Month: May 2022

I dropped the cupboard/wardrobe up to Chelmsford and in so doing I won my car back. “Are you sure your car is secure overnight,” I was asked a couple of days ago by my anxious friend. That led to me trying to imagine who would attempt to steal a vast cheap wardrobe the barely fits in the car. “Quick, mate! To me! To you! To me!”.

I dropped it off and got my legroom back. As I shook out the pins and needles I was begrudgingly given more or less exactly what the journey cost in recompense. I have noted clearly to myself that I am to avoid any further favours in that direction. It’s done, and I’m not out of pocket.

Bletchley in the evening and I got back in plenty of time for the show. A bit more carnage than usual playing Dilly. Beer got thrown all over my desk soaking many of the papers on it. The place has to be chaos anyway. Dilly is best when he’s scattered, but I think I found the edge tonight. Tomorrow I’ll likely look to tighten things again a bit. There’s medicine, Bovril, tea wine and beer all soaked into everything everywhere. It might be time for a clear out of sorts in that room, although I’d then have to deliberately generate more mess.

Now I’m back in Slough. The playing fields at Eton are just the other side of the M4 from me. Depending on who you talk to that’s either where the war was won or where the (lack of) thinking that led to tens of millions of unnecessary deaths was bred. I’m conscious of the proximity – the other place… I’m just letting the energy work.

On my lap, warm and fragile, one of the two cats is placed. Blue collar so I’m assuming the boy. We are sharing warmth and breath, as can happen with cats. The other cat is audibly snoring to my left, fast asleep up at the top of her scratch tree, collared in pink.

Over the last hour I cooked a butternut squash dahl, making good use of what must be the cat-parent’s wedding gifts: lots of beautiful Le Creuset cookware. I am feeling so happy and full now, after HelloFresh excelled themselves on the Daal. I’m not used to good quality kitchenware though. Right at the beginning of the prep process I tried to sever my left thumb through my cavalier handling of a vegetable knife with an actual sharp blade. Right through the onion it went in moments, and then into the side of my left thumb. Good deep cut. Ow.

The cat-parents are proper grown-ups despite being considerably younger than me. If you cut yourself at my flat, the plasters are in the 1840’s Oriental Resin box under the sculpture of Prometheus – the one that’s located by the Blue and Whites – just lift up the African hardwood busts to see the keyhole. The key is in the mouth of the desiccated crocodile I keep stored in the box of teeth on the oldest of those three mahogany sideboards. To find antiseptic you must first befriend the Frog King and complete twelve trials. Simple. If you cut yourself here though, the antiseptic and plasters are under the bathroom sink in a tin. With blood liberally gushing from my onionthumb, I found the plasters through swift application of logic, habit, shared memory… I looked where everybody else keeps their plasters. What a remarkable system. I had a clean bound wound in under five minutes and now I can write this without tracking gore everywhere. I went back to slicing onions and honestly I almost got my thumb again immediately. I’m far too accustomed to blunt knives.

Maybe I need to sharpen my Dilly performance now as well, and make him less bludgeon and more scalpel. One more week after this. The joy is in the experiment. The learning is in the precision for me here. I like to play jazz with immersive stuff. I like to try and make the bad note good, to listen, to play and to respond. But there can surely be ways to bring precision in as well… We shall see.

Sometimes when I’m reading a book and somebody gets tortured (and maybe it’s a genre thing but it happens a great deal) I find myself wondering how I would cope in that chair.

Today I went to the dental hygienist for the first time in my adult life. I had the foresight to dose up with codeine before going in. Even despite that, I would have signed the confession after five minutes if I knew it would make it stop. “Open your mouth wider! Relax your tongue!” I was in some sort of agony rictus. There were hard thick chunks. “Is that bits of tooth?” “No it’s buildup.” She was like a lumberjack in there. She wasn’t going to compromise. She went in with blade and polish. She was alone – I had to hold the suction at one point while she attacked my lower jaw with both hands. I am so glad of the codeine. When I spat I was spitting a disaster. I hope they cleaned up before the next patient because that basin looked like the basin of a serial killer.

Then I had to chew a pipe and motormouth as Dilly for two hours. Zoe’s second show as Mavis, my number two in the cottage. She smashed it again. Lots of talking for me though, and oh how my mouth hurts. Still, it was a fun show. Some genuinely wonderful moments of things coming together. Always a delight, this piece. Good kind talented people working together to make a thing.

