothing set out with a brown paper 'For Sale' notice, My sinking heart recalled a rooftop squat in the next street from a few years back and I realised that my new neighbour is my old neighbour - Cheesey 


We are three weeks into Cheesey's tree occupation, he's still buttonholing any passersby and now has an assortment of brothers-in-arms who gather to bicker about who owns the bike they just nicked or whether setting the pallets on fire was a stupid move -the tree looks a bit fed up.

The accumulation of Cheesey's sweary vocabulary and other people yelling at him from their windows to Shut the F*** up, has made things very sweary indeed. Cheesey came to my gate last week so he could call me a F****** B**** in close-up, and then, when he thought he was invisible, he came into the front yard to take a series of photos on his smartphone (???!!), surprised that I noticed he shouted at me that it was all part of his 'environmental campaign'.

But I got a break from all that 

last week I was in Switzerland with my chum Mr Attenborough - chauffering him around foresty filming locations - there was chitchat - I told him about Cheesey and we both agreed that the story bore more than a passing resemblance to Alan Bennett's tale of The Lady in The Van and that I'd better watch out.

In other news 

Mrs Blackbird is back. She flies into the kitchen as soon as I  open the garden door, having picked up this habit last year -  despite my putting food outside to keep her out, she still likes to come in, perch on the furniture and poop on the floor - today she brought her children in, which was a whole lot more poopy

Extra Extra
In yet another (probably doomed) bid to get the hang of social media I've made an Instagram account - there's probably a widget that I should stick on the side bar but meanwhile here's a link

A Head of Large Objects

is being sought for London's Imperial War Museum. If this isn't delicious enough, I see that it's based in the department of Narrative and Content.

In other news

I returned to Bristol this week, at the same time as a man-who-can't-stop-talking moved into the tree opposite my house. I heard his monologue as I was moving around the house, opening shutters and windows to air the place out. I ran down the hill for fresh milk and on my way back up a voice came out of the tree

'do you like my treehouse?'

.. he poked his head through the leaves and showed me a squashed phone and started telling me he worked in UX design at Nokia and then there was lots of Narrative and Content about an argument down the road, I tried to move on but  it was impossible because I was trying to do it politely so I finally just had to leave him in full flow.

He's like a faulty car alarm going off the minute he detects someone approach. When a friend came to visit yesterday he followed them to the front door as I opened it he was saying ...

... do you like natural history do you live here can I come in I used to work for the river authority

People always stop the first time he hails them but then they have to work out how to move on. We've got quite a lot of drug dealers and alcoholics in the area so they stop for longer. And when he does find a friend he brings them across the road to sit on the pavement under my bedroom window where they chat on all night in comfort.

More scrubbing

on a different section of the river bed, a big flat slabby section of massive stone blocks running along the river wall for about 100 metres - we don't know what it is yet, so the current technical term  for it is 'A Long Hard Thing'. This was a fabulously satisfying exercise, we were like the Borrowers cleaning a giant's front path, the mud lay like chocolate blancmonge with a furry green skin that sliced off neatly with a trowel and then after a bit of scrubbing the stone became visible along with stone-mason marks.

The houses that existed behind the wall in the C18th were ultra-gothic stone mansions and no-one wanted to buy them so they were demolished to make space for cheapy little houses - now selling for several million pounds. It's possible that this pavement was made from that gothic rubble, possibly to shore up the wall.

Further down the shore some people are looking out for Viking fish traps and there are boatloads of people on the water

A chaser is

1. a person or thing that chases

2.  a drink drunk after another drink of a different kind,  

other things are chasers but they don't interest me, I was thinking of the first two when I agreed to go and help monitor a 'Submarine Chaser'*

I was expecting a sleek metallic shark-like beast, ageing gracefully on the river. Instead I found boat become river bank, a woody container of mud with prickly plants and a tree growing in/on it. 

Twelve women clanked across the river bed with buckets and brushes, following the Man-who-loves boats, struggling and sometimes failing to stay upright as our boots sucked us into the  stinky Thames mud. We located the boat's remains then arranged ourselves around it to wipe away mud from it's edges, mud that will be redeposited in a few hours - a Sisiphean parody of housewifery.

The Chaser served in World Wars I and II and was part of the Normandy Landings. For post-war civilian life, the big engines were replaced with a neutered set, someone added a dinky cabin, it became a houseboat, then abandoned, then moored up to die at a boatyard in Isleworth where it made a nuisance of itself banging around on the tide so it was holed to shut it up. Now it is visited every year by the Man-who-loves-boats and a cleaning lady army to stroke it lovingly, photograph that year's state of decay and then leave it for another year.

