Birds
Ah, fuck it. I don't have much to say. Look at these owls instead (no, don't get excited, they are merely cute, not epoch-defining like Owl in a Box). Hey! Wanstead Bird guy! This is the SECOND time I have featured birds on my weblog since you linked to me. Flattered? I could tell you about the seagull I met in Edinburgh too. Well, when I say "met", I mean "limped away from, whimpering in terror". It was the size of a horse. At this point it is incumbent upon me to say that anyone who hasn't read Anna's post on seagulls must go and read it now.
Ok. Enough fucking birds [ed].
Stump
It is Armistice Day and a public holiday in Belge Land. I have spent a proportion of the day standing in my new back garden getting wet feet and talking about a "souche" (tree stump). I don't give a shit about the tree stump, but the neighbours who have escaped from the famous French film "La vie est une longue fleuve tranquille", do. The neighbours are ostentatiously Catholic and have SIX tweedy blond children. The two eldest are respectively "chez les Jésuites" and "au séminaire". Madame has perfected what I call "le style biscotte" a combination of extreme dessicated thinness (due to a diet of Sveltesse prune flavoured yoghurts and biscottes, those crumbling, joyless French bread substitutes), a pie crust blouse and a cardigan with gold buttons pulled tightly over concave chest and the incontournable bouche en cul de chat (cat's arse face). Le tout accessorised with a drooping Christ crucifix. Oh, I imagine she alternates with a nylon ribbed polo neck.
[I am being mean about my new neighbour. I know this is bad. But there is practically nothing and noone I can be mean about any more and I am in the mood for employing Mrs Trefusis's infamous ninja toasting fork. I am not Fotherington Thomas, dammit and if you are expecting me to rhapsodise about the light fading over the Atomium and the kitteny softness of babies' cheeks you have come to the wrong place.]
I am apparently responsible for this fucking souche and its removal. I am not enthused. Once more, this does not seem to be the kind of expenditure likely to bring me Roland Mouret dresses. Maybe I can have a debauched tree stump party? We can sacrifice virgins and small goats on its slimy, mouldering surface. Raise spirits?
Stuff
Contents of the new house today:
1 (white! HA!) Ektorp sofa.
Some towels.
Some duvets.
Some curtains, still in packets
A roll of tin foil
An empty Maltesers packet
Likely additions before I moving in this Monday:
A bottle of gin
A hot water bottle
That seems sufficient, no?
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
Listing
I am starting, squeamishly, to pack. As much as one can without boxes. I am mainly packing in my head and on long, crazy person lists, with some flutteringly feeble attempts to pile things up. It is woefully little, terrifyingly late. I am moving early next week. In my head I'm not actually taking anything except the piano and a small sofa and a chair, but the reality is rather different. I mean, there are clothes, and shoes, and nicky nacky trinkety bits of nonsense, and the CFO is very unreasonably refusing to retain custody of all my unopened bills and correspondence with HSBC.
The kitchen is ok. We have too much of most things, particularly bowls of course. I might have to return to my former career of cutlery crime for spoons. I get the Kitchenaid, he gets the juicer. For all either of us know, the juicer may have a family of rare bats nesting in it given the amount of use it has. I am prone to self-delusion, but not prone enough to believe I am going to start juicing. I have mass purchased bedlinen and towels in a twitchy fashion, so that's not a problem either. We've talked about all the big stuff, most of which is staying here with the CFO, and apart from some serious residual sadness on both sides over pictures and photos, we're ok with it. I'll be pretty devastated not to see the Skygarden from my bed any more, but in the grand scheme of things, it's pretty low on the list of miseries. Oh, and of course I don't even have a bed to look at it from. The weepette gets to keep one of his two favoured chairs.
I am trying to decide what books to take. The CFO is keen to keep the shelves full (not a problem, overflow paperbacks clutter most corners), so I am only taking what I really want to have, to keep, to read or reread. It's an odd mix, so far; part what I genuinely want to read or reread, and partly deluded. Deluded in that I am taking all the worthy stuff that I have not, thus far, had any desire to read, books of poetry bought for me by Prog Rock or my mum, giant history tomes I failed to read during my degree or subsequently, things I bought believing I should have read them that stare reproachfully down from their dusty perches (Don DeLillo, Montaigne, Yeats and Proust biographies, I am particularly thinking of you here) .
