A man walks into a bar

Man in a pale grey suit walks up to the bar, peels off his false mushtache, puts it in his pocket and orders a drink. Leaning against the bar he tries to get a hair out of his mouth, repeatedly picking at it iwth his finger and thumb. Something is odd about his suit - it seems to fit right - arms are long enough but not too long, legs are the right length, just something doesn't seem quite right. Maybe something to do with being in disguise.

Posh Shopping

Me: going to the ribbon shop on Marylebone High Street (eek - when I got there it had turned into a bed linen store, fortunately the clerk knew where it had gone to - just round the corner, phew). After the purchase of a particular kind of velvet piping that can be sewn into a seam (only place I know that sells it) I'm an interloper on an expensive street and suddenly become very aware of my fraying coat cuffs as I rub shoulders with women in tres chic macs, expensive brocade or fur jackets and £200 patent leather pumps. How the other half live.

Afterwards I pop into Selfridges where its ok to be a bit edgy (that'll be me in my old coat then) alongside the designer clobber.

Beetroot

It was beetroot carrot and ginger, thick like blood, stained teeth like red wine. I dutifully took a sip when offered a try, it was heavy with the flavour of earth and tangy. The baby decided to dunk her dummy in it, sucked it and instantly burst into tears. Sobbing. Obviously not expecting the repugnant taste. Personally I would have done the same except that I'm an adult and such behaviour is not expected.

Burgeoning Big WoWo

(Its a quote from a teeshirt...not sure what it means but it does feel like a fanfare which is fitting when I'm bringing you fashion tips). White teeshirts are in this year. So are bras in multitude of colours, with lace, sparkles, beading, polka dots and embroidery. Don't go so well together, despite there being a lot of it around.

Huge breasted girl in a vest with a pink/red/yellow stripped bra underneath. Small breasted girl with black bra with pearls on under her white teeshirt (Big WoWo). Somehow leaves nothing to the imagination. Which is a bad thing... or perhaps that's just me.

Autumn Night

Cold seeps out from the dark park through the open gates. Chills the ankles and creeps up the legs. In the park the dew must have fallen. Tall trees tower overhead and hold the cold air down.

Fair Purchase Policy

The checkout chick wouldn't let the Chinese woman ahead of me buy 50 packs of instant freeze dried noodles with bacon bits. She was only allowed to buy 10. It came to £1.10. I was amazed. (Partly because I can't imagine anyone else even wanting such a thing, I would have thought they'd be glad to be rid of it).

Commute

I'm hoping he didn't think he looked like a woman because he really really looked like a balding fat middle aged man in women's clothing. He'd made no effort - no wig, no make-up, not even a shave today really - apart from his pink v neck sweater worn backwards, jean skirt and spike heel boots (that were rather worn down - obviously not their first outing). Perhaps its the feel of the clothes. Or something.


Two women do make-up - compacts held aloft, eyes wide, lids pulled up or down, sticks of kohl and mascara wands held dangerously close to their eyeballs as we lurch along the track. All the suits were pinstripe. Perhaps its the fashion. One an unusual beige, worn with a pink and white candy stripe shirt, picking his nose with his left hand that sported a heavy gold wedding band.

We attempt not to trip up our fellow commuters as they struggle to alight through the standing throngs.

Hearing the click-clack tapping of a blind man's cane [Tom Waits - Gun Street Girl]
Or, Secrets from the Blind Man's World

Did you know that there are little cones on the bottom of the green-man button box that turn round when the green man is showing so that blind people can tell when it is safe to cross. I didn't. But I checked a few yesterday evening and they really are there. I'm on a course at the moment with a visually impaired person (also referred to as a VIP) who was giving us a brief awareness raising course.

Vote for the Most Depressed Day of the Year

Its grey, its been raining heavily. Today is the 9 September, its drizzled, its dreary and it didn't really get bright all day. I woke up with an overwhelming sense of gloom probably due to bad dreams that were brought on by being scared by noises in the night (bad foxes). It didn't lift on the way to work and when I got out of the tube the street was wet again. In work it was afflicting a number of other colleagues and the atmosphere was much dampened.

