Regent's Canal Stroll




In search of lunch we went over to the Narrow Boat Inn. Unimpressed with their menu we decided to walk along the canal to Camden, certain we would be more in luck there.

Its mostly tranquil along the canal between Islington and shortly before Camden. Quiet. Walking along beside the green slick water. Passing locks, canal boats moored, aquatic birdlife, fishermen and other towpath users. The gas towers that used to mark the skyline in Kings Cross have all but one been removed, mass building work happening in its place bringing the channel tunnel link closer. The water was very high and gushed at some rate through the overflows on the locks.

On making it to Camden we were thrust into the mayhem that the market has become, all tourists, youths, noodles and tie dye clothing. We stopped by Camden Lock to decide where to head. A man close by was packing up his folding chair - a man with a mass or rings through his face, ears, head and neck. A face painted green and red to match the tattoos smothering the rest of his body. A body exposed to the air on this warm spring day, no trousers just silver pants.

We crossed the market to walk up the main road towards Chalk Farm in search of the perfect menu, failing to find it, we found ourselves at Marine Ices, behind the painted and pierced man who somehow had beaten us there and was eating a single cone sitting on his folding chair by a lampost on the side of the road.

Marine Ices - great ice cream, a favourite of my mother who would treat us on occasion in the early 70s after swimming lessons at Prince of Wales Road Baths. We never had a double cone like we all did today though.

Sherlock

The man strolls down 21st Century Borough High Street with a long gait. He's wearing a Sherlock Holmeseque half-caped coat and carrying his deerstalker in his hand. Next to the sandwich bars, neon signs, cashpoints, fast food rubbish he's looking quite hilarious in his Victorian attire with his blond highlights. And he's quite some way from Baker Street.

Summer Time

I don't know why but when the clocks go forward it always fucks me up. I'm overly tired. Can't wake up at the right time. Its a good few days and I still feel like I'm minorly jet-lagged. Surely its time we stopped doing this to ourselves and just settled on one time or other!

Itchy Feet

Bath salts melt into the water like cigarette smoke evaporates into the air. Slow curling whispers.

The exertion of gardening is apparent in the muscles of my back. A slow weekend has left me craving excitement. To see a wider horizon, drive on different roads, in new scenery, meet other people, listening to foreign sounds.

The vapour trails of jet planes criss crossing the skies draws my eye away from my daily routine. Oh for a journey that doesn't have a defined destination. Oh to feel hot sand between my toes and swim in warm water. To drive open roads, across the landscape of movies. To have awe. To be breath taken.

The Creep

Short bus ride home. Sitting looking out the window, a young man sits down next to her. She can tell out of the corner of her eye that he is looking at her intently. She pretends not to notice, but in actual fact sees that his hand is in his trousers. Uncomfortable, she contemplates telling the driver, how long would it all take to sort out? Walking distance from home she decides instead to get off the bus. Its 2.00am. She gets out and starts walking. Then she notices he has gotten off as well. She walks slowly. He overtakes and then waits up ahead until she has to pass him. She walks quickly. He walks quickly. She changes direction, thinking she could go into the pub and tell them she's being harassed. She says to him, please leave me alone. She turns back and sees a woman ahead. She catches up with the woman and asks to walk with her. They walk a little ways together. The creep disappears.

Dr Who

Personally, I liked Tom Baker, and everyone who came after seemed to be gradually more and more ridiculous. I liked the oddness but also liked when they took it a little more seriously. And I liked the assistants to be adult.

So to the new Dr Who - I actually thought it did a not too bad a job of going back to how it was when I watched it properly. Christopher Eccleston makes a good doctor. And yes I can see a wheelie bin eat a person, the London eye being used as a transmitter and the consciousness be down a manhole by the GLC building.

