Testosterone Surge

1st April
Barney, The Director’s son arrived at the weekend and is going to stay and work with us for a while, Spider Man has come back to continue logging and will stay over for the week, Félix is also here today setting up the tanks for the underwater creatures.

A couple of weeks ago I posted some notes about the existing housemates
it ony seems fair to do the same for the new boys:

Barney:
just got some very fancy sunglasses and won’t take them off – he probably sleeps wearing them, he never wears a jacket, in fact he generally dresses in a very impractical manner, he makes a great Pavlova - towering edifices that take an entire afternoon to construct.


Spider Man:
Rarely speaks, when he takes breaks from the computer he goes outside and swishes a big net around, then he examines what he’s caught and makes notes in the book he always carries with him, his favourite food is aubergine, he’s a bit rubbish at jam-making, he gave me a jar of his tomato jam – I wanted to taste it but I couldn’t find an implement strong enough to slice a piece out of the jar so, insane with curiosity, I had to just lick the surface of it.

Félix:
collects wild food, invited me for supper and served nettle soup (pretty good actually, sprinkled with ground sesame and salt), he lives with his mother, he runs a seed bank, one evening last week he turned up with a compartmentalised box hung on a strap round his neck from which he dispensed seeds for my vegetable garden. The tomato seeds are stuck on sheets of kitchen roll with the variety written on the paper.

Miss Whiplash isn’t coming until next week, by which time the odour of smelly socks might have become overwhelming and we’ll have to run off together and set up our own salon

Breaking The Ice

11th March
Félix came over last night, he is very shy and speaks no English so we welcomed him by showing him a darts game we'd just invented:

Who fetches the beer?
Someone throws a dart to make the challenge, everyone in the room has to grab a dart and throw it at the board from wherever they were when the challenge was declared. furthest from the bull gets the beer (from the insect fridge in the cold back kitchen). If you're facing away from the board when the challenge is made - tough the dart has to be thrown over your shoulder.

Félix thought that one was great so we invented some more games including:

How many darts can you get into a board in a single throw?
Funnily enough cramming your fist with loads of darts and hurling them at the board doesn’t mean that more stick in, just throwing two or three has more success than six at once.

How far can you be from the board and still get a dart in?
You can get a sightline to the dartboard from the back of the next room but no-one has been able to throw that far yet.

Félix did end up having to fetch a lot of beer, but he went home happy with a big net and a list of dragonfly larvae species to hunt down.

Scarecut Trio

30th January
I'm dealing with my hair horror by using hats and avoiding mirrors. I also only go out if I'm not likely to be seen by many people.

A couple of days ago I attended an anti-pesticide film showing at Jeanne's café - an event put on by Félix, a young man who engulfs his skinny body with big knobbly jumpers, an assortment of scarves and an oversized duffle coat, his face is almost entirely hidden by his dreadlocks and profuse beard.

Félix has a degree in ecology, I invited him for lunch with a view to him working on our project, he brought along his friend who is a spider specialist.

Spider Man is scrubbed very clean, wiry ginger hair scraped into a ponytail, his beige turtleneck tucked neatly into his smartly ironed, high-waisted jeans. Spider Man doesn’t do small talk and Félix is extremely shy. I spent the long silences wondering if we should capitalise on our hair and form a pop group, we could become famous as singers on a chat show. All we need is a catchy name ...