Plant Protection

 

The Val Doonican house was too disturbing after I dissolved through the neighbour’s walls last week so I went back home to resume the fight with my own burglars.

I took  my paintings to a place that said they wanted paintings to hang up but the guy there didn’t like them,  I started leaving but just before I had my coat on properly I said to the guy, ‘I make photographs too’ and  showed him my photographs on my phone and he said ‘I like those, let’s have them’.

My friends are returning to the Val Doonican house soon so I went there with bread and cake and took my rotting macaroni cheese out of their fridge.

Today I received a gift of purple sprouting broccoli – too pretty to eat I have placed it in a vase on the table.

Rusting

It's been raining all day, the radio is full of people crying - I might drown.

Thrilled with the banana wrap that I made last weekend I want to colour another piece of this lovely felty wool. The coffee shop down the road leaves out bags of used grounds for anyone who wants it (cushion stuffing?).

I soaked my fabric in old coffee grounds overnight - the result is disappointingly off-grey. I have now lain the sad thing outside and covered it with old nails we shall see if this never-ending rain can rust some colour onto it.

Quote of the Day

“No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.”  W.H. Auden

Silver-tongued

Space Lady was wearing clothes today and an entire room had been made visible. I took a broom and swept the ceiling then we both sat down. A  small beige plastic telly on a mountain of beta tapes showed a silent rerun of Heartbeat. I cleaned silver while Space Lady kept up a running commentary. The wideness of the pickle forks and the smallness of the cake forks provoked pictures in my head. The Man-in-the-cellar was out stealing wood.

Burglars vs Neighbours

My friends have gone on holiday and I am guarding their house - any burglars will have to fight me before making off with the Val Doonican record collection. This is a relief from having to be at my own house fighting burglars wanting to steal the submarine propeller that I foolishly told the world about last weekend.

The novelty of someone else's home - how long it takes to find a bottle opener/saucepan/spoon and of course I fingered all their lovely things - occupied me for the first couple of days but as I got settled in I became increasingly aware of the closeness of the neighbours; initially I just noticed the tantrums and door slams but then I could hear sneezes, conversations, door clicks ever more clearly.

Last night I went to bed and sleep and woke with a start and ran to the kitchen sure that I must've left the oven on because I smelt burning but I hadn't and then back to bed I smelt that smell even stronger as though the walls had dissolved and I had actually moved in with the people next door.

Banana Art

On Friday I went to the depot where manufacturers bring excess materials/mistakes/by-products. Here one can fill a large shopping trolley with knicker elastic, bits of string, misprinted maps, sheet-sized pieces of felt and rubber body parts. On payment of 10 groats one can also take these things home.

I will make the sitting-in bit of a garden chair with the knicker elastic – pink and blue if you’re asking.  The bits of string are too short to be very useful but I used them to tie a blanket-sized piece of felt into a concertina-y tube then boiled it and dyed it yellow. It came out of the boiler looking a bit weedy – like it had been weed on - so I twisted it further and baked it in the oven like a strudel until it had burnt patches all over. I love this thing that looks like an enormous ripening banana skin and smells like a croissant, I will wear it round my neck like a gigantic Elizabethan ruff and dogs will follow me down the street. 

I just googled 'banana art' - had no idea it was actually a 'thing'

Penis Envy

Today I attended a gathering for people who are artists but are not actually producing any work.  It is styled after an AA meeting: We introduce ourselves  ‘I am Lulu and I haven’t produced any work since …’ then we are asked to share some personal information with the group.

Today we have to declare the object we consider to be the weirdest thing in our possession. This is tough: one does not want to appear to be too odd, not odd enough, nor to be a show-off -  I judged badly and cited my submarine propeller then was immediately jealous when a girl in crimson lipstick brought up her collection of unusual penis postcards, swiftly followed by someone with a collection of penis bones, one of which she gave to Neil Gaiman as a present.

Overheard

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I went to Paris last week and my neighbour was supposed to come in and feed the cats but the key didn’t work so the poor thing had to post the bits of chicken through the letterbox every day which was really hard because she was a vegetarian.