The Trainspotter

As we wind our way across the rooftops on our journey to London Bridge the man's excitement visibly rises. Nose pressed against the window feverishly trying to jot down numbers in his well-thumbed notebook. Its a busy time, evening rush hour - trains passing, laiden with passengers - his head is swiveling this way and that, desperately trying to make out the last digits of the treasured number. I think this trainspotter is interested in engines, he doesn't note down the numbers of the carriages (but then maybe nobody collects those). There appear to be numbers all over the trains - each carriage has one, each set of doors has them, each engine...

He's wearing a teal fleece and carrying one of those bags popular in the 70s as carry-on luggage. The bag is also green. He's carrying other old well used notebooks - the sort that have an elastic to help keep them shut. He's writing with a very ordinary but totally functional biro.

Watching him there I get this burning desire to ask him what exactly he does. Do you collect engine numbers? What's the aim, to collect all the numbers of all known working engines? What do you do when you have them all? Do you take your numbers home and put them into a database of some sort? How long have you been collecting them? But mostly Why?

As we stand up we are gathering by the door next to each other, and there's this moment when I am looking at him too long and too intently and it makes him catch my eye, that was the moment. And I bottled it, looked away and busied myself with my pass. When we escaped the train I watched him bustle along to the bridge. I expect he was rushing over the platform 6, where the trainspotters tend to gather at the far end. I've seen them, videoing, writing with pencils that have to be licked, or talking into dictaphones. Trainspotting gangs.

Why?

Monday's Life Class





Top row: first three (from left to right) 5 minute poses, far right was the first picture of the night - 20 minute warm up pose. Middle row: 30 second drawings all done with left hand. Bottom: last drawing of the evening 40 minutes - I personally think its one of the best drawings I've done for ages. Really managed to get some form, three dimensionality, depth and tone and a feeling of the woman.

All original drawings £25 excluding postage and packing (A1 sized). Or althernatively, A4 sized prints for £5 excluding postage and packing. For further details see the lifedrawing gallery or email me.

Candid Arts Trust: open access sessions and more formal taught courses in both life drawing and painting. Behind Angel tube, Islington - first left down City Road. Contact: The Candid Arts Trust, 3 Torrens Street, London EC1V 1NQ, Tel: 020 7837 4237.

DAUK Film Night

Pops roped me into going to see two documentary films shown by the Democrats Abroad UK. On friday night. Not really sure what posessed me. I roped in Bails.

We arrived. On the door was a man who looked like he was trying to emulate a 30s movie star - blue suit, very high pulled up trousers with red braces, round thick rimmed glasses, bald. He looked rather suprised but I think that was because of his prescription. Inside everyone was very serious and intellectual in a sort of academic kind of way. We tittered at the back.

The hosts of the event couldn't quite decide what to do - start on time or wait for those who hadn't arrived yet. They waited. For half an hour. On starting there was some confusion as to whether to explain why we were here and what the Democrats Abroad news was. In front of us 5 people sighed heavily and finally piped up that since we were starting late couldn't we skip the speeches. Herman thought yes, perhaps we should and then launched into a brief intro, only to be interrupted by the long Joan Baez haired woman who snapped either we skip it or I'll do it. Herman shut up. Joan Baez hair started into her speil. The 5 huffed and sighed and squirmed in their seats.

So then they started the film. The lights in the lecture theatre dimmed. The video started. It was barely audible. Someone asked for the volume to be turned up. Herman, at the podium with the controls turned the lights on and off for a couple of minutes, evidently trying to find the volume. Then he lost the picture (data projectors - rather temperamental). Then he found the picture and turned the lights back on. Then 2 others ran up to help. The three of them stood round the podium turning the lights on and off, losing and finding the picture. Finally they said its as loud as it can get (better to blame the equipment than admit defeat). Bails, Pops and I had quiet hysterics. Lights out, picture on, some debate as to whether the film (which had been running through the lights on lights off section) should be rewound to the beginning. The 5 said NO. The rest of the audience thought yes. It was rewound and begun again. Still could barely hear it.

We left after the first film. Is it any wonder they couldn't win an election Pops wondered later.

Was an interesting film though - Unconstitutional about how the Patriot Act went too far too fast.

