Flower power

Downtown Manchester

View from my hotel room

May Day in our garden

The last day of April

The Whale: "I didn't do it on porpoise!"

Respect, my arse.

So I came back from a (most fantastic) holiday in Barcelona to find out that George Galloway is in Celebrity Big Brother. What an absolute fucking tosser. His constituency is one of the poorest, most socially troubled areas in the UK suffering severe housing and health problems. He should doing the job that he is being paid for as a public servant, not pissing about on a game show bitching about the other freaks in the Big Brother house. Please support the “Why isn’t he at work?” campaign and sign the petition here .

Christmas Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve

I dreamt that a terrorist space shuttle spun and crashed on Cheapside. I saw it from the back window of a London cab. I dreamt that one of my college friends, a tall mad person, left a note for one of my staff calling her a fat, slutty anti-semite.

I took toffees to the office and got in the way of a building surveyor. A Sikh with brown gunk in his moustache wished me a happy Christmas and asked for money for a charity. I was late and burpy from soup.

I saw a prawn cracker in the shape of a duck on the pavement. A grey condom with a knot in it. Coloured paperclips. Broken orange car indicator plastic. An empty pen ink cartridge. A small woman with thin, flat hair and big eyes and gold cog jewellery, walking, barely moving forward, staring at the ground, opening a packet of Silk Cut.

There’s always blood on the street outside the Pepper Pot pub.

Face ache

So yesterday I trod on the teeth of a garden rake. Now, of course, normally rake related accidents will always make me laugh but even with the high comedy of the handle whipping up and smashing me in the schnozz, it actually made me cry. My nose throbbed a lot, cartoon-style, for a long time, while I panicked that there would be bruising. When my nose wasn’t too sore to touch anymore, I realised it felt extra soft, as if it had been tenderised.

Yoga positions

Subfusc

Today I walked back to the place where last week I saw a man’s head get kicked in and my breath caught as I thought there was blood still on the municipal slabs where he had lain. But I was being stupid, of course. It’s rained many times since then. It was just congealing strawberry fromage frais trailing along to a squashed Munch Bunch carton. I sat by the lily pond and watched someone too old and too young to be feeding ducks throw pita bread at the waterfowl. The echoes of screams from the playground and squealing gulls made me stand up too quickly and stare into the black water for quiet. As I my eyes ached down at the cosy nothing, yellow green milfoil moved suddenly closer and it hurt my ears like I had just dropped a lift floor.

I wondered why I am always peering into dark lakes half hoping to see a body.

Neophyte

My nephew is convinced that wrestling is a real sport but refuses to believe in modern day pirates. I tried not to patronise him but after much frustrating debate, I felt I had no choice but to win the argument by using the line: “With respect, you are eight.”

Sleevetastic

Heheheheeee

Workbound

Two Red Bull and four Stella cans with carefully crushed midriffs hug the kerb in the residents car park on Underwood. A camper van with a German licence plate is parked next to a knotted black bin bag with mysteriously large, sharp-edged contents and a browning apple core nestling on top.

At the sharp corner of Deal Street and Hanbury, the bin men meet the street sweepers. Brooms and shovels clipped to the sides of their lorries pass within a whisker and I wonder if they are rivals.

A lad in a Royal Mail van shouts “’ello gorgeous!” out of his window and waves at me with a cheeky, fat grin. I know him from years ago so it doesn’t really count. I can’t remember his name.

There’s stencilled graffiti on the cream wall of the Bank of Islam “I love flat D”. The musical note or dream accommodation? I am staring at the billboard poster advertising the new iPod Nano trying to decide if the model was chosen for having a gigantic hand.

The lights inside the Post Office are on but the door’s locked, causing great consternation out front. A lopsided woman in pale blue, with telephone pole legs and a wheeled tartan shopping bag, is twittering incomprehensibly to an oval brickie wearing thin metal-framed glasses squashed to his forehead just above his eyebrows.

On Hooper Street, I hear someone sniff but can’t see another living soul.

The fire alarm is rattling at Magenta House. Hundreds of suits stand in clumps outside the building, smoking urgently and trying to work out if they are cold or not. The bells stop and a murmur of staff make their way back indoors with practised sullenness.

A short pink guy in bright stripes, draws hard on the last of his fag butt and gently throws it into the road with a long smooth movement of shoulder, never taking his eyes off the remnant of his smoke. He sighs deeply and turns around to climb, very slowly, the steps into his office.

Cusp by Robin Robertson

The child’s skip
still there in the walk,
a woman’s poise in her slow
examination
of the brightly coloured globe, this
toy of the world.
Is there anything
More heartbreaking than hope?

The Bank Holiday

We went to the seaside.

Poem of the Week

The Heron by Paul Farley

One of the most begrudging avian take-offs
is the heron’s “fucking hell, alright, alright,
I’ll go to the garage for your cigarettes”
cranky departure, though once they’re up
their flight can be extravagant. I watched
one big spender climb the thermal staircase,
a calorific waterspout of frogs
and sticklebacks, the undercarriage down
and trailing. Seen from antiquity
you gain the Icarus things; seen from my childhood
that cursing man sets out for Superkings,
though the heron cares for neither as it struggles
into its wings then soars sunwards and throws
its huge overcoat across the earth.

Two weeks on...

More bombs in London.

More of London

I am so in love with this city right now. Some photos from Saturday…

London "post 7/7"

I have been very happy to see Londoners out on the streets in droves since Thursday’s bombings. Yesterday I took a few photos in our neighbourhood.

"A letter to the terrorists, from London"

Exactly.

WTF?

So yesterday a stranger came up to me and said, "Nice head".

Glastonbury

you have gotta love the British weather

Trying not to anthropomorphise

Jehesius!

In other animal news, Poodle caught a bird last night. His first. An ickle sparrow that was still twitching as “Murdering” Murphy rushed towards the garden door to the flat. I managed to shut it just in time but then spent a very uncomfortable hour as Poo toyed gleefully with his prey on the deck before disappearing with Tip. When they returned they were both licking their lips and paws and seemed a whole lot older and wilder than before.