It's stupid really. Going half a mile down the road is unlikely to change my reading habits. I will still buy whatever modern novels catch my eye on the 3 for 2 pile, or that are well-reviewed, or that I like the sound of. I will re-read almost nothing - Wodehouse, Mitford, Cold Comfort Farm, I Capture the Castle, David Sedaris. I will flirt with poetry again and it will make me feel peculiar again and I will shove it away in a distant corner. I will never look at my big art and photography books. Does anyone look at them? I have been as guilty as anyone of buying them as gifts, but really? Do you ever look at them more than once?
What would you really really have to take with you if you moved? Or what would you and your significant other fight to the death over? It can be like that "what would you save if the house was on fire" question they ask in magazines. I've never managed to answer it satisfactorily when I am playing 'fantasy when I am a celebrity interview' in my head (don't give me that, of course you've played). I can only conclude I would burn to death trying to decide which picture to take. With my mouth full of shoes. I wouldn't make a great buddhist, would I?
The kitchen is ok. We have too much of most things, particularly bowls of course. I might have to return to my former career of cutlery crime for spoons. I get the Kitchenaid, he gets the juicer. For all either of us know, the juicer may have a family of rare bats nesting in it given the amount of use it has. I am prone to self-delusion, but not prone enough to believe I am going to start juicing. I have mass purchased bedlinen and towels in a twitchy fashion, so that's not a problem either. We've talked about all the big stuff, most of which is staying here with the CFO, and apart from some serious residual sadness on both sides over pictures and photos, we're ok with it. I'll be pretty devastated not to see the Skygarden from my bed any more, but in the grand scheme of things, it's pretty low on the list of miseries. Oh, and of course I don't even have a bed to look at it from. The weepette gets to keep one of his two favoured chairs.
I am trying to decide what books to take. The CFO is keen to keep the shelves full (not a problem, overflow paperbacks clutter most corners), so I am only taking what I really want to have, to keep, to read or reread. It's an odd mix, so far; part what I genuinely want to read or reread, and partly deluded. Deluded in that I am taking all the worthy stuff that I have not, thus far, had any desire to read, books of poetry bought for me by Prog Rock or my mum, giant history tomes I failed to read during my degree or subsequently, things I bought believing I should have read them that stare reproachfully down from their dusty perches (Don DeLillo, Montaigne, Yeats and Proust biographies, I am particularly thinking of you here) .
It's stupid really. Going half a mile down the road is unlikely to change my reading habits. I will still buy whatever modern novels catch my eye on the 3 for 2 pile, or that are well-reviewed, or that I like the sound of. I will re-read almost nothing - Wodehouse, Mitford, Cold Comfort Farm, I Capture the Castle, David Sedaris. I will flirt with poetry again and it will make me feel peculiar again and I will shove it away in a distant corner. I will never look at my big art and photography books. Does anyone look at them? I have been as guilty as anyone of buying them as gifts, but really? Do you ever look at them more than once?
What would you really really have to take with you if you moved? Or what would you and your significant other fight to the death over? It can be like that "what would you save if the house was on fire" question they ask in magazines. I've never managed to answer it satisfactorily when I am playing 'fantasy when I am a celebrity interview' in my head (don't give me that, of course you've played). I can only conclude I would burn to death trying to decide which picture to take. With my mouth full of shoes. I wouldn't make a great buddhist, would I?
Monday, 9 November 2009
Obliquely weekly review
If I tried to do the weekly review thing for the past seven days I would end up sticking my head in the shredder. Let us instead do what I do with bank statements, my arse when accidentally spotted in a badly placed mirror, and correspondance with the Tresorie Public - look fixedly around the edges, not allowing our eyes to stray for a nano-second into the forbidden zones where Bad Things lurk. At least, not unless we are holding both hands in front of our face for protection. In Belgium, when you want to withdraw money from a cash machine, it cruelly insists on displaying your balance at the bottom of the screen. I have become expert at putting my wallet in front of the offending pixels. With our wallets firmly pressed against the screen, let us proceed with caution.
Monday
A rogue bank holiday catches me out and I am imprisoned at home, alternately snapping and bribing the spawn to let me work. At the end of the day, when we all hate each other and the dog is cowering in his kennel, hiding both from the sound of me shrieking like a demented harridan and Fingers sitting on him and attaching 3 rolls of sellotape to his tail and ears, Team Sudoku (the CFO's parents) comes to the rescue.
