Thursday 12 August 2021
Friday 25 September 2020
Lockdown and Beyond
Thursday 13 August 2020
Brewing Storm
Yesterday's front never reached the back of our house - it remained for a while a ridge of building cloud when I looked out front but it eventually burned off giving way to another warm evening that didn't drop below 28 degrees even in the dark.
The heat was up again this morning, but about 2pm a cool breeze blew in, noticeably cooler, almost 10 degrees. The sky is grey, the leaves are rustling in the upper branches, a lone helicopter passes overhead in the distance.
I am listening to Astrud Gilberto singing Once Upon a Summertime in the background - in looking through a stack of old records to see if he wanted any my father picked a album out with this on it. Very 60s lounge sound, excellent for working to. I also had to listen to A Man and a Woman - reminding me of my mother and the records they used to play in the early 70s. Waiting for the rain. Sort of quiet, sad and breathy female vocal.
On the news there is flooding and pictures of huge downpours over red London buses. Not here yet. Amazing how localised the weather can be. A sprinkling of rain comes down, enough to feel the prickle on your hot skin but no opening deluge. Its expectant. Just a matter of time. I'm hoping for a huge crack of thunder and perhaps some lightning just as starting point.
Fat drops come down at great speed. Plink plunking in the pool of water I have keep cool. Time to move indoors except that the cooling hot drops are lovely respite from the recent heatwave. Its like being in the sea in Thailand in the rain. Lovely.
And almost as fast as it started it has stopped. For now.
Wednesday 12 August 2020
Front
There’s a hot wind blowing from the west, whipping up the clouds in the upper atmosphere - big and frothy with crisp edges picked out by the sun. It’s the fourth day in a row that has reached temperatures over 30 degrees. Without the air conditioning at the office the hot wind is a welcome respite.
The cat is hunting mice in the bamboo from next door that juts up against our wire fence. She pokes her arm into the dead leaves that have accumulated and burrows down to see if she can catch them. I can’t see them. I wonder if she is just chasing the wind in the leaves.
Sounds of children playing outside have rung out all day. Heat excitement.
The slow rumble of thunder rolls through the sky in the distance. Underlying the sound of the urban trains going past, the wind roughing up the leaves, and the distant dual carriageway. Absolutely no emergency vehicles. My neighbour is out, his only presence the click of his cigarette lighter.
Tuesday 22 October 2019
Tube Travelling 5
Down and outs of the underground
Everything hurts, face scarred, fingers torn and filthy, an empty coffee cup, held out as a container, begging the commuting workers and tourists for spare change. In a changing world less change available. Screen faces ignoring the plight of the stricken and hungry. He looks at the people he is throwing his life out to, nobody engages, nobody sees this person. A person. A soul. Lost but a soul. Lost in the depths of whatever despair is afflicting him. But he studies us. And we ignore him.
Tube Travelling 4
There are an unusual number of observers on the tube today - 3 out the 12 where usually it is just me. Everyone else lost in their world of screen - games, music, downloads and the usual odd woman engaged in her morning makeup rituals. I briefly cross eyes with the other two, interest in their eyes, reflecting back my own.
Tube Travelling 3
Years of travelling the same route, then forced to redirect on the whim of the underground bosses - directed walkways and thought-through one way systems that interfere with the age old desire for humans to find the path of least resistance and so in defiance of the rules we walk through no entry tunnels and earn a few more minutes grace on our journeys much to the bemusement of more rule-abiding tourists.
Tube Travelling 2
An ashy old man in an olive parka sits on the Victoria line holding a plastic bottle of water, his hand is twitching making the bottle squeak in that creaky plastic bottle way, while he watches a large beige woman transform herself in a morning routine that ought to be performed at home. No preservation of the mystery is left to the imagination - face sculpting with shades of foundation and powder, eye shadow, mascara, lash curlers, under chin shading. Fascinating to the man. Amazing to me that it takes so much makeup to look bare faced.
Tube travelling
The neurotic itchy people seem to pierce my eye more readily than the still calm people. Leg twitching, uncontrolled expressive faces, tics from too many drugs, inability to sit still, those with ants in their pants. Drawing myself to bring up my inner stillness, collecting myself in self awareness, holding each muscle and bone in deliberate poise, extending elegance to counter the messy, jerky, tic-y thing that I am watching.
Friday 24 May 2019
Distressed Voting
Wednesday 15 May 2019
Pigeon
Monday 29 April 2019
Perceptions of Colour
Thursday 25 April 2019
Longing
Sunday 21 April 2019
Zephaniah Trouble Thomas
Thursday 18 April 2019
Waiting
Sunday 14 April 2019
Top Secrets from the Underground
Monday 28 January 2019
Painting
We have been painting. Continuing on from creating an homage to the Panther's mother we have kept going. For me its about learning to mix the paint and creating a likeness.
Happy New Year (and its almost a twelfth over)
I have had a cold for what seems like three months, it comes and goes and resurfaces when I'm just about feeling better, and a back ache that the physiotherapist decided was the pelvis bone rubbing, which was on the left hand side and over the weekend jumped to the right with all the excruciating initial pain it had.