Three Things

A little girl in a navy blue uniform plays in the shadows down a lane between the railwaya nd a block of flats. She hangs off the grill fencing close to a line of parked vehicles - a couple of VW camper vans, an ice cream van and a car with its front end stripped.

The man next to me on the train reads the 2005 Yearbook for Jehovah's Witnesses. A small book printed on shiny paper with those illustrations that fill a bottom corner and are printed right up to the edge. Opposite him is a builder with his sweatshirt tied around his waist, his teeshirt slogan reads real tits fake tits who cares? they all taste the same.

Two tiny boys play footabll against the doors of some garages. A plastic multicoloured tricycle abandoned to one side.

Admission

Man says to the help desk operative at the end of the phone, "I've got one of your special offer cards and I'm trying to load it up but I'm a bit drunk and I'm not doing it fast enough".

Evening Light

Its light in the evening! Standing waiting for the bus with the sun still up, shadows drifing down the sides of the buildings, a cool breeze blowing pleasantly, its hard to remember the heavy oppresiveness of winter even though it finished (for now) only 2 days ago.

We've entered that confusion between the major seasons that sees people in the same street on the same day wearing shorts and teeshirts or coats. Early adopters in vest tops, driving open top cars blaring summer tunes, sandals and painted toenails.

The lightness of being seeping back into your bones. Winter fug that had taken up residence in the space between my eyes is dislodged by looking at the bright light sky whilst relaxing riding the bus after work. I will probably be avoiding the tube for a while, with its dense and overbearing atmosphere in favour of a view (particularly after work).

The reality of blossom, new leaves, beers in the evening sitting outside and the joy of parks will be on us. Roll on.

Through a Window

The barmaid sits slumped on a stool arms resting on the bar, head nestled in the crook. They're open but empty. No beers to be pulled. No balls rocketing along the baise. No old drunks nursing pints in the corner. No smoke curling lazily skyward. Nothing.

Peckham to Elephant

Strings of towerblocks and low rise blocks, scraps of grass, trees dwarfed by the buildings, improvements as after thoughts when the brutalist architecture has proved not to work. Concrete walkways. Glass corridors. Wooden fencing round the gardens on the ground floors, already broken down and rotting, the patches inside still uncared for. A playground in the classic 70s style - scaffold A frame structures painted orange and blue. All thats left are a couple of lengths of chain, swings long gone.

Scattering Ashes

As a family we have finally reached a point where we feel ready to scatter Mum's ashes. She has been dead for 9 years so far, so it can be said that it has taken us some time to reach this point. We're planning it in the summer.

Did you know that you can have your beloved turned into a rocket so they can take part in a fireworks display? No really! Pops also read about a woman who had her husband turned into 275 12-bore cartridges and she and 20 close friends shot 70 partridges, 23 pheasants, 7 ducks and fox with him.

Fact is stranger than fiction. I'm finding it all a bit bizarre! (Actually I'm quite attracted to the idea of being made into a firework).

Her Name is Rio

I can't get that Duran Duran song out of my head since Pops got back from Rio. He wasn't impressed with carnival (too santised, not nearly enough nudity, and couldn't get a close enough view - seemed to me he was a bit disappointed that he couldn't tell if the women had bare breasts). However, between sunburnings (its quite close to the equator down there and the sun is somewhat higher in the sky but in the quest for a suntan he kept not taking the advice of ladies in the chemists by not buying a high enough factor) he seemed to enjoy the beach, watching the vendors plying their wares - sarongs, hammocks, sunglasses, drinks, shrimps on sticks and stuff. And the obligatory pic of Rio's statue of Jesus, I liked the fact a cloud was passing over at the time.

Are You Dancin?

At the hypothetical Blogger's Disco over at Troubled Diva, Mike the DJ has asked for requests. I requested Stuck in the Middle With You by the Stealers Wheel because by the time I've danced for 75 tracks (listing so far at time of writing) we'd probably be doing routines and stuff and this sort of seemed appropriate. Oh and it encourages you to think of really bad men (Michael Madsen, nuff said). And Mike will donate £1 to Red Nose Day - its all fur charidy!

