Bastropod. Day 2.

His nerve knows no bounds.

Bastropod.

Look at this, the cheeky little feck. The girls' sunflowers aren't even out of their seed tray yet, and he's managed to climb three feet up the greenhouse staging, march across the gridded shelf, shuck off the protective cover and start gorging.



Honestly. Worse, he's right in the middle like the cocky arse he is. I knew I should've put him in the bin when I caught him trying to bungee off the doorbell the other week.




Scaring away visitors is sometimes a good thing.

Smokeless Person Update


It is a really large number of days now since I became smokelessly fuelled. Feb 4th - you work it out. On my way home from an immense eleven hour shift yesterday, I was sitting at the traffic lights when there was a rap on my window. I looked left, and a beeeeeeaaaauuuuutiful (seriously beautiful) man was making clickety click signs with his right hand. Winding down the window, puzzled, I looked at him. "Have you got a light?" he said. "No! I don't smoke" I said. "I can see!" he grinned. "That's one of those things you use to stop, no? Good luck!!!"




I hadn't fully realised this was jammed between my lips ----------->





How fabulous. The most gorgeous man I've seen in approximately 32 years, and I'm chewing on a plastic tampon. If you think it couldn't get any worse, Mel C was on my stereo.

Norwegian Mood

The more I think about it (and no, I don't know why I am anyway), the more Norway annoys me. Those stupid little O's with diagonal slashes through them, those vile little open circles above letters, like the ones that teenage numpties use to dot their i's, those stupid burrrdoy-beeedish-beeedoy voices. Bleurgh. I've been to Norway, twice by the way, to a city which occupies an entire island, Moss. It's between Oslo and Fredrikstad. If you ever get the chance to go there, don't. Spend a more entertaining week in a remote campsite in deepest east england instead. Norway stinks. I flew into Oslo and got mugged at the airport bar immediately. Two small bottles of beer - a tenner. Norway, makes you bleed money from every orifice, open your purse and watch kroners fountain out. Fancy a tube of smarties? Ok. Three QUID. Want to take home a bottle of wine? Ok. First, go to the goverment controlled Vin Monopolet (wine monopoly - I'm serious. Something with more than a whiff of communism about this... take a ticket from a roll by the door, take a leaflet printed with the wine list and go stand in the queue. Inch forward, two paces per five miutes. Wait for your number to flash up on a screen, move past the locked (truly, locked)cabinets of Blue Nun and Leibfraumilch, and hand it over to the man behind the counter who has a smiling mouth and the eyes of a serial killer. Wait as he disappears into the back of the store and returns with your bottle of basic three quid plonk. Hand over twenty five quid. Do not wait for change, there will be none.
Walk back to your house, and do not expect to see anyone on the streets as there is no such thing as cafe society. Take in the boutiques along the way. Gawp in astonishment at the leather dresses in shop windows, complete with tassles, beads and feathers and marvel at the utter lack of any fashion sense whatsoever. Notice the one and only nightclub in the whole city, Whiskey Shack, and imagine to yourself the visions that must fill it on a Saturday night. Go out later for a meal with your PartnerAtTheTime - share a large pizza and a couple of beers, and find yourself signing a credit card chit for £170, the tears pouring down your cheeks mingling with the fountain of blood spurting, chopped-artery like, from your purse.

No one SMILES there. Well actually that's not strictly true. Like Vin Monopoly Man, they do smile, it is just that the smiles are like muscle spasms - they flit briefly across the mouth, do not reach any other part of the face, and leave ... no one laughs, no one shouts. It's like an enormous Village of the Damned.

When I flew home the London bound plane taxied along the airport runway in Oslo, then screeched to a halt. "Noooooo!!!" everything inside me screamed, "I HAVE to leave!". Two lorries pulled up, hosed the plane down with de-icer and then the plane took off almost immediately and practically vertically.
What a relief.

Rubbish Job.

