Body Cakes

Yesterday I made  Body Cakes (Kroppkakor) with a Swedish musician called Linnea Olsen.

here is the recipe

cook and mash floury potatoes then grate in an almost  equal weight raw potatoes of a firmer character, add eggs and season then leave to sit while you sauté minced shallots in butter.  Add chanterelles to the soft but not coloured shallots in the pan then a glass of white wine, when the wet has simmered away add salt, pepper, finely chopped parsley and ground allspice.

get flour on your hands and make a tennis ball out of the potato dough, poke a hole in the middle and put in a spoonful of the chanterelle mixture, pinch the potato back over it.

Have a pot of simmering water handy and lower the body cakes into the water when they bounce to the surface they are cooked.

Serve the cake on a lake of thin cream with a 'click' of butter on top and a spoonful of sugared raw lingonberries

Recipes have flooded in

for my annual WOMAD event - the one where musicians come and cook for an audience. 

The musicians send me their recipes and I take Bristol apart in my quest for food things like rotting fish sauce, raw lingonberries and meat of the buffalo. I also search out hardware such as 'one large cauldron', 'a spit and fire' and 'baking stones'. 

Today I am filling my car with meat, this is one of the recipes for today with notes from the band:

Lecsó for 25 persons

12 slices of Hungarian lard

6kg Hungarian yellow paprika

12 Hungarian strong paprika

8-10 Onion

10 garlic

30-40 pieces of tomato

1kg Hungarian sausage

For the vegetarian part we just take out the lard and sausage and need sunflower oil. We will bring the cauldron and the bread too, as we won’t have time to cook any! Are we allowed to bring also Hungarian plum brandy! It’s not really the same without it, it’s really part of the tradition!

Today at the Brain Surgery

a patient with the same name as a hair accessory stood in front of me, diary open looking for a date that she'd like to come for another visit. The front was embossed in gold '1997' I said nothing but she guessed what I was thinking

I have piles of diaries at home I just pick one with January first on the same day as January first this year

I guess you have to watch out for  Leap Years

Yes and Easter's a bit problematic


Image: Mark Twain's Naming Journal

Today has been heavy and hot

Last weekend, in honour of my sister's visit, I bought the best cheese in the world and put it on a shelf to get perfect for eating the next day and then I forgot about it until this evening when we had made a fire in the garden and suddenly the moment was perfect for cheese.
too late ... all inside the wrapper was alive with maggots

Also

... on the green hilly piece where the scoundrels do drug deals I saw the man who uses Drunk Trike being given driving lessons on a shiny red motorised four-wheeler

Take me to the Bridge

The Brain Surgery has been painted  a cerebral sort of grey. This morning I glid behind the 'console', sat on the black vinyl spaceship-driver's seat and thought that what I needed were more Star Trek outfits.

Then a patient arrived wearing Coco Chanel-esque white palazzo pants and a Margaret Howell matelot jersey

My memory obliterates

all my previous gardening failures. Each year that I decide to grow vegetables I do it with the eternal sunshine of a spotless mind.

It's only when I am inspecting the fly-ravaged beans and worm-eaten peas, when the Man comes and stands beside me and says

I see that we've got lots of no-beans again this year

and I say

there are no-peas too

that's when I remember

This morning

hedghogs and lollipops by Ella

My niece ate 4 donut peaches, a bowl each of strawberries and black-and-red-currants with yoghurt and an avocado, performed modern dance while executing a painting about hedgehogs and lollipops then went to film bees in the brambles wearing a long purple gown with wings and matching tiara

Also

some scoundrels appear to have set up a drug racket across from my house, they are straight out of central casting, I'm keeping an eye on them

I've just got a bike

so I cycled across the city, over the river to meet Ro at a restaurant near her house - she'd booked the last available table - 6.30 - this place is that popular.

Being warm and sunny we sat outside then we got chilly and went inside, trying out several tables before settling on the nicest one - we had the place to ourselves until 9pm - all the other people who wanted to be where we were, were in their cars, blocked by a lorry full of candles on fire in the middle of the big car road that crosses the river.

Boy am I smug

FYI : the candles were american and on their way to italy -  rome probably

Accumulations

turquoise is loneliness - wendy walgate

The days have been doubled up busy - painting and clearing out the Brain Surgery, tidying the community garden and making-lists for the annual cooking-with-music event.

