I saw a fox do a wee on the lawn at Niel and Lizzie's!

A real fox. I got very excited and tried to take a photo of it with my phone, but the other thing i was doing with my phone was listening to music. So what I ended up doing in all the ensuing Excitement was wrenching my headphones out of my ears, then out of the phone, which makes the music start playing straight from the phone, and sticking my hand out the window in order to play quite loud classical music to the fox. It hated it and ran away. I didn't even come close to being able to take a picture. But that's okay. Foxes are everywhere these days.
What is quite weird is how long it took me to work out that it was a fox. Like there is that ridiculous Lie that says that when Christopher Columbus's ships hoved to on the horizon, the indians who lived on whatever island it was couldn't actually see them, because they had no frame of reference for them. So the idea is that they just saw nothing, because they couldn't understand what they were seeing. Obviously this isnt true, but I remember it making sense to me when I first heard it. And it makes sense again now. Because I looked out the window and saw the fox, and went:
1. oh look at that thin orange dog.
2. that's definitely not a dog.
3. look at that huge, huge cat.
4. I don't think that's a huge cat.
5. look at that terracotta pot running across the lawn and weeing on it.
6. oh its a fox.

I hope I see lots more, and get used to recognising them instantly.

There have been some things in the news lately

One of them was that during the Raoul Moat Manhunt, the police enlisted the help of that celebrity survivalist called Ray Mears. I don't know how to take all this. I do just sort of think: what. Ray Mears. But he's on TV! Eating old bits of snakes in the jungle! I don't think of him as a real man. And of course the whole case was terrible, it really was, but if one good thing has come out of it, it's me imagining Ray Mears's pleased little pink face when Scotland Yard called him.

the other thing was that during the Raoul Moat Standoff, that celebrity alcoholic and footballer called Paul Gascoigne arrived at where the police were baying into their megaphones and doing negotiation things. He arrived fresh from an "all day wake" for someone, and said he was a friend of Raoul Moat's (he knew him from when he was a bouncer) and that all he had to do was walk around on the moors shouting, "Moaty, it's Gazza", and everything would be fine. He brought some supplies with him also. They were:
1. a can of lager.
2. some chicken drumsticks.
3. a fishing rod.
4. a cellphone.
5. a dressing gown.

2 and 5 are my bests. But really they are all just something else. This is all true. It's gone very underreported, I guess because of the just amazing amount of lols attached to it, and the whole thing is still very Raw and No Laughing Matter etc. And it is terrible. But also quite incredible.

7. his water wings

Mae asked me to be the godmother of The Boy With No Name!

It's all right that they haven't thought of a name yet*, because the baby is only being born in October. Also, emma m was telling me the other day about someone she knows whose baby is a month old and who still doesn't have a name. Also, when we were horrible teenagers we knew this guy called Aaron who was only named that when he was two. Before that he was just called The Baby. It's terrible that after all that, his mum clearly just opened the baby name book and chose the first name in there.

so it's going to be the best thing ever being the godmother. I bought him some tiny stripy pants the other day with pockets in. Me and Roms had nice chats about what could go in them.

1. His money
2. His little plastic spoon.
3. His own little fists.
4. His spade
5. His chicken drumstick
6. His magazines

The last two are evidence based. From our experience of ourselves and of other babies we have seen in our lives, we have concluded that a baby's best things are chicken drumsticks and tearing up magazines. I'm so excited to test this out on my own godson.





* They have actually thought of and then scornfully and swiftly rejected MILLIONS. Everyone is still playing that name where you go through the baby name book and go oh god imagine naming your baby this. You could call it anything in the whole world and yet you settled on Gus.

My dad just emailed me

He says, "And by the way, I HAVE read a book by a woman, and it was one of the best books I ever read - Possession. You really must read it. I also read one or two by margaret atwood , but I got over it."

yesterday we were talking about the deadly business of raising a child

and Dan was talking about his terror of the ocean. He is really not at all keen on the sea, and he was talking about his Worry that, in some kind of Hypothetical certainly not going to happen future, him and mae and their children would live by the sea in South Africa, and their kid would go into that same sea, and be be eaten by a shark.
"South Africa is their Disneyland," is what he said. At first I thought he meant that South Africa is a child's Disneyland, but really he was referring to Great Whites.
When asked how to get around this problem, he said, "well, it's very easy, I just won't ever let it go into the sea."
Then Mae said, "oh PLEASE, there are hundreds of things in South Africa that can kill you.Just before she came here, Rosie nearly stood on a puff adder, and she CERTAINLY would have died."*

and then we both looked at him like YA YOU SEE. and he just looked bewildered and said, "Well I just won't let it go there then either."
Mae said, "it's not that simple, Dan."
and he just looked bewildered again and said, "But why not?"
I spose i can see his point, when you look at it like that.