I have ended up in Slough tonight. Emergency catsitting. Here for three nights. Gordon Welchman, my second in command at Bletchley, is custodian (with his wife) of two remarkable kittens. They are mostly Siamese and they are some of the most mobile and fun felines I’ve been exposed to for ages. They are bouncy crazy fun Tiggers. I’m immediately in love. I’m gonna look after them in between shows, and be based in Slough. Why the hell not? I get to look after kittens and relax. What’s not to like?

I’m glad to have landed surrounded by kittens after the morning I had. It’s like the universe said “yes, we will cause you pain, but then there will be fun audience and following that, KITTENS!” Audience was super fun today. Kittens are so fluffy. More days like this please, despite the pain. Wahoo… More codeine. Zzz

Facebook Marketplace put an ad into my timeline from somebody in Wandsworth trying to sell a Cupid doorknocker identical to the one I photographed on my blog the other day.

This is the one. I am unashamedly using it as a blind tie for the beautiful blind Lou made me.

They want £20 for their one. It’s a nice enough piece that it might fetch that price. But surely there’s something blooey about the algorithm here. I’ve already got my cupid knocker and I’ve posted a photo. Why, my dear AI, do I want to spend £20 for another one – and one that’s much more tarnished? Oh yeah I mean patina.

Nice to see one just like mine. But I feel slightly violated…

Long ago, in the name of convenience, I gave away all my privacy. The bludgeon was called Facebook Messenger. And it was a conscious decision, because it had to be. At the time, we were all using it. Messenger adjusted their terms of service and made it very clear. “We own you. All of you. Forever. Otherwise you can’t talk to your friends! Click this easy button. Sanctus. Spiritus.” There was a pop up and I remember avoiding it and ignoring it right up until the wall when I had no choice. And then, for the first time, with a heavy heart, I chose to sign my everything away.

Other companies followed quickly. Before long it was pretty standard to be asked to sign away your information in perpetuity to some app that swaps your face. A bit like the profile apps that crop up where you send an HD photo and sign your everything away and it gives you a momentary flattering cartoon and the lifelong possibility of being the subject of deepfakes. I’m angry with myself about how much I’ve handed over in the course of my life, and that’s not even taking into account this blog. I write things here every day where I actually try to speak truth and not manipulate algorithms, and I do it in a world where I know I could work to hook it into money and advertising – and I’m expected to do that and billed accordingly by WordPress. But I don’t. And who knows what I’ve signed up to with WordPress! I remember being on the phone to a woman at pokerwhatever.com, asking what had happened to a balance from a few years previously. “If you don’t log in for X time, we take your balance at X rate. It’s all in the terms and conditions you agreed to when you signed up.” And so it falls out. The terms and conditions. “Nobody ever reads them… Are you honestly telling me that you’ve absorbed over £200 because I didn’t log in, and there’s nothing you can do to get it back to me?” “It was in the terms and conditions when you signed up.” Thieves. That was a long long time ago. Pacific Poker. I don’t think it exists now. But it was a useful early lesson in how little anybody gives a fuck once you’ve clicked okay to the wall of text you get when signing up.

What’s the solution? I think maybe there needs to be a layer where, outside of the full legalese, any company has to give a clearer description of the potential misunderstandings… Problem is, that’ll only make more money for solicitors, and the true problems in the running will still be glossed over if a failure in understanding or observance will be profitable to the company. Like the evil at the heart of the idea that your actual fine for the thing is double what it should be but you get it half price if you pay fast. But… Argh.

I don’t want to buy a knocker that I already have and am using. But … by writing this blog and knowing how shit the AI is, I’ll likely be sent more photos of doorknockers. And … Even though asking price is never value – especially in London – it’s good to see a low asking price and thus an even lower value for a thing that I just casually decided to use as an attractive detail with my blind. I knew it wasn’t valuable. Good to get a second opinion for free. Maybe that’s enough…

But I want to revoke the privilege I gave to these sites. I don’t want meatface to be able to render me comprehensible to his empty friends. I suspect I’d lose all functionality, and I’m sure I’ll get lots of bullshit links now telling me to copy and paste some sort of titbiscuit into my timeline. But it’s just such arse. I hate having to put up with my timeline feeding me what it thinks I want to read, when I remember the glory days. I know what a timeline can be. A time line. With no curation. Oh Gods. Wasn’t it great before the advertising people plopped in? But … that’s their job – to be BUYSatan. And a beautiful random thing was utterly fucked forever by “yeah but where’s the money?” Bastards. Some of them are my friends. None of them will take full responsibility. They’ve got families. Sure they were part of destroying something wonderful and replacing it with a wet plate of shit. But hey, check my Instagram kids photos! PS They’re watching you.

