"I'm a Cock-er-ney"

After a luxurious lie-in, I spent this morning experiencing the joys of Walthamstow market. But a ten minute walk from Cutthroat Cottage, it's nice to see a bit of 'Old Lahndan Town' at work. London boys of all shapes and sizes, colours and cultures, shouting their wares. Every which way is a bargain, and every 100 yards a pound shop with every peice of tat you ever needed. Even 'Chubby Isaacs's Jellied Eel stall' for the hungry shopper with an iron stomach (I'll try most things, but this estuary delicacy is one step too far). Having had nothing on my shopping list I returned with a couple of freshly baked cheese and onion pasties, some smoked cheese with chilli in (mmmmmmmm) and the cockles of my heart warmed..... hmmm could it be that I am having some kind of middle-class pretensions to being an east-ender?? It'll not be long before I'm wearing braces and doing a little dance...

But just to prove I'm a berkshire lass at heart, I hurried home to listen to the mighty 'ding (well watch thanks to the joys of foreign channels on tinterweb). 2-3 to the ding over the scummy brum boys. Mwa ha ha ha. But best of all, Kits scored a goal on his first start after injury. Just gotta love the 'flame-haired' one. If only they interviewed him on MOTD....

Mind and Matter

Suddenly I am having a flurry of thoughts. Disney at work thinks I'm going mad ("or possibly in love") so I've cut down the coffee (no effect). Hmmmm.

Anyway, as part of this descent into madness, I have decided to concentrate a little more on poetry and things I like. Think the visit of Foe and his friends recently (all PhD students in poetry no less) has inspired me. So I have decided to use my practically defunct myspace page to create a pure 'poetryblog'. So for anyone who wants to have a gander at my stuff, it'll be on:

http://blog.myspace.com/themightyding

So far, just what is on here, but without the inane comments (from moi).

Now I need to wind down...................

Creative Corner #7

Winter Swim, Silent Pool

She swims lengths
And with each long, articulated stroke
The water and the air
Form knots across her coppiced back.
It flows with and against the grain,
Into the folds and the seams, and on,
And away again,
In an endless movement,
In an endless ritual loop,
She observes the rhythm
Of breathing and diving,
And kicking into the deep
Where, with eyes open,
She can see the void
Through which she moves.

Here she slows, suspended
In the ripples of blue,
At the lowest reach of her dive,
Until her lungs are punctured balloons,
And the loud thump
Of her heart in her chest,
Hauls her to the surface
In the wake of an air-filled squall.

In this upward movement
She is unaware
Of the man who has come to the pool-side
And stands looking down, with a smile
And a vacant stare,
But she understands,
As the first strand of hair
Breaks the prism and the silence,
That death stalks her,
Out on the red-brick streets,
And the underground trains
That thunder here and there,
That it lies somewhere between
Her distant friends, the deep water,
And the winter heath.

It's a Long Way from Tipperary...

Just in case this blog is descending into 'wallowing' territory (Valentine's Day is nearing, you ain't seen nothing yet!) I wish to blog about happier things - namely the embarrassing and yet quite delightful pursuit of collecting football stickers.

Schwesty had bought me the Merlin Premier League sticker album as a Crimbo present (remembering how as a kid the prospect of the Mighty 'ding gracing such a thing was but a distant dream, and the holy grail of stickers was David Batty!!) but aside from the starter packs, I had done nothing with it. But lo and behold, yesterday's Mirror came with the self-same album free. Me and Schwesty knew that this happy event called for the sticker-collecting to begin in earnest, as we now had the opportunity to do swappsies!!

I'm not beyond the shame of walking into a newsagents at the age of twenty-six and loading up on stickers (and cherry coke) and so yesterday we had a marathon sticker session. Never has so much excitement been witnessed, in a house of adults, as when we ripped open a pack to find the Bobster (Bobby Convey) and Longie (Shane Long) staring back at us - two of the finest (ahem cutest) players to grace the Madstad.

However the sticker mission will not be over until the Reading FC page is filled, and I have at least one spare of head ging-boy Dave Kitson to stick on my bedpost, and draw a heart round with a biro (that is a joke - sort of!).

