sidle

There is a crab on the pavement, next to the bus stop. It is whole. Dead. About 8 inches wide, without its front claws, which are lying near to it. How did it get there? Did it walk ? Was it dropped by a passing seagull?

Poor crab.

random meetings

I was dragged into 'the out' on Saturday, having spent much of my week s[k]ulking on the sofa. We walked to Plumstead where we didn't get books at the library and did get semolina flour from the Indian supermarket. On the way back we wandered the scenic route, and circled St Nicholas' church, wondering at its strange mush of styles and brickwork. We must have been pointing and staring, because a gentleman walking past us stopped and said 'it's a very old church'.

We stood and chatted to him for about fifteen or twenty minutes. He told us all about the church: built in 960, narrowly missed and damaged by a V2 in 1945, and then moved on to the school behind us where he 'got my first caning'. We learned of the deep shelters just up the road where passengers from the tram station could shelter, the pubs that used to stand every 50 yards up Woolwich High Street which his wife had had to go and retrieve her dad from as a child, of how he made it to school on the day of the V2 bomb along with two other children, how he and his friends rode a fire engine to a fire in Bostall Woods that they had reported, and how they had built fires in the woods themselves to bake potatoes while they played. His final tale was of how he would freewheel his bike down the street we were standing on and bang into the green phone box at the end of the road to stop. 'You got to stop somehow, haven't you?'

Then he wished us well and we him, and we went our separate ways. What a nice bloke.

how to be invisible

I've been tagged. Thank heavens, I finally have something I put in this flipping empty update box. So that's what memes are for - for when you have the blog blanks.

I've never been tagged before. Honest. I'm never tagged. Tagless, that's me. I'm thrilled. Genuinely. I feel as though I've finally joined some sort of elite club. The club of persons popular enough to get tagged. I've made it! I'm a somebody at last! Hurray!

OK. I have to find the nearest book, turn to page 123, and .. Oh God, I've lost the will to go on.

Sorry.

(Maybe it was better when I was feeling quiet.)

colouring in

As I walk through Boots I ponder one of the make-up counters. I pick up something that I saw in a friend's bathroom yesterday and examine it, trying to decide whether I actually want it or if I'm just being sucked in by the packaging. It's the packaging, I decide. It gets me every time. Perhaps I should have become a graphic designer and spent 'all day designing perfume boxes' as my art teacher warned when I was 16. The contents of the packaging are brown eyeshadows in colours that I have already, and don't wear often because I think they look slightly peculiar with my neither-green-nor-blue eyes.

A lady appears; as if from nowhere. Can I help you?' she asks. 'No thank you' I say, dropping the box as though it has suddenly become hot. 'They're lovely aren't they?' she adds brightly. I nod non-commitally. They look like brown eyeshadow to me, and I have trouble with describing brown things as lovely, unless they are foodstuffs.

'Would you like to see how they work?' She asks. 'Would I?' I wonder. Well, I'm not doing anything else, and she seems keen. She sits me on a stool, and begins to remove my hastily applied green eyeliner. I worry that she is only going to do one eye and that I will spend the rest of the day walking around with one green eye and one brown. I do not want to look that foolish. Fortunately she removes the eyeliner from both eyes, only poking me in the eye once, and begins to apply the make-up. I watch her in the mirror, on the basis that she might know more about putting it on than me. I am an amateur. I have never quite got past the idea that make-up is worn by Other Women. When I go out wearing lots it feels as though I am someone else, although sometimes that is the whole point.

Once the eyeshadow is on it looks OK (though it still doesn't really go with my not-quite blue-nor-green eyes). I am quite impressed, and feel informed; especially on the subject of blending (use your fingers). Then she starts adding other stuff to my face. Foundation. High Beam Something-or-Other. Blusher. This is a step too far for me. She says she is 'adding some colour' to my face. 'I quite liked it the colour it was' I think silently, and try to edge off the stool. She shows me myself in the mirror. I am slightly yellow, and look like a slapper.

I smile politely and say thank you. 'Are you going to treat yourself?' she asks. 'Not right now' I say, and bolt for Superdrug where I buy make-up remover and scrub off the layer of yellowness. Later I go back past the counter and a different lady pounces. 'Have you come back to buy something?' she asks 'Your make-up looks lovely'. 'Not right now' I say, and run away to the relative safety of the hot water bottle section.