Private View

Hobnobbing with the art crowd at the preview of Susan Hiller exhibition at the Tate Britain. The work requires a certain intellectual engagement that isn't properly possible in such crowded conditions but there is definitely a reason to come back and spend more time. Feminist and psychological sensibility. Mixed and alternative media. Collections and cataloguing. Relooking at found objects, re-presenting them.

Tate Britain first gallery is full of sculpture of the human form, people mill around drinking wine and posing. I keep looking at shoes.

Of Dogsitting and Panic

Invited to London to look after a house while the owners are away and dog-sit at the same time. Thoroughly enjoying the city. Walking the dog and having a house to roam around in.

Come down one morning to find the dog has died in the night. Shocked and unsure what to do, look up a vet, call them. The vet says bring him in - they can look at what may have happened. Next issue - how to transport the dead dog to the vet, and how to get there. Having planned the route, discover a suitably large suitcase (this is not a small dog), put the dead canine inside and set off.

Surprisingly heavy load. Struggling up the stairs at the tube with the case. Passing man asks if he can help. Consider, then say actually its heavy, yes appreciate the help. Boy it is heavy, what you got in here, he asks. Quick thinking come up with a plausable explanation - boyfriend's decks - he's a DJ and is doing a set later. Man promptly runs off with the case. Second shock.

Two things flash through the head.

1. The man's face when he opens the case and discovers that his most recent criminal act has not resulted in his ownership of a fine pair of decks but rather a dead dog. Perhaps he's selling it on sight unseen to some budding DJ or a fence...
2. The explanation to the owners becomes increasingly implausable - OMG the dog died, I was taking him to the vet, in a suitcase, when I was mugged...

Lady Marmalade

Today I was mostly making marmalade. I didn't start until after 9pm so didn't get finished until 2am. Forgot I needed to let the mixture simmer for 2 hours, and then melt sugar and boil for a further 20 minutes, and putting it in jars took half an hour.  Anyway, the house smells divine - orangy in a way that evokes the summer. I didn't used to like marmalade but this reminiscence of summer is a lovely thing, especially in the middle of the winter.

There's a road that crosses Calendonian Road where when you stopped at the lights in the summer (having the window down, music playing) the scent of oranges would waft over from the orange juice factory. Made you feel like Florida. Cooking with oranges is like this. Pungent smell that is very evocative.

Ceramics Class




3rd week - three-legged spoon pot came out of the kiln this week - think its very jaunty with all the spoons inside. Finished the first water jug (thinking of making 4 of them for various people), and a 20 minute coil pot that I covered in green slip. Roll on next week, got things to do!

Me & the Foxes of Peckham

Leaving work at 930pm. The temperature has dropped. It's slightly misty. You can taste the damp in the air. Sky is pitch black and the recently huge moon isn't visible from my vantage point. Crossing, a fox darts out from the Girdler's Cottages and runs round the corner in a flash. The streets are deserted. Smoke drifts out of a chimney and is blown off by the chill, it's not really wind. The station is deserted. Distant sound of sirens and some feint background city noise like a quiet tinnitus. A plane crosses the sky but is not visible. Fingertips are frozen. I need some fingerless gloves (I can't type on the touch screen with full gloves). They would add to my channelling-a-Toulouse-Lautrec-prostitute-image (patent leather lace-up boots, black tights, hair twisted high in the fringe).

Overheard

I'm waiting to catch him, have a little word
What was she doing with his medical certificate? 
Well, it wouldn't be the first time, what can we say - she is the company bike, everyone rides it. So perhaps there's something going on in that department. Like I said waiting to bump into him and have a little word...