Bus Journey

"Can you tell us when you get to Picadilly mate?" Picadilly is such a silly sounding name, especially when said out loud. The kids on the back of the bus are singing advert tunes, espeically the krazy frog ringtone 'tune'. The light dips slowly, lengthening days - spring is definitely in the air. Anti-war protester in Parliament Square has an impressive number of badges on his hat - more badge than hat actually, and a large collection of banners. Silent, staunch and alone he stands facing the Houses of Parliament, hunkered down into his coat. I bet none of the stuffed shirts inside give him a second thought. In Whitehall we passed a horseguard without a horse, looking short and vulnerable while balancing a huge white plummed hat on his head with a serious looking underchin strap, as a small gaggle of tourists try to make him smile. A couple of doors down some other kind of guard suspiciously eyes a tourist who has sat down on a ledge of his building to tie his shoes. Swinging into Picadilly where the once lovely bright neon lights have been spoiled with backlit advertising, the man and his kids get off and greet their mum on the side of the road.

Monday's Life Class






Prolific. Its the way forward. Top row - we had the first 20mins, then 2x 5mins. Next row - 2 mins drawn with the lefthand (not my usual hand). Next row first 3 = 30seconds not looking at paper, next 2 = 30seconds but looking. Final one 20mins.

The woman was a photographic model by day and really knew how to strike a pose.

Candid Arts Trust: open access sessions and more formal taught courses in both life drawing and painting. Behind Angel tube, Islington - first left down City Road. Contact: The Candid Arts Trust, 3 Torrens Street, London EC1V 1NQ, Tel: 020 7837 4237.

Passengers

The man with Elvis hair, the man with too short sleeves, the man wearing a black necktie, the girl with a white skiing jacket and the woman whose feet barely touched the floor sat opposite the man with stand-out blood vessels on his temples, the woman reading The Time Traveller's Wife, the lady in a pale pink scarf, the man with the pointy nose, the woman on chapter 35 and me. In between stood a man listening to an ipod and wearing a quilted barbour jacket of the sort best seen on a stablehand who kept staring at me writing in my notepad. I couldn't decide whether he had a tic or was irritated but I got distracted by the man stood next to me who couldn't stop rattling his change in his pocket.

Bar

She stood alone at the bar with two pint so larger. I stood next to her trying to get served. After some time an arm reached round her and tried to grab one of her beers, she held onto its bottom saying, "no, that's mine". So the arm tried to take the other one and she said, "no, that's mine as well". The owner of the arm said, "one of them must be mine!" At which she turned round and exclaimed, "Oh its You!" I laughed. He said to me, "the worrying thing is I pinched her bum before I tried to take her beer and I thought she knew it was me cos she didn't do anything about that - was a little concerned when she thought I was just trying to nick her beer though." Quite.

Cold and Damp

"I think I'm getting a cold," she says in a deep husky voice.

"Good," he retorts in a slightly agressive manner, "join the fucking club!" She laughs heartily. "Oh, its just I feel shitty, and then the lousy weather, and my crappy job," he continues [this could be me, I think].

"What you need is a project," she chirps in her best girl guide helpfulness.

[Yes. That's what I have, I think].

Pocket

Two boys bound onto the bus. One has a Swoosh sweatshirt on. It has one of those pockets across the front which has an opening for each hand. For a little while they play fight - pretending to land punches on each other. Swoosh then fell into a seat for a while. Fumbling in his central pocket he pulled out some plastic string, a knotted wad of pink and blue. Then he stuck it back deep inside and brought out a set of keys with a keyring made of homemade plastic makrame. Then he found a miniature telescope which he stared at his friend with until they got to Manor House and shot off into the dark.

Homage

I have a fascination for stencil graffiti, been taking pictures of it on and off for over a year. Now in homage to Psychbloke I'm posting some of them (he posts them frequently and is much better informed about who did them than I am).

