The new boy from Iceland

looks as though he has stepped out from that painting.

He is raw and green as a newly hatched cabbage. Nothing makes any sense to him; not how to make a padlock work on a gate, or what things constitute food. His luggage was a toothbrush and a bike, he doesn't own a coat and he has had to go and buy himself some stouter shoes -  I have a bet on how long the bike will last (less than one week) because he secures it with a rubber band and forgets to bring it in behind that gate he must learn to lock and unlock.

I don't know how much of this is about the difference between our countries and how much is about him being twenty years old but I daily resist the urge to put him into a brown paper bag with a banana to ripen a bit more.

lyfe wythout aye contnues

Have had busy week:

Just done transformyng a bubblegum-pnk-cardy to short-sleeved shell-top

Then went to see Farey-Godmother-Aunt and salute her new orange garden, we ate salmon and strawberry lunch then she heaped my arms wth fabryc and knttng wool and also lots of aynchant cotton sheets, foxed wth orange spots like pages of old books - aye fynd them very beautyful.

A new young man has come to stay at our house for a couple of months, barely twenty he answered our advert for a mddle-aged woman to take the spare room. He's from Ayes-land (north of Denmark) and frozen n my draughty house - geothermal hotness bursts out of the ground where he's from, heatng houses so hot that they all go around n just t-shrts up there - he's currently bundled up n several of my jumpers and can barely move - but at least no hyperthermya on my watch.

Splt tea on my keyboard

and have lost the use of some keys ncludng the one that sounds lke 'eye' - bear wth me untl eye fnd a workaround.

Drected all my fury at not beng n another country to cleanyng the ktchen floor, spendyng whole week scrubbyng, mendyng and oylyng.

Now have lovely, shyny floor and have beeen gettng chums to polysh even brghter by removng shoes and skatng around on tea towels that are left out for the purpose. My grlfrends alternate between ballet glydes, norwegan skatyng and black bottom boogys but the Man shuffles pengwynshly on a syngle cloth askng when we can just walk on the floor lyke normal people, he says am remyndng hm of an uncle who always kept the protectve plastyc on the sofa.

I should be driving to Italy

right now, annoying the Man by singing Cliff Richard songs and arriving somewhere near Verona in time for supper.

But that didn't happen.

I'd already arranged for Rabbit to cover my Brain Doctor days so here we are having a 'staycation' which in my case involves cleaning the kitchen, washing my jumpers and sulking. I am also knitting a garden chair with electrical wire.

The Man has channeled his disappointment into bee maintenance; having planted lots of 'flowers for bees' - his slug-defense strategy is getting progressively aggressive, he is photographing and logging all the insects that come into our garden, particularly the solitary bees and has identified around FIFTY different species of bee just in our tiny city centre patch.

This intense scrutiny also means that he has become an expert in bee First Aid, frequently placing tired bees near a source of food and rescuing rain-sodden bees. On Sunday I saw him taking a tiny glass of water out to clean a bee that was muddy and couldn't fly properly.

In London

I saw this graffiti which reminded me that I was going to invent a rain hat - it would be  like that girl's wearing the newspaper except that it would be rubber and styled like a wig




I'm mainly spending time on my own which suits me quite well.

Then someone suggested swimming at Hackney Lido at night when the moon was full - I don't much like swimming but I do like moons and I am told that I ought to get out more

I said yes ok

The day before the event we discovered that the Lido was closing early on full moon night which was last night because they wanted to go and eat Easter eggs so we met for this swim at the end of a vague grey afternoon which is not the same thing at all as a full moon swim

and I don't much like swimming

and then we were hungry so when food was suggested I said yes ok

Hackney Lido is attached to London Fields which is attached to Broadway Market which is full of food shops and restaurants. I pointed at one that looked nice to me and we looked in the window to see that it was just the right amount full and the menu had a lot of things that I like including quite a lot of things containing no meat but one of the girls pointed to a kebab place over the road and said that looks good and everyone else agreed so we went there

One feature of kebab places is that they serve meat so we ordered the METRE OF MEAT speciality of the house  - a METRE OF MEAT is a long plank piled high with meat

except the girl who wanted to come to this place - she just had humous because she is a vegetarian

It's always about food

Crouch End Cat has poorly kidneys and must eat bland medicinal food with a tiny amount of cooked chicken breast - he eats the chicken but leaves most of the medicinal food. He is pointing at the dish and looking at me and sticking his tongue out.