So, I raise the motion that September the 9th is the most depressed day of the year. I base my motion on the fact that the sun has barely shone the whole summer and despite hopes for an Indian summer it appears that we are well and truly heading for winter. The nights are drawing in noticably already. I'm going to start my holiday fund for next year. I need enough to get somewhere hot and guaranteed sunny - doesn't have to be interesting. I just need at least 12 hours vitamin D generation for a couple of weeks.

Fly Trap

I bought these two venus fly traps because they were on show at the checkout at Homebase. I was in the middle of a fly-problem at home (its been another summer of pest-problems - first a dead rat, then the flies... nightmare) and was trying anything as a possible means of conrol - there are sticky fly thingys, a blue light and now these.



I took them home, put them on the window sill and didn't really expect them to contribute to the war on bluebottle. However, they have so far caught 14 flies between them. 14! And not just little ones either - proper blue bottles that they can hardly get their lips round. I'm impressed.

Allergy

Late in the evening I stood in the warm evening air watering the garden and something bit me on the foot. In the night I must have scratched it. By the morning it was swelling up and red and itchy like mad. Later that day it was moving around my foot skin - it was up my ankle and is now working its way down the foot into my toes. Its a bit freaky. I've only developed this kind of reaction to insect bites recently which I find suprising.

Bus Shelters Gallery

I've been meaning to put these up for some time but continue to fail to get a decent picture but I'm now going to put them up anyway (some of the turf hearts are looking a bit spartan now that its been dry for a while - they started off so lush and lovely!). So bus shelters. Now featuring art (and for some time it seems on bus routes that I don't normally take), if you live near Southgate Road, Old Street or work near Moorgate. Two sorts - these funny brightly coloured sputnik things or turf hearts. Love it.




I think this is the artist making the spudniks. Article by Londonist, Guardian.

Gifts

There was evidence of a massacre on the lawn - little black feathers strewn across it. Since there wasn't a body I suspected the foxes - they tend to eat stuff entirely.

Cooking dinner I went out for some mint and discovered a carcass nestling in the pots, carefully placed as if lain there purposefully - a decapatated blackbird with weirdly grey legs. Bit of a shock. Bagged it up and tossed it (don't know why it wasn't as disgusting as the dead rat we found last week - maybe because I was a vegetarian making a roast chicken dinner for the very lucky boyfiend so my squeamish response was dulled already).

Later next doors' cat suddenly appeared sitting by the open back door - he sometimes comes but mostly in the day time. My suspicians changed as to who was the suspect for the black bird murder. Very much a cat type gift.

Shortning days

When did it suddenly start getting dark at 8.30 again? It suddenly struck me this evening.

Word Cloud



Courtesy of laP, via bignjuicy, a link to Wordle that has created a wordcloud of In the Aquarium. Vacation and clouds feature in big writing - perhaps its a state of mind. And then I did it again...

Red Admiral



Spotted one in the garden today - resting on the elderberries that are drooping from heavily laiden branches. Adding it to the short list visitors this year: peacock, comma and an abundance of small whites. Don't know why I get so excited by them but I do! (I've also had dragonflies.)

Vacation

Vacation is a word that always seems a bit matter of fact, business-like and as such best describes my time off from work. I am not on holiday - holidays are frivolous, exotic, trips out of your regular scenery. I have been off from work for almost a week now. Not been anywhere but the house. Which means I have been travelling less than on a regular week (which in itself is lovely - the less tube the better!) Instead I have been staying up late and watching the olympics live in the middle of the night, sleeping late, painting my hallway (it has taken me some time to figure out quite how I was going to do that - it's a stairwell and I have a fear of ladders, but with extendable poles and paint pads its not been that bad), and capturing any rays that break through the clouds. When I've finished the hall I will be able to hang some pictures which I've had hanging around for some time. Finally get rid of the last colour choice of the previous owners. Its all good!