38

It is my birthday on Saturday. This will be my 38th summer.

Stuff makes me happy.

My mostkin, my everythingness. Mum, TC, Minnie, Madge, Tip Little and Poodle Murphy. The fish. Tom Waits. The garden. Ben. Aary. Jack. My camera. Our new hall floor. Chalk pastels. Wearing black. Chinese with Jobi. Ray Winstone. White wine. Kodo drummers. Gemma. Kandinsky. Barbeques in Paddocks Lane. Galway. Jesse’s leopard. Mint jelly. Withnail and I. Short Cuts. The Cote d’Azur. Mark Brown. Jolie Holland. Tucson Zoo. Scars. Honeysuckle. Silver. Stained glass. Climbing Croagh Patrick. Fairy lights. Yellow. Geek Love. Art shops. Chillies. The Raindog Nation. Couscous. Ted. Dad’s mulled wine. Chagall. Jeff Buckley. Drinking Merlot in the kitchen with Ian and Dom. Solveig. Chanel sunglasses. Brick Lane. Velvet. Where the Wild Things Are. The Guardian. Thunder. Steve Buscemi. Picasso. Pinstripe. Poppy fields. The Sihn Lee. The Chimp. John’s Yorkshire Pudding Game. Walking Holly. Rocket. Our Tom Waits’ wall. Coffee. Shopping with Kitty. Bone Machine. Roath. Clean bedding. Hot chocolate. Cary Grant. Berlin. Louis de Bernieres. John Lurie. Hettie’s chicken. Flying. Gin and grapefruit juice. Phil’s mercury dustbin. The Morgan Arms. Hog & Andy. Dilbert. Manhattan. Mull. Rain. Whalerider. The Times Literary Supplement. Beer and postcards. Shaved heads. Portraits. La Wally. Walking the Malvern Hills. Tattoos. Dandelions. Football. Irish pubs. Tarka Dall. Spitalfields Market. Meeting Anders and Peter in the Tiergarten. Orange roses. Springsteen. Eddie Izzard. The Mediterranean. Tulips. Asparagus. Deadwood. Bats. Water. Birthday parties. Loving. Being loved. Laughing. Living.

Lunacy

It has been a difficult day after a difficult weekend. I am blaming the howling gales that have been relentlessly tearing down our street and, of course, the moon. Saturday and Sunday lurched from being fraught to fantastic to fractious and I feel rather wrung out. Matt probably does too, given that I began the day with a spaz about not being able to find Radio Four’s Today programme on our bedside radio. I am not keen on the idea that I am someone who cannot function in the morning without routine but I do get a bit twitchy if I can’t hear the soothing tones of “Auntie” first thing.

It turns out that the radio had not been maliciously tampered with. The dial had not been accidentally nudged. My beloved husband had not, of course, sabotaged my early morning listening. Moreover, he was not actually directly responsible for the 24 hour strike by 11,000 BBC journalists and technicians which resulted in the radical changes to programming and thus my numpty confusion.

I apologised when I realised what a feckless imbecile I had been but still it was not a good way to start the week.

M x O +Bh (H + R) x S

I am very sad to hear about Kylie
but slightly strangely cheered by the idea of this

Baishakhi Mela

Spent Sunday celebrating the Bengali New Year in our neighbourhood… took a few photos …

Tentless encampments

So, it has been a bit of a strange week.

Today, I overheard a scruffy man with too many teeth say to a woman dressed all in black velvet, “How was I to know it would be full of hair?”

Yesterday, in our decidedly urban garden, a smatter of leaves landed on my head. I looked up and was somewhat surprised by the undercarriage of a rusty grey squirrel.

On Sunday, instead of asking if I needed any help, the assistant manager in a shoe shop vacuumed around my feet. Her colleague tried, unsuccessfully, to find the other half of the sandals I wanted to buy. He called Hoover Girl over to the storage shelves to help search and she told him he was “a useless twat”.

On Saturday, I dreamt about hedgehogs and rain tanks and rooms without walls.

On Friday, I received a text message from Auschwitz.

On Thursday, I asked a group of job candidates to do a presentation about themselves, which included naming their favourite film. One lad had chosen the movie Seven and illustrated this on a flip chart by drawing a (crap) picture of a severed head in a box. I won’t be inviting him back for a second interview.

On Wednesday, I received a cheque from the solicitors dealing with my uncle’s estate. I thought I’d be thrilled to get this unexpected boost to my finances but I just felt sadder than ever. I have heard people claim this before - and never really fully understood it - but I can honestly say I would give back all the money in a heartbeat to spend just one more day with him.

Niece and nephews

We get drunk, by accident, on Saturday and stay up chatting in the kitchen of our tiny flat until the early hours. The next morning Jack, aged 8, asks why everyone was shouting all night about voting.

There’s masses of pink blossom in drifts all over the tarmac outside our building. Ben, aged 5, inspects the area and says, “It’s nice around here. Like a wedding.”

Aaryanna, aged 2, stands in the doorway with her little muddy coat on, hood up. She has a woollen scarecrow doll under her arm and is ready to leave. She watches her brothers walk away, to go home to a different town, to their different Mum and starts to cry, “I miss my boys.”

Downtown

Tonight the sandstone steeple of the nursery looks starched against the pale blue sky above Shadwell. A flat up and down ironing board of a man with a tonsure and tassels of coarse brown hair combed forward to his eyes and ears stands outside the old Mercury building, hands on hips, surveying the drug rehab centre opposite.

This is where the Battle of Cable Street was fought in 1936, when the good people of London’s East End pushed back the fascist march of Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts. “They shall not pass”.

