Ball games

Four men from the hand care wash (one of those businesses that spring up in an empty petrol station or car lot) are playing football and volley ball becuase they have no customers. Its sunny. The weather is warm. They keep kicking the ball over the wall. One in particular is over-zealous and can't control his kicking strength enough. They have to balance on a crate and drag the ball off one of the out building's roofs with a broom. Next time its running round into the garden of the neighbouring block of flats. Its funny. Like kids.

Boundary

Today I have mostly been thinking about the boundary of my house. At the moment it s a rotting fence to the front and a big cloud-trimmed hedge between me and my neighbour. I keep thinking it would be good to trim it into some topiary shape but I'm not brave at the moment. Pops is going to buy me a brick wall for my birthday last year - still haven't found a brickie to do it. I'd like the bricks to match the house - they are mostly yellow London clay - some are pinky and some are slightly blackened like they've been burned. There's a two row detail of red brick running through the building. Pops has a metal gate in his cellar that I can have. I might paint it pink or something that metal gates aren't usually painted.

I'm also looking for metal numbers - large ones, preferably brass. I want to replace the ones that are up there already.

I've also got a lollypop trees that I'm desperate to cut down. My neighbour has a chainsaw - he's willing to help. I want to replace it with a pale pink flowering tree. I've got lots of plans, but no action yet.

Reminiscence
and a couple of jokes I was reminded of at work today


How many social workers does it take to change a lightbulb?
One, but it must want to change.


The huge yellow orb is hanging low in the spring sky. Drawn to it I look and then get spots before my eyes. Sun setting over Hackney. Tops of buildings caught in light of gold.

Tiger Lillies flow onto the ipod. Reminds me of different times. Hedonistic nights in the Kings Head back room, late nights, surrounded by people. Georgia flashing her tits. Never getting tired. Endlessly seeking adventure and good times.

Pass Rosemary Works, a ceramics studio across the street from a pub where the Tiger Lillies used to play, I have a brief dream of a different life. Having kept the artists studio I used to have, I spend my days making work. I wondered how many pots I could fit into one of those toploading kilns that Kerry used to have at Cockpit arts. A life of making. In the late, bright spring light its a thrilling alternative life thought.


How many goths does it take to change a lightbulb?
None - they'd rather sit in the dark.


Pink blossom tree. Beautiful. Frivolous. Candyfloss and cake icing. Debate again in my head whether I want a pink blossom or white outside my house. White is more tasteful but pink gives me greater joy and elation somehow.

Sun has dipped and the sky is left with a glorious arc of gold cloud. Sometimes I think I should be where I can see more sky - it uplifts me so. Two fidgeters have sat in front of me on the bus this evening. Ants in their pants. Their presence is disturbing my thoughts. Interesting how thoughts come back to the present when you get into a part of time you didn't know in the past. My neighbourhood holds no old memories for me. The memories are the present and the future.

Ceramics class

So, this term I've been making big things.





(That last one is not finished yet - its a monster - takes two people to move it - I want to grow waterlillies in it once its fired).

Of Vacation, Tiling the Kitchen and Kew Gardens

Two weeks off have just finished. Spent the time gardening (1st week, first couple of days), and tackling the DIY job I had been putting off for over 2 years - tiling the kitchen. Once started the tiling really wasn't as bad as I was anticipating. Did take me most of a week, especially after I had to repaint the kitchen (black grout is filthy stuff).

When I finally got through we spent a day at Kew to relax. I love spring. Its uplifting and hopeful and energetic.

Oddballs

Stinky elderly gentleman sat on me and then nudged up closer.

Lady with a crutch and a massive dog called Maxy sat on the seat nearest the doors. Maxy got very comfortable and lay down in the middle of the exit. He wasn't very obedient and wouldn't listen when she told him to move.

What looked like another unstinky old man got onto the bus. He was wearing the most amazing white cowboy shoe-boots with silve toecaps. A man standing by the doors recognised him. It was Dave Elvis, famous in his own world, and to the rest of the world as an eccentric X-Factor auditioner.