Gabriel Orozco at the Tate

Private view - started at 7.00, we were in time to actually see the exhibition before it got too crowded and before those who were just there to be seen arrived. The work ranges wildly in scale from objects that can be held to huge collections that fill up a gallery. It demands closer inspection, the beauty of it is in the detail - the skin prints on ceramic, wrinkles in the paint of pictures made by folding to create symmetrical prints, telephone numbers from the telephone book, pieces of blown out tyres that curl and fray like seaweed, lines drawn with a ruler with blips that go round fingers overhanging, lint from tumble dryers that is grey fluff barely holding together full of hair and threads and flakes. It is playful and funny - the one seat wide Citroen that looks like a glider plane or a racing car, fan with toilet rolls that spiral from each blade. Quietly clever beautiful photographs - concentric ripples across a pond that is actually a puddle on a roof, bicycle tracks circling through two puddles, watermeloncats. I like this work alot. Some of it was very familiar, definitely had a feeling I had seen some of it before.  I hadn't realised I was standing next to the artist and his son in one of the galleries until I came out and saw a video. Later I threw off my London nonchalantness and asked him to sign my copy of the catalogue. He was very obliging and afterwards held my hand in both of his as we shook  and said it was a pleasure meeting me, despite the fact I barely said two words to him and we really only shared an intense look. When I got home and shelved the books I found a catalogue from the ICA in 1996 where I had seen some of the work before. Its not often I feel as inspired and excited by an exhibition as this. I loved it, worth a look.

Reviews:
Metro
Laura Mclean-Ferris in the Independent

Neighbourhood events

Late afternoon on a 341 to the supermarket. As we turn into Glover Drive, home of Tescos and Ikea, one of a pair of girls (who on closer inspection do appear to be overdressed for a trip to buy furniture or household supplies) asks if this bus is going to Angel. I manage to suppress the chortle forming in my throat and tell them this is Angel Road Superstores not Angel (good for going out with it's plethora of pubs, eateries and nightclubs). Indignant, she says but it says Angel on the front. Personally I would have thought the feeling of it not being the right direction would have started dawning before the end stop as the bus travelled further into deepest Tottenham or even as it passed Manor House tube. The confusion of London. They had along journey ahead of themselves back to civilisation.

On the way home, getting off the bus, a dramatic car crash had just happened. A woman stood on the side of the road hugging herself against the cold in orange fluffy slippers and a teeshirt, curtains twitched in the flats opposite, bystanders ogled. The car had careened headlong into the safety barriers by the pedestrian crossing. As I got closer there was an arc of broken glass strewn over the pavement on the other side of the road, possibly the car went out of control before swinging across the road into the barriers. There was nobody in the car. A helpful bystander told me they all jumped out and ran away. Stolen car seemed to be the general hypothesis. An ambulance arrived as I turned down my street - wasted trip...

On my way out today the street was full of parked cars - Tottenham playing at home - a red jaguar searching for a spot pulled in to let an oncoming car pass scraping the back end of a parked vehicle. A man in grey sweat pants recorded the red jag's numberplate and inspected the damage. He scraped it didn't he - we conflabbed. Neighbourly I thought.

Bleak Mid-Winter

Its been relentlessly grey and damp. This is much more depressing weather than all the bright shiny snow we had in the lead up to Christmas. The daylight is low, the drizzle keeps going, its wet, there are puddles. Its making things seem a bit intense - maybe its the pressure building up under the clouds. Someone said there will be more snow in February, I'm actually looking forward to it. There is something jolly about the muted sound, colour and drifts of snow covered spaces. And there was blue sky.

Fur

It seems a long time since we used to shout at women wearing fur "Yuk! Your disgusting fur coat" and other such slogans as advised by PETRA, and those adverts of models dragging blood dripping fur coats along catwalks.

We have shared coat cupboards at work. They have hangers and are aired nicely so they are not smelly. One of the ones I use regularly started to have a fur coat in it during the cold spell. It might be rabbit - it somehow doesn't seem like a really expensive fancy one. Its a little bit scraggy, or something. Fur coat no knickers. Springs to mind every time I open the cupboard to put my coat in. I try not to put my coat next to it. Not sure whether thats because I don't want it tarnished by it or don't want my coat to feel of a lower quality.

Finally I discovered who was the fur coat wearer. A tall and painfully thin blond with a fondness of incredibly high tarty shoes. Fur coat no knickers seemed appropriate.

All in Grey

In Costas by Kings Cross downstairs from the Premier Inn there seem to be an awful lot of people in smart grey. Grey jackets and grey trousers, two in grey jumpers with a light grey cuff and collarband, and then two raincoats with lime linings. A uniform. They are all talking in french. Eurostar staff. Doh. Then another man comes in wearing a long slate blue coat, a bright red scarf and matching glasses. Natty. Another uniform - his bag says East Coast to Leeds. Must be all the long haul staff of the train companies who dress like air hostesses. Train hostesses. Like those cleaners who are now called Train Presentation Staff, and ticket inspectors who are Revenue Protectors.

