Day 253: Five-In-One

Today I walk past an evangelical church.  There's a car (an Audi TT) parked outside with the number plate DE1TY V.  V?  I thought that the evangels favoured the whole there-can-only-be-One thing.  I know that can stretch to three-in-one (like a Kinder Egg), but this implies there are five of them.  Like Thunderbirds.

This is one option.  Another is that it's God's car - and God is an egotistical petrol head, like Clarkson (but if so, it would be a Murcielago, not a TT).  Or maybe, just maybe, the vicar* is a bit of a plum, with too much cash to spare.

* Probably not called a vicar.  Too stuffy.  Jesus-chum?

Day 252: The Right Path

There is a gravel path in the garden, studded with large round stepping stones, and flanked with brick borders.  I'm sure it was a thing of beauty when it was first built, but over the years, top soil from the adjoining borders has washed into the gravel, making it an ideal home for weeds, grass and cat shit.  Every so often I will take a trowel to the cat shit and a hoe to the weeds, but it never looks good.  The weeds got so bad after the rainy July that the quickest and best option was to strim them.  Suddenly the answer presents itself.  Forget the half-hearted attempts at weeding.  Get rid of the gravel and grass it over. 

A day devoted to digging up the path, and sifting its contents in a big metal garden sieve.  Three piles - gravel, weeds and soil.  Cinderella meets 'Time Team'.  This is about as close as I'll ever get to an archaeological dig.  I'm hoping (and expecting) to discover a Roman horde (it's St Albans - totally feasible) but the closest I get is part of an old clay pipe (still pretty exciting).  It starts to rain heavily, but still I sieve.  For hours (it's strangely compulsive). 

The shower I have at the end of my labours is epic.  The water runs dark brown for several minutes, which is surprisingly satisfying.  Outside the path is clear of gravel, and ready for grass seed. 

One short day.  That's all it took to change things.  (And a lot of digging and sieving.)

Day 251: Wick and Breathe

An unnaturally quiet Saturday morning.  I go for a long run and the streets are deserted.  Everyone must be sleeping off an excess of Olympic spirit.  I am roadtesting my new cut-off leggings, which were expensive (for leggings) but are apparently full of technology - able to breathe (they have LUNGS!) and wick (they can absorb!).  This is beyond my expectations - I am just concerned that they will either a) fall down, so I will have to be constantly hitching them up or b) ride up, so I will be having to pull each leg down as bunched material chafes and annoys.  

My money was well-spent.  They stay in place, they are stretchy-comfortable, and they are as flattering as such things can be.  Plus they have fluorescent bits, and a hidden pocket for keys or enough money for an ice-cream (balance in all things). 

So excited by all of this that I run further than I would normally.  Get home.  Sweat.  Lie on the floor and breathe.  Then I wick some water, via a glass and my throat.  Cool down.  Dry off.

My leggings are good.  But I am even better.

Day 250: Bonkers

The Opening Ceremony.  Will it embarrass us?  Will it live up to the hype?  I'm initially dubious as a slightly ropy singer lays down an overly-aggressive folk song, followed by some shouty acting from Ken as Isambard Kingdom Brunel (best name ever) and a slightly cringy relationship-via-text-message section.  But so many things to tip the balance in favour. 

'Jerusalem' in 3D.  Green and pleasant lands: dark satanic mills.  Cycling doves!  An NHS dance!  And my favourite moment - the immortal words 'Good evening, Mr Bond' from Her Maj.  Initial confusion - WHAT?  It REALLY looks like HER!  Then doubt - surely not?  Must be a brilliant look-a-like.  Corroboration from Channel 4 on Twitter - IT IS HER! And how Queenish of her not to even crack a smile after her arrival.

I think Josie Long's Twitter feed sums it up best.  She writes 'I'm very cynical about this and I am finding it pretty moving and compelling'.

The next day she follows up with this - 'In the cold light of day, last night was a bit weird.'

Weird - but good weird.   No coincidence that Dizzee Rascal sang 'Bonkers'. 

Day 249: Go, Team GB

Today I almost see the torch.  'Almost' as in 'don't'.  I am in Blackfriars.  So is the torch - but the route does not take it directly through the room I am in.  I feel excluded. 

Inclusion comes later.  When I spot the Angolan Olympic team, huddled on a traffic island just outside King's Cross station.  Trying, and failing, to negotiate the pedestrian crossing.  No form at all.  Their mental game is all over the place. 

Admittedly, it's a challenging course, but it's well-trodden ground for me.  I take them on the inside, and ruthlessly sprint to victory across the Euston Road. 

It's all about the timing.  Winners don't wait for permission from no green man. 

#HomeAdvantage.