Friday Foe Report

Well I've spent a pleasant couple of days - first an evening out with Foe and his poetry friends, followed by a greasy spoon lunch with Shaggy, Foe and his friend Timmy, the following day. Foe is an old acquaintance from Belfast. We are rarely in contact (in fact there were three years of no-talk-at-all) but on those occasions when we do bump into each other, it seems to be a battle of who can baffle the other best. I'm starting to think that Foe exists on a higher plane when it comes to men/women. He could be one way or other, or none at all, it's quite difficult to work out, amongst all his high intellect. But what I do know is that any sign of interest from yours truly, and steam starts to come out of his ears - he has no idea how to cope. Hence the rather cruel pleasure I have taken these last two days complimenting his appearance (his rather wonderful ginger beard being my top priority) wondering if he'll break. He never does of course - he knows he's my nemesis - and for now it'll return to the status-quo, as he's back across the water and back in his own world.

Haunted House!!!

True story - last night, as I lay close to slumber, an authoritive male voice boomed at me across my empty bedroom - "shower" (!) Slightly random thing to say, suggests my ghost has a concern with personal hygiene, don't think I am that smelly, but maybe it was a coded message. Think it's a friendly ghost, though, as was only a little shocked, but not scared. Brilliant!

On another subject, just to prove van-driver Paul was not telling fibs, check out this link to his (failed) band. He is second from left:

http://www.fourstory.net/

Ebay it...

Well, as of this morning, all main furniture is installed in Cutthroat Cottage, and the house can finally become a home (as Burt Bacharach would put it). The DFS men came this morning with our two big fat sofas, taking off two wing mirrors en route (as well as their own) and getting into an argument with a white-van man stuck behind them, as they squeezed their rather big lorry down our rather thin lane. They seemed in good jest about it though.

The most furniture fun (yes it is possible) that me and Schwesty have had, though, is picking up our 'ebay-bought' Art Deco table and chairs from Southend-on-Sea. Londoners (especially miserable commuters) are renowned for their sullen faces, and lack of solidarity, but our rush-hour train journey to the Essex seaside was perked up by a lovely commuter who regaled us with tales of fabulous blind-dates, the pros and cons of 'Trial and Retribution' and 'Waking the Dead', why Dr. Goran is the unluckiest man on TV, and how she fought the law and won to get her African husband home. Then having met our 'man with a van' and picked up the table, we had a one-hour road-trip of belly laughs as Paul (a down-on-his-luck roadie/musician) told us his juicy tales of showbiz life - how he shamed Shane Lynch (of boyzone fame) by dropping him off at a red-carpet event in his VW Passat, how he's ended up as an usher at Vanessa Feltz's wedding, and (my favourite) the moment he knew his music career had gone up in smoke on "A Song For Europe".

The table is lovely, but the money dished out for it was worth it for the journey alone. Let nobody tell you that Londoners are a bad bunch. It just ain't true!

Binge Drinking is Bad

Well here I go again - seeing how quickly I can bring about liver failure or shame myself to death (if such a thing is possible - I think it is). Went to Dion's house-warming in the Heathrow-direction on Saturday night. As I have come to expect of Dion, his flat is nothing short of super-swanky, with wi-fi radiators (???) et al, and, as always, a fine array of malt whiskeys on offer. Naturally it was my job to try everything, several times, and then settle my stomach with a glass of port at the end. Whyyyy? Think I would have survived, if I had have caught the last train home, but I just could not face pitching up at Waterloo, and then trying to work out which combination of freak-filled night buses would get me back to E17 in the early hours. So, with no time-limit set, me and Dion sat up and drank a bit more. And then I fell asleep on Dion's sofa. And then I probably dribbled a bit on it. And then Dion ordered me to the spare room, where I could happily fall into a coma.

One of the worst things about drinking too much is that hideous false hope you get, when you wake up feeling a little bit trembly but basically okay, so merrily go about tidying the place a little, drinking a cup of tea, eating a banana, and setting off for the marathon train/tube journey home. And then, and only then, it suddenly hits, when you're stuck on the noisy, stuffy, icky Victoria line for 45 minutes. I was literally doubled over (as this was the least nauseating of positions) waiting for the end of the line. I did manage to make it off the train (though past Tottenham Hale it was looking very ropey) but needless to say I didn't make it home, before the night's sins revisited. Ugg. I'm a binge-drinking old hag. How depressing. The worst of it being, it's the people I would most prefer not to see me as such a tragic lush, that I get f***ed in front of.

