I am looking after a very sweet dog

he mainly looks like this - when I talk he looks like this with his head cocked

Stabby and Shooty

Where I'm staying there's a massive school a few metres up the road, I ask a couple who live nearby if it's any good

The man says

I think so ... but I hear it's a bit shooty - one of the dads went in there and pulled a gun a while back

woman says
... and  it's a bit stabby too, there was that argument between the mothers - one of them got her scissors out of her bag and stabbed the other one in the forehead

In the spare room

The duvet is naked and curled over the end of the bed

it is marbled with an unpleasant grey pattern

Doglady sees me looking at it

I know that looks bad but it's not mildew ... it's fire

??

the last person sleeping there set fire to herself

I answered one of the small ads

not the one that involved a dachshund with a jacuzzi and pool table in Cairo but one that involved a lady with a dog in London

I arrive at the House of Astonishing Things just before Doglady leaves for her holiday - the house is covered with lots of little notes for me but they are difficult to notice because of all the astonishing things that keep filling my eyes.

Her holiday outfit is a pink velour pant suit and she carries a tiny parachute silk holdall - she is holding out a big canvas tent-like thing

she makes a fanfare

TA DAAAHH!

and like the Great Splendido she swirls the heavy tent-thing onto her body and becomes enormous.

She pats the lumps that are all round her back and front and recites:

suncream
maps
shoes
sandals
hairbrush
deodrant
camera
reading glasses
sunglasses
books-my-god-they-shouldn't-complain-about people-who-take-books-on-holiday-do-they-want illiterate-clients?
guidebooks
dictionary

she is triumphant!

Here's a thing

The man has been in France with a lady who makes enormous dinners and keeps dozens of dogs and who first noticed the luminous earthworms 3 years ago. Thinking this to be interesting, she told some French scientists - boy did they laugh.

Madame you 'ave no penis - it is not possible that you make observations - go back to your kitchen
and drink less absynthe

The luminous-worm story was repeated among the scientists to illustrate the stupidity of women until it filtered through to someone who did go and visit the lady and the worms who then set about finding someone with a luminosity-filming camera ...

this is just the beginning of a story 

POSTSCRIPT

Sir David Attenborough was so excited by this and other intriguing bioluminescence stories that he agreed to present the Man's film which is called David Attenborough's Life that Glows in the UK and David Attenborough's  Light on Earth elsewhere

The programme started airing in May 2016  Here's a link to a site with a trailer

I've just read this

According to a study published Thursday in the journal Cell, scientists have developed a chemical treatment that turns lab mice transparent … It takes roughly two days to make a mouse’s organs transparent and one week more to make a mouse fully see-through.
—Newsweek

and then I read this

If you can't be bothered to click through I'll just give you the end bit

The transparent mice are part of a project that would make the entire human brain see-through.

The Man Is Filming Luminous French Worms

In France

it has to be done at night

He calls me and  complains that his French hosts make him eat an enormous French supper before he goes out to do this.

I'm still checking the small ads

this is today's favourite

Pet Sitter needed for our Dachshund for 10 Days in Cairo, Egypt - Pool Table and Jacuzzi Included!

Today at the Brain Doctor's

the doorbell stopped working again - I tore it from the wall and shouted at it but it was no use

a surprising number of patients who visit have only one good eye

today a new patient parked a few metres down the road then phoned to say she couldn't find the surgery. I said stay where you are I'll come and get you but she moved and we ended up chasing each other round the block. I completed the circuit to see her standing at the bell-less door waving at me

I'm in a book

Women in Clothes by Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, Leanne Shapton and 639 Others


I love it that in a book about clothes my contribution is about nudity

It was this kind of day today

jug: bastien aubry and dimitri broquard

Today there was a sunflower competition

at the top of the hill

Back in May, three seeds were delivered in an envelope to everyone in the neighbourhood with a note attached

THESE SEEDS HAVE BEEN DONATED BY THE LOCAL PLANT SHOP
ON 14TH SPETMBER THERE WILL BE A SUNFLOWER COMPETITION AT THE TOP OF THE HILL

THE PRIZE-WINNING CATEGORIES WILL BE AS FOLLOWS:

BRIGHTEST SUNFLOWER
BIGGEST SUNFLOWER
BEST-DRESSED SUNFLOWER
MOST MELANCHOLY SUNFLOWER

I sowed these and as many other sunflower seeds as I could find. This last month sunflowers have been blooming and fading and the house is now surrounded by crusty vegetable shower heads. Of the seeds that arrived through the letterbox two survived, on Friday they bloomed huge and tall and beautiful and leaning on each other for support - I didn't have the heart to chop the biggest away so I just took the thought of my flowers up the hill.

