The current cat

doesn't drink water from her bowl or a running tap  but when I take a shower, she runs upstairs and jumps in when I step out. 

Then she sits in the puddle that I've left behind, head cocked waiting for drips to land on her tongue

We've had a bit more Chumpy

in the Life Class, which was divertingly chaotic. I'd booked a pregnant female model for this evening's class but she couldn't make it, so one of the office staff agreed to fall asleep and let us draw her, I put some Agnes Obel on the music box and it was lovely.

House of Dangerous People

The Man has been filming jaguars in Costa Rica, standing far too close while they suck the heads off gigantic flipping turtles. He was also nearly squeezed to death by a giant boa constrictor but he returned alive to Bristol last week. I was missing him and missing being at home so I took a break from studies to go and make dinners, do laundry and sniff the Bristol air.

Our home has been languishing emptily but now we are joined by two new female housemates: Lu is Chinese, she is studying how to prevent landslides, this is research commissioned by the controversial Three Gorges Dam project. Our other housemate Sarah is employed as a danger-aversion-person by EDF who are building a controversial nuclear plant near Bristol.

I've been instructing Lu in the art of moth-combat and the need to shake woolies out on a regular basis, the idea of clothes-eating-moths horrifies her far more than the prospect of nuclear explosions, snakes, jaguars or landslides.

At the very posh local farmers market

a chap was selling premium dairy products; hand churned butter, fancy milk and  ... buttermilk.  Proper buttermilk is so difficult to find that I'd forgotten about it's existence. I was sort of excited to see this rare thing but couldn't remember why.

Seeing my hesitation the dairyman handed me a leaflet with suggestions for how to use buttermilk, then he said

one of my customers drinks it but you're not supposed to do that 

Why not?

it's already been used  

!!!!!!!!!

In my search for a good Local

I was directed to a bar along the waterfront and across the park. It was almost empty, a blazing fire blazed in the middle of one wall, two young men were behind the bar trying to work the till. The bar room contained a dozen assorted wooden kitchen-type tables and chairs, the only other customers were two women and their gentleman friend.

I finally got a pint and took it to a seat at one of the large tables, shortly afterwards the other party got up and assembled themselves in coats and scarves. During this disruption they asked me if I lived nearby, we had a short exchange and they left.

Five minutes later one of the women ran back in and asked if she could join me. We entertained each other for the next half hour. My New Best Friend is the twin of the other woman, I shall call them Sybill, the other twin had lived in the neighbourhood longer and knew more people - this was a good opportunity to even things up a little.

We arranged to meet, me with both twins the following week.

That was yesterday. The experience was like a being in a story co-written by Lewis Caroll, Edward Lear and Mervyn Peake

The first thing I had to be made aware of was size, they were identical and both the same size they said, so they could wear each others clothes but they also pointed out that one was taller with a much longer body and exceptionally large hands and feet, we stood and compared all these things. They felt that they were so identical that the large-handed one differentiated herself with a fat bow on her head.


The large-handed twin was by far the bossier - as she questioned me she would stop to wave her enormous hands in the air and cry

My darling we have absolutely NOTHING in common!

Their lives revolve around omens, they each have their special sign to look out for, the small-handed Sybill looks for things with vertical lines and the large-handed Sybill looks for horizontal lines, this system is used for every important decision; for example when they need to know to trust an estate agent - they look at the pattern of his tie. This and numerous other examples were given to show how well the system works.

We are planning to go to the cinema together soon  

We are very critical
yes very critical

we used to work in the cinema industry as extras so we know a lot about it

we've been directed by ... who's that actor who's now a director?
(many names are tried out)
Clint Eastwood
yes him
we are very critical and we don't like much   
and we don't like much food  
no we're very fussy  
we're terrible to eat with  

Making up for his early arrival last week

Chumpy turned up just slightly late for our class this week, there was a lengthy explanation about how he'd been too absorbed in his book and missed his bus stop then he went and made himself a cup of tea and was just about to get on with modelling when he noticed a small pile of cheap out-of-date biscuits in the kitchen, someone had put a sticker on for anyone who wanted them to take them . . . we waited while Chumpy found his coat and filled the pockets. . .