Tuesday
La la lalalalalaa.
La
La
Very cold out.
Wine? Thank you, I don't mind if I do. No, no glass, just open the tap on the giant wine box, papy, and I'll put my head underneath it, thanks.
Wednesday
We go to Switzerland and stay here, pretending momentarily to be rich. It is nicely womblike and has lamps shaped like jellyfish. Approximately 47% of guests appear to be Russian hookers. I eat a steak that is considerably larger - and tastier - than my head and drink stuff made with lychees and vodka. The CFO and I get drunk and I cry sporadically. Because there is a minibar entirely stocked with FREE soft drinks (FREE! Included in room rate!) I do not suffer unduly from the drinking because I am better hydrated than at any time in my adult life, stubbornly filling myself with free Fanta and Perrier until I feel like I will explode. Maybe this is why rich people look so much better than I do? Free soft drinks?
Thursday
After stuffing our bags with everything we can steal and filling our pockets with snacks from breakfast wrapped in stolen shower caps, we spend the day wandering round Geneva. I finally buy the CFO his long-delayed 40th birthday present. It's the oddest, saddest, day. There is a definite sense of finality as we part at the airport.
Friday
I go to Scotland. After what feels like a week on various small trains staring at fields full of sheep, I eventually reach Edinburgh. M and I stomp around saying "cock" and drink cocktails and eat cake and laugh at hippies and poke things in shops. She laughs cruelly when my shoes make a sound like seagulls farting on the marble floor of Harvey Nichols. My hotel is bizarrely seedy and employs a sad Eastern European girl to droop on the stairs spraying foaming chemicals and dabbing at them ineffectually.
We are particularly amused by the "Eco-erotic Emporium" selling organic and sustainably sourced erotica. M takes a picture which she will send me soon, please M.
Saturday
I wake up with a knee the size of Belgium and can barely hobble as far as Jaeger to stalk a dress that looks exactly like every other dress I own. Thankfully they do not have it in stock, though they have a large number of other very desirable things that I have to violently prevent myself buying. Jaeger is verrrry, dangerously, good for people like me who are short and fond of elegant black dresses despite having problems with basics of elegance like hosiery without holes, and fingernails. Oh, hang on, I appear to have turned into my mother. Also, having persued the "New Arrivals" section on line, it appears to be full of mad clothes that Joan Collins rejected in 1983, and PLUS FOURS. FOR WOMEN. Words are inadequate. I hobble to Hawkins Bazaar which is the best shop in the history of the world ever and buy luminous disco ducks, dinosaur eggs, slime, wind up snails, jumping beans and other exceptionally cheap tat for boys.
I spend the rest of the day alternating between having baths in my new Elemis muscle soak, which is made of magic, watching shitty tv and napping. It is very, very nice. However when M comes round, I realise my knee has locked at a 45° angle and I can't move it. This is not important, thankfully, as M and I are so overcome with fumes from the special foaming cleaning product that the mournful girl is applying to the carpet outside the room, that we end up watching 'Paris Hilton's New Best Friend' and giving ourselves spectacularly shit manicures.
Finally, M (5 feet of fierceness) has to practically carry me to the bus. Noone even glances at us, since they just assume I am drunk. Soon after that, I am.
Sunday
I am awake all night weeping into my Halloween pumpkin knee. (well, not strictly into it, which would be disgusting) and watching X Factor repeats. This means I am up in plenty of time to take the Sheep Express back all the way across Scotland.
Very many hours of low rent travel later I get back to Brussels and we finally tell the boys we are separating. The next few hours are among those I would least like to live again in my life. It is at least done, though.
Haiku version:
Your turn.
Monday
A rogue bank holiday catches me out and I am imprisoned at home, alternately snapping and bribing the spawn to let me work. At the end of the day, when we all hate each other and the dog is cowering in his kennel, hiding both from the sound of me shrieking like a demented harridan and Fingers sitting on him and attaching 3 rolls of sellotape to his tail and ears, Team Sudoku (the CFO's parents) comes to the rescue.
Tuesday
La la lalalalalaa.
La
La
Very cold out.
Wine? Thank you, I don't mind if I do. No, no glass, just open the tap on the giant wine box, papy, and I'll put my head underneath it, thanks.