*as a newly trained foreshore archeological monitor. I need monitoring practise and also I need reminding how shallow and easily bored I am.

The Castalia

was a 'failed ferry' -  it became a hospital ship in 1883 when the Metropolitan Asylum Board bought it, built several chimney-ish warehouses on it and moored it out at Deptford.

Last Saturday I became embroiled in a Metropolitan-Asylum-Board-themed jigsaw game. 

I discovered about the ship and the jigsaw last month when I was busy cleaning bits of boat and basket embedded in the foreshore* in Rotherhithe. There was a 'Receiving Station' at this place, people with infectious diseases like cholera and polio were held here until a fireboat took them away to the hospital ships. The Castalia was the ship for women.

The Receiving Station was bombed out of existence in the war and now a city farm occupies the site

On the footpath outside the city farm is a display case with shards of crockery from the Metropolitan Asylum Board (MAB), there were many items in the services; platescupssaucers, jugs-of-every-size, tureens ...

Items lost in the river often don't go far, the river buries them for a while and then allows them to re-emerge. People picking up pieces of  MAB crockery have noticed that sometimes they fit together - it has become a huge community jigsaw - if anyone finds a piece they leave it on the display case and each month people get together around a big table to try the new pieces and see if they fit. The aim is to reconstruct an example of each piece.


*I have developed a fascination with the Thames foreshore - the bit that's briefly visible at low tide. People come here to enjoy the river and look out for treasures; neolithic tools, bronze-age jewels, bones and bodies and reminders of bodies - It all comes back to bodies one way and another - this is what my anthropology thesis is about

A terrible thing happened in Manchester this week. 

I hesitate to write about any of these attacks because I don't want to fuel the publicity which seems to be the desired outcome -  to say that it's a horror and an unimaginable sorrow for the families concerned is to state the obvious - but it is beyond horrible. My niece and nephew are the age of these children - just going to their first pop concerts ...

I am now catless

- Porky's owner returned at the weekend and I went back to my Putney palace where it's raining so hard that I've had to light the fire inside as a sort of counterbalance - I can't carry around enough clothing to cope with British weather.

I do have the right sort of clothing to dress up as Kalinda Sharma (my latest crush) - which I did today to meet M. at a very delicious lunch cafe*  I ordered a glass of orange blossom tea which I now realise is the flavour that makes baklava taste like Savlon

I recently learned that there are about 100 million discarded things in space, including a spatula, an obsolete space station and a space suit that was thrown overboard with a transmitter attached to it's head - an 'ephemeral satellite'. 

An art project about this junk includes a short beautiful film about Suitsat

I'm dwelling on Suitsat because I am currently feeling adrift, school is nearly over, all I have to do is write a big essay - ON MY OWN - there are no more classes. In an effort to cling on to institutionalisation a little bit longer I signed up for a grim tutorial about how to use a software package - this involved being trapped in a dark room with a clunky pc that I couldn't turn on and a lady lecturing us at speed from the dim end of the room. 


*broad bean purée, soft boiled egg, paprika and asparagus followed by pistachio-cherry-frangipane cake and cardamom coffee if you're asking.

I'm in Bethnal Green

keeping company with a large male cat in a tiny ground floor flat. I'm under instructions not to give in to Porky's requests for more food and must watch out for the lady who sometimes lets herself into the front garden at night, convinced that the cat is starving, she likes to push food through the catflap-in-the-window.

It's all about bodies lately - my research has led me to reading about London burial places and bodies on the Thames Foreshore. 

I teach Life Drawing in an old mortuary* - sited near the place on the Thames foreshore where bodies tend to wash up. Our model for the next couple of weeks is a body builder, pumped to the point that his head doesn't quite belong on that body but this might be a help to students who worry about being realistic.

*no longer functioning as a mortuary

image: Lucy Mcrae

I had one of those builders round

the sort that do a lot of teeth-sucking before telling you how difficult it will be to fix a broken window. This one, in his broad brummie accent, assessed the situation and told me quite frankly it would be cheaper and less trouble to move.   

I said  we can't move, there's 50 different species of bee* in the garden, it's like having a farm

he said   I know what that's like, I leave a sandwich out every night for the fox - a chip buttie, he bites the middle of it and then just walks off leaving the crust - every night         



*More about bees here

This week has mainly been wet

by day I have been on the Thames foreshore scrubbing chunks of ship and other items embedded in the beach and visible at low tide - this is part of an archaeological survey and a pleasant way to spend a morning - even when it's raining which it did between bursts of spectacular sunshine.