Today I had lunch

in central London.

The lights went out while I was mid-brocoli - I guessed that this must be normal in austerity-ridden London.

We carried on talking and the waiter said that coffee would be impossible because there was a fire on

The streets around the cafe were jammed so I walked halfway to Crouch End then got on a bus. A well-dressed woman with a bouncy talkative child sat across from me - after 10 minutes of noisy bouncing the child slumped against her mother and said

you know my life's not in a good place at the moment



Back in Crouch End the cat is waiting for me

I haven't got the body language yet, he doesn't much like being picked up or sitting on my lap but I can tell he wants something - he keeps sitting under my chair and then he comes out and fixes me with  a look.

My fingertips are hairy

with clumped up cat's hair  - the more I brush myself down the longer my hairy fingertips become, my clothes and footwear are also coated. I have to put in a half hour of stickyroller-ing before heading downtown.

Looking after houses and animals can get stressful; today I thought I had broken the internet and that the cat might starve to death -  by the end of the day I'd figured out how to make the plug be properly switched on and that the cat likes eating his food cold from the fridge so right now I'm feeling pretty successful and celebrating with a beer while he sits on my lap getting his neck rubbed and covering me in another thick layer of hair.

I'm staying in Crouch End

with an arthritic and very hairy grey cat  - in the space of a single day I too have become hairy and grey, the house is painted white - this must be what being a yeti is like

Birthday gift

the man doesn't like wrapping his sandwiches in plastic

it's his birthday

I have given him one thousand paper bags

Sugar for carnivores

... contains

I raise my eyebrows at the assistant - she says it is called 'red' sugar because red is lucky

The Brain Doctor is back

but not in a good way

he's full of aches and pains and his foot has swollen up.

I'm worried and say so and that makes him irritated so I move on to other topics and he becomes upset about my lack of sympathy.

We shut shop early

The Brain Doctor is away

so I am busy making things and visiting friends. I am reknitting a cashmere jumper donated by a friend because 'the colour is ugly' -  raw-sausage-pink. It is also too small for either of us.

In Cornwall this weekend, I walked in oak woods awash with a hairy lichen rumoured to be an excellent dyestuff, I put some in my pocket and for the last two days I have been boiling the lichen then adding urine and vinegar-soaked cashemere. The wool transformed into beige spaghetti so I continued with additives including and entire caddy of tea - if this doesn't work then at least we have something for supper.

The Brain Doctor will go away again soon and I think it will be safer if I go and look after someone's animals for that period - checking through the 'wanted' lists again, today's best advert is this one:

Responsible Couple needed for 6 cats in July

...We have 4 females and 2 males-2 mothers, 2 daughters and 2 fathers! One of the fathers is feral and hides so you will have to look for him in various places of the house and garden ... Although there is a garden it is lawned with no place for the cats to go to the toilet. The cats are enclosed in the garden but they do try to escape. It's important that a cat count is done periodically throughout the day.

I keep hearing about crippled women

who hadn't realised that if only they had worn a correctly fitting bra they wouldn't be suffering this way now.

I've been feeling a bit crippled lately


it was time to visit the big shop famous for it's bosom-measuring service.

I was given an appointment for in 10 minutes time so that the assistant behind the counter with the appointment book could put on her bosom-measuring face.

Maybe the assistant was on loan from the fish department - she was not comfortable with bosoms. Eyes averted she put a tape measure over my clothes and measured the middle of my rib cage then she went and took a lunch break.

She came back with arms full of ugly beige boulder-holders in a variety of sizes, instructed me to try them all on until I found a comfy one, then she disappeared for ever.

It's sunny and I've been to a place

where I can sit outside surrounded by students and unemployed people. To my left are some tattooed lads trying to do the quick crossword but they can't spell 'Memphis' or 'leotard' and they think the five-letter word for a leg joint must be 'thigh' so they're not making much headway.

On the other side are some female students discussing housemates, most of the girls agree that having to share with boys is the worst but then one girl describes her housemate.

... I'd had a romantic evening with Rob because he was heading off to Cambodia the next day but in the night I started projectile vomiting - fair play he'd had it a couple of days previously and gave it to me so he had to look after me but it carried on the next day and I was lying in bed listening to my irritating housemate parading her family around the house showing them all the rooms and she just opened my bedroom door without knocking with all her family there saying this is Julie's room then she saw me and said oh - are you still ill? then she stepped in a bowl full of my orange sick tipping it all over the carpet.

