Monday's Life Class



Tough class - haven't been in an age and have gotten really rusty and we had to draw the model who just won't do anything interesting.

Before class I had a cup of tea in the Candid Cafe. A bohemian long narrow low ceiling'd affair. Under the huge painting of a nude a man lay across the lap of his companion rattling his keys discussing with her something that had challenged his thinking that day. Two women behind the parlour palm leaned together conspiratorially over a small table. The sun was going down, the light fading through the dirty windows. A brazilian and a man with a Bergerac smirk talk over coffee. The brazilian does most of the talking. And all the smoking. Bergerac is listening his crows feet creased from smiling. Wafts of conversations "...I passed out downstairs but she was fully clothed so I don't think anything happened...so why do you want to take the test?...I walk somewhere and I find a baths and I went in and have a turkish bath...I know it suits her very much. She's very good. Its great to draw, you know, the nude..."

Candid Arts Trust: open access sessions and more formal taught courses in both life drawing and painting. Behind Angel tube, Islington - first left down City Road. Contact: The Candid Arts Trust, 3 Torrens Street, London EC1V 1NQ, Tel: 020 7837 4237.

The Olympics

A sports event that even those who aren't particularly interested in sport watch. We've always been really into it. That and Wimbledon. I preferred it when the winter and summer olympics were in the same year though.

So far:

• I've been glad that the little american (Carly Patterson) won the individual gymnastics over the anorexic-looking russian (Sventlana Khorkina). Still doesn't quite feel like a sport when the competitors wear glitter in their hair and blue eyeshadow (just a little bit too come dancing). And there's something really unnatural about the bends in their little spines and jerky arm waving between tumbles on the floor.
• I've been in awe of the massive Phelps in the pool. And sorry the team GBR were such a bunch of whingey whiners. Appalled by Sharon Davis' interviewing technique (asking the Scot who had just failed to make the final if she was going to hang up her goggles and make babies from now on).
• I've watched the weird spectacle of the table-tennis doubles - minute studied serves and massive overblown gestural strokes. Bouncing around the tiny table full of pent up aggression.
• I've listened closely to the sweaty badminton and discovered there is no sound apart from the squeak of tennis shoes on plastic flooring.
• I've ogled the strutting pumped up peacocks that run in the men's 100 metres. Big Testosterone. Fluff themselves up. Stare down the straight. Flex unbelievably enormous thighs. [Even the women's race is the same - these women have better six packs than most men - bodies pared down to bone and muscle]. Massive burst of running. And at the end lots of standing around pounding their chests (with a bit of real men hugging thrown in - arms round, big slap on the back, no chest contact).
• I've caught the end of the rowing, the win (just) and the tears of joy. And laughed at the fact they are racing in the waters of Skinny Ass [Schinias].
• I've questioned whether some of the events actually are olympic sports - they may be nice to look at but are they really sport - I'm thinking sychronised swimming, rhythmic gymnastics, beach volleyball (and yes I do understand that its not really about the sport but about the bikinis and bronzed bodies of the lithe female players), to name a few. Perhaps the next introduction could be pole dancing (its difficult, has a degree of skill and keeps you fit, no reason why it couldn't be marked out of ten for execution and difficulty).

Signs of Love No.1
The Hickey

Loved by the school-aged teenagers who need a visible symbol of their 'dating' (much as the ring has become for the engagement of adults) that will last for approximately the same amount of time it takes for them to become bored with one another (two weeks perhaps).

On my travels this week I have seen two adult (late 20s, early 30s) men with hickies on their necks. Worn with pride, no attempt to cover them up. Nasty oval red bruises with yellow outsides, fading speckledly back to skin colour. Definite sign of damaged flesh.

So what is it about these men that their women folk (I'm making a massive assumption) seem to want to eat them alive? Is this a sign of passion, or a gross insecurity which requires them to mark their territory? Resurgence of vampirism?

I suggest a clove of garlic, cut in half, the open side rubbed on the neck. Protect yourselves before its too late.

Smears

Arriving at the doctor's in a torrential downpour, summer coat soaked through, sandals ruined and red hair dye running down the middle of my face (tis a flawed method of colouring that I use but its the only way to get it to be bright and striking enough), the horrible receptionist asked rhetorically, "are you wet?". I managed a no-eyes-smiling sneer in response.

I hate the doctors and it isn't really the doctors themselves its the receptionists. Fascist gossipy old cows the lot of them.

So anyway, during the smear test you normally grit your teeth and think of the cracks in the ceiling until its over. Yesterday the practice nurse (who I think is a little nutty) treated me like I'd never had one before and gave me a very detailed scenario to think about to help me present my cervix in an easily-reachable manner. It went like this:

Imagine you step into a lift and find a gorgeous guy in there but suddenly realise you need to fart (I'm telling you, this would never happen, or if it did you'd actually have to leave the lift) - so what you do is relax your bum and legs so you can let the fart slide out silently (& would you really want to deal a silent, but violent, one into a lift with a gorgeous guy?)