At night I have been creeping down to the gym in the Glamorous Apartment Block. It's a bit spooky weaving through ranks of gigantic walking machines, rowers and other pulley contraptions but finally I arrive in the darkly shiny spa. It's a novelty for me and I am alone here so I spend far too much time steaming, sauna-ing and jacuzzi-ing before emerging prune-like and squeaky clean to drift back to my penthouse where the cats are waiting for me to play Evil Villains which involves caressing them on my lap as we swivel in the Big Evil Villain chair surveying the entirety of London laid out before us.

I think I am living in a Smart Home

but I'm not smart enough to know what that means.

There's a lot of automated things that seem to be operating me: a circular hooverbot will suddenly start trundling round the room bumping into furniture, chewing up the cat's toys and getting stuck under the fridge, then a voice tells me that I'm going to enjoy 'this' music or she'll start nattering to herself but if I ask her what the weather's going to do tomorrow she keeps a sullen silence. I can see 'eyes' in all the objects - I've no idea how many things are watching me (I've turned some of them to look at the wall but they might be unsmart eyes). 

In the bathroom the soap will only dispense itself if I stroke it in a particular way and there's a creature there that sometimes sneezes perfume. Heaven knows what the lavatory is capable of.

as usual I am kept under close surveillance

The Look Out team consists of: 
The-One-That-Perches-On-Things
The-One-That-Peeps-Through-Things
and 
The-One-That-Licks-Things-To-Keep-Calm

This week I am in luxury accommodation

 this is my view 

and these are my new friends

Life classes continue

There was a bit of confusion at the old mortuary a couple of weeks ago; Dora double-booked Chumpy and a large amphibious man to model for the life class - I asked them to pose as though they were both in an everyday environment, chatting to each other in the pub or watching telly and was surprised how unlikely it looked - much more realistic for them to be emulating classical statues or acrobats.

I told Dora that I'd been in Switzerland with David Attenborough and showed her my photographs, she was well impressed then said - you look like a television presenter so I expect he felt comfortable around you

I was in Switzerland last week

the Man is making a film about ants in the forest - I went out to spend his birthday with him.

Sir David Attenborough was there too, narrating the story  (I had been to this same place with him about 12 years ago and tell that story here) - it's always interesting to see how other people react to him. The head waiter at the hotel played a series of jokes,  actually it was the same joke over and over again where he pretended not to have any of the food that was ordered or to have run out of wine. SDA accepted this punishment with good humour but  clearly wasn't enjoying the joke as much as the waiter - it must be really hard being a National Treasure

a hairy beardy man in a hooded parka

waved his bumper pack of chocolate digestives at me as I was about to go into a tube station saying that he wanted to recite me a poem, I said no thank you but he said 'pleeeease' and I felt a bit cornered. 

Thinking I was going to say no again he popped a biscuit in his mouth at the same moment that I said go on then
  
Not wanting to give me the opportunity to change my mind, he launched into some really quite shouty verses and, being English, I felt that I couldn't shield myself overtly - I squinched my eyes and sort-of-shrank into my coat collar for the duration. 

When he finished I opened my eyes and said thank you and he said how was it? and I said a bit biscuity

I'm missing my home in Bristol

I miss hearing the school children crashing down the hill by our house and the ruckus as they muck around at the crossroads, climbing on a neighbouring wall and arguing under the wonky lamp post outside our front gate. Once 4 boys stood by the lamp post to properly practise a rap that I'd heard them working on since beyond the top of the hill.

They are also a bit naughty, they pinched figs off next-doors tree last year and I suspect it was they not the wind behind the incident reported yesterday in an email from the Chinese lady living there at the moment

One thing want want to let you know. One of the roof on rock pillar at front door* fell down yesterday, due to the strong wind maybe. I found it was moved into the yard this morning by someone, I must say thanks because it is too heavy to move for me. I don't know how to deal with it, just leave it in the yard.

*trans note: front door = gate post in this instance

Our friend died

there was a long illness, a funeral, weeping

words and music

and this piece of music



I recommend a chapel but eyes-closed-listening works well too

Just a normal phone message conversation

from neighbour 
Help - people keep giving me pheasants and rabbits will you teach me how to peel them and  I've run out of room in my freezer do you have space in yours until I have time to deal with them


from me 
we can do it Monday, there's probably room in my freezer for about 2 rabbits and a pheasant let yourself in  but first you'll have to remove the wool that's in there hiding from moths

In the life class

Our model this week was a yoga-ista who held poses for 30 seconds, 1 minute and 5 minutes  we scribbled away like banshees and at the end we taped everything to the wall and admired our efforts. Here's a selection. Prizes for guessing which is mine

The current cat

doesn't drink water from her bowl or a running tap  but when I take a shower, she runs upstairs and jumps in when I step out. 