Wednesday
We go to Switzerland and stay here, pretending momentarily to be rich. It is nicely womblike and has lamps shaped like jellyfish. Approximately 47% of guests appear to be Russian hookers. I eat a steak that is considerably larger - and tastier - than my head and drink stuff made with lychees and vodka. The CFO and I get drunk and I cry sporadically. Because there is a minibar entirely stocked with FREE soft drinks (FREE! Included in room rate!) I do not suffer unduly from the drinking because I am better hydrated than at any time in my adult life, stubbornly filling myself with free Fanta and Perrier until I feel like I will explode. Maybe this is why rich people look so much better than I do? Free soft drinks?
Thursday
After stuffing our bags with everything we can steal and filling our pockets with snacks from breakfast wrapped in stolen shower caps, we spend the day wandering round Geneva. I finally buy the CFO his long-delayed 40th birthday present. It's the oddest, saddest, day. There is a definite sense of finality as we part at the airport.
Friday
I go to Scotland. After what feels like a week on various small trains staring at fields full of sheep, I eventually reach Edinburgh. M and I stomp around saying "cock" and drink cocktails and eat cake and laugh at hippies and poke things in shops. She laughs cruelly when my shoes make a sound like seagulls farting on the marble floor of Harvey Nichols. My hotel is bizarrely seedy and employs a sad Eastern European girl to droop on the stairs spraying foaming chemicals and dabbing at them ineffectually.
We are particularly amused by the "Eco-erotic Emporium" selling organic and sustainably sourced erotica. M takes a picture which she will send me soon, please M.
Saturday
I wake up with a knee the size of Belgium and can barely hobble as far as Jaeger to stalk a dress that looks exactly like every other dress I own. Thankfully they do not have it in stock, though they have a large number of other very desirable things that I have to violently prevent myself buying. Jaeger is verrrry, dangerously, good for people like me who are short and fond of elegant black dresses despite having problems with basics of elegance like hosiery without holes, and fingernails. Oh, hang on, I appear to have turned into my mother. Also, having persued the "New Arrivals" section on line, it appears to be full of mad clothes that Joan Collins rejected in 1983, and PLUS FOURS. FOR WOMEN. Words are inadequate. I hobble to Hawkins Bazaar which is the best shop in the history of the world ever and buy luminous disco ducks, dinosaur eggs, slime, wind up snails, jumping beans and other exceptionally cheap tat for boys.
I spend the rest of the day alternating between having baths in my new Elemis muscle soak, which is made of magic, watching shitty tv and napping. It is very, very nice. However when M comes round, I realise my knee has locked at a 45° angle and I can't move it. This is not important, thankfully, as M and I are so overcome with fumes from the special foaming cleaning product that the mournful girl is applying to the carpet outside the room, that we end up watching 'Paris Hilton's New Best Friend' and giving ourselves spectacularly shit manicures.
Finally, M (5 feet of fierceness) has to practically carry me to the bus. Noone even glances at us, since they just assume I am drunk. Soon after that, I am.
Sunday
I am awake all night weeping into my Halloween pumpkin knee. (well, not strictly into it, which would be disgusting) and watching X Factor repeats. This means I am up in plenty of time to take the Sheep Express back all the way across Scotland.
Very many hours of low rent travel later I get back to Brussels and we finally tell the boys we are separating. The next few hours are among those I would least like to live again in my life. It is at least done, though.
Haiku version:
Sustainably sourced
Organic tofu sex toys
More fun than break up
Your turn.
Saturday, 7 November 2009
Miss Havisham, no transport
I have half an hour before my free wifi expires. What can I tell you in half an hour? More than you could ever wish for, I fear.
I am in Edinburgh. Edinburgh, I can now tell you, is a goodly distance from Prestwick airport. A distance, indeed, that I would have thought exceeded the size of the whole of Scotland. I think my train went to every single place in the whole of Scotland yesterday, though perhaps my perception of time was skewed by my travel companions on the Ned Express and my fear that the one with the tracheotomy tube would come and sit next to me. By the time I got off I was drunk by proxy on Tennants Export and magazine induced shinything lust. When we wandered round Harvey Nichols later yesterday I kept stopping and saying 'ooh, I saw that in a magazine', until M was forced to beat me over the head with Elemis muscle soak.
