Fatehpur Sikri

A deserted city. Built by Mughal Emperor Akbar in 1571. It was the Mughal capital city for 14 years after which it was abandoned, due to lack of water apparently. It stands on a hill looking out over the planes. Its beautifully preserved, like it was abandoned only recently.



Flickr photostream of Fatehpur Sikri.

Unformed Thoughts

We're seeing people with next to nothing, living in tiny rooms, businesses that are little more than a stall, perhaps they are selling mouth freshener or have a grinder and fix things, families all together, washing in the river or a pump on the corner of the road. We have so much - the space and luxuries that we take totally forgranted. Bathrooms, fresh water, hot water, a whole house to ourselves, more food than we can eat, in fact waste food.

There are some things that are hard to get used to. Like... Every question answered is worth a few rupees. Every helpful gesture is tippable. Looking after shoes at the temple is worth 5 rupees, 1 day tip for driver 120. Like... Every price is negotiable. Shopping is fraught with pressure. We tire of bargaining quite quickly and instead prefer not to go into shops. Its difficult largely because we aren't sure whats acceptable or what costs are (as yet).

Children tug at my sister's heartstrings. There are children younger than her eldest (who is 4 and a half) looking after babies. They are ages at which British kids are toddling round and learning to speak. Can't imagine my neice having to look after her brother - keep him safe, feed him. I think they would be in grave danger. Here its different.

Trendy young Indian men wear high cut jeans tigher at the top and flared at the bottom with skinny fitting shirts - similar to 70s man. I've grown so used to men with low slung trousers, hipsters or positively hanging off that wearing trousers high seems strange.

Taj Mahal

While I could take it or leave it, Amy's one must-see for the trip was the Taj. I was unprepared for the actual beauty of the building in real life - its such a famous image, exploited for all its symbolism by Diana, Princess of Wales. It was almost as though it didn't need looking at because it is already so well known.

However, it is a truly beautiful tomb. The whitest marble, opaqly translucent inlaid with semi-precious stones in floral designs remarkable in their realism and recognisable as particular species - lillies, poppies, lotus flowers and honeysuckle.




The site was being visited by many Indian tourists - visiting the north from the south (its cooler there - but its all relative when its 43 degrees). A family wanted to have their picture taken with us. Strange to be so strange.

Flickr photo stream - more pictures or to have a closer look.

Varanasi to Agra

Train journey. 3rd class night train. 3 bunks, narrower than 2nd class. More tourists. Well prepared Germans with sleeping sheets, chains and padlocks to lock up their rucksacks, torches on headbands for reading in bed.

Chimneys from brick making. Pits where the clay has been dug from the earth. Piles of bricks stacked up neatly after firing.

Small groups of buildings close togehter with old men sleeping outside on strung beds under the shade of trees. Cow sheds, children, goats, chickens. People washing at water pumps.

As light fades we pass a shrine on the side of the road, a candle burning. 3 cows graze nearby and a man in pale blue robes walks away.

In the morning agricultural land slips past the window. People integral to the landscape.




Flickr photo stream here

The Ganges

There's a sign on the wall that reads, "The Ganga is the life blood of India". Also referred to as the Great Mother. In the travel agent in Delhi a seasoned India-traveller asked where we were going. Varanasi was her second favourite place in India (used to be her first but she subsequently went to Kashmir and that has taken 1st place now). Very spiritual, she said. She spoke like she'd smoked too much dope - sort of slowly, with consideration.

At 5.30am we walked through the tight knots of streets down to the Ghats sitting on the Ganga's edge. Down the steps to the river, where we picked up a river boat that took us along the riverside - looking at the riverside temples, people bathing and washing their clothes, cremation pires at the far reaches tended by men with long poles, umbrellas, flags. Sun rose. Yogi's instruct their followers sitting cross legged on concrete platforms. Tourists survey the scene from rowing boats.




Much later we found ourselves back on the boat, watching prayers at one of the river side ghats, lights against water, monks wafting insense smoke and pots of fire, people pushing banana leaf bowls with tea lights inside into the water. The prayer leader's singing chants waft out across the water combined with bells clanging and drums.



For a closer look or to see more pictures of Varanasi click here.