Two silver cyclists, all angry helmet and Lycra, bump over a discarded shoe sole. A madman bobs his head by the Doner kebab sign and tries to direct the traffic. Plastic carrier bags are stuck to the pavement by patches of rain, reminding us that this is April, not California.

And here now canvassers for the ‘Respect’ party tell the Muslim electorate not to vote for local Member of Parliament Oona King, a black woman, because she is Jewish.

Ducks in a row

My head is being pounded and disturbed by the weird and the woeful. A man in Essex gets his nose bloodied by a frozen sausage thrown in through the window of his moving car. A pretty girl writes about being hung by a chain around her neck for 80 days of rape and torture by a Belgian paedophile. Punchable nuns. Graffiti on a wooden board in Leman Street: ‘Minty Burger’ makes me smile. Kittyhawks. A majestic fuck. Pope Schmope. Hardliner. German. I don’t care.

My heart is on a big wheel soaring up above the lights of the fair until I go over the rise again and sink slowly down into the dark of the greasy, clanging machinery.

There’s a little blue and yellow striped school tie with grubby neck elastic lying on its back in the gutter next to a broken plastic fork on Woodseer Street, near where a shiny man stopped me to find out if he was heading the right way to Brick Lane. I wanted to ask him how he got to here and where had he come from and why was he going there and when had he first thought that maybe he was lost.

Leaving work, full of muddle and grief, I heard birdsong on the staircase and I don’t know how when there are no windows and the concrete and bricks of the office are flanked by more concrete and bricks of more offices and roads thick with diesel and commuter commotion. But there it was. Tweeting and warbling. Filling out all the crushed space in my chest with primal joy and colouring the empty magnolia walls with paradise.

Aye aye

I want one of these ...

Hee

My Dad, on the subject of the marriage of Charles and Camilla:

"I don't think it'll last."

Airports

Our returning flight from Nice landed at Luton Airport at 11pm last Saturday night. We had a good laugh about the fact that it is called ‘London Luton Airport’. Don’t be fooled, folks! Luton is way beyond the M25. To make things worse, the plane flew right over central London, tantalising the passengers with the beautiful giant circuit board of landmarks and neon and countless bustling lives. And it kept on flying… away from the bright lights, away from the bridges and the sparkle of the Thames, away from the intricate sprawl of the suburbs and into the dark emptiness of unpopulation.

No one really wanted to be arriving back in the UK at that time of on a Saturday night. We ached to be home on the sofa with a glass of wine and a bunch of happy memories. But as Tom Waits so rightly says, “if it’s worth the going, it’s worth the ride” so I dug deep to find the patience to enjoy the final leg of the journey.

I was panicking a little bit about the retrieval of our bags. We had suffered a small delay by being in a long non-EU passport queue for immigration control, on account of Matt being a Johnny foreigner and all that. I snuck him through with me though (oh the irony of demanding priority attention for the man in the wheelchair, who was actually the only passenger able to queue whilst sitting down… I didn’t notice us getting any dirty looks but I bet there were some) and rushed to Carousel 2 which was heaving and grinding its way around its own bends endlessly. I waited for a while, staring at nothing, shifting from foot to foot, rather grubby, increasingly eager to get to bed.

There was a tannoy announcement to say that the luggage from the Malaga flight would now be coming out on Carousel 2 as well. Passengers from genteel Nice convulsed and shrank as the lumpen masses swarmed towards the conveyer belt.

A woman standing near me, who had – by definition – just returned from a foreign holiday (in the French fucking Riviera no less), who was obviously well-dressed, who was with friends and/or family, who was well-spoken (and presumably educated to a reasonable level), who looked healthy, who was clearly not starving or being bombed or tortured, this woman actually had the nerve to say out loud, “This must be what hell is like”.

I have said many, many such stupid tasteless offensive things in my middle class life but that did not stop me from despising her with every fibre of my hypocritical sleepy being.

I befriended the beleaguered father next to me. We had spotted him in the French departure lounge and joked about him being tranqued to obliviland in order to deal with the stresses and strains of having five rambunctious children. He and his wife appeared to be very indulgent parents putting up with all kinds of shenanigans from their brood. In person he was more pleasant than I had expected, although I did cringe inside when he encouraged one of his daughters – who looked about ten – to try to work out the speed at which the belt was moving so that she could calculate the distance it would travel in one rotation. It was nearly midnight, for fuck’s sake! As the time dragged on, it became clear to me that this poor guy was hanging on by a thread. Completely worn out, struggling to keep his wriggly family in one place, worried about leaving bags behind, concerned that his children were tired, as desperate to get home as the rest of us and all the while he was determined not to get grumpy. So, my heart went out to him when his little girl looked up at his wan, puffy face and said, “Daddy, what’s a world war?”

A dedication

Jez has a head shaped like an anvil. He combs his hair with a pork chop.

Jez is quite handsome and always dresses immaculately.

Jez tries to be cool and show off about carrying condoms but he muddles up his slang and calls them ‘jimmies’ instead of ‘johnnies’.

Jez once got whiplash when someone flicked a raisin at his forehead.

Jez recently explained away the strange fridge odour by telling the entire office that it was down to his ‘salami deodorant’.

Jez needs constant attention.

Jez can eat six inch long cream cakes in one mouthful.

Jez had an Uncle Pod and an Auntie Vim.

Jez sent me the only text I got on the day of my godfather’s funeral, saying that he hoped things would go as well as could be expected.

Jez shakes constantly. He blames the caffeine but is quietly terrified that he has Parkinson’s.

Jez doesn’t get drunk, he gets ‘sloshed’. He uses words like ‘twerp’ and reads first edition romantic literature in the noble savage tradition.

Jez fancies Sandra Bullock and listens to Boney M.

Jez went out with Dorothy a couple of times. On their first date, she announced in the pub that she didn’t want to drink her pint because she thought the bar staff were trying to poison her. Instead of dismissing her as being totally doolally, he offered to swap drinks and let her have his pint, which touched her beyond words.