Day 248: ~ is for ~pple

Today starts with me tipping a large cup of coffee over my bedside table, to flood over books, electrical sockets, anything in the vicinity that is white/dry-clean only, etc. You get the picture.  Please note that I do not own anything that is both white AND dry-clean only.  I am not John Travolta. (Although, his would most definitely have been machine-washable. Therefore this comment is n/a.)  Fortunately the sections of last weekend's Sunday Times are still hanging around, so I cast them over the approximate area to work their absorbent magic, because I cannot be hanging around to mop up the mess.

I've got other things to do.  Like losing a key of my laptop, which goes flying under a banquette of seats in a cafe.  This particular key has been troublesome since day one.  Unfortunate that it is the 'a' key.  Rather than the ~ or the ]. 

After some inelegant scuffling around, I find it, but it's not prepared to stay put anymore.  So I replace it with the ~ key, which is hanging on.  Just. As the 'a' used to.  I suspect there is something wrong with the underpinnings.  Where the ~ used to be, I now just have a naked rubbery nobble.  No problem.  I only use the ~ on high days and holidays - it will be a treat to touch the nobble on these occasions. 

When the ~ gives out, I shall replace it.  With [ and then ], followed by = and then z.  This should buy me enough of a window of opportunity to spill a cup of coffee over the entire thing, and to be forced to go to PC World again (see Day 122).  Then the circle will be complete. 

So, I have a plan.  Everything is fine.  But why the 'a' key?  Of all keys?  WHY?

Day 247: Tarred and Feathered

Unfamiliar

The hottest day of the year.  Apparently.  Not that I'd know, because I'm in an air-conditioned room until half past four.  I emerge with parched eyeballs and slight goosebumps to a Mediterranean late afternoon.  My car is waiting for me, looking disreputable amongst its carefully polished peers in the car park  In the recent heat, the lime trees on my street have been raining sticky sap.  In addition there must have been a nearby incident involving a bird (and probably a fox).  Essentially my car has been tarred and feathered.  Lightly, but distinctly.  I really should wash it.  At some stage.  This year.   

Compensate by doing some late laundry (it's a gesture towards a cleaner lifestyle).  Hang it out on the line in the evening sun, where it dries by half eight.  Strange times.  In the garden the air is dropsied with scent - honeysuckle, jasmine and sweet pea, punching well above their weight.

All is quiet and still.  Except for the loud and panicky alarm call of a blackbird, high in the branches of the lime* tree outside the front door.

I think my car may be in for another feathering.

(* Have just been thinking about bird 'lime' (ie shit).  It's a good word.  I may start to use it.  'He's full of lime'.  'Don't come in - I'm having a lime.'  Or may favourite expletive - 'Bulllime!' (Yes - THREE x l).

There's a satisfying circular connection between lime trees, then lime AND bird-lime AND bird on my car, then bird in the lime tree.  It's a Venn waiting to happen.

Day 246: Departure Lounge

Working at Heathrow in sight of the runway.  It's hot.  Thirty degrees kind of hot.  With the smell of aviation fuel hanging heavy in the air, it's like arriving at a holiday destination.  About to be shepherded into those ridiculous buses that take you one hundred yards across the tarmac with your face pressed into somebody else's rucksack, sweating in your destination-inappropriate travel longs. 

Plane after plane takes off.  Barely a minute in between them.  In the foyer of the hotel a departure board tantalises.  Hordes of carbon-copy cabin crew are milling around the reception desk, looking over-groomed and blank.  I feel I should be going somewhere.  Everybody else is. 

But I'm not.  Console myself with the words of William Hazlitt - 'The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases'.  Today although I am restricted in what I do, I can at least think and feel as I please.  Two out of three.  Most of the soul of a journey.  Travelling without moving.

(Almost convincing myself.  But not quite...)

Day 245: Given the Bird

Hot sun on the Heath, lush and bosky from months of rain.  The green lung of North London breathes warm chlorophyll over the well-heeled of Hampstead, as they sprawl around proper picture-book picnics.  Rugs, baskets and wine.  Dogs with human names (Simon).  All expand and slow gratefully in the long-awaited heat. 

Including a kestrel.  On the path in front of me, just sitting there.  Only a couple of feet away, and seemingly unbothered.  I've never seen a bird of prey so close before (other than an owl called Hubey in a failed aerial display - too fat to fly).  So much so that I am worried that it is wounded.  It's not.  It's just very relaxed.  It stays for ages, but eventually gets spooked by a small child on a scooter. 

Understandably.  Scooters are dangerous.  Child at play beats bird of prey.  

Day 244: Greater

An omelette featuring courgette, onion, dill and feta cheese.  I went out on a limb with this, as sometimes I very much dislike courgette - pale discs of watery nothingness.  Bleuch.  But grated (as here) they are transformed, and taste completely different. 