“It’s a cupboard. It’ll fit in your car.”

Sometimes I’m a little too quick to say yes.

This is the back of the World’s End Estate. It’s my local troublesome estate. Some of the flats get a river view. There’s a knife amnesty bin. The management gives zero fucks about anybody in the block. Same lot as Grenfell.

A small Frenchwoman was getting rid of a wardrobe. Not a cupboard. A wardrobe.

I rolled up on my own in Bergman.

“I’m hoping there’s no damage. It’ll be perfect for Airbnb in the downstairs room.” That’s my friend. About this “cupboard.” Talking about her needs.

There was no damage when I arrived. I was ushered upstairs to the door of a council flat. I was illegally parked downstairs and suddenly I was looking at a huge wardrobe on my own. I wasn’t even sure it would fit in the car. I had no choice but to corner the fucking thing. “Surely somebody would have stopped to help you carry it,” said my attractive female friend. And sure, she would have looked helpless and got help. If it I tried that I’d still be there. The world ain’t fair.

I wrestled it as far as Bergman on my own. I had damaged the feet but I honestly didn’t mind. I was just focused on this impossible task. It cost very little. My focus wasn’t on keeping it pristine when it was clearly a two man job on my own. A wardrobe isn’t a cupboard. Sure she sent me measurements. Makes no sense to me.

I honestly didn’t think it would fit in the car. I thought I’d have to get a zipvan. Lots of people walked past. Nobody offered to help. I got it this far. I leaned it down behind Bergy and tipped it in. It came down to a matter of inches. It’s in the car. The boot closes without breaking the window. Just.

I was proud of myself.

The car is virtually impossible to drive safely, I have no leg room and I can’t see out the back. Nevertheless the cupboard wardrobe is in.

Lou was livid. “She’d better be paying you properly.” My friend, however, merely managed a slightly snarky bunch of comments about the damage that very nearly made me just throw the fucking thing in the river and have done with it. Then she remembered to be nice. But we haven’t talked about money and historically the numbers have been way off.

She wants it in Chelmsford. It’s a three hour round trip and for half of it the car will be unsafe as I can barely move my feet. The recipient has expressed no understanding of this nor has she expressed any desire to compensate me. She just deserves the wardrobe. I’m honestly half expecting her to fuck with me over petrol money when I get to her. It’s why Lou was so angry. Lou’s also right. This is thoughtless. I shouldn’t have said yes. Sure I like being amenable, but sometimes that leads to people exploiting my good nature. QED. Time to draw a line under this.

Once I’ve dropped the fucking thing off.

I was going to do it tomorrow but I have an audition. I forgot about it. Interesting stuff. A potentially delightful tour that would be logistically very complicated. Maybe somewhere I’ve banked some good karma.

I’ll deal with this somehow. For now, Shakespeare…

I’m back in London. Oh this strange and wonderful town. I’m just down the road from one of the major druid schools of the ancient world. Thorney Island. Lost to time.

The wealth and power of Thorney has been almost totally eradicated now, but that little eyot in the original tidal river is still significant. Once upon a time it was home to interesting and thoughtful people. Now the palace of Westminster sits there. What a shame, that so many oblivious people jostle with one another on land that has carried weight for so long. I can’t remember the last time we have seen true depth in an elected politician. Sad empty jumping puppets or frothing hatepots. All these nasty weird little failed humans, all kicking about in Thorney. You’d hope they woke up and realised the extent to which they are all piggies. Nope. Ladies and gentlemen of the British Isles: THESE ARE YOUR LEADERS. *oink* *shuffle shuffle* *blank look*

It’s ok though because apparently the other party did something slightly off key. They didn’t set policy and then make it clear they thought they were different from normal people. But let’s all look askance at them shall we, and overlook the fact that a large portion of people voted for meatfaced lying goitres.

I wish there was still a sacrifice of the high king every third midsummer. Right now we would be together as a community, building a huge wicker Boris. We could easily tempt him in at the right time – just tell him there’s fan mail written by attractive young women. We are currently being led by a twelve year old. He hasn’t evolved. He won’t. Maybe we could learn something by burning him in the old tradition. Or he could ritually tear himself apart like the ancient sumerian kings – throwing his organs with fire to the crowd – gifts of power. They did leadership better back when there were consequences. We made wonderful and deep civilisations out of togetherness and need.