On the reception desk

at the Brain Surgery

is the latest copy of New Scientist featuring the latest news on head transplantation

I discussed this with one of the lady patients - we agreed that the idea was probably being marketed to women as most of us wish we had someone else's hair - I'd give anything for curls

Today's wish list

from the photolibrary:

We’ve had a request for some fairly obscure creatures, that I’m hoping you might be able to help with? The client is after any image of any species from the various phyla listed below:

Cycliophora
Goblet worms – entroprocta
Jay worms – Gnathostomulida
Kinorhyncha (mud dragon)
Loricifera (girdle wearers)
Orthonectida
Placozoa
Micrognathozoans
Rhombozoans
Xenoturbellida (strange worms)

I appreciate that some of these at least might be quite hard to find! But worth a try. Please let me have any suitable images in low res jpg form via e-mail in the first instance.

Miranda July

is my big girl crush, I love her writing, her art projects are brilliant and she is very good at titles -I am particularly fond of  Eleven Heavy Things 


As we have both contributed to Sheila Heti's book Women in Clothes - I feel like we are colleagues if not actual friends.

Miranda visited Bristol last night to talk about her new book The First Bad Man (which is great!) and I have spent the last week suppressing my excitement in case it didn't happen*

Just in case she really did show up I resisted eating kippers for lunch as I hoped to get to speak to her.

She showed up, she was patient with the embarrassingly awful interviewer and she was funny, she also signed my copies of her books and was charming.



*last time I went to see a writer at this same venue he didn't show

Progress report

It might seem that not much is happening in my life but  I am actually being very productive:

Firstly: I underwent bicycle light training and have now successfully mastered 'switching the lamp on and off' and also 'blinking mode'

Secondly: I have received a package of moth pheromone strips to lure male moths away from the girls and into a sticky trap I also have some scented pads to strew among my rugs and jumpers.

I heard on the radio that when a pest controller comes to your house he uses a pencil to test if a hole is big enough for a mouse - I'm not strong enough to think about mice yet.

Thirdly: I have embarked on a new reknit - someone gave me a nude-colour cashmere jumper saying that the colour was ugly. It is a bit raw-meat-like but I can't resist the softness. It was also a bit small for either of us so I am reknitting the top part on extra big needles - if it ends up looking like chicken mince I shall have to dye it.

Giant, slobbery, affectionate dog lover required!

yet another job ad where I am simply failing to meet basic requirements.

This is a shame because if I was a slobbery giant I could be in a town which boasts major attractions:

Tesco Express, fish & chips, chinese takeaway, Dominoes, Indian restaurant, hairdressers, coffee shop and Vets are all within a 2 minute walk.

Today at the Brain Surgery

We remembered that the patient who was about to arrive had invited us (me and the Brain Doctor) to a Valentine party that was rather expensive and involved music we didn't like and was too far away and anyway we're not a couple...

we had discussed this party last week

... and we thought we could attend and enjoy the party if we were cross-dressed because he likes wearing women's clothes and wigs and I have always wondered what it would be like to have a sock in my trousers - not the sort I don't know about - that yesterday-sock that leaks out of the end of the trouser-leg but the sort I do know about that gets in the way of walking.

in the end we did not attend so as not to compromise our professional demeanor

I had another assignation with Rabbit

I like being warm but she hates it and she had arrived first so we sat in the draught.

I was late because my new bike light wouldn't switch off so I had to wrestle the whole lighting apparatus off the bike and hide it,  blinking on, in my pocket.

At the end of our meal the battery was exhausted so I had to push the bike home.

Video of the year

Post by American Wind Energy Association (AWEA).

A neat gentleman

in tartan slacks waits to see the Brain Doctor, he's a visiting hairdresser and he always wears a particularly nice cologne.

we're talking about the cold weather and he asks to see my gloves

They're no good get down to the Pound Shop they do really good thermal ones

For a pound?

I expect they're from abroad

While waiting his turn in the Brain Surgery

a large gentleman talked about the pub across the road

It used to be an abattoir - my mum made me go and work there when I was thirteen she said go there and learn how to be a butcher and you'll never be out of work

Did you become a butcher?

No I became a printer, lithographers were very well respected in those days we wore bowler hats

Three bus stops up the road

from my house there's a prison and all around the prison are streets and streets of samey-looking houses.