Varanasi

Arriving at the train station was like being in the set of The Jewel in the Crown - dust covered platform full of people - beggars, travelling farmers and business men, huge families with cases and food supplies waiting to board, chai sellers with steel teapots and a bucket full of unglazed terracotta handleless cups, porters in red robes, handpulled carts, bicycles, tourists, taxi drivers with handscrawled names on paper. Very old fashioned, poor and people with missing limbs, deformities and injuries. Arrivals feeling rather overwhelming.

Night Train to Varanasi

On a cockroach infested train, in a couchette thats very hot (especially with the curtains shut) Amy and I are pretending we're in Some Like it Hot (heads popping through the gap in the curtains). She wants to be the double bass player, then the trombone. Do wab do wab. Then I was upset to discover that I haven't got a sneer so my Elvis impersonating days are over - I've mastered the hair but haven't got a good upper lip sneer on either side.

Standing looking out of the open train door in the morning it passes through agricultural fields full of women cutting grain crops, people carrying water and goods on their heads. Talking to a Seikh who said he was once in California in a village and there was nobody in the landscape which he found really strange. Here the landscape is full of people, and dotted with ramshackle buildings full of cows, goats, and people washing, cooking, eating.

The train stopped and a fight broke out on a path outside - a man was on the ground being beaten, kicked, punched, stamped on the head and stoned. Set upon by 10 others. The gaggle of men watching from the train door decided he was a pick pocket who had been chased off he train and was getting his just desserts.

Snapshot of Delhi

Culture shock, fear, arranged the trip. Sightseeing in 43 degrees - driven round in a taxi by a lovely driver with a variety of tour guides (in the loosest possible sense - sometimes felt they were more like chaparones becuase they could barely tell us more about the places than a name).





Flickr photo stream - if you want to take a closer look.

Delhi

We arrived middle of the night. While it didn't go quite according to plan its OK, sort of. We're staying in a different hotel, going to places we didn't know about. Its really really hot and dirty. But the driver we have has been very nice.

Can't quite decide whether we are being taken for a ride totally, even though the people who are doing so are very nice about it. I've been bitten by mosquitoes terribly - everyone keeps asking me whats wrong with me (I look like I have a terrible disease or something).

Seen some stuff, been made to wear a fabric bag over my skirt into the Jama Masjid Mosque - much to the amusement of the locals. Indians like to be in love, I believe. All the public gardens are full of couples. Canoodling in the shade from the heat of the day.

Amy has been keeping an animal count which I think amuses the driver - its all so ordinary for them - cows in the street (big white ones), ox (which big humps on their backs), monkeys, parrots, eagles, hooded crows, and circus elephants (not performing just standing around the big top, thought it best not to think too hard about it).. All of which hopefully will seem ordinary to us once we've been on safari (cross your fingers for tigers).

Jetting Off

I'm off to India for two weeks. Going to a wedding in Jaipur. Flying into Delhi tonight. Other than that we have no plans! Its all to be decided on arrival. So, I'll blog sporadically if I find a connection!

See you when I get back.

"How to" "Hoxton Fin"

Now while this searcher is unlikely to have actually found the answer this time, I do believe that collectively we could provide a very good answer to how to hoxton fin. For those of you not in the know, a hoxton fin is a haircut for men, not some kind of whacky ballroom dance.

I think there are two ways to get the look, although only one of them is truely effective. You can either get gel (one of the new less sticky but strong ones) and use the flats of both your hands to press the middle of your hair together in the middle, or, preferrably you need to go to a fancy hairdressers or trendy barbers for a proper asymmetrical haircut which is longer in the middle of the head. They will give you the benefit of their hair advice as to how is best to get that all desirable central uplift.

Beware though, this haircut is well and truely over. Nobody but children's tv presenters and second-rate boybanders wear their hair this way anymore. So I ask you, do you really want to hoxton fin?

White Dogs

As we said good evening on the steps of the old library we looked out over Bermondsey Spa Gardens and for the second time that day all the dogs in the park were white. Any size, any shape, any type, any colour as long as its white. Perhaps there's a local rule or something.

Garden

My new garden has a well established lawn and not a lot else. Last weekend I planted a tree and a magnolia. They are both in bloom (not masses because they are both rather twigging at present, but in bloom non the less).