Jez has mental health support needs that I am not qualified to work with. I think he may have Asperger’s Syndrome.

Jez’s Mum died when he was little. He makes jokes about it but misses her terribly everyday. His computer passwords are always variants of her name.

Nice

I spent fucking WEEKS trying to find a cheeky last minute deal holiday that guaranteed being suitable for Matt. It was a pain in the arse but that's another story [and one which has resulted in us deciding to launch a website for travellers in wheelchairs - more about that later.]

Planning the trip with our dear friend Jobi, we all agreed on some basic requirements:

Being able to have a drink outside without freezing
Being able to roll around without having to resort to cabs or public transport
Being somewhere photogenic

And Nice delivered all that and more by the shedload. What a gorgeous, surprising place it is. Full of art and energy and all the best things about France.

Some of my photos are here in the Cote d’Azur gallery.

Now that we are back, I am trying to get organised to write a bit more regularly. Apologies for all the big gaps, if there is anyone out there still visiting Thunderglades.

Damn my whorish highly-paid day job with its constant and unreasonable demands.

Balls

Tip Little and Poodle Murphy are at the vet’s today having their nadgers removed. I’m feeling rather traumatised about the whole thing (although, to be fair, probably not as traumatised as they are).

It was bad enough having four mental cats trotting around after me all morning, demanding food, which they weren’t allowed in advance of the operation. Then there was the anxiety over the very questionable sturdiness of the cat basket; there were parking dramas and payment problems - the vet, who sounds like Morgan Freeman, wanted the money up front but all the cashpoints were busted up. I had to traipse the length of the Bethnal Green Road. By the time I got the fat wodge of cash and made it back to the surgery, Tip and Poodle were shaking like little black velvet sacks of terrifiedness. When the vet said, “You won’t forget to pick them up, will you?” I nearly burst into tears. Yeah, like I won’t be worrying about them every minute all day.

I do feel a bit bad for the kitten boys that when we first all got in the car to drive up to there, the Tom Waits song that just happened to be playing was “I Know I’ve Been Changed”. I wonder how long it will be before I can listen to that again without thinking of cat castration…

Starlings swarming over Brighton Pier on Thursday evening 

Old Peculiar

So last night I was discussing some strategic management issues with my fabulous deputy, Kitty L’Amour.

A shadow fell over us and we looked up to see Jez, The Mighty R standing next to my desk, holding an open black folder and a pen.

“I’ve already started writing the ticket – it’s not my problem, love!”

Kitty and I stared at each other, confused and a little frightened. Just as I opened my mouth to ask what the fuck he was talking about, he continued (quite forcefully), “Just pay the fine and appeal later.”

Turns out he wanted to be a traffic warden for the day.

Matt 

Sunday's hill 

Brizzle

This week has been decidedly iffy. Cold, grey, soggy and with few bright spots. And I am not just talking about the weather. Last weekend was good though – hanging out with mates in Bristol.

We went to the zoo, where they have blue frogs the size of a teaspoon scoop. There were lions but some chavette was banging on the glass.

Her mate squawked, “What yer fuckin' doin’, Kels?”.
“Oim just tryin’ get ‘im a look at me!” shrieked Kels, manoeuvring her kid’s pushchair violently.

I thought I would be disappointed that there weren’t more of the larger animals but there was a wonderful time to be had looking at all the little creatures in Twilight World, the Insect House, the Reptile House, the Aviary, the Aquarium …

We arrived excitedly at the otter enclosure – firm faunal favourites with us all – but the cute little beasties were nowhere to be seen. Just as we were about to walk away, one scampered out with something white in its mouth. A second otter emerged, also carrying some white booty, which turned out to be rat. Our group watched in horror as the otters proceeded to tear the rodents limb from limb. They started by biting off the feet and then chewed their heads until the skin came away. Next came the evisceration. The dark red insides of the rats opened up and organs slipped out over dirty wet white fur onto the rocks. As we ogled, dumfounded at the brutality of the natural world, a family with small children approached the enclosure and the adults joined us in looking aghast. The kids of course pressed their faces to the glass and stared blankly, confirming - without question - my assertion that all youngsters these days are utterly desensitised to death and gore (due to the bifurcate evils of TV and video games, obviously).

I had the idea that otters only ate fish but the keeper told us they will take down a seagull, if it happens to stray into their pen on the scavenge.

All in all though, it was a lovely outing with some hilarious moments:
Gem: “Oh, oh! Look at those torpedo speedo things!
John: “Gemma! They’re PENGUINS!!”

And there were pockets of magic… like walking through tunnels underwater whilst the seals swam upside down above us; like miniscule toads kissing each other a dozen times; like the leaf-cutter ants making fungus farms; like the beetles that shone like Moorish jewels; like the Picasso fish; like the Postman Butterfly which feeds sometimes on the salty tears of alligators; like just being with best friends in the thin February sunshine, on a freezing cold day, laughing.

Tip Little 

I'm blaming the planets

So today is turning out to be a little bit weird. The pond and the bird baths had frozen over so I started the day feeling like some kind of farmer tending to the needs of my land, breaking up the ice, feeding all the animals, checking the water supply. There was a robin in the garden, first one I have seen in months. Rather a cliché that it showed up on a snow day, I thought. Everyone was wearing funny hats because of the weather, and walking gingerly.

At lunchtime I fell down the stairs. It was my own fault - I was writing something in my Moleskine and stepped down onto the landing about three stairs higher than the landing actually was. My fall was broken partly by the side of my face, which is now throbbing like a bastard, and my bosoms. I smashed into the handrail, twisted my ankle and produced a delicate snot bubble in my left nostril all in one ungainly swoop. Luckily, I managed to stop myself from crying with the pain and humiliation by thinking how amusing it must have looked on the CCTV cameras. But, on arrival at the ground floor, it was really no surprise to find that our ludicrously crap security guard Keith had missed the whole thing because he was rearranging the contents of the charity snack tray on the reception desk. Feeling decidedly shaky, I went for a walk by the canal and along Wapping Lane. As I came through the gate of the graveyard, a spooky woman leaning against a gigantic window in Gun Wharf waved at me as if we were old friends. There was almost a pile-up outside the office as a bus (the slinky kind that Matt so dislikes) careered down the wrong side of the road trying to get into the right turn lane. The oncoming cars screeched to a tyre-smoking halt and cacophonised while the bus driver indicated his contempt for the pint-sized vehicles in his path by doing spastic octopus impressions and cursing silently, or so it seemed from where I was rooted to the spot, horrified that - for once - I empathised with a BMW driver.