Happy 2011

So making a change from Jules Holland and feeling sorry for myself on the sofa, I was invited to a new year's eve party. While the majority drank bubbly, we had brought whisky (not my usual tipple but I quite enjoyed the heat in the back of the throat experience). A mixture of friends and neighbours, nibbles and music. Midnight crept up on us quite unexpectedly and the host let off some fireworks in the back garden (mostly low level spark throwing and smoky, some medium sized bangs). Chinese sky lanterns drifted up into the sky from neighbouring parties. After the new year began the music was turned up and there was dancing. Happy new year!

I haven't made any formal new year's resolutions though, have you?

SALE

Work on Wednesday - one lone day in the middle of the week to meet a 31/12/2010 deadline. After the work was done I took the bus over to seething mass that Oxford Street has been for weeks. I've been looking for a new pair of glasses, popped into the Alain Mikli shop at the bottom of Regent Street.



Shoppers are hitting the shops, as are the tourists. Swarming along the pavements, packed into buses,  jostling around the stock searching for a bargain - shoes, clothes, electricals. Where people find the cash... The desperation of it all makes shopping an agony. I still haven't found a frame I am keen enough on to spend the arm and leg they cost - I like a slightly quirky frame. My favourite ones are from a couple of years ago and I still like them the best but I've had them reglazed 3 times now and they are terribly scratched again. I've found good shapes but the wrong colours, or good colours but the wrong shape.

Season to be Jolly

On the eve of Christmas Eve we were shopping in Edmonton Tescos. They had run out of brussel sprouts and I was told if I had wanted them I should have been shopping two days ago (not so much of a bad thing for me but terrible for some of my Christmas guests - they were texted and told of the situation, five minutes later they called to say they had some). Shortly after this a fight broke out between some customers. Lots of shouting and a massive crowd. Eventually someone came on the tannoy and asked customers and staff to move away from the entrance.

Two geese cooked for dinner, stuffed with a highland stuffing with the addition of two chopped bramley apples and a chopped quince. Apparently delicious (being a vegetarian I didn't eat any of it). Two full jars of goose fat drained off and given to the meat eaters for roasting other things later. Dinner was great, company was great. Played games.

Hoping you all had a great time, whatever you did.

3am

Snow reflecting moonlight bright like day. The clouds are white, one section of blueish light towards the horizon. Moonshadows fall across the sparkling ground. The sound of melting - water slowly dripping, ice losing its grip and falling, crunching. Tomorrow much of the precarious balancing stacks will have fallen from the branches and shrubbery will be green and brown again. Spells the end of the magic.

Winter draws in

I've been to Beckton to pick up a parcel - 1. its far away (all the way to Stratford and beyond, bus to Asda, across the street to a shopping arena and round the back of some factories to the depot of the postal carrier), 2. its a dump, 3. when I got the parcel back the goods were damaged and I had to send them back.

Someone at Bruce Grove tried a cashpoint scam on me that didn't work. Beware the helpful passer by telling you the machine is swallowing cards while pressing cancel button (without you noticing) - you leave to go into the bank to complain, he draws out the money. It didn't work but it left a bad taste in my mouth. Hate it when people try to rip me off.

Its been snowing - the streets are lined with exactly the right snow to muffle the sound of the world around us and heighten the crunch under foot. Snowmen appearing on every street corner and all over the parks. Sis in Dundee has been trying to get a snow shovel for a couple of weeks now - they are all sold out...

Got a tree, half decorated it, its the last few days before getting a break and I can't wait. Made mince pies, and marzipan for the cake. Sent the gifts to Scotland, maybe not in time to get there for christmas itself.

December evenings

It's 530 but feels later. Misty. Like fireworks night is supposed to be. Sort of frosty mist - great for eating potatoes baked around a bonfire in tinfoil and being warm on one side (hot face) and freezing on the back. Someone came back from a trip to America and brought mini hershie bars (not sure of the spelling, is it 'y', 'ey', dunno) and bitesized peanut butter cups. Blast from the past. Nanny used to send us parcels with these and hershies kisses and red hot gum. Quite unlike anything we had here at the time. I remember these space fillers more than the actual gifts - I think there were nighties with yolks and high necks made of highly electrostatic material or t-shirts for the Oklahoma 49ers. The parcel always came a bit before Christmas and we would open when it arrived rather than waiting. Treat.