I am also BROKEN. So, so broken. The knee of death is back and it is combining with Michael O'Leary Syndrome (pain, muscle ache, neck cramps and general lack of will to live caused by having to shove all possessions into tiny bag and cram into the yellow bird of death, herded by disdainful Eastern Europeans to probable death) to make me incapable of movement. I have hobbled along Princes Street drawing concerned and appalled stares, half expecting charitable Edinburgh ladies to shove 50p pieces into my pathetic claws. It's shaming, and humbling to be this immobile. You feel suddenly vulnerable, and a bit ridiculous. I have to wait for the green man to cross roads and, like a Dalek, stairs unman me completely. It makes me worry about old age. Possibly I am there already, on the strength of this. How will I cope on my own? How will I even manage the move? It's in a week, holy mother of Nathan. At this rate I will have to adopt Mya's recent suggestion to train the weepette to pull a small bath chair. Given he remains resistant to understanding basic commands like 'Heel', this is unlikely to be achievable within a week. It's going to be Dr Kevorkian time again.
More immediately, more pressingly, more shallowly, I am concerned about M's birthday party tonight. She is considerably younger than me (we can share a brain despite this due to her egregious old lady tendencies, particularly in the fields of knitting) and all the dirty students she has promised to lay on for me will be appalled and disgusted at the sight of my decreptitude. I have brought two dresses with me in a feat of Michael O'Leary defying packing prowess, but neither of them cover the knee of death which is currently the size of, ooh, a galia melon? Heading towards pumpkin? I could wear what I am wearing now (+J v neck jumper and Gap skating skirt), but it's already on its second day. And there were cocktails yesterday so there are probably holes and stains I haven't even noticed yet.
So. Task for readership. What can I wear/do to deal with giant decrepit old lady failing body? How can I transform myself into the usual sultry WaffleSiren (cough cough, hem hem)? I have about £80, all day, and limited mobility. Go on, get creative.
I am in Edinburgh. Edinburgh, I can now tell you, is a goodly distance from Prestwick airport. A distance, indeed, that I would have thought exceeded the size of the whole of Scotland. I think my train went to every single place in the whole of Scotland yesterday, though perhaps my perception of time was skewed by my travel companions on the Ned Express and my fear that the one with the tracheotomy tube would come and sit next to me. By the time I got off I was drunk by proxy on Tennants Export and magazine induced shinything lust. When we wandered round Harvey Nichols later yesterday I kept stopping and saying 'ooh, I saw that in a magazine', until M was forced to beat me over the head with Elemis muscle soak.
I am also BROKEN. So, so broken. The knee of death is back and it is combining with Michael O'Leary Syndrome (pain, muscle ache, neck cramps and general lack of will to live caused by having to shove all possessions into tiny bag and cram into the yellow bird of death, herded by disdainful Eastern Europeans to probable death) to make me incapable of movement. I have hobbled along Princes Street drawing concerned and appalled stares, half expecting charitable Edinburgh ladies to shove 50p pieces into my pathetic claws. It's shaming, and humbling to be this immobile. You feel suddenly vulnerable, and a bit ridiculous. I have to wait for the green man to cross roads and, like a Dalek, stairs unman me completely. It makes me worry about old age. Possibly I am there already, on the strength of this. How will I cope on my own? How will I even manage the move? It's in a week, holy mother of Nathan. At this rate I will have to adopt Mya's recent suggestion to train the weepette to pull a small bath chair. Given he remains resistant to understanding basic commands like 'Heel', this is unlikely to be achievable within a week. It's going to be Dr Kevorkian time again.
More immediately, more pressingly, more shallowly, I am concerned about M's birthday party tonight. She is considerably younger than me (we can share a brain despite this due to her egregious old lady tendencies, particularly in the fields of knitting) and all the dirty students she has promised to lay on for me will be appalled and disgusted at the sight of my decreptitude. I have brought two dresses with me in a feat of Michael O'Leary defying packing prowess, but neither of them cover the knee of death which is currently the size of, ooh, a galia melon? Heading towards pumpkin? I could wear what I am wearing now (+J v neck jumper and Gap skating skirt), but it's already on its second day. And there were cocktails yesterday so there are probably holes and stains I haven't even noticed yet.
So. Task for readership. What can I wear/do to deal with giant decrepit old lady failing body? How can I transform myself into the usual sultry WaffleSiren (cough cough, hem hem)? I have about £80, all day, and limited mobility. Go on, get creative.
Thursday, 5 November 2009
I am not even slightly dead
Hello.
