look to the sky

essential bush-slaying equipment
Originally uploaded by etcher67.

I have been rushing around for the last couple of days feeling invincible. I've painted the shed, attatched several bits of trellis, dug a new bed, wrestled with the bindweed of horror and single-handedly removed a 7ft shrub from one of my borders. Last night I went dancing and double-span all evening. Someone asked me if I was on casters.

Today I hurt all over. WonderWoman has left the building. Owwwww.

she said I hate to be pedantic but it drives me nearly frantic when I see that unromantic syncophantic lot of sluts forever wriggling their guts

You are disappointed by what I write here?

Pick up your bag and walk, my friend. No-one, and I mean NO ONE gets to tell me what or how I write here. Here I may write my shopping list, accounts of my gardening, the events of my past and future life, what I ate for dinner or jokes for my friends. I can choose to think about what I am writing, drunkenly blurt out half-hidden secrets, comment idly upon the weather or request parts for my ailing car.

The only censor is me.
The only arbiter of taste is me.
The only quality control is mine.
The only editor is me.

Me, me, mine. Not yours, not his, not hers, not any other bugger's. MINE.

tuppence a bag

Recently I have mainly been laughing at Pigeon blog, (the diary of a London pigeon named Brian), and it has had an unanticipated affect on me. Every time I see a pigeon I think 'There's Brian'.

I realise that this is relatively harmless if slightly daft; but things are starting to get worse. Yesterday I was driving along past Plumstead Common and I noticed a whole load of Brian's mates standing on a hillock of grass, all looking in the same direction. There were no other pigeons, just the ones all standing on this slope looking upwards. Now, a normal person might conclude that as it was at the time raining sideways, then the pigeons had found shelter in the lee of the slope and were facing their pointy bits into the wind to keep sort of vaguely dry-ish. Me, I thought to myself 'Ooh, look! Pigeon rally!', and contemplated stopping to take a picture to send to Brian.

Then I remembered that I was driving and slammed on my brakes just in time to miss the pretty blue Mazda 6 something that was indicating left in front of me. In the nick of time. I can see it now, on the insurace form - Reason for accident? 'Looking at pigeons'.

eat the stalks: they'll put hairs on your chest

I am thinking of applying for a crazy internet stalker. All the cool guys have one - why shouldn't I? I could do with some obsessive email telling me that I write exactly the words that thier dog is transmitting telepathically. I'd appreciate the attention, and the site could do with the traffic too. (Currently most of my traffic comes from Canada - Hello Canada.)

So, if you're at a loose end, perhaps slightly delusional - why not apply? I can offer the following benefits:

1) I will read all your emails and possibly forward them to my friends.
2) I may reply to your emails, though admittedly I will probably become Too Cool once I have you.
3) Given the limited nature of the traffic on this site, you will get a high ratio of comments.
4) In other words: you can dominate my box.
5) I may be able to introduce you to other crazy stalker-types from other blogs.

Looking at the above it all looks so good that I may have to stalk myself.

In other news: today I caught a colleague googling me. Thank FUCK my name isn't on this site anywhere. (Though...maybe she'd like to stalk me?)

glass

glass
Originally uploaded by etcher67.

I am tired and disgruntled. I feel unsettled. Last night I dreamt that I was burgled and when I awoke the dream was so real that I half expected everything to be gone when I got downstairs.

This post has no ending.

the fourth, the fifth: the minor fall, the major lift

After a week or so of anticipating the date, yesterday I forgot all about it; nursed my hangover and later went dancing.

I've been planning a 'things I have learnt in the past year' post for a while, but really I don't feel like doing that right now. Instead I'm going relish the thought of not having to do another year of firsts.

That's got to be good news.

Blues in the Night

bluesinthenight1
Originally uploaded by Cheerful One.

He sits in his room and listens to the blues, watching the smoke rise in a curl from the tip of his cigarette.

She lays curled up: hugging the far edge of the bed, staring through the darkness at the pattern on the curtains which she bought but no longer likes; surrounded by emptiness, hollowed out inside by the wishing and wanting that she knows is pointless but is unable to resist.

Alone and empty, lost and betrayed, longing for someone to reach across and make contact.


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count me in

After a discussion with Vaughan, I tried automatic writing. The theory is that one counts backwards from 100 whilst writing. Automatically. Sounds straightforward. Isn't.