Sadly (for my hungover self) I had already promised to meet Didcot and Schwesty to watch the mighty 'ding down the pub, followed by Mrs Pedro's birthday do, also down the pub, so I staggered my miserable un-washed uncouth self to these events, barely capable of speech, and with a face like a slapped arse. When I feel like that, and think about the oh-so-together Naz and Boo and Dion, I want to disappear into a gigantic hole. And then I get over the hideous hang-over, and the unattractive self-pity, promise myself I won't drink that much again, and but a month later, repeat it all over again like the utter plank I am.

Undercrackers Galore!

The time has come to starting spending some dosh (or more accurately crimbo vouchers because I have no dosh)....

[I take a break to look at my bank account online for the first time since Christmas. Ha ha ha it's not as bad as I thought. Yes!! Mind you, I'm not getting paid for another three weeks so best not get too smug....]

Anyway, back to point. Having settled rather too quickly into domesticity, I am now wasting the spare moments in my day, browsing furniture on ebay, looking at lampshades at John Lewis, and dreaming up fabulous art-deco inspired colour-schemes. But mostly I am thinking of how I can spend my precious www.figleaves.com voucher. Fifty big ones will either buy me a few pretty little ones, or one really quite nice lacy one. Cannae wait. But am going to wait, as think browsing underwear sites at work is not to be advised (and am not yet connected to the tinterweb at home). Bring me undercrackers, oh Lord!

Don't Tempt Fate

Just tootling home, so the plumber can come and fix the non-existent hot water. This weekend has proven that no matter how many saucepans of water you boil, they will not equal a luke warm bath. D'oh!

Cnut in a Kelp Chair

Christmas and New Year have necessitated a wee break from the blogging. But today I re-entered the real world (work) and for my sins I am back online.

Was very happy with my little excursion. Trips with a large group are always a little testing, and some people tested my nerve more than others with their ever increasing obliviousness to the outside world and their own flaws. But all things considered it was a success, and beat most shitey New Years celebrations by a country mile. Highlights:

• Raucous night out at the local pub, which involved me getting picked up and twirled round by a big drunk guy (under duress I might add). A memory that would be slightly more amusing if Pedro hadn't insisted on videoing the incident on his phone. To my utter annoyance Pedro seems intent on videoing every single shameful drunken incident in my life, and entertaining every mutual friend we have, with the resulting "film". Utter git.


• Trip to the Giant's Causeway. Have actually been twice before, but this was the first time it was done on my own timescale. The weather was choppy but clear, the light fabulous, and every part of the stunning landscape highlighted by it. We all happily wandered about, wasting the hours, taking it in. Sat on a column, watching the waves crash over the end of the causeway, I was as near to content as I could be (without someone whispering something meaningful in my ear, and the rest of the world disappearing). Finished off by the pre-requisite cup of tea and doughnut in the National Trust tea room (the others think my love of NT tea-rooms is hilarious, and are convinced that I will end up as that hunched old coot that you see sitting in every NT tea room).


• Quiet wanderings along Cushendun beach, which is a proper winter beach, windswept and covered in kelp, with a rolling hill at one end, and a smart row of tall pastel coloured apartments at the other. We were all impressed by this new-build architecture. Good sense and good value tends to triumph over beauty in rural Northern Ireland (where stained pebble dashed houses sit next door to humble crumbling crofts - the kind English yuppies would walk across hot coals to own and restore) but not in this case. A finer (new) sea-front I haven't seen in a good while.


• The journey from the village to the cottage (about a mile) which was half boggy copse, half country lane. We all enjoyed fumbling our way through the trees as the dark descended, before risking our lives on the road, as the local boy-racers drove their souped-up mini in a loop round the village. Best moment, though, was catching a lift back with Pedro, and honking the horn as we passed Didcot, who dutifully half jumped - half fell into the verge in a fit of fright. Sorry Didcot.


• And finally (after years of vowing to to visit it) me, Monky, Schwesty and Choc-Chip dropped into the the Crown Liquer Saloon in Belfast for a quick lunch, before catching our various flights home. It was good as I imagined and better, with a staggering decorative ceiling, stained glass windows, and that impossible-to-top Victorian flourish. We sat in a closed booth, and I day-dreamed about getting locked in one evening, supping whiskey in the half-dark, with some handsome gent (common theme of holiday day-dreaming).

Anyways enough of all that. I'm sitting surrounded by boxes, as am moving house tomorrow, so computer will be off-line for a few weeks, and probably electricity and hot-water knowing my luck. Hope you enjoy my one lonely holiday pic (shamefully stolen from Monky's website, though taken with my own fair hand). This is Choc-Chip in her flotsam chair. Have a most prosperous New Year bods!