Somehow I got back to the office in one piece, where I now sit with bruised boobs and an aching jawbone. Everyone has gone to a party. There’s just the humming of the printers, the occasional siren from the Highway and the heavy pressing quiet of a room suddenly empty.

The Day Today

I got about 55 minutes sleep last night. Mice have reclaimed Admiral House. The weather is alternating between blizzard and blue skies. Matt shaved his head off. The kittens now have collars and name tags which they keep kick scratching. I got a letter about our modest charity donation to Tomas Tomas signed by Tom Waits (although possibly not in person). The Mighty R has some kind of diseased skin patch, which he keeps claiming is just where he has “itched” (sic) himself. The envelope containing the collection for Anatole’s leaving present has gone missing from Jez’s desk. The office is divided on whether or not he should be bollocked. I appear to be the only one defending him.

Pushing an elephant upstairs

From Private Eye’s “Dumb Britain” this week:

Steve Wright’s Big Quiz, Radio 2
Wright: How many days are there in five weeks?
Contestant: Don’t know.
Wright: Give it a guess.
Contestant: Sixty.

BBC Radio Devon
Presenter: Name the artist born in 1776 in East Bergholt, Suffolk whose paintings include The Hay Wain and Chain Pier, Brighton?
Contestant: Van Gogh.

The Weakest Link, BBC2
Anne Robinson: Mount Everest is in the autonomous Chinese region of Tibet and which other country?
Contestant: Nicaragua.

And from MoreFM, Christchurch, New Zealand
Presenter: What’s another name for Cosa Nostra?
Contestant: Ummmm…. Amnesty International?

And while I am at it… here are some choice picks from Pseuds Corner:

“I have no quarrel with Einstein.” Simon Jenkins, The Times

“These South African wines embody the spirit of reconciliation.” Roger Scruton, New Statesman

“Sideways is beautifully written, terrifically acted; it is paced and constructed with such understated mastery that it is a sort of miracle…. Audiences at the screenings where I have been present may have heard something like a fusillade of gunshots from the auditorium; it was the sound of my heart breaking into a thousand pieces.” Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

Lapis Lazuli

I dreamt about an armadillo and rattan and prune yoghurt
And a tanned, tattooed Tony Blackburn, in bed with a man.
Our garden was full of cheeky rats.

My head pounds, ringed with sweat
Cracked with dehydration.
I thought that my house had a sand bottom,
But apparently it is easier to make room in my heart
For the things I fear
Than for something that doesn’t even yet
Have a name.

We are coming ever closer.
My hectic splashes
Running off the edges
Over a beautiful, bright background of you.

Decidedly under the weather

My face is squeaking. Every time I breathe out it sounds like a door hinge in the upstairs flat needs to be oiled. My wheezechest burns with a hundred thousand needlepricks sewed drum tight into a bursting leather bag. The neighbours are out-shouting each other, an angry baby is bawling its head off and the sky is suddenly blue with candyfloss clouds bobbing sheepishly behind the chimneys. When I cough too hard I almost wet myself and my ears hurt. I am basically a bubbling head of snot and think it is best if I return to my bed with a bottle of Gee’s Linctus until it is wine o’clock.

Who fucking cares?

Heh.

Actually, the best laugh I have had out of this whole Charles and Camilla thing was listening to John Prescott on Radio 4 this morning. Ed Stourton asked him what he thought about the royal engagement and Prescott replied, “I think it’s a good thing – it means Charles will have less time for fox-hunting”.

In the neighbourhood

The blackbirds are building a nest in the ivy bush by our pond. Tip Little and Poodle Murphy sit on the windowsill, carefully watching all the activity, twitching and swishing their tails, shoulders up, ready to pounce, if only they could get through the glass. Minnie crouches at the foot of the ivy staring up but is soon spooked by the wind and waddles indoors.

A cruddy Tupperware box has been ditched with some old clothes on a chair by the bins. Inside is a half-eaten brown bread sandwich.

A group of middle-aged black women cackle infectiously and talk over each other on Underwood Road before heading in to work in the social services family centre.

An egg-sized growth protruding from the thin hair of a young man begs me to stare at it on the Commercial Road.

People have their hoods up, shoulders hunched into the wind, umbrellas out. The windows of the Codfather fish and chip shop have steamed up.

A lass checks her Hijab in the silver cracked windows of an old pub.

Two policemen patrol the streets on tall, beautiful chestnut mares. The men have luminous yellow jackets and flashing red lights on ankle bands. A gang of 15 or so Asian teenagers yell abuse and make noises to scare the horses. “TOSSERS”,“FUCKING CUNTS”, “WANKERS”. The police pretend to ignore them, muttering to each other to save face. Farther down the street someone opens their front door high up in the block of flats to shout “PIGS” before going back inside.

A sign in the barbershop window advertises the special price of £5.50 for something undisclosed. The 50 is written very, very small.

Outside the Post Office, a sleek Mercedes with blacked-out windows idles on double yellow lines.

A white-haired man coughs long and hard at the top of a tall ladder. His paint can wobbles.

A fat man leans against the park railings laughing into his mobile phone.

One of the local street drinkers hurries down Backchurch Lane. His straggly white beard is ginger-streaked with nicotine.