Snowy Scene

London snow - not like the Dundee snow (sis says its sometimes up to their knees, theres a foot of snow sitting on top of her outside bin, she has had to knock the icicles off their roof before they injure someone, push and dig a car out of her road along with 5 neighbours, and push an ikea delivery van out of the road - they live at the top of a steep hill and have been snowed in for a week now) - its a sprinkling in comparison and while we haven't been snowed in it has caused some travel chaos.

Court Room Drama

We had to go to court this week for reasons I'm not going to explain. I had to do a witness statement and therefore was called to be available to the court in case I had to answer questions on it. I imagined being cross examined by a rabid counsel for the defence and cracking under the questionning. Glad to say life is not like in the movies.

There were barristers in cloaks with funny bits hanging off the back (apparently for attracting their attention from behind by tugging on it... not sure I believed this explanation except it was given by a person with a humour by-pass) and wigs that looked like they were slightly balding. There was a judge sitting high up on a red leather chair, wearing purple, not making much eye contact. There was verbal ping pong between the barristers (my learned friend) and the judge (your honor). And a listings manager or clerk or something who was like a bouncer who liked talking in a booming voice (top of the stairs announcing the court number to the waiting room), All Rise when the judge went in and out of the room. Eventually when the barristers were conflabbing and the judge was out for a while he came through the court and said we all looked like we were waiting for the film to start, next time through he called out ice creams ice creams.

And the outcome wasn't exactly favourable and will be drawn out for potentially another year.

The Season (to be jolly)

So, having endured the onslaught since August by turning a blind eye (don't believe in even mentioning it until well after Halloween), my mind has finally turned to christmas with the current freezing weather and plans afoot. I made mincemeat for mince pies last weekend, the fruit for cake is soaking, to be made tomorrow, there will be goose (!?!) for dinner. The last time (and incidentally the only time) I cooked goose was one christmas at Georgia's. They cracked open the sparkly wine before getting the dinner in the oven. As the bottles stacked up someone had to take charge, otherwise we probably wouldn't have had any dinner at all. That time we just bunged it into the oven with all the usual stuff. This time I've been looking up recipes and advice. Apple sauce, or quince compote, and some kind of apple stuffing, it seems may be the thing. (Would you believe I'm a vegetarian? I've been practicing cooking poultry so it doesn't dry out all year - start it sitting on its breast - and I'm not sure if that's necessary with a goose.)

Haven't done any shopping yet though. Did pass through Oxford Street once and hardly dared get off the bus the crowds were so huge.

Social Network

iPhone app - Instagram - social networking through photography. I use my account to post pictures taken on my iphone as I go about. Other people treat it differently - posting only their best ever photos. Linking to others is called following, people who follow you are your followers, theres a link button at the bottom of each picture where you can like it. There's a popular page where the most liked photos appear. To be really popular you need to be doing really good landscape/urban photography, sunsets and sunrises of the dramatic type that we rarely get in the UK and kitten pictures.

Social networking always works the same way - there's a giant love-in for a few people that attract a lot of attention from those who want to become popular - these few grow huge followings, their posts are loved by many and always appear in the popular lists but they are unable to share the love with lesser known meteorites because it takes them so much time dealing with their own huge following. It was like this with blogging (7 years) and is like it with Instagram (10 days). One of the A listers of Instagram was bemoaning that they must be doing something to keep his pictures off the popular page - must be a bit of a dent to his superego (loss of popularity is a concern) but as one of his commentors said in a kind of aside - I'm still waiting for a picture to grace the popular list.

I find its like in reality - I've always been just slightly too left-field to be really popular. As a teenager I wore that as a badge of honor. Must learn to take that attitude to online social networking!

End of Term 1

So another 10 weeks (11 counting half term) has slipped past. We've made glaze, experiments, disasters, pots, failed to finish anything significant, eaten pizza, drank wine and sambucca and are now resting. In the last two weeks I have made some significant progress towards some better work but being as it was the last two weeks it isn't finished yet. There are still some pots with images of nudes on them in relief, a pot that was made in half an hour that is 65cm tall (still drying), and a pot for wooden spoons that looks a bit like a joke pot but hopefully will be less so when glazed. In the meantime the results of all the weeks are a rag tag of glazing and making experiements that have to be squirreled away in hidden corners.



