at the beginning of March

my hand underwent surgery. The surgeon gave me a sketch of what he did and I've been showing it to all and sundry in the manner of a proud parent-to-be showing a baby scan.

It's still the recovery period (and for another month or so at least), doing lots of flexing and massage to build strength in my thumb joint, to bring the nerve endings back to life and reduce scar tissue - it's sore and I can't drive or put my bra on!

It's been a sad month - a dear friend and beloved member of our neighbourhood died at the end of February.


I am setting up an art project in Surrey, I'm still in the preparatory phase. As I'm not able to drive and I'm unfamiliar with the area I took up the offer to go and look after a long-haired cat near the estate where I'll be working. The hairy tomcat spent his days and nights out and about, getting up to mischief no doubt. He'd slink back to the house with evidence of these adventures on his prodigious coat - bits of hedge and moss stuck all over him, surprising odours hitching a ride too - one morning he came in smelling as though he'd been in the sewers.

Back home on Friday I decided to try swimming in the lake by the ocean with my injured hand, the temperature is still quite icy, as the cold seeped in my thumb joint complained and I had to return to dry land swimming single handedly, the poorly one held above my head as though I was calling for help.

Cat repair person for hire

I've returned to Devon to look after a cat called Edna, I was here a couple of months ago. Edna was a gaunt, trembly old thing when I arrived but after just 10 days in my care Edna turned into a lovely shiny thing, her tembliness became bounce, she had plumped up nicely and her owners exclaimed with joy about the new, improved cat waiting for them.

I seem to have discovered how to work the cat reset button

I'm not saying I can mend a properly broken cat, my abilities lie in fixing those slightly manky cats, the ones that have gone a bit boss-eyed and keep forgetting to clean themselves, or the ones that over-lick one area of their body, also the bony neurotic cats that shiver for no good reason and I'm pretty good at eliminating asthma attacks. I've had no luck with dirty-protest cats like the Bum-Crayoner but I do think there might be a call for a professional cat-plumper-and-polisher (feline-smoother/cat valet?) - I'm working on my marketing for this new business

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 temporarily overhoused

and life will be complicated for a while as I shuttle between a south London house with no pets and the ongoing north London house of marauding all-shapes-and-sizes cats.

both homes are loaded with terrors - in trying to balance which is the most terrifying I came up with a point system:

North London

cats that I need to keep alive - 50

pirate cats that want to come in and pee on my stuff - 20

shaky stacks of stuff that could avalanche at any time - 20

knobs and handles that drop off when I touch them - the toll so far includes the fridge handle, 2 X light switches, 2 parts of the lavatory flush system and the lavatory seat  which is trying to make up for it's wobbliness by being fluorescent - 20

levels of extreme unhygienic uncleanness that I keep noticing in my peripheral vision  - 50

terror toll = 160

South London

super neat squeaky clean (like in a hospital) - 50

highly burglarable - 50

a neighbour who is prone to run through the hallway and jump the fence into his own garden in his dressing gown  if the front door is left open -  minus10

there is no kettle here: the hot water tap does that function and will spurt steaming-boiling water if  you use one hand to pump the middle of the tap three times then twist the pumpy thing while holding a mug under the spluttering stream of lava - 500

terror toll = 590

The new household

Fred and Ginger are prize-winning visions of sleekness their home is full of toys and play towers

Fat boy and Fluffy are the hobo cats who live outside - Fluffy  is timid and has a very tiny head on her fat grey body, Fat Boy is her father - an enormous tiger-striped champ with a broken ear, his wide eyeballs give him an air of shockedness

I have been instructed to take care of all these cats - there is an entire room full of food for them including a fridge and a freezer packed with prime cuts of beef and chicken from the butcher.

This is Black Pete, the one-eared neighbourhood pirate cat - we are all scared of him