Snow

Waiting for the train this morning, looking up at the roof of London Bridge station, Victorian steel frame and glass, snow falling gently through the air, almost imperceptable but definitely there. On the bridge that crosses the platforms, standing on the top step, closer to the roof, watching the throng of commuters rushing along platform 13 to the exit, desperate to get to work so they can get the day over with and go home, they don't seem to notice the gently swirling snow snowing through the roof gaps. Snowing indoors. Felt sort of magical.

Train Journey

Sitting by the lav on the train from Kings Cross this evening when suddenly a weird high pitched wailing began emanating from behind the locked door. The businessmen all around me exchanged raised eyebrows at each other and a man on the phone to his wife told her that there were people fucking in the toilet. The wailing continued. Sort of like a pig in distress.

And then the lav flushed and a tall broad older gentleman came out obviously oblivious to the fact that anything could be heard outside. Nobody else came out after him. As he disappeared down the train all the chaps tittered.

Snow

Its always funny how it seems to float and waft and swirl around in different directions even when its coming down quite fast.

Peckham Street Drinkers

"fuck off you cnuts", the highpitched yet strangely resonant slow drawl shouts. I look across, its a man with a beige sweatshirt tied around his head, brandishing a plastic bottle of cider, kicking out at the pigeons.

He sees me looking. "See they want to steal my food", he gestures at his laid out cloth with half a loaf and some bags. "Are they French? Where do you think they are from?" he asks. I half smile but he doesn't wait for my answer, "where do you think? Buckingham Palace?" he chuckles, "Trafalgar Square?"

He's not as out of it as he first appears maybe. As I round the corner he is joined by his mate, a man with his hair in 3 dreadlocks - one huge matted one on top and two huge matted ones on either side.

No.38 Bench Seat

Early evening, saturday night on the way to see House of the Flying Daggers, we sat on the bench seats of the routemaster on the 38 bus.

Opposite was a middle-aged couple off to the theatre - dressed up as is the custom of this age group. He was a serene looking man in a good suit and the palest pink shirt. She was glamorous in maroon velvet and a scarf wtih silk tassles. She was totally fabulous apart from her cheap looking gold open toed sandals worn with flesh-toned tights with the toe seams showing.

Next to them was a man wearing trendy attire - jeans and trainers. He had a face that was full of sorrow and yet seemed friendly at the same time. Hang dog eyes and a mouth that turned down. But the faintest flicker of a smile made him seem appraochable and loveable in a sorrowful way. Bald on top but longish side and back hair. A clown. He had the face of a sorrowful clown. The type who wears a cross over his eyes and a big red mouth.

I wonder if the whole world is really here to entertain me or if my imagination is over-active.

Its Nice Outside

I woke up
I got outta bed
I listened to music the boyfiend bought me for valentines
I talked to my sister on the phone
I watered my plants
I turned all the cacti around so they grow the other direction (love and care)
I looked at the leaves unfurling on another plant
I washed my hair slowly for a change
Outside the sun is shining
I arranged to meet at Beetroot on Berwick Street for a box of hippy food.

Its nice outside.

Same Old Same Old

Not been feeling like blogging much - yesterday I got sent to Coventry and nobody talked to me all day (ok kidding, not really - I went there for a meeting so talked all day and then fell asleep on the train on the way home) and today I've been trying to sort out the cockroach infestation in my office (poisoned them all on Friday, really would have liked the cleaners to vaccuum but they don't seem to do that without you asking) and when talking to the people downstairs it appears its a building problem and not just in my office which in some ways makes me feel much better (I was worried it was because of something I had done) and in other ways makes my skin crawl.

Pops is in Brazil for the Mardi Gras - the carnival goes on in a football stadium and he was sitting too far away to tell if the women were naked or not. All terribly disappointing. He was on a health tourist trip - trying to get some cheaper teeth implants but I think he can't seem to find an appropriate dentist. He emailed me from an internet cafe where he said he had to ask a group of young americans to settle down (he can at times be a mite grumpy - my sister and I joke about him growing into his mother - much to his non-amusement) so its obviously not making him full of the joys of youth.

