An actual god-sized bathtub of water tipped over our house last saturday

 

it came right into the house like the roof didn't even exist 

the stairs became a waterfall

what couldn't wait to come down the stairs squirted itself through the light fittings

I had that look on my face like Carrie after the buckets of blood dropped on her at the prom

 

Apart from that August hasn't been my favourite month this year.

The Beast from the East arrived in Bristol yesterday

it came in from London with me. By the time I'd skidded the car into our road the kerb was no longer visible. I had to park quite a way from the house, the blizzard forcing me to comedy-walk to our front door. Already the kids were out with sliding devices to polish the hill outside our house.

The weather was just mad today

I woke to thick blobs of snow rushing at the bedroom window, ten minutes later the sun was out, blue sky, dry pavements. I dressed and walked for 40 minutes down the road during which time I experienced two arctic-blizzard-blazing-sun bi-polar weather cycles

In other news

I'm listening to Portrait of the Artist  as a Young Man read by Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes - it's the ideal accompaniment to a big wallow in a hot bath

five word week

saturday: blue dye trousers gardening telly
sunday: papers books neighbours supper
monday: dentist raining drain pipe broken
tuesday: butcher baking caking haircut raining
wednesday: london meeting raining footwear torture
thursday: glad tidings feathers sunny day
friday : raining draining piping blinking broken


art: Kate McGwire at RWA Bristol

Today we are mostly crying

Violin practice in All Hallows Church, Easton

The rain has been heavy since last night.

This morning I found tiny eggs on the ground and a torn nest hanging under the hedge. Two squashed shells each containing a perfect baby robin lay next to a single unbroken egg on the wet black soil.
Pink and each one the size of my index fingernail.

Then I went to a church to listen to a choir singing songs so beautiful that I cried all over again.

After the choir, a music teacher used the residual audience as a rehearsal opportunity with her young pupil - more tears.

I seem unable to turn the taps off - I'm currently taking a break from boohooing at the telly.

Video of the year

Post by American Wind Energy Association (AWEA).

Today's weather on the forecast thingy looks like this

outdoors it looks like this

The whippet and I have mostly been inside listening to things like this




Longplayer Conversation 2014: David Graeber and Brian Eno from Artangel on Vimeo.

Shevelling

image:running in circles' willow and maple saplings, patrick dougherty



di·shev·elled. adjective

1. hanging loosely or in disorder; unkempt: disheveled hair.

2. untidy; disarranged: a disheveled appearance.

 

 

Origin:
1375–1425; late Middle English discheveled  < Old French deschevele,  past participle of descheveler to dishevel the hair, equivalent to des- + -cheveler,  derivative of chevel  a hair < Latin capillus

The Man didn't bring quite enough sunshine back and has been complaining about the cold, he is also disturbed by the untidiness of the garden

I'm going out to shevel the garden and warm up

All week the rain bucketed down

the sound invading my dreams and becoming roaring crowds or traffic ... or just lots of water washing all my new plants away.

Today two things happened: the Man returned from India - a place he tells me has got too hot - and the sun came out here in Bristol

I said

fan-bloody-tastic you brought the sun with you

he accepted full responsibility

Yeah - well I hope I haven't brought it all

Anticipation

The Man should be starting to make his way back from India any minute now. I've had the odd call saying how hot it is, then I got an email from him a week ago, it was very short

Last night, our ranger, Morad had to do some other work, and we had Ibrahim instead, who hardly spoke but guided us to a scene with striped hyenas and jackals.

Striped hyenas must be one of the most beautiful and elegant animals in existence. Long stripy coat as if groomed on an hourly basis, strange ghost-like gait which enables it to float across the grass.

It is Alphonso mango season in India they are my favourite thing but mangoes have been banned from coming to England because the government is worried they will take all the jobs... that or the fruit flies.

Dressing is Impossible These Days

The weather never delivers what it seems to be promising in the morning and clever is the girl that puts together an outfit that will perform correctly for the whole day.

Today it started summerish and ended on an arctic note. The man called from India complaining about the constant heat and telling me how he wished he could be in a cold and damp place

When I'm home alone I defrost a UFO* and have myself a surprise supper - lucked out tonight it was chicken and flageolet bean casserole. Last time it was yeasty sourdough starter.


* UFO = Frozen Object that I didn't have the wit to label

Feeling the Cold

David Hammons Bliz-aard Ball Sale 
(snowballs)


About a month ago there was a day of sun. I went into a mania of seedling-planting, filling several soily trays with my winnings at the city seed swap.

The weather returned to coldandwet. I finally had to accept that most of my treasures had rotted in their little cardboard cells.

The six pea plantlets and single dwarf bean that have grown enough to go into the big soil were put out yesterday, fenced around with razor wire to protect them from the beasts.

Water Recycling

I've just worked out how to get my not-too-soapy bath water into the water butt out front where my plants always die because I can't get enough water to them.


Claudia Winkelman is on the radio playing her 'inheritance tracks' and talking about work and family

What people don't realise is that television is really easy - anyone can do it, you just paint yourself orange, go on, read something then you can go home and do tea - the perfect job for a mother

 

I put my tiny rocket seedlings out in the sun yesterday which made the weather laugh at me and throw icy stones down on  them. I slipped in my rush to save them.