Saturday 25 August 2018
Leopold
Monday 16 July 2018
Reading Murder Mysteries
Wednesday 21 March 2018
Playing people tessellation on the tube
Pressed up against the last man in’s backpack. Two people force their way on behind me. Small woman who can’t stand still and fidgets in the curve of my back on the right. And a large older man who I feel trying to stifle chesty coughs through his barber jacket
At Paddington lots get off. Shuffle around. Sharing the pole with a pole hogging American who doesn’t seem to mind that her breast is pressed against my hand and her warm hand is cupping the top of mine. Plenty of room for everyone if someone isn’t leaning all round it
Tourists fuddle the smooth transition across hall at the top of the escalators at kings cross, standing still or heading cross trajectories.
At the Piccadilly line platform a crowd round the open door is an obstacle to getting on the remaining space.
Tuesday 13 March 2018
Monkeys in Chapel Street Market
Fast forward to 2018, we live in Tottenham, we were having a cup of tea with my neighbour and were talking about her photographs (one on display of her as a young mum in the 80s with that big permed 80's hair). She showed us a picture of her holding a monkey when she was a child. I have one almost exactly the same as that I said. And nipped back home to get a photograph album. Her photo reminded me of one of my own, in memory it felt like an almost exact replica. We talked about the likelihood of it being in Chapel Street - she thought yes. We compared pictures,
Friday 2 March 2018
Siberian Winter
Snowing
Sunshine through snow
Blue sky
Snowing
Sun melts snow on south facing
Icicles form off the shed roof
Footprints in snow
Wake up
Heating broken
Frozen pipes opened
Heating working
Snow storm blows in
Flakes swirling across the window
Yesterday’s indentations re-covered
Five wintering thrushes sitting in the tree
Grey sky
Saturday 9 December 2017
Being the subject
Monday 16 October 2017
Dark descends
Thursday 5 October 2017
Absence
There have been fights about technology - falling in to the trap of using the phone for connection all the time, even at inappropriate times, followed by long stretches of no contact at all and the technology being switched off.
There are conspiracy's abounding about the bad affects on health of screens, wifi and spying. I'm reading too many espionage novels - borrowed from the window sill in the kitchen area of the office (people leave books there for others to borrow - a sort of library which reminds me of book-crossing) and find I get paranoid, but I can't bring myself to slog through the other type of fiction that abounds there - stories of women in old times.
There has been death. Lots of it. The Panther's mother the most potent. Our neighbour's mother also. One of our younger friend's young girlfriend. The mother of another friend of mine from my previous workplace. My friend Alex from school - from a virulent cancer. I'm guessing the middle age of life is where this starts to happen. I feel for my father, in his mid-80s with his massive collection of photos of dead friends and family
We passed a 3 year anniversary. The Panther and I. Love is still strong.
Wednesday 4 October 2017
Evening commute
Then a cyclist drove straight into the back of a bus because he was looking at his phone. Clonk. And the front wheel had been forced inwards on the frame and couldn't be pulled out. He dragged it off.
And then I followed a woman onto the bus who had long black hair with a back-combed fringe that stuck out and had just had her lips collogened - all puffed up and swollen.
And dark fell before I reached home.
Friday 4 August 2017
Lunchtime City
Tuesday 25 July 2017
Eyebrows
Friday 12 May 2017
Birthday eve
Monday 8 May 2017
Painting
Wednesday 26 April 2017
Time Passing in a Vaccum
Things have happened which passed us by - three people killed by stabbing across London, a man killed his daughter and himself live on Facebook, it snowed up north in April.
Outside life doesn't feel real and inside the bubble is a supportive seclusion. I'd forgotten how it was in the time after. I remember my father and sister watching lots of videos and never leaving the house, while I went to work and put on an appearance of normality while walking through treacle.
Tuesday 28 March 2017
Feeling
The panther's mother is seriously ill, at home with nothing more they can do for her. It brings back all sorts of grief from my mother's death. This is a woman who on first meeting gave me a hug to welcome me to her family. I told her I loved her son and she said she knows.
I woke up this morning feeling foreboding. I'm not sure how to support the Panther, and I'm not sure I can hide how I feel.
Thursday 23 March 2017
Commuters
I'm a bit fed up. Working while looking out the window at the sunshine and magnolia trees in full bloom.
And yesterday there was a terror attack on Westminster. It unfurled in real time by social media. People today shocked at the photographers who took pictures but failed to help. Trump Jr being an idiot about Mayor Khan. Ever since I remember London has had some form of threat - the Irish, then the anti-gay nail bomber, 7/7... we are used to it. We don't have as many incidents and deaths as Americans do from gun owners killing their fellow citizens. I wish we could get away from all the mud slinging. Whatever happened to leaders just expressing sympathy to other nations.
Wednesday 8 March 2017
Space Oddity
In a cafe a man plays chess against himself and a timer. A roll up board. He plays both black and white pieces. I'm not sure where the challenge is. Behind him a young beardy man with crutches eats chocolate cake. A man with half white face and drawn on black curling moustache hands out flyers to a hairdressers. She listens to her music loudly. Nothing gets through.
An albino child walks by, cap pulled low over his head. Skin so flaky he is scaled like some deep sea fish. Fish out of water.
Tom Waits is singing Gods away on business in his deep gravelly, freak show voice. She was on a different route to usual and didn't realise she missed her stop. Not enough people disembarked so she didn't notice. Waiting at a bus stop to correct the tragectory of travel tall chromed heels flick past flashing light about like knives thrown at the circus.
Boring life, who would want it.