Knitting Obsessive

bodysuit Andrea Crew


The dyeing and remodelling of charity shop woollies might be getting out of hand - but I will not be suffering in this cold weather.

Fee Fie Fo Fum

I hid from the hail in a charity shop and fingered trinkets while eavesdropping on a very overweight man explaining to the emaciated lady behind the counter about the trick to losing weight

It's all about carbo loading - you've got to avoid doing it

?????

It's when you have all the pizza and the bread and the cake - how can you eat half a pizza though?

Among the trinkets were some envelopes containing bean seeds (beans)  I have bought one and put it with all the packets of seeds I didn't sow last year.

Dirty Conspiracy

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

THIS LEAK IS DEFINITELY COMING FROM THE BATH!!!


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

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

Bottom-Banging Squatters

I couldn't remember if I was supposed to visit Space Lady today so I phoned her to find out:

Well yes but no can you come next week instead we've got squatters

How exciting!

No not really they're banging their bottoms on the window when they try and get in and that wakes me up

Have you tried talking to them?

No they haven't shown themselves to be spoken to yet

Well maybe if you speak to them then you can find out what sort of people they are

Oh I can see what sort of people they are - they're the middle class sort

Wind and Sun

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

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

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

Sneaky Water

Image: Guy Bourdin

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

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

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

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

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

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

Runnning Away to the Circus

Photo by Todd Walker

When I was twenty years old I joined a performing horse circus in France it was surreal and wonderful and those memories came rushing back when I read this small ad:

Circus Family in Phoenix Needs Help

We are in a professional band that performs frequently and our home is very musical and lively. It's difficult to put our entire vision into a small box ... while here you will have the opportunity to assist us with cultivating the land and vision.
Here are some ideas of what we will need assistance with:

Building a chicken coop
Starting a garden
Building a sweat lodge
Building a fire pit circle
Planting fruit trees
Building a dry sauna
Planting bamboo
Building outdoor balcony
Building a geo-dome
Building a drip system
Setting up our 18 foot teepee
Building a stage
Rigging for aerial silks
Building a loft in our son's bedroom
Building revolving doors


 ... Phoenix is a plethora of activity as well ... We also have the world-renowned Musical Instrument Museum, as well as other art and history museums.

Gold Dust

I haven't been very thorough in my jumper-rinsing. I sat at a table for one hour wearing my yellow jumper - when I got up there was a cloud of golden powder in my place.

New York New York

Today this postcard arrived on my doormat all the way from New York - I dream of New York and this was sent to me by a beautiful and talented poet and musician there is so much to love about this card that I can't begin to say ... the stamps on the back are an absolute bonus they are celebrating this year of the whores

Miranda July has forecast this for me today:

You will meet a woman near a clock today. Or she might be wearing a watch. You'll never see her again, but she'll help you forever.

I only just saw this just now so I must go out right away and find a clock and stand there until she comes

Yellow Jumper

This is the jumper I dyed with turmeric powder it is still drying out. I have added the word Mmmmmmmmmmmm to my dictionary.

Gimme Shelter

Bloom by Sam Spenser

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

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

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

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

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

We Are Dissolving

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

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

Absolutely No Chemical Verbilizers

Today I am looking at job adverts in the agricultural section, this is the one I shall be contacting

I rent also a 9 square kilometre garden with lots of fruit trees and fields for vegetables. The whole garden is designed to work as a biological circle, I don´t use any poisons or chemical verbalizers. There is much more potential in this garden than I can make out of it on my own, so therefore I´m searching some help

 

 

Also today I am darning socks I can't find my darning needle and the only thing I can find to take the wool is a needle for threading string through mattresses it is as long as a runner bean and is bent like a spoon - the task of sock-darning has become very difficult but quite interesting.

Affogato

Affogato is a shot of hot espresso coffee poured over a scoop of vanilla ice cream - I LOVE it - by half-way through you are spooning at a tiny bowl of pale creamy coffee-tinted soup.

I like coffee but I like it strong and it gives me the shakes so I don't normally drink it but I needed some strong coffee to dye an arran cardigan that had gone a bit wooden and was an unpleasant yellowy nicotine-stain colour.

I made a big jug of strong coffee for the dyeing it looked so good I had to have some and then there wasn't enough left for dyeing, I have been saving the ends of jugs of coffee for days allthewhile getting shakier and shakier -  just before I died I got enough coffee to dye the wooden cardigan.

IT IS FANTASTIC it looks like the end of an affogato and it smells like a coffee roasting house.

I listened in on a conversation about a new person starting work 

she was dressed quite strangely

strangely - how?

about 20 years too old

I don't know how that's going to end

Untitled

My man has recently returned from India, his son is here too, he makes title graphics for television programmes:

I got my first job doing the programme titles completely on my own last week

Great - how did that go?

