6 March 2011

It's only been a few months. What of it? I've been a rather busy bee, that's all... Welcome to the new year, belatedly.

It's funny the kinds of thoughts that spark your desire share a post. For me, this time, it was pickled eggs. I've been thinking about them for a few days. Perhaps I saw some on the tele. They used to be a staple at pubs and now they've practically vanished. I've never had a pickled egg. I have tried a one thousand year old egg at a little place called Leung's Legend in China Town. It's a great restaurant - not because of its decaying eggs - but because they do an obscenely large stuffed crab full of chilli and garlic. They also give you a large cracking device to demolish it with.

I'm going to buy some pickled eggs. Have you tried them?

I've been the most ridiculous tourist since I last blogged. Everywhere I've been, I've taken all the same photos that everyone else has in their albums and bought all the same things that those oversized women on group tours have bought. Take Istanbul for example. I now have a lantern, a set of hand-painted bowls and some multi-coloured woven fabric in traditional designs. Ludicrously unoriginal. The photo above is a case-in-point. I took it on the Bosphorus as we pulled up to Asia in the ferry. I thought it was a good example of the descriptions of dilapidated houses from my Orhan Pamuk readings... until I looked around me and realised that everyone was taking a picture of the same thing...

In Hungary, we sang David Bowie in the Labyrinth...

In New York, I bought myself an "I heart NY" t-shirt...

I think that I had better stay in London for a while. Before I turn into some sort of cardboard cut-out. A lemming. Perhaps without the trademark cliff-diving. Having said that, sitting on the couch on a Sunday, up against the radiator with laptop in hand, isn't particularly original. Mildly warming at least - it's miserably cold outside. In fact, I'm wearing two scarves inside. One of these scarves is possum fur and Penny left it to me after she'd finished with it in New York. She reasoned that she'll never see that kind of cold again and she was concerned that I was warm enough in the London winter. Too thoughtful. She quietly left it in the hotel room, as she took off for the airport, and I happened upon it whilst packing myself up.

Like foxes, one shouldn't feel too sorry for possums, because they're extraordinarily warm.

I've been possum shooting before.

(It's quite odd to write a sentence like that).

I was staying at a friend's farm. I must have been about thirteen. There was a pig that you had to beat back with a stick if you wanted to cross its field. It was eaten that year for Christmas dinner. Not only did they take me on a possum shoot but they also took me on a turkey shoot. Why shoot the turkeys? I couldn't tell you. Perhaps they were rife. Population control. I guess that all experience is good experience. It all sounds more intrepid than my recent travels, doesn't it?

So, you see, you haven't been missing anything. Life is less than wild. Less wild than a lemming's.

I'm afraid that the little guys don't dive off cliffs or rain down from the sky though, in truth.

7 November 2010

I was told a desperately funny story the other day. It was Stephen in fact. We have these little chats at the appropriate times. You'd think it would be hard to orchestrate, with the thirteen hour time difference, but it's quite an adroit exercise.

I said to him, "I haven't told you about the fox". He said to me, "I haven't told you about the moth..."

We were discussing fish, actually. Too many animals, I know. Keep up though. And he'd arrived at a little barbecue, to which he'd brought some freshly caught and smoked fish, and was strumming away at the guitar, whilst his friend with the nice voice sung along, with an intimate little crowd amongst a wider group of barbecuees. All at once, instead of the sonorous tones of his friend's voice, it was a moth he heard and it bumbled straight into his ear!

Now, I can just imagine it - Stephen has long arms, imagine a monkey, and when they flail, they do so quite madly. I can just picture it now. When he told me the story, I laughed and thought, surely that's it - the moth flew in and then out and that's the end of that. No, no. It was a two day saga of moth in ear antics. How did he know it was a moth? There were apparently some quite telling clues, for example, the sound. Imagine that frantic flutter of dusty wings. Like a helicopter in a bubble perhaps? He toyed with the idea that it was a mosquito but discounted it on account of the level of a hum. Bug-in-ear connoisseur? Probably not. Probably just common sense.

Someone kindly suggested that they vacuum it out. Another rather sweet suggestion was to put his ear next to a light and it would be drawn out.

I like that.

In the end, one helpful person drowned it with a bottle of expired ear drops. But, the ex-moth was still in his ear. He wandered around with the little corpse in his head for another day! It was causing him considerable distress as he was having trouble hearing people.