One local nosey parker devised a scheme to get a peep into as many people's houses as possible, she suggested that the whole neighbourhood did art in their windows for three hours this evening and let the rest of everybody in the whole world walk around gawking into their houses

AND THEY DID!!!!

This evening I have been peeping into peoples houses - whole front rooms have been transformed into a disco or an aquarium, someone made several little illuminated boxes of glass animal scenarios and many children made Lego-worlds and cardboard Minecraft Worlds in their windows.

One house was bathed in a projection of flames - the house next door had a giant puppet sausage-on-a-toasting-fork tipping towards the flames.

There was a house that had made it's front garden into a beach with a punch-and-judy show and a beach hut and a flock of seagulls on the washing line guarded by a Cliff-Richard-singing-light-flashing dalek.

There were houses that looked like they were full of balloons or full of a forest and lots of people just left their curtains open so you could look at their stuff

and it was great!

knitted bedspread

All those charity shop jumpers have yielded tons of odd assorted yarn so I've used it to make a knitted patchwork blanket. It's all in thick ribby garter stitch which is very springy and lovely.

I made a cake with rapeseed oil

It was delicious and I have just eaten another piece

then I carried on typing and noticed a dark flake on my keyboard - thinking it to be a missed piece of cake I popped it in my mouth.

IT WASN"T CAKE!!!

horse-and-kangaroo eating cat. sitter wanted

I checked out the details but unfortunately I don't fit the profile;

... We are looking for a reliable animal lover. A single gay man preferred but not exclusively so. We are not looking for couples or families however, sorry. We would prefer someone based in Europe please.

 The female cat has a food allergy so she can only eat fresh horsemeat or kangaroo meat, ... You have to be OK with that and with keeping an eye on her so she doesn't eat anything she shouldn't...

On the train home

I looked for the quiet carriage and sat opposite two young women, an enormous pile of make up was tipped out on the table between us and one of the girls was picking up a succession of pots and brushes and attacking her face with them while narrating her endless anxieties;

...I'm really worried about being stuck in a taxi for - like - three hours with a random frenchman

Not in an 'I'm-scared-for-my-life' sort of way but in an 'oh-my-god-what-if-he-tries-to-talk-to-me' way

My niece has just learned to write her name

The Brain Surgery is feeling a bit end-of-days

The low-voltage-long-life bulb that hangs from a cord in the waiting room has half burned out. The half with a tiny bit of light remaining is begging for mercy.

Also black spots started growing on the carpet in one of the consulting rooms, this was another of the things about which we must not speak.

When the spots had joined up and one large area in the consulting room was really quite swampy I asked the Brain Doctor if he was concerned, he said not and we continued not to speak of this thing, and all the other things.

Last week two ladies in matching hats came for treatment and I directed the eldest one to that room.

She came straight back out and asked if we knew about the wet monster. It seemed shocking her saying out loud the thing that we must not say but I said yes we knew and she went back in again and her daughter smiled at me as if to say

My mother, she imagines all sorts of things

Last Saturday my hot waters broke

and didn't get fixed until Wednesday

FOUR days washing in a cold basin

from Wednesday onwards I took THREE baths per day - in case it broke again and I needed to get in-credit clean

until today - now I'm back to the normal amount

Limpy, Lumpy and Shaky

Today Whiplash became part-owner of a poor abandoned little dog who got run over and now only has three legs

also we were visited by a friend who is looking after two dogs, one with tumours on it's face, the other one trembles uncontrollably.

The conversation has turned marineward ...

... at night parrotfish make themselves a mucous bubble to sleep in

this stops predators being able to smell them

it also stops lice settling on them when they're not looking

Immortal Jellyfish please

email from Nature Picture Library

Dear all,
We’ve had a request for either / both stills and footage of several creatures. The most important / difficult to find of these is the wolverine frog, but new images or footage of the other two would also be useful. (Immortal jellyfish next most important, and pistol shrimp less important).

Wolverine frog (also known as hairy frog or horror frog) - Trichobatrachus robustus
Immortal jellyfish Turritopsis dohrnii
Pistol shrimp

The wolverine frog has already given me the shaky horrors but I really really want an immortal jelly fish so if anyone has a spare one please send it to me.

I'm back at the knitting

 this one's by Agata Oleksiak

Wig Lady moved in last night, I cooked roast vegetables and bouncy chicken for us.


