A Crock

I am here! I have just been doing a bit of dashing around. Will catch up tomorrow but in the meantime does anyone know what this tree is? I came across it in Kenya last December. They call it the Crocodile Tree...Isn't it gorgeous!!

Milking it.

You know when you listen to your recorded voice..if you hear yourself on an answer phone or on an old cassette…and it sounds daft or just odd? Well, I feel the same way when I catch sight of my reflection or see myself in photos. 'Who is that ridiculous woman?' I hiss. 'What a funny face. What an odd shape.'

It has always been this way..ever since I was a child. I feel like this face and body are nothing to do with the internal me. Not a good representation and I don’t recognise myself. Inside, on my good days, I am sleeker, taller, fearsome! Inside on my good days I am Riply AND the Alien. I am the Angela Carter werewolf who wears her fur on the inside.

On my bad days I am much smaller and old, brittle, fragile and sad, sad, sad but the less said about them days the better…

The idea behind being ‘aware’, ‘alive’ in its deepest sense was explored in the eye-opening film by Julian Schnabel ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly’. It is extraordinary, profoundly moving…the story of the French editor of Elle Magazine, Jean- Dominique Bauby who at the age of 42 had a massive stroke and woke up 20 days later paralysed except for his one eye with which he somehow managed to dictate a book about what he was going through, about his deep love for his family and huge appetite for life.

I remembered hearing about the publication of his book back in the '90s and had been meaning to buy it for years but baulked when I heard it was to be made into a film. How could this man’s inner journey be filmed for Gods Sake without making it excruciatingly sentimental and phoney? Schnabel however came from inside out – you will know what I mean when you see it – and crafted with light, colour, soundtrack and point of view a film moving, funny and ultimately hopeful. He does not suck up to Bauby does not make this vain but charming man a saint and this somehow makes his story and the end of his life more deeply affecting.

Also downloaded this week's 'Dr Who' (BBC One). Holy crap it was great!!! So gripping, disturbing and some real skin of teeth performances from Bernard Cribbins (aww what a coup of a casting!) and Catherine Tate. Near perfect apart from the very large plastic stag beetle that the effects department came up with. The original must have bust at the last minute and some poor runner had had to dash to Toys R Us. The writer Russell T. Davis is just beginning to become brilliant as opposed to bloody annoyingly clever. What next, what next??

I am hiding behind TV criticism. As way of apology I give you one of me favourite poems written some years ago…on a fearsome day!


Got MILK?

Got Milk?

Only blood and water
Plasma and piss

But boiling and bubbling
and coiling and spluttering
Souped up gizmo
I should coco
Whole new mojo

Milk?

Give it to the babies
And Witches' tit me,
Shakespeare!

Running my mouth.

Did I run? I did not. Partly because I got a text at 5am from a bored friend trapped at Luton airport, thought ‘ah well… I’m awake now I might as well get up,’ and then promptly fell into a deep abyss of dreamless sleep and woke up only just in time to scramble over to the CAB offices to answer phone calls from distressed, depressed and occasionally extremely unpleasant folk in various stages of crises. Kind of lost the will to live after that.

Citizens Advice Bureau, having said that, is an incredible place.
And why?
You sir! Your wife leaves you for your brother-in-law and becomes your sister-in-law (once removed). What are your rights as to the house or your children?

You madam! Yes you with the lop sided leer. Say you are waitressing and on your shift the customers at table 8 do ‘a runner’. The restaurant manager says you have to pay their bill or work an extra shift? Is that legal?

And you two, just over from Poland and working in a drycleaners. But you ma’am find out you are pregnant and are worried about the chemicals. You want to leave until the baby comes but you are not sure if your job will be there when you need it. Do you have any rights?
Well do ya? Punk?

And you reading this. Think you wouldn’t need CAB eh? How about the fact that you, after a healthy trek in the Himalayas are struck down with lurgi, face 6 months of illness and can’t work. Can you claim benefits?
If you fall into debt after investing with some Nigerian internet firm, can someone advise you and advocate for you even if you cannot afford a solicitor?

Citizens Advice is there because none of us has a real clue to the constant changing torrent of legislation that affects every part of our lives. And yet, even though manned mostly by volunteers the CAB is constantly facing closure and disruption due to lack of funds. It is very strange and I suspect it is being badly managed at the highest level and I intend to find out why so few people know or understand or care about this remarkable charity. Knowledge is power and should be free for everyone after all.

All righty, Monday rant over. My neck is killing me from sitting all day at a computer and my eyes seem to have a thick paste of Vaseline and glitter over them. Pretty but not practical. Best turn ‘em off and turn on the radio for a break. More tomorrow!

New Year all round.

So here I am in the next year of my life.

To tell you the truth it feels a little bit like the last one only a bit stiffer.

