Breakfast streaking

Bails thought she had left the front door keys in the door of Rodney's flat. Forgetting that despite it being a side basement door that there is a view to the street she opened the door in the buff to check just as a woman walked past. 

Disgusting people

I work in an open plan office. I have just seen a colleague diagonally opposite dig his ear with a bic biro lid and then examine it before he licked it off. Ugh. Bet he is a nose picker as well. 

Cravings

I'm wondering, 8 months on whether I will ever be able to slake my craving for beef. Particularly in steak or burger form. Will it take me 26 years (length of my vegetarian gap) to catch up?

Classy bar staff

I came into a classy restaurant with a bar. Sat on a comfortable stool at the marble topped bar. Ordered a cocktail sitting where the barman makes the drinks. It is happy hour. I got two cocktails for the price of one. The barman spilled chipped ice around that looked like rough cut diamonds. The other clientele were all couples. I watched the barman and wished mr was here. By the time I started my second cocktail I was perhaps one sheet to the wind and managed to tip some down my shirt. Barman just quietly placed some additional napkins by my setting without even seeming to notice what I had done. Classy. Very classy. 

Strict Undergarments

I found myself in Harmony looking at corsets. Helped by a lovely oriental assistant to actually get into them. We started with a purple one I picked off the shelf - lovely colour. She pulled it tight in the middle. Just about able to breathe. And then laced it up and down. And then went for a second tightening. Breathing was optional I decided. I can see why ladies used to faint. I can also see how you might get hooked on the constriction - it makes you 100% aware of your body (posture, movement, breathing and shape). We decided it didn't fit on the bust. All the squeezing meant it barely covered it. 

We tried a black one next. Much better fit, if a less exciting colour. In between she decided I had to get rid of the bra I was wearing cos it did nothing for me. And I felt I had to listen - this was a lady who looked and sounded like she would take no shit. And then she wanted to take pictures to show my boyfriend, who she believed would love it (despite the fact she knew nothing of him). Her direction was strict - look sultry, don't smile, be confident, don't do your arm like that. And she hated the iPhone camera. 

There's something special about underwear sales assistants. Very complementary but honest if that makes any sense. Not afraid to burst in and make themselves known. 

I always thought I ought to have been born a Victorian! 

Through the Wardrobe

From Rye Lane, Peckham, we drove up through the multi-storey car park and then walked through the iron gates into a display of installation and sculpture accompanied by a warm up for the London Contemporary Music Festival by a choir with their faces painted white.

Finally out onto the top floor to find Frank's cafe and cocktails. Blue sky and sparkling. A haven with a full panoramic view at the top of Peckham. Full of Shoreditch types. Drinking cocktails that were pre-made. Joined an empty queue and was helpfully told I had gone the wrong way (lots of rules in this transplanted Hoxton). The waitresses wore hot pants with their bum cheeks hanging out. And we started off sharing a table with a couple of fluorescent haired tattooed pierced suburbanites. We eventually had to move from their inane gossip. 

Weird and otherworldly. Most unlike what you expect to find on top of a car park. 

A baby seagull had taken a dive from the nest but could launch himself back into the air. He was all long legs and mottled fluffy feathers. His mum dive bombed the drinkers but they mostly didn't notice her or the baby seagull. 

In the corner someone hemmed the trouser leg of one of the choir members. 

And then we went home descending through the floors back out into the reality of Peckham. 

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Cafe Viva

Intense young woman and her apple notebook rubs the shoulder of her friend vigorously. The friend is dressed in the style of a land girl from the forties and is bent over her iPhone texting and rolling a cigarette with liquorice papers. When she finishes, she gets up and leaves, pecking the intense girl on the cheek on the way out. The man sitting next to me has slicked back hair and a moustache that curls at both ends. Head from the 1930s, dressed like a grungy festival hippy. The weather has cooled. They are digging up the street outside and a dustbin lorry goes past stinking. Intense girl turns the volume up on her phonecall to be heard. We all hear. 