My ballerina has cancelled for next week

I still haven't visited Penge

I've been staying in Dulwich (pronounced: dull itch) which is on the way to Penge, a place that also sounds like a medical symptom in this case maybe a pain/twinge, as in:

I can't do that - it makes my knees penge

The Putney heating is still broken so I jumped at the opportunity to look after a cat-in-a-warm-house last week but alas I have now returned to the Putney fridge.

In the Mortuary

I've been running the Life Drawing classes. I had a special one on Saturday - after  a day spent marching against Drumpf I had to rush eastwards only just making it to the mortuary in time to set up for the Birthday Party Life Class. The model I shall call Chumpy, an excitable man who was already naked and waiting for me in the kitchen, there were things to be done before the guests arrived and every time I looked around Chumpy was doing something dangerous while naked - he had to be ordered down from a stack of chairs that he'd decided to clamber onto (he wanted to pin bunting up), then he cut his finger. When he'd done bandaging the finger he started blowing up balloons, it was during this episode that he managed to hurt his eye. The class arrived and the host wore gold shoes with flashing blue lights, he handed out artist berets to his 30 friends along with Champagne and fizzy jelly sweets.  When I finally got the class settled with crayons and paper, I asked Chumpy if he could start with a simple kneeling posture which he did by attempting a sort of upside down pretzel shape - knocking over a cup of water as he fell.

I've got Chumpy again next Thursday but after that I get a Ballerina.

On the bus to Penge

I'm on the top deck. Sitting across from me are two boys aged around twelve years old and a chic young woman who might be their big sister or aunt, they are talking and laughing and sound like they come from south London, she says:

There's this stuff called escargot, it's snails eggs and people eat it

that's disgusting!

it's like caviar which is fish eggs, you eat hens eggs, what's the difference?

I've been engaged

as Drawing Mistress

to teach a Life class

in an old mortuary ...

just gonna leave that there

Coping with death

is tough and is a difficult concept for a child, my niece (age 5) and nephew (age 9)  lost  two grandparents last year, the 9-year old was beside himself with grief and decided to do something about it by raising money for Cancer Research and have a bake sale. He wrote to various supermarkets and packaging companies to ask if they'd donate ingredients and other things he needed. The local vicar said that he could hold the sale after Sunday service just before Christmas and my nephew posted about his endeavour on facebook (via his mum).

Orders came flooding in and by the end of the church porch sale he'd raised £700 which is bloody impressive.

this is the boy 4 years ago making a Star Wars birthday cake.



My 5-year old niece is still trying to work out what 'death' is and is currently doing a star jump after every time she crosses a road, shouting triumphantly with every leap  

I'M STILL ALIVE  

(photo credit: James Prinz)

Yesterday at 5 am

I drove the Man to  where his filming crew, a big pile of suitcases and a bus were waiting for him to start a journey to Costa Rica where they will make another film about animals.

Today at 5 am I drove Kanako to the airport so she could start her journey back to Japan, we did a lot of crying and then I went home and cleaned our empty house and then I filled the car with logs and jumpers and cake and drove to London. 

I drove to Putney, to the house I am taking care of during school term time - the house with the Rude Mad Man next door. Currently it is also the house-with-a-broken-heating-system-until-a-Man-comes-to-fix-it.

Kanako is going back to Japan tomorrow

we are making sure that we have exchanged as much vital information as possible. I have introduced her to oxtail and steak-and-kidney and she has discovered English sandwiches and jam rolypoly for herself. On Christmas day we did crown-wearing at dinner.

Yesterday we held a conference

have you had mince pies?

yes at least seven pieces they are very delicious

Christmas cake was missing from the list but luckily we found some that I hadn't eaten yet, we also covered bramble jelly, fried christmas pudding, sponge cake and marmalade.

We moved on to some Japanese essentials

1) Dried firefly squid tastes densely old fishy and gluey, the tentacles have a nice crunch but the wings and body have the texture of a plastic blister pack - this aspect is a bit sore on the mouth.

2) The Japanese winter sock routine involves four pairs of exquisite white socks, the silk and cotton socks with toes - footgloves - first put on the silk then the cotton. Then the silk foot mittens then the cotton foot mittens until you have a pair of very fat and warm feet.

