Siberian wardrobe problems

 

I sat next to a woman who told me she was from Siberia

Two Siberian clichés crashed into my brain, I made a pinchy face, she was defensive

It is not just very cold it is also very hot,  we only have extremes, six months very hot, six months very cold and very great difference over one day - it can start at minus 20 degrees, then later in day zero degrees - so it really fucks with our blood pressure and people die from that, but really big problem in Siberia is that we love British trench coat - every woman has trench coat but weather is either for fur coat or little small top, there are precisely two days every year when  trench coat is acceptable so we all live with trench coat in wardrobe. 

This prompted me to think about an over-sized, new-but-vintage toffee-coloured cashmere coat I bought in a charity shop last year. I had to have it but it looked like I was wearing an actual wardrobe so I got it altered by an expensive tailor. As long as I wear it over a big chunky jumper, accessorised with substantial footwear and headwear it looks fantastic. Mimsy British weather is never cold enough for this outfit, obviously I must relocate . . . but Siberia . . . gulags, chilly . . .

My next post might be from Norway 

I'm trying to get as much of lovely europe as possible

while we're still in it.

At the weekend I booked flights to go to a Greek island. This evening I booked the house we'll stay in. It's located in a 'village' with two other houses and two tavernas, all clustered at the end of a long peninsula.

the house owner has contacted me with directions and other relevant things to note:

Other informations....every day in the piazza of the village,at 10.30 comes a white van,and sells bread,beverages,biscotts....and every monday and Thursday at 9-10 another white van sells vegetables ,frutts...
Remember have bottle water with you,the water in the house you cannot drink it

The London bus was late

the queue in the bus station was chatting among itself. A jolly-looking Irish man was talking about his bad experience with the rival bus company, I asked him if he was aware that a third bus company had started up, the stop for that one was just outside the bus station


Jolly-looking man regarded me as though I'd suggested he pick through litter bins for his lunch

Outside the bus station??? - that sounds very dodgy  

I didn't have time to rebut this because he got busy telling me that if I was even thinking about taking the train I'd better not fall asleep or someone would be stealing my bag and nipping off at Swindon.

And now the whole bus queue started catastrophising about how the entire  fabric of society is in tatters but he shouted above them

and you know what ... I say DO YOU KNOW WHAT???? and this is true because I know it is. The whole police force is taken up with looking at Facebook and Twitter these days, looking for anyone that says something that might upset someone, you can be getting murdered or burgled in your beds, call the police for being murdered and no-one will come but you say something on Facebook and they'll be round mob-handed to clap you in irons   

we fell silent.

The London bus pulled into the bay, I said - Look Hurray! it's a double-decker! 


Jolly-looking man gave me another of his looks, he said I always stay downstairs, I don't want to get my head chopped off by a bridge

Where to start?

there were cats and now there are none

there was school but that's  finished for summer

I'm sort of back in Bristol but keep going away - that embroidered rendition of Clifton Suspension Bridge was discovered on a visit to a Stoke Newington junk shop on wednesday with my fairy-godmother-aunt who haggled mercilessly to buy it for me. After the f-g-m-a left I met my tutor and asked him if our exam results were out yet

yes but I haven't worked out how to publish them

visited Holy Island with the Man to see the priory and the upside down Hobbit boats

then to Scotland to see my sister and the nibblings where a discussion of future careers was going on:
adult: you can be anything you want
five-year-old : can I be a Wot Wot Hoo Ha?

Afterthought

I feel the need to draw your attention to this poem about hermits

Reviving Absurdity

Who doesn't need an off-the-shoulder-see-thru poncho trimmed with pompoms?

I just went to Paris.

The whole point of going away is to renew one's sense of the absurd, you go to a new place with all its strange behaviour, you're there long enough to normalise the strangeness, then you come back home to a whole new set of previously unobserved ridiculousness.

The point of the Parisian trip was to attend a 'Congress', I found a world in miniature: I felt enormous as I tried not to wolf eclairs made for dolls and sipped on the tiny tiny cups of coffee. There were also people speaking and there were films being shown but I mainly remembered people obsessing about beverages. Listening makes people really hungry.

There were a lot of Americans at this event, from my own visits to the USA I know that American people need to be permanently plumbed into large reservoirs of caffeine - at the end of the Paris event when we were asked how the next one could be improved the big demand was for bigger coffee, I would've asked for bigger cakes but I was too shy.