I walk past a short, stocky man who has worked on the markets in Whitechapel for 40 years, pushing carts and goods around for the stallholders. For as long as I can remember, he was always seen with his dog, a huge shaggy German shepherd. Now outside his council flat he wears a donkey jacket and a woolly hat. He is flustered and in a high pitched voice shouts at the ground where his pet used to be, “I keep not being able to find you! I don’t want to have to fucking worry about you”. He shakes and shuffles in tiny steps and is fighting back tears.

A Happy Anniversary

Four years ago to the day, I was cuddled up with Matt in the LAX Hilton spending our very first night ever together. I had known him for two months, in contact by email and then by phone, and we had seized the moment, deciding to have a holiday together before he was dragged off to prison.

I phoned my Mum from Heathrow (in one of those I-might-die-in-a-plane-crash-and-I-want-to-say-a-proper-Goodbye-and-I-love-you-just-in-case moments) and she was very outwardly calm, bless her. She asked me (casually), “So how well do you know this bloke you are going all the way to America to meet?” “Oh, we go back centuries”, I explained (casually), convinced that would reassure her.

In retrospect, I can hardly believe that I flew 6,000 miles to take a vacation in the desert with a strange man that I had met on the internet, but at the time it seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

I befriended a British actor during the flight, a warm, fascinating man called Tom Lockyer. He was rather charmed by my story of falling in love with Matt and before we each drifted off towards Passport Control in Los Angeles, he gave me a hug and wished me all the best. Back in London a few weeks later, I tracked Tom down through Spotlight and wrote to tell him that it had been a delight to talk with him and that everything had gone perfectly with Matt. He emailed me straight away and said that he had actually been in the arrivals area when I came through the gate. He had seen that very first moment when Matt spotted me, grinned and rolled towards me with a single red rose on his lap. Tom wrote: “I'm so happy and feel very privileged to have been there to witness such an amazingly romantic meeting. I wanted to cheer, but didn't!”

Of course, I only had eyes for my baby and hadn’t noticed Tom so it was a bit weird to find out afterwards that we had been observed but it made the surreal more real as well.

The holiday was magical in a million ways, 11 blissful days in Palm Springs, until I had to come home. I have no idea how I managed to make it down the walkway to the plane, knowing that it would be at least another two years until I could see my man again. And some days I still find it hard to believe that he is really here in London, in our flat, just a short walk or a phone call away and that he is the last thing I see before I sleep and the first thing I see in the morning and I can cuddle my beloved all night, every night.

Yesterday

We took a wander around Chinatown and I snapped a few photos...

There are even some pics of the ENO's Coliseum as mentioned in my previous post. It is all coming together!

History is just one fucking thing after another

I was slightly confused recently to spot some Alan Bennett CDs in the window of a local shop. The store is the Bengali equivalent of a 99p shop. I know this because underneath the elegant Bangla script on the painted sign across the shop front, it says in much smaller letters “99p shop”. Most of the merchandise seems to be household goods - cheap kitchen roll, stacks of scouring sponges, cut-price 2 litre bottles of pop which all look like they would glow in the dark. Anything purchased is handed to the customer in a blue carrier bag, which might as well have been made of wet stressed tissue paper. And the clientele are exactly as you would expect in such a store. Minging. So what the hell are they doing selling Alan Bennett CDs?

Bennett wrote up a very entertaining diary of his year in the Times Literary Supplement in January. Here are a couple of entries…

April 22nd
An absurd direction from the ENO management requesting all employees at the Coliseum to cease from calling each ‘darling’ and indeed from touching one another at all or using other terms of endearment.

News of this is gleefully received at the National Theatre where copies of the directive are given to everybody arriving at the stage door and announcements over the tannoy take on a husky intimacy. ‘Sweethearts. Could we have two of those delightful electricians to the stage of the Cottesloe. Hurry, hurry, hurry. A bientot.’

October 11th
Stephen Page (Faber) and Andrew Franklin (Profile Books) come round to take delivery of the manuscript of Untold Stories, a collection of diaries and other memoirs which they are about to publish jointly next September. It’s in a big box file with some of the stuff in manuscript and the rest as printed in the London Review of Books. Opening the box Andrew remarks that it’s a long time since he’s seen one of these, manuscripts nowadays generally coming in the form of a floppy disc. For my part I hope they don’t notice the smear of jam on the box, the odd grease spot and even the faint odour of milk, a consequence of the manuscript being put regularly in the fridge for safekeeping whenever we go away. I used to keep my manuscripts in boxes on the floor of the kitchen but about twenty years or so ago I had a burst boiler which flooded the kitchen and ruined half of them. I told Miss Shepherd, then living in her van, of this disaster. 'Oh dear,' she said mustering what she could in the way of fellow-feeling. 'What a waste of water.'

Me by my brother 

My Dad by my brother 

Nephew #1 by his Dad 

My brother's girlfriend by my brother 

Niece #1 by her Dad 

Nephew #2 by his Dad 

Stinky Face

My nephews arrived on Friday night behaving like incarnations of our hellkittens, but without the sleeping.

"You're gay!" shouted one to the other, as they tussled in a violent heap on the sofa. "Yeah, well you're a lesbian!" retorted Nephew #2. When pressed to explain himself, he informed us that a lesbian is "someone who loves someone else".

It was a great weekend. We went bowling and ate chocolate cake and listened to Max Boyce records and drew monsters and laughed a lot.

Charlie Romeo Alpha Papa

I feel like a twat using the NATO phonetic alphabet.

So I was intrigued when someone wrote into the Notes & Queries section in the Guardian in December and asked about the words we use to spell out names over the phone. The original questioner mentioned T for Tom, A for Apple and D for Dog (old RAF usage, I believe) and wondered if there is an official alphabet.

One reply came from a smartarse called Robert Bassett, London, SW12.
“If someone asks for the spelling of my name in this fashion, I always use the following system: R for Robert, O for obert, B for bert, E for ert, R for rt, T for t.”