Not very well really they couldn't think of what to call the programme

Double Bedding

 

bedroom in russian house by andrew qzmn

I need a new mattress so I went to the place I last bought a mattress from but it has closed down.

I came home and looked on the computer for bed shops, I also looked at the Gumtree small ads where I saw a suspiciously large number of ‘brand new still in rapper (sic) mattress’  advertisements for a variety of mattresses , they are all in the same part of town (Bedminster - really!) I called one of the numbers and spoke to a man asking him why he was selling this mattress.

Because they deliver me two

It turned out that his mattress was not the right size so I called another of the numbers and spoke to someone else

Why are you selling this mattress

Because they deliver me two.

Burning Wool

I have just taken my latest length of felt out of the oven, it is coloured bright pillarbox red and I want it to have a dark edge the grey dye didn't take I think maybe fabric gets tired of being dyed after a while and it refused to take the dark grey and just looked dirty so I coiled it up and put it in the oven and burnt a black edge on it - when you really burn wool it crumbles like toast - who knew?

The Gathering of The Funny Noses

Billy Winslow: clown and wire walker


I've been driving around town, on the hourly news I keep hearing part of an item where our Prime Minister urges the Scottish people not to leave us. I always miss the beginning and I'm concentrating on other things but he seems to be saying that his name means 'crooked nose' in Scottish and that his  'clown motto*' is 'let us unite'.

*PS: Heard the news properly this evening turns out he's talking about 'Clans' - that's a Scottish thing

Blonde Neighbours

Lola came for tea today, while she was here my neighbour knocked on my door to collect some flowers that had been delivered for her. Lola noted that my neighbour is blonde and  tells me that she has a blonde neighbour but all blondes look the same to her so she can never recognise her blonde neighbour unless she actually sees her leaving or entering her house.

… last week she came knocking on the door saying that she needed some milk because she had been staying off the drink for two weeks but I had no idea who she was and then the next day our other neighbours had a fight in the street one had a hammer and the other a sword …

Here Comes The Sun…

painting by Luli Sanchez

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

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

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

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

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

Luxury Bow Sale

The local shop is having a Luxury Bow sale - I think these will have a use beyond sticking on gifts, the addition of a luxury bow will surely elevate anything; cakes, piles of dirty washing ... maybe if bad news was delivered with a luxury bow it would make it better  - a sort of medal for bravery.


My husband has been in India for a month, he got home last night and is a bit disoriented. While I  cooked supper he told me travellers tales


then he noticed the jugs of coffee and bowls of used tea bags that I am planning to use for wool dying.

What are those?
Coffee and teabags to colour a jumper

Is that normal?


I might have mentioned my fondness for verbatim poetry before, todays UKIP tweet compilation on the Verbatim Poetry site is lovely

More Wind

Not much rain today but the cold is arriving and I am curling up at the edges, I will soon look as pinched as a lettuce that has been left too long at the back of a fridge.

My front door was burst open this morning by the sheer force of a man knocking on it, all the wind came in at once and smashed open the inside doors - the explosions made me scream and the man laugh.

Supper was so good I am definitely going to dream about it, I opened a tiny bottle of truffle oil and dripped the contents over buttered, peppery spaghetti.

A Bit Windy

the rain has swollen the doors  - they will either not shut or not open.

when I came home I pulled the door into the door hole until it stopped moving. during the night the wind re-opened it because my obese front door is refusing to engage with the latch.

today the last of my celebratory black beans will be fried up with rice  - soon I will be able to socialise in enclosed spaces.

my jumper cupboard is overflowing. I have readjusted my work-search criteria to include jumper-wearing.

Gorilla Gardening

rain gave way to sun which gave way to icy gales - a double-scarf-plus-gloves day

Poster from United Nations Environment Programme

Community gardening, guerilla gardening, vertical gardening, edible cites and suchlike are currently very fashionable. Today I joined a neighbourhood  tour looking at areas that might be ripe for a bit of community diggery. To guide us and explain things were a community organiser and someone who had experience working for the council.

We walked from one patch of grass to the next talking dog poo, drug-taking, public sex, fencing, festivals, foxes, why we build housing that overlooks the sexy areas and the fact that planting fruit trees is not allowed because fruit represents a ‘missile hazard’

Wettest

there can not be any rain left in the whole world

it all fell on my house this afternoon

Image by Viviane Sassan

I’m trying to concentrate on designing a book about bees. My many distraction strategies mainly involve visiting the kitchen. 

While making lunch I turned on the radio and got engrossed in a programme about statistics manipulation, I took the radio back upstairs to my busy bee work place. On the way my fingers slipped the dial a notch onto a local community station where two schoolgirls were talking and giggling as though only to each other while looking at a computer and trying to work out the pricing structure of a festival on the Isle of Wight, it was great.  

