Cat Lady

Walking past Choumert Road carpark first thing. Sunshine. Leaves on the trees turning golden. At the far side of the carpark an old woman in an electric mobility tricycle is being followed by 3 cats, tails up, excited. As she moved closer to the wall of the houses that back onto the carpark she was joined by another, and another and another cat. Fluffy, tabbies, black and white ones, older, younger. 10 cats. And another and another. Trailed by 20 cats, all their tails held up expectantly. Milling around waiting for the bags to open and the food to come out. Never seen this before despite working near here for 5 years.

Iphone

For some time I have been coveting the iphone, looking on green-eyed (in the jealous sense rather than the literal sense, although I am green eyed) as people on other network providers were able to get one. Kept hassling Tmobile for when they were going to start offering it. Eventually 2 months ago they did give me one. It has been everything I hoped it would be. Arrived in the neatest packaging I have ever had for a mobile phone. I have overcome the urge to constantly be playing with it - all the apps you can get, lovely things that are so useful (scan tool, crop photos) and addictive (angry bird, doodlejump). I have been caught up with an Instagram - which is like flickr but on the phone, constantly updateable. So I find I have neglected the blog. Perhaps this is the next stage that blogging will take, no longer a computer thing instead a mobile thing. Perhaps it has already made that leap.

Ceramics Class



New technique tried - leather hard clay is painted with shellac patterns, wet sponge is wiped over the clay body which removes layers of clay around the shellac design leaving a raised pattern.

Spider

The low autumn sunshine glints across the silky strands of a monster cobweb that is partially formed between the ceiling, shelving and wall. It will, when competed, include several webs interlocked on a plane. Clearly not a lot of dusting gets done here in the office, and the things stacked on the shelves are seldom in demand.

Sunday morning

The smell of fox is strong in the morning. Transported from a city street to a country woodland edging a field. Autumn is in the air - damp earth, yellowed leaves litter the pavement, mist hazy. Trees which started late this spring are having a patchy fall - one side yellow and brown already the other still holding dark green. In the garden a few late summer blooms have been resurrected with the autumn warmth after heavy rain and mingle with autumn colour. Grass is growing fast after spending so long brown and dormant in parched july/august. One winter flowering crocus has emerged under the japanese cherry.

Watching

There's a crowd of oglers by the alley on the side of the post office. A community police officer is saying "there's nothing to see here" attempting to shoo them away as you would a flock of angry geese. Murmmerings in the crowd. If that were you and me we'd be dead! One elderly west Indian to another. A large bottle of evian has splattered on the floor. I follow the gaze up to the roof line. The officer was right, there was nothing to see.

Fog Sandwich

Its been a fog sandwich of a day. Way into work on the train the tops of tallest buildings were obscured by the low hanging cloud and the air had that moist grey feeling of fog (even though the visibility wasn't bad). Middle of the day the sun managed to brighten up the sky, warmth came through. Seemed very much an end of summer day, rather than the autumnal we have started to become accustomed to. By home time the cloud has come down again and in the distance the tall buildings have disappeared once again into the sky.

Late Night, Church Street

3 men lurch along church street. The night is warm for October. Pavements have dried since the last rain.
...he said he was cleaning a strip club...
A strip club?
Yeah, up west, I said, so you're mopping up cum in a strip club!!
Raucus man-laughing.
They pass four tall men standing on the corner having a discussion. Two of them are wearing trilby hats.
Someone shakes a sheet out over their balcony and creeps back into the shadows.
Outside abney road cemetery a man sits on a bench to drink a vanilla smoothy and smoke a joint.
Another man passes me by and says Hi Leoni. I look blank. Hi Leoni, he tries again, does it burn down there? I have no answer. He's got wild hair, no coat and seems confused. I'm not Leoni, I finally say. He passes on by continuing up the road going in and out of pools of street light.

Light

Remarkable light at sunset - one side of the sky had gold shimmmering out from under the clouds, the other thickening black clouds darker than any seen recently. Amazed to get home before any rain fell.

Gloomy Sunday

Some days, when you open the curtains and discover it is grey and threatening more rain after a night of heavy rain, it seems the right thing to do to curl back under the duvet and wait for the next morning of reasonable brightness before getting up.

But, alas, this is seldom an option. The feeling has infected my disposition all day however - overly aware of the oddballs and theives in the neighbourhood. Beggars. Pickpocket on the bus. Drunks. Odd man I've seen before who must live in my neighbourhood who sits too close pressing his leg inappropriately, smelling of beer. It was a relief to get back home and close the door against the outside. And then it rained some more.








Fine and Dandy

He's got a strangely high voice chatting on his mobile phone. Wearing a tan leather suit and shoes. He's telling the caller how he's been out walking about in the pissing rain looking for a feisty woman. When he turns round he also has a big moustache, heavy gold chains and medallion rings on every finger.

Barcelona

Our original trip was postponed in May due to BA strikes and the volcanic ash. We spent a September weekend there instead. We walked through the city looking at the Gaudi buildings, popping into art galleries (Picasso, Dali, Miro and Tapies). We ate tapas and ice-creams. We visited the Mies Van Der Rohe pavillion building and sat in the park for some sunshine relief. Nice sisterly trip.






I wasn't sure whether I loved the Gaudi or not - its so over exposed and we see so many images of it that it wasn't as suprising as I was expecting. Its been there for a long time however, and it has to be seen in context of when it was built. At the time it must have been really different (architect friend discussed with me at ceramics class on Thursday). Parts of it are stunning.