(I don’t actually believe that he goes through this whole process because “rt” would be very hard to pronounce. But then maybe he is very good at rolling his rs.)

It was the second reply that tickled me though. From David Clarke, Morden, Surrey:

“What about those conversations when you need to go through the motions of appearing communicative – for example, calls to the Inland Revenue? My alternative phonetic alphabet includes C for csar, P for psychiatry and T for Tchaikovsky. The following prompt an interesting reaction: Aesop, Csar, Django, Eiderdown, Gnocchi (Gnome?), Hors d’oeuvres, Jalapeno (Jojoba?), Knocker (Kneel?), Llanelli, Mnemonic, Neil, Psychiatrist, Qatar, Syzygy, Tchaikovsky, Wringer (Whore?), Xylene, Zyster. But I’m struggling for B (Bdelloid?), F (Final? – see V), I (Iannic?), O (Oolite?), R?, U (Urchin?) and V (Vinyl). And what about Y?”

Complex mathematical formulae

Uh oh... and they didn't even take into account the fact that Celebrity Big Brother has ended!

Matt, this afternoon 

The Truman Brewery, this afternoon 

The Pickle, this afternoon 

Spitalfields, this afternoon  

Beauty and a beast

This is grim but this is fab.

Obloquy

So, last night, I was walking towards the Whitechapel Art Gallery clutching my copy of Word magazine. A beggar, sitting at a wooden bench outside the White Hart, asked me, “Spare a bit of change, love?”

I once read something about how honest, genuine homeless people do understand if you don’t want to or can’t afford to give them money but they do not want to be ignored. They hate feeling invisible. Generally, I don’t give money on the street as charities like Crisis urge the public not to but at the same time I do not want to be rude.

So I shook my head and said, in the nicest, sincerest way I could, “Sorry mate”.

To which the beggar replied, “Are you a lesbian?”

Insanity has 70 gates

I hadn’t left the flat for two weeks until last night and things had certainly changed in Whitechapel. The Q Bar, which used to be the Grave Maurice, frequented by dirty old men, was hosting a Lithuanian Dance Party! It looked rather frightening and sounded fucking horrible. I miss those dirty old men holding their warm dirty pints, in silence. I have had flu since New Year’s Eve and don’t seem to be able to shake it off. It has been hard to keep track of what day it is with the monotony of delirium and sweaty sleep at all the wrong times. I have been self-medicating with Floradix and a cough mixture called Buttercup. It sounds very benign except that its active ingredient is “squill”.

It is miserable having no energy whatsoever and yet being bored to tears from doing absolutely nothing for a fortnight. Thank Christ for Celebrity Big Brother. It puts me in mind of something Julie Burchill said about psychiatrists. Quoting NME’s Ian Penman, “ Shrinks are so called because they attempt to shrink the magnificent sewer of the human mind”. She went on: “They leave you as a sausage machine of bite-sized second hand opinions. You might not be sick any more but I bet you’re not interesting either.”

She also said that she met Tracey Emin and thought she was lovely until her cats started writing letters to Burchill’s cats, saying “My mum’s a bit tired today, how’s your mum feeling?” I might get Minnie and Madge to start writing to Redmond and Bianca. Although Minnie is too lazy. And too busy staring.

Hellcat #2 

Hellcat #1 

Boulderflies

Whilst my mid-life crisis rampages around, banging a discordrum and showing its arse to all and sundry, I find myself rather dazed by how much has changed over the last 12 months. Exactly a year ago, more or less to the minute as I write this, I was in Arizona sipping a toe-curlingly strong Margarita, moments after getting married to Matt. We had no idea whether he would even be able to come to London with me.

And then about a million things happened and now I am here wondering exactly what it all means. I feel like a train has been through my house. It is gone now but there is broken track and left luggage everywhere.

I turned the television on in the middle of a nature programme. The narrator said, “Every night this hummingbird almost dies.”

I am surprised you don’t see more people sitting in cars, crying.

Tidal

Numbed by the sheer fucking hell and carnage
All over the news, the dizzying swathes of
Devastation, the untold people missing dead.
A million tiny pockets of paradise swept away
Forever, islands shifted, lost and drowned.
The earth rocked on her axis, and whole worlds have collapsed.

I’m sitting quietly under a railway arch
Staring at soft wet brown stone
And feather-flecked netting
To keep the pigeons at bay.
It’s been raining in suburbia
But the locals are busy texting and
Don’t seem to care.

A grey train takes me into London
Past the backside of garden sheds and
Streets where people put their bins out,
Winter Poplars, white graffiti,
Towards the cranes and Tower Bridge.

There’s a pain in my gut
When I think of those big families
With their faces and their fights
And their grinning group photos,
Whilst I batter down with fists
On stone decisions I have made.

Long , slow tango

Nothing in this world makes sense. Apart from Sphenodon punctatus, last survivor of the reptilian order Rhynchocephalia. If only there were a woman like it – cold, efficient and brutal in love but also able to feed off small animals, inhabit the breeding burrows of certain small petrels and be in possession of a vestigial third eye. Zoologist M (51), possibly a little too close to his work. And his mother. Box no. 01/05

My Christmas Day TV schedule includes a pause in transmission at 3.52pm for me to cry into the sleeve of the cardigan I bought myself. Unless you want to meet up and have crazy post-turkey sex? No? No? Bloody sod you then. Man, 34. Box no. 01/09

[London Review of Books 6 January 2005 edition]

Taking the piste

This has been a strange week.

I discovered on Thursday that there is a gay porn film called “Shaving Ryan’s Privates”.

I discovered on Friday that although Bush is clearly an egregious buffoon and his malversation-ridden presidency is unforgivable, Fahrenheit 9/11 really wasn’t a very good film.

I discovered on Saturday that aborning is an actual word.

I discovered on Sunday that although I thought I was jaded, the Simpsons can still make me laugh a lot: Homer: “Good news, Marge! I’ve learnt how to walk naked on stilts!”

