Battling

 

I've not posted this month because I've been waiting to ungrump but it's clearly not going to happen before tomorrow. 

I had a tooth out, then attended a dear person's funeral and then someone was horrid to me, then I spent a day in a hot traffic jam and all year my hormones haven't been working nicely.

I'm attempting to keep to at least one post a month so here it is.

Next month had better be better

Here's an employment opportunity

Battlefield Architect

Join our Future Battlefield Capability team ... You'll be developing new concepts such as Battlefield Effects Management and next generation open fire control systems in the context of large scale Digitised Battlefield Infrastructures.
You will be responsible for ensuring the integration of MBDA products into the wider battlespace. By interfacing with our customers directly, you'll identify their future capability needs, conduct investigation on potential solutions, and assess their feasibility as future products.

 

'Battlefield  Effects Management' sounds like it'll be basically working on something Star Wars or Marvel, it's all sounds Huge Fun doesn't it?

To escape my growing pile of rejection slips

I dashed to France for a hit of Mediterranean sun-and-sea and found the perfect slightly-difficult-to-get-to cove for my morning swims - just me, the fish and the sea-birds - until a boatload of Peeping Toms turned up.

Before France there was Derbyshire. Celebrating my father's 90th birthday. We hired a blazing-fireplace-cosy-cottage near Bakewell. There was a Grand Supper, my niece made a Bakewell Birthday Cake, the way we love our Bakewell Tarts (lots of Almonds, butter and sharp red jam) - it was truly delicious. Next day we visited Bakewell, a town consisting solely of tart vendors, each claiming to offer 'The Only Real Authentic Bakewell Pudding', two versions were sampled, the first was awful and the second inedible.

Mrs China has now been with us for a month. On Sunday she is moving to her permanent accommodation and I think we will both be relieved, she is still baffled by our rubbish disposal system and I can't understand her system of slippers and mats,  nor the systems of which things must see the sun and which things are not allowed to see other things.

I have come back to a little job which is a bit Top Secret - I drive to a massive aircraft hangar and unlock a series of doors until I arrive at a room where 214 objects have been collected, some of these pieces are worse than rubbish, others are worth millions (of which currency I shall not tell) I must unwrap these items, photograph them, say something about them and then seal them away - perhaps for ever.

Footwear Coordinator Wanted

at the  Royal Shakespeare Company   - can my newfound passion for pockets expand to a general aptitude for sartorial appurtenances? 

'... As Footwear Coordinator, you will be reporting directly to the Head of Costume Props, Footwear and Armoury  ...'  


... and of course I know so much about armour   


art  shoes by Gwen Murphy found here

Jobs jobs jobs

The Natural History Museum is looking for a Curator of Meteorites but too late for me  to apply because I am now employed to bring Art to the Bewildered at a specialised facility on the edge of town. The Bewildered includes myself, the rest of the staff, the residents and the visitors

Despite it being in my job title,  I've stopped using the 'A' word, too many people find it frightening or annoying,  if asked what I do, I've learned to say that my job is to make life more interesting, no-one seems to be able to argue with that.

Data Privacy Rules are being updated - I'm not even allowed to write myself notes anymore let alone tell you what I'm up to, so details will be scant I'm afraid. 

Being part of a big work crew again after two years in anthropological study is delirious. My colleagues all  seem exotically fascinating - there's Big Doreen who told me off on my first day for standing on the wrong mat, and Mousey-Cat who keeps asking me really really sweetly to do 'little jobs' for her. Toya takes up all the space wherever she is, she's covered in tattoos and spends the entirety of every break in the tiny staff room having Facetime with her boyfriend or, in the event of internet breakdown, telling us all about what he-said-she-said last night and the night before, there was a brief moment when she stopped to draw breath and Helga, a young Finnish nurse leapt in to veer the conversation away

I would like one of those tattoo sleeves but for my leg - just one

me: would you call it a tattoo half-a-trouser?

elderly nurse: I don't understand, how can you have a trouser tattoo?

me: Actually it'd be more like a one-legged pair of tights - a tattoo stocking

Toya: .... he says he's taking me out for dinner tonight and I said well I'm paying and he said ...

Ok, so I found a job

but I'm also still looking ...

this is for a job at Splash!

Description

We require two Photographers to shoot children with their parents in our swimming pool concessions located in Guildford, Kingston, Crawley and Woking. The job is sociable and enjoyable...



or this, for an art teacher in London 

Description

We are looking for teachers who are experienced with young teenagers aged 13-16, and can solve their problems...