The tree is a Prunus x yedoensis 'Shidare-Yoshino'. Which is quite exciting. No idea when I bought it that it would have autumn colour.

Lidl's Finsbury Park

So a long time ago there used to be a pram shop. On the corner of the park sort of next to the 12 Pins. It recently opened up as Lidls. One of my fellow ceramics students goes there to pick up bulk buys of bottled water. He talks about it, so our tutor has started popping in to see what's available as the special purchase of the week. The only time I stopped by it was cherry trees. One week it was golf clubs (shame that Ally Pally golf course has now shut). Last week it was horse's jackets (can't imagine how relieved the residents of Finsbury Park were when upon popping into Lidl's they found they could pick up that one difficult thing left on the bottom of their shopping list). This week, apparently it was unicycles. £24.99. Bargain.

Ceramics Class



So the 10 minute tea set turned out like this. Despite lavishing gold oxide onto the edges, it has turned out more like pewter. Still they're quite funny and seeing as it was the last class we ate easter eggs and drank Leffe out of them (one cup takes approximately one sip, after about 3 refills each we had managed to finish oh easily a quarter of the bottle). Still they are water tight (apart from one which leaks!). Also finally got back the porcelain vase and glazed that so its something to look forward to next term.

flickr ceramics class set

Men's Shoes

On a rack outside a shop in Bruce Grove. Sign says buy one get one free. Does that mean buy a right one and get the left one free or does it mean buy one pair and get a second free?

Office

New. Open plan. New building. Memory of PC stolen at some point during unplugging and arriving at new place. Irritated other workers on the new desk-island. Bad start to new work surroundings.

9.55am. Not too bad so far. I'm using a spare PC. Its awfully quiet. I've just had to go into the stairwell to talking on the mobile phone.

11.52am. Right now there is far too much chatting and giggling going on and not much work. There's two in the meeting area. Out island-colleagues are talking with colleagues from anther island - talking about babies. The cataloguing librarians are chatting and tearing off sellotape - chatting in a sort over-the-fence-gossiping way.

16.05pm. Full compliment of colleagues on the opposite island. Boy can they chat. Two people are going round in coats complaining of cold. I on the other hand am baking and would really like to open some windows. My cheeks are red - I can feel them. We've just had a brief blast of Boney M's Brown Girl in the Ring from the cataloguers. Much full room discussion of singing the song in the school playground, or the fact of being far too young to remember such things. I'm almost at the stage of putting my fingers in my ears and going lalala I can't hear you.

16.34pm. There's a great talking bum (clad in tweed) using a guillotine next to my desk. Its talking to a colleague who sits next to me who has wandered off without the guillotine-user realising.

5.30pm. End of the day. Sure I'll get used to it in time.

Sparrows vs Tits

(Not quite West Side Story, and actually more sparrows vs tit, singular). There's a gang of sparrows about 11 strong. They hang out in this mass of matted branch, stem stuff at the back of next door's neighbour's. The stuff overhangs next door's shed. Sparrows flit from matted stuff to shed roof edge and onto a feeder hanging in a small tree on my boundary with next door. Dominating the back of the gardens. Much too-ing and fro-ing. Tit gets the front of the garden. From the fucia (I hate fucias), holly bush and tall rose to the house eaves and across to the feeder in a tree closer to the houses. On rare occassions tit makes at attempt at the sparrows feeder. Then everybody abandons everything when next door's cat arches his back lazily on the roof of the shed at the back of the opposite garden.

1000th Post

And this is my 1000th post (so I'm making it a really boring one!) It seems like some kind of milestone. It feels it has taken me quite a long time to get here I have to say!

Spring Forward

Why I'm actually doing awake at this hour (when I haven't been out and am not dancing the night away somewhere) I'm not sure. However I am now in that limboland that the changing clocks besets us with. Its not quite so upsetting in Autumn when you get an extra hour but I suddenly noticed that the time on the laptop had moved to 2.00am when I was certain it had only been 12.40 very recently. I had to check the BBC website to see if it was tonight that the clocks were going forward. Normally you hear it on the news. I can never quite get my head around where the extra hour comes from or where it disappears to in Autumn. But it certainly upsets my body clock considerably. For about a week. So it doesn't help that I am awake noticing it happen.