Leave Space Here

Today Space Lady booked me to work for her, she is wearing her giant romper suit and gravity boots which is a bad sign. We navigated her crowded house with difficulty, trying to decide where to clear space so that she could have a visitor and as many as two people could sit. There was the usual failure of nerve - it was decided that I should spend the rest of the session listening to the Goon Show with her instead.

Space Lady has a large house and it is impossible to get through the door of most of the rooms. There was a room full of dead fridges and microwaves which I cleared last year, but this drew attention to the bay window which is peeling off the front of the house and the window panes which are zigzagged with lightening cracks stuck over with electrical tape.

Space Lady has a husband who has chosen to live in the cellar.

The Cake of Mild Embarrassment

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I made my first ever Christmas cake two weeks ago, it is mainly marzipan with a sliver of fruit cake running through the middle of it, keeping to tradition there is a coating of crispy lemon icing round the outside.  The cake is not out on display, I'm afraid that people will laugh at it, so it’s hidden under foil in my fridge  -  if you’d like some please say

Poetry

 

I love it when I get the special poetic spam, this is a favourite:

 

The Pink Mouth Turbo Tube sleeve combines the popular mouth orifice with the latest fleshlight texture - the Turbo Tube. Fortunately, with today's news we don't lose screen real estate, the smaller, bite-sized egos instead of the pressure being all on the right side. Take you car to best garage in the county and arrange to have one of the plane. One worm changes the wallpaper on affected devices to a photo of a plane crash.

I love the idea of a bite-sized ego, I think I have one of those - one that is easily nibbled away at.

Image 'Logan' by Oli Macavoy

Cakewalk of Shame

Last week I did the 'halfway outfit test'  this involves trying on the 'test' dress. If it won't quite zip up, it means that less than half my clothes currently fit me,  last week the dress actually laughed at me and refused to get past my waist. 

The night after the frock humiliation, my dreams mingled the cake/body angst together -  I visited Claridges for afternoon tea. The waiter arrived and fastened the cakes directly onto my body, I left for a job interview wearing a meringue on one breast, a cupcake on the other and jangling as I walked in a skirt of chocolate fingers.

Women in Clothes

Earlier this year I came across Sheila Heti and, intrigued by her 'women in clothes' project,  I filled out the survey that informs the project, asking women to respond to questions about how they think about clothes, and include photographs or diagrams if possible. I came across my answers today and was filled by nostalgia by the two responses below.
 
Q. Do you remember the first time you were conscious of what you were wearing? Can you decribe this moment and what it was about?

A. I had never considered what I looked like or been interested in what I was wearing, I lived in hand-me-downs and jumble-sale clothing, my hair was cut by an aunt. When I was seven years old my father married a very stylish lady who took me on a train to London to shop for some new outfits, including two sleeveless, rock 'n' roll-neck nylon shift dresses covered in psychedelic paisley shapes (we were in the 'swinging sixties').  She then took me to a hairdresser called Giovanni and instructed him to give me an ‘elfin style’ cut, this turned out to involve a heavy fringe and sideburns. The sideburns showcased my ears which are attached to my head in the same manner that handles are attached to a mug. At this time I also sported a luxuriant monobrow, the boys on the school bus would ask to see if the brow actually encircled my head completely.

Q. Can you recall a time when you have dressed a particular way to calm yourself or gain a sense of control over a situation that scared you?

A. I have a sticky-out stiff blue skirt, it’s a bit cartoony and makes me feel light-hearted, if I wear it with my rigid leather biker jacket it becomes my 'armour outfit’, I feel like Lucy Van Pelt (from the Peanuts) in this outfit.

(This no longer works - I am currently trialling other 'armour outfits')

The Era Of Fun

My sister’s children are in a state of hysteria about the massive shopathon event that is Christmas in the UK, I appear to lack enthusiasm so the six-year-old hopped around the kitchen and explained the relevance of Jesus to his dim auntie ...

Jesus started Christmas

and Christmas started fun  ... see?

Folding Lady

My lack of ability as a cleaning lady has selected out a very particular sort of clientele, such as elderly people who do their own cleaning (see previous post) but want someone to come by once a week to check that they are still alive then help them turn on the computer and reach down a jar of pickles.