Near to the clinic I have on a Friday morning is a shop which sells all manner of useless and cheap crap. There are tons of them here at the seaside, they are in a kind of poundland style, but owned by various local business people. Anyway, I nipped in to this one which is a particularly large, warehouse sized one, to get some latex gloves and nappy sacks for picking up dog mess (my life just gets more brilliant), and as I was walking around picking up bits and pieces (Pantene shampoo/conditioner £1.50, barg) a really loud voice shouted "Do not open the boxes!" I looked up to see a woman standing on a table at the front of the shop, shouting. I was in there for ten minutes (nine more than is good for anyone) and saw several people shamed this way. "Man in the red anorak, do not touch the lampshades" "Lady in the pink teeshirt, do not open the packaging".
This woman is actually employed to stand on a table and yell at punters. Whilst I can see the positives in it (I would LOVE to clamber up on my trolley and shout at some of my patients), this poor specimen was standing on a rickety table amongst piles of 50p colouring books, in jeans, boots, jumper and mittens, making sure that no one buggered up the flimsy cardboard on a box of lightbulbs.
That has got to be the worst job I've seen for a good long while. I wonder if she was the cheapshop poundland prototype for this?

London Marathon

Speaking as one who wouldn't run if my bum was on fire, I admire those who would. This bloke is a colleague/boss/friend of mine. Can anyone spare a quid for the Round Table Children Wish?

Especially for R.




Got to love that poor guy in the tie at 2.40, just right of the guitar. Looks a bit like a bloke that threw us out of the Green Dragon that night eh?

x

More Disaster in the Midlands

... as I get rip roaringly drunk and then loudly announce how shit the first act is at the Ha Ha Harborough night. My new found love of rose wine has been washed ashore by deep red hot waves of shame, and smashed to pieces on Hangover Rocks. I am deeply penitent. Not about the 'this is shit' stage whisper (ok, bellow) as really, someone needed to say it (and anyway the rest of the night depended heavily on jokes about the (ejected but not dejected) pair (that's you as well Clarkie) of drunken farts that were peacably persuaded to piss off to the pub I am reliably informed), but penitent because it was my best friends birthday AND I was supposed to be showing my daughter a great time. Still, she has her ways of getting her own back. There is a video on her phone of me falling off a bench, burger from Bills Bar in one hand and mayonnaise all over my chops, which I am certain will end up on MySpaz or Youtube.

God. Driving home was horrid. The schizophrenic sat nav that had, the day before, tried to make me leave Harborough every time I actually entered it (maybe the worlds first psychic sat nav) , failed to work at all as we left. Signal too low, it kept announcing. Consequently it took an extra hour to get home, as the turn right, turn right then turn right direction which Fish had given turned out to be useless as the second turn right was closed. I was almost in tears.

Poor me. Poor my friends.

Disaster...

struck the Midlands area last night, as mental boxer careered into tumbler full of merlot at 60mph.





I have a red nose after lolling in the hammock all day reading This is Serbia Calling. (Matthew Collin - I highly recommend it if anyone else is as a) fascinated by Serbia or b) as anorak clad as me). The day was long, I bought a mini crate of Grolsch and drank it almost all, which was a little bit appalling. Ivoryfishbone turned up with a box of chocs in one hand and a bottle of red in the other. And lovely daughter too. Not sure if the red nose is from too much sunshine or a glut of alcohol.

Nice day. Nice evening. Stupid dog.

Ever get the feeling you're being taken for a ride?


Chair Dog.




Look, I know we agreed I'm not allowed on the furniture, but I'm just so knackered. Yep, it really does have to be your chair. Nope, I'm not moving. Sit on the floor woman.



Bed Dog.




Oh come 0n ... I'm white. The bed is white. What is your problem?

A Life Less Literary


(driving along, Pesk and Bonny enjoy a chat)

Bonny - Mummy, if there was a country where everything was really cheap, houses were £1 say, and all food was free in the shops, would you move there?

Pesk - Yes, of course.

Bonny - And say, the country was called Pesk-eats-Poo, would you still move there?

(Pesk turns radio up.)

Details Disappear.


The name of the restaurant and the food we ate that night
drifted away during the years in between.
but I did see him there. My friend heard him first,
nodded gently backwards, eyes rolling a direction.
I swear he looked through the shoulders of his guards, straight at me.
His name alone a force for my mouth to reckon with.
A frisson of sounds aloud, written down, all exclamations.

