a negative capability scrapbook
…to drag everyone I know and love to Brighton beach and take pictures of them.
I used not to want to take pictures of people at all, finding it difficult, intrusive and somehow embarrassing. Now I love it. I think that must in a large part be due to Neha’s patience putting up with me practicing.
Dogs, on the other hand, have never presented a problem.
The rest of the set is here.
Not my laundry, obviously, which apart from one emergency trip to F’s machine remains unwashed and scrumpled, but the local lilies.
I had one of those conversations this morning which I dread. The ones with someone you don’t know particularly well and haven’t seen in a really long time. Fortunately this was a woman I liked and had much in common with who I met through shared school stuff and hadn’t seen much since our respective children moved on to different places. The conversation went something like this:
Pleasant Acquaintance (out jogging, jauntily): Hi! how are you?
Me (attached to lead pulled by grumpy dog): Fine!
PA (removing headphones from which issue tinny jogging music): I haven’t seen you in ages! How’s FirstSpawn?
Me (heart sinking slightly, realising that we weren’t going to pass like ships in the night): He’s fine thanks, but he’s off school at the moment…
[we have a wide-ranging and in-depth conversation about boys, illness, and school examinations and find we have much in common]
PA: And how’s [the ex]?
Me: Oh he seems fine. He’s just got engaged.
PA (unable to disguise the fact that she’s goggling with astonishment): Engaged????!!
Me: (realising it’s been a *very* long time since we last met): Ah, er, yes. We split up some time ago…
[we have a wide-ranging and in-depth conversation about men, maintenance and much younger women and find we have much in common]
PA: And the BBC, how’s that going?
Me: Ah. Well, actually I’m unemployed now. A single mother on benefits, you know, that great scourge of modern society.
At this point PA realises that the water under the bridge is of sufficient volume to irrigate several rice paddies. We check that we have up-to-date mobile numbers and arrange to meet for a cup of tea.
I’m rather looking forward to it.
This is not my knitting. I merely recorded him.
Isn’t he spectacular? Silk sewing thread and dressmaker’s pins. No pattern. Made by F. She calls it “knitting off piste”. There’s another picture here.
Further to yesterday’s post, here is a picture of the garment I was working on at the I Knit London meet-up. The sleeve on the right of the picture was sewn on before I had my five-a-day; the sleeve on the left of the picture was sewn on after consumption of the appropriate number of fruit-and-veg.
QED, I think you’ll agree. It really is necessary to have five cocktails a day. Here are some suggestions to get you started. If you click through to the picture on flickr there are helpful notes on ingredients.
Now please excuse me, I have to remove and reinsert a wonky sleeve.
News just in – the washing machine’s finally given up the ghost. Sigh. An expected bereavement but sad none the less. The economics of laundrettes clearly dictate a new machine will be cheaper than feeding the voracious slots of commercial washing appliances for any length of time, so a new machine has been ordered. Thank goodness for the never-never, that’s what I say. Oh, and the peerless John Lewis without which life might not be worth living.
The above is F hanging out her own washing while condoling on my loss and sheroically offering the services of her own machine while I wait (a week) for the new one. Hurrah.
In some lights London looks almost continental European, ancient architecture decaying in a genteel manner under a Mediterranean sun. But of course it isn’t, it’s merely a boarded-up shop in Willesden.
I am also red, green, white and decaying, but in this case also tired and shriveled.
We all respond in our different ways.
SecondSpawn wraps himself up in a blanket and retreats to the sofa. He’s gone down with some virus/bacteria infection which has given him a fever and rubbed the lining of his throat red-raw removing the ability to swallow and talk much.
FirstSpawn requests deodorant, chocolate-scented, and pooh-poohs (I use the expression advisedly) my suggestion that regular, frequent and thorough attention to personal hygiene is more effective, cheaper and would prevent the danger of attack by frustrated and therefore enraged chocolate-seeking bees.
I step out with a pair of scissors into the area behind the house inaccurately known as the “garden”, that word containing as it does the implication of cultivation. The fact that I can’t actually find the rosemary bush I am seeking to snip (and I must make it clear that this is a very very very small garden) may indicate the level of lack of human intervention in the burgeoning plant life.
Where I thought the rosemary bush once grew was instead a curtain of young saplings with leaves liberally sprinkled with vile and vicious alien creatures. And to make matters worse they were fornicating with abandon.
Well, abandon in two senses perhaps. While the male clung on and intermittently shook his booty manically side-to-side like the rattle of an excited snake the female strolled around apparently oblivious to theĀ proceedings.
I needed the rosemary to flavour a roast which is of course the most sensible thing to eat in midsummer.
This was just too good to miss. Three women, dressed identically, sashaying along the Holloway Road last night. It almost made the three and a half hours it took to drop FirstSpawn off at his party worth while.
Almost.
After all in that same amount of time we could have got to vast swathes of coastline, put our feet in the sea and quaffed a refreshing drink rather than worn ourselves ragged navigating across London without the Victoria line.
The whole of London smells of shit.
frizzyLogic 