So I'm lying on the bed with a lamp shining up where the sun doesn't usually shine trying hard to get the scenario right but stopping before the actual farting bit and becoming very confused with which muscles are supposed to relax. I end up thinking how high the ceiling is. I was relieved to take my soaked and cold self back out into the street so I could dispense with all the make-believe.

Question?

I want to find some webspace to hold my pictures and perhaps some other stuff which I can link to from my blog. Who knows a good service? Is webspace what I am looking for (I don't want a hosted domain I don't think)?

Portrait of a City

The Return

An elderly gay couple take a turn in the midday sun on the shady side of the street. They link arms despite the 38 degree heat.

A street person bathes in the switched off fountain. Taking a towel from her shopping trolley load of possessions to dry with.

We, laiden with bags, suitcases and a mirror, wait on the side of the Gran Via Ferdinando for a libre cab to whisk us back to the airport.

Not looking forward to the hours of stale still air, cold or hot cabins, plastic wrapped food to be eaten with tiny plastic cultery and the remains wiped away with chemical-laced freshening up towels. When we will be back from our lifestyle fo sleeping late, strolling to get breakfast in a cafe, wandering around town looking at buildings and streets and popping to the beach after lunch, showering sand out of our hair and suntan lotion from our bodies before walking into the old town for a late night drink. Back to a variety of realities - new job; honest straight talking in the current job; and the mundainity of regular life. Back from a brilliant blue intense sky that heightens colours. Buildings painted brilliant yellow, ochre, red or green and not looking over the top. Back from balconies dripping wiht trailing plants, cactus' and blinds hanging over the edge to protect the room inside from the sun's heat. Back from sleepless nights tossing and turning getting tangled up in the sheet unable to promote a breeze from strategic opening of windows, no breeze but the smells and noise of neighbours drifting in from the tiny shaft all the windows open onto - ones alarm, ones discussions, ones radio, ones first cigarette of the day, ones meaty breakfast. Back from the sandy beach, swims in a warm sea, sun bleached hair coarse with salt and sandy to the scalp. Back. Sigh.

And in Madrid waiting for our connecting flight my eyes are killing me from the assault on the senses the airport has become - lights, flourescents hard and harsh, shopping frenzy to rid yourself of the last of the euro coins that can't be changed back, acrid smoking points drifting all over the place adding to the dry membrane of my mostrils, people, people, people, voices in english - don't drift into the background like a hubbub - all conversations register in the brain because its the first time in two weeks when I understand those around me, endless cavernous airport malls tiled in away to enhance perspective. Eventually with a headache pounding in the back of my eyes I take off my glasses and shut my eyes against the world, when I open them I am in a blur but its the only way to drown out some of the noise.

Cathedral De Valencia

Tucked between streets and buildings and smaller seeming on the outside than the inside stepped into the Cathedral de Valencia onto a stone floor highly polished through thousands of feet smoothing it as they walk. Windows high up let a warm light drop onto the congregation. Not glazed they are filled with thinly sliced veined marble.

Around the outside of the main area smaller alters where people pray to their particular patron saint, iconography, paintings and sculptures, and in the one to St Martin a relic - a mummified arm.

The lighting of candles has been replaced by a system of dropping a coin into a box which automatically lights one of the electric candles by the side of the chosen alter. I sometimes light a candle in the memory of my mother but this doesn´t seem quite the same so I don´t do it.

Nuns run the postcard shop. In a side chapel an amazing vaulted ceiling and huge chains hung around the room.

Later sitting eating paella at a roadside restaurant watching a mother and daughter together at the next table I feel sad that I will never know my mother as an old woman. Dad sometimes says he is glad not to know her all withened [not sure how to spell this] and old but I don´t know, I think there were years of knowing still to be had.

Motorcyclist

From the bus I see a couple on a motorbike pull up. The guy is sittingh behind as his girlfriend drives the bike. She has long plated extensions and is wearing a pair of those running shorts that curve up at the outer leg seam. Her boyfriend has his big hands on her tiny waist and a big toothy grin from ear to ear. At the lights he sits back and she balances the bike by resting her feet on the ground. He flicks her braids out of the way and runs a finger down the back of her neck. She turns her head to talk to him. They laugh. She rests her hand on her thigh which is clenched from supporting the bike. He slaps her leg and then grips her waist again. He´s loving it. She´s loving it.

Evening Drink

Sultry night spent in the Old Town. Streets with ornate buildings, balconies & shutters, sometimes painted seaside town colours, sometimes cracked and falling down netting on the outside to catch debris, wrought ironwork. Narrow streets linking churches and squares. Bathed the orange streetlight glow.

Sitting outside the bar there is a light babble of a foreign tongue trilling off the tongues of groups of people enjoying leisurely drinks. It rained this evening but it hasn´t cleared the air. I´m sitting still and am still beaded with sweat.