Now we have Boris and his absurd pre-broken puppets. If we want something older we have to look deeper. With these morons, we really have to govern ourselves. It might take time for us to properly mobilise, but the only option is so clear. What are we going to do? Keep being dictated to by a venal berk and his cronies? Let’s call a stop to this. You can do better. Revolution. It’s not such a big ask, is it? Maybe I’m just fed up. The replacement won’t be any better. But when I think of how out of touch the ostrich bitch (Marie a Antoinette) was – it doesn’t even come close to the current crop of horrible little people in the commons, right near to where the old eradicated Thorney Island Druid College sat. Lost to Google. Breathe and believe.

Slowly now Lou is building her little workshop empire. It is a little bright upstairs room in the countryside, perfect for beavering away. There’s virtually no mobile phone signal there, but it’s cheap compared to most things in the area, and with a little use it will pay for itself. Right now the business will be about getting the surfaces and worktops sorted out, as it came completely empty. This is why I came down loaded up with IKEA crap. It’s cheap and practical and will help her start to make use of this new work-home.

Today the weather was disappointing once again, so we decided to be practical instead of going questing for beauty. We loaded up some sewing machines and fabric and various bits of toolsage and off we went over the hill to Ditchling, there to sit in her slowly forming work-palace and to attempt to follow the little wordless line-drawn IKEA person on the instruction manuals. We made some shelves and some hanging racks. “I think this is the first time I’ve made flat pack furniture on a Sunday afternoon,” says Lou. It’s not the most romantic pursuit, but it was uneventful enough. Nothing was done upside down. It all kind of makes sense and shouldn’t immediately collapse. A few shelves went in the wrong holes and had to be rejigged but mostly we were as efficient as the Swedes who made all that stuff up.

It makes me want a space. I’ve got my flat. Need to get through all that crap. I’m slowly starting to wade through it. But there’s so much. Oh so much.

This’ll be my last night in the cat palace for sure. The two little pedigree darlings are at each others throats as I write, and we are running a bath. It’s only half past six but I’m pooped. I’d gladly just drift off to sleep now. One large glass of Merlot and a huge Sunday lunch back at the St George’s Inn in Kemptown and I’m almost done for. I’m not used to all this calm combined with tasty food. Likely I’ll be happy to be back on the Bletchley Park Adrenaline Train from Wednesday of next week. Are you coming to see it? They’re a lovely lot. I want to see them selling well so they can wear even nicer clothes.

London’s calling. I like it by the sea, but I live by the river! And the more the world wakes up the more I want to get stuck into it again. But not this evening. Food coma, cats, hot water and snuggles. Then back up tomorrow. Petrol has gone to over 1.70 in most of the local stations. It’s all very well coming second to Ukraine at Eurovision. It would be nice if that affected the cost of fuel…

By anybody’s best guess, Chanctonbury Ring in the South Downs was rich with human activity as early as The Bronze Age. It wasn’t inhabited, but tools and items have been found there that might have been brought over hundreds of years and used or deposited in rituals. Now it is the peaceful hilltop grazing ground for one of the luckier herds of free range cattle in this country. And it is open to the public for walks. We got out good and early in the morning and we drove there.

As you begin to walk up the hill you pass a beech tree, clinging to a mud bank. The water runnels of many years down the hill and through the chalky soil have exposed huge areas of root network. The tree still stands strong and tall, but children play in the roots. It’s a rare chance to see the amount of a tree that needs to be underground in order to properly deal with those winds. In Cornwall the other day I remarked on an onshore wind turbine to Chris the driver. “An astonishing amount of concrete under those things,” he said, gnomically. And my imagination went to the earthwork, the digging and the pouring. To the disrupted habitats and ruined mycelium. I remembered again how everything has a cost, which was of course what Chris was angling for. “Good though, I suppose it’ll be worth the disruption over time.” “They have to ship ’em from the Netherlands,” he continued. “Not even made in England.” He doesn’t like them. I’m off to set to work. The topic quietly dropped.

But I started thinking about that weight of concrete. And then I started thinking about trees and roots. If you make a tall thing that’s supposed to be blown at, of course you have to make sure it doesn’t fall over. Trees come up slowly, and as they come up they go down into the soil and explore, taking nutrients and holding themselves in the wind. They meet other trees, and the networks of mycelium connect them further and help them share information over long distances, I am told. Often we draw a root network as a little ball. Capability Brown did discover that you can cut a tree out and move it. It’ll take years for that tree to be established again though. I wonder what sort of trauma such a thing would experience. There’s an incredible documentary – “Taming the Garden” – where you watch it being done on a large scale. But a properly established tree is like an iceberg. And this soaked off chalky ball of roots in the South Downs is good illustration. The tree still holds up fine so there’s evidently still a load of buried roots pulling into the side of the hill.