Some things are grater* than the sum of their parts.  This omelette is one of them.  I eat it and am grateful**.


*  I will not apologise for this.  It's been a long week. 

**  Or this.  Live with it.

Day 243: Oh Limp Dicks

The Olympics gets every nearer.  This morning the tube was rammed.  Not with extra tourists, but with Olympic 'Games Makers'.  These people who will be scattered around London, ready to give Olympic advice to anyone in need.  To this end they have apparently had training in sensitivity and not being nervous.  Plus they also have special T-shirts and lanyards. 

This particular bunch look neither sensitive nor confident as they shamble around awkwardly, blocking the doors and clogging up the carriage.  I'm not convinced by their advice-ability. 

'Excuse me.  How can I win gold?'

'Um...  I think you need to change at Leicester Square.'

I'm not up to speed with the Olympics yet.  I was away when The Torch was carried past the end of my road, so I have not seen the light. 

Better than Beach Volleyball

But I do have a favourite Olympic event. 

The Little Chef Olympic.  The breakfast of champions. 

Obviously. 



  

Day 242: Ropes, Stinks and Tarnish

Verulam Park is full of raucous teenage girls, rocket-fuelled by last-day-of-term hysteria.  They are armed with cans of purple hair spray, and all sport evidence of multiple direct hits.  Paint-ball entertainment without the pain or the bruising (strangely sensible).  And with the added bonus of a territorial marker, as they leave a Superdrug scent trail in their wake, charting their progress through the park.    They are bawling snippets from Cher Lloyd's seminal work 'Swagger Jagger', aimed at slapping down all the 'haterz'*.  It's a multilateral assault on the eyes, nose and ears.

(*Presumably people who do not appreciate volume, purple hair spray or Cher Lloyd.  I am not one of this number, as I find all three entertaining.  For today only.) 

Some distance behind them, a girl walks on her own.  She's watching them.  From her expression I strongly suspect she would like to be shrieking and covered in purple too.  But for her, entrance to that particular club is clearly roped off. 

Such is life.  Age may remove the purple, the volume and the swagger, but the game stays the same - clubs and ropes. 


CLUBS N' ROPES QUIZ - you want to get in, but the rope is up.  Do you:- 
a) bribe security?
b) go round the back?
c) keep walking until you find another, better club?

Answers:-
a) You and security will always know.  Your entry is tarnished.  Bad.
b) Cheeky, but seedy.  You may have to climbs over bins.  Your entry is stinky.  Pretty bad.
c) Obviously the correct answer.  You knew this anyway.  Good.

Day 241: The Bends

Two weeks of living in a holiday bubble.  Life reduced to the simplest choices.  I have worn unspeakable items of clothing (salty rags) for days at a time and eaten a great deal of ice-cream.  I have seen a fat man do a wheelie on a rubbish motorbike.  I have forgotten what socks are for and my toes have spaced out. 

Time's up.  Today I re-enter reality at warp speed, with no chance to decompress. 

I think I've got the bends.

Day 240: Bisy Backson

RTKOB is going on holiday.  Properly.  Which means no phone, no shoes, no email, no watch, no internet.  So no posts for two weeks. 

See you on the other side.

Day 239: Ninja Run

Simple pleasures.   I weave a brand new running route, along hedge-lined footpaths, cutting across vast wheat fields, then tunnelling spookily through dense woodland, before finishing off in Palladian park land.  All it would take is a bit of a sneaky snip, and I could connect this to my other favourite route. To make a circuit of epic beauty - add to the above a river, willows, water meadows, sheep and cows, plus an Elizabethan water mill, and a Roman amphitheatre.   And no roads.   No more need to run along 'the notorious Pre bend', with those four words echoing in my head ('notorious' is particularly loud) and my back tensing as cars whoosh past too fast.

It would only be a minor trespass.  I could wear dark colours and run silently.  Like a ninja.

Or I could just go and ask permission. 

(And then still run like a ninja.  Just for fun.)

Day 238: Quiet Hogs

Today I am hosting a true story show in a bookshop on the Charing Cross Road.  Sleazy tales of Soho.  Mainly involving sex shops and brothels and petty crime and police.  The characters are flamboyant.  Except one small, quietly-spoken man, neatly dressed in black.  Turns out he was a lynch pin of the counter culture revolution in the 1960s, working in underground publishing and organising various 'happenings'.  Music, art, poetry, nudity, flowers.  Amongst all this he found the time to introduce Paul McCartney to drugs in the form of hash brownies in 1965. 

No coincidence that the excellent 'Rubber Soul' (which Lennon referred to as 'the pot album') was released the self-same year.

Interesting to note that this man goes quietly.  There are others with far less to tell who blow their personal trumpets much louder.  I know what my grandmother would have said.  'It's the quiet hog that sucks the most wash.'

Indeed.