On Monday morning, he took a detour to the doctor on his way to work and told the GP of his troubles. The GP wiped his hands of it and sent him to an ear specialist. The ear specialist had trouble believing his story but agreed in the end to suction it - like they would do for glue-ear or old men with excessive wax production. And, oh my stars, what pops out but that fated little moth - much to the horror of the specialist who kept repeating, "I can't believe it, I just can't believe it..."

He kept the moth. And the doctor's certificate.

How to you claim this back on medical insurance? Or would they tell you to claim it back on the accident compensation scheme?

In other news...

Life has been ticking along well enough for the most part. I've been to a number of seasonal events - dressing up as a cat, as I have done every year since I was thirteen, for Halloween and then playing with some fireworks (two sparklers to be precise). I finally took that day off from work on Friday and with every intention of using it wisely - I had two naps, read two books and did my accounting.

I went to a very interesting evening at the Shoreditch Church. What an amazing space! So cavernous. I recommend that you pop your head in if you're out that way. It was the premier of an independent film named for "Dirty Old Town". And who should be singing that same tune for us? Why, it was MacGowan himself! He looks well! I take that to mean that there's hope for us yet so keep heart.

I wore my fox fur scarf out last night. Ha! You'll rue the day, you dirty little beast.

One of the barristers at Chambers told me that she'd started jogging. Apparently I'd inspired her one night at the pub when I was lauding its benefits. I can't remember the conversation myself, but barristers do tend to ply you with more wine than they would think to consume themselves. She lives in the countryside and it's not foxes but deer that obstruct her path. I'm not sure whether they are as ferocious but perhaps they are a cause for concern to the jogger. I can't see her parading around in a deer hide on account of them. Not like this dastardly avenger, yours truly. Goodness, though, it's a warm little scarf. Next time you see a little fox darting around forlornly on a cold night, don't, on any account, feel sorry for it - they're snug as a bug under there.

This was the animal edition (bar the Pogues). I'll bring the human interest element next time.

16 October 2010

It's Saturday today and I'm heading into the office. Oh, the dedication! It's been like this for a while now... Me, the office, very little else. I'm not too sore about it, most of the time. But it can make me rather dull.

Perhaps, I did do something a little out of the ordinary. For example, on Thursday, I was wandering along Euston Road, with every intent to go to work. I had on my little, silk, grey shirt that I picked up at the second hand store, coupled with a black woollen skirt and then some boots. It's been cold recently, so I pulled out my heavy grey coat and to add a bit of colour to it, I wrapped by bright purple, woolly scarf around my neck. I never did have much of a sense for fashion. I'd love to employ someone to dress me chicly.

And just as I rounded the corner, at St Pancras International, I turned from my route - surprising myself - and strode up to the ticket booth requesting a round trip ticket to Paris for the day. And I went. And I saw some Rodin and ate some foie gras and sat in the jardin des tuileries watching the tourists and the pickpockets. And then I got back on the train and was in London in time for the ten o'clock evening news. It was quite a lonely little trip but it was nice, I think, on account of the pointless spontaneity.

I'm listening to Belle and Sebastian and waiting for the washing machine to finish its cycle so that I can hang up my whites before I leave for the office. I've laid out all my little chores on the bed so that I can tackle them over the weekend. I do this every weekend and it seems I always face the same chores, since I never actually get them done. My guitar is lying there, sans one string. The mail for the previous tenants and the landlord waits for redirection and I have some local elections to vote in.

Far cry from a surprise Parisian day trip. I can transport myself with my Balzac though. Perhaps he's the reason why Paris is on my mind.

Those of you who saw me in London on Thursday head down in a pile of paperwork or sneaking up to the Council cafe for some greasy spoon - I assure you, it was my doppelganger. Her resemblance to me is uncanny. I'm afraid if we find ourselves in the same place, at the same time, I'll spontaneously combust! Isn't that the science behind the phenomenon?

11 October 2010

Today is the 11th of October.

Yes, I know that you can see that from my heading.

Did you know that I was chased by a fox? Well, I've told some of you - and you laughed. It was no laughing matter during that instant when I was determining whether she was going to lunge at me. She seemed quite fierce. I was out for my run at the time and I hate to run faster than a light jog. I had to run like the clappers though, because she was swift and she growled and I let out a little yelp as I quickened my pace.

