Big Garden Watch

Woke up to a blue sky and sun shining weakly over the garden. I sat outside drinking coffee and counted the birds in the garden. There aren't many different sorts but there is lots of activity. I saw:

• 2 blue tits
• 2 black birds (male and female)
• 6 sparrows (my neighbour says they sit under his eaves and try to peck out the morter to get into his attic)
• 2 wood pigeons
• 2 robins
• 2 collared doves
• 1 magpie

Growing things

The bulbs are poking through the bare earth. Leaves are budding - tiny, energetic. I'm excited by the second growing year of the garden. Waiting for the spring flowers. There's a yellow crocus about to open. It gets you in the mood for tidying up, pruning, watching. I belatedly moved a rather orangy red rose from where it was in too-close proximity to an elderly and huge wine red rose (colour clash) and transplanted it in the front of the house where hopefully I will be able to learn to love its multiple blooms (assuming it actually takes to its new home). Chatted with my neighbour about christmas, the roof and my deceased rat(s).

Stink

The wretched stench of death seeps up through the floorboards of the dining room. There is no mistaking it now, the bin has been emptied and bleached clean, the compost pail has been dumped in the compost bin, there's been spraying of odour eliminising sprays and burnin of incense. All to no avail. There be dead things down below. (S'pose that's what comes from putting punnets of poison down there).

Waiting at the End of the Universe

Please take a ticket and wait your turn. A number is called: three hundred and five please come to desk 4. My ticket says 333, issued at 5.40.

3 people behind the counter. Takes approximately 10 minutes to deal with each person trying to return items. Then there are five minutes in between to get the goods out back. This is an uncared-for part of the warehouse store, all the glamour and lighting kept to the bits where they are trying to pursuade you to purchase something. Here are hard benches, unflattering lighting with nothing to look at. Returners sit with their heads in their hands, unwanted, damaged, broken goods loaded on trolleys.

By 6.30 we are onto number 325. The last couple of people have been at the counters for 15 minutes. The 3rd staff member has wandered off. There seems to be an inverse proportion between the length of time it takes to serve someone and the closeness of your number.

My advice is this: make your choices carefully in Ikea. Do not go in there and buy on whims, don't buy on the spur of the moment. You do not want to have to return anything.

Ludicrous claims by tube train drivers

On a crowded morning train, sorry actually packed liked sardines, the tube driver asked us to please stand away from the doors because proximity to the doors was affecting the motion of the train. Two things went through my mind as my face pressed into the mac of a man in front of me, the angular handbag of a woman dug into my lower back and people to either side held me up - a. how exactly, and b. since when (first time I've ever heard that one in about 20 years of travelling by tube).

Blue sky yonder

 

the black thunder cloud is passing over and in the distance the blue sky is growing up from the horizon. A plane flies into the clear sky. The pink edge inches towards our office. Perhaps it will be dry by going home time after all.

And suddenly the rain started, then lightning, hail pounded, car alarms went off and thunder clapped. Its nearly time to go home and I didn't bring an umbrella to work today. Sigh.

January Blues



Its the longest month of the year (psychologically speaking), dark, damp, nothing to look forward to. Weeks of endless drudgery stretch out ahead of us. Work is mundane. Nobody is going out. Little things are keeping a glimmer of optimism alive - like the sunrise, like the hyacinths coming into bloom in the kitchen, the daffodil tips poking through the sodden soil, ER back on tv and ceramics class starting up again.

Urban Fox

(Or two, or three). Woke up yesterday, looked out of the window, as the light rose saw a fox sitting around in the garden without a care in the world. Later joined by a mate. Today there were three - two went one way and the other went down the side of the house.




They're young - haven't started making those horrible screeches yet. Just playing. Its going to be really stinky when they grow up if they don't move away when they grow up.

Attack of the Blue Bottles

Sitting watching CIS (repeats) a big blue bottle flew into the room, was dim wittedly attracted to the light whereupon I swatted him. Two minutes later another one appeared. I checked the other corpse was there thinking perhaps I had only stunned him and he had secretly come back to life and snuck up on me again like baddies in horror films. It wasn't him. Fly 2 was faster, less dozy. I had to chase him. Finally flapped him in the air.

Later I turned to find two more blue bottle baddies sharing some space on the standard lamp. Tricksy. Wouldn't be able to get both in one swipe. First one went down fast. Other one required some careful sneaking and sudden pouncing action before he too went down.

Phew. Cleared the air.

In flies another one. Flies about, hangs around the light on the shelf. Shoots across the room. Crawls over the light by the stereo. Makes a dash for the standard lamp, does one round, crosses the room. I'm after him flapping and swatting at his tail all the way. But he's crafty and gets between the back of the light and the wall. (He's the one that got away - like in all good horror you have to be left with the uneasy feeling that it isn't over yet). The next one will be called The Revenge of the Blue Bottles, or something.

Still hasn't snowed yet.

Still waiting... its cold enough to snow but it feels a bit damp in the air - might come a bit slushy.

We were promised snow. Thick snow. We're still waiting.

2008

Woohoo. Its a new year.