Anxiety

I'm having tree planting anxiety. I've wanted to plant a small tree in my small urban garden. Looking around the garden centre last weekend I found a suitable one. Bought it. It was delivered yesterday. Between those times I have spent a little bit of time looking up planting advice. I've now got the anxiety of a hypochondriac (the oh my god I've got... kind of anxiety). I have to dig a hole - I can do that, thats fine. But I do need to improve the soil it seems (general fertilizer must be bought). I need to stake the tree (do I need to get a new thicker one or is the one that came with the tree sufficient) and ties, proper tree ties manufactured specially for that purpose (so the advice says, if I can't find one, what then...). I need to water it but not drown it for the first year. Its a lot of responsibility. What if it dies? But I'm forgetting I'm quite good with plants...

Ceramics Class



Its coming to an end again. There's the mad rush at the end of the 10 week term where people have been making and making and making but not glazing. Lots of finishing off to be done. Glazing isn't the quick dipping at the end that one might expect it to be. There are choices (albeit subject to a certain amount of chance once applied, but choices none the less). There are techniques for applying. Then there is cleaning up (bottoms must be clean with at least 4mm of clean space at the bottom of the pot as well - to allow for seeping glaze during firing - technicians are not best pleased if your pot/cup/plate/thing sticks to the kiln shelf). So its all a bit frantic for the last couple of weeks.

So the tall pot didn't come out exactly as I had hoped. Next time I might choose not to drip blue lines onto it. And the bulbous pot (which is actually shorter by far than the tall pot) was a bit of a glazing disaster - white tin was too thin, the shiny stuff is extremely shiny (on the plus side it doesn't look so much like a hospital pisspot anymore). But as it is a bit of a hit and miss process and I feel I'm just working up to the real work, it doesn't really matter!

flickr ceramics class set

Visa

Waited in the rain queuing outside the Indian High Commission to get a Q-number from the open window. Waited in the wrong queue until a nice man behind me explained why there were two windows.

Collected my yellow, dated, Q-number and entered the embassy through a side door, passed through an ancient security detector gate, up some steps with municipal linolium and into the visa hall. It was full. The electronic numbers were on B39. My ticket was number C41. It was 9.30am. Over a hundred visas to be approved before me.

The floor was old parquet, the counter was like an old 50s post office - dark stained wood windows with clutches of people crowding round. Grey plastic fixed seats filled with the waiting stretched across the hall. A big crowd congregated at the far side by the exit. Completely unsure about what was going on and where exactly I should be I sat down and waited for the buzzing of numbers turning to inch closer to B99 when at least we'd get to the C-numbers.

B63. I got my paper out. A new crowd of people gathered at a wooden doorway which occassionaly opened for forms to be passed in or a stack of passports to be passed out.

B71 the man at one of the windows got a bit trigger happy and kept pressing, the numbers buzzed through to B79 before any of the holders of those numbers had an opportunity to present themselves. People crowded up to the windows. Chaos ensued. The chairs cleared a little though.

Buzzzd. The numbers turned over. The C light lit up. 00. buzzd. C01.

C22. A look around. Its a great leveller, the visa hall. We're all here. Woman in an extremely expensive fur coat and scarf, serious travellers, groups, boys off to Goa, people visiting relatives, a woman organising some kind of tournament (much loud discussion of buffet breakfast tickets, itineries and the participants on the mobile phone, despite there being many signs forbidding their use).

C23. A man who came in after me presented himself to the window. Your ticket is C57, the woman behind the glass said. I've been waiting for ages, he said. I'm sorry, she said, watch the indicator and come back up when your number appears.

C41. I finally get to a window. It takes 5 minutes to process the form. She gives me a print out with my number on it and says collect your passport from window 1 in an hour. I contemplate going out to get a coffee somewhere, stand in the doorway feeling the chill breeze and decide instead to sit back down and wait some more. About half an hour later I hear the man at window 1 calling out numbers B23, B56 and then suddenly unexpectedly C41. I go up wafting my print out. A woman protests, I must have missed my number, my number's B.. The man cuts her off, you must come when I call the number out please wait, make room. I pass my print out through the window and recieve back my passport with visa and leave the melee behind me, descend the dark hallway and escape back through the side door to the street.