It’s a shame we can’t root wind turbines like trees. A great big lump of concrete is certainly inelegant – I’m with Chris there. Nevertheless it’s good we are trying to take more of our energy from renewable sources. Refining those methods and making them elegant and sympathetic might take centuries but surely the more we can work with nature the happier we and the planet will be. We aren’t separate from nature but boy we spend way too much of our time and effort trying to pretend we are – or that we control it. Because it’s bigger than us, and always will be if we think of ourselves as not being part of it. And as soon as we realise we are part of it then we have to come to terms with what we’ve done to it and to ourselves in our attempts to subjugate it.

We lay in the morning sun on a bank up there, overlooking the sweeping Sussex Downs. We looked at the cows and caught the sun and it was good. Good to ground and to make the best of a sunny day – still a rare commodity this season. More like this and warmer please. Especially while I’m staying here in lovely Brighton with Lou and the pussies.

A warm night by the sea. If you’re outside there’s still far too much cold air moving around. But indoors, it’s cosy here at The Cat Palace. I didn’t think I’d make it back here. I’ve got cover for Dilly all week though so it seemed like the perfect opportunity.

The seaside, and despite it being a festival weekend here in Brighton, this beautiful property is peaceful.

We joined the throng in the morning though. Starfish and Coffee, where we consumed remarkable vast breakfasts accompanied by the howling of young children old enough to know better. While their tired hungry parents were distracted or indifferent their younger siblings hurled projectiles for the waiters to clean up. We enjoyed the food, but we were in the thick of it so escaped to a quiet bit of park as quickly as possible. To our favourite bench in Brighton, in Queens Park. The bench bears a tribute to “Dave Verney”. He smoked his first badly rolled spliff there, we are told by the plaque. Good choice, Dave. A good view, sun on the face, and all the birds. We had a very close encounter with a curious robin, a brief seagull visitation, and plenty of cooing. The pigeons are a-bothering. It’s the time of year that they follow the ladies around like ill-self-governed drinktwats on the way home in London.

Is summer beginning to kick in? Oh please.

Lou has a workshop now out in the Downs. She’s taken a punt on it for a year and I think it’ll bear fruit. It’s in a beautiful area – airy and peaceful. I had picked up some shelves and cupboards from IKEA. I came down loaded up with them and we spent a good half an hour hauling great big bolts of fabric down the stairs of her flat to move them over in Bergman so she can see them and work with them. It’ll make so much sense for her there I feel, but since she doesn’t drive it was a good opportunity today to make use of my muscles and my wheels. Working away from home makes sense. I work hard when I’m not in my flat. I struggle to do it when I’m there.

A couple more nights in the palais des chats. A bit more time with these two fluffy friends, with the high ceilings and the sea. Having taken so much fabric out of Lou’s place it’ll be much clearer up there when her temporary tenancy here is finally over. But with my diary filling up I honestly didn’t think there’d be an opportunity like this until late summer. A peaceful weekend by the seaside stretches ahead. I hope yours works out well too! I can hear the distant sounds of a dance tent. But I don’t feel called to it. And it’s far enough away that I can block it out and snooze.

It’s odd. This evening, I don’t feel much like writing. Not that I’ve had a bad day or a nothing day. I just don’t know how I can make what I experienced today into entertaining reading.

This is the knife edge, with my daily scribble.

If I’m drunk or exhausted I can just extrude words into some sort of a mucky cohesive pudding, and then pass out contented. If I’m clear headed and something of note has happened, I can build a swirl of words around a kernel and then attempt to fight through insomnia. Today I’m neither drunk nor exhausted, nothing out of the ordinary has happened, I’ve worked long enough that I know I’ll sleep well, I’m tired and not particularly inspired.

