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.