Terrible Things to Do with your Eyebrows
Numbers 1, 2 & 3

1. Pluck them all out and draw very thin, very black lines in their place. Particularly when that line goes above the natural brow line (you will look like a drag queen).


2. Remove the bit of your brows that joins them over your nose by shaving it off. This never looks quite right. Get professional help. Or at least pluck.


3. For a man - overly manicured eyebrows (something becoming more popular with younger fellows). Your eyebrows are supposed to be bigger and less neat than a woman's. Try not to show us up.

Spring

Free from a meeting back into the street I look up at the snow flying horizontally across a steel grey sky. Strangely it isn't falling on me. Where I am the sun shines and makes a rainbow against the snow. And then bam the first icy flakes hit me in the face. And then more and heavy rain drops pummel down on my head.

Later. Much later I stand on platform 2, raised as it is above the street, listening to heavy drops dripping from the gutter onto a flat roof below. I stare into the huge pale yellow sun hanging low in the sky as dusk gathers. Relishing the blue spots when I look away.

I'm thinking about the beggar I just gave a measly amount of spare change to (some coppers and two silver coins). He told me its his birthday tomorrow. He'll be 36. He's younger than I am but looks about 45. Glad I'm not him. Its cold to be living on the street.

First day of spring tomorrow.

Play

Went to a play today. At the National. It was good. Audience was full of olds. Perhaps it was because it was a Tennessee Williams play. Perhaps its because it was the National, or maybe because it was Monday night.

I'm reminded of theatre etiquette. Where ever you sit in a theatre you have responsibilities. Middle of the row - you must try to be back early from the interval. Terrible to have to excuse everybody else on the row to get back to your seat. End of rowers need to be both swift off their seats at the start of intervals and end of performance and lesiurely back from intermission. And try not to push people over on the rush to the bar, there are no gold medals y'know.

Coffee and Cake

In a clean white coffee and cake shop on Blackstock Road the waitress busies herself with washing up quietly and two japanese girls have one of those difficult conversations between girlfriends when one has got together with a boyfriend and the other has been left behind. I know you say I can call you anytime but its not really possible because he doesn't like it. I dont see you anymore. (Translate: I liked our relationship the way it was before. I feel abandoned.) The boyfriend is made to be the enemy of the piece becuase he's the basic cause and all his girlfriend can do is apologise. Its a sort of one sided pain.

Earwigging an Actress, Darhling

...I'm thinking a bit young but gorgeous, right up my street...its like when you've got two lines and you're up on the stage of the Almedia for the first time and because you've only got two lines you really ham it up, proper 40s accent and everything. And they say can you just throw it away a bit more Jessica and you say yeah of course and then do it the same again. Two years at Rada? You're rubbish. So naturally I don't get the call...I was up for an advert, playing Australia, America, New Zealand and here - very unusual - it was life changing money, I'd have been able to pay off my mortgage, £150,000.00 and £500 every time it aired. They were telling me I had it in the bag. There were 8 of us, whittled down to 2. I called Ben and my mum and I was screaming and they were screaming. And then I was just waiting for the call. That was 2 weeks ago...it was all face stuff, there were no lines. I have a great face for face stuff. You just had to look orgasmic eating porridge. My face is soooo porridge...

Tube Space

Standing today with the bum of a man much taller than me nestled into the small of my back a number of things crossed my mind. Firstly, that I could tell this was an irritated bum, how could I tell this? Something to do with the way it backed into me, like it was accusing me of getting in its space. Secondly, if it wasn't an angry bum it might be a slightly erotic situation. This thought quickly evaporated as someone's bag dug into me, the bum leaned angrily against me as the tube jerked and the doors opened to let more people on who will squeeze, push, cajole and inch a space out for themselves. And then London Bridge and the freedom of space and a depth of air that just doesn't exist in a tube carriage.

Assessment Test

I have been assaulted with a battery of tests today. Competing with the best of the rest of the Council for an obviously coveted place on a leadership course. We've had individual interviews for an hour and a half, taken a raven's test for an hour, and pretended we were a special projects officer in the second week of work having to deal with a written crisis (hour long exercise), prepare for and meet with an angry councillor (played by a pretty convincing actor) and write a presentation which I delivered to the woman who used to be in the RAF jumping out of planes.