During a family gathering this week

my father and I took turns to relate the story about how he came to visit me in France in the early eighties: I was working as a goatherd in a remote woody-hilly place somewhere near the Pyrenees and had sent a letter home describing the route to get to my hut, it was illustrated with a map and my father used it to pay me a visit. *

it was a good story with lots of adventures  - there was one part that I had never heard before:

My father left me to get on with my goatherding and went off to do a few days walking in the area by himself. The first night he stayed in a B&B then continued on his way. A few hours into the day's walk he stopped by a hedge on a dirt track to scrump a few cherries when a van hove into sight and stopped next to him, there were two men inside - one from the previous night's boarding house, this man leaned out of his window and said   

Monsieur, you left this at our 'ouse

and handed over some greyish white fabric that my father recognised as his own, rather unfashionable, underpants

* the map and another version of this story is here

Runnning Away to the Circus

Photo by Todd Walker

When I was twenty years old I joined a performing horse circus in France it was surreal and wonderful and those memories came rushing back when I read this small ad:

Circus Family in Phoenix Needs Help

We are in a professional band that performs frequently and our home is very musical and lively. It's difficult to put our entire vision into a small box ... while here you will have the opportunity to assist us with cultivating the land and vision.
Here are some ideas of what we will need assistance with:

Building a chicken coop
Starting a garden
Building a sweat lodge
Building a fire pit circle
Planting fruit trees
Building a dry sauna
Planting bamboo
Building outdoor balcony
Building a geo-dome
Building a drip system
Setting up our 18 foot teepee
Building a stage
Rigging for aerial silks
Building a loft in our son's bedroom
Building revolving doors


 ... Phoenix is a plethora of activity as well ... We also have the world-renowned Musical Instrument Museum, as well as other art and history museums.

A Bit Windy

the rain has swollen the doors  - they will either not shut or not open.

when I came home I pulled the door into the door hole until it stopped moving. during the night the wind re-opened it because my obese front door is refusing to engage with the latch.

today the last of my celebratory black beans will be fried up with rice  - soon I will be able to socialise in enclosed spaces.

my jumper cupboard is overflowing. I have readjusted my work-search criteria to include jumper-wearing.

Wet Wet Wet

Image 1953 Peter Stackpole

Harsh loud hail waking me at night    rainy monotony during the day   cold weather coming

Space Lady day today: we sit opposite each other at the dining table and polish arcane silverware, she tells me complicated stories while Cellar Man fusses in the kitchen – long ago, to reduce frivolous water consumption, he removed one of the tap tops, today he  has removed the other one so water can only be obtained by means of a monkey wrench.

My charity shop unknittings have yielded about a jumperful of wool, all of it slightly different shades of cream, they make each other look dirty so I have been saving my used teabags to dye the skeins.  Some has turned a beautiful golden colour but the larger part of it looks like old meat. I have re-dyed the old meat wool with aubergine colour and it is now divine.

Job Titles

On Tuesday mornings I visit an elderly couple: I arrive, we exchange a little light banter, I don’t see them again for the duration of my visit.

There is actually nothing for me to do in this large detached house, it is completely neat and dust-free. 

Last week as I was leaving, I mentioned their tidiness and she said Oh we don’t want our mess to get in the way of your work, which puzzled me as I imagined myself to be their cleaner.

Today, for two hours, I walking around, up and down the stairs, plugging and unplugging the hoover, opening and closing doors and I suddenly saw myself clearly; less hairy than a cat, less needy than a dog, less trouble than guests but nevertheless a living thing, moving around in their big big house. 

Can’t decide whether to think of myself as a part-time pet or a performance artist.




A few days ago I attended a talk at the Wilderness Society given by an 'explorer',  a young man with romantic-but-ill-researched notions of crossing deserts.

Women NEVER call themselves explorers.

Except Dora

Folding Lady

My lack of ability as a cleaning lady has selected out a very particular sort of clientele, such as elderly people who do their own cleaning (see previous post) but want someone to come by once a week to check that they are still alive then help them turn on the computer and reach down a jar of pickles.

A woman with aspergers syndrome texts me once every couple of months. A large portion of her tiny flat is taken up with enormous recycling bins that separate glass, cardboard and plastic. When they are full she starts piling boxes and tins on top of the bins. At the point that she fears getting trapped underneath an avalanche she sends a text in a state of panic about the situation. Cardboard boxes in need of flattening occupy the sofa and the bathroom contains a large bucket full of cardboard loo roll inners. Somehow she can cope with her other rubbish but not this ... this needy waste. The other issue here are the clothes racks which tower like pylons behind the sofa and in front of the tv, piled with clean laundry, it just needs folding - and folding is something she can’t do.

Theories of Relativity: i

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My current career as a domestic cleaner is a family joke, visiting my house is a bit like entering a crime scene. I'm myopic so don’t notice dust and can't see details on far away places like the floor.  Sometimes (when a visitor is imminent) I do a speedy swab across the decks, merely making things worse, I am effectively smearing dirt and consolidating several piles of jumble  which only serves to draw attention to our sorry state.

It has long been apparent that any housework done in my own home is an unrewarding task, within hours the house reverts to it's default state of messiness. This is in stark contrast to the home of an elderly couple where I visit once a week for vacuuming duties, their home is identically neat from one week to the next - they leave exactly 12 crumbs under the dining table to check that I do actually push their Hoover around - but nothing else shifts or changes. I imagine them living in this house, gently reading the papers or a book until it is time to move to another room, drifting through the house in a manner that won’t dislodge any hair or skin flakes.