I wanted to see a halo, some sign of the vaunted integrity.
I saw a man silvered too soon and dropped my eyes.
We’re all old quickly here, said my friend, and
unable to stomach another lecture I got up, walked over
my unasked for hello a shout in the swift silence.
He asked me to sit, and I did.
We shared some wine. The oddest things are still vivid –
In a potato coloured shirt, my friends eyes fixed on his plate
mouth mechanically working through the food.

The name of the restaurant is gone, what we talked about is mostly gone
(The Clash, Andrić, my wispy grasp of his politics)
but I saw him there and he shook my hand.
The sibilant plosive anger later expressed at my stupidity also remains.
Four years on, he ran down some stairs and into a bullet.
The outward dangers were all gone you see.

It’s like this; we think we are safe, we stop taking care.
We forget.

Zoran Đinđić (Zoran Djindjić)1952 - 2003.

Sp3llin

Olya sent me a message this morning which landed straight to my bulk folder, entitled "Privet!" As I spent all day yesterday erecting a fence of chicken wire with which to keep my puppy in (due to my neighbour insisting on a boundry marker of privet rather than wire) if I never see any small green leaves attached to stubby stabby twiglet style branchy bits again, I shall be very glad. I certainly don't want to purchase any more privet Olya.
I also got a link to pictures of Britiney Speers. Who is she I wonder. A Canadian pharmacy thinks I will be interested in D0ct0r Gay, whilst M3dh3lp think that dr. maryellen will make me rush to open the mail. I'll pass. Another says, Don't like Cricket? Don't open this then Pesk. The fact that this mentions me by name is intriguing. But, they're absolutely right, I don't like cricket, so I shan't open. Otherwise I'm sure I'd rush to have a look. Bastids.

Moving Out

The Time is ripe, and rotten ripe, for change;
Then let it come ...

I deliberately moved away from my last blogging community. I do this, if not a lot, then perhaps more than most. I have been a 20sixer (for a very short time, the spam drove me away) and a platform27er, (the endless loveydovey matching twinned blogs drove me away from there). I have blogged on backside books' (see below) website, the nutty woman who owned that saw me off. So here I am again, moved back to blogspot. This is one I've had since April 12th 2004 - though the original posts have gone. The posts from then were moaning and sweary, much in the same vein as the one's I'm posting now. So, although I have moved ON in a way, I obviously haven't really moved on at all. At least, so my a little-bit-buddhist friend would say. She let me moan at her for 33 minutes tonight, as I wallowed in both the bath and my own misery. Been having a really crappy time at work recently. Yesterday it came to a pus filled pinnacle and I lost my temper with one of my bosses. I have three and would like to shoot two. My friend would be perfectly justified in yelling "get a GRIP" at me sometimes, but she never does. She laughs in the right places, makes soothing "oh Darl, they are vile" murmurs in other places, and generally makes me feel better.
She is the soothing balm to the whinging twat.
Anyway, best news - a phone call yesterday to tell me that I have an interview for a New Job. How thrilling.
New books today -Walter Greenwood's Love on the Dole (how ironic after castigating Backside Books for having an ancient reading list for their Radical Reading Group, that I buy a book originally published in 1933), and C.A. Brkic's The Stone Fields. And now, I'm off to bed with one of them. Which will make me sleep best, a tale of grinding poverty or a tale of mass grave excavation?

It's gym life, but not as we know it.

Or, I should say, as I know it. Actually, I don't know it at all, and I'd prefer it to stay that way. I've been roped into accompanying my aged (but active) mother to the gym. She goes to Lanzarote in a month, and wants to tighten up. I too, could do with losing a few pounds, pointed out mum helpfully. She can fit in an hour this afternoon - other spare hours this week are for swimming club, line dancing or aerobics. Her not me, doh.

I looked at the brochure for the gym, and felt exhausted and not a little murderous already. There are Rules for the gym. Firstly, when in the fitness suite, do not chew. Pardon me? I can understand patrons not being encouraged to bring in gateaux, but do not chew? At all? I shall deliberately conceal a wodge of wrigleys betwixt tooth and cheek. My danders up already.
To annoy further, the price list is like one of those impossible mathematic questions about trains crossing at varying speeds en route to scotland and london.