They asked us as we left if we had fun. Personally I felt not. I was stressed. Anxious. It was like having the worst day at work, not knowing what you're supposed to be doing, not knowing the subject properly and being made to take the blame. Not sure its really an accurate depiction of the role of a leader, but then again I may be mistaken, being as I'm not one at present. At least there wasn't an Alan Sugar moment where we were hauled in and told you're fired.

Bus

In the pound shop a girl sticks out her chest so the man behind the counter can grab her breast with his long-armed-grabber. They collapse in laughter when he is successful. A form of extreme flirtation perhaps.

Boys run for the bus trying not to spill their open drinks. First they're on the outside of the railings and then transfer to the safe side. They miss the bus though.

Some driver agreived by the bus driver pulling out infront of him, manages to overtake and proceeds to drive very slowly infront of the bus as a protest. At the next stop he pulls in, jumps out and runs up to give the bus driver a piece of his mind.

Two stops long a youth jumps onto the bus screaming to the driver to get out of his cab, punches the glass divide repeatedly. Two girls with him drag him off the bus by the neck telling him he's soooo stupid.

Ceramics Class



I'm calling this plate, because, well, its a plate. I dipped it in white crackle glaze which gives it a really lovely satiny feel and drizzled some Egyptian blue on the spiral.

This term one of the students is a big whistler. Which has led to lots of tunes being sung/hummed/whistled almost subconsciously. Last week it was Hawai-5-O. This week it was songs from the Jungle Book. Somehow between us we knew many of the words to many of the songs. My personal favourite is the vultures singing, "we're your friend, we're your friend, we're your friend til the bitter end".


flickr ceramics class set

Little Africa, Peckham

Its lunchtime. The warmth of the spring sunshine is strengthening. In the doorway of his mother's shop a child less than 3 years old dances to the reggae music blaring from the hairdressers across the street.

Pet Peeves

On crowded underground trains standing body to body I'm finding it increasingly difficult to tolerate those little bumps when someone's elbow nudges you or they swing against you against the sway of the train. Its irrational, but a response to personal space invasion. I hardly ever seem to let my hand slip down the pole and land on someone else's hand. But I'm having less and less tolerance to this enforced bodily contact with strangers. Perhaps it was just today. Went to work earlier than normal. Much more crowded.

Invigilation games

Teachers are much more like teachers than I ever imagined. Invigilation games involve trying to relieve boredom during endless exams by doing the catwalk (catwalking the aisles), or walking as far as possible with your eyes shut without bumping into something, or my personal favourite of the games offered up, each invigilator standing next to the kid they think is most likely to be pregnant by 15.

Moon

The shadow of the earth crossed over the moon until the moon grew orange, the sky is darker than usual.

Pictures by DrD and Blue Witch.

BBQ

In a delapidated park in the Old Kent Road, on a day that had started sunny but was now cloudy and turning damp, the front trees were surrounded by daffodils, brightly cheerful in the dim surroundings. Old concrete planters with dark shrubs lined up along the back walls. A blossom tree in pink hung over the wall from a garden behind. And in the mossy, grey darkness towards the back a man barbequed his dinner sitting on a low bench. A lick of smoke curling up through the trees.

Ceramics Class



Paperclay pot - made with paper fibre wedged into the clay to make it stronger and lighter. I was attempting to build something really tall. Then in the week before half term I started another pot - terracotta so that I can use some gold oxide on it. Trying to build something that isn't bulbous which is proving to be really difficult.

Then we had a group activity. Make 10 things in 10 minutes. All that came into my head was teacups. Not that you'd make them out of terracotta normally, or anything.

flickr ceramics classs set

IoD

Many times I've travelled past on the bus, looking into the tall dark rooms covered in enormous paintings of minor royalty and admirals and filled with leather chairs containing stiff businessmen in pin stripes. Some kind of exclusive gentlemen's club I always thought.

I spent the day there today at a conference. The Institute of Directors has a strict dress code of no trainers or jeans because it is a place of business. And no mobile phones were to be used at the reception. Never been to a conference with a dress code before.

Its rooms were grand, detail picked out in gold leaf, pictures bigger than most of the rooms in my house. Chandeliers.