The waiter knows more English than we do Spanish. He has hair slightly longer than chin length centre parted, thick eyebrows, gentle seeming open expression. Two middle aged women are drinking some kind of orange cocktail from wide-mouthed cocktail glasses. Two stories up a couple sit facing each other on their balcony. He isn´t wearing a shirt. They have dry-land plants growing from pots and a string of CDs hanging off their awning to scare the birds. Two beardy men sit down next to us, black hair, glasses, beards. One is drinking coca cola (universal fizzy pop), the other something medium brown in a wine glass with ice - he´s wearing a communist teeshirt and is smoking slowly, the smoke escaping form his nostrils and mouth as he speaks in a deep resonant voice.

There is only noise, no conversations because of my lack of understanding. I interest myself in visual things - what people look like, how buildings and streets look, writing. Having started to read without understanding I keep asking Bails pronunciation questions and grammatical questions about word differences (like a child with a million whys) but she doesn´t have the answers yet.

A young man walks he baby past in a perambulator, not shirt on, baby playing with the rattly thing strung across. A couple on a scooter, she´s wearing a red and white printed shirt with a string bag over her shoulder, the shirt billows in the back draft.

Four gay men sit down. They are smoking and laughing. Out of the corner of my eye I see the one with his back to us pull his lime green teeshirt low and slip his trousers off and quickly pull some shorts on. He was either not wearing any pants or has a g-string on but in the flash the quick change took its hard to be sure. I´m drawn back to our conversation. Then he changes his shirt. One of his companions sees my wide-eyed glance and says with broken English, "he´s hot".

And finally at the end of the evening we are chased from our bar by the man HS had been watching for weirdness who suddenly lowered the newspaper he was holding at an odd angle to reveal his willy that he had been rubbing while watching her watch him.

Whore Count

Don´t know why it is when you travel as a londoner (perhaps its just me) but I notice the scummy stuff as well as the beauty of the place I´m in - pickpockets, homeless, piles of rubbish etc.

On the way to El Saler beach today we saw 6 prostitutes standing on the side of the road. On the way back (at 8pm) we saw 24. All of them young and black. Tarty with peacock green eyeshadow, gold shoes and exposed nipples. Sad.

How to Get a Suntan

• Aim to arrive at the beach at 15.30 (too hot sooner).
• Scout a position on the beach, hoping that its far enough away from the carpark so as to deter people from sitting right next to you but close enough to the sea.
• Towels laid out in a row.
• 3 basted bodies (not really - suntan lotion applied, factors 8-30 depending on skin type).
• Front roasting 20mins.
• Turn.
• Back roasting 20mins (plus reading book).
• Cooling sea dip - wave jumping, bit of a swim.
• Suntan lotion slathering, trying (unsuccessfully) not to get sand mixed in.
• Front roasting 20mins...

Spanish Lessons

Sadly there will be no more Spanish Lessons because we lost the phrasebook. We are seriously stuffed linguistically. Living in a bubble.

Friday Night Saturday Morning

White clouds pass slowly over a black sky. The air is cooler now, not cold but not hot enough to draw a sweat either. Six floors down on the street cars race frantically up and down the road. Wheels on tarmac. Friday night frantic. The fountain outside the flat was turned off hours ago. A homeless man sleeps on a bench beside it, all his worldly goods packed into a shopping trolley. Our windows are thrown wide open and the shutters are up, the breeze is lovely against my skin. Fresh like is never is in daylight. Crickets. I´m finally yawning with tiredness at 2.30am. I can see the two towers of the Quart in the close distance. Old city gates. And shacks built on the roofs of the buildings opposite with a cluster of TV aerials on top. One star glints in the sky above the orange glow of the city. As I stand at the window to lower the shutters (to avoid morning heat) I see the moon bright in the night sky. Half a moon. Cut exactly in half.

I lay awake listening to the sound of the road. Hopefully it will lull me to sleep. Usually the TV does that. Cars accelerate from the stop lights and just manage a gear change if the following ones are green at the other end of our block. A street washing truck is going down the EMT Taxi lane (taxis are liable to stop in it but I don´t know what it stands for). I know if I went and looked that I could see up and down the Gran Via Ferdinando with its stop/starting traffic held for blocks by traffic lights.

The Spanish Hooker

From the yellow bus on the way back from the much more pleasant El Saler [el seler] beach (the sea was how the med ought to be with a strip of green by the shallow and blue after that, it didn´t taste of oil and there weren´t fag ends instead of shells) there in the middle of a roundabout in the middle of nowhere standing just in front of the long golden grass drinking from a water bottle wiht her head tipped all the way back was a local whore. Enormous breasts squeezed into a red and black lace up corset bustier, white hotpants with her buttocks hanging out. We couldn´t decide whether she would provide services in the long grass or perhaps in a nearby carpark.

Spanish Lesson No.3

Sitting in a cafe outside the internet shop a pregnant woman came up and started talking to me about the telephone [telefonica]. After much blank looking and her trying to explain and point it transpired she wanted to borrow my pen:

¿Puedo (can I) coger prestada (borrow - with the female a ending) su (your) bolí (pen - shortened version)?
[apologies for no pronunciation lesson today]

So having lent her my pen, she went over and had her telephone conversation, wrote down her number and returned it to me.