Can you imagine me heaving along down Camden Road at 6am being chased by a fox? It's slapstick in the extreme.

In other misfortunes, I fell over into the road on Friday evening after a good wining with Sandra and I scrapped my knees off. It was truly unfortunate, because it was amongst the height of traffic and in front of a car that had stopped to let me cross. I had to wave him on, because it was going to take me sometime to pick myself up again.

It seems that my clumsy side is back in business. Let's hope it continues. It's the only matter which inspires me to turn to this blog and relay some of my happenings and thoughts lately.

Thoughts. It's October. It's unseasonably warm. My social calendar is perfectly empty until Christmas. And so, I thought I might book myself on a flight to Budapest, avoiding the toxic sludge of course. "Toxic sludge" - what a phrase. Who on earth coined it and why did it stick? Could it have been called anything else?

And quietly, down here at the end (so soon? yes, I must get into bed with book and tea), by way of explanation, I've had guests to entertain recently and they've taken my attention away from you.

Forgive me and wish me well on the roads.

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.

14 August 2010

I like a good Saturday morning blogathon. I put on some good Saturday morning, preparing for the weekend music, like Passion Pit, and write away. Actually, this may turn out to be a short one because I'm just about to pick up the paint brushes again. It's a rainy day outside, which I think will make the paint already on the canvass rather more moist and easier to work with.

I've been duly chastised for not updating my blog enough. I promise I'll try harder.

I popped to the theatre this week to see Jeff Goldblum in The Prisoner of Second Avenue. It's a sweet, querky little script. Why does it remind me of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?? It's much tamer. And it ends on an up-note. I shrug. Perhaps he's a fan of Albee.

After the theatre, we made our way to that fantastic little cellar bar under the Embankment tube. Gordon's? I think that's the name. Whilst my associate was off at the bar, an odd American man with a large smile came up to me and produced a handkerchief from thin air.
"Would you like to see another one?" I nodded. He then made the handkerchief disappear and sat down to show me a card trick. Mine was the seven of hearts. He lay the pack against the salt shaker and my card, all of its own accord, raised itself from the pack. I was more than tickled at this display.

He shook my hand and was off before my associate returned. Was it a dream? It was terribly surreal. I love a good magician.

Yesterday, I booked my flights to New York. I'm joining Penny and Dianne for Christmas and New Years in the Big Apple. I've just flicked through my Lonely Planet which I bought for that fateful trip to Coachella, and I'm starting to get excited. New York makes me think of Patti Smith and the MoMA and the Statten Island ferry. I want to eat a bagel and bring back an I heart NY t-shirt. It's nice to be a tourist.

But that is the future and too far away. In the present, I've just finished tarting up my toenails in readiness for the cocktail party at my boss' house tonight up in Crouch End. The weather is frightful, but so long as my hair stays straight, it will be great fun. This is an excuse to put on that dress that I reserve for the races and weddings... I'm not sure that I'm happy attending horse races. It doesn't sit too well with my conscience. What do you think?

When I went to Ascot last year, one of the horses had a nasty fall. I didn't place a bet. In my style, I knocked over half a bottle of rather expensive champagne. It was particularly fraught.

Weddings on the other hand. My favourite kind of event. What with the dancing and the drinking. Did I mention the dancing? I love dancing. And then there's the love. It's all so nice. I want to go to more weddings. I went to one in Winchester with Jon last year and I pulled out the dress. I must have been the first one up on the dance floor. I was certainly the last one.

I can't see any weddings on the horizon at present.

A man propositioned me this morning outside the supermarket. It's nice to feel desirable, but this was the Big Issue seller. Go on, laugh away. I spent the walk home wondering what would happen if I'd agreed to go out for coffee with him. Well, certainly I'd be buying. What could he do? Use his morning's takings? What a thought.

I'm teasing! Of course I wouldn't go on a coffee date with the Big Issue man who ostensibly wants me to be his. He says as much every Saturday morning. Gasp! I will buy his magazine though. I didn't quite have the change today, so another shopper helped top me up with the difference and I walked away with a magazine that I didn't want and has been caste atop my bed to join the mail which I'll be recycling. Production and demand - I hate to perpetuate it.