Basic programme - £6.00
Basic Programme with Concession - £5.00
Basic Programme with Keycard - £5.00
Basic Programme with Concession AND keycard - £4.00

One on One Programme - £9.00
One on One Programme with Concession - £8.00
One on One Programme with Keycard - £8.00
One on One Programme with Concession AND Keycard - £7.00

Basic Programme with Shared Instructor - £10.00
Basic Programme with Shared Instructor and Concession - £9.00

And so on, and so on.

What do you have to have to get a concession I ask.
"A bus pass", smugged mother, patting her silver hair. "Or a disability"

I don't even have any trainers (rule two, trainers must be worn), or tracksuit bottoms (rule three, loose comfortable clothes. NONE of my clothes are bloody loose, I wouldnt be going at ALL if they were bloody loose). Apparently, it doesn't matter, as mum has a pair of tracksuit bottoms which are 'too big', and dad has the same size foot as me. I feel like pointing out that making ones daughter feel like a slightly less fashionable Andy Pipkin with breasts is probably not Good Mothering, but she has gone upstairs to collect together my gym attire. I can hear a bit of a scuffle at the top of the stairs, and my dad yelling "It's not a bloody fashion parade", and I am immediately transported to being 12 year old Pesk sneaking out to school in lipgloss with my skirt folded over at the waist three times.

Dad's trainers, as mum hands them over, shed bits of flokky pale grey fake suede. The hems of the tracksuit bottoms I hold against me flap just under my knees. Wearing this, I will be automatically entitled to a concession I suspect.

I leave, mum a helpless wreck of guffaws halfway up the stairs.

Later, as I drink coffee with a friend, I get a text from mum.

"Nice trainers in Lidls five quid."

However did my life come to this?

Book Clubs

Weird things. I think that there aren't any near where I live, and horribly stereotypist that I am, I might assume that if there were, I should be forced to suffer M******t D********'s Plough the strangled threads and that kind of thing. They say that you can't judge a book by the cover it shows, but a drawing of a delicate young lovely in red lipstick, rollers and landgirl style overalls standing by a tractor puffing a lovely white plume into a china blue sky full of seagulls isn't likely to make me pick it up.

I joined a bookshop community online. I shall call it Backside Books. Hurrah I thought, as it described itself as a 'bookshop of the future'. Though I am past the radical age, of course I still like to read fiction (and non fiction) which challenges me, makes me think, alters my opinions, stuns me into more research. Having a glimpse at the reading list for their 'radical fiction' reading group, makes me sigh though, especially (though not exclusively) the euro fiction section. Camus and Kafka... come on, Backside Books. Kafka may have been radical in the late 19th and early 20thC, but where is the stuff that challenges todays generation (and anyway, he doesnt work in translation, the verb placement is fucked in english)? What about the new modern classics in Europe? Where are the Slavenka Drakulics, the C. A. Brkics, where even, are the Kunderas? And if you want to hammer away at the old stuff, why such obvious books? Why not, instead of Kafka's Trial, Ivo Andric's Bridge on the Drina (nobel prize for literature,"for the epic force with which he has traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from the history of his country."?
The list is described as being full of 'leftwing, progressive and revolutionary fiction'.

Hrm.

And yes I know these books are still relevant (ish), but so is Shakespeare in that way, but there is a huge GUSH of work coming out of formely repressed nations, the classics of the future are knocking at our door, yet Backside Books are still plugging away at Kafka. Hardly radical.

More so, it seems, is Richard and Judy's list. The poetically beautiful yet sharp as a tack The Girls from Lori Lansen, the shockingly intense Half of a Yellow Sun from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (an instant uni list of a book if ever I saw one and far better (imo) than the Ralph Ellison offered at Backside Books) and the fantastically bizarre This book will change your life from A. M. Holmes.

It's madness. Three years intensive study for my literature degree, leaves me sitting in front of a channel 4 teatime programme, waiting to find a decent read.

What do you all do with your unwanted books?

I have just burnt one of mine. It has been in the toilet on my mini bookcase for at least three years, and though once I tried to read it, it was excruciatingly bad. The book was self published by an acquaintance, and I felt duty bound to buy it. I can't tell you how terrible this book was. Not only was it filled with grammatical errors and continuity gaffes, it had a ridiculously dull plot.