Nooks and hidey-holes in the Brain Surgery are stuffed with accumulations. I sort and make collections of things that go together and make homes for them. The sorting and collecting and homing has infected me.

I dreamt about a vast bed in a dark wooden room, a high four-poster stacked with many layers of mattresses and pillows, filed in between them are dozens of sleeping labrador puppies, black ones and yellow ones. I patrol the bed pulling out a floppy hibernating puppy here and there, checking it's breathing before slipping it back in place and continuing my rounds. Also, in the interstices of the bed frame are tiny wooden tubes, each containing a bee which need regular, gentle watering.

Then Lennie Kravitz came into the room - I didn't want him to know about the puppies

Spring Cleaning has crept into my heart

It felt so good to wash the kitchen floor that I took a set of muslin curtains down and put them in the washing machine with some other things.

I turned on the machine and  forgot about it. 

When I opened the washer the next day my knickers and t-shirts were bound round with shreds of semi-digested rags - it took a full ten minutes to remember about the curtains.

The Brain Doctor is away next week

he suggested that, in lieu of having aimless conversations with his patients maybe I could freshen up the waiting room.

I'm rubbish at cleaning so I plan to paint over the dirt.

I  mixed up two nice colours, painted them  onto a piece of cardboard and went down to the paintshop and asked if they would match them into a quantity of paint. The guy in the shop said.

It's always best to buy sample pots first then you can see if you like them

I like these colours - a big tin of each please

Ok and then if you don't like it you only have to wait a couple of years - get your money's worth out if it - and then you can paint it over



 

Rose and Apple

'A few drops of rosewater give apple juice an exotic edge. Add two fingers of vanilla vodka to make what shall henceforth be known as a Scheherazade.'

today's treat from The Flavour Thesaurus

I just bought this book

the flavour thesaurus by niki segnit

It was supposed to be a gift but I have already read it too much, I will need to keep this one and buy another.

It will be indispensable on those days when think that I've not got the makings of a meal in the house and then I spot the watermelon and that bar of chocolate at the back of a drawer :

the sicilian dish gelo di melone is a watermelon soup thickened with cornflour, sweetened with sugar, spiced with cinnamon and flavoured with either crushed pistachio, grated chocolate or candied peel, or a combination of all three.

who knew?

When another bottle of milk went missing - part 2

My mother redoubled her efforts.

across the road from their house there is a boundary hedge with a drainage ditch in front of it. The ditch is full of thistles and nettles and long grass and an ideal place to stage a stake out.  Embedding a camping chair in the ditch and dressing warmly, my mother set the alarm again, waited for the milk to be delivered and then went over the road and settled herself into the ditch at about 3am.

Nothing happened

Until 5am when the paper boy came along to deliver the newspapers.

Mum was concerned that when he passed where she was hidden, the boy might see her and be startled, so when he drew near she called out to reassure him

Hello... Hello there ... It's only me!

The boy looked around to see where the voice was coming from - but she was hidden from view and too deep in the ditch and too cold to get up and reveal herself


Dad called her in for breakfast at 6.30 and no more milk went missing and the matter faded away ...

... Until a few weeks later the postman came to the door and said you'll never guess what?... then showed her a video on his phone of a large retriever jogging up the road, carrying a square plastic milk bottle in his mouth.

(continued from previous post)

I've been visiting my parents

and discovered that a great mystery has been solved


My parents live in a quiet farmy village surrounded by other quiet farmy villages. My mother circulates the village on a daily basis armed with a rubber glove and a plastic carrier bag in which she collects any litter she finds; two full bags of discarded wrappers and drinks cans in a single day and once when she pulled something unspeakable out of a tree, these things used to mark the peak of local criminal activity.

until the milk started going missing ....


The village dairy farmer delivers his bottled milk door to door in the early hours of the morning before going home to get the cows hooked up for the next milking.

When milk bottles started disappearing from people's front doorsteps suspicion was cast wide but mainly settled on road labourers and travellers working in the area.

After listening to the gossip, and having lost a few bottles herself, my mother decided to get to the bottom of the thing,  she went to bed early in the evening, set an alarm for 3am (milk delivery time)  at which time she went and stood sentinel by the bedroom window where she had a view of the front doorstep but dad said that her standing like a statue in the dark room was a bit weird and he couldn't sleep - so when nothing had happened by 4 she went back to bed.

... to be continued

Got a letter from the FBI today

FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION FBI.WASHINGTON DC.
WASHINGTON D.C ROOM, 7367
J. EDGAR HOOVER FBI BUILDING
935 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE,
NW WASHINGTON, DC 20535, 0001.