I've just finished another Hesse. Have you read Hesse? This was Rosshalde. What a depressing book. I know Steppenwolf can have such an effect that you might want to lie in a warm bath with a razor, but this takes the cake. Oh, I know. Stop protesting. It's all allegorical. The book, that is. No one is drawing a bath.

I haven't had a bath in eons. But with our plumbing, I do believe that it's out of the question.

9 August 2010

I took a little tour around the Olympic sight this weekend. Nicholas signed us up to be taken about the place to see the developments and hear a little of the history and the future plans and these kinds of things. It's looking great and the plans to be look truly magnificent. I would recommend that everyone takes the time to do it. And how nice is it to be out and about on a Saturday morning in a new part of the city.

I've been down that way before. When I first arrived in London we were seriously considering taking a nice house in Bow which is very much up and coming now but back then was a bit of a fright. In the end we decided that the walk to the tube was a little too far and it was through a lot of estate parks which were mildly unsavoury. Why then did we choose White City which posed the same problems? It can be hard to get the work/house balance right when first settling in a new city. You need to know that you have the employment to fund the rent and that you can commute to work easily and so on. I did not get it right. But it was on account of my deference. I am actually quite a deferential soul, although you might jump to exclaim that I'm not. In this decision, I was at least.

Our house was a half hour commute across London to get to the train station which took me out to Chelmsford. The whole journey was pushing two hours each way. Oh my stars, I look back and wonder how on earth I managed it. And to travel so far to get to Chelmsford of all places. Did you know what Mr Dickens said of Chelmsford? "If any one were to ask me what in my opinion was the dullest and most stupid spot on the face of the Earth, I should decidedly say Chelmsford." Well, I might agree with him. If you ever find yourself there, I urge you to get straight back onto the train.

Having said that, I remember the lovely butcher there at the markets who let me try all the different types of ham that I might order in readiness for our hotchpotch Christmas that year where we cobbled together a family out of very little and drank champagne for breakfast and ate Chelmsford ham. It was good ham. I remember my colleagues. Korah was on some fantastic diet where she was allowed to drink this powdered muck three times a day. She did lose the weight. I wonder if she's kept it off. John remonstrated when I said summer takes place in December in New Zealand. "You mean winter!" he cried. "No, no, I'm quite sure that is the way the seasons work on the other side of the equator, John."

"Oh, yes." Then a pause for thought. "Oh, yes of course."

It's hard to consider a world outside Essex.

So, whilst out in the Pudding Mill area, we took the train one stop to Stratford. It'll be such a monstrosity with the new Westfield mall. They had designs for it back when I used to get stuck there because the train would terminate early for engineering works or suicides... I never left the station.

But one must leave the station, of course! Saturday morning in Stratford is a thing of charm and vibrancy. Walking through that mall with myriad forms of Poundland-type shops and market stalls spilling through the centre selling everything from bedsheets to whelks - rather unwholesome looking whelks, mind... yes, just too charming. We found a little greasy spoon down the way and popped in for some baked potato goodness.

Yesterday I made an apple pie with blueberries. How homely. And we chose the best kind of apple pie music to accompany it. Daddy always used to put on "dinner music" for our nightly family dinners when I was young. It was generally something from the Romantics... a little Debussy. Sometimes a bit of Schumann. Apple pie called for some Johnny Cash couples with Creedence Clearwater followed by some Gram Parsons. Is that what you'd choose? Add some vanilla ice-cream into the mix and you've got yourself a postcard.

I'm listening to Tom Waits. This is good blog music, I think. It reminds me that I haven't bought the strings for my guitar yet. Especially because he's playing Gin Soaked Boy right now. Incidentally, I'll also need one of those mechanisms that wind them on. I'm not too hot on guitar paraphernalia yet. Give me time. I'll be a rock and roll suicide - just you wait and see. Or a folk suicide.

It was a lonely, old day today without my work wife in the office. She did send me a few emails over the course of the day to remind me that she was thinking of me. She'd even left a banana on my desk. My colleagues tease us because we're quite inseparable. What do you expect when you throw us into an office alone together? Of course this engenders a special bond. They're all horribly jealous, I'm sure.

She's back tomorrow. A longer separation than that is quite unbearable.