Last Day Before the Vacation

It didn't start well. I decided, just before setting off for work, that I would water the newly planted bamboo (it was looking a bit dry). When I was done I managed to hose myself in the face. The shock of it made me drop the hose and in my haste to turn it off at the tap I ran over it, forgetting that it would spray up my front, up my skirt. Soaked. Doh.

Naked in the afternoon

Waiting for a cab outside Homebase in Haringey, the afternoon sun emerges after a rain storm, the cold air warming gently. My eye is drawn to movement over an italian cafe - in the roof is a skylight, a naked japanese man (torso at least) is leaning out of the window talking to someone outside. Moving forward the party he is talking to comes into view - another naked torso leaning out of the neighbouring skylight. Finally they both hook the window arms onto the notches, their heads visible though the opening like the eyes of the building.

Short walk

Between meetings from St James Park to Southwark stations. Was enjoying the sunshine in the middle of the day - drew attention to the arty stuff around, and reminded me that spring was on the way. Spring in my step today.




Bought delicious smelling fat plum tomatoes in Borough Market on the way home.

The Wrong Carriage

I stood one carriage down from my normal spot. Train pulled in and opened its doors. Only on stepping in did I realise that two whole lengths of seats wer crammed with excitable seven year olds on a school trip. Two to a seat frequently. Adult supervisors struggling to make them all sit down, be calm and be quiet. Packed lunches and bags. Squabbles over who sits next to whom. Chatting. Laughing. Noses pressed up to the window hoods shielding the light to see into the tunnel. Finding amusement in the curved glass of the doors as if it were a hall of mirrors.

And then they got off. Phew. Calm restored.

CSI Walworth

COLD OPEN:
[EXT. VARIOUS Walworth Road and Elephant & Castle (STOCK) - NIGHT]
[EXT. Walworth Road COMMUNITY (STOCK) - NIGHT]
WHITE FLASH TO:
SCENE #01:
[EXT. Blockbusters Walworth Road - DAY]
(Camera opens on a Securico Van pulling up outside Blockbusters. The first officer gets out and gets into the back. Second officer walks round to the back of the van.)
(Camera pushes in slowly to the hatch at the back of the van.)
(Officer inside the van pushes the box of money into the hatch.)

(Suddenly, a man runs up behind the officer receiving the money box, grabs the box and runs off down the road.)
(The officer takes chase.)
CUE SOUND: (PRELAP) POLICE SIREN WAILING

HARD CUT TO:
END OF TEASER
ROLL TITLE CREDITS

SCENE #02:
[EXT. Blockbusters Walworth Road - DAY -- CONTINUOUS]
(Emergency tape surrounds the scene and 3 police officers guard Blockbusters and the Securico van.)

(CSInvestigator in a stripy shirt and purple rubber gloves dusts the hatch of the van for fingerprints.)
(People of Walworth stream past the van)

CUT TO:
Council workers cling to the window watching the Securico van as if taking a Diet Coke break...

Pancake Day

Couldn't be bothered to make any by the time I got home. Maybe I'll do it tomorrow instead - just to shirk tradition.

Shopping

I need:

• Lightbulb for cooker hood (although I have many in the lightbulb drawer, none of them is exactly right to fit and work in the cooker hood - I need a small screw with a slightly more pointy end than the ones I have)
• Starflower oil suppliments (hoping to get ones this time that are not the size of horse tablets)

Instead I bought an ipod nano to replace the one that suddenly stopped working.

Bigger picture

The things that are giving me the most pleasure at the moment are the details, little things. Watching the birds in the morning flying across the garden, and the two blue tits eating seeds out of a half coconut, blackbirds washing in the birdbath, next door's cat leaping up the fence to find his spot on the shed roof, 1st floor detailing on buildings on the bus journey to the tube, coffee and walnut cake, slightly warmer weather - not feling freezing waiting for the bus, comfort of sleeping in the middle of the bed...

The trouble with it is that when I can't see the bigger picture I can't switch off the brain as easily.