I'm trying to slim down my shelves. Books are shoving, pushing and slithering over each other each other in every room, and stupidly, I can't seem to bear the thought of throwing any away. Some I have taken to the hospital, my old uni books I have been selling on ebay. Others are stuffed under the bed, in the horror that someone I respect might spot them and Point and Laugh at me. Sophie Kinsella's Shopaholic Abroad? Pesk, really! HAHAHAHA! How to Declutter Your House? It's not working. HAHAHA!

So, some have to go. But it's painful. Books I despise, well and truly, can go on the fire. Or can they? How on earth did I end up with Howard Stern's Private Parts under my bed?

I decide I will categorize before burning. Top shelf in the toilet will be Ted Hughes' domain. His collections and biographies, his books for children.

On the second shelf in toilet will go books that are too small to go onto the third shelf. Fuck, a useless categorization already. Ok, skinny or stunted ones which suit shelf number two.
Paula Fox, Nicholson Baker, Simon Armitage (how did I end up with two copies of Kid? And what do I do with the other?) Ancient hardback books of poetry and serious little Life and Times Of, in marbled red, green, black can fit on this shelf too. Beautifully earnest with gold lettered spines, Elizabeth Barrett pre Browning, Jane Austen, the Bronte's. I don't read them, any of them. Why are they here? Perhaps I bought them in a flurry of panic before starting university, as though the classics could seep in through some form of osmosis. Surely though, once they must've been savoured by someone. The tiny red bound copy of Austen's Emma has an important little stamp inside the cover, which declares it to have been sold by A.H.Wheeler and Co's Railway Bookstalls, for One Rupee and Eight Annas. I imagine some genteel lady half baked to death, clackety clackety clacking through 429 pages of tiny writing all the way to Jaipur, yearning for the tranquility of an English drawing room. However did they cope with print so microscopic in the days before Specsavers?

Anyway, third shelf - big boisterous books. The History of Kosovo, Legends of the Balkans, Ivo Andric's Bridge on the Drina, Vuk Draskovic's Knife all trumpet their status here - why do I have these? Because I once loved a Serb of course. They stay. Big, handsomely decorated, self important and clever, they are too like him to dispose of. A couple of Viz annuals sit next to them. He'd be so annoyed.

Bedroom now, two big bookcases. The top row of both, is purely for poetry. No idea why. Perhaps because poetry is my big love. Some of these though, like any other lover, are scandalously awful. The Portable Henry Rollins? Please. Can I throw it away? Of course not. Please Lord make me a Famous Poet, or at Least Less Fat. The book is bad, but the title resonates, and so it stays. Carol Ann Duffy, her entire output. Liz Lochead, nothing too ropey. Then we get to a chunky hardback Andrew Motion, won in a faber & faber competition. How embarrassing. Can I throw it? Nope. I won that when I could still write.

Middle and bottom shelves here map my past. I can look at the spine particular books and know exactly where I was when I was reading it - beach in Turkey (Margaret Atwood), coffee shop in Belgrade (David Lodge), lake in Prague (Jaroslav Seifert) flight to Norway (Toby Litt, Isabelle Allende). I can remember coming home to find one book on Serbia ripped into pieces and strewn across my bed. The replacement copy sits, pristine and unopened, reminding m oe why I left the jealous shredder. On my bedside table, a copy of the The Giant's House. I've finished it, so it should migrate somewhere (back to Ivoryfishbone's house?) but it's so beautifully written I keep picking it back up and reading parts over and over. She'll have to wrestle it from me.

Downstairs in the living room, a huge Victorian bookcase dominates the room. On three shelves are worthy books. Not to impress visitors (o.k, not only), but as a nod to the splendour of the shelves they inhabit. Tolstoy. Kundera. Chekhov. The resolve runs out by the bottom shelf though. A puppy chewed copy of Tell Me a Story, several jacketless Enid Blyton's. A GI diet book. An A to Z of Prague.
Stacked upwards on the microwave in the kitchen, balance approximately 30 cookbooks. Meals in Minutes, Fast Food, Quick and Easy Food, One Pot Dishes (can you spot a pattern?) with a copy of Colonial Discourse and Post Colonial Theory disconcertingly wedged in the middle. I don't use any of these. What is the point?

The fire spatters and coughs, waiting.