Blogging a slim possibility, dependent on whether the local pub still has wifi. As well, of course, as my having anything to say other than complaining about the weather. And the midges. Etc.
Water Ship Down
Ok, it’s blurry. She was drumming, the light was a single domestic standard lamp with a bit of yellow plastic over it and I was feeling not so good (actually the food poisoning hadn’t kicked in at that point but it’s an excuse and I’m using it). However is not Amy one of the most beautiful people imaginable? Yes, is the correct answer. Always has been, always utterly unaware of being so.
And here, unfortunately largely obscured by hair and a microphone, is her elder brother Tomas. Just as delightful.
I’d like to be able to give a thoughtful, insightful and informative review of the music but unfortunately I can’t. Firstly because it was so loud I couldn’t really hear it, was worried about the future of my hearing and retreated after taking a few photographs back to the bar. Secondly because the above-mentioned food poisoning was approaching like an avalanche down a high mountain and I was concentrating very hard on trying not to throw up.
There’s another one, of Amy at her drums, here.
Shorts for summer with an extra leg
I’m quite enmeshed in Facebook and flickr and thus feel slightly decentralised. Tripartite? trinitarian? a tripod? highly stable? [stop. now].
Anyway, from Facebook I hereby reproduce a fengtastic response to the previous post:
I’ve been looking at fly fishing flies. The Purple Egg Sucking Leech comes close to lav:
(from the Wooly Buggers)
There’s the Red Flying Ant and the Red Ibis among the Queens, Parmachanee Belle of the Dry Flies; a whole variety of Italian tapestry shades in the Crystal Buggers, just no lav. Outdone by a landslide though by the feather boas of Pink and Purple Rabbit Leeches.
Personally I like playing with my crab but if it’s size you want, conking the bloody fish out is always a last resort if you’re wired up with Bomber Salmons.
Oh here we go, the standard BDSM superhero vinyl costume types we use back home:
I’m not entirely sure whether this means mr feng squeezes into a glow-in-the-dark rubber cephalopod costume for an exciting night out hooking or goes fishing with squid lures. However I find it appropriate that the picture is titled “assred”.
“Lav”, I should probably explain, is short for lavender well-known, of course, for its calming and soothing effect. Spritz! spritz! And here’s one I saw earlier…
Which of course brings us from Facebook to flickr. The public element of Tate Britain‘s How We Are: Photographing Britain exhibition has been wrapped up… no more entries are being accepted to the How We Are Now flickr pool and ten finalists have been chosen from each of the four categories. None of my submissions, you will be astonished to learn, is among them.
However a very delightful and clearly highly discerning photographer, Stuart Haden, thought that one of them should have been, which makes me extremely happy. And he gives a fundamentally important piece of advice – “Follow your passion, never give up, enjoy what you do.”
I went to see the exhibition but don’t recall writing about it. Did I? I seem to remember having a couple of passing thoughts about it but all that now remains in my small-capacity brain (apart from the OCD vegetable and fruit photographer who later used his glass plates for cold frames) was that the most exciting moment was standing in front of a huge ever-changing display of pictures by a portrait photographer and seeing a friend scroll by.
Elsewhere I’m really enjoying Xtinpore, with whom I share displeasure about 29, and her friend pluvialis. Energetic, superbright, gorgeous, funny, multi-talented/obsessed and fascinating. Damn! And one of them is a real live falconer. Double damn!
Shortly I am off to a gig about which I was alerted by a friend on Facebook. He is a member of the band. As is his sister (she’s the drummer). They’re both my friends on Facebook and they’re both the children of one of my dearest bosom buddies. Much has been written about Facebook but I have yet to see an anguished plea about what to do when one of your mother’s friends befriends you digitally. (Oh the things I could tell her. Not. Well, perhaps. For a small fee. Silence is also available in multiple currencies.)
Coneheads
Apparently salmon go wild for these things. And what a great name – conehead. Like an egghead but less, um, ovoid. More pointy. Possibly.
These flies sport a wing of soft mobile fur – for example Arctic fox or possibly a soft synthetic fibre. This is tied in facing forward then folded back to create a sinuous teardrop-shaped fly that flutters and darts enticingly in the stream.
I love fishing flies – the sheer audacity of the colours and shapes and textures, exotic and sensuous, fur and feathers and sparkles. I adored helping my father when he tied his own. All the little plastic bags and transparent boxes full of brightly dyed fur and feathers, lengths of metallic thread and shiny stuff like very tiny tinsel. The miniature vice to hold the hook as the layers of extravagant fluff and fibre are built up. It’s jewellery-making for boys. (And girls too of course.)