Attention:Beneficiary,

This is to acknowledge the receipt of an email from the Federal Ministry of finance Nigeria ... to notify you that I  and Mrs. Pamela Helen Brooks (The financial expert working with the World Bank) have perfected every arrangement for your approved fund valued 10.5 million usd. to be transferred into your nominated bank account without any further delay.

Gonna head into town and buy me some new celebration underpants

I also get letters from sexy girls who want to marry me - do you think it's because of all this money I have?

Giraffe Man visited the Brain Dctor yesterday

he came into the waiting room very slowly because his square-haired wife clutched him tightly and walked with great care - her dark glasses were very dark and I thought she must have gone blind but once she had sat down she took them off.

I asked her if she was enjoying our new hot summery weather

the hot weather makes it more difficult to walk because the straps keep slipping off my sandals

I could see that her feet were not-quite-strapped onto a pair of shiny-looking leather soles.

I said that I'd seen some rather good woven loafers in Debenhams but she looked sad and said that there were no shoe shops where she lived.




In the afternoon my favourite patient visited, dressed in Parisien Chic, she is very deaf and has Alzheimers. She tells me that she is about to move house, she knew she had to do it but she had got the date wrong and thought it was next month but in fact it's this month and now she must get rid of so many things

I had to give away my fairground horse

More words

from the Futility Closet today

my favourite is

quakebuttock 
n. a coward

A posse of black girls

in black and white school uniforms were at the end of the road when I set out for the Brain Doctor's.

Half of them broke off - racing to a lamp post and back. By the time I reached them they were back together, the sprinters breathless and laughing, a lot of chat with heavy swearing.

The tallest one was talking over everyone, über-swearily while bouncing on the spot, about a soon-to-happen race.

Her friend who hadn't been running interrupted her

Charlene 

you are so fucking ...

 (long pause trying to place the right word)

sportated 

today

the hedge was wild and woolly

the baby birds are fledged

I clipped away at the vegetation to remake my invisible nudie spot at the back of the garden, uncovering this nest

designer's notes: sheep fleece woven among twigs accessorised with blue plastic string. Under layer made from the ginger fur that remains after a tomcat fight

It smells animal-ish

Best thing

currently in the Jamaica Street Artists studio is Rose Vickers' quilt made of old rulers

I got an emergency text

from the lady who can't fold things.

can you help - my mother is coming to stay - can we make the flat look normal

i wasn't sure what that meant

do you want me to make it look nice


no my mother would never believe that

A man who looked like a giraffe

turned up at the Brain Surgery today accompanied by a short lady with square hair.


Giraffe Man had long white legs with markings and white mid-calf socks pulled up tight and tan sandals, he also wore pale beige shorts with the waistband way past his navel area. He moved in that way giraffes move - like a swimming rockinghorse.

He parked Square Hair Lady on the sofa then he swam in to the Brain Doctor's consulting room. She told me all about her knees showing me which one bent and which one didn't

I've had it operated on and it's a disaster but the woman at the clinic said I shouldn't ask to have it done again because I might lose the leg or even die

While I was away ants moved in under my plants

I've engaged in counter-terrorism but I suspect I might not win this one.

I thought my Lady Garden was all about growing things but actually it's nothing to do with gardening. I live at a comedy nexus, a street theatre leyline - the combination of junction, steep hill and lamp post outside my front door makes a natural stopping place - for passersby to collapse breathless or ramp up that argument that's been brewing the last half mile.

If I time my ant-bothering correctly I can watch the schoolchildren washing up and down the hill.

One group of boys comes down later than the others,  I hear them from the top of the hill practising their gangsta speak, one boy voice-raised trying to tell the others important things over their rapping lyrics and beatbox sounds. They come into view practising their moves ... head bobs, shapes with the fingers.

Arriving at my ant-ridden planters, they cluster together and work out the song that's brewing

mm chukka mm chukka mm chukka mm chukka mmmmmm

I'm chillin'    she's willin'    got the feelin'     it's reelin'    hey baby hey baby .... mm chukka mmm

I passed Drunk Trike on my way to the Brain Doctor's

She's looking a bit porky


 I think it's too much junk food



Happy to back with the Brain Doctor.

A very old and tiny patient comes in regularly, today she peeped over the edge of my desk and pushed towards me a card that she had cut down from a card someone had given her.