Spanish Lessons no.2

On the second day after we shopped at the supermarket, ate lunch at the flat, rode the bus to the beach (aside: we took the wrong bus and ended up at a beach which wouldn´t win the cleanest beach in Europe award - had tonnes of fag butts and the water tasted like oil. Tomorrow we are looking for the much nicer El Saler), laid in thesun, swum in the sea, looked at the beachside market and listened to the worst-band-in-the-world practicing we came home and ate dinner.

After dinner we felt like a drink. It was coming up to be 11.45 but bars open late here. Strolling over to the Old Town we found plenty of bars. Picked out one. Sat down. On a hot and sultry evening at 1.00am in the morning the drink of choice has to be asked for thus:

una ginebra [hinebra] con tonica [toneeka] (a gin & tonic) (and then say please which I can´t spell although I know how to say!)

Spanish Lessons no.1

When setting out to the supermarket for the first time in the general direction a woman with supermarket bags appears to be coming from it is a good idea to swot up on some phraseology. Our route took us along a tree lined avenue called Erudito Orellana where we followed the apparent direction of other similar shopping bags. When the supermarket still didn´t appear to be jumping out at us, Bails (who has been learning spanish for about six lessons since being in Argentina) asked someone. The ´conversation´ went something like this:

¿Puede decime [pwedeh detheermeh](can you tell me) donde esta [dondeh esta](where is the) suupermercado [soopermerkado] (supermarket)?

None of us had a clue what he said in reply because he talked very fast but we got the gist of what he said from his gesticulations.

Sleeping

Footsteps in an unfamiliar apartment. Footsteps with sand underneath them. Carefully treading as if not to make too much noise. They are coming from either next door or upstairs.

I turn the light back on to reassess where I am. I spend some time looking at the ceiling. Square around the edge, cornicing very intricate but not flowery more ancient greek influenced. The circle in the middle of the room used to have a candelabra hanging from it, the hook is still there. Electric light was introduced and fed through a drilled hole in the ceiling off-centre at the edge of the central piece. All the rooms are like this with the electric overheads jutting through like they were done yesteday, unfinished and off-centre.

I listen to the road. Cars - familiar but these are spanish sounding ones. They are the same cars but they sound foreign. Or maybe the road sounds foreign. Interspersed with the urgent sound of scooters bombing up and down the street. Very spanish. Boys in t-shirts and shorts but no helmets. Throwing limes at pedestrians.

Its too hot to sleep. Stifling even at 1.00am. The thin white cotton sheet feels heavy on my body. Haven´t had time to acclimatise yet.

Clouds Over Spain

Clouds build like huge mountains out of the sky below. Water vapour becomes tangible entities that look like stalactites and stalagmites. Cloud falls off a ledge or is covered by wisps of cauliflower florrets. Ever increasing fractals. Sun shines on them like white gold and in the shade they become irridescent blue, eerie like glaciers or icebergs.

And travelling down the plane cuts into it and mist wicks past the window instantly instangible again lacking any body or form. Descending from clear blue daylight into night dusk below.

And looking up at the cloud above it is dark and grey, layered and flat. I was told off for taking pictures out of the window. Sort of feel like everything is being forbidden now. Not allowed to capture the weird view only seen when up above the clouds in a plane.

Arriving in Valencia was a relief. Travelling took all day literally, mammoth queues and endless stuffy airports.

People I met today

I spent a very fine day in the company of:

Blue Witch and MrBW
Mundania
Diamond Geezer
Those Wonderful People Out There in the Dark
London Calling and These Moments I've Had and Edward (fly catching dog extraordinaire)
Oddverse and S
Planarchy and Z
JetSetPiggy and Paul

and if I´ve forgotten anyone I apologise profusely I don´t mean it honest. It was great meeting y´all!

i'm emailing from my phone just to see if it works

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Pops was taking me to the theatre again. I hadn't looked at the ticket until I was on my way out of the office and then when I did I had visions of Frankie Howard, Up Pompeii, Barbara Windsor with a yellow bikini flying off and my heart sank and my heels dragged. I just never really got the carry-on films.

Anyway it was bright jaunty music, lots and lots of innuendo (and the audience loved it) and a shaky cardboardy set and cheap tacky looking costumes - all, I believe, purposefully so.

The audience was much fuller than usual of elderly people and all-male groups. The man in front kept breaking wind in the silent but violent vein vain (vane - which vain is it?) (thanks Harry). Lots of thick plastic framed glasses of the sort popular in the 70s with thick bottle bottom lenses (like my grandad used to wear). In the interval a couple had brought sandwiches wrapped up in a tea towel that they ate while sitting on a bench on the balcony outside. And the sunset was marvelous.

The Tiny Bag

When will we see the end of the mini-handbag. The sort often seen hooked under the armpit of girls who don't appear to be low-maintenance but who manage to cope with a bag that appears to only have room for a purse/wallet, a lipstick and a mobile phone (unless of course they are TARDIS like - bigger on the inside than they appear from the outside).