A woman with aspergers syndrome texts me once every couple of months. A large portion of her tiny flat is taken up with enormous recycling bins that separate glass, cardboard and plastic. When they are full she starts piling boxes and tins on top of the bins. At the point that she fears getting trapped underneath an avalanche she sends a text in a state of panic about the situation. Cardboard boxes in need of flattening occupy the sofa and the bathroom contains a large bucket full of cardboard loo roll inners. Somehow she can cope with her other rubbish but not this ... this needy waste. The other issue here are the clothes racks which tower like pylons behind the sofa and in front of the tv, piled with clean laundry, it just needs folding - and folding is something she can’t do.

Theories of Relativity: i

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My current career as a domestic cleaner is a family joke, visiting my house is a bit like entering a crime scene. I'm myopic so don’t notice dust and can't see details on far away places like the floor.  Sometimes (when a visitor is imminent) I do a speedy swab across the decks, merely making things worse, I am effectively smearing dirt and consolidating several piles of jumble  which only serves to draw attention to our sorry state.

It has long been apparent that any housework done in my own home is an unrewarding task, within hours the house reverts to it's default state of messiness. This is in stark contrast to the home of an elderly couple where I visit once a week for vacuuming duties, their home is identically neat from one week to the next - they leave exactly 12 crumbs under the dining table to check that I do actually push their Hoover around - but nothing else shifts or changes. I imagine them living in this house, gently reading the papers or a book until it is time to move to another room, drifting through the house in a manner that won’t dislodge any hair or skin flakes.

I have met  another artist who earns her living as a cleaner, we’d both like our homes to be neater but are equally ineffective at achieving this, we suggested that perhaps it would be more interesting if we did each other's housework*. The problem with this plan is that it still involves time spent doing housework, we will call the idea Art and file under ‘conceptual’.

*actually I refuse to own the housework, my house is shared with another who deserves equal opprobrium for the mess in which we find ourselves

House Music

My daily life is mostly occupied with cleaning people's homes. Pointing at and exclaiming about the things that interests me in these places might be considered impolite so instead I have taken inspiration from this verbatim poem and composed my own list of names for the places I have visited over the last six months.

House with many wind apertures

House of hairy dolls

New baby, zombie lady house

Pants on floor house

House of love and frayed carpets

Sticky wall house

House with no place for bottom or cup of tea

House of many cushions

House where big man sleeps

House for lady in bunny suit

House like grandma’s

House where man consider ending life

Party Girl

I've started rescuing poems from the pavement.


This one was mostly crossed out so I've reconstructed it and I've also given it a title:

Party Girl

Hair Extensions
Make-Up
Eyelashes
Extra pair of shoes
tights
under wear
Red earrings
gold ring
pull ups stockings
suspender belt
clutch bag
passport
pj's
wipes
toothbrush
toothpaste
change of pants
outfit
shoes
jewellery
phone charger

Out of the Dog House

This morning I dawdled along behind two small boys and eavesdropped on their plans for world domination; they were dividing the city between them, the larger boy had just claimed the bus station so the smaller boy countered with a gesture that took in the block of flats that we were walking past 

These are all mine

His friend was scornful

Don't be stupid, if you owned all that you'd have to buy LOADS of sofas

Jobs

... the next time I visited  the cat house, the cats kept out of my sight. I cleaned the living room and moved on. Glancing into the living room on my way out I noticed that a clutch of enormous turds had recently been laid on the carpet in the window bay.

Twice a week I go to a house with dogs and a little boy who calls me Harry because that is the name of his friend.

I spend an hour a week in a house where I have never seen the owner, he called me and asked if I did ironing, I said not really because I wasn't very good at it and I worried that I might do more harm than good, the man said 'What if I didn't care', then he dropped his keys off in my letter box and leaves me cash in his microwave every fortnight.

I have recently started cleaning a sexndrugsnrocknroll house. It is the sort of place where it is difficult to tell what colour the paintwork might originally have been but I'm guessing they had a lot of fun getting it this dirty. They don't want me to come very often and they're too stoned to care what I clean.  I choose something that I can complete in a session. The first week I concentrated on a glazed door between the kitchen and living room. After two hours with a scourer and some Ajax I had uncovered a very bright and shiny thing indeed, I imagined them coming home and thinking that a celestial Tardis had been installed.