This is the secret to being able to continue wearing little thin flattering easy-to-move-about-in clothes on the top of your body in winter.

3) The Japanese omelette is a delicious and beautiful thing. 

Put a fish-and-seaweed teabag in a cup, pour on a little hot water, add this infusion to eggs in a bowl and beat with chopsticks.

Heat a little vegetable oil in a frying pan (at this point my drawing skills fail)

Pour some of the fishy egg in the middle section of a pan, muddle it around until set then add a small pool of egg mix to one side, as this part sets the middle section can be rolled onto it then you can lay down another side section of egg and roll again, if you add seaweed at each part the omelette spiral becomes more evident and very beautiful. The end result is a fat egg sausage to be sliced up like a Swiss Roll

the bus from Bristol to London

is a journey that takes one hour and a half, this is just to get to the beginning of London, if you want to get into the centre of town the bus takes at least another hour to get through the traffic.

Like most sensible passengers I get off the bus at the beginning of London and take the tube

I got on the bus at Bristol on Monday and the driver said You going to Victoria?

I said, Yes but I'll get off at Hammersmith (with all the other passengers)

You're supposed to get a ticket to Hammersmith and you're supposed to pay more to do that !!!!

The whole week went the way of Alice in Wonderland 

After Blind Ken started questioning me about my appearance I became aware that another person was in the house, Ken kept leaving the room to squabble with someone that might have been a housekeeper - should she use a supermarket voucher to buy milk or fish? He'd say what he wanted, come back to where I sat and bring our conversation back to my piratey teeth then he'd change his mind and leave the room again to tell her to buy fish ... or milk.

Clearly she could have been more use in the room to tell Blind Ken if I also had an eye patch and a parrot but I never got to meet her.

Saw this tempting ad

in London yesterday.

In the afternoon I met Ken who is blind and would like someone to go and read to him now and again. 

Ken asked me to describe myself. After I'd said that I was a fairly average sized sort of woman  I felt I ought to try and think of distinguishing features, I described my hair which went down well, then I said that children tend to notice my gold tooth and that I supposed it made me look a bit swashbuckling. 

This bit made Ken visibly anxious

my friend is returning to Japan

after living in the UK for nearly two years she now has just two weeks to get everything done. Yesterday she told me excitedly that she had achieved another item on her bucket list:

today I had jam roly poly

Overheard in London last night

I had a vegan breakfast in Whitby then got the train ... seriously double ... no treble beans ... five hours later I could still feel the gas bubbles travelling up my back and coming out of my collar - goodness knows what the other passengers must've thought

I live near two football grounds and a river

these things can be hazardous:

the river is tidal - twice a month it comes in over-the-road high so I need to keep wellies handy.

The football grounds mean that I can sometimes hear lovely chanting from the terraces but I also need to be careful about when I attempt public transport.  

Last match day I was on an empty tube then suddenly an entire stadium of people poured into my carriage. Sandwiched tight between roaring and singing men was actually quite fun - like a really loud lullaby but then I was coming to my station and said 'excuse me I need to get off' but my feet were a bit lifted off the floor and despite having people trying to propel me from behind I wasn't getting towards the door so they decided to see if they could 'crowd-surf' me me over the top but they were mainly very tall men and it was apparent that I was going to get slapped in the face by dangling handstraps and also I had quite a big handbag which would cause friction and might be undignified - so I declined the offer and went along for a few more miles and several refrains of Lord of the Dance

The neighbours are comedically awful

Their initial investigations were conducted by inviting me over for drinks and 'nibbles' which was ok, Brenda might be nice but I couldn't tell over Gary's braying. We're British so I had to 'tit' their 'tat' - I asked Brenda to join me in town for supper and Gary decided to join us because he's the sort of man who never misses an opportunity to behave like an arse in public so we had a ghastly time - I nipped over to the front desk and paid the bill before we'd finished eating so I could get home as quickly as possible - I'd hoped they'd noticed that we weren't getting on and we could quietly (Britishly) leave it at that.