Two such lovelies on the bus today (immaculately made-up in the Jordan School of more is more with irridescent cheeks, thick foundation AND powder, blended eye shades in complementary tones, lipstick & line and industrially straightened hair laiden with product) had bags so small they could barely be seen and couldn't possibly fit any touching-up stuff in and had to carry their reading material (thick 1000 word novels with gold-embossed lettering) in their hands along with their cardigans.

Surely the impracticality of such bags has worn thin. But then again maybe thats the point (I'm trying to think of a point - like, I'm so gorgeous I don't need money, or I wear combat pants with pockets therefore I don't need a bag - haven't quite got it yet as you can see).

Consumer Terrorism

(Stories from the pub). Some residents of Highbury cheesed off [pardon the pun] with the very up-market Fromagerie in Highbury Barn (up market to the point of up-their-own-arseness - they wear smocks behind the counter) decided to take positive action and with a a bit of diversion and slight of hand planted a round box of Dairylea triangles and some Kraft individually wrapped slices of cheddar into their window display on christmas eve, where it remained unnoticed until boxing day and beyond. A mark of success against this most loathed bastion of upper class snobbery.

Dead Air

This kind of stillness is hanging over us. Even though it isn't hot exactly its stifling and close. The air tangible on the skin.

The abrasive call of a magpie reverberates between the houses on a residential street. Its dead quiet and dead still.

When I get home there's a sick pigeon sitting on the windowsill. He's sort of pinky with an ankle cuff on. We look at each other through the glass. Unsure what to make of each other. Eventually I decide to just leave him alone.

Monday's Life Class





Lots and lots and lots of short poses.

Candid Arts Trust: open access sessions and more formal taught courses in both life drawing and painting. Behind Angel tube, Islington - first left down City Road. Contact: The Candid Arts Trust, 3 Torrens Street, London EC1V 1NQ, Tel: 020 7837 4237.

Seagulls Over the Supermarket

On the way out looking up over the roof at a gaggle of seagulls sqwaking urgently overhead against a clear blue sky. It put me in mind a quayside of a seaside town in Cornwall when the fishing boats come in. Frantic diving and an urgency of these solid white birds. I imagined the boats bobbing on their moorings, a mixture of pleasure boats all white and sparking and working fishing vessels dark and weathered, men with broad accents and wind-whipped red faces, the cool unphaseable gazes of men who work with the elements. Sunshine glinting off the sea, big nets, lobster pots and ladies in flowery aprons. And when I looked back down I was still in the sainsbury's carpark with four bags of shopping to lug back home.

Searching for Answers

People search for things in Google and come here hoping to find the answers. I'm sure they click in and click out again swiftly. These writings are inspired by the searches that led people here (the title is the search term).


Black Umbrella Gentlemen Walking
Swing the umbrella out with the forward stride, slight back-whip of the wrist, snapping the tip down onto the pavement with a click, body moves forward past the upright brolly and swing... (repeat, all the way to the bank).

I walk over London Bridge from the station with all the other city rats. Resonating clickety-click of umbrella tips and leather soled shoes. I come from Deptford. Lucky to have a job in a bank really. But one day I’m going to kill my boss. I’ve worked hard to get where I got and he won’t let me forget where I came from for one minute. Yeah I may share a council flat with me old man just off church street but there isn’t a bank manager working today who deserves more than me. The work is boring but I can do it and I get a regular wage for it. Can’t say I haven’t given considerable thought to breaking the bank but I’m not quite ready, yet.


Girl Wrigley
Bubblegum beauty slides down the shorefront paving in disco rollerboots and hotpants. Hitting the sundecks hard has brought up a Miami beach-bunny tan. Blond hair, part sun- part bottle-blond. Rolling past the palm trees and the sand, chewing gum and singing Britney songs in her head. Tomorrow’s pressures put off by today’s carefree wind-in-the-hair freedom. And then she blows the most enormous bubble that bursts sticking all over her face and trapping the tips of her hair.


Toulouse Lautrec Brothel Life
I’ve grown fat and lazy since being here. My lace is fading and my velvet going bald. I was a young woman when I arrived, shock of red hair, loud laugh and back-street brash. Popular with the well-to-do gents, who seemed to love my pale skin and those freckles across my nose, I did very well for myself in the early days. Oh they bought me things - chocolate from Belgium, flowers from Holland and clothes - dresses with pink net petty coats, lingerie that held my stomach in and pushed my tits up.

I came to Paris to dance in the theatres but there was stiff competition from the sophisticated girls trained in ballet. I sought solice in the bottom of a wine glass in a bar near Montmatre, where I met Madame. She took me in, taught me the trade and showed me how easy it was to live like a queen on the gifts they brought me. They dressed me up to take me out, fed me fat and then I lay back and let them have their way with me.

As my looks faded I took a specialism. I bought a riding crop from a saddlemaker on the outskirts of town and dressed in pantaloons with a tightly drawn corset and laced up boots. And I gave them a jolly good spanking, and how they loved it, they came back again and again.

