Altab Ali Park

The bit of my desk that I look at the most.

Baishaki Mela

Brick Lane

Icecream Fence

Uptown Manchester

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