Singular of Sheep

At an artists studio someone said (while looking at a wicker sculpture of a sheep) why isn't there a singular of sheep. I said it could follow the pattern of teeth and tooth - a singular of sheep could be shoop. But why don't we have a singular of sheep, someone asked. Maybe I thought because sheep don't normally come in ones. They come in flocks. 

Ly-cester Square

I'm waiting for my companions for the evening. Leicester Square. Being renovated has a mirrored awning around the fountain which reflects back the passing throng of tourists which this area now almost exclusively attracts. More foreign languages spoken here than English. Could be on holiday. 

It's warm. People are strewn over the grass like they've been here all day. The evening sun is waning slowly. On the opposite corner the police arrest and take away a seemingly compliant tramp who looked like he was about to pitch a tent. 

Mostly people are eating burgers and fries and eating pig fat ice creams despite the fact there is a Haggan Das shop on one side and a Ben and Jerry's on the other. 

It's stretched into a long 20 minutes. Possibly double. Still waiting. 

Waving not drowning

I'm on the train that passes his house and on the phone to him at the same time. He comes outside and waves at the train as it goes past. I'm in the third carriage first doors I say waving back. He laughs. I laugh. The woman standing next to me sees him and also laughs. Did you see me I ask. Yes he said you're wearing a grey teeshirt or something. I am. Tenuous connections, fleeting but lovely. I bet the whole train saw me he says, we have to stop doing this shit. I hope not I think smiling. 

Waiting for the bus

I'm impatient and it said 5 minutes before any bus was due. I started walking and a man started talking. Couldn't be bothered to wait for the bus either? no. It's been a long day and I don't feel like waiting.

How far you going? Not really sure. 

What do you do? Work for the Council. 

Doing what? Contracts management. 

Admin then? Largely, I agree. Boring then? Somewhat. 

What do you do in your spare time? I make pots, and... Blog a little. And take photos. Quite a bit of extras I think. Haven't thought about that for a while. 

What kind of pots? Big and odd. 

Do you sell them online or anything? Not sure anyone would want them. But I'm trying to persuade someone to give me an exhibition in Peckham. 

Anyway we've talked a lot about me. What about you? 

I used to work with young people but didn't like it as I got further into management and now am trying to set up as photographer.

So these interesting conversations about people trying to do some self employment type work. It makes me think about what I intended to do when I started out at the beginning. Some kind of artistic expression. 

Finally, he said, I've walked past my bus stop twice now. You must go back I said. Yes he said. We went our separate ways and I'm thinking of what I will do next. 

Bored boy and the German tourist

The bored boy is driving his toy car over the back of his seat and behind the neck of a German tourist. The German tourist flicks the back of his neck with slight irritation. The bored boy's car drives across the seat backs to his mother's shoulder. His feet press gently against the German tourist's apple green samsonite suitcase so that it rolls slightly on its four caster wheels. The German tourist rolls the suitcase off the bottom of the bored boy's trainer soles. The car drives back across the seats and down the arm of the German tourist, whereupon the bored boy's father nodded to the bored boy's mother who knocked the bored boy's feet off the seat and apologised to the German tourist who pretended it was okay, even though it blatantly wasn't really. 

Bananas

After Friday prayers at lunchtime men stream out of the local mosque and flow back up towards Rye Lane. Multiculturally Muslim. And eating perfect yellow bananas.

Dressing your age

I can't decide whether it is better to be mutton dressed as lamb, or lamb dressed as mutton. Lamb doesn't often dress as mutton but I've seen a girl outside in a gold brocade jacket with a brown blouse underneath with a knot detail at the neck. Lady Di-esc. She looks like she has come out in her granny's clothes. 

Morning, Love

Young couple on way to work in the city. He in a suit, she in a beige mac. A standing crushed together on the train morning. His head is down looking at something on his phone. She leans her forehead against his. He presses against hers. Looks up. Finishes with the phone, and puts his arm around her. They read the Metro together. No words, just actions. 