On the back of it was written the address of someone she thought I might be interested in.

The passage to Dubrovnik

began reasonably well, the plane stayed in the air all the way to Split. We deserved to be ripped off by a taxi because there was a neat bus that went all the way to the doorway of the hotel in Split and we were too stupid to notice.

Next day at the bus station we caught a bus to Dubrovnik and discovered just how unhelpful bus-related employees can be. Also I discovered travel sickness for the first time since I was eight years old.

Shared Space Croatian Style

When a motorbike doesn't want to go in the direction of the one way system it gets onto the very narrow pavement behind a female pedestrian and trails her all the way to the junction.

The holiday bungalow

in Dubrovnik is in the grounds of what should be an imposing mansion but the Grand Palazzo next door has menaced it into submission.

To get to there we have to heft open the gate-like-a-prison-gate then up steps-and-path steps-and-path  until we reach the door that marks the threshold of the path to the grove of trees surrounding the place where we will stay for four days.

There are windows around the walls and also big french doors all along one wall and windows are also in the ceiling. The bathroom and bedroom are divided off with walls that don't go right to the top so the light from all the windows can be everywhere. The bungalow is mainly painted in different shades of apple and lime green. Cobalt blue is added in the bathroom and the bedroom has a pink ceiling. The vegetation grows much higher than the roof adding filters and shadows to the sunlight that's trying to pour in.

Lottje is waiting for us, sitting at the white dining table set with a big bowl of strawberries which we must dip into grainy honey and eat while she tells us about buses and boats and also some sad stories.

this all happens before we take the boat to Starri Grad

the old centre of Starri Grad has streets of polished marble

In the olden days all visitors and horses must have been fitted with special shoe covers to get the streets this shiny. Closer to the central church the streets get narrower and coming out into the big square brings on vertigo.

I chose the room in one of the oldest towns in Europe through my telephone. I liked that it was next to the church and didn't pay any attention to the size. We had to step down a deep step into the tiny kitchen, we two and our luggage could only just squeeze in to the space and we had to take it in turns to breathe. The bedroom was bed-sized and up against a glazed door next to the pavement. There was a net curtain but, as we could hear every inhalation of passersby, we were pretty sure they'd notice the Man's snoring.

The boat from Dubrovnik arrived in Hvar town at eight fifteen in the evening, the guide book tells us that Hvar Town is where the Jetset stay and all the paparazzi come here. Starri Grad is the other side of the island. I was sure there would be a bus to take us there.

There was not a bus so we took a taxi. The taxi driver assumed that we had made a mistake, he kept asking if we were sure we wanted to go to Starri Grad, when he dropped us off he said.

next time you stay in Hvar town, Starri Grad is very quiet.

No cars can come into the polished area so we had to find our way in by ourselves. From the outside you see the church tower but once into the streets they are too narrow and house walls too high to see.

I saw Ljublinka's silhouette - her daughter had told her we were coming so she went outside and waited - like a lighthouse to guide us in.

I left Starri Grad yesterday

Today I've been shooing out the strange odours that have taken up residence and been having a party in my home while I've been gone, some of them I tracked down straight away, the long-forgotten piece of broccoli, vases of not-quite-dead flowers that I hadn't the heart to throw out before I left - others are still evading me

I did some drawings. They might appear here

Found a snorkel

in the dressing-up box under the wigs.

Also got

a gaily stripey/polka dot skirt
a straw hat
shorts with beads sewn on
some scarves
sandals

I'm off to Dubrovnik

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

I live near a church

all of its altars, coffins, fonts etc. have been removed, it is a building pared down to stone walls, stained glass windows, a wooden floor and a high high ceiling.

Last night in the stripped church a Dutchman performed a show called Freeze.

On the centre of the wooden floor are eight knee-high mirrored glass cubes arranged in a circle. Around the cubes are stones, all kinds of shapes and sizes, some would fit in your palm, others are bigger than a big man's foot. The Dutchman stands upright in the circle. 

A body length away from the cubes are floor cushions for the audience.

A recorded voice delivers a measured narrative in a strong Dutch accent. While the voice talks the Dutchman inspects the stones, picks out one and places it with great deliberation on a cube. He finds another three or four and places them on other cubes. He then searches out a stone to pair with one of the first stones, he works at this pairing until he has made the two stones balance one on the other in a way that seemed impossible but now they have grown into each other.