Last time I found this station I was riveted by two presenters trying to do a programme about mental health issues, they had two interviewees (nurses) trying to tell us about support available in our area – but the information was lost due to the presenter's escalating hysterics over the fact that one woman was called Kirsty the other  Kusty it was the best radio I’d heard all year.  




I signed up to receive a bi-weekly fortune-telling email from Miranda July

this one arrived today

Good job with how you handled everything last night. This proves, once and for all, you are the right person to be you.
good luck,
Miranda

I feel relieved

Wetter

We've had a lot of rain lately. 

I'm listening to radio news: the military have arrived in Somerset to rescue the people of Muchelney who have been stuck in floods for 4 weeks. The reporter is is telling us that the water level has dropped a bit but on the way down the things that were floating on the water have got stuck to the trees and  are now very smelly, he is speaking to a lady called Reverend Twitty about this.

Wet Wet Wet

Image 1953 Peter Stackpole

Harsh loud hail waking me at night    rainy monotony during the day   cold weather coming

Space Lady day today: we sit opposite each other at the dining table and polish arcane silverware, she tells me complicated stories while Cellar Man fusses in the kitchen – long ago, to reduce frivolous water consumption, he removed one of the tap tops, today he  has removed the other one so water can only be obtained by means of a monkey wrench.

My charity shop unknittings have yielded about a jumperful of wool, all of it slightly different shades of cream, they make each other look dirty so I have been saving my used teabags to dye the skeins.  Some has turned a beautiful golden colour but the larger part of it looks like old meat. I have re-dyed the old meat wool with aubergine colour and it is now divine.

In Other News

image by Edward Gorey who’s pen names included Ogdred Weary, Raddory Gewe, Regera Dowdy, D. Awd­rey-Gore, E.G. Deadworry, Waredo Dyrge, Deary Rewdgo, Dewda Yorger, and Dogear Wryde. Writer Wim Tigges responded, “God reward ye!”


Turns out that I'm not just a conceptual-house-pet, for today I have sold two of my bird skull etchings.

This has been celebrated by the boiling up a pot of black-eyed beans

Job Titles

On Tuesday mornings I visit an elderly couple: I arrive, we exchange a little light banter, I don’t see them again for the duration of my visit.

There is actually nothing for me to do in this large detached house, it is completely neat and dust-free. 

Last week as I was leaving, I mentioned their tidiness and she said Oh we don’t want our mess to get in the way of your work, which puzzled me as I imagined myself to be their cleaner.

Today, for two hours, I walking around, up and down the stairs, plugging and unplugging the hoover, opening and closing doors and I suddenly saw myself clearly; less hairy than a cat, less needy than a dog, less trouble than guests but nevertheless a living thing, moving around in their big big house. 

Can’t decide whether to think of myself as a part-time pet or a performance artist.




A few days ago I attended a talk at the Wilderness Society given by an 'explorer',  a young man with romantic-but-ill-researched notions of crossing deserts.

Women NEVER call themselves explorers.

Except Dora

Radio Days

Today has been a bust, one of those wading-through-treacle days where nothing turns out well -  background mood supplied by torrential rain.

I have taken refuge in the radio.

There was someone talking about Google self-driving cars and the thorny issue of ethical driving decisions: whether to swerve to avoid an animal, which animals are more swerveworthy than others  and what to do when faced with the choice of crashing into a bus or ploughing down pedestrians. 

There is apparently a surreal European initiative called the Sartre project, in which a convoy of self-drive cars follow a man driving a lorry.

If you're not in the UK, the piece is  written down here,  the radio show is here.

THINGS WE DON’T UNDERSTAND AND DEFINITELY ARE NOT GOING TO TALK ABOUT

title of a performance by Miranda July

Also on the radio: news that Brokeback Mountain has become an opera, illustrated with a section where the men sing to each other in that operaticky mad-talking-in-funny-voices way.  The next time I need to say a difficult thing to someone I will definitely do it in the operatic style.


image from Algae Opera

Not Knitting

I want to knit a thing but wool’s really expensive so I haunt charity shops lookingout for actual wool woolies that I can unknit and reknit.  I find them and get them home and like them as they are so I’ve ended up with a pile of ready knitted things and a lot of washing to do.

On my way back from the print studio there was a lone open shop in the Sunday morning quiet - a charity shop. I went in and the assistant followed me excitedly round the shop keeping up a running commentary.

It’s been so dead, you’re only the third in since I opened and that was hours ago, I haven’t taken a penny yet do you think it’ll rain all day? I've got the insurance coming tomorrow to look at my roof which is leaking but if it’s going to be torrential today then I’m really stuck aren’t I? Nice shoes.