Queen of the hill

Lady drunk sits atop a litter bin in the rain. Cheeks rouged by alcohol, hair in a pony tail, white shoes, surrounded by male courtiers drinking special brew from the can. She's screeching hey! hey! at a group of poles standing a metre or two away as they spark up cigarettes. Can I 'ave one? she asks in her best little girl flirt when she finally attracts one's attention. She has to decant from her litter bin throne in order to claim it.

Weather: changeable

• Waking up: heavy rain (listening to it through the open bedroom window without looking out)
• Awake: get up look out - sunny and raining. Craning out of the bathroom window - there is a double rainbow to the west
• Leaving for work: drizzle, grey
• Emerging from the tube: threatening clouds overhead
• 1.30pm: blue dky, occassional white clouds

2012

We've been watching quite a lot of the Olympics. Its a habit from when I was a girl. Our family wasn't particularly interested in sports but we always watched the Olympics and Wimbledon. I've periodically added other sporting events depending on friends and boyfriends - currently that means football, but has in the past included snooker, cricket and formula 1.

So far I've been watching:

• rowing - some of the races but trying to miss the meet the people in the boat segments because they aren't enhancing my experience of the sport.
• men's gymnastics - very impressive feats of strength and control, and none of the arm and hand twiddles that female gymnasts have to pepper their routines with.
• swimming - always like watching swimming, I like the under water shots, and the line of the world record going along. I'm very much rooting for Phelps, but also for anyone from outside the normal swimming-winning nations (glad that Taehwan Park from Korea won a gold in 400m freestyle). Very irritated with Sharon Davies' commentary - each time the GB swimmers don't come 1st, 2nd or 3rd (which is always) she starts off the interview with, "are you disappointed?" which really dampens their youthful excitement about being at the Olympic games swimming in competition with athletes they are in awe of.
• boxing - not sure why I watched it but I did.
• archery - its a funny sport - tense and taut with very big bows. Disappointed by our GB team - they seemed to shoot more accurately against the Chinese and then having failed to make the gold/silver contest got worse while competing against the French. Still they are clearly better than I'd ever be (very small target when its set a 70m.
• women's cycle road racing - which was very exciting at the end, a Brit in the breakaway group, who the commentator was suddenly very concerned about when she seemed to be slipping off the end of the group, only for her to come back and win it in the sprint. Her absolute jubilation at winning was a joy to see.
• 2 minutes of beach volley ball (honestly, this is clearly not about the athletes but the sport of watching the athletes - how can it be taken seriously when they wear really skimpy bikinis to play in - its ogling that is the real sport here).

This morning Dad and I watched his copy of the opening ceremony. Great fireworks. Really great fireworks. A male display (female - one at a time, making for a slow paced display but able to savour every explosion, male - set them all off at once for an intense but impressive display - its a theory, someone told me one bonfire night - I like male displays better, personally). All over the city. Loving the birdnest stadium. I even liked seeing the athletes parading in - bright eyed, excited by the occasion, taking pictures of the crowd who were taking pictures of them. The ceremony was impressive, although at times rather long I thought (we could fast forward the slow bits).

I'm concerned about the London Olympics. Clearly Londoners and Brits generally are less than enthusiastic about them. Being stingy is clearly not going to help us make a successful games. I'm not sure we can come up with an impressive opening ceremony, I'm not even convinced we can get the stadia finished in time (while I love it I do remember that the Millennium Wheel didn't actually get raised until sometime after the new year, and remember the issues with the Millennium Bridge?)

Everyone keeps saying we can't top the Chinese so we should do something really low key and different. I'm not sure low-key will help to get people engaged. I think we should do something like a massive fireworks display that snakes all along the Thames - a massive intense male fireworks display from Parliament all the way to the O2 or something. Less of the bah humbug. More passion. Maybe.