I hate the celebrations of a new year - always disappointing - either you are out with lots of pissed people stuck in a venue determined to have a good time (never easy to have an enforced good time), or choose to be at home, sometimes alone which starts off ok but by the countdown you end up feeling extraodinarily lonely and bahumbug about the whole thing.

I haven't made resolutions. But I do want to try to crack what it is that I really want to do. Over the last year work has seemed more and more dissatisfying - its not providing enough time for the self (not that work is really about that par se). Working for money is no longer enough...

I wish you all a good one.

return journey blogging from my phone on the free wifi provided by gner, sorry, National express (train crew keep making this mistake as wall) - so its taking a damn long time to text all this in - phone has a very limited vocabulary as well - it doesn't even know the word vocabulary. I also wish they would invent a system that would recognise punctation usage (like fact there is a good probability that the next punctation i will need is a close bracket). The train is half an hour late. On a 5 and a half hour journey thats getting to beyond most people's threshold of being able to handle it. They had double booked some seats. Some people have been standing. There's a man who seems slightly asbergers sitting behind the girl across the table from me - he has one of those evil laughs that make him seen ever so slightly deranged - shoulders shake mouth laughs eyes look like they could kill. He's a figet i'd hate to be sitting next to him. I dropped off somewhere near darlington and woke up to find a man had eased himself into the seat opposite around my sprawled out legs - i was very apologetic - likely very unladylike - i just hope i didn't do any of those snorty snores that slumped in seat sleeping can make happen. . ,

Toy Cars



Joseph played with his toy cars, a lot. He liked them to be in traffic jams and move them on in lines very carefully, one moving from the front to the back so each one had an opportunity to be first. Being first is terribly important in a 3 year old psyche.




I didn't know that most toy cars are now made foreign - of all the cars the only ones which were right hand drives were these old fashioned looking ones from Corgi.

Happy Christmas Everyone

Having a breather - been cooking up a storm all day, niece and nephew have had all the expected highs and lows when Santa has been, too much chocolate has been consumed and lots of presents have been opened, admired and discarded. Our cracker jokes were expectedly rubbish:

Q. Where should a dressmaker build her house?
A. On the outskirts of town. (groan)

Q. What did the beaver say to the tree?
A. Nice gnawing you. (not even worth a groan)

Q. Why didn't the skeleton go to the New Year's Eve party?
A. He nad no body to go with. (groan again)

Q. What has a bed but does not sleep and a mouth but does not speak?
A. A river (hardly a joke at all)

Q. How did the human cannonball lose his job?
A. He got fired (this was guessed)

Q. What does minimum mean?
A. A very small mother (groan).

How were yours?

Train Journey

Outside the frost clings to the fields and trees, white, stiff, outlining detail. Thick fog.

There's a weird screeching from the table seats behind me. What I thought was a miniature puppet show that a woman was attending to with great concern turns out to be some kind of bird in a cage with a specially made quilted silver fabric cover.

A portly man in a grey suit ahead of me plays with the underneath strip of his tie, twirling it as if it were a stripper's tassel. He has a missing front tooth and ate his lunch with great haste. Crisps, but he doesn't seem like a regular crisp eater. Bit like my grandad when he ate crisps. Reminded me of spitting image depiction of Roy Hattersley - all lisping and spitting and large bubbery lips.

Tables are awash with laptops - I'm wondering what the plug-ettiquette is when there is only one between four. If you're the first there and plug in, is it acceptable for someone else to want a shot at some electrical input?

Angel of the North high on a hill - all heavy metal solid and earthbound.

And then Newcastle - a city which looks interesting every time I pass through - its a testamont to industrialisation and modernisation and tradition - bridges, levels, warehouse rennovations, steeples of churches and turrets.

Weak winter sun tries to break through the mist and haze. Bright across the hazy landscape - it hasn't the strength to melt the ice layered on patches of water in the fields.

And then the sea, grey against a grey beach. Sandy coloured houses with red roofs pushed up against the hillside. The clouds out to sea rise up like mountains in the distance. the train flashes over a glassy river with arched brick bridge reflecting and a heron on the water's edge.

The bird lady is wearing a pale blue sweatshirt with a janty parrot emblem.

After five and a half hours I'm losing the will to live. Finally getting off the train and standing in the icy Dundee wind, face pink and burning, breathing deeply. Relief to be outside.

End of Term Ceramics Class Roundup

Over for another term, spent more time experimenting. Experiments don't always work out - sometimes they end up ugly!



Slabs painted with coloured slip and allowed to harden, then formed around a tube and slurry glued together. Colours come out stronger after glazing.



Long necked vessel made with extruded coils.



The stack of donuts pot, also made with extruded coils - big fat ones. Probably the least successful pot after glazing. Didn't quite look how I wanted it to...

Christmas is coming

Been to the Montpelier with work. Encouraged to drink one too many baileys (nice at this time of year - xmas and everything), now beginning to regret it as they wash around my belly on the bouncy bus on the way home. Pissed bloke is ranting incomprehensibly in the corner. He starts making a noise that is somewhere between growling and retching. "Easy," commands some man from the back of the bus. I get off at Newington Green. There's a man with a christmas cracker hat perched at the obligatory jaunty angle. Can't quite figure out whether he remembers he's wearing it or not.