I thought the one in the Nash room was rather gaudy with its glass that split light into rainbows (not dissimilar to those that can be purchased from a delightfully tacky light shop on the end of turnpike lane) and therefore assumed to be modern(ish) in comparison to the one in the Trafalgar room and the hallway, neither of which did the rainbow thing and had more beautifully cut glass in a wider variety of forms.

Familiars

So you see someone around. Periodically seeing them on the last part of the daily epic commute. Only noticing them as you familiarise yourself with the surroundings. And then after two years, when your routine has settled down you start to see them more frequently and realise they are weird. Someone who was once just another smart office worker on their way to work suddenly becomes a neurotic who stands up against the doors whispering harshly into a mobile phone, who won't get on the train until its just about to leave.

Neighbourhood

Coming home this evening stepping off the emptying 341 bus into the past-midnight street I realised that the now familiar streets, paving stones, buildings, people were no longer scary as they once were. I followed an elderly lady along the street in her baige mac and black hat to the unoffical crossing (place where everyone crosses but no actual pedestrian crossing exists) and crossed into my road. A quiet road, well lit. Familiar cars. Privet hedges, scrappy front gardens, ricketing low-rise fencing. Familiarity promotes feeling of safety. The known nooks and crannies no longer scary.

I've forgotten the fear I once had sitting at the bus stop late at night before I had moved in.

I'm Loving...



Haunting, melodic, beautiful and suprising from a man who looks like a mountain man with a big beard - Ray LaMontagne. Loved his first album also - the fantastic Trouble.



I'm hating...

My new Dell inspiron LCD screen - keeps turning black with white lines - makes it very difficult to see what you're doing! Still the end is near - they're sending a technician out to replace the LCD finally on Monday after being told this is likely to be whats needed back on 9 Jan. In between I've had to jump through all their stupid technical hoops like reinstalling video drivers, taking machine back to factory settings because it might of been caused by software. Not been impressed I have to say and I've always loved Dell computers before.

The Catastrophic Mistake of an Outfit
London Bridge. 9.14am

Felt hat, with a brim upturned on one side, worn at a jaunty angle over flowing salt'n'peppered locks. Black and white coat in large hounds-tooth check. Black mini-skirt, slightly flared. Sheer tights with tiny black spots and pink high heels, peep toes with bows. A total 80s extravaganza. Perhaps they were having 80s day at work.

Home

How long does it take for a house to feel like home? My initial excitement at buying is long over (even before the completion in fact). The shock of the empty house left when I started pulling up the red carpets. The drive to make it mine was strong when I first got the keys but it waned over christmas.

I feel safe in my house and it has the mod cons necessary for a comfortable life. But, it isn't feeling like home yet. Perhaps because there are still things at my dad's - books mainly. Perhaps because there are boxes still piled up in the upstairs rooms. Perhaps because I'm still sleeping on the futon and haven't moved back into my bedroom after having guests at christmas. It all feels a bit temporary. And blank. Pictures. It needs pictures.

Perhaps its the let down of it all - while its nice having a your own space to do with what you please, it's just a house. I only get to be in it for any length of time at the weekend. Maybe there hasn't been enough time yet. It also feels chaotic. I'm probably craving organisation. Finished-ness. Dare I say perfection. Too many house magazines with all their perfect rooms, dressed with everything just so, not a thing out of place, everything in its place (those magazines aren't real - nobody in them actually lives like that, obviously, its all just for the shoot). They're supposed to be aspirational, I suppose, but just make you feel bad (feed the dissatisfaction!)

Ceramics Class

I finally got to see the finished Ladypot - its been weeks in the making, carefully scratching drawings into it, thinking about the glazing and stuff. Generally I'm finding the end result a little bit disappointing but this one isn't too bad. I'm quite happy with it (apart from the thickness of the glazing). The drawings are really quite effective.

Over the course of the day I have changed my mind about what I wanted to say here. What I really wanted to say is that I was very nervous about the ladypot. I liked it a lot while I was making it and have been rather disappointed with the way glazes have turned out on other things. So it was with a great deal of anxiety that I left the glazed pot on the shelf for its final firing. And this week I found what was once grey with carved drawings on it has turned out like this:



I quite like it.

flickr ceramics classs set

Be my Valentine

Its a cruel celebration really - enables those that have to rub those-that-have-nobody-to-share-it-with's noses in it. Still won't linger on that (wouldn't want to rub anyone's nose in it afterall).

