orson and welles

The pair of fat wood pigeons that plague our garden now have names. One's called Orson, and the other's called Welles. If I only see one of them, I tend to assume it's Orson because it's more fun to say the name. It breaks all laws of aerodynamics that birds that fat achieve lift.

It was a good weekend. Friday night I broke my writer's block and passed a big round number. The release was a deluge and I almost resented my schedule over the following two days as it kept me from continuing apace. My fears were allayed today as another round number was passed in a flurry of scribbling that will pick up again when this post is finished.

Saturday was my birthday party. The sun shone bright and friends chatted, tossed the frisbee around, ate, drank and were merry. It didn't really have to be my birthday party. It could just have been a nice bbq. But I'm glad it was, because someone gave me chocolate truffles and someone else gave me a bottle of Lagavulin.

Yesterday I spoke with a family friend for nearly four hours about jobs, my CV and the future. It went well.

Today - well, today was hot. The Belfry is a sauna. Hence writing at night.

proof of green dogs

I now have photographic proof. I'm not hallucinating. The people of Barnes live with a pack of large green dogs staring at them across the river.

See if you can spot those dogs I'm seeing.
No? How about if I circle the dogs in red? See - easy. They're totally there.

Still no luck? Well, I was afraid of that, so using sophisticated Photoshop skills, I've enhanced the images to highlight the canine aspects of the trees in question.



So there you have it - I'm not seeing things. They're there. And one of them's Hong Kong Phooey.

let them eat scooby snacks

Happy Bastille Day!

To celebrate the anniversary of the start of the French Revolution, I'm going to take a walk and try to take some pictures of the giant green dogs up the river. Not to prove it to everyone else, but for my own piece of mind. It may be that I'm imagining the similarities. That the willows are just willows, and not giant green dogs. That without sweat streaming into my eyes as I run, this will be apparent.

But I'm hoping they're still there.

And no, it really doesn't have anything to do with Bastille Day.

the gardenia tale

My father's devotion to my mother is a wonder to behold. Four times a year, he and I engage in overly-complex, clandestine gift-obtaining operations, desperate not to repeat ourselves. Valentine's, Mother's Day, Birthday & Christmas - the ritual is almost as important as the gift itself, whatever it may be. Sometimes he asks. Sometimes I ask. This is part of the subterfuge. Mom will tell us something simple, practical, or both. That will be my present, because it's usually the cheapest as well. Then we'll come up with something nicer or more extravagant and that will be from him, because he pays for it. Half the time it's my idea, half the time it's his. It works well. We're a good double act and all the secrecy lets us fulfill that yearning every guy has to be a secret agent.

This past Mother's Day, mom told dad she wanted a gardenia. Aside from the fact it was a plant, dad and I were pretty clueless. But we found a nice garden supply shop, ordered a couple and they went down a storm. Mom really liked them. She really liked the surreptitious surprise present as well, I'm sure. But the gardenias were lovely. Even I liked them. They smelled amazing. For 5 years I tasted & judged wines, mentioning 'heady floral notes' on the nose and now admit that until I'd smelled these gardenias, I knew naught of 'heady floral notes'. It was like Turkish Delight but without the sickly confection. Like smelling a real, ripe strawberry having only ever had McDonald's strawberry milkshakes beforehand.

I took special interest in these gardenias. They need quite a bit of attention and they don't like the cold. My only experiences with plants involved putting up Christmas trees and a couple of bonsai trees I was given when I was 11 or 12. Bonsais were the coolest plants ever in the late eighties. The shallowness of the decade allowed a tradition thousands of years old to be grasped as a fad by the ignorant. I was one of the ignorant. Too young to make a fashion statement with my dwarf trees, instead I used them as dramatic scenery when playing with my Star Wars and GI Joe toys. My mother refused to get one with a water feature, probably for the best. I didn't take good care of them and they died. They deserved better. So did the gardenias.

The hectic travel schedule at the beginning of the summer, combined with the drought and hosepipe ban, spelled their doom. One looked mummified, the vibrant green of the leaves replaced with terminal brown and grey, a single touch enough to bring the whole lot into an autumnal pile at the base of its pot. The other fared little better; some green remained but, like the lawn, it was mostly scorched, the healthy patches looking the aberration rather than the norm. They looked pathetic. Mom said one was beyond help and we considered chucking them both out.

I said no, I wanted to nurse them both back to health. So we pruned all the dead stuff off to salvage the healthy and let it grow. Pruning is a harsh art. Anything dead must go, even if the living still clings to it. What remains looks more dead than what you began with. The pathetic twigs breaking through the soil look like someone planted kindling. You've only got faith that whetever's left behind can grow back. It's optimism at its best, but most brutal.