... but that isn't to be, I have been included on a very long email list for a twice-weekly 'round robin' update of Gary's latest literary reviews, views on modern music and news of their various family activities

I'm in new temporary accommodation

The house-owner had mentioned that if the front door was left open the next-door-neighbour-in-his-dressing-gown was liable to run in, pelt down the hallway, out the other side and leap over the fence into his own back garden.

I'd figured this could go either way - scary or entertainment - I reserved judgement. 

Chatting with this neighbour and his wife last night I realised that they were trying to decide if they wanted to be friends with me, I'd told them that I normally live in Bristol: 

Have you got a big house in Bristol? 

yes it's a whopper 


and a garden?  

well, more of a park really

walking through a hideous city building site

near Aldgate East - a woman was coming towards me through scaffolding poles that were taking up the pavement and the roaring traffic was way too close. She looked like she lived on the street and as she was coming straight for me waving a hand that held a polystyrene cup in one hand and clutching a handwritten sign slightly scrunched in the other I guessed she was going to ask for money. We were in a noisy stream of people when she was in front of me I stood still to hear what she was yelling while waving the begging note and I saw the money note and everyone was bumping into us she in a dizzy mix of shock and delight

THAT GUY THAT GUY HE GAVE ME TWENTY POUNDS - THAT GUY JUST GAVE ME TWENTY POUNDS -  TWENTY POUNDS!!

we high-fived and she went on her way trying to tell as many people as possible

My mother and I

were out and about in London  

at the pedestrian crossing we waited until the cars had stopped and the man turned green, by which time a crowd of impatient pedestrians had formed   

the cyclist - a man in his sixties - nearly ran us over because he was busy on his phone and hadn't noticed the lights  

a woman crossing with us said angry things to him   

mum thought people should take a more compassionate view 

there must've been something wrong with him - didn't you see he was talking to himself

My new tooth was screwed in last week

I keep needing to remember that there is no big black gap and I can readjust my smile  


I'm sad about Leonard but can't bear to try and decide on a favourite song to post - so here's a speech  

I went to Paris to buy a chapati roller

I also went to See Things but I was poorly so only got as far as the roller and a bowl of chips before retiring to the bed of my tiny rented apartment.

Here I gained an insight into another answer of how Parisian women  stay so remarkably slim:

A very small kitchen plus an enormous fridge. Only a very slim person can get into the kitchen with the fridge and then the tiny space between body and fridge only allows access to a small amount of food, the bigger you get the less food available - a perfect feedback loop

I'm living by the river

it's a fashion hotspot  - this photograph is a typical example of daywear in Putney

Today I walked out in one of my Frankenstein jumpers - an orange one. I had stopped at a frantically complicated traffic junction - a car braked hard in the middle of the intersection, the driver wound down the window and, amid a torrent of honking, asked (in a way that sounded like she did actually want one) where I got that jumper.

I have become fascinating

everything I do is scrutinised at close quarters    

the cats have a dirt tray in the bathroom 

which they never use - because they go outside for that ...

 unless I go in there and don't shut the door really tightly

my new best thing to do in London

is to walk along the Thames foreshore at low tide - apart from being outsidey and seasidey, it's as social as you want it to be and the beach is full of exciting things -  it is an excellent sort of party.

The foreshore is basically a long established rubbish dump that gets turned around twice daily in the Thames washing machine. I frequently meet people* who show me astonishing treasures that they have found on their beach walks.

I'm a beginner and my eyes aren't in yet so I'm still at the stage of being in awe at driftwood and old bones, I'm also keen on the phenomenon known as 'Thames Spuds'  - my photo shows one very rude example -  soft London bricks that become 'pebbelised' in the churning water

*people who forage along the foreshore are known as 'mudlarks'

Since March my dentition has been incomplete

BUT NOW, RIGHT AT THIS MOMENT a new tooth is being 3d printed for me 

I hope they make it out of something tasty 

like toffee 

luckily our neighbourhood has a person who can deal with Most Dangerous Things

I'm temporarily overhoused

and life will be complicated for a while as I shuttle between a south London house with no pets and the ongoing north London house of marauding all-shapes-and-sizes cats.

both homes are loaded with terrors - in trying to balance which is the most terrifying I came up with a point system:

North London

cats that I need to keep alive - 50

pirate cats that want to come in and pee on my stuff - 20

shaky stacks of stuff that could avalanche at any time - 20

knobs and handles that drop off when I touch them - the toll so far includes the fridge handle, 2 X light switches, 2 parts of the lavatory flush system and the lavatory seat  which is trying to make up for it's wobbliness by being fluorescent - 20

levels of extreme unhygienic uncleanness that I keep noticing in my peripheral vision  - 50

terror toll = 160

South London

super neat squeaky clean (like in a hospital) - 50

highly burglarable - 50

a neighbour who is prone to run through the hallway and jump the fence into his own garden in his dressing gown  if the front door is left open -  minus10

there is no kettle here: the hot water tap does that function and will spurt steaming-boiling water if  you use one hand to pump the middle of the tap three times then twist the pumpy thing while holding a mug under the spluttering stream of lava - 500

terror toll = 590

I am the TV

at night the cats sit on the window sill outside to watch the latest episode of Me

Conversation with 5 year old who has decided that she wants to become a doctor

our lungs are amazing! our whole body is made of lungs; our eye balls, our fingers, our hair...

so what are our lungs made of?

pottery

The new household

Fred and Ginger are prize-winning visions of sleekness their home is full of toys and play towers

Fat boy and Fluffy are the hobo cats who live outside - Fluffy  is timid and has a very tiny head on her fat grey body, Fat Boy is her father - an enormous tiger-striped champ with a broken ear, his wide eyeballs give him an air of shockedness

I have been instructed to take care of all these cats - there is an entire room full of food for them including a fridge and a freezer packed with prime cuts of beef and chicken from the butcher.

This is Black Pete, the one-eared neighbourhood pirate cat - we are all scared of him

I'm back at school

the computerised system for timetables etc., still doesn't work very well so there's a lot of tutting going on.

I am catsitting far to the north of the city - in a crazy woman's home. The place is stuffed to the ceiling except for tiny channels of not-stuff that just allows a person, if they are careful, to weave a path through - until today there was no possibility of sitting anywhere or finding a space to stand and chop in the kitchen.

I spent the evening gathering up the dirty underwear which I don't think should live under the dining table even when mixed with Doritos and fag ends. Then I moved a few broken electrical goods and now I have made enough hoovered space to sit nicely with a cup of tea and wonder where the cats are.

Two identical sleek siblings are the bona fide feline residents here, there are also two scared hobo cats. On the half hour a sleek cat snakes through the open window, slides under chairs and table, then with a glance back at me, heads out the door to report to the others what I'm up to now and now and now.

I've been asked for more sandwich

here's a round up of things I can remember happening between the end of Spain and the beginning of being back in London:  

unpacking and laundry unpacking and laundry unpacking and laundry

frenetic socialising to make the most of tan and holiday pzazz

attended a weekend conference about the future with 'Play' as one of it's major themes. This included  filmed robot demonstrations - in the 'playful robot' section a robotic puppy is programmed to get infected by a computer virus which makes it behave badly. Then there was a talk about how most people don't actually enjoy 'play' so maybe it's best kept as an idealised concept, religious people do this quite well because most of them think of 'heaven' as a great big playground where no-one has to feel guilty about having fun because they're dead

unpacking and laundry

eating quite a lot of cheese

finally accepted that the stunted plum tree in our garden might be dead - I pulled at the trunk and it snapped in my hand like a big stick of grissini

outings to see family

unpacking and laundry 

Inherited an ancient and damaged rug* - currently working out how to mend it


*rug once owned by a New Zealand homesteader known as Willy Cobbledick, most famous for driving badly  in the '50s

Went to an Catalunyan outdoor boogie woogie concert

met this gang of loud women-with-many-fans-and-one-man

the following day we went to see Vivian Maier's photographs

that was a high point

Best resignation letter ever

Barcelona was hotter than hell

The puppy and I assumed this position A LOT 

I had one great skirt, long and billowy and I wore it constantly  

When it was time to wash it I put the clean billowy skirt out to dry on the washing line which is cantilevered off the balcony -the flat is up at the top of the building.