Things that have not happened to me:
1. I have not been consumed by a passion for Sudoku so great I can no longer blog.
2. I have not injured my typing arms in any way.
3. I am not so consumed with trauma that I cannot get out of a rocking foetal ball on the floor.
4. I have not been placed under an injunction not to write on my weblog.
5. I have not abused drugs or alcohol to such a degree I am incoherent and cannot form sentences (this might prove to be a mistake on my part).
6. I have not had a change of heart and stopped blogging altogether.
7. Oscar has not chewed my face off.
8. La belle-mère has not stuffed me in the cocotte minute and made me into soup for taking a candid shot of her and beau-père doing synchronised sudoku in their slippers (try saying that after a couple of lychee martinis).
No.
I have been in Geneva thrashing out a Waffle version of the Versailles Treaty with the CFO. We have agreed on the essential points as follows:
- We are ace at breaking up. I, in particular, win the Oscar for best break up. Amusingly, my prize is Oscar. Oh, how we laughed!
- Our children are fucking brilliant.
- I will still go shopping for clothes with him when he needs more clothes.
- The end.
Good, no? In between thrashing out these crucial points, we bought him a very late birthday present, had too much to drink and squabbled and fell over and so on.
I will try and post tomorrow but I am in Scotch Land celebrating M, my brain twin's birthday.
(Incidentally, can some grammar drone explain to me the correct way of doing that last sentence? Do I have to say "celebrating the birthday of my brain twin M" to avoid getting tangled in missing apostrophes? )
We will be celebrating in traditional Scotch Land fashion by leering at students, saying "cock" a lot and drinking stuff with lychees in. Oh, and plotting our continued world domination through the medium of mean crafts. I promise to report back incoherently afterwards, even if I fail to do so while I am there.
Things that have not happened to me:
1. I have not been consumed by a passion for Sudoku so great I can no longer blog.
2. I have not injured my typing arms in any way.
3. I am not so consumed with trauma that I cannot get out of a rocking foetal ball on the floor.
4. I have not been placed under an injunction not to write on my weblog.
5. I have not abused drugs or alcohol to such a degree I am incoherent and cannot form sentences (this might prove to be a mistake on my part).
6. I have not had a change of heart and stopped blogging altogether.
7. Oscar has not chewed my face off.
8. La belle-mère has not stuffed me in the cocotte minute and made me into soup for taking a candid shot of her and beau-père doing synchronised sudoku in their slippers (try saying that after a couple of lychee martinis).
No.
I have been in Geneva thrashing out a Waffle version of the Versailles Treaty with the CFO. We have agreed on the essential points as follows:
- We are ace at breaking up. I, in particular, win the Oscar for best break up. Amusingly, my prize is Oscar. Oh, how we laughed!
- Our children are fucking brilliant.
- I will still go shopping for clothes with him when he needs more clothes.
- The end.
Good, no? In between thrashing out these crucial points, we bought him a very late birthday present, had too much to drink and squabbled and fell over and so on.
I will try and post tomorrow but I am in Scotch Land celebrating M, my brain twin's birthday.
(Incidentally, can some grammar drone explain to me the correct way of doing that last sentence? Do I have to say "celebrating the birthday of my brain twin M" to avoid getting tangled in missing apostrophes? )
We will be celebrating in traditional Scotch Land fashion by leering at students, saying "cock" a lot and drinking stuff with lychees in. Oh, and plotting our continued world domination through the medium of mean crafts. I promise to report back incoherently afterwards, even if I fail to do so while I am there.
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Offcuts
Very odd day that I can't really talk about. As you may recall, when I say that, it is NOT because someone has offered me vasts sums of money to lie around eating cake and talking about my biscuit philosophy.
By the way, thank you so much for all your wonderful support yesterday. I was having a shockingly awful day; it culminated catatonic and trembling in a foetal ball on the bench outside smoking one of the CFO's hideous cigarettes. Today was an improvement in at least one respect: la belle-mère made Proper Dinner with a guinea fowl and potatoes and everything. I nearly wept with gratitude. Have I ever mentioned that they travel everywhere with a 10 litre wine box in case of emergencies? You love them now, don't you, and rightly so. I have left them to watch police procedurals translated into French tonight (Portés Disparus/"Coald Kess"/Police Judiciaire/"Ze Waïre") , and snuck off to bed.