Yesterday I found a half dozen tiny green bulbs emerging on those pathetic twigs.

Pruning my CV has been more difficult. Untended for over 3 years, dead leaves and dry twigs abound. High School education is no longer important when you're 30. Dead leaves & dry twigs, it must go, though fond, vibrant memories cling to it. University, the most defining years of my life, gets put to the bottom of the pot - it provided the growth but is no longer part of the foliage. It's fertiliser. First jobs, bartending and building, essential to nostalgia, their menial aspects badges of pride and proof of proper labour, are no longer relevant, memories of a decade ago - pruning shears at the ready. The agonies and tortures of terrible jobs must be snipped, leaving only the upsides and lessons learned to thrive unhindered. Things I felt defined me, as I was, lie at the bottom of the pot.

The twigs are all that's left.

But they're about to sprout.

feh

Didn't write anything today. I did tinker with my CV, to the extent that I stole a new layout for it and tried to work out why someone would hire me. I didn't get very far. Not because I couldn't think of a reason for someone to hire me. There are loads of great reasons to hire me. I just couldn't succinctly put them to paper. Which is, I suppose, a good reason not to hire me. And evidence that writer's block affects everything bar blog posts.

There's a big post coming. Not this one though. There will be flowers mentioned, but not pictured.

I didn't realise that lingering sniffles was my 300th post.

Listen to Robot Man by The Aliens.

I gave almost 50 pages to someone today. They had words on them and everything.

Sometimes you can't shout, scream, sob and rant in indignation, outrage, anger and sorrow. You want to. But you can't, because you can't understand what you'd be shouting about; it's not about you. And shouting, screaming, sobbing and ranting won't change that, and it won't make anything better. And all you want is for it to be better, or never have happened at all.

Anyway.

Flowers. Tomorrow. Big post. I'm going all horticultural.

And real writing. That you won't read til it's out in hardback at the beginning of next year. It'll be worth the wait though.

lingering sniffles

Colds are peculiar. The symptoms and suffering are rubbish - lots of snot, coughing, sneezing. Which granted, aren't pleasant to be around, but they're not life-threatening. My strategy for them has changed over the years. I used to ignore them in a manly way until they incapacitated me and I wound up sick for almost a month rather than a week. Not anymore. Now I indulge it, do as the doctors say: rest, plenty of fluids, all that sort of stuff. And it lasts about a week. Kind of. There's always a lingering sniffle, or cough. It can be so annoying that I forget how bad the cold was, and complain more about it than when I was actually sick. I felt too rubbish to complain when I was sick. Sometimes it lingers until the next cold.

I don't have a cold at the moment, and any lingering sniffles are nothing to do with viruses.

I do, however, have writer's block. It's been almost a week since I was productive on the book. The document is opened, pale behind the browser I type this on, and I'm very close to overcoming a large milestone both in story and in terms of nice, round numbers. But not much is coming. I'll type a sentence and delete it. I revert to my methods of dealing with colds.

The manly, ignore it and it will go away method - I stare at the page, nothing comes, so I move on. I'll check Boston.com for Red Sox news, quit Safari or Firefox, and then stare at the page some more. Wander into the house to grab a bottle of water from the fridge, linger in the kitchen, contemplate a snack, head back to the Belfry and almost try again, but then decide that updating the blog is almost as good, because that's writing too. I'll take yet more pointless pictures of the mess around my desk and delete them. I'll take a pointless picture of my new Red Sox hat. I'll check out movie news.

Recently, spider relocation has served as a great distraction. There is no end to the spider population in the Belfry. I've spoken of it before. It used to irk me. Not because I'm arachnophobic - I'm not - but because I was outnumbered. Every time I dusted their webs away, two more would pop up. Now I don't dust their homes away: I shuffle them or their web onto a piece of paper, carefully make my way down the spiral stairs , open the door, double check the spider is still on - or at least dangling from - the piece of paper and deposit it in the garden. While I do this, two more enter the house. But I don't mind. Whether this is due to newfound respect for them or just some impending nostalgia kick, my departure looming ever closer, is unclear. It doesn't matter. Dumping arachnids in the garden doesn't write my book.

It's clear this manly ignoring of my writer's block and just getting on with everything else doesn't work. Because I'm not writing. Some writers say to keep writing through it. I don't really know how that works. Maybe if I stare hard enough at the document, the words will come, like those hidden picture thingies. I never saw those pictures though, so maybe that's not the best tactic. Perhaps then, just one word at a time. I won't write any pages wittering away here, relocating spiders or checking on the Red Sox.