Next term I already have a better plan and clearer idea of what it is I am attempting to make.

Last night we talked about what it is that we get out of attending the class - mixture of development of skill, playing with material, using hands and brain in different more primeaval manner and the results we are looking for - symmetrical and unsymmetrical, perfect and kooky, could only agree on one thing - we like it. What we do it for is completely individual and what we are trying to achieve is also.

On the use of pale green

Passed a launderette while on the bus. Pale green walls. Presumably when designing it pale green is going to feel clean and fresh. Together with bad lighting and steam, hardy plants and industrial washersa nd dryers it ends up dingy and drab, lending a sickly glow to the interior and people within.

Hospitals with high ceiled wards and corridors. Pale green here intended to be a soothing colour to help the sick get better. But too many years between coats means it looses its clean sheen and ends up dirty in the corners.

Lewisham College under the reign of the formidable Ruth Silver used pale green as the institution's colour. Not until I left working there did I appreciate how a single colour scheme and a redecorating schedule that ensured a new coat of paint over the whole college every year, kept the place seeiming orderly, clean and refreshed.

Bags

How can a supermarket run out of plastic bags? I know we are supposed to be cutting down on their use but for the whole store to run out seems like extraordinarily poor stock management. I mean, couldn't they have cab'd some over from the next store over (it's only 10 mins away). They were handing out bin liners instead - flimsy things that wouldn't hold 2 tins of beans without splitting. They wouldn't give out bags for life for free either. Many disgruntled customers.

Ceramics



Its almost the end of the term and I've managed to get not much done again. Done some experiments with glazes, and using shellac. But actual end results minimal.

Violated

I've had my email account hacked. Someone has stolen my password logged in and sent tonnes of people a spam email from me. If you are one of those people I profusely apologise. They also posted onto this blog (now deleted). Ugh. I feel like someone has been in my house rummaging around my papers. Broken in. Hate it. Maybe its more than burglary. Maybe its more like stealing your identify and pretending to be you. Actually this is a bit of an exaggeration but I don't like it all the same.

Remember remember



Didn't actually go to see any fireworks display this evening but looked out when I heard a loud crack to see a couple of colourful sparks sprinkling over the rooftops of my neighbours.

Action

Bus driver says might as well transfer to the bus behind we'll be here a while. 150 passengers file off the bus unsure of their likelihood of a squeeze onto a following bus due to the overcrowding from the tube strike. A militant italian cyclist was trying to get his bike half on the bus to stop the driver absconding while he called the police. A fellow passenger told me he was claiming the bus driver nearly ran him off the road. Believable, yes, but when the cyclist clearly wasn't injured and his bike wasn't damaged wouldn't a more appropriate course of action be to take the driver's shift number and lodge a complaint. Particularly when the tubes were on strike.

Early to Work

Been expected early to work. So having to get up at 6.30. Before the clocks went back it meant I saw the sunrise twice without getting up for it specially. Red and gold and lovely. Quiet time. Leaves have turned. Bright yellow, orange. Sometimes a bright blue sky behind. Leaving the house at 7.30. Emptier on the way to the station. Leaves under foot, not yet slimy. Train station is more crowded, train is more crowded. These are early start people. Suited. Booted. More ferocious in their quest for a seat. Fewer seats available and none of the emptying out of the train at Seven Sisters that there is when you set out an hour or so later. Walk to work from the station faced with more head on pedestrians hot-footing it to catch the train. Look for the cat lady (haven't seen her again since although once saw two cats who must have been remaining after).

Work - whirlwind of organising, deciding, troubleshooting, emailing, question-answering, telephone calls and other distractions. And hot.

Sun sets over the ridge in the west, shining gold evening light into the side of the building. Afterwork, it is dark or darkening. The air is light on the eyes which by now are tired. The quiet and cool of the outside is refreshing. Stand on the platform of the station, high over the surrounding neighbourhood. Navy blue sky. Aeroplane passing. Slouched in a seat, staring. Longer the week goes on (and it is only second day), more tired I become. Can't wait for the weekend.

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?