Wig Lady told us about the men who harvest hair from the heads of east european maidens, this is the second most desired hair (first most desired hair is scandanavian) east european hair usually ends up on the heads of people appearing on really bad television shows.

wiggery pokery

A wig-maker (operatic) has just arranged to move in with us for the next two months. I'm ridiculously excited about the idea.

At the garden meeting this evening I told my gardening friends about the wig-maker  - one of the other gardeners revealed herself to be a wig mistress in real life.

I want to be 'in wigs'

Tattoo Man is back

He and the Brain Doctor dealt with the biscuit situation over new year

and now he's busy clumping in and out, using heavy machinery and making sure that I can see what fine muscles he has.

Biscuitlandia

I am back to work at the Brain Surgery

In my absence, biscuit-gifts from grateful patients have filled the waiting room.

Anyone wanting to see the Brain Doctor will need to eat a path to his door - also he needs rescuing as he's too small to push his own way out.

I hand a LUXURY SELECTION BOX to a waiting patient, the man-who-is-always-grumpy

No thank you, I got a pile of my own at home, people keep giving me the buggers I don't know what they think I'm going to do with them. I used to get them wholesale - Family Circle - that's a quality biscuit that is - I could get  two boxes for a fiver. That was my Christmas present for everyone a few years back. Then they put the price up  - kept the box the same size but reduced the goods inside - so I don't bother buying them anymore.

My nephew attends a knitting club

he has already made a fabulous range of jewelry, helter skelters, monsters, money-holding-things and this divine gun

last week he asked me to knit a very specific sort of scarf that he could decorate





He is still working as a pastry chef, he and his sister made the Christmas tree cookies;

The cats have challenged each other

to find the highest most wobbly thing to get on top of. The tops of doors are ideal.

I spent Christmas day with my sister and the rest of the family, when I returned to the cat house the kitchen door was closed and the bath full of poo.

The cats had worked together to prise open the airing cupboard door, this had banged the kitchen door shut, the kitchen is where the litter trays are and also the cat flap to the back garden.

They have shown me the trick several times since. It takes a lot of frantic scrabbling to get the cupboard door open, the cupboard is mainly packed with towels and spare bedding - on one shelf is a  clear plastic container half-full of pegs. Once the door has been opened the cats take it in turns to leap onto the door, the game is then to get from the top of the door into the plastic peg box which has exactly enough space in it to contain most of a cat.

The cats have emerged

from their bunkers and are now mainly perching on things higher than us. When they think we might not notice, a paw reaches over to pat an ear or someone's hair gets nibbled.

Lawn Sausage

I heard talk about Lorne Sausage before I saw the packaging - until then I assumed that it was the Scots euphemism for what happens when you keep dogs

I've moved into a house

close to my sister's house


I shall be cat-sitting here for the next few days.

The cats hide from me, in boxes, behind furniture, in the bath ... when they feel brave they raise a periscope and report my movements to each other via walkie-talkies

it is our big solstice celebration

we are staying in Scotland with my sister and her children. My three-year-old niece is very keen on biscuits -  I asked which were her favourite

Jammy Todgers

it's knitting season again

I knit to while away the hours at the Brain Surgery; people arrive, I knit we chat, when we've chatted for the right amount of time I direct them to a consulting room, when they have closed the door some of them take off their clothes and lie down.

Yesterday I did not pay proper attention to the schedule and sent a lady to a room to take off her clothes and lie down. and then another lady arrived .... who had an appointment before her.


I'm blaming my inattention on over-biscuiting

over-biscuiting

the patients pay their bill and hand us gift-wrapped boxes

all the boxes contain exactly the same DE-LUXE chocolate biscuit selection

there are only three of us here to eat them

it seems rude to offer them round to the waiting patients - it would be like giving them back their presents

tomorrow I must find a route home that involves more homeless people

I wrote a 'To Do' list last night

nothing on it has been achieved so I've had to add:

clean stove

phone mortgage company

phone mortgage company again

phone mortgage company again

be apoplectic

make tea

drink tea

clear up mess made during stove cleaning

now I have things to cross off

Breathing holes

The Brain Doctor handed me a heavy catalogue and asked me to order new covers for the treatment tables.

I found some thick bouncy blue covers and called the number on the book.

the woman at the end of the phone said:

treatment table covers? with a breathing hole or without?

with

we stock pearl beige terry towelling

I'd like the blue spongy ones

we don't do those

she hung up

I noticed that the catalogue cover was dated 2005