The lingering sniffles of bad grammar, punctuation and typos will be welcome after this. I won't complain, honest.

real chat

No inner nagging voices tonight - just a friend whose silliness compliments mine. Got some Messenger chat that drifted into the ridiculous, so I thought I'd share some of it. No context.

Richard says: (20:50:25)
well then - you're sorted. I'll buy you some cornicing

lish says: (20:50:56)
hee actually you can buy it can't you?

Richard says: (20:51:9)
yeah- i wouldn't though

lish says: (20:51:21)
why not?

Richard says: (20:51:46)
well... it's like buying a faux bidet or something... .what's the point

Richard says: (20:51:56)
maybe not a faux bidet... that would be disastrous

lish says: (20:52:4)
christ, what would that even DO?

lish says: (20:52:13)
shoot coffee into your nevermind?

Richard says: (20:52:31)
no one uses them anyway. It would be years before the ruse was discovered

lish says: (20:52:46)
the french do. and yet they smell. go figure

the best thing

I went to get a beer this evening and it turned out I left the Belfry fridge open last night. Terrible for the environment, terrible for electricity bills, terrible for the fridge and terrible for my beer, which is warm and covered in condensation. That's about the best thing that's happened to me today.

A friend of mine got a great job, and I am psyched for him. But that happened to him, and not me.

masks, meat & mucky windows

Last night was a masked 40th birthday party for a couple who've been family friends for so long it's difficult to explain it all so I won't. It was held at an immense mansion straight out of Footballer's Wives, designed and decorated with about the same amount of taste. It wasn't their house.

I didn't bring my camera - bit of a shame as groovy photo op after groovy photo op presented itself. Perhaps it was for the best though, as one of the guests was flashing an incredible Leica, and my Canon would've felt somewhat gauche in such company. But forget about cameras. I used my phone to take a few shots, one of which was of a BBQ I must have. It's a spit roast BBQ. I discovered later that it didn't belong to the house, but was rented for the occasion. To own a spit roast BBQ you've got to have a lot of spit roasts. I still want one.

One of the trees that constantly batters the Belfry has now taken to depositing some sort of stuff on the skylight. Tree effluvium. Or something. I've gotten used to the noise now though. It no longer scares me at night, I no longer scream "who's there" at 3 in the morning. Instead I roll over, comforted at the trees' protection. The skylight's a mess though.

meat
masks

mucky window

whatever

You may already have seen it - I just grabbed it from a Wired link. Brilliant stuff - though probably not how the free world should be run. Enjoy. And have a good weekend.

*Update* - I don't know why I bother writing that. It's not like this is a news service. I just can't be bothered to do another post, so I'm adding to this one.

Anyway.

Bollocks.

What was I going to write? Oh, yeah. Uh. Well, after all that it's stupid, but I've now had over 2000 visitors. I know it's only about 10 people 200 times. And considering this has been up for 19 months now, that's rubbish. But it's also a nice round number.

Tonight was pizza, beer and 80's comedies Real Genius and Better Off Dead. The former a reminder that Val Kilmer was once cool and the other that John Cusack has always been, and always will be, cool. And the French chick in Better Off Dead was hot. I'm not sure she was really French - but she was hot. As good a reason as any to support them in the World Cup final, I suppose. That, and the Italians cheat. Heh.

pirates, curry, poker and awakenings

There are certain inalienable truths to life. Sometimes they are crushing. For a 7 year-old boy, it was learning that he'd never be Indiana Jones, even if he did become a great archaeologist. Which he didn't. For a 30 year-old boy, it's realising that he will never, ever, be as cool as (Captain) Jack Sparrow. Though with a bit of rum, he may be as drunk.

Go see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. It's awesome.

I returned this morning from stilted children and giant green daschunds to find an invite to a curry this evening. The invite came from an old mate and involved other old mates. And curry. So I accepted. Thank goodness for that. Already on a bit of a rush from the swashbuckling, a catch-up, a few beers, food and longing for less responsible times was in order.

And to be honest, not much had changed. My half-hearted attempt to catch the tube after dinner was disposed of swiftly by the invite to poker and several drinks. So we got back to the flat and searched for cards and scoured the booze cabinets to work out what was drinkable. And I did something I haven't done in a long time. I just mixed up some crazy fucking cocktails. No nose-in-the-air snobby drinking, this was strip-mining a liquor cabinet and desperate-for-mixer drinking and I made some fun shit and we drank a bunch of it and played poker and talked rubbish. When we were students, we would have done the same and slept until noon. One of the people playing had an important interview first thing, another had to pick up his most important client at 715am, one of us had to write a novel and somebody actually worked for a living. So, if you look at it right, we're even better than we used to be. I'll be running in the morning. The only running I did as a student was - wait, nope. None. Never. Well, shinty perhaps, so that's 3 times in seven years.

