6 September 2010

Time flies when you're not blogging. I've had many bloggable thoughts, but without carrying around a notebook with me, they're lost in the ether.

I used to carry a journal around with me when I realised that I couldn't go on writing all my thoughts down on post-its. I've got a wonderful post-it collection. But, one day, the post-it musings just dried up. I've collected them into my intended magnum opus which is as yet, unfinished.

It hasn't been notably busy recently. But I did manage to get along to the Glyndbourne screening down at Somerset House. They were doing the Rake's Progress. Stravinsky is very "plink, plonk". A note up here, and a note down there, and then up again perhaps... But these were the times, weren't they? The set was a Hockney creation. Perhaps you'll be shocked to know that I don't enjoy Hockney. I see what he's doing, but it reminds me of something that one can too easily write an essay at art school about and there's little flare to it.

Do I mean flare? I'm not sure I do.

Strike that. I do mean flare. I even mean the X-factor.

No, now I think I mean beauty. Don't complain to me that beauty was never the point. Why do I think that Rothko is beautiful? Boy, isn't he though?

And, once again, I was able to sit back and let some Auden swim past me. He was responsible for the libretto. The rain also swum past me, but only a little. Only enough to make my hair go curly which I can't stand. Andy and I sat on a pile of blankets eating truffles and drinking some sort of fantastically awful chocolate-bar-inspired drink which we decided to relabel Yuck. It was all bad. So bad, that it swung right back round to good through that meeting of dimensions. It's hell like that, hanging out with Andy. Hell in the sense that it swings right back around to heaven. We always eat these terrible, indulgent items that should never have been produced in the first place - not in a well-functioning society.

Recently, we've managed to replace "road futon" with some new couches. "Road" in the sense that we found it on the road and "new" in the sense that they weren't in our lounge before - they were in Darren's. And house suddenly feels like home rather than student flat. Although, we still have Johnny Cash on the wall flipping us the bird and a postcard of "farmer cat" courtesy of Chloe. This cat is simply smashed into a pair of dungarees and looks like he's been fed wholly on Yuck drinks. It's a nice touch to the decor. Thank goodness for Chloe's "LOL Cats" phase.

So now you can come around and sit on a couch, rather than starting on a couch which slowly falls apart under you until you're half sprawling on the floor. Many of you learnt to just start on the floor from the start of the evening - it being the more comfortable choice in the end. No more!

We've been playing this awful game recently. I'd call it a drinking game, but it's only association with drinking seems to be that one is only inclined to play it when drinking and one continues to drink throughout its duration. And one suffers. Not from the drinking, but from the contortion. I'm sure you've played it. The game involves a cardboard box, generally of the variety that houses beer at the beginning of the night. You cannot touch the ground, except with the soles of your feet and you must pick up the box with your teeth before ripping off a piece and throwing it back to the floor in a defiant manner.

Well, by the time this piece of box is teensy, it's quite the struggle to bend in such a fashion that will enable you to pick it up with your teeth. And you bend and then sink and suddenly, your on the floor. I suffer the next day with terrible pulled muscles in my posterior which stems from a very strong conviction that I can still gracefully sink to the floor the way I did when I was a little ballerina. I can't and it's especially not graceful. All I can say is, thank goodness for this tights-phase that the fashion is going through. I ended up handing them out to all the girls one night so that they could up their game. And then I lost. Altruism is what it is.

It's not quite the Withnail and I drinking game, is it? Probably less dangerous but also less inspired.

There's a lovely exhibition at the British Library at the moment and I would encourage you to go. It is a collection of old maps gathered from all over depicting spoils and triumphs and journeys to make the world larger. There's an incredibly big atlas. We imagined what it would be like to pull that out on the streets in place of an A to Z. It's much larger than me. And perhaps you.

The exhibition will take a mere forty minutes and is free.

I'm unsure whether I've told you that I've started running again. It's been mildly disastrous. Last Tuesday morning, as the sun rose, I tripped over again on another of those uneven paving stones and flew across the sidewalk ripping my poor hand to pieces. Poor old hand. It's taking an age to recover. Last week I had to shower in a glove. It's very hard to wash my hair in such a state and showering became an emotional experience. Finally, at the weekend, I'd given up washing altogether - too much of a chore. Such a dirty little urchin with a seething wound which wouldn't heal. But it was back to the office today so I picked myself up, I even hit the pavements again, more carefully this time, washed myself off and I'm almost whole again. They say that you should always get back on the horse, but I resent this feeling that I have that I will inevitably end up on the pavement again hardly knowing how bad it shall be next time...

It's autumn now. Definitely autumn. This is fine. I like the feeling of winter coming although it turns me upside down a little because my mind still responds as if it's April. I shan't be buying a new coat this year and will have to make do with whatever is in the wardrobe. If only I had a kind benefactor who would buy me a coat. I insist on buying these silly Vogue magazines and seeing all the lovely fashions that other people will be wearing. How nice for them.

Back to autumn, and we are planning an outing to the beach, having not seen one in quite some time. We've settled on Margate of which I've heard good things. And what of the weather, really. An outing is an outing, whatever the weather. If we end up sheltering in a stale pub playing scrabble and watching the rain, it is the good intentions that will make the day. I think we'll take one of those exorbitantly priced trains that they run.

I'm in the middle of putting together a batch of blueberry muffins. They have buttermilk in them. I always think of Charlotte's Web when I'm confronted with buttermilk. The farmer's wife washed the pig in buttermilk and he came up so shiny and won the show. And then they didn't eat him. A fair is a veritable smorgasbord, my friend... but a pig, covered in lashings of buttermilk, is not.

I take my leave and return to the muffins.