The recorded voice stops, the Dutchman continues  around the cubes and the stones, placing stones together in pairs then threes, the concentration is immense and we are concentrating with him. When four stone totems are built, despite none of us moving a muscle - we are not even breathing - one of the totems  smashed down through the glass plinth. It was shocking and liberating.

Unconcerned he continued, occasionally gesturing to an audience member to pass a stone while he held a half-totem in balance. One woman stepped forward a little abruptly setting four totems smashing through their glass plinths.

It is a piece about being in the moment - it was mesmerising.

Nick Steur is touring this show



I went there with two girlfriends, we talked about the show a lot, then we talked about other things. One of the women has a husband who makes films she tells us that he now wants to write a book

He's worried about posterity, he says he wants to leave a mark

I don't want to leave a mark.

Today I coveted this dress

but it was on a high shelf and I suspected that I would have needed to be a bit smaller to fit into it


so I bought these shoes for my niece instead

Dressing and Undressing

at the weekend I attended a life drawing class held above a pub in a bad part of town, the models were tattooed and wiggy burlesque-esque performers, opening up their outfits a bit at a time and striking lewd poses. I liked the one with screechy lips, raven black hair and enormous pink-and-red knickers the best.



This morning I dressed for an appointment where I needed to look just the right kind of thrown-on cool-smart: grey linen jeans and a white white shirt fresh off the press.

It needed to look like nearly no makeup on so I did nude on my eyelids and swept a brown liquid liner across my eyelash line - so swiftly the brush leapt out of my hand and onto my shirt collar.

I changed into an indigo shirt.

It was an enormous relief - I'd have never kept that white white all the way to the date.

I can't go

on Facebook anymore - everybody is shouting at each other to not vote UKIP.

as though any of my friends would be friends with anyone who would

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.

My Lady Garden

This year I decided to transform the bland block of concrete in front of my house into a lush verdant garden of wondrous delight.

I started with my biggest pots filling them with compost and sowing seeds. When that was done I felt brave enough to make a long fat planter to sit on my low flat wall. Little plants started sprouting and I have the beginnings of spinach and peas, poppies, morning glory and garlic, there is also a carrot top from the compost bin that is enjoying being there so much it has put up a plume of feathery leaves.

Some people see my planter and think that I have provided a fancy litter bin. I pick out paper chip wrappers and discarded drinks cans  before I head off to the Brain Doctor's - today an ant trail showed me the remains of a burger bun buried in the soil, last week a passerby plonked plastic pots of stunted garden centre orni-mentals on my delicate babies.

I'm getting quite cross about this

I've had visitors

Written like that it sounds like an illness, like shingles or measles.

The prospect of visitors feels like I might be coming down with something because I focus on all the cleaning and house organisation that I don't do and I get impending anxiousness. It takes a while for me to remember that I choose friends who don't judge me on such things and relax into enjoying their company. They came all the way from America and brought me shoes and washed-out-looking linen of the sort I adore and our mouths were fully occupied the whole time with eating and talking - yes even in our sleep - it was exhausting.

Today they've gone and I really miss them

My local grocer is called Roy's

Walking down that way last night I watched a young man balancing on a wheeled rubbish bin pushing at a sofa with a broom, trying to squeeze it through an upstairs window. The shop carried on business as usual. The young man's relatives were shouting instructions at him from the shop doorway.

Against the laws of physics the sofa disappeared through the window and then some heads peered out of it and there was more shouting and another sofa was hoisted up - through the same window.

I have no idea how many sofas had gone in before I arrived.

We worry about soft-furnishings in Bristol

Drunk Trike fell off the wagon

the recumbent tandem ran off with a boney-arsed two-wheeler

a lone party celebrated good riddance to bad rubbish

Since Meeting Space Lady

my dread of being buried by things has increased. Over the winter a lot of jumpers were needed to feed my  jumper unknitting fetish - my cupboards are bulging. Today I collected up lots of sad-but-might-be-useful t-shirts, impractical dresses and over-optimistic-trousers when I'd filled a sack I took it to the charity shop.

I have come back with a wild flame-coloured mohair cardigan, it's too long and has a collar that needs un-ridiculousing. When I've fixed it, it will be magnificent.

Car Protection League

In an effort to reduce car congestion all the neighbourhoods in our city will become Residents Only Parking Zones - people can buy annual permits to park their cars near their home, visitors and shoppers will have to park on meters or in car parks.