Hampering Services

At the beginning of last year I stopped doing a grown-up job and became a full-time artist but that doesn't pay so well and by the end of the year I needed cash quick. I placed an advert in the fancy-house area of town and have since been deluged with pleas for my ‘Super Cleaning Services’.

Yesterday the Knick-knack House was on my rota and the cat was  standing guard in the living room doorway.

As I started dusting, the cat mewed furiously and jumped up onto the tiny ledge under the TV attempting to sit exactly where I was dusting, my dusting hand trapped under the cat’s bottom shot the animal off  and onto a card-covered side table, spraying the cards in all directions, the cat then crashed onto the mantelpiece sending all the framed photos etc., showering down to the hearth among all the tiny candles and glass pebbles that covered that surface.

I think that's what they call a job creation scheme.

Later today it's the House of Dogs ...

Velvet Bottom

My husband photographs the night sky with special cameras.   

To get away from people and city lights he drives for an hour, to Velvet Bottom.

Last night when he returned  from a visit to Velvet Bottom I asked how it went:

Well, it was ok to begin with but then four young guys in a car turned up hunting rabbits with torches, they thought I was the police then they decided I wasn’t so they came up and asked if I’d seen any police, then they went off. Half an hour later another two men turned up – to hunt with hawks so I had to chat to them, then they went away. Then the police turned up.

Christmas Rapping

I am browsing bias binding in Fabricland * . A young woman enters in a state of excitement, I hear her say to her friend behind the counter

There’s a crowd outside watching wrappers

?

Another customer standing at the counter has heard differently she says:

Watching a ruckus - what’s the ruckus about?

The first girl says:

No - rappers – like singing

The friend behind the counter becomes slightly interested:

Are they famous rappers – or just community rappers?

(for verisimiliutude do not pronounce the ‘t’ in community when you say that sentence in your head))

The first girl says that  she doesn’t recognize them so they’re probably just 'community rappers'.

I need to know what 'community rappers' look like so I abandon the bindings and go outside.

This is Mr Woodnote, he has more videos on Youtube


*Fabricland is my favourite Bristol shop, decorated with shouty notices in multi-coloured text, I can always depend on seeing a bit of community improv theatre when I visit

Sandwich Night

Yesterday was our wedding anniversary, our celebration would take the form of going out to watch a movie together (we never do this).

Usually on Friday evenings the gentlemen in the neighbourhood cycle to a pub just far enough away to make them believe they’ve earned  a pint. This particular Friday was going to be special so he tried to persuade me to do the movie thing a day early:

When we get to the pub on the Friday before Christmas they bring out a plate of sandwiches - it's the only night of the year they do this! (sad, pleading face)

I remained stony in my resolve that we do the anniversary thing on the anniversary day.

He checked the calendar to make sure there’s no possibility that Sandwich Night and our anniversary will clash next year.

Placebo Pies

Waiting at a bus stop I listen to a woman wearing sparkly antlers telling her friend about a recent party hosted by a stuffy friend;

Sparkly had volunteered to supply the mince pies...

Sparkly: … so then Malcolm said he’d help me cook them ... and when he came over he had this bag of grass and we made a special one for us with a cross on it so we’d know which one it was… but then the pastry all kind of melted in the oven and the cross disappeared so we didn’t know which was ours … I took them anyway and didn’t say anything about the grass ... everyone was there and eating them and  they all seemed normal but when Malcolm turned up a couple of hours later he was pissed and I knew he’d told someone ‘cos a ripple went through the room…

…and then everyone started behaving really differently … in a good way

That Time of Year - Postscript

Judging by the comments on the last post we all do a bit of ‘regifting’, that's good, it’s ecologically sound behaviour and saves cash - but there are rules: (1) check that the book you’re handing on isn’t dedicated to you in the original giver’s hand and (2) do remember where the gift came from, last year my parents (unwittingly?) returned a bottle of homemade Sloe Gin to their daughter who had lovingly made it with her own fair hands!

Do you still visit here Dad?

That Time of Year...

My husband and his son were discussing Christmas this weekend:

Son: What d'you want for Christmas then Dad?