This is a photo of the scene of the crime. That whole path is just teeming with puff adders.



* this is not true. I did nearly stand on one, but there's no way I would have even come close to dying. I just would have been a person who had been bitten by a puff adder, which would be pretty grim, but not the worst. Their wikipedia entry says that they can "bite through soft leather", like that's the scariest thing you ever heard. It is quite scary, I spose, but it's a snake. As far as Terrible Things An Animal Can Do go, that's really not so bad.

I KNEW I WOULD THINK OF MORE STRAIGHT AWAY

Shot In the Heart - Mikal Gilmore.
Mikal Gilmore is GARY GILMORE'S BROTHER. I would read this if it was a book-length interview with him in heat magazine, but apparently, on top of it being about the most interesting thing ever, it's really really good as well.

Books for my dad to read when recovering from a back operation

1. The Ghost Map - Steven Johnson (it's about the cholera epidemic in London in the 1850s, before there was such a thing as a germ theory of disease, and doctors thought you just got sick from being poor or dirty. It's so clever and excellent, and it has lots of things about the invention of the modern idea of a city that I had never thought of before)

2. The Man on Devil's Island by Ruth Harris (I haven't read this but it's about the Dreyfus Affair, and it looks so great)

3. This Arthur Miller biography by Christopher Bigsby (I haven't read this either, but I really want to a lot. All that stuff about Marilyn Monroe and the House Un-American Activities Committee and him having that baby that he put in a home and never let anyone talk about or visit is VERY INTERESTING)

4. All the Rabbit books (you should just read them again. I'm reading the third one again now and it's really just the best thing ever)

5. Troubles - JG Farrell (This just got reissued, for some reason, and there are lots of articles saying that he has finally got his Rightful Place In The Canon or whatever. It's like the siege of krishnapur except better)

6. William Dalrymple has just written a new book, but it looks a bit spiritual.

7. Wolf Hall is really meant to be excellent, and it's so LONG.

8. The Corrections (you should read it again)

9. If I wasn't making this list for a very specific man, who I have never seen knowingly read a book by a woman, I would say that there's hundreds of Alice Munro books to read.

10. The Old Devils by Kingsley Amis (his very nice and Longsuffering ex-wife (the mum of Martin) died last week, and all the obituaries and things uniformly said "aw. what a nice lady who put up with such a lot of Crap.")

11. There's loads more I will think of soon

two weeks ago I twisted my ankle

And i couldn't believe how terrible it was. It just kept on being horrible and unignorable and sore for ages, and if we lived in a Perfect World, I would not have stopped whingeing about it for even a second.

Simon came to stay with me just after I hurt it*, and we couldn't do anything except go to the heath and walk up and down the hill to Mae and Dan's. Simon was a real sport about it, and he pretended that he wasn't a bit dumps that he had sort of wasted a trip to London. We did have a good time though. We had a nice dinner party on the roof, and Mae and Dan told us a terrible story about this estate agent who showed them round a place in Archway** where the biggest selling point of the flat was that it had a microwave. Except the guy called it a Microwave Cooker. Dan does the accent when he tells the story and it sort of comes out as Microwave Cookah. Also, the estate agent told them that everyone said he looked like Sean Penn. It is quite easy to draw parallels between a flat where the best thing in it is a Microwave Cookah, and a person where the best thing about them is that they look a bit like Sean Penn.

Simon thinks you can see in this photo that I am limping. I don't know that the photo captures how dramatically I was listing to the right, but there is definitely something a bit funny about the way I'm walking there.





*I don't know how I hurt it. It wasn't anything dramatic or any kind of a good story. I think I just fell over a bit in Oxford.
** Archway isn't very nice. The only person I know in London*** who has been mugged got mugged in Archway
*** This Swedish guy Andreas who works with Mae. He is small and thin and tells the most incredibly far out and inappropriate sexual stories all the time. Just after Mae found out she was pregnant, Andreas told Dan all secretly that he found heavily pregnant women sexually attractive. It would be fine, if a bit strange, if he had said "I find pregnant women attractive". But it's a whole other kind of a thing to say "I find heavily pregnant women sexually attractive." That is vintage Andreas. I think Dan was quite freaked out.

about five minutes before simon took this a horrible old rastafarian came out of a bush and told me I looked exhausted

He told me I look like I need to relax. That's the second time that that's happened to me since I've been here, that an extremely, extremely High person has told me that I looked stressed. Maybe it's like a sales pitch. If so, it's not a very good one. My immediate thought when he told me that was not: I should go into that bush with him and get really blazed.

a thing that makes me Cringe (ii)

Is when people who think of themselves as Wordsmiths get too excited about fancy swearing. Like get too thrilled at the demonstration of their ability to mix it up and show that they are a person of the streets but also of the library. A perfect example of this is the phrase "inveterate cocksucker".
I think it's a hangover from that movie called Withnail&I. It's the same sorts of people who say that they only like British comedy, because American comedy isn't subtle enough.