I didn't put enough pegs on the skirt so when I next looked out of the window my skirt was no longer there.  I went outside and leaned over the balcony - my skirt had caught on the washing line of someone below - but very delicately. Before it blew off again I rushed downstairs and knocked on the door of the apartment and as I waited for the reply and noticed the tumbleweed in the corridors I realised that I was the only person stupid enough to be in Barcelona at this time of year - everyone else has found a mountain to visit.

The puppy and I gazed down at the skirt and decided that it would definitely blow away in the night.

Over the following days I peered down below to see my skirt still just hanging on down there - then about a week later I came in the front door of the building at the same time as a lady with her arms full of ciabatta she looked at me suspiciously and said

where are you?

I said that I was with the puppy in the top apartment

Ah - the two boys - where have they gone?

I told her - then she said

I was in the mountains for two months - I have your skirt would you like it back?

Currently living with a range of beautiful flooring designs

khaki harlequin floor with red braid trim, accessorised here with red chewy

pink-and-white zig zag floor with visible mend

classic monochrome

all floors available with added canine

I stayed with Mrs Madrigal's daughter

last night in Barcelona*.

She let me into the house,  showed me the bed I could sleep in - which was on this veranda. We exchanged stories and then she disappeared. I'd spotted the kitchen but after she'd gone I needed the bathroom which I knew was behind one of the closed doors along the corridor - the first doors I tried opened onto other bedrooms where young women were reading or doing their hair - we smiled and said perdon/de nada at each other before I closed their door and tried the next one.

I particularly liked these family photographs on a shelf in the living room

*I'm guessing it must be Mrs Madrigal's daughter because I felt as though I'd turned up in an Armistead Maupin tale

I'm packing for Spain

- in preparation for the trip I've been meeting Dolores for a daily dose of language exchange - I still can't pronounce the Spanish word for lawn and she laughs when I talk about fingers or toes so I will avoid conversations involving those things.

Part of the adventure will involve looking after a not-very-young puppy in a fancy-pants district of Barcelona, apparently he can't too walk far so I plan to buy a trolley as a sort of puppy pushchair.

In other news

I have spent the last two years trying to find someone who can mend bits of the house - during this time there have been:
i) the ones who said they'd come to look but didn't
ii) the ones who came to look but didn't send quotes

and

iii) the one who came and told me that he could fix everything then put a call out on social media to see if there were any unemployed burglars who'd like to come and fix everything

During this week of family meetups

my five-year-old-niece went to visit her uncle-who-lives-in-a-palace 

The palace has shiny parquet floors and is decorated with many glass orbs and other delicacies. The niece and her brother are very lively and nosey people.

The uncle laid out ground rules:
no sliding on the floors, no looking in cupboards, don't touch this or that or that

the niece listened then asked

can we fart?

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

on the bus to London

I did knitting and caught up on podcasts -  99% invisible - for a story about the worst smell in the world then a piece about 'sewbots' at Planet Money. Yesterday's best show was Freakanomics  about racial profiling in restaurants if there were shows like these in Spanish I'd be fluent in no time - if anyone knows of any good ones please send me the links.

yes I am still trying to speak Spanish like a native - did I mention that I'm off to Spain soon?

Dolores and I still have our regular spanglish meetings, we speak Spanish one visit then English the next - today was English day and, as she is a professional sportsperson, we discussed the fashion for 'cupping' amongst athletes.

When it is my turn to speak Spanish I seem to always end up talking about insects 

we're plagued with flies

massive bluebottles suddenly appear and buzz crazily around the room bashing into windows and light fittings

tonight I watched one drive himself into a tiny spiders web, the tiny spider was hiding behind a book licking his lips as the fly (which was 10 times bigger than him)  tangled around in the web 

finally the fly buzzed itself free and continued it's noisy flight around the room but this time draped in cobweb like a great big ghost fly

my jobs-to-do list could wrap twice around the house

this sort of thing has colonised the terrace 


there are days when I sense that the jobs-to-do-list may have reduced infinitessimally 

last week

the electrician fixed my blinking lights.