Dad: I dunno something useful ... gloves, scarves .... they're always good

Son: A scarf then ... would you like one like the one you gave me last year?

Dad: That was a really nice scarf that was  ... Welsh wool ... very good quality 

Son: I could let you have that one if you like, I've never worn it.

Dad: Sounds great - yeah all right

Christmas - sorted!

Sri Lanka Revisited

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Getting To Sri Lanka

Highlights of the first 24 hours of our journey to Sri Lanka; note the 3-hour jam on the motorway, the dash for the flight, the random meals and the bit where we are met by NK at Columbo airport, taken to a restaurant and served our third breakfast in 12 hours.
 

When NK laid eyes on the poor straggly things that we had become he said, When did you set off? ... Yesterday morning ... hahahaha ... we now have very a long drive, you are going to kill me .... 

 

Friday, July 9

Today I Am Mostly Buying Foam

After bumping across the country for about 12 hours we finally arrived at the lodge where we will stay and film for the next month.


The first day is spent getting everything set up, we have a lot of very sensitive equipment so we make nests for all the components which we fit in the filming vehicles to help them withstand the battering they will be getting. Mostly what is needed for this is foam and cardboard - I have achieved piles of these items and the two vehicles are now ready to go.

It is bake-a-cake-in-the-oven hot but we can't use the air conditioning because it will upset the many computers that we use outside for filming then bring back inside to transfer and log the images. From now on I will become a Data Monkey working in my room all day tapping away with my fingers and operating a fan with my big toes.

The food is really good here and I'm wondering if sweating counts as exercise.

Sunday July 11th

My World of Wildlife

Every afternoon the boys drive off into the National Park to film proper he-man animals: crocodiles, elephants and leopards. I stay behind at the Lodge, process footage and have a different sort of wildlife experience. The Lodge is in a sandy woody area, guests stay in cabins among the trees. I have set up a work station on a couple of tables in my room and the geckos have taken up residence above me, their tails poke out from the rafters, I like them but wish they wouldn't deposit such unusually large amounts of lizard poo among my hard drives, adding fresh ones every time I go off for a coffee.

When I do go out for a coffee, giant squirrels suddenly appear on branches, close to my face, cocking their big-eyed faces and holding out little paws, (for what? Spare change?), palm squirrels copulate on the table where I am eating my dinner and cows belch and fart explosively outside my window.

In the evenings at six, about two dozen wild pigs come round for drinks, they snorkel noisily around the cabins waving their snouty lips up at the air-conditioning pipes to catch the icy drips. Tonight I watched a big old boar with his head stuck down a drain, front legs knelt down, hind legs on tiptoe, straining his bottom and huge swollen testicles up in the air in an attempt to reach something delicious, he sensed me watching him, jerked his head out of the drain and glared at me, the absolute image of Ken Dodd, it was just an instant, then he tossed his tatty mane and trotted off to join the outlet-lickers.

Wednesday, July 14

Shopping For Man Stuff

Photo: Gayam and W. M. Upali the tuktuk driver, we are eating fishy buns to fortify ourselves for the journey ahead.

Four hours before I took that photo, Gayam and I had come to town in a jeep, we were in search of lunchboxes, batteries, chargers, clips, leads and other motor-related items, we also needed a piece of ply the size of a small coffee table top.

In town there are lots of 'everything shops', they seem to be divided into two types; the ones that sell women’s things like household items, crayons, key rings and shinyshiny. The other everything shops sell men’s things; loudspeakers, bendy tubes, wheelbarrows and batteries.




Most of my items needed to come from the Man Shops, we chose the ones with most car batteries stacked up outside them but each shop only had one component on my list, we went from one shop to another and back again assembling a compatible set of items, none of the items have a guarantee, if you buy and it doesn't work - well that's just tough! You identify the shop selling a battery charger that works and another shop with the battery you are thinking of buying, then you accompany the owner down the road to a place where the equipment can be tested to everyone's satisfaction.