I was at a school in Tottenham, getting them to think about engineering. Decent humans and a sparky school, but teacher support almost entirely lacking. Frequently I was the only adult in the room while they were running around squirting each other with hand sanitizer or whatever it was they decided was going to be more interesting than the thing I’d asked them to do. “When we were that age, we thought that age automatically garnered respect,” says the teacher to me. “Nowadays, it’s not like that. The status is at parity the whole time and you have to work hard to stay ahead.” Nah. Rubbish. My teachers were never out of the firing line for me. Any fucker that assumed I’d respect him because of who he thought he was? I had a word-axe on his legs as quickly as I could find it. I’m not going in wanting to be respected or needing it. But … I’ve got a message within all the stuff about engineering and renewable energy. “Learn that your actions have consequences for you and for others.” I think that’s part of what I’m really trying to put across. If we burn stuff to make us warm, it goes after a while and we’re cold again. How can we adjust our needs and our behaviour? And how can we learn to think long term and beyond our little desires.

I never lost those students but fuck they made me work to hold them. Defiant and clever year 9 students at a school that likely isn’t at the top of the list for any pasty-faced twat whose job it is to allocate funding. I enjoyed their spark, and their strange mixture of engagement and fear of the unknown. With some guidance I mostly helped them to avoid the easy hole of pretending towards that warm and safe disinterest that doesn’t expose your lack of knowledge. It can set in so young – this idea that we are supposed to know things and if we don’t we are dumb and we can just ignore it. How the hell can you know things until you’ve learnt them? Learning is best when we do it for the sake of learning, but the system makes it competitive and everybody’s brain is different so it pushes some people out. I never expect anyone to know specific things unless I’m playing Dilly or his ilk. Then I make an obscure joke of it: “Of course everybody knows Andra Moi Ennepe Mousa Polutropon hos mala polla planchte epei troies hieron ptoliethron epersen don’t they?” But that’s because lots of people are Dilly without my irony, and I hated them when I was in the system that is supposed to educate us.

We forget that because something is simple to us and has been for a long time, it might be new to somebody else and that’s ok. Discovery is personal and we only have so much space for new thought. We only alienate people further to the things that matter to us if we treat people like idiots for not understanding what we have known for years.

Anyway. Blah. My brain is tired. I’m gonna neck my chamomile tea and see if it sends me to sleepytown…

This feels more like London should feel. I’m in my bedroom as the light finally fades through the window. My friend is in the living room running a zoom session about looking after yourself and cosmic things. We went for a walk in the park earlier. For so many years this quirky flat has been a haven for lovely people. I enjoy sharing my space like this – I have loved the manner in which people in the past would move through here, sometimes leaving gifts, sometimes money… Regular visitors, emergency visitors, lodgers and dodgers. It was lively in here. I was thinking of installing a saloon door. Since this Covid, people just haven’t been pulled to London in the way they used to be. The city has been quieter and consequently this flat has been less of a hub.

My friend and I left for a walk this evening as my neighbour was returning home, and I felt the heat of her curiosity. “Who is this visitor?” We still have negotiations about indoor spaces. People have strong opinions about what is acceptable, above and beyond what is considered to be acceptable by the various idiots who find themselves having to make policy because they desperately wanted to make policy. Remember the kids in the playground who really wanted to make up adjustments to the rules for the games we played and somehow if they were allowed to would try to tweak the game in their favour? It’s a long-winded way of observing it. But I’m not constrained to a word count here, and honestly – look at these lawmakers! Sure, it is possible to be a politician because you care for the greater good. But every single one of these coked up dingleberries cares more about their bank account than anybody or anything. It’s hard to maintain faith in authority when there is no honour in them. Corruption drips down, and there’s something rotten in the state.

I’m gearing up for an early bed. Back on the workshop train tomorrow. Fundango. The darkness has fallen outside and somebody is playing a bad Abba cover on one of the party boats. I think my friend has finished her zoom session so I’m going into the kitchen to bang around pots and pans. She’s vegan and I went and ordered a discounted Hello-Fresh that’s all meat and cream. Hey ho. I’m not gonna let it go to waste…

—

My friend is running a guided meditation. Very bad music is thumping in from the party boat that seems to have decided to stop outside. “See yourself as your own reflection in the still waters” “MAMA MIA HERE I GO AGAIN.” Come the revolution it’ll be those DJs against the wall if I have any say in matter. Well… First it’ll be the obvious people. Then the DJs. But… I’ve got no faith in a revolution, because we all know who will rise to the top. The people who want power. And they are the only people who shouldn’t have it. How do we solve it? A lottery system? I don’t know. I’m not offering solutions here, just problems.

“I’ve finished!” shouts my friend. So I’m off to cook a chicken korma.

—

Done and now it’s bed and outside over the traffic noise two young men talk loudly on a riverside bench with alcohol. It’s not even that warm yet. But once again a familiar thing. London is waking up for summer. I’m off to sleep.