Maybe its a late bout of January blues. I normally suffer from them terribly but they didn't kick in until late perhaps.

The Tall Tale Telling Man

He was in customs and excise, importer of coke, his mate across the table was one of his customers and they'd been there since 11.00am and he'd chopped out a line that reached the whole length of the table, and his other mate always got the leftovers. Implausable.

So his mate was an artist and the other one was a probation officer and he did grafitti. And actually he was his probation officer because he'd just been inside for doing grafitti, and his artist friend was finding representation for him at a gallery. Funny but still implausable.

He had amalgamated lifts embroidered over his shirt pocket. Apparently Amalgamated Lifts was a company who provided a service to commuters on the underground, very popular on Mondays. Giving support to overtired commuters trying to shake off monday blues. Sponsored by Homepride he had to wear a hat like the Pilbury Doughboy. He was gonna show us, but then decided it would have to wait for later.

Not sure I've ever met someone before who couldn't utter a true word. He was funny but we had other places to be, so we left him and his two untalkative mates with their £100 bar bill and went off to pastures new.

The Image

I hadn't been aware of them getting on but after a while of them sitting behind me on the bus I drifted into their conversation (in a silent overhearing kind of way). They were colleagues. He was her senior but in a different team, he had a resonant deep happy voice. It was the voice of a tall man who would wear a good quality suit, perhaps have glasses(designer ones) and a decent haircut. She was a middle class young woman, tweed skirt and blouse type, successful, confident. Ever so slightly pearl-necklacy.

She was getting married in the summer - they had decided at Christmas, so far they had managed to arrange the engagement party (next friday - everyone they had ever known was invited, the whole email address list, and everyone they had ever known was coming, so it was really quite exciting) and order the ring. Probably being very naive believing that they could organise such an event in this amount of time but they had agreed if it all got too much for them that they would elope to somewhere foreign.

He had been married, just the once, in Italy where the organisation had been a real pain, for the civil ceremony they had to register with both the British consulate and the Italian authorities, trying to get them both to understand the papers was quite difficult but then they also wanted to be married in church and trying to get the Catholic church to agree. Now that was something, letters from the parish priest in England to be sure that he had never been married in church before. But it was worth it, a wonderful ceremony...

They chatted about holidays, he had been in the states over christmas, Chicago, and wasn't due another holiday at the moment although he would be in Syria for Easter for work. She hadn't got a break planned what with the wedding preparations and everything.

And then he got up and went downstairs, the creak of a leather jacket passed me and his faded jeans, and his unshaved face, ruffled hair with a bald patch at the back, large grin, "maybe I'll bump into you again," he called back at the woman as he disappeared down the stairs. Two stops later she got off, trousers, younger than I imagined, long red hair, centre parted and hanging down both sides of her face.

Wrong on every count. I don't even think they knew one another.

Rediscovered Smells

For a number of reasons I haven't smelt this smell for a long time - mostly to do with the fact that I don't generally spin sheets on a vigorous 1200 setting so they hang slightly wet and all the creases fall out whilst they dry and they don't need ironing. However, this week, in a hurry I didn't change the settings on the washing machine and ironing became a necessity. The sheets were very creased. More creased than I could leave them despite the fact that you're only going to lye on them and wrinkle them up anyway. More creased than stretching them over the bed would straighten. So tonight I'm ironing them. And the smell is lovely - clean cotton sheets, ironed with steam. Reminds me of opening the parachute bag that mum would bring home full of clean pressed washing from the laundry at Hornsey Road Baths. Sheets ironed in huge roller ironing machines. Warm still despite the journey, but with their poppers crushed.

In a beaten up silver ford sierra 2 hasidic jews rock while listening to loud reggae music out of their open window before steaming away from the traffic lights.

Slow Fast Day

For a day that dragged and at 3.00pm seemed like it would never end I was suprised when I looked up and it was suddenly 5.35. That fear shot through me - the fear that is being locked in the building and not knowing how to get out (at least 2 people have told me this has happened to them). I gladly found that although I was the last there, I wasn't locked in and rushed out into the open air.