Prior to all this we had spent an hour in the bank, our jeep driver now had to leave, he introduced his friend W.M who would drive us back to the lodge in his tuktuk.
Last item on the list was the piece of ply - the shop would only sell us a whole sheet, the whole sheet was the dimensions of a king-sized bed but a bit longer.

cutting is not possible


A tuktuk is a three-wheeled mo-ped in a cabin with a soft roof, they are usually decorated, this one had gold fringing around the windscreen, a vase of flowers on the dashboard and a red and yellow garland hanging from the ceiling. The three of us looked at the big sheet of wood, then at the tuktuk, we went for tea and fishy buns then we returned to heave the ply onto the roof of the vehicle, we got in and each put an arm out, clamping the sheet onto the roof with a hand - finally ready, we put-putted along the pot-holed road for an hour - all the way home. 

 

 

 

 

Thursday, July 15

The Babbler

At dusk the most extraordinary boinging and hooting noises erupt around my cabin. I think it's mostly birds. There is a dust-coloured bird that comes around several at a time, the size of a fat thrush, it is not at all sleek, they chatter away together and make a lovely sound - I am told that it is a Babbler. I look the Babbler up in Birds of Sri Lanka where Mssrs Wijeyeratne, Warakagoda and De Zylva inform me that it is a garrulous bird ... members of the flock help build each nest, which may be shared

Sweet!


Friday, July 16

The Breakfast of Champions

String Hoppers are a sort of steamed shredded wheat.



To make Egg Hoppers
• Pour coconut milk pancake batter into a bowl-shaped iron pan on a hot ring
• swirl the batter up the sides and crack an egg into the bottom
• Place a lid on the pan and let it steam for a minute or two
• When it is cooked, the steamed egg in it's crispy pancake bowl will slide out onto your plate
• add a spoonful of dahl and a sprinkle of coconut sambal if you like.





Saturday, July 17

More Wildlife Than Might Be Good For Me

I'm much worse at packing than I used to be, I pack far more these days and yet I have only a couple of wearable outfits - the other ninety per cent of my luggage might as well have stayed at home.

I had considered my pyjamas to be redundant, at bedtime I take a cold shower and lie on the bed hoping sleep will come before I reheat. This morning, when I went to the bathroom, I noticed all the gecko pellets stuck on my legs.

A lady sunbird pecks for long periods on my window pane, I think she is attacking her reflection and imagines herself to be arguing with another sunbird but her persistence feels rather Hitchcockian.

Monday, July 19

The Jesus Pig

Just beyond the bushes surrounding my cabin is a bright green lake, the luminosity of which led me to assume that it didn't support much life but I watched as horned cattle waded in to shoulder depth in the mornings, stood around for an hour or two then disappeared back into the bushes. I also saw some deliciously cartoon-ey storks standing in the lake and realised that a lot of birds come visiting here, so I got out my crayons and walked up the spit of sand that runs part-way into the lake to see them more closely.

Yesterday evening I climbed to a look-out post from which I could see the lake. The sand spit was covered with fat man-sized crocodiles, which made me gulp a bit, then I watched a pig emerge from the bushes, keeping up a steady trot, she made straight for the spit, slalomed between the crocs and when she got to the end of the land she kept going, running on the water without slackening her pace until she got to the island in the middle of the lake.

impressive surface tension!

 

Tuesday, July 20

Boundaries

This is a map of my world these days, the film crew occupy three of the two dozen wooden cabins that accommodate the lodge guests, we each have a little fenced-in beer porch outside our front door.

A central wooden building contains the bar and restaurant, there is a Look-Out! tower on top of the restaurant and a fiendish pool outside the bar. The pool looks really good - new guests jump in with the anticipation of a refreshing swim only to find that the water level comes to just above a grown-ups knees. The children have great fun though, there are little islands to leap around on and I spent a happy hour watching three Dutch children playing an interesting drowning/life-saving game there the other day.

Apart from my foam- and battery-buying forays I am confined to the lodge boundaries and have yet to visit the National Park.

Due to the proximity of the park and the quantity of animals that could present us with so many exotic ways to die, we are requested not to venture out of sight of the cabins on our own. I can hear a crashing sea, metres from my cabin but I can’t go and look at it without company.

The Camera Boys are subject to the same restrictions as everyone else, when they pack up the vehicles for the shoot they must include a park warden and everyone stays inside the cars until they get back home again.



Langurs come to play on our roofs, usually a great big herd of them descend and bounce around noisily for an hour before moving on to the next one. 