There is an authentic Manhunt happening here

And if a person wanted to figure out quite a lot of things about England very fast, it would be a good idea to read about how this whole thing is being treated by the police and the papers and everything.
This guy, who used to be a bouncer and then a bodybuilder, shot his ex-girlfriend and killed her new boyfriend, and then disappeared. He then wrote a 49 page letter to the police where he said a number of very insane things. The Sun has been publishing extracts of it, especially the bits where he explicitly says how much he wants to kill chavs, and the police, and social workers, and people who work for the Environmental Agency.
Obviously this is one of those stories where The Unfolding Man Hunt is front page news in the Sun and the Daily Mail and those, but doesnt really make it past the fifth page in the guardian or the independent or whatever. Obviously. It Doesn't Take A Rocket Scientist etc etc.
It still is a bit strange though. If you wanted to be all class warrior about it, there are a number of things you could say.
The other thing is that this guys's name is "Raoul Moat". If I had sat for a hundred years trying to think of the scariest name in the world, I could never have come up with something as sinister and horrible as that. "Raoul Moat".

A horrible picture of the young gordon brown

I think it's weird that Gordon Brown was blinded in one eye during a rugby match cos he got kicked in the head and then a thing called "retinal detachment" happened, and no one ever makes a big deal about it. He never mentioned it in any of his speeches. I think he should have. Maybe more people would have felt sorry for him. The thing that almost characterised people's attitude to Gordon Brown was that hardly anyone felt sorry for him, ever. Although. The other politician who is blind in one eye is Nick Griffin, and no one ever feels sorry for him either.

Other people blinded in one eye that I can think of offhand

1. Slick Rick
2. Sammy Davis Jnr
3. Admiral Nelson
4. http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100519152747AAhnPL6

"thanks in advance"

A nice thing to say to or about someone is that they have a Wonderful Turn Of Phrase

I can think of a probably disproportionately high number of people that I would say this about, where it's not what they say but how they say it, but no one more so than my parents. The way both of them talk just knocks me out completely. And it's made even better by their continued and wild enjoyment of it. One of my best things about my mum is that she can make herself laugh more than anyone else can. It's a good thing to be able to do. This is them driving through the transkei. My dad had been driving for ages, and then they swapped, and my mum was sort of settling into drivinng, sitting all weird and wriggly and uncomfortable with a very stiff high neck in her seat.

mum: "i've got a total horror of running over a monkey."

dad: "oooh jesus, it would be like running over a baby."

mum: "and then you would have to get out of the car and stomp on it."

dad: "and it would be screaming. it would latch onto my achilles tendon and bite it off."

The other day rom said "you can still like someone even if you know they don't like you"

And I think he is right. There is this monster book of Kingsley Amis's letters that I read a while ago. It has bits in that you read and go, oh great, this is going to make me laugh on and off for the rest of my life. Lots of it is very mean on a sort of personal level as well as just a this is no way to see the world level, but it's very very very easy to get really into that as well.

While I was reading it I kept remembering that even though I so desperately wanted him to be
a) still alive
b) my best pal
it was important to keep in mind that he would HATE me. He would dismiss me as a drip and a nerd and a Fucking Woman. But still I don't care. I love him and I wish he would have loved me.

Here is him writing to his real best pal, talking about his father in law:
An old man i hate has come to stay with us for a few, but not nearly few enough, days...Alas, there he was at the train station, his resentful ape's face peering about all round me without seeing me, finally moving off to the right and out of my view. had he fallen down a grating? No, he'd just slipped away to the left, after his feint to the right, so as to take me in the rear. Squirting me with talk, he followed me home. Whenever his face was turned away from mine, i screwed my own into a dazzle pattern of hatred and fury...i shall swing for the old cockchafer unless i put him in a book, recognisably, so that he will feel hurt and bewildered at being so hated.

and here he is talking about his brother in law:


"When we arrived back here, my sister-in-law's husband announced that he and his wife were going to Paris for a week instead of the four days agreed upon. When they had gone, after telling us that they had broken our iron, we looked round the house and found that they had broken the wringer, drunk the rum i asked them not to drink, and left several week-old dirty saucepans in the sink. But old Rodge gave us a gas poke for Christmas and paid the electricity bill, so that's all right you see NO it isnt THEYVE PUT IT RIGHT you see NO they havent WE CAN CALL IT SQUARE you see NO thats just how we shall be unable to call it."

the whole book is like that.