But I'm tired now, the younger girls are sparky and bright showered with the guady baubles and flashy dresses that they buy for them. I sit here in the corner with my greying skin and liverspotted hands and can't even be bothered to disguise myself with rouge. I haven't had a gift in an age. I have regulars, they like me because I'll still do what their wives won't and I'll still do it more often. Just enough so that Madame won't toss me out onto the street. Just enough.

From Wells Terrace to Seven Sisters and Home

There's a tunnel that joins the entrances of the tube station, one section goes from Wells Terrace to Seven Sisters Road. Walking against the flow of traffic who are all coming up on the left-hand side of the barrier (keep left keep left printed everywhere) people pass me in flashes sort of like street lights passing overhead on the motorway. Glimpses of things pass the periphery of the eye, no full pictures.

Loud wharhol-esq Che Guevara shirt, old lady with dyed black hair, her husband behind her thick brown glasses glazed grin, platform flip flops talking to herself, pink hair and tights to match, trousers belted too high, coat with daisy buttons.

At the middle point there's a three way junction, aiming to go straight, having to dodge the people coming from the right passing over my path and moving to the left, steady stream. Man in a ticket box not collecting any tickets. Tunnel is lined with tiles that have been recently painted.

Weird blast of cooler air as pass out the other end.

Black boys, all dressed in all black, sitting in a parked black car. Blond dreadlocks sitting on top of a dustbin leaning against a lamppost. Purple and black braided hair, purple and black stripey tights.

The heat is heavy, I'm glad to get home and take off my shoes and dump my work bags.

Sitting here I can see a white swan and a grey signet on the canal.

The Surrender

Looking out of the office window I noticed that someone had hung a white sheet on a stick out the window of one of the houses. It was blowing gently between the satellite dish and the biggest shrub in the garden like a white flag of surrender. I wondered if the kid in the vest and pants who is always pressing himself up against the narrow slatted window had learned a sign.

Monday's Life Class




Only four poses this evening, drawing with the overhead lights off and three spotlights trained on the model. All about shadow. A 20 minute pose followed by two 15 minutes and a long 40 minutes after break.

Candid Arts Trust: open access sessions and more formal taught courses in both life drawing and painting. Behind Angel tube, Islington - first left down City Road. Contact: The Candid Arts Trust, 3 Torrens Street, London EC1V 1NQ, Tel: 020 7837 4237.

An Eye into the World of Child Centred Living

Its a marvelous day, the sun is up, the sky is blue (despite weather girl warnings of pending rain) and I'm sitting in the office waiting for my 9.30 meeting.

I've spent the last week playing with my neice aged one and three quarters after work - endless rounds of repetative games of walking up and down the garden stopping to pull flowers off shrubs and to play the wind chime (its loud but it isn't pretty), bubble blowing until my mouth is sore and my hands are sticky, bathing games of moving water from one container to another and story reading (I now have intimate knowledge of peepo, the hungry catapillar and Mr Greedy).

My sister and I went for a brief trip to the West End, childless, to scout for that truck of the perambulator world the double buggy (she's expecting a second in September so for a couple of months she'll have a couple of under 2 year olds to contend with). Massive pavement filling contraptions which mostly don't fold down (where are you going to store it at home, how will it get in the car?). And those posh range-rover style four wheel drive versions with three huge wheels and bullbar-esque frames that are popular in Crouch End also have a two seater cousin.

Remarkable to be shopping for those things that are the bain of the childless' lives - nothing worse than to be confronted by a gang of buggy weilding mums bombing down the road to get to Starbucks for their coffee morning. And interesting how by being at work and going out after dark you manage to almost entirely avoid that side of life infrequently glimpsed on trips to Crouch End during working hours where everyone is either retired or pregnant or with buggy.

There's a whole other world out there.

The Most Revolting Man in the World

A whale of a man dragged himself huffing and puffing onto the bus, searched in his pocket for his bus pass leaning heavily on the bus driver's coin shelf, on pulling it out dropped his lighter on the floor.
"Know what I mean?" he growled to the driver by way of telling him off for jerking the bus and causing it to happen. He waited until the bus was stationary before bending over to pick it up. He leaned down with great difficulty holding on to the rail for support stretching a fat hand down to pick it up.

When the lighter was finally back in his pocket he turned to find a seat, he had a half smoked cigarette lodged in the gap where a missing inciscor should have been. And then his enormous grey liverspotted belly revealed itself from between the flappy sides of his open shirt. The most revolting specimen of man the world has ever seen. Blinded by the sight I tried hard not to stare and fixed my gaze on something out of the window. He slumped into a seat opposite a man with some shopping bags.
"You gowin shoppin?" His booming 60s gangster voice addressed the man. The man ignored him. "SHOPPIN?" He said again waving his own green plastic carrier in the man's face.
"Yes, shopping", the man finally replied.
"HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN HERE?"
"20 years"
"You ain't doing very well with the old english are ya?"
Before it got any worse I was glad we pulled into Finsbury Park and I could alight. One glance back through the bus window left me with the vision of him slumped in his chair, his shirt hanging away from his massive round belly, huge sloppy pecs sliding down either side, a vile grimace on his face.