Thursday, July 22nd

Points of View

Our film is about what happens at night.

If you go into the Park at night, and it is a bit cloudy without much moon, it all looks like black scribble.

With night vision goggles you can see shapes of animals but the ones more than a few metres from the car will be quite fuzzy.



Our magic cameras can magnify the light of a single star by a factor of thousands and translate heat into light. Out in the bush only the one with the camera gets a clear picture.



The view from my cabin is another thing. The Camera Boys give me their boxes containing the fragments of a thousand stories, I sort through the clips, looking for the edge pieces and important details that will accumulate to become The Most Interesting Story, a good one with little sub-plots and dramas.

Saturday, July 24

Some Things...

Sun Protection
I haven't seen a Sri Lankan in sunglasses yet, nor much hat wearing.

There is however, plenty of umbrella-sharing.

Feeling Like A Farmyard Animal
I am often sitting on my beer porch in the evening when the pigs come round, they poke their noses in at me through the railings. I think they are laughing at me.

If they had bananas I think they'd throw me one.


Laundry Conversation
I don’t understand how the laundry system works - a few days ago I put a pile of clothes on my bed with a hopeful note saying laundry. The man who comes in to sweep the room looked at the pile and said

I can’t take the laundry until tomorrow. Here is a bag, write your items on the list

I am confused
But you can't take it until tomorrow?

Maybe I can take it today

Monday, July 26
Jaggery
a concentrated product of cane juice without separation of the molasses and crystals, contains sugars and other insoluble matter such as ash, proteins and bagasse fibers.

Considered to be a particularly wholesome sugar, retaining more mineral salts than refined sugar. Moreover, the process does not involve chemical agents. Ayurvedic medicine considers jaggery to be beneficial in treating throat and lung infections.

Jaggery is for sale in all the shops I go in here - except the ones that sell car tyres - it is one of the things you need to make wattalapam

Jaggery is how I feel when I've consumed too much jaggery - on the other hand maybe it's how I'd feel if I had bee stings around my mouth.

Jaggery-filled things 

The Golden Pudding Cupboard stands at one end of the dining room - a glass case full of sari-coloured sweets.























Wednesday, July 28

Things I Can't Show You

I used to do a lot of people-photographing but nowadays all this bloggy, facebooking, interwebbery inhibits me, not knowing where an image may end up and how it might be used can make the camera an unwelcome intrusion, so mostly I leave it in my bag.

There are so many photos I’d love to take in Sri Lanka; groups of schoolgirls, clustered under umbrellas in the street, their hair in thick black plaits, looking like a flashback to the fifties in impossibly white dresses and ankle socks, I’d also like to snap the men in bright sarongs holding umbrellas, shopping slung around them as they weave between buses on their bicycles.

and there’s the little girl with birds-nest hair dancing on the shop counter in her baggy underwear...

Last time in town I went to buy some sarong fabric. As soon as I walked into the shop the owners called out back to someone to come and see me. A skinny child with enormous eyes and a huge tangled pile of hair peeped from behind the curtain. Initially shy, she was soon showing off and performing dance routines while I shopped. Fabric bought and bagged I asked if I could take a photo, the mother said yes and disappeared so I took a quick snap of the dancing child, said goodbye and was about to go when the mother returned with a set of clothes and a hair brush, she quickly dressed the child and set about taming the hair.

This is the photo I feel that I have permission to use - you’ll just have to imagine other one.

Thursday, July 29

The Mouse Deer Whale Pig

The star attraction of the nature reserves are always the big cats. In Yala the leopard paparazzi flood into the national park every day hoping for a fleeting glimpse of the big spotty glamourpuss.

My own crush is on the much more mysterious and melancholic-sounding mouse deer. The books all describe this creature as secretive and solitary, the sole surviving member of the infraorder tragulina. It runs up low, shallow-angled branches to get itself into trees and it isn't really a deer at all, it is in fact more like a pig, especially in it's sexual behaviour.