I have met  another artist who earns her living as a cleaner, we’d both like our homes to be neater but are equally ineffective at achieving this, we suggested that perhaps it would be more interesting if we did each other's housework*. The problem with this plan is that it still involves time spent doing housework, we will call the idea Art and file under ‘conceptual’.

*actually I refuse to own the housework, my house is shared with another who deserves equal opprobrium for the mess in which we find ourselves

Out of the Dog House

This morning I dawdled along behind two small boys and eavesdropped on their plans for world domination; they were dividing the city between them, the larger boy had just claimed the bus station so the smaller boy countered with a gesture that took in the block of flats that we were walking past 

These are all mine

His friend was scornful

Don't be stupid, if you owned all that you'd have to buy LOADS of sofas

Jobs

... the next time I visited  the cat house, the cats kept out of my sight. I cleaned the living room and moved on. Glancing into the living room on my way out I noticed that a clutch of enormous turds had recently been laid on the carpet in the window bay.

Twice a week I go to a house with dogs and a little boy who calls me Harry because that is the name of his friend.

I spend an hour a week in a house where I have never seen the owner, he called me and asked if I did ironing, I said not really because I wasn't very good at it and I worried that I might do more harm than good, the man said 'What if I didn't care', then he dropped his keys off in my letter box and leaves me cash in his microwave every fortnight.

I have recently started cleaning a sexndrugsnrocknroll house. It is the sort of place where it is difficult to tell what colour the paintwork might originally have been but I'm guessing they had a lot of fun getting it this dirty. They don't want me to come very often and they're too stoned to care what I clean.  I choose something that I can complete in a session. The first week I concentrated on a glazed door between the kitchen and living room. After two hours with a scourer and some Ajax I had uncovered a very bright and shiny thing indeed, I imagined them coming home and thinking that a celestial Tardis had been installed.

Pat-a-cake, Pat-a-cake Baker's Man

I am off do another batch of cooking work soon. In order to hone my skills I recently visited a Master Baker for some expert tuition in the art of cake decoration. I have carefully noted the key requirements of tasteful decoration and will be applying them to my next job.

Meaningful Headgear

Sorry about all the neglect round here. I've been busy looking for the Meaning of Life which I had hoped might be revealed through the medium of a new job. The grave-digging thing didn't work out, mainly because I had to wear a frightful yellow helmet while operating the digger. I am now hoping to find a more stylish sort of Meaning.

I'm quite keen on getting a pirate-ey lifestyle, I like the swag and the swaggering, very fond of the rum and above all I love the hats. I've been doing a bit of research into the subject, here is one of my interviews.

Grave Digger Required

I'm on a bit of a Dickens jag at the moment and have just been watching Edwin Drood on telly.

Drood was duly murdered then I went and checked out some small ads, I found a job advert for a Grave Digger, the job description stated that:


Candidates must have previous experience in all tasks associated with the preparation of graves ...

Slugs and Snails

This week I have been cooking in the depths of rural England, back to the house where little girls danced with whales, here are some of the week’s high- and low-points

1. The place is now full of little boys - the meals were appropriately themed; last night’s supper was worms in a compost heap followed by mud pie with extra dirt.

2. This is a no-electronic-games-allowed household, most of the boys were outside, happily running around thwacking things, but I discovered a sad-faced child called Oscar in the pantry, he was fingering something he called a DS. He agreed to wash his hands and help me make pizzas.

3. Oscar wants to be an actor and shows great promise, after flinging something to the floor during supper, his mother insisted that there would be no mud pie until he picked it up, he left the room roaring
I am now going to kill myself

4. I stayed on the premises this time, I dislike 'living-in’, but it’s a long commute and The Director is away stalking vampires.

My bags were taken to a converted barn adjacent to the main house; a vast split level space with fat oak floorboards and stone gable ends - it is wonderfully empty, a bed one end, a sink the other and a huge old tub somewhere in the middle. It is the old hay loft and harness rooms and is over a mill race - in daylight the sound of the stream rushing under the building is charming. At night I realised that the big empty space of my apartment is a supersonic amplifier, it was like being trapped in a giant’s bathroom with a broken flush - I have not slept a wink for four nights.

5. There is no internet or phone signal at the house so I found a big empty pub with wifi. I went there this morning at 9 am and sat down at the only table with an electric socket, then some people came in; two couples and a teenage boy, none of them appeared to have a neck and they were clearly all very closely related. They walked past the empty tables and came to sit with me - they weren’t being at all friendly, finally one of the men said
We always sit here

6. While I was preparing supper tonight Oscar lurked nearby, finally he asked me
What do you really do for a living?



Photo by Mark Peterson

Bringing It All Back Home

The Director is back from filming in Botswana, most of the kit is in storage but the lenses are up in the spare room for testing and cleaning. He's mostly been asleep since his return, which is a shame as I was hoping he might do some Man Jobs, like get the congealed fat out of the drain.


He's hoping I'll do some Woman Jobs, like fix all the broken trousers that are in his clothes bag. I won't be doing that because I'll have my arm down a drain, but I will model the trousers that show what happens if you stand too close to the camp fire.

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.