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.