In the absence of anything remotely edifying, and frankly it's a miracle I can put fingers to keyboard at all, here are some arbitrary observations/housekeeping points from today.
1. A Flock of (Shoe) Seagulls
The thing I hate most about Brussels - more than the service des étrangers, UHT milk or the lighting in Delhaize - is the way the paving stones interact with my shoes. WHY, holy mother of Nathan, do they make all my shoes squawk mournfully like seagulls? What is it about the gaps beween paving stones here that sucks my heels in and keeps them, leaving me to hop around and swear to myself, suddenly barefoot in a public place? There is a particular street I walk down everyday, that combines both these appealing characteristics. I will systematically lose a shoe in an embarassing fashion (usually this happens right next to the gangs of too cool for school drama students who lurk around in gangs looking like an edgier version of the Kids from Fame) and then walk the rest of the way squawking. Kark, kark kark, squeeeek. I've tried speeding up, slowing down, all manner of different heel heights, and every time the result is the same. Is it the way I walk? My choice of shoes? I NO LONGER CARE. I have shoe rage.
2. Viral marketing, innit?
No, I cannot tell you what the prototype in the 'Belgian Pic of the Week' is. Not yet. Suffice to say it is something that my brain twin M and I are cooking up as part of our plan for world domination through the medium of craft and swearing and it makes us laugh like Dastardly and Muttley. Well, if one can do such a thing by email.
E: The two halves of the brain will finally be united!
M: What?
E: Moving sloooowly towards each other.
M: Like a slug.
E: Like two halves of a broken slug. Slurp, slurp.
M: Ugh. Unclean.
E: Our brain IS unclean.
3. I am so very sorry
I have terrible TERRIBLE guilt right now about things promised and not delivered on this very weblog. Person to whom I owe that book from ages ago - I am a shithead. Sorry. People who did amazing things for the village fête - I am also a shithead. So so sorry. Sometime, before we are incontinent and delirious in nursing homes, I will actually follow up on what I have promised.
4. Parfum, Lashes style
I have had a horrible conversation with Lashes tonight. Well the horrible was more in the object we were discussing (I wrote 'disgusting' first time, as well I might). Vieux doudou, his comfort blanket, also know as Old Mimi, also known as "that stinky rag". It used to be a scarf of sorts. Then it morphed into what looked horribly like a set of filthy white dreads held together only by knots and slime. Then he lost that one and rapidly created another one in its image made from some pyjama bottoms of mine. When I asked him how he made it so putrid so quickly, he looked shifty and said something evasive. I do not pursue it; this is definitely one of those things better left unsaid.
Anyway, tonight he summoned me and made me smell it. Why did I agree, you are wondering? Because I am in a state of Perma Guilt at the moment.
"You have to smell it, it has a strange smell".
"Strange? Disgusting more like".
"No! Part of it smells different. WRONG".
I sniff my way carefully along vieux doudou. It smells foul, obviously. I get to a bit that doesn't.
"Is it this bit? It smells of Playdoh here".
He checks, with the assured nose of the connaisseur.
"No, it's not that" .
Finally he finds it himself.
"Here! Sniff this".
He shoves it under my nose. It smells like cheap perfume mixed with photocopier toner. Very nasty indeed. I feel an instant migraine coming on.
"What on earth is it, Lashes?"
"The glo-stick from Halloween, er, leaked"
He's looking shifty again.
"Well, just keep your face away from that part until it fades a bit".
"No. I have to find a "centre de dégoûtant"
He makes to shove it down his pyjama trousers. I lunge for him in the hope of restoring some shred of decency to proceedings.
"Oh, Lashes, no! Listen, it just means your doudou is, er, four different flavours! Like an ice cream".
This seems to tickle him. I stagger away and retch quietly in the corner. Gag. I have a distinct fear that some sinister tentacle of vieux doudou will still be lurking under his pillow when Lashes hits 45, but at least he'll be marvellously well-adjusted right? RIGHT? Oldest reader still in possession of transitional object from childhood please give me a report on your current psychiatric wellbeing. Thank you.
By the way, thank you so much for all your wonderful support yesterday. I was having a shockingly awful day; it culminated catatonic and trembling in a foetal ball on the bench outside smoking one of the CFO's hideous cigarettes. Today was an improvement in at least one respect: la belle-mère made Proper Dinner with a guinea fowl and potatoes and everything. I nearly wept with gratitude. Have I ever mentioned that they travel everywhere with a 10 litre wine box in case of emergencies? You love them now, don't you, and rightly so. I have left them to watch police procedurals translated into French tonight (Portés Disparus/"Coald Kess"/Police Judiciaire/"Ze Waïre") , and snuck off to bed.