We brought food and there were sack races and racing toy cars and a tug o war. A flower in a purple wig won the best-dressed section and a man came round the corner pushing a wheelbarrow overflowing with a stalk the size of a lap-dancing pole, his two children carried a decaying flower which was bigger than their two heads combined

The Brain Doctor

operates from very low-rent premises, there is no technology, no card machine, no computer - the record-keeping system is made of paper and paper clips and pencils

he charges very little for his services and people pay as they go - cash or cheque only

today a patient had his treatment and then ran off without paying - he literally ran out of the door so I couldn't catch him

I picked up the piece of paper with his contact details on

and they are all made up

this has never happened before

The tooth has gone

It feels a bit drool-ey

have bought eye patch, parrot and stumpy leg

seems like I've been in dental dread

forever,

I can't remember when I wasn't eating painkillers.

I did go to see the dentist last Tuesday,  arriving early to sit among the magazines in that shrunken scared way of someone who knows something bad is going to happen.

after a long chat with the receptionist the dentist showed me into the surgery

the dentist then spent ten minutes telling me about her overloaded schedule - finally she looked in my mouth but she was out of time and said she'd have to do the work over her lunch break today.

Found some metres of this

in a charity shop - I think it's the dogs

and now I know how to finish decorating the bedroom - it involves a GOLD ceiling

it's going to be F.A.B

Tempting...

today someone posted a notice asking for live-in help around the house, no pay but you get to stay there for free ...


It needs much work and I have limited funds. My wife left me about 7 years ago, after 25 years of marriage. She liked being a housewife, but said she had no feelings for me. I disdain housework and I'm not much at remodeling ... I'm not too demanding- but I don't have pets ( except Goldfish ) , a fence, or allow them in the house. I also can't stand people smoking- anything. I've been a health nut for many years- but don't mind others eating what they want. I don't drink alcohol or take other drugs. I'm an easy going Christian gentleman.

My tooth still hurts

but we are in England so I have to wait until next Tuesday to see a dentist.

I receive weekly advice emails from Miranda July and this week she says ...

You know how Jason Bourne keeps on moving, no matter what? You should too. Bullet to the leg? Keep going. Don't think, just go.

good luck,
Miranda

Someone wanted me to feel better

and planted this dress for me to find on the Gloucester Road

My tooth

has been getting progressively wobblier all year

i've been in denial about this fact and now it's getting quite sore, begging me to let it go.

i am very sad about this



probably because I'm afraid that I'll end up looking like a pirate

I'm a fishperson

and I just thought that I really liked Kate Bush.

ONE DAY SHE CAME FOR SUPPER AND THIS PHOTOGRAPH WAS TAKEN !!

it was back in the '80s - in the days when I used to cook at popstar recording studios - those days when popstars traipsed in and out of my kitchen day in day out: that bloke off Police, a Beatle, Joni Mitchell, all of them - I'd just put supper on the table then sit down and eat with everyone like we all went to school together.

Until Katebush Day

A fan finds it hard to believe the object of fandom actually exists - or that's how it affected me - it was like having a unicorn in the house.

I was also dazzled by that whiterthanwhite top which stayed unblemished the entire day - and I know biscuits were involved in the recording studio. Look at me, I'm wearing a brown jumper because I know that if I wear anything smooth or light-coloured something stain-ey will jump on it within 5 seconds.

As you can see it was in the good old days of cigarettes - that's Kate's brother Paddy in the front - I'm trying really hard not to set his hair alight.

That doorbell

I got for the Brain Surgery - turns out it's haunted.

It seemed a little strange when I unwrapped it - the ring menu contained nothing you'd want to announce a visitor: electro drum 'n' bass, rickety piano, cartoon car parps, swanee whistle - everything except ding dong.

I settled on a tinny cascade called 'peel of bells' but even that had consequences, prompting one patient to recall a '60s sitcom that no-one had ever heard of. To boost our memories she re-enacted the opening sequence and would've done the entire first series but someone said 'oh - that show' and I was able to show her into the consulting room.

Today the haunted doorbell started randomly playing bits from it's repertoire of bizarre sounds.

Maybe it's the plug socket that's possessed

A tattooed man lives above the Brain Surgery

When he clomps up and down the stairs the surgery shakes and those of us in the waiting room hunch up a little like we're in an air raid shelter.