Aunty Bettys

Out with ceramics class for the first class of the term - back to the regular haunt (pizza place off Blackstock Road with awnings for sitting outside).

Can't remember why but I was relaying a description of my Aunty Betty (actually not an aunty, a second cousin but its a snappier title aunty - anything for a good story) - a farmers wife who always wore stilletto shoes clattering around the farmyard, a yellow twinset and black conicle bra (large pointy tits) and could butter a whole loaf of sliced white in 20 seconds while making sandwiches for the farmhands.

Two other people (out of 6) had aunty bettys, which seems quite a high proportion.

One of these alternative Aunty Bettys lived over a petrol station, ate jujubes, spent a lot of time longingly looking at the picture of her husband who died from a war-related illness having been gassed in the trenches. She caught something from kissing her budgie and died.

The other alternative Aunty Betty would sit cross legged on the floor peeling potatoes. She believed that the kitchen table was the real repository of the adventures of the household. Her architect niece designed a house for her in which the kitchen had to be exactly the same as it was in the previous house so said kitchen table could be exactly as it had always been.

Ladies who lunch

Australian ladies lunching. One is on the phone. "Matthew has to wear glasses all the time, in class as well....can you make sure he is going that....yah....thanks."
Comes off the phone. Yes, she says to her companion, we took him to the opticians this week - he has something progressive, he won't go blind, but its from wearing hard contact lenses. Its impacted on his cornea - its shaped like this [I refrain from looking round to see the shape]. Have you ever had botox?
Yes I love it - I'm getting some more for my birthday.
Where did you have it done? [I assumed she meant which clinic, her friend thought differently]
I get it here, here, here, here and here. Its great.
When did you last have it done?
About a year ago so there is nothing in there now...
But it looks great!
Thankfully they pick up their stuff and leave us in peace with our lunches. I'd like to say flounce off to the shops but I had my back to them and couldn't tell.

Tamara Drewe

This was a very funny film - I laughed out loud. Perfectly drawn bored rural teenagers up to no good (I only have the reports from two rural teenage friends to go by but they seem to get up to a lot more mischief than I ever did living in the city - sex in fields, sniffing inappropriate substances, stealing stuff, climbing over fences to get into festivals) - perfect angst - all those hormones surging through the pubescent bodies - in LOVE with pop idols. The idea of a writers retreat (nightmare - certain it is like this - lots of talk about my work, self obsessed and idolising those already published). Keeps true to the feel of the Posy Simmonds strip it came from.

Ally Pally

Bus drives over the hill and passes in front of the palace. The changing London skyline looms out of the mist - new tower at elephant and castle with it's weird horn shape and satellite dishes, the city with it's ever growing height and docklands. Wonder how long before these three areas join up into a manhattanesque horizon. St Pauls finally overshadowed. Off the bus the air always smells of damp under growth. The garden centre is empty now that the autumn is arriving.

Eating

mcdonalds in Bruce Grove has their new orange and olive green design with a huge plate glass window. Three youths sit in the bucket leatherette chairs inside the window. One of them is picking his nose.

Autumn

So the month has turned and we slide into the autumn  months. Not ready for it yet. Blooms are reaching their ends. Plants are leggy with dying flowers. The earlier crushed ferms have put out some new shoots since the rains hit and the grass is green once again. A tomato plant has grown out of an air hole of the compost bin but I don't think it will have enough time to actually make tomatoes. Red onions have been harvested and plaited up. Ongoing battle with the squirrel to keep the bulbs from last year in the pot he likes to dig up.

Walking the dog

Its a sunny morning on the way to work, turning into Choumert Road there are two people with buggies walking towards me on the pathway. First is a man with his daughter. He is talking to her, pointing stuff out. The second is a grandma with the rainhood over the buggy. As I pass I realise that the granny actually has two yorkshire terriers in her buggy - its a specially designed dog buggy by the look of it. Doesn't it sort of defeat the purpose of walking the dog if they are riding?

Ernesto Neto

Hankering after seeing something good - went to Hayward to see Ernesto  Neto. Large interactive installation on the top floors of the gallery. Stretched transparent coloured fabric with what looks like knicker elastic edges, forming caverns, spaces and tunnels. Tubes of fabric (like a pair of old stockings) linking different skins, sometimes providing a hole to see through, or reach through, sometimes looking like a stalegtite.Watching other people inside the structures, ghostly wandering. Towers to stand on and view from a different angle, height. Feels like being inside a body, enveloped. Really worth a look.





And don't forget your swimming togs and a towel if you want to go in the heated roof top pool.

London River

Sometimes you have to see a film even though the reviews don't rave exactly. But it is filmed in a tight triangle of London with which I am very familiar. The hotel that the French father stays in is at the top of my Dad's street, as is Haringey train station that they all keep coming out of. The girl's flat is over a butchers on Blackstock road next to the college where I study ceramics. They walk about Finsbury Park, visit North Middlesex Hospital (I am fairly certain), ride a 259 past Manor House, have a cab ride through Crouch End, walk along the New River canal. Its very green, strangely. Not at all alien, although it might be to other people. My main distraction, from knowing the landscape too well, was my inability to suspend my disbelief because the routes were not right. Nobody would arrive to London get out at Haringey and then try to find a flat on Blackstock Road (same train, get off at Finsbury Park), you wouldn't walk to Blackstock road from Burgoyne by going over the railway - quicker to cut across the park. Anyway, it was a worthy film, quietly told. Tragic.