So it's groovy. The thing is, it wasn't for a bit. I was thinking too much, letting items of little import weigh me down. I was going to cancel my birthday party. Too many people couldn't make it, it was 2 months after my actual birthday, I didn't really deserve a party, I needed to pack - all sorts of self-pitying bollocks. I remembered a time when nothing short of a nuclear bomb would have stopped me throwing a party, cancellations were quickly replaced by luck, happenstance and beautiful women and even the hangovers were fun. I tried to work out what had changed.
Nada.
Zip.
Zero.
Zilch.
Fuck all.
Nothing's changed.
So the party's fucking on, the invites are still going out, the food's going to be awesome (sorted the menu yesterday - genius), the booze will be flowing and there may even be a piñata. Because piñata are cool. And you know it.

I may even give it a theme. At the last minute. Or give everyone a different theme? We did a mediaeval spaceman party once. Surely that can be topped? Theme suggestions in comments.

field trips

The green dogs were still lapping at the river on my run this morning. I think one's a long-haired daschund. As strange as that sounds, and unable to shake the image as I am, I saw something even stranger this morning.

Do you remember school field trips? I do. Museums, zoos, aquariums, desperate to be educational, more often than not a disciplinary nightmare for teachers. From the age of 6 to 11 I was taught by nuns. In third grade, aged 8, they took us to Historic Plymouth, Massachusetts. It's one of these places that tries, quite successfully, to be a timewarp, to give people an idea of what it was like in the early 17th Century. A replica of the Mayflower sits docked in the harbour. I remember thinking how small it was. A single dirt road lined by log huts and cabins, livestock running about, a well in the middle of the street, this was ancient times in our minds. Maids in puritan dress plucked dead chickens and turkeys in front of us. Which, to a bunch of 8 year-olds from the city and suburbs, was about as gruesome and primitive as you can get. It also lead to disaster. There was a pile of discarded feathers next to the maid. This was just too tempting. Some of the boys grabbed handfuls of feathers and chased the girls with the bloody ends, running down the dirt road, roaring while the girls shrieked.

Courtship was simpler then.

I was dragged by the ear to the bus. When I was in Boston in May, an old friend remarked how it was always me that got caught, regardless of how many others were involved. He was right. The only homework we had after these field trips was to draw the thing we liked most about the day. I think I drew the Mayflower. My friend Joey drew me being dragged to the schoolbus by Sister Janice, a fistful of bloody feathers in my hand. He wound up in trouble, and I got in more trouble, my reputation as a bad influence proved in Crayola.

Art became a focus of field trips. During my GCSEs, museums attended dutifully with sketchbooks, searching for a great work to do no justice whatsoever. I loved soft pencils- they looked cool on the page and made a mess. 4 or 6B was the way to go. Wouldn't touch an H pencil. Far too boring.

Even when I went back to the States for High School, our field trips brought us to musuems. The Met was my favourite. I didn't have time to draw anything badly because there was too much to see. I should have gone to the Guggenheim.

So today, on my run, on the grass by the river just before you get to The Dove, was a group of about 30 kids, 7 or 8 - no more, having the best field trip ever. It was a stilt party. I ran by 30 kids on stilts, walking and running around having the best time ever. I couldn't imagine, at any point in my education, having a teacher say, "I know, let's find a company that will put all the kids in stilts and let them run around and have a great time". It's fun and wish fulfillment at the same time. What kid doesn't want to be taller? What kid doesn't want to run around in the grass, taller than their teacher, hitting eachother with baloons?

We didn't have stilts in my day. We had to make do with feathers.

green sheepdogs and other matters

The accumulation of 30 years of trinkets, books, clothes, computers, cameras, lenses, photos, boxes, printers, pens, pencils, sketchbooks, posters, correspondence, trophies, nik-naks, invites, scarves, empty wine bottles, a Big Mouth Billy Bass, a no entry sign, traffic warning lights, alarm clocks, stationery, paperwork, school files, uni files, cds, dvds, videos, birthday cards await my attention. Most to be packed for storage, some to be brought to Scotland. My earnest intention to properly sift through it all, chucking the needless - which is plentiful - and carefully organising and packing the rest, will come to naught. It will be frantic and emotional. There will no doubt be one thing placed in a certain box that brings it all home and tears will follow. Or not. I'm quite numb about it - the urgency and anxiety of this whole house shenanigan has been replaced by an urgency and anxiety to just leave.