He was really really close and put me off my jumper-touching, I backed towards the ‘entertainment’ section and picked up a Motown Chartbuster, gave the guy his first sale then came home and got my record player out - it’s been  a happy afternoon singing along with the Temptations.

reasons to be cheerful that my house is bloody freezing

1. I have a lot of jumpers that need wearing

2. The irises that I put in a vase 10 days ago are still looking fresh (frozen?)

3.   ... ???

Felt Pods

I did this!


Up with the lark this morning to the print room. A piece of grey felt that has been lying outside with rusting things on it now looks a bit like nicely foxed paper so I printed it with one of my etching plates.

Wrapping-up a Room

Just before Christmas a sad thing happened to our friend, so that sad thing also happened to the rest of us – but a bit less.

We have been trying to make things better for her. Part of that involves a Big Clear Out in her home  - one room in particular, I got a call for help to redecorate this red red room:

I bought some rolls of brown wrapping paper to paper the walls with I think it’ll look great in there

Ok do you need anything – wallpaper paste?

No I’ve got loads of glue sticks.

We crayoned the glue sticks over the walls and stuck on the stripey brown paper it was like wrapping a parcel from the inside.

and when I looked at what we were doing I thought this does look great, it looks a bit like leather – vegetarian leather. 

Working silently for the first hour then my friend said

These glue sticks are really excellent - last time I used honey which wasn’t nearly as successful.

Brown bag sofa from here

Futile?

Gaargh, I just fell into a bank trap:

On depositing a cheque yesterday the cashier said

I see that you still use our 'dull people' account when you could move to our 'shiny special person' account?

I was dull and hungover so I said OK

You have to be advised she said I'll make you an appointment for tomorrow

I was dull and hungover so I said OK


This morning was spent wrestling a man trying to kill me with bank products



from the futility closet

Oliver Herford opened his Christmas cards in July.

When other people’s friends have gone away for the summer ... it certainly is gratifying and exciting to be cheerily greeted by everyone you know.

I don't do Christmas cards anymore, nor do most of my friends - but on reading this I'm a bit sorry

but not much

Would've, Should've, Could've

Beili Liu - The Mending Project 

I shouldn’t drink wine anymore – it hurts too much, but I was talking so much last night that I forgot about the not drinking thing and today my head has been full of sharp pointy things.

I should’ve spent today writing applications or at least scrubbed a floor or chased dust off the tv screen but I just stared at things until someone came to rescue me with a cup of tea.

There is a fox yelping outside my window, I've turned off the lights and am standing close to the window to try and see him but my breath fogs the pane. I’ve been holding my breath for ….

No Pets Please ...

I tell Lola about the dog woman

Lola says 

all animals are trouble even the little ones…

I got given two fish right but then I had to go away and so did my flatmates so I had to put the fish in a bag and put the fish tank on my back and carry them over the other side of town to my friend and I told her she had to use old water for the tank it has to be two days old or the tap water kills them but the water wasn’t old enough and the fish died and she was so sorry that when I came back she bought me two fish but one was bigger than the other and he bullied the little one and I called my mother who told me to separate them but while I was on the phone I watched the little one die he just went over on his side like that while I was watching …

Stuffed

 

our need for consolation is insatiable - Stig Dagerman

first I visited the woman-who-can't-fold-things, for her I folded a sofaload of clean clothing.

then I took a dog for a walk, both the owners work full time.

alfie lives in a kitchen that is ten thousand times too small for him in  a full-to-bursting flat made from the edge of a bigger house, furniture escaping from rooms and cats climbing out of windows  -  we had our walk and then I wrestled him back into his cell - I have become embroiled in a hostage situation.

image: set for Addams Family

Wild Life

I work by a window that overlooks the garden. Today it appears to be full of bits of plastic, I go out and inspect the remains of a fox party - a bag of bright blue hairy old bread brought in for a pillow fight. Notice that alliums I planted last year are coming up and some of them are going to be gigantic but there is a bald patch where I planted the bulbs which promised to grow into vivid blue pompoms - I’m blaming the squirrel.

Back in the house watched Maurice-the-needy-cat slinking around the bready plastic mess. Wish I had water pistol.

Wax Print

Callooh! Callay! the owners of the Val Doonican house returned and, finding it unburgled, I was rewarded with a length of African wax printed cotton - one I can eat should I get hungry.

Saag Paneer, Beer and Felt

Cooked up beet greens with spinach and put some ricotta on top, as I was eating it the man texted to tell me that he was eating saag paneer in India which is also spinach and sortofcheese.

Still grooming that old slab of grey felt . Some orange spots have appeared but the nails are rusting surprisingly slowly - how is it that when I don’t want a nail to rust it practically dissolves in front of my eyes?

Spilt beer on the living room rug which is made of red wool –  am I glad I didn’t get that hipster cowhide one instead.

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