I breathed deeply, having only just realised that the stale ashy smell that had caused my nose to close up and my breathing to become shallow was eminating from him, relieved to be released from what could have turned into bus hell.

Monday's Life Class





It was a testing class what with the bad ankle and standing for two hours. Did plenty of drawings though - we got right down to the very short 30 second poses again. Tall amazonian redhead.

Candid Arts Trust: open access sessions and more formal taught courses in both life drawing and painting. Behind Angel tube, Islington - first left down City Road. Contact: The Candid Arts Trust, 3 Torrens Street, London EC1V 1NQ, Tel: 020 7837 4237.

3 Pals And the Beautiful Woman

The girlfriend was picking up her boyfriend and his mate. They had just arrived from somewhere and she was taking them home on the bus.

They got on and sat in an arrangement where she sat next to the friend and the boyfriend sat across the isle from her next to someone else. They chatted in spanish across the seats.

When the boyfriend's seat companion got off he patted the empty seat next to him to encourage his girlfriend to join him, which she did. The two men exchanged some kind of jokes, "whats wrong with sitting by me?", "She's my girl", to "I'm lonely and cold now". And at that exact moment a tall thin bronzed beautiful brunette slipped into the seat beside him. The girlfriend shot him a look behind her that say, "there you are!". Laughs all round.

His new companion looked great but from my vantage point I could see the grey roots of her dyed hair.

New Week

Having found some excellent adhesive sports strapping am returning to work before I'm overcome with an inability to function outside the confines of my house.

My dad once talked about having some kind of injury which kept him in hospital for a considerable length of time, finding as time went on that the thought of leaving those safe and nurturing surroundings became frightening to the point that it was slowing recovery and therefore elongating the stay. This is not that kind of injury but the longer I was off the nicer my bed and duvet and the view of the garden through the huge kitchen window were becoming, and not going out meant I wasn't spending any money which is very exciting for a horder like me (watching the unspent pounds mount up over the days) and the creeping boredom (unnoticable but gradually apparent) hadn't yet got the better of me, with a few sympathy texts each couple of days I felt thought of and had the ability to bask in the joy of ailment discussion (old age creeping up).

THEREFORE, we start the week with a return to work, the wearing of full dress including closed-toed shoes and tights with the aim to rediscover the working mind.

Living Life Through Others

HS txted me to say she had been for a drink at London Bridge and had walked over the water at dusk. Its a beautiful view - the Thames at night. Long reflections of lights and lit buildings stretch out over the swelling water, banks edged by frilly architecture or buildings glowing pink or blue or stark white. Love the strings of bulbs hanging from those tres fancy street lights with fish curling round the bases that I think are old enough to be in pictures from the wartime of couples canoodling on the riverbanks. City riversides are often romantic, paticularly when they are pedestrian and therefore discrete and secluded with dancing light and the sound of water.

A Pint and a Path Walking the Thames
The River Thames Guide
Bronze Age on the River Thames
History of the Southbank - the dates

From the Depths of the Bed

So snippets of the week that was just because I haven't been doing anything:

• ER's - old ones (we still have Benton, Sally Field as Abbey's mother having bi-polar episodes, Abbey and Lukar, Dr Green hasn't died - reincarnations are great).
• Third Watch season 3 (ambulance crews, fire crews AND Police - a veritable fest of uniforms and hunky heros and heroines to choose from - they all live in dark brown New York apartments, marriage jealousy, babies dumped on unsuspecting fathers, partner problems - for the cops, Russian criminal gangs, shot police officers - its all very exciting, really).
• Richard and Judy (the over-advertised interview with Bill Clinton is on Monday when I hope to be back at work) (she is morphing into an owl - you can tell by the rings around her eyes - they go all the way round not just under).
• Big Brother - theres been fun and laughter, bitching and irritation. The Bunny Boiler has been remarkably quiet until yesterday - determined to get her own way she behaves like the older woman feels she should - being in control and demanding only to find that the apple of her eye sometimes behaves stubbonly re-exerting his own will - causing her to go into a sulk. The spanking episode following a mammoth session of truth or dare that turned into kiss or dare resulting in lots of nudity and licking jam off bossoms. The silence. The burning hat. (I gotta get back to work).
• And the rain, I think I could draw the outline of the tree outside blindfolded, watching the wind and the rain and the lightning and thunder. Talking to people a mile away who have downpours when I don't and then getting it later. When I went into work earlier in the week to get some work to do from bed someone said "global warming is here". It could be. The news said there were tunnel? or funnel? clouds over England (beginnings of twisters), floods and the worst summer storms.

Normal service will be resuming shortly (I'm willing it better - theres so much to do - I want to see Fahrenheit 9/11, Girl with a Pearl Earring showing at the Prince Charles on Sun, Tues or Weds, Shrek 2, Sounds in Space at the V&A and the Edward Hopper at the Tate Modern). I'm so bored...