Then she sits in the puddle that I've left behind, head cocked waiting for drips to land on her tongue

We've had a bit more Chumpy

in the Life Class, which was divertingly chaotic. I'd booked a pregnant female model for this evening's class but she couldn't make it, so one of the office staff agreed to fall asleep and let us draw her, I put some Agnes Obel on the music box and it was lovely.

House of Dangerous People

The Man has been filming jaguars in Costa Rica, standing far too close while they suck the heads off gigantic flipping turtles. He was also nearly squeezed to death by a giant boa constrictor but he returned alive to Bristol last week. I was missing him and missing being at home so I took a break from studies to go and make dinners, do laundry and sniff the Bristol air.

Our home has been languishing emptily but now we are joined by two new female housemates: Lu is Chinese, she is studying how to prevent landslides, this is research commissioned by the controversial Three Gorges Dam project. Our other housemate Sarah is employed as a danger-aversion-person by EDF who are building a controversial nuclear plant near Bristol.

I've been instructing Lu in the art of moth-combat and the need to shake woolies out on a regular basis, the idea of clothes-eating-moths horrifies her far more than the prospect of nuclear explosions, snakes, jaguars or landslides.

At the very posh local farmers market

a chap was selling premium dairy products; hand churned butter, fancy milk and  ... buttermilk.  Proper buttermilk is so difficult to find that I'd forgotten about it's existence. I was sort of excited to see this rare thing but couldn't remember why.

Seeing my hesitation the dairyman handed me a leaflet with suggestions for how to use buttermilk, then he said

one of my customers drinks it but you're not supposed to do that 

Why not?

it's already been used  

!!!!!!!!!

In my search for a good Local

I was directed to a bar along the waterfront and across the park. It was almost empty, a blazing fire blazed in the middle of one wall, two young men were behind the bar trying to work the till. The bar room contained a dozen assorted wooden kitchen-type tables and chairs, the only other customers were two women and their gentleman friend.

I finally got a pint and took it to a seat at one of the large tables, shortly afterwards the other party got up and assembled themselves in coats and scarves. During this disruption they asked me if I lived nearby, we had a short exchange and they left.

Five minutes later one of the women ran back in and asked if she could join me. We entertained each other for the next half hour. My New Best Friend is the twin of the other woman, I shall call them Sybill, the other twin had lived in the neighbourhood longer and knew more people - this was a good opportunity to even things up a little.

We arranged to meet, me with both twins the following week.

That was yesterday. The experience was like a being in a story co-written by Lewis Caroll, Edward Lear and Mervyn Peake

The first thing I had to be made aware of was size, they were identical and both the same size they said, so they could wear each others clothes but they also pointed out that one was taller with a much longer body and exceptionally large hands and feet, we stood and compared all these things. They felt that they were so identical that the large-handed one differentiated herself with a fat bow on her head.


The large-handed twin was by far the bossier - as she questioned me she would stop to wave her enormous hands in the air and cry

My darling we have absolutely NOTHING in common!

Their lives revolve around omens, they each have their special sign to look out for, the small-handed Sybill looks for things with vertical lines and the large-handed Sybill looks for horizontal lines, this system is used for every important decision; for example when they need to know to trust an estate agent - they look at the pattern of his tie. This and numerous other examples were given to show how well the system works.

We are planning to go to the cinema together soon  

We are very critical
yes very critical

we used to work in the cinema industry as extras so we know a lot about it

we've been directed by ... who's that actor who's now a director?
(many names are tried out)
Clint Eastwood
yes him
we are very critical and we don't like much   
and we don't like much food  
no we're very fussy  
we're terrible to eat with  

Making up for his early arrival last week

Chumpy turned up just slightly late for our class this week, there was a lengthy explanation about how he'd been too absorbed in his book and missed his bus stop then he went and made himself a cup of tea and was just about to get on with modelling when he noticed a small pile of cheap out-of-date biscuits in the kitchen, someone had put a sticker on for anyone who wanted them to take them . . . we waited while Chumpy found his coat and filled the pockets. . .

My ballerina has cancelled for next week

I still haven't visited Penge

I've been staying in Dulwich (pronounced: dull itch) which is on the way to Penge, a place that also sounds like a medical symptom in this case maybe a pain/twinge, as in:

I can't do that - it makes my knees penge

The Putney heating is still broken so I jumped at the opportunity to look after a cat-in-a-warm-house last week but alas I have now returned to the Putney fridge.