The native name for the mouse deer translates as 'a deer and a pig' and my sense of it being stranded between species is reinforced by the wiki entry that says that it has

... a remarkable affinity with water often remaining submerged for prolonged periods to evade predators or other unwelcome intrusion. This has also lent support to the idea that whales evolved from water-loving creatures that looked like small deer


Wednesday, August 11

Trying to Give Gifts

We went along to watch a farmer, his young son and their cattle herd being presented with an anti-leopard pen last week, the idea being that young or sick animals can be put in the pen at night to protect them from leopard attack. The farmer was thrilled, but the calves weren't too keen.

Monday, August 16

The Wonder Dog

This is the hotel dog formerly known as Bollocks. All that changed last year when he was discovered with his head down a python's throat.

The rest of the python was wrapped around the dogs body and squeezing hard, the dog's owner thought Bollocks was a goner but shouted out for help anyway and noticed that the tiny bit of Bollocks that wasn't being strangled, the tip of his tail, wagged in response to his master's voice.

Help had arrived, the two men hit the python with sticks and it released the dog, unharmed but a bit cross, Bollocks bit the python before running home and has been henceforth known as Wonder Dog. 

Bringing Back The Sun

I'm back in the UK feeling all hazy and jetlaggy and it's bloody cold. A little pile of books that I read while I was away are still by my bed so I have been dipping back into them since my return for a warm-up.

The Book of Indian Birds: Salim Ali (1941)
Lovely illustrations and great text, I particularly liked Mr Ali’s descriptions of bird calls, here he is on the Malabar Pied Hornbill’s call;
A variety of loud cackling and inane screams reminiscent of the protestations of a dak bungalow murghi* seized by the cook, and also the yelps of a smacked puppy!

*Baffled I looked for explanation and found this wonderfully informative passage here
The British had set up rest-houses known as Daak Bungalow... Somehow, there was always an Anglo-Indian woman who would found her way to the Dak Bungalow to keep the company of the traveling British officer. Every Dak Bungalow has a love story to tell, only if the walls could talk.

In the rear, every Daak Bungalow had chicken coup manned by 'Murghi wala'


Reef: Romesh Gunesekera (1994)
Narrated by Triton, a young houseboy in the service of his hero Mister Salgado, sensuous and funny, turning chillingly dark towards the end, I loved it’s 170 pages so much that I eeked them out for days.
Thanks for the recommendation Eryl


How to see Ceylon: Bella Sidney Woolf (1914)
An early travel guide, Bella Woolf went to Ceylon in 1907 to visit her brother Leonard and ended up marrying the Assistant Director of the Peradeniya Botanical Gardens. Contains fascinatingly descriptive travel itineraries and plenty of useful advice:
A Topee should always be worn until 4 to 4.30 pm even on dull days


Ceylon Daily News Cookery Book (1929)
...constitutes a serious attempt to aid the housewives of Ceylon to practise the art of cooking so that, like the quality of mercy, the preparation of palatable dishes will bless her that gives and him that takes.

Contains recipes for things as diverse as Poached Eggs with Mince and Titta Tibbatu Mallung. I’m particularly fond of the section entitled Invalid & Convalescent Cookery, which gives this advice
Do not consult a patient about his meal, but try and find out what will be liked and let it come as a surprise.

Then follows such appetite tempters as Egg White Water, Beef Tea Custard, Invalid Blancmange, Sago Gruel and Stewed Spaghetti.
Who wouldn't get better when faced with this?

Running in the Family: Michael Ondaatje (1982)
The most delicious memoir of Ondaatje’s Sri Lankan family history, pieced together from photo albums and anecdotes told by friends and family members. I looked for it in a bookshop in Columbo, the elderly salesman snatched it down from the shelf when I mentioned the title declaring
this book is a must have ... an absolute must have
he clutched it so tightly that I had to fight it off him. Anyway it’s great and now it’s mine - here’s a bit;

An aunt gives an account of her journey to Ondaatje's father's wedding, they have seen a car in a ditch and next to it the Bishop who was to officiate at the wedding, everyone knew the man to be a terrible driver - he has to be given a lift.

First of all his luggage had to be put in carefully because his vestments couldn’t be crushed. Then his mitre and sceptre and those special shoes and whatnot. And as we were so crowded and a bishop couldn’t sit on anyone’s lap – and as no one could really sit on a bishop’s lap we had to let him drive the Fiat...