Gazing about the Belfry at the piles of stuff that in some way plots the course my life has run gives me the curious desire to just leave it all. Slice through the umbilical cord that is the sentimental attachment to inanimate objects, keep only what's practical and fits a small backpack and leave, with no forwarding address. The backpack would have The Essays of E. B. White, several notebooks, including the new suede one which would double as a sketchbook, several pens, a toothbrush and toothpaste, a clean pair of boxers and a pair of socks. And a spare t-shirt.

Alas, it's a combination of cowardice and sentimentality that keeps me here. It's six of one and half dozen of another. There's also a sense of duty; to help my folks this one last time through the next month - if that's another six, then there's 18 in total. But the three fit so easily together like puzzle pieces that it's hard to tell which one excuses the other.

Rain hit us quite hard early this morning. It's a testimony to how hot it is still, that by the time I ran the ground was mostly dry. The air was not, it was as though the city and river were sweating the rain water back skywards and it was like running in a sauna. As I sweat last night's beer, the city sweat out its morning drink. It was like jogging in one of those water cycle diagrams you had to study in school.

Running today brought some rare surrealism. Crossing to the Barnes side of the Thames, I looked across the water to the Chiswick path I'd just left. The agéd willows, drooping over the river, looked like giant green dogs, stooped on their forepaws to lap at the water. Some like sheepdogs, some like bloodhounds, I couldn't shake the image as I ran into the woods, wondering for the life of me if someone across the river was looking at the willows I was running by and thinking how much they looked like dogs.
I'm starting to write this without a title. Usually I start with the title. If you're reading it and there's still no title, well, then I guess inspiration passed me over. A title's not hugely important, really.

Sometimes things happen quite quickly. This morning, my father made an offer on a house just up the road, though quite a bit smaller than Staithe, and that offer was accepted. Whether the lady who owns it will be out of it in time for us to move in before we have to move out of here - who knows?

Just over a year ago, last August, I decided to move to London to write my book.
I've decided to move back to Scotland - but not to St Andrews - before the end of the summer. In August, in fact. The first draft of my book will be finished by then.

We had a 4th of July BBQ with loads of food, the Stars n' Stripes waving, some actual Americans, fireworks, and strawberry shortcake. There was treeclimbing and everything.

Need bed now. Sleep's getting better.

chichester and other things

Well, I went to see a friend ordained as a deacon today. The setting was Chichester Cathedral, the sun shone brilliantly and apparently there was a football match on. It was a crowded cathedral, and because I forgot my invite, we wound up sitting watching the whole thing on television. Yup - so popular it's televised. And yes, there were several chuckles when every third bloke asked if they could turn the footie on.

This wasn't your average ordination though. If such a thing exists. But this was a bit different as it was a Shinty Boy getting ordained. Shinty is a traditional Gaelic sport, similar to field hockey, noted for its violence, lunacy and gross consumption of alcohol before, during and after play. Well, that's how it's done in St Andrews at least. Which is why St Andrews has the worst shinty team ever. They never win anything, other than the party. This has led to the occasional ejection from the Athletic Union and police trouble. Someone who not only played this sport but served as a facilitator of mayhem within it is an odd choice for the Diaconate. That he intends to become a priest subsequent also raised some eyebrows.

I have no doubts though. I remember Huber (also known as Tim) from his 1st year and had many a chat, sometimes accompanied by a whisky or two, about faith, morality, the world etc. Huber never sought to convert (thank goodness), but to understand and help in whatever may need to be understood or helped. He's as brilliant a person as you could hope to meet. The church has gained a valuable addition. And should consider itself lucky that of all the Shinty Boys they could have got, they got him.

Bless y - oh, it's you, never mind.

You can take the boys out of St Andrews, but you should probably put them back.
After his 3rd dreadful chat-up line, Doris turned to find one of those sexy new Deacons she'd heard about. Bowker, defeated, put Chicago's Greatest Hits on full blast and turned to the bottle.

buttercups, lazy cats & a new garden

Just a few pics from the recent Scotland jaunt. Some because the light was good, one because the cat was cozy and the light was bad, and one because there's a garden where there once was jungle.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road



Bagel, the eternal kitten, chillin' in front of the fire (in June?)

A civilized picnic in a garden that used to be a jungle. This was the legendary Watkins's final day at work, and working hard he was. Honest.

nap, interrupted

So I went for a nap and managed to sleep for almost a minute before I got woken up by loads of old family friends.

So it proves that I can fall asleep in short time. Just not at night.

So I cooked a nice meal and drank some nice wine and hopefully will sleep with a belly full of nice food and nice booze.

I'm going to start counting sheep. There are quite a few out there. And they're all really, really, stupid.