Now I find myself sitting on a 63 bus listening to Paulo Conte (singing dancin dancin, chips chips, you're wonderfuel you're wonderfuel good luck ma baby etc). There's a man behind me whose breath smells stale, whose clothes smell of mothballs and who persists in thumping my seat as we wing our way through Southwark, past the Dun Cow Surgery that must be a doctor's but looks like a pub and down onto the Old Kent Road to the Elephant.

The Elephant and Castle is a confusion of merging routes, underpasses, overpasses, market stalls, pink walls, housing towers. They still haven't taken down the christmas decorations.

Then the bus empties out as we turn north along the London Road round the strange roundabout with a war memorial and past the station I always forget exists (Southwark) then over the Blackfriars bridge to the northside.

Monday's Life Class




So today, drawing this model, trying to draw him in ink and feeling unable to get across what I wanted to, I decided to go back to charcoal. And I liked it. It was messy but it was good. Man with blue rope.

Candid Arts Trust: open access sessions and more formal taught courses in both life drawing and painting. Behind Angel tube, Islington - first left down City Road. Contact: The Candid Arts Trust, 3 Torrens Street, London EC1V 1NQ, Tel: 020 7837 4237.

Spring is Coming

Its getting noticeably lighter in the evenings and the snow drops have appeared. So it feels like the bleak months are behind us.

Mishaps

Just because I was having a gentle dig at those morning disasters yesterday doesn't mean I'm immune to them, which I then started thinking would only be fair to share.

Like walking around Padstow (in Cornwall) with my lovely long skirt tucked into the back of my knickers until some old dears kindly told me so.

Or the time I had just purchased some absolutely beautiful boots with buckles, patent leather faux snakeskin long pointy toes (it was the 80s, and I know it sounds like a bad teenage movie, but it really was the thing to be wearing, and I was a teenager). Riding the escalator down to the tube platform at Manor House and just as I got to the bottom, a trainload of decanting passengers arrived just in time to see me get one of the blasted toes stuck in the grill at the bottom and splat head first across the floor. It doesn't matter how long you lye there, face down and hope for the ground to swallow you up. It won't.

Or the time when I wasn't really slightly pissed and was wearing wedges (stoooopid stoooopid shoes) and slipped off the steps at Leicester Square tube and tumbled all the way down, bag contents flying all over the place. I was badly behaved and snapped at all offers of help. Much to the boyfiend's aghast embarrassment.

And then there's the time when I went to the loo at lunchtime after a really important meeting and discovered I had a big black smudge across my forehead, most likely from the dirty underside of the tube escalator handle earlier that morning.

Oh and being told by my boss to pull my shirt down because I'm flashing some waist skin. Only not being sure which is better, waist skin or too much cleavage (poor choice of top - not quite long enough either direction, and usually I would go with cleavage but it being work and everything..).

And everyone's got a piece-of-spinach story.

Morning Toilette

Boys, nay men, need to remember to wipe the toothpaste from the corners of their mouth, the crumbs from their beards and not to catch their shirts in their flies.

The Knitting Girl

Standing on the platform at Peckham Rye, waiting for the imminent arrival of the london bridge train, a girl is knitting. Knitting something narrow and straight in bottle green. Thin needles. Thin wool. The ball is in her bag, an enormous length looping from the bag to the needles hanging almost to the ground. Its the technique of an inexperienced knitter. The loops being knitted into are too far down the sticks - making it difficult to slip the new stitch over.

Its not the knitting of our grannies. That manic click clicking, chatter and speedily growing garments with odd patterns, knobbly wool, side opening necklines and thick itchy socks.

Hamlet

There's a man leaning against the door frame. He's carrying the head of another man under his arm. The head doesn't look particularly perturbed by this.

Or at least, thats what it looks like as he stands on the other side of a glass panel to me (with a seated passenger facing him and reflected in the glass in my sight line).