Home again

Sometimes my favourite thing is to get home, lock the door behind me and bask in the warmth behind the closed off windows away from the madness in the street. To get away from the pick pockets, the madness of shrieking girls thrown out of school, smelly people, the crush of the tube, the sounds, other people's conversations.

Snivel

Being disgusted by the sniffing symphonies of commuters. Clearly nobody travels with hankies any more (I think my dad may be the last person I know to always have a hankie with him - a real cloth one, folded just so, soft from use) and people's hands, feet and noses are cold in the freezing conditions. I sat between two men sniffing in slightly different rhythms this morning. I'm feeling its a citizenly gesture to carry a tissue at least to blow ones nose with rather than sniffing.

Late on the Snow News

I've been holed up at the Church Street Hotel in Camberwell in anticipation of our impending inspection (in order to be close to the venue rather than struggling in on the tube). As it turned out we were stuck in the hotel after the BIG SNOW fell (yes, those of you in Russia, Canada, North USA, Germany, Finland, and everywhere else that gets snow regularly, we know its confounding how pathetic we are!). I had failed to bring any appropriate footwear to the hotel with me. The inspection was postponed, there were no buses across London, we walked evenutally from the hotel to work (I had wedge platform shoes with cut out sides - I was embarrassed to be one of those women who struggle through the snow in stupid shoes, suprisingly they were quite grippy though) - about 10 of us made it in. Pretty though.

After work

Long day at work. On the bus at 9.45pm couldn't face going home and cooking. Dropped into Pizza Express instead. Table for one. Got my book out to while away the time between the order and arrival of the food. The waitress chatted about books. She suggested reading Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres, encouraging me to get through the first 2/3 chapters (boring bits of history apparently). She was studenty and excitable. Not sure if she just didn't want me to feel lonely. It was nice. She forgot to add my water (bottled) to the bill of £5.75, so I gave her a £2 tip. I hoped she didn't get into trouble with her boss for talking too much. A French woman was talking too loudly to her boyfriend. As the customers thinned out, the background hubbub died down, she became more instrusive.

I sat behind a man whose hair was purposefully greasy. It stank. When he got off I almost expected him to be a tramp but he wasn't - a respectable wool coat, nice jeans, sweater and shirt.

We can't call a tramp a tramp anymore in our PC work world (we need to be inclusive rather than judgemental and derogative). But in writing it down I wonder if it evokes the same imagery if we say homeless person. Homeless people makes me think of body shapes sleeping in doorways in damp sleeping bags on flattened cardboard boxes. Tramp seems to be more characterful. Or something.

A man comes out of the chicken shop and hands the plastic bag carrying his box of chicken and chips into the mouth of his black labrador. The labrador takes the bag obentiently, doesn't tuck into the box or anything, just holds it off the ground and jogs along side his owner. Eager to please, dogs are.

Journey Home

In the dark of the early evening in a bus winging its way northwards. The streets are bathed in the particular light pools that streetlamps provide. Away from the crowds of Oxford Street, past the eastern end where all the businesses are boarded up. Past the shops closing up for the evening, security staff guarding the doors as the last customer purchases are rung through the tills. Past the large darkened buildings on Euston Road - municiple Camden Council Buildings, closed offices. Occassionally a pub emitting yellowy light from windows, a couple of the clientele standing outside smoking. Into the bright shabbiness of Kings Cross (still the south side of Euston Road remains largely untouched by the regeneration) - all illuminated fast food joints.

An elderly man walks purposesfully, while keeping steadfastly to the shop-edge of the pavement. He holds his over-large suit jacket close around him. He has no trousers or socks though.

Crawling up Pentoville Road. Roadworks at the top of the hill hold us up. Trees are bare - upper branches in the dark above the streetlight.

Pigeon Man

On the tube, standing, crowded between people. He kept looking all around, persistently changing where his eyes were directed. Head back, nose forward, peeking out from almost closed eyelids. Couldn't decide whether he was really tired or wearing varifocals and only looking out of the bottom third of his glasses.