In the absence of anything remotely edifying, and frankly it's a miracle I can put fingers to keyboard at all, here are some arbitrary observations/housekeeping points from today.
1. A Flock of (Shoe) Seagulls
The thing I hate most about Brussels - more than the service des étrangers, UHT milk or the lighting in Delhaize - is the way the paving stones interact with my shoes. WHY, holy mother of Nathan, do they make all my shoes squawk mournfully like seagulls? What is it about the gaps beween paving stones here that sucks my heels in and keeps them, leaving me to hop around and swear to myself, suddenly barefoot in a public place? There is a particular street I walk down everyday, that combines both these appealing characteristics. I will systematically lose a shoe in an embarassing fashion (usually this happens right next to the gangs of too cool for school drama students who lurk around in gangs looking like an edgier version of the Kids from Fame) and then walk the rest of the way squawking. Kark, kark kark, squeeeek. I've tried speeding up, slowing down, all manner of different heel heights, and every time the result is the same. Is it the way I walk? My choice of shoes? I NO LONGER CARE. I have shoe rage.
2. Viral marketing, innit?
No, I cannot tell you what the prototype in the 'Belgian Pic of the Week' is. Not yet. Suffice to say it is something that my brain twin M and I are cooking up as part of our plan for world domination through the medium of craft and swearing and it makes us laugh like Dastardly and Muttley. Well, if one can do such a thing by email.
E: The two halves of the brain will finally be united!
M: What?
E: Moving sloooowly towards each other.
M: Like a slug.
E: Like two halves of a broken slug. Slurp, slurp.
M: Ugh. Unclean.
E: Our brain IS unclean.
3. I am so very sorry
I have terrible TERRIBLE guilt right now about things promised and not delivered on this very weblog. Person to whom I owe that book from ages ago - I am a shithead. Sorry. People who did amazing things for the village fête - I am also a shithead. So so sorry. Sometime, before we are incontinent and delirious in nursing homes, I will actually follow up on what I have promised.
4. Parfum, Lashes style
I have had a horrible conversation with Lashes tonight. Well the horrible was more in the object we were discussing (I wrote 'disgusting' first time, as well I might). Vieux doudou, his comfort blanket, also know as Old Mimi, also known as "that stinky rag". It used to be a scarf of sorts. Then it morphed into what looked horribly like a set of filthy white dreads held together only by knots and slime. Then he lost that one and rapidly created another one in its image made from some pyjama bottoms of mine. When I asked him how he made it so putrid so quickly, he looked shifty and said something evasive. I do not pursue it; this is definitely one of those things better left unsaid.
Anyway, tonight he summoned me and made me smell it. Why did I agree, you are wondering? Because I am in a state of Perma Guilt at the moment.
"You have to smell it, it has a strange smell".
"Strange? Disgusting more like".
"No! Part of it smells different. WRONG".
I sniff my way carefully along vieux doudou. It smells foul, obviously. I get to a bit that doesn't.
"Is it this bit? It smells of Playdoh here".
He checks, with the assured nose of the connaisseur.
"No, it's not that" .
Finally he finds it himself.
"Here! Sniff this".
He shoves it under my nose. It smells like cheap perfume mixed with photocopier toner. Very nasty indeed. I feel an instant migraine coming on.
"What on earth is it, Lashes?"
"The glo-stick from Halloween, er, leaked"
He's looking shifty again.
"Well, just keep your face away from that part until it fades a bit".
"No. I have to find a "centre de dégoûtant"
He makes to shove it down his pyjama trousers. I lunge for him in the hope of restoring some shred of decency to proceedings.
"Oh, Lashes, no! Listen, it just means your doudou is, er, four different flavours! Like an ice cream".
This seems to tickle him. I stagger away and retch quietly in the corner. Gag. I have a distinct fear that some sinister tentacle of vieux doudou will still be lurking under his pillow when Lashes hits 45, but at least he'll be marvellously well-adjusted right? RIGHT? Oldest reader still in possession of transitional object from childhood please give me a report on your current psychiatric wellbeing. Thank you.
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