As still feeling hungover from lovely gentle birthday bash in rain I will keep this short. Also will have to get a decent nights sleep as I promised myself I would start running again in the mornings. What kind of an idiotic birthday gift to self is that? Why didn't I promise myself more time to write or less spent on organic food and more on decent wine? Ah well..perhaps that will all happen too.

More soon me dears.

Birthday Solstice

Holy smoke..what heppened to the time? must have been that vintage cider!

Ladies and gentlement, tomorrow is the summer solstice and..yup..my birthday. Tis all a bit bemusing to be off an age where most people have children, mortgages, bald spots, and savings. I have ...an over active imagination, an exhausted liver and always the feeling of discombobulation that makes me feel that i am still searching for something elusive , strange and truly beautiful.
Maybe this year eh?

I want to say thank you for everything and everyone so far, even those who can't be here this solstice.

I am alright tonight..calm. I give you a poem what I wrote instead of usual ramble.
With much love:

The point.

I have done Gym

Time

I walk a hell of

A lot

On knobbly pavements,

In Cold rain

And still my belly rolls

and yaws

This little rotund body of mine

Stomping on along the snakes and ladders of

The calander.

Ahead,

A perfect

Bird

Waits

Head cocked;

My anxiety

Absurd.

Fairly magik

Yesterday I went to the Town and Country Fair with my floaty neighbour.. The weather was chilly and sunny in equal bursts with occasional splodges of fat rain drops …there is nothing quite like the English summer. My eyes have been a bit difficult this last week so at first I was subdued and sullen wandering around between the organic jam stalls and the sheep shearing.

Things brightened up considerably after I bumped into the vintage cider stall however. A swift glug or three and it all became 'perfekedly charmin’. '

At the far end of the field were two Suffolk Punches. From a distance they just look like big horses but when you are close they tower above you, all massive and golden and sweet smelling, with hooves like buckets and liquid brown eyes and soft grey noses. There are only 420 in the whole world. Even the Giant Panda has better odds on extinction. There is something otherworldly and magical about them as if they are moving through a slightly different air to us..

As I stood slightly hypnotised by the creatures, several men strode past with falcons on their arms, two sheep dogs rounded up some Indian river ducks for a wildly applauding, enthusiastic crowd, a group of glassy eyed, mid-exam-up-the-yazoo students shared a Wild Boar burger with chips and a toddler in wellies was virtually smothered under the weight of the five-foot long stuffed tiger her Dad had just won at the fairground.
‘You can’t make this up’ I thought heading back towards the cider tent.
And I didn’t.

You Lookin' At Me?

Taxi driver: You got tunnel vision then..

Me: I..err. well ye…..

Taxi driver: Its that stick what give it away. I saw it and I thought that one’s got tunnel vision. I was going to give you a hand but then you was in already.

Silence

Me: (realising I was supposed to comment) Err …so you know about …tunnel vision..

Taxi Driver: Yeah I meet lots of them people and their dogs. In fact I am in charge of organising a training thing…um..whasit called?

Me: An awareness training?

Taxi driver: Yeah, yeah that’s right. Awareness training.

Me: That’s great. What on earth made you decide to do that?

Taxi Driver: Well we have to really. One of our drivers ..he’s foreign ..he wouldn’t take this woman in his cab..it was the dog. He just refused..and it was raining and that.
Poor thing. She ended up going on her way crying and it was even night…and then there were complaints.

Me: (Poor, poor, poor woman) Poor woman.

Taxi Driver: The bloke wouldn’t believe he had done nuffink wrong. He took it all the way to Crown Court before they threw it out.

Me: What an ass…idiot. So its because of him..?

Taxi Driver: Not really. His mate. See, he gave his taxi insurance over to his mate and his mate won’t take them people either. I’ve given him a warning..I’ve told him that as a licensed cabbie he bloody has to unless he applies for special dispensation for allergy or that.
(pause)
I mean I take them all the time. Just have a hoover in the back for the dog hair. Its no trouble. With a hoover. I like dogs.

Silence

Me: (Oh good grief..more?) So you are organising an awareness…

Taxi Driver: Yeah that’s right. That one will be there. The one what won’t take them people. He’s foreign too. I think they probably eat them dogs or something in their country…that’s the problem.

Me: (Sweet Jesus!) Yeaaahh….I think it is to do with issues of cleanliness and purity..some conflict with religion although I have not ever met a mullah who says Guide Dogs are unclean..

Taxi Driver: Mu..wha?

Me: Never mind..It’s great what you are doing.

Taxi Driver: Well..as I say I had to really. There will be this blind lady telling us stuff and her dog and her daughter. You know and we’ll even take her out for a nice pub lunch after.

Me: I am sure she’ll be really pleased..

Taxi driver: Yeah well.. its hard for these people..they don’t have much of a life do they…

Me: (?!!!***?) Apparently not…Oh sorry..must answer my phone….….