What I have mainly discovered (apart from the fact that no words will come out of my pen) is that I can't get past 96 without going wrong. 100, 99, 98, 97, 96, 94 - every time. I have no idea what my brain holds against the number 95, but below 94 it's anybody's guess what number will come out and in what order. Crossing the tens is a near impossibility and I am just as likely to jump down ten numbers as I am to start counting upward. I am familiar with this dysfunction, as I have spent years inwardly wincing whilst the special needs register end of my classes struggled with the very same problem. Admittedly they were only trying to count backwards and I was trying to do something else at the same time, but I am roughly 30 years older than them and feel that by now the concept ought to have bedded in, really.

I have for years blamed a poor conmprehensive education for my non-academic state, but am now beginning to wonder whether the rot might have set in earlier: whilst I was wearing a-line pinafore dresses with tights, hanging my bowl haircut upside-down in playgrounds and singing about the 'Alley-Alley-Oh', for instance.

glamourpuss

In the absence of very much to say i'll post slightly ranty emails, I think:

'It could be worse, you could be trying to find something to wear to accompany a friend to a lunch to celebrate an award she's won for watercolour painting....without knowing if it's posh or not, and with the added complication of having lost so much weight that the only summer clothes you have that don't fall down are at least three years old and distinctly scruffy (not to mention unfashionable).

PLUS in a desperte attempt to look vaguely feminine you could have made the rash decision to wear heels, in the full knowledge that by about 1.30 you won't actually be able to walk.

/rant'

As it happens, the glamorous lunch turned out to be a brown paper bag containing a tuna mayonnaise sandwich, an apple and a Kit-Kat. The celebration turned out to be an awards ceremony with blokes sitting about in fur-trimmed capes and a speaker who eulogised about drawing (never a bad thing).

As well as this, the heels were strangely comfortable.

Further proof that one ought never to expect the expected. I do still desperately need some new clothes, though.

all things must pass

There are too many anniversaries at the moment. It's unnerving. Nostalgia and regret keep rearing up and slapping me, and I find myself dissolving at minor triggers. Pictures of trees. 15 year old memories of weeding. Songs I never really liked. In addition anything even remotely romantic on the TV has me sobbing all over my dinner. Not ideal. Did I tell someone the other day that I had my head back above the water? How often this statement disproves itself: I ought to give up making it.

In the middle of all this I act super-functional - change the house insurance, my broadband provider, plant window boxes, hoover, cook, move plants in the garden. There's a battle for supremacy out there between the snails and the bindweed, and it's neck and neck, a little like my incremental recovery. Two steps forward, one-and-a-half back. I am impatient. Let it be over now.

Here is something I didn't draw, though I rather wish I had. Reproduced entirely without permission (sorry Graham).

fry and barnet

1) sunshine and mangoes in the park
2) days off so that the place of work can be a polling station
3) the number 43 bus
4) not having to tell stories about myself in sign language
5) chilled white wine

leave it to the birds and the bees

My purse went missing at the Hammersmith Palais on Sunday night/Monday morning - one of those things you try very hard to chalk up to experience ('it could have been my car keys, my phone, so much worse and I was never in any dancger blah bla bla') whilst kicking yourself repeatedly in the shins for being such a dope and leaving it un-hidden. Or for dropping it on the stairs; whichever I actually did. Whatever, it's a pain in the arse and my clever economy of only going to the evening party has been totally buggered by the loss of the cash.

In the meantime I watch my bank account like a hawk to see whether some slimy arse is ordering shiny gadgets on Amazon. It's a very sobering experience watching money drain out of my bank account, and one I generally avoid at all costs.

I may have to sell my body.

birds singing in the sycamore tree

Of course it was a dream...*shakes head*.

the muse

I watched him as he crossed the room towards me. Tall, pale, blonde, dressed in a grey sleeveless t-shirt and dark jeans. I was standing examining a paint palette that had about 50 identical small blue paint pans and one tiny yellow one, wondering whether landscape painting really was for me, if there was to be no red at all.

He picked up his palette and turned to speak. Stammered between gulping breaths that he found it too hard to speak to me; that he couldn’t breathe properly when I was around. I considered asking him how he was ever going to manage to kiss me, but decided we could find a way around that.

It wasn’t until I was following him out of the room that I realised he was beautiful.

humdrum

I have been bribed by Colin to promote his new blog. Here it is: Humdrum.

Colin approached Andre, Vaughan and myself in a cafe near Covent Garden and offered us money to help him become famous in blogland. Being a bit skint, we agreed.

Later on I plan to sell him a nice wobbly bridge I've got going cheap.