Cobblers

Bought a lovely pair of sandals with a slight heel from that jumble sale called TKMaxx. Wore them out to the theatre and the heel pad of one came off. Took them to the cobblers in London Bridge. Nice man. Said they were very summery and wouldn't I be wearing them later? I said it depended how long to fix them. Timings didn't fit in but I would collect them tomorrow. 

On collection we had a similar conversation about wearing them. I looked around the workshop area - there were spike heels in black with studs, and flesh toned ones in patent leather and a kitten heel on the counter getting glued. I wondered if he had a shoe fetish. A cobbler with a shoe fetish. Could be the ideal job!

Indulgences

So today on the quest to find the perfect black leather jacket for a man with a 46inch chest I was on Bond Street, playing at being a rich woman shopping for her husband. Being very contained and not balking at the outrageously large prices of said jackets (£1600 anybody? Someone must be buying them). The shops are decidedly empty here - none of the crowds stacking up on sweatshop-produced cheap shit from Primark. No, these are shops with charming sales assistants and security men who open the door for you and wish you a very pleasant evening. They sit you down and parade their wares for you, checking prices and sizes and telling you all about the fabric. 

In Fenwick I tried on brassieres. One of them worth £145. That's more than I've paid for any item of clothing I've ever owned! Nice though. Very good fit. The shop assistant thought so also as she burst through the curtain unannounced and told me that there was good room in the back, cup size was perfect and my tan looked very fresh. I forget what it's like in these kinds of shops - extra helpful! A little bit over zealous! 

And it all shut down well before late night shopping finished on Oxford Street. No need to work for people who can afford such items, perhaps. 

Loud

The cafe is full of shrieking babies. A man across from me raises his eyes to the sky. The mums are getting ready to leave - it takes them 10 minutes of talking baby to each other excitedly about swings to leave while the babies continue at the tops of their lungs. 

When quiet descends the conversation of three people making film proposals fills the space. The pitch is about the moon and reaching up to show longing and desire. Beautiful they think. Cliche I think. Then there is something about a person holding up a cheese and a dolls house and a family that just sounds naff. Advert perhaps. One of them is going to start doing the sound scapy stuff. Doing diaries, around half term, loudly. Pretentious students.  Or perhaps pretentious film people who deliver courses. 

Birthday

It's my birthday today (actual birthday not blog birthday). Not been posting much because my computer has broken and I need a new hard drive. There are posts I need to do - like about my fabulous trips to Ghana and most recently Greece and stories of life and love and tribulations, ceramics and work, London, Athens and Accra. I'm going to be better. Because I'm 43. And I don't want my life to pass me by uncommented upon! 

I wore yellow to work today. They've not seen me in anything other than black before. It was somewhat controversial and deemed worthy of much comment. 

Lunchtime Cafe Musicals

On the way to the cafe the brief display of sunshine was replaced by threateningly black clouds.

Two mums sat chatting with their babies and buggies. A man and his mum having coffee. Several lone eaters with the dregs of hot drinks. A woman opposite with splendidly black shiny hair and a thick fringe had ordered the same as me.

Egg Mayonaise and salad sandwich on brown. Deliciously reminiscent of the 70s for me. Picnics and homemade sandwiches. Very evocative. Walking across Regent's Park's Inner Circle when mum's flip flop stuck to the heat-moistened tarmac and broke.

Black clouds led to a hail storm. Mum and son chatted about the radio weather on the way down predicting this for London. The mothers gassed on about the inanities of life - messing up the recording of their favourite programme which they were bereft about because it had just finished. Waiting for a lull in the weather to leave. When it arrived they walked to the door. One of the mums sang, oh it's still hailing and I'm not wearing appropriate clothes (in the way people do when they are alone). The last words swallowed by the wind as the door closes behind her. The remaining cafe occupants burst into a round of spontaneous laughter which she must have heard as she put up her sweatshirt hood - she blushed and laughed. The other mum had an umbrella which promptly turned inside out in the wind.