We were in Farlows, my father and I. “One for me and one for J [my stepmother] to steal off me” he muttered as he poked through the compartments of different coloured and sized pieces of spangly fluff.
“Where is the fun,” I asked, over espresso, later, “in fishing with something infallibly attractive. Surely it takes the skill and excitement out of the chase?”
His answer lasted some time. Almost as long as the video of him fishing in Argentina which I have been privileged to sit in front of watch on more than one occasion. The subtleties and nuances of the exegesis were possibly similarly infinitesimally varied, to the unenthusiasticinitiated viewer/auditor. However for those unversed in the piscatorial arts the response can be condensed.
No.
Suck
Yesterday I heard screams of such raw and primal grief I assumed the neighbour’s baby had died (she is so ill it’s a case not of if but when). Only after some time did I realise it was the couple in the upstairs flat.
The fumes from their post-coital packet/s of cigarettes are still drifting through the window and impregnating my space with their noxious odour.
Last night, or rather this morning at 1am, the dog-hater was under the window again with a new appellation implying I possess an overweening interest in performing oral sex on men.
The house is empty, the children are still away. The sky has darkened. It is about to rain.
A bath of blackberries
Like a bed of roses, something that one should be grateful life isn’t. Too lacerating.
Back from Wales which was mostly misty.
Sometimes drivingly so. The driving being done by the extremely blusterous wind which threatened at one stage to remove the tent. Luckily the driven mist calmed the sunburn acquired the previous day.
Maizy had a great time, what with all the walking.
So did I. More pictures here.
Timely and appropriate fortune cookie
Immobile
It’s been a stressful few days. I’ve had to cancel, under difficult circumstances, a trip I was due to take in September to see friends, which has been very sad. Finances are increasingly worrying. Just the sort of day when life seems like crap every way you look and a trip to the shrink seems like a necessity, healing balm to the troubled mind, rather than a routine chore.
I get in the van. I reverse gently in order to get out of a tight parking space. Steering wheel pulled hard right-hand-down I gently move forward to sail out into the road. Only there’s a problem. The van is moving forward, but only very slowly. And what’s that in the rear-view mirror?
The problem is a really big problem. A problem the size of a four-by-four with an over-protruberant tow-bar. We were attached. Intimately. Where I go the four-by-four follows.
I tried everything. Edging forward at various angles and speeds in the hopes of ripping clear. Moving everything out of the back of the van and putting heavy things in the front to lift the back up. Hitting the bottom of the bumper with a hammer. Nothing worked. The last effort produced a small tinny clunk and a shower of rust but made absolutely no impression at all on the iron of the bumper.
I had an idea. Jack up the right-hand side of the van in the hopes that E (the lovely next-door-neighbour and owner of the extra-long tow-bar) could drive away from the van’s embrace. There was just one problem. I don’t have a jack and hers was in the back of her car. Which was inaccessible due to the proximity of a large and immovable van.
In the end I phoned the RAC. This was a slightly protracted process due to their whizzy computerised system which only foresaw a certain range of possible circumstances which could result in a call for their help. Van vaginismus was not among them, neither was tow-bar dysfunction. The unfortunate operator was deeply puzzled as to which category it might best be fitted. I suggested “flat tyre” might be the closest since the action required to solve the problem was similar, but with the added benefit of not needing to change the wheel.
Whatever category she eventually chose it had excellent results. Faster than a speeding bullet (well in about 20 minutes which is amazingly quick for such an entirely non-urgent matter) the delightful and ebullient Chris appeared with the ideal solution. Let E’s tyres down.
We chatted about social networking, E and I sitting in the sun on the wall at the front of the house, Chris from his deflating position prone on the pavement. He’s a globe-trotting kiwi and a keen user of facebook and was delighted at the prospect of my putting his picture there. “So much better for keeping in touch with all your friends when you’re travelling than sorting through a hotmail inbox crammed full of spam” he said.
Once I had rolled triumphantly out from the now flaccid embrace of the four-by-four he even produced a special hammer and bashed the bumps out of the bumper.
So thank you very much, Chris. For uncoupling the over-amourous vehicles, for another reason to enjoy facebook and for generally straightening things out. If only mental dents were as easily undinted.
Eyeshadow
Look! look! the sun is out!!
Well, ok, that’s a shadow. But it is proof of the existence of the sun, no?
We were fantastically lucky. I booked our trip to the London Eye more than a week ago because lovely Z from Hungary is staying and it turned out to be the only sunny day in living memory.
There are more in this set of pictures on flickr.
frizzyLogic 