Tattoo Man doesn't just tread the stairs, he also bursts into the waiting room in his muscle-revealing vest and shorts. Sometimes he powers through to the store room to see if he left a drill there, sometimes he just stops by to tell an amusing traffic warden story or show a tear-inducing video clip.

the Brain Doctor is British so he has never directly let it be known that he is less than happy with this arrangement

Forever Bicycles

by Ai Weiwei


My forever bikes

Monday:  bike breaks, Shopman sucks teeth, tells me he probably can't repair it but will have a look

Tuesday: secondhand bike advertised on Gumtree, send email - no reply assume sold. Another secondhand bike advertised up the road, it's a clunker - I buy it for £40

Wednesday: I hate clunkerbike

Thursday: Gumtree bike responds 'I've been away - still for sale' I buy it for £50, this one is better but not as nice as my broken bike

Friday: Shopman calls to tell me he's fixed the broken bit of my bike for which he will charge £50 but I must note that the gears are nearly worn invisible and the brakes should be replaced

The man who sits on the pavement

outside the florist has stopped selling the 'Post-its' and paperclips that he nicks from the stationer a couple of doors down.

Instead he is weaving his beer cans into ashtrays so I bought one for a quid -  you might think that sounds cheap but the smoking's going to cost me a fortune

a regular visitor

to the Brain Surgery arrived today with scars on her arm

and I've got a bad leg,  I've not been line dancing for a fortnight

what happened?

I was running down the path with cake

???

 my niece visited and I forgot to give her cake -  so I ran after her with it and slipped

did you land on the cake?

no but my husband was so angry with it that he swore at it and kicked it right to the end of the path

When I started working

at the Brain Surgery the main things I didn't like there, were the colour (pork pie meat) and the smell in the waiting room (charity shop underwear).

Which is why I offered to decorate it last month. Also, the doorbell worked only intermittently causing patients to call to me through the letterbox to get let in.

After the decorating the doorbell didn't work at all but the smell had miraculously disappeared.

Today the Brain Doctor noticed that a thing that used to be plugged into the wall at skirting board level had disappeared - This apparently, was the doorbell buzzer (!!!)

I'd taken it for a stale room freshener and thrown it out. I've promised to buy a new one before Monday.

The only edible things

that grow in my garden are the things that just arrive - like blackberries which all got ripe yesterday just as the rain was at it's most torrential. Woken by the noise I had to run out in my swimsuit and wellingtons to pick them and stop them getting ruined.

The elderly couple

live in a house entirely painted and furnished with the colours of stewed fruit - it feels and smells exactly like my grandmother's house did in the '60s.

For two weeks the decorators have been busy on the top floor - today was the big reveal, it has been repainted exactly the same colours. I find this comforting.

I was in a part of Devon

and needed to get to another part of Devon. 

My local expert advised that a route through winding unsigned lanes would be the best idea

I set off and after a few bends realised that I was driving behind a large vehicle full of dogs - paws up against the rear window making faces at me.

Me and the travelling dog show went on for a few miles then the road widened, the dog-lorry pulled over and a large man got out and waved me down

you looking for something?

Tedburn St Mary - is this the way?

You're not looking for a terrier then?

No thank you

It's just that we saw one on the road back there and picked it up ... but then we dropped it off at the pub ... thought it might be yours

Body Cakes

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

here is the recipe

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

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

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

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

Recipes have flooded in

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

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

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

Lecsó for 25 persons

12 slices of Hungarian lard

6kg Hungarian yellow paprika

12 Hungarian strong paprika

8-10 Onion

10 garlic

30-40 pieces of tomato

1kg Hungarian sausage

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

Today at the Brain Surgery

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

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

I guess you have to watch out for  Leap Years

Yes and Easter's a bit problematic


Image: Mark Twain's Naming Journal

Today has been heavy and hot

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

Also

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

Take me to the Bridge

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

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

My memory obliterates

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

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

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

and I say

there are no-peas too

that's when I remember

This morning

hedghogs and lollipops by Ella

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

Also

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

I've just got a bike

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

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

Boy am I smug

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

Accumulations

turquoise is loneliness - wendy walgate

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

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

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

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

Spring Cleaning has crept into my heart

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

I turned on the machine and  forgot about it. 

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

The Brain Doctor is away next week

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

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

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

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

I like these colours - a big tin of each please

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



 

Rose and Apple

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

today's treat from The Flavour Thesaurus

I just bought this book

the flavour thesaurus by niki segnit

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

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

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

who knew?

When another bottle of milk went missing - part 2

My mother redoubled her efforts.

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

Nothing happened

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

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

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

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


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

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

(continued from previous post)

I've been visiting my parents

and discovered that a great mystery has been solved


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

until the milk started going missing ....


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

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

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

... to be continued

Got a letter from the FBI today

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

Attention:Beneficiary,

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

Gonna head into town and buy me some new celebration underpants

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

Giraffe Man visited the Brain Dctor yesterday

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

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

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

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

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




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

I had to give away my fairground horse

More words

from the Futility Closet today

my favourite is

quakebuttock 
n. a coward

A posse of black girls

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

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

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

Her friend who hadn't been running interrupted her

Charlene 

you are so fucking ...

 (long pause trying to place the right word)

sportated 

today

the hedge was wild and woolly

the baby birds are fledged

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

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

It smells animal-ish