Its a day for those who believe in true love to wear their romantic streaks on their sleeves, so to speak. At Moorgate there was a woman dressed in a red suede coat and boots, with a red feather boa. Off to the office with a colleague in tow. On the tube an otherwise dourly dressed woman wore a red enamelled heart-shaped badge on her lapel. And opposite her was a teenager in blond jeans with a bag full of goodies - mini red heart balloon, chocolates and something with a big red bow.

Happy Valentines!

Seven Sisters

They were trees y'know (you probably did, actually!)

A woman applies mascara on the notoriously bumpy section of the Victoria Line between Seven Sisters and Finsbury Park. Other people are rolled vigorously in their seats. She is watched by a man with a painstakingly perfect 60s bob - side parting and smoothed into a bowl with not a single hair out of place. He's wearing a short parker jacket (a blue one with orange inside and scrappy fake grey fur around the hood) and a big beard. Both of which detract from the smooth hair image.

Whatever happened to...

Jimmy Somerville? I think I saw him cycle past the bus stop this morning.

Snow

I'm belatedly blogging about the snow. Largely to remind myself about how it looked. It was lovely looking out on Thursday morning to the softness, light and quiet of the gently falling snow. People had trampled the path before me, their footsteps crispy underfoot already. But my garden remained pristine bar a couple of trails of fox and local cats (either the black and white one or the one-eyed tabby).



By the next day the big melt had started (and completed in most places) but in Tottenham where the council hadn't salted the pavements the resulting compacted snow blackened on the side of the road. So it was nice that it was gone by the evening.

Fire Fire

So after the other women of the group got over their disappointment that the firemen giving the talk weren't in their hard hats and protective overcoats (so many cliched fantasies, bet they involved poles), they actually turned out to be a bunch of pyromaniacs. How their eyes lit up at the prospect of being able to put out actual simulated fires with fire extinguishers. Our crappy coffee cup managed to leak coffee onto one of the firemen's shirts. He decided to take it off, wash it, dry it on the radiator and hang round in his vest in the meantime (fanning the girls fantasies, perhaps, he didn't really look much like the diet coke man, though, which perhaps saved him). Fire safety training is scary actually.

Spider

I first saw it hiding under the skirting board when I was sanding four months ago. I vaccumed under there carefully hoping to suck it up. Today it ran into the middle of the rug before I saw it. Its grown. Huge. (Not in turrantula proportions, you understand, but big for a british house spider). I froze. It froze. I looked round for something to catch him in. I considered pouring the water out of the nearby glass through a gap in the floorboards. I finally spied a box, emptied it, and like lightening slapped it over the top of the spider, clapping a cd against a hole on one side. Phew. A box is harder to slide a paper under though. I slid last week's weekend magazine under, it mostly fitted and daringly flipped the box right way up closing the lid as the spider ran into a corner. Spider nightmares (mostly that they'll run up my arm). I released it to the outdoors where he promptly headed for the ventilation vent under the building. Nightmare. I fully expect to have to catch him again.

Freesheets

It seems to be agreed by everyone that London's Freesheets are getting out of hand. The additional litter and the fruggers (remember chuggers - charity muggers - bib wearing charity collecting harassers, fruggers are those agressive freesheet giver-outers who are everywhere on the streets of an evening).

This evening I found my bus littered by a stack of special editions of More than Conquerers from the Deya Ministries warning of the marriages destroyed by witchcraft spells and of witches attacking the head of state's granddaughter (the State being Cameroon). Scary.

The Pompous Ass

He was sitting on the tube reading his telegraph folded in half horizontally down the middle, held out in front of him with his arms not resting on anything, almost like an endurance test. Clad in a pink shirt (bound to be Pinks) with a feint blue check matched with a blue tie with pink stars.

Pompous ass, I thought. Judgemental perhaps but he was. Deconstructing my prejudice about his ass-ness I wondered what exactly made me think that when I had never spoken to the poor man. Its the way he sits, his pointy nose, the way he folded his suit jacket just so. Harsh, I thought, always jumping to conclusions. Perhaps I'm the pompous ass.