This has been a gradual process, only a few parts of the city are Zoned at this point, some people not yet Zoned are up in arms - vocal spokespeople announce the armageddon: all trade will stop and elderly people will starve in their front rooms because someone is endlessly circling the neighbourhood unable to park near enough to deliver much-needed care or supplies.

I got caught up in a Zone Terror conversation yesterday. A soon-to-be-Zoned woman, told me about the imminent disaster

all trade will stop, people will starve, children abandoned ... 

I said

We've been Zoned; all the vehicles parked on corners, dumped camper vans, constant sharky cars cruising for spaces -they've gone. People walk around in groups chatting, I see cyclists using the road instead of the pavement...


The lady was not impressed

Well that sounds all very nice for people - but it's not nice for cars is it?

In Poland

when dubbing foreign import TV shows, they hire one actor to do all of the voices - be they men, women, children or mythical creatures.

It used to be for budgetary reasons, but now people are so used to it they don't really like it when it's changed.

Here's what that looks like


information lifted wholesale from the latest Popbitch gossipsheet

Three years ago

  
the artist known as Banksy wrote a slogan


THIS LOOKS A BIT LIKE AN ELEPHANT

on a disused water tank in Hollywood,
 
Conflicting reports circulated. The disinformation that I repeated was that a homeless man occupied the tank, Banksy's work resulted in his eviction and our heroic Banksy flew to the rescue by giving the man a home and also disowning the work so that it became devalued.

None of that turned out to be true.

An extraordinary character called Tachowa Covington, had lived in the tank for seven years but had moved out to a nearby cave before Banksy  'arted' it.


Tom Wainwright wrote a play about it

The Room In The Elephant 

An actor playing Tachowa Covington delivered an explosive monologue. Inconsistencies made it clear that this was not necessarily an account that could be relied on.

When the piece ended the story wasn't complete. We were then shown a film, a documentary made by amateur film-makers who'd met the homeless man when he was still living in the tank and had filmed him. We saw crazy, damaged Tachowa in the tank, he'd organised water, electricity, sanitation and had set up security cameras, he described how you go about making a living space in a cylinder

How you make a floor when it's curved ? you have to put ladders across that's what, make it flat. How you attached stuff to metal walls?  Magnets man you use magnets

The tank was was full of his art. The man flickered between shy child, king of the world and ranting madman, the actor had performed him brilliantly.

The film was made over a seven-year period, we see the film-makers going to his cave and showing Tachowa the news that a play is being written about him, Tachowa was then taken to Edinburgh where the show opened last year.

What people do in the city on a sunny day

I walked through a park, bursts of hand-clapping kept exploding behind me. I finally identified a Tourette-ey man bobbing around in a suit, face clenched in concentration, his clapping was interspersed with lamp-post-tapping and tree-kissing.

I made straight for the big fig tree, clipped off a few of it's new sappy leaves and stuffed them down the front of my vest so that the figgy scent could waft around me for the rest of the day.

Quote of The Day

from Poor Richard’s Almanack:

Sally laughs at everything you say. Why? Because she has fine teeth.


I'll win a fiver if I can slip this into a conversation at the Brain Doctor's tomorrow

The Path of Good Intentions

My regular route to the Brain Doctor passes a hospital, I usually take the path that hugs the hospital wall.


It was pointed out to me that there was a specially constructed path nearby which took the same route it goes through a lovely wooded area - why don't you use that one?

The Path is very short, just 300 metres long and has consulted the manual on public place-making, the one called  Alienating The Public Via Civic Construction

Warning signs in triplicate mark the entrance; lists of forbidden activities, a sign to tell you that if you die on the path it will be your own fault and one that shows how much you are being surveyed as you take this walk.

There are THREE emergency telephones on the Path!

The Path is fenced in and every ten paces there are shouty signs on both sides. Halfway through this über-telling-off there is a closely mown green patch with three little wooden constructions, slightly too high and too narrow to be sat on - this is  'bench as concept'. If you were thinking of stopping here for a poop there are extra cameras and signs forbidding pooping unless you clean up after yourself properly using the large poop bins provided.

What's not to like?

I Visited The Community Garden

and stuck in labels for all the plantings we did last Sunday. There is an emerald green glossy-leafed vegetable in the garden,  no-one seems at all interested in it. I picked as much as would fit in my handbag and have just cooked it with nutmeg and butter. It is divine - like super spinach.

I might not mention this to the other gardeners