If I was in charge of wardrobe for a movie

And I had to make the outfit for a crazy man, the thing that I would do is make them wear a suit, like just a normal suit with a tie and everything, and then on their feet I would make them wear running shoes. If I was really pushing it I would make them wear women's running shoes. But just normal men's nikes or whatever work fine. It's the best if it's a black suit and the tie that someone wears on a normal work day, but really any kind of suit and any kind of tie work fine.

It's the quickest identifiable marker of a crazy man that I can think of. There was a guy at UCT when I was in third year, I think, who had that outfit on, and he wouldn't have had to really do or say anything* for you to know that he was just out of his mind. You could tell straight away from his black suit/women's reeboks combination.
And there was a similar thing happening on the tube just now. This guy got in and sat next to me, and I knew that I was in for a sweet time before he said ANYTHING. just from blue suit nike cross trainer combo.
He started talking to himself REAL LOUD shortly after that. I was right! He was nuts! I bet this is standard wardrobe procedure for all crazy man movies, and I have only just noticed it now.












*even though he did and said A LOT

a thing that makes me Cringe

is when people put "you see" in their writing. as in "I've grown up, you see."

I have identified the problem

the thing that all these clothes have in common is that they would look much better if they weren't red.
especially the first one, jesus. I like it when some people say "a pyjama" when actually what they mean is "pyjamas". The thing that I think when I look at that first one is "that looks like a pyjama".

the guardian did a thing a while ago about "men's red" where they tried to persuade everyone that it was time for all men to wear a lot of red now.

if I was an anthropologist who was into doing a lot of interesting surveys, another one I would do, for men only, would look like this:

a) how come you never wear a red shirt?

or a red anything, really. alex has that one red shirt that I have seen him wear. alexis had a red scarf for a while. my dad I think has one of those vests with the huge arm holes that is red.
that's it though. and I don't really know why. It's another thing I would like to find out more about.

we saw that guy called cillian murphy and I was really awkward about it

him and his wife (who was wearing a sort of Cheesecloth purple jumpsuit, actually, but despite this she managed to come across as very nice and someone you wouldn't mind being stuck in a lift with) were sitting at the same set of tables and chairs that we were for most of the day. they borrowed our sunscreen. the wife made a nice joke about eating some of our ice cream*. things i noticed about cillian murphy:
A) his head is much bigger from the side than from the front
B) he seems all right, really.

I recognised him straight away and I could feel my eyes go all bobbly and stupid. I don't even like him! He does not at all feature in my life! I don't think I have ever had a conversation about him with anyone except maybe em! but still I was so LAME about it. still it was all I could do to stop myself from leaning over to him and going, "Look, you and I both know that you were in that movie called 28 Days Later, so can we stop pretending please."

they were sort of next to us when we watched beach house as well. they weren't nearly as into beach house as they were into this sort of ska band that played earlier. obviously this minused them a million points, not just cos beach house was SO GREAT, but because ska is SO HORRIBLE.





* it's this ice cream called a twister and normally I am not a person of ice cream at all, but it was so hot and all the other food you could buy there was so gross. we shared it.
food we shared that day:
a) apple (we each had our own apple, but mine had bad vibes in it, so I made rom give me his also)
b) banana (we each had our own, but I still ate most of both.)
c) a cup of tea
d) three ice creams
e) why were we eating the food of people in The Famous Five?

If I was an anthropologist who was into doing a lot of interesting surveys

a survey I would do would look like this:

a) are you freaked out by the idea of space?
b) if yes: well do you have a bossy older sibling then?
c) if no: good

this is a thing i have observed. There are some people I know who come over all woozy and funny when they think about space for any length of time. Not space like personal space. Real space.
The thing that they all have in common, these people, is that they each have a very chats and In Charge big sister (liam, mae, caitie, john). I wonder what is going on there? I wonder if all the big sisters told the little ones scary stories about space? I definitely didn't. I don't know any scary stories about space.
This is a thing I would like to find out more about.

If I was a photographer who was into Gritty Social Realism

the things that I would take pictures of are all the hundreds of VERY shiny, VERY flash, VERY empty climbing frames in the middle of all the council estates here. It's a real thing. People get very worked up about keeping the Kids off the Streets, and it's seems like the best idea anyone has been able to come up with is to throw a number of jungle gyms at the problem. Needless to say, it doesn't work at all. Not at all. But obviously it doesn't. I feel like if you were a naughty and insane child on an estate, the actual last thing you would want to do is crawl around in a horrible tunnel painted a bright colour. That's certainly the last thing I would ever want to do.
But they do keep building them, it seems like. I saw one just now in a park near Lizzie and Niel's house, except this one wasn't even a climbing frame, it was all this small gym equipment. Like bars and weights and stairmaster looking things, just very very little. and there was a big sign above them that said THIS IS FOR EXERCISE ONLY.
When I imagine the hideous council meeting where they came up with this idea I get very depressed.