In the Mortuary

I've been running the Life Drawing classes. I had a special one on Saturday - after  a day spent marching against Drumpf I had to rush eastwards only just making it to the mortuary in time to set up for the Birthday Party Life Class. The model I shall call Chumpy, an excitable man who was already naked and waiting for me in the kitchen, there were things to be done before the guests arrived and every time I looked around Chumpy was doing something dangerous while naked - he had to be ordered down from a stack of chairs that he'd decided to clamber onto (he wanted to pin bunting up), then he cut his finger. When he'd done bandaging the finger he started blowing up balloons, it was during this episode that he managed to hurt his eye. The class arrived and the host wore gold shoes with flashing blue lights, he handed out artist berets to his 30 friends along with Champagne and fizzy jelly sweets.  When I finally got the class settled with crayons and paper, I asked Chumpy if he could start with a simple kneeling posture which he did by attempting a sort of upside down pretzel shape - knocking over a cup of water as he fell.

I've got Chumpy again next Thursday but after that I get a Ballerina.

On the bus to Penge

I'm on the top deck. Sitting across from me are two boys aged around twelve years old and a chic young woman who might be their big sister or aunt, they are talking and laughing and sound like they come from south London, she says:

There's this stuff called escargot, it's snails eggs and people eat it

that's disgusting!

it's like caviar which is fish eggs, you eat hens eggs, what's the difference?

I've been engaged

as Drawing Mistress

to teach a Life class

in an old mortuary ...

just gonna leave that there

Coping with death

is tough and is a difficult concept for a child, my niece (age 5) and nephew (age 9)  lost  two grandparents last year, the 9-year old was beside himself with grief and decided to do something about it by raising money for Cancer Research and have a bake sale. He wrote to various supermarkets and packaging companies to ask if they'd donate ingredients and other things he needed. The local vicar said that he could hold the sale after Sunday service just before Christmas and my nephew posted about his endeavour on facebook (via his mum).

Orders came flooding in and by the end of the church porch sale he'd raised £700 which is bloody impressive.

this is the boy 4 years ago making a Star Wars birthday cake.



My 5-year old niece is still trying to work out what 'death' is and is currently doing a star jump after every time she crosses a road, shouting triumphantly with every leap  

I'M STILL ALIVE  

(photo credit: James Prinz)

Yesterday at 5 am

I drove the Man to  where his filming crew, a big pile of suitcases and a bus were waiting for him to start a journey to Costa Rica where they will make another film about animals.

Today at 5 am I drove Kanako to the airport so she could start her journey back to Japan, we did a lot of crying and then I went home and cleaned our empty house and then I filled the car with logs and jumpers and cake and drove to London. 

I drove to Putney, to the house I am taking care of during school term time - the house with the Rude Mad Man next door. Currently it is also the house-with-a-broken-heating-system-until-a-Man-comes-to-fix-it.

Kanako is going back to Japan tomorrow

we are making sure that we have exchanged as much vital information as possible. I have introduced her to oxtail and steak-and-kidney and she has discovered English sandwiches and jam rolypoly for herself. On Christmas day we did crown-wearing at dinner.

Yesterday we held a conference

have you had mince pies?

yes at least seven pieces they are very delicious

Christmas cake was missing from the list but luckily we found some that I hadn't eaten yet, we also covered bramble jelly, fried christmas pudding, sponge cake and marmalade.

We moved on to some Japanese essentials

1) Dried firefly squid tastes densely old fishy and gluey, the tentacles have a nice crunch but the wings and body have the texture of a plastic blister pack - this aspect is a bit sore on the mouth.

2) The Japanese winter sock routine involves four pairs of exquisite white socks, the silk and cotton socks with toes - footgloves - first put on the silk then the cotton. Then the silk foot mittens then the cotton foot mittens until you have a pair of very fat and warm feet.

This is the secret to being able to continue wearing little thin flattering easy-to-move-about-in clothes on the top of your body in winter.

3) The Japanese omelette is a delicious and beautiful thing. 

Put a fish-and-seaweed teabag in a cup, pour on a little hot water, add this infusion to eggs in a bowl and beat with chopsticks.

Heat a little vegetable oil in a frying pan (at this point my drawing skills fail)

Pour some of the fishy egg in the middle section of a pan, muddle it around until set then add a small pool of egg mix to one side, as this part sets the middle section can be rolled onto it then you can lay down another side section of egg and roll again, if you add seaweed at each part the omelette spiral becomes more evident and very beautiful. The end result is a fat egg sausage to be sliced up like a Swiss Roll