I am planning a getaway

which I might have to do on my own and this always focusses my attention on the issues of being a lone female at home and abroad. But I’ve had enough of being a broad alone at home

Many places frequented by wholesome family-types regard a woman circulating unguarded by a man with alarm. Startled gazelle-eyes wondering whether I'm a needy parasite or a sexual predator. In northern Spain I was once asked to leave a bar where I had the nerve to sit without consort.

The answer of course, is too visit the less genteel neighbourhoods. Watch this space...

Gushing

affluent (ˈæflʊənt
- adj
1. rich: wealthy
2.  abundant; copius
3. flowing freely
_ n
4. archaic a tributary stream

related words
backwater, brook, brooklet, creek, rill, rivulet, run (chiefly Midland), Streamlet; fountainhead, head, headstream, headwater, source

 

 

For the last month I have alternated between blaming the weather and the bath for the sometimes-sometimes-not water that makes it's way through the ceiling downstairs.

The plumber rowed in today and listened patiently as I explained my expanding-hot-pipes-hypothesis. He flushed the lavatory then put his hand inside the inspection hole I had made in the wall. Then he told me to put my hand in the hole while he flushed again

And  lo! water did fountain forth from the cistern

It's also wet under the bath because the pipes there aren't quite joined up - this is producing that red herring effect that was driving me crazy and there was also water coming out of another bit of toilet plumbing which wasn't helping matters and now the floorboards are properly up we can really appreciate the smell of the fungus that has been growing in there.


The other thing I did today was mix farmyard manure into the compost heap


I would like tomorrow to be less about effluent


Image: Feather fountain by Kate MccGwire

Dirty Conspiracy

The house and the weather are trying to make a fool out of me;  rain and wind keep happening whenever someone has a bath - then the weather sits back and has a good laugh when I run around shouting

THIS LEAK IS DEFINITELY COMING FROM THE BATH!!!


in other news i am trying to knit a cardigan in one big piece, sleeves and all - my big wool-engineering project

I am working next to the window that looks out onto the garden, I should be finishing that bee book and I nearly have but I am also watching a new cat that has appeared in our garden, being new she doesn't understand that we don't want cats in the garden but she has such an air of astonishment at finding herself in this world and she is so astonished and so young that she's useless at getting the birds so I haven't started shoo-ing her yet.

Wind and Sun

The sun has been out all day and everyone has been walking around un-berella-ed 

Sometimes my sense of smell turns on me - today I had enormous trouble walking into a house simply because of the sweaty people in it, same thing happened yesterday at the garden centre - I think it's my hormones.

I made a terrific supper with rice and lentils, cabbage and anchovies and toasted hazelnuts, cheap and tasty - if slightly windy.

Sneaky Water

Image: Guy Bourdin

Water started dripping through the ceiling into the thin slice of a room on the ground floor last week, above the slice room is a bathroom - maybe this was the source of the leak.

I called plumbers but none answered, today I unscrewed floorboards and sawed through bits of supporting woodwork  - it was all dry.

I enlisted help from an equally unqualified person, we agreed to clear the slice room then run water through the bathtub to see if we could re-enact the leakage. We drilled a hole in the slice room ceiling to ease the passage of any water wanting to come downstairs, three holes were made in our damp and stained ceiling.

No leakage happened -  maybe it was the rain surfeit creeping into wallspaces and running around the interfloor areas only coming out when the house was fully saturated.

This afternoon I am unravelling one of my charity shop jumpers, nearly all unravelled I  arrived at a pocket - where I  found a condom.

It's ok it's in an unopened packet - but really out of date, so no use

Gimme Shelter

Bloom by Sam Spenser

Umbrella circulation has ground to a halt, I have left more of them in other people’s houses than they have left in mine.

I went to an umbrella shop and picked a beautiful saffron-coloured umbrella which I was just going to buy but just before I did I put it up to see if it seemed strong enough to withstand the hurricane that is currently visiting us. I wasn’t sure that it did seem sturdy and tried to put it away, I got the stalk all telescoped in but I couldn’t get the canopy shut so I had to leave it coracle-like on the floor of the store while I slipped out….

This grey weather is making me crave all things yellow. Today I dyed one of my charity shop jumpers the colour of sunflowers.

This evening there was a public talk at the university given by a newly appointed Chair of cognitive psychology - an award-garlanded professor. The theme of the talk was 'misinformation'. The professor informed us that the public are frequently misinformed, media outlets such as the Daily Mail  and Fox News do more misinforming than the BBC or NPR and people who get their information from the first sort of media are more misinformed than people who don’t.

I want to institute an award - it will be called the ‘No Shit, Sherlock’ Award

We Are Dissolving

The rain is melting all the rivers and also the iron in our gate hinge - we fixed the gate hinge

I saw this dog today - a furry rosette has turned his back stripe into a sea horse

Here Comes The Sun…

painting by Luli Sanchez

Not really - lots more rain and wind - the radio is full of stories about the sea throwing stones at houses and washing away the railway lines.

But we laugh at the rain here in Bristol, on Monday a bus driver said he’d seen a crocodile in the river and it’s made INTERNATIONAL news. There’s already grafitti up and ‘Chris’ has two Twitter accounts.

In non-weather news: I have toothache and made, what I thought would be  a soothing, gruel for lunch but I added some out-of-date porcini which made the entire kitchen smell of horse manure and the gruel taste a bit farmyardy

None of this bothers me – not one jot because I have a ticket to visit That London where I will go to look at art and people and shiny things.

Also I have many duck legs slowly melting in my oven - the farmyard smells have been replaced by the scent of  butter and cardamom and cinnamon and anise and orange.