Stages of a Trip

Tripping is most common when inebriated, however it can also occur at other times for a variety of reasons such as wearing a new pair of shoes (particularly ones with a particularly different shape to your normal ones - like having very pointy toes), council neglect of pavements paved with slabs (you can get money from them for this if the offending paving stone is over a particular height out of line), or taking a dark route when having just stepped out of a brightly lit pub. My own trip followed the last example here - and no I had not been drinking, honestly.

1. Unassuming walk under some trees on the way home after dark. Not drunk (really, its true).
2. Darkness led to inability to see two branches, therefore stepped on the first and slid one way, in recovery stepped on the other and slid the other way. Way scary. Fell onto side on the grass.
3. Lying on the grass dealing with pain stabbing through the ankle. Rolling around in agony. Concerned friends.
4. Finally laughter. Following acute embarrassment. Falling over is always embarrassing - we are not 'old people' after all. And we rarely manage to make it as graceful as Naomi Campbell in those shoes. Its all agony, spewn out bag contents (lipstick, condoms, tampons, change rolling, eyelash curlers - any combination as befits the bag owner), knickers flashed and torn tights. And then being snappy with caring passers by because actually you'd rather the ground swallow you up rather than actually gratefully receive some help (we're nuts really - its only the embarrassment talking).
5. Some discussion around likely injury - twisted or broken. Wish I could remember the actual level of pain a broken leg was (did do that when I was 11) because I'm certain that it must be worse than a severe twist but really its hard to compare after all these years. Twist is the final prognosis.
6. Getting up, getting on the bus for one stop, changing buses - all fine. The final walk up the hill to home takes longer than usual but not too bad. Pain sets in. Hobbling.
7. Preparation for the night - ice pack, wrapped in towels, painkillers, ankle raised on cushions over the level of the heart when horizontal. Ice so cold that it hurts.
8. On waking put a stretch bandage on. Spend day with foot up in bed watching Sunday's crap TV - including Pop World, Hollyoaks, Big Brother repeats (sad sad), some of East Enders (as much as can stomach), tennis, followed by football, Big Brother: the psychology episode. Square eyes.
9. Bandage taken off for the night. In the morning a lovely purple and yellow florid bruise appears.
10. Take as much time off as is fitting for the injury. So far by third day (second day off work) its still painful to walk on and hobbling is the only option. Probably go back tomorrow and hopefully the days with raised ankle and mind-numbing daytime tv will help a swifter recovery (although have discovered again, that they have ER repeats and a great programme called Third Watch, after that it all goes down the pan with antique sales, house make-overs and tidying up programmes - I've not only got square eyes but a headache).
11. The crap on TV makes it a joy to go back to work. And there will be sympathy due to the pathetic hobbling, at least for a day or so.

Trapped in the Cubicle By Two Girls Gasing

I was in there when they came in and there just wasn't a moment when I felt like it would be ok to make an exit (wouldn't want to be accused of earwig-ing after all...I know I know, its what I do best).
"Oh I'm really pissed off - he's making me so grumpy"
"Don't feel grumpy"
"I can't help it, he's really pissing me off"
"Oh come on, I'm the fat one. Wouldn't you rather be the grumpy one than the fat one?"
"Don't be silly"
"Its true"
"FUCK off!!"
"Do I look ok?"
"Your hair is beautiful like that. Oh I can't believe he's making me grumpy. I think I'm gonna stay in here for a bit"
"So what can we do to stop you being grumpy?"
"We're probably missing out on a round by now"
"We better not be"
"Hey what have you got in there? Anything new? Did you get that new lipstick yet?"
"Nah, but try this"
"How do I look?"
"Great. We can go y'know, if you want to."
"Nah, its ok, I don't want to spoil your night"
"You wouldn't, honest."
"Nah really."
"Come on then, lets get back"

Finally.

Trouble Shooting

Bails has recently been put onto the Duty Principle rota requiring her to deal iwth the kind of trouble only an FE college can throw up. All the Fs - Fire, Fucking, Fighting and Flashing.

An example of a recent incident involved two boys (actually young men) pulling their trousers down in front of some fashion students. Pants stayed up but it merited the police being called because one had a very visible erection.

When I worked there the mens toilet on the second floor was shut for a year because two people had been found having sex in there and the layout was such that it was ideal for peeping toms and toilet festishists to sneak into the ladies unseen and get their cheap thrills.

Last week a spanking crop was discovered in the mens and apparently it wasn't the first time such an item had been found.

Hotbed of hormones raging in a controlled environment.

I Am A Passenger

I got on. Chose a seat, went over and sat in it. It was central on the middle seat section. Became aware of the fact that on 3 'corner' seats (those on each end of the row of seats) were elderly gentlemen: one with a tartan shopping trolley and a huge belly; one with one of those hats on with under-chin fasteners that were hanging down floppy around his ears and checked socks with his sandals; and a third with a suit on. And they were all staring at me. So I buried myself in my notebook and tried to ignore them. At the following station a man got on and sat next to me. Middle aged. Very hairy hands. Fraying shirt cuffs and a digital calculator watch. Haven't seen one of those since I was in junior school in the 70s. They were the bees knees then.