I discovered on Monday that people I actually know have bought this book and this book for their loved ones' Christmas stockings.

I discovered today that people in my office are weird. We just got this email: “A pair of Ski boot clips and Ski trousers have been found. Please contact Office Services on x23222 to claim.”

Say something clever then

Well, it is Monday and work is busy as all hell so it must be time for some more small ads from the London Review of Books....

‘I always begin the LRB at the personals. Then I drink. Then I weep. Then I move on to the articles. I drink some more. I weep some more. Then I hit the letters page. You can see where I am heading here? That’s right, it’s straight to the claims court and if these personal ads don’t get any better I’m going to sue each and every one of you. Depressed, anxious, alcoholic M (41) means business, so does his legal representation (M, 38, cha-cha enthusiast and M, 42, bit of chubster but cute to boot). Box no. 23/03’

‘Mimi, 64, WLTM man whose first name is composed entirely of Roman numeral letters. You must also have a degree in advanced mathematics and be very well-endowed. Box no. 23/10’

‘ “That’s soooo funny,” I said, and wedged his biscotti vertically in his over-confidant mouth. Edgy woman (my age is my business) promises to meet future courtiers in a public place with not so many potential weapons. Send photo for list of things you’re not allowed to mention to box no. 22/07’

‘These ads always seem too preoccupied with shoehorning in song lyrics. Not me, I’m the cat that won’t cop out when there’s danger all about. Complicated man (49) - no one understands me but my woman (that’s you, bad mother to 50 with big hair and bigger grits). Shut your mouth then write to box no. 22/06’

The Aftermath of the Office Party

Many of my colleagues woke up this morning bleary eyed and remorseful after a long night of substance abuse, ludicrous dancing, ill advised lunges and inept gropes.

I must be growing up. This is the least fucked I have ever felt after an office party. I don’t have a hangover. I am not remotely shaky. There are no parts of the evening missing. Nothing I wish that I hadn’t said. I am shameless, bright eyed and bushy tailed.

But I seem to be alone in that. The Mighty R has reheated his Pumblechook’s Supreme Coffee seven times in the extremely suspect office microwave but he is still too tremulous to finish it. He’s got “Big Hat, No Cattle” syndrome and verbal diarrhoea. Ponyboy is trying to convince him that everyone has a dormant ginger gene. People are slumped at their desks mortified by the memories creeping up on them as the events of last night get slowly pieced together. Kitty just got an email from a friend across town: “Got cunted at the jolly.”

Four years

My head hurts. I smashed it on the boot of my car on Saturday. There was blood, which scared me, frankly. But the real low point of the weekend was when I trod on one of Tip Little’s pintsize turds, in socks. Tip was so eager to rejoin his brother, with the aim of beating the living fucking daylights out of Poodle Murphy in his penguin suit, that he erupted from the cat litter box mid-poo, trailing miniscule dung in his wake. It all happened so fast that before I knew it, there was a perfect circle faecal feline squish on the hall floor, which is boarded not carpeted, thank goodness, and sock squelch.


It is four years since I first met Matt since I first got that fantastic floaty sinking never going back feeling since I fell into the well of terrifying high wire tremble walk finding faraway stranger crazy endless emails pictures phone calls stories secrets first meeting making promises heart giving four years since true love came crashing over my head since that moment we said out loud that we were everything to each other. That we were forever. I was living underwater until four years ago when I first saw his beautiful face wobble and shimmer with bright lights up there on the surface and I flew out gasping for air, into the sound of another incredible world.

A deficit of wonder

Our trip to the Centre for Reproductive Medicine at Barts was rather a let down. It turns out that making a baby is quite a long process. Who’d have thought? We were very nervous. So much so that we both managed to get our ages wrong when the doctor asked. I was pretty sure that I wasn’t 36 but it was hard to believe that I was actually 37. My bumbling confused Matt who knows for sure that we are always 9 years apart so he declared himself to be 45, before realising that we are both in fact a year older. The quack looked bemused but our fuckwittery didn’t seem to have an immediate bearing on whether we were deemed to be fit to raise kids or not so we blundered on. He was not the brightest spark I’ve ever met and kept asking how long we had been trying for a baby. “About 20 minutes” was the truth of the matter but he eventually put an entirely random “Two years” in his notes. An hour later we left feeling a tad violated (some things just shouldn’t ever have to be said out loud) with handfuls of chits for various stomach-churning tests.

I decided to take the bull by the horns and embark upon these at the earliest opportunity. Waiting for blood tests (for Rubella, Hepatitis and HIV) at the Royal London, I was seated next to a sweet little girl, early to mid teens, who was with her Dad. Like me, she was clutching the referral form for the tests and I noticed with some sadness that in the box headed “Reason for Investigation” her GP had scribbled “Depression”.

We have kittens. Tip Little and Poodle Murphy. We went to Worcester past burning fields and blue-bummed sheep, through Autumn mists and one-way villages to pick up two little black kitten boys. They were teeny and timid and sat on Matt’s lap all the way home. Poodle puked silently – a shiny clay-coloured regurgitation the size of his head – over Matt’s fleece, car sickness presumably, but we didn’t mind because they were so damn cute. I have since discovered that these kittens were actually spawned in the depths of hell and are determined not to rest until our flat has been completely destroyed. Minnie and Madge are nervous wrecks, afraid to sleep or eat or pee or poo. These big old tabby cats have no sanctuary from the trails of havoc and devastation wreaked by the tornado twins. Meanwhile, us lumbering humans look on speechless, at once enchanted and horrified, wondering where it is all going to end.

There are some photos of the little buggers here.


Tom Waits says: "This is what's wrong with the world. "Everything is explained now. We live in an age when you say casually to somebody 'What's the story on that?' and they can run to the computer and tell you within five seconds. That's fine, but sometimes I'd just as soon continue wondering. We have a deficit of wonder right now."