I told the electrician that I could use some young muscles to tidy up the terrace which has become submerged beneath gigantic tufts of a hybrid-vigour-super-grass that is anchored firmly between the paving stones. The electrician said   


I know someone  

being Welsh his tone is naturally ironic so I was not sure what would happen

today

A plump sixteen-year-old crept up to my gate clutching a plastic carrier bag full of crisps and orange fizzy drink.  He tickled the grass with a spade for a couple of hours we were both relieved when the rain gave us an excuse to call it a day and head home for chips

in other news

I have fixed 2 sets of broken curtains

The Haitians got lost backstage

at the other end of the arena -  a man with a buggy got them rounded up and driven over to our stage, they spilled off the buggy and ran around laughing and kissing us all, there were at least fifty ten people if you counted all the seeing double that was going on.

Meanwhile in front of the stage the audience had been sampling the wine provided by our sponsor and were already pretty happy but they  roared with approval to see a cascade of stoned people arriving on and around the stage giggling and dancing. Their music was fantastic but they weren't up to slicing vegetables - several audience members were pulled onto the stage to help including a girl called Trixie wearing a very short white fairy outfit and crimson hair .

Trixie was able to chop cabbage, twist open bottles of vinegar and fry plantain while band members fell at her feet and grinned at her.

The woman in the Haitian band was the danciest and had many many silk patterned scarves  tied around her waist which she dispensed liberally along with perfume and many kisses - my scarf is blue stripey with flowers and a rude fruity smell, apparently it contains a lot of voodoo so I have put it in a nice box for safety

I wore emerald silk

to attend the festival

looking around the market area there was a table piled with old costume jewellery which I picked through and found some earrings to go with my favourite daisy necklace (which I was wearing as you can see from this picture taken near the best food stand)

The jewellery seller sidled up, looked at me and then at the earrings I'd chosen and said approvingly  

Ah yes, I can see that you're a fan of early plastic

Other things

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Vine leaves were the biggest challenge

I live near Turkish supermarkets and various sorts of hippy shops and imagined these to be the least of my problems but it appears that Bristol is experiencing a World Leaf Shortage (and I needneedneed them for WOMAD see my post from two days ago)

I returned home leafless to meet the new electrician who arrived before I'd had time to clean the grease off the broken kitchen light that I hoped he could fix

at peak panic a chum appeared and we both busily phoned potential vine-leaf vendors while watching time running out on shop-opening hours

at the latest moment a leaf supplier was discovered and the person with a bike had to cycle to the other side of the city to buy pickled foliage while I washed my embarrassing light fitting and made tea for the electrician

A naked man was in the road

two doors down from the friend I was visiting this evening

it was raining so I wondered if he was making the most of the free water but then I saw the mattress wedged half-in-half-out of the open front doorway of the house - maybe it was throwing him out for being unfaithful

he saw me looking at him and said

I forgot to put it out earlier

to make Kale crisps

tear up dry raw pieces of kale leaf without any stem, rub them over LIGHTLY with nice oil and lay the pieces out on a baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt and bake in a moderate oven for about 5 minutes.   When you remove them from the oven you must EAT THEM INSTANTLY they are delicious for precisely 30 seconds ... at 31 seconds they are foul

I'm all about food this week

WOMAD starts on Thursday - this is the 10th year that I will be shopping, chopping and hopping around for this musical food event * 

This year's big challenge has been to find a ewe's cheese like one used in Romania to make a rustic dish called Shut-up-and-swallow. I am also looking for live clams, garden eggs and several shades of yellow/green plantain

three years ago Babylon Circus made this film about their experience of Taste the World




*if you click the 'womad' tag below all previous posts on this annual extravaganza will appear

The Man cycles to the pub on Friday nights

he meets other people there, they drink pints, talk about car engines and catastrophise about Brexit

today he told me about the previous evening and said that he thought that his daughter might eventually want to join in on the Friday night pub merriment

why do you think that?

well I asked her along and she gave an excuse rather than just said no - it'll probably take a couple of years before she does though

An abandoned steel chair frame

arrived at our house 5 years ago

I gave it an new coat of red electrical wire  which faded and became saggy and sad 

luckily i was recently given a few miles of knicker elastic by the underwear factory down the road  - chair is refreshed