I'm supposed to only be eating one baked goody a day because sugar makes me ill (what kind of bastard trick is that for the universe to play on a girl who comes from a long line of sugar/cake addicts?*) and today I already had a toasted coconut doughnut. But N's out watching the football in some bar and there's a cupcake shop right under our apartment and I'm fucked if I can resist.
*I don't use that word lightly. No way, nuh huh.
Chickens, we are in New York. We got here on Thursday night and our first few days were exxhaaaaaauuusting. We spent today trying to recover but mostly we just got wet.
More soon. But now, old pizza and bed.
Lub to you.
(ps, holy shitballs {to paraphrase a favourite chicken} this city is amazing)
((pps, Thank you for all your sweet comments on my last post, they helped muchly.))
*photograph by Joel Schekman
thursday 15th april.Wake up, terribly excited. Check flights, flights cancelled. What the hell? Something about a volcano. Flights still leaving London so hop on a train. £300 and 4 hours later we're in London and flights from Heathrow have been cancelled too. Fuck. Call N's brother and beg for food and shelter. Plea granted. Brother in law suspects bed bugs in his bedroom so we sleep on the living room floor. Flights rebooked for tomorrow. Iceland cursed thoroughly.friday 16th april.Wake up. Hurt. Floor not comfortable. Check flights, cancelled again. Decide we might as well enjoy the day. Brother in Law skives off work and takes us to Battersea, where he and N used to live. Eat Italian food, cooked by Italians, eaten by Italians. According to menu espresso is £1.20, cola £1, Italian lessons POA and counselling gratis. Very nice pasta. Which is good as chef comes out to check everyone has cleaned their plates and chef is scary. Go home, check flights. Flights pushed back for another 12 hours. Fall asleep in a ball on living room floor. Wake up, now have flights for Sunday evening. Curse Iceland to hell.saturday 17th aprilWake up, hurt more. Floors are hard. Skies still dusty. Flights pushed back more hours, Mum's flights home from New York cancelled. Begin to wonder what exactly the point of Iceland is because really, it just seems like a giant fucker to me. Leave boys knocking down shed while make way to Covent Garden to meet blogging ladies. Sunshine hot, maps rubbish, tube station has too many steps. Find self collapsed on street corner while annoying clown shouts at tourists. Blogging ladies lovely and take me to Liberty where we ooh and ahh over 'spensive shoes. Get tube home and buy pillows on the way, floor will be less horrible if N and I aren't sharing one pillow. Call flight people and change flights to Thursday. Thursday is last chance time. N uses the phrase 'when the volcano has chilled out a bit' on the phone to flight people. Flight people respond 'Sir. I do not understand what you are saying.' Flight people have limited sense of humour. Suggestions are made that Iceland be nuked. Decide the people can probably leave first, I don't hate them, just their fucking country and its fucking volcanoes.sunday 18th april.Wake up. Hurt less. Seem to be getting used to the floor. Skin is disintegrating though. It doesn't like London. Sit in the garden under a parasol while brother in law barbecues shit then accompany brother in law to a carpark in the suburbs to watch a man jump off the roof over and over and over. Brother in law's friend is making a tv program, brother in law is 'economic advisor' to tv program. Lots of men with poorly shorn facial hair, badly fitting jeans and silly glasses run around on roof with very large cameras. Coolness factor diminished by jumpers tied to heads as it is sofuckinghot we might all die. A minion comes back from shops with box full of ice creams. I kick N as she approaches with the box and he starts to tell her we're not part of the crew and shouldn't really be eating ice creams. Arrive home, check flights. Times pushed back further still. Starting to worry very much about missing the wedding. Speak to mum, she is slightly hysterical. Am more sympathetic than expected considering she is having our holiday. Get off phone to find N, his brother and his brother's lady inspecting the bedroom carpet with torches. Crumbs and fluffs are analysed for legs and heads. It is decided that bed bugs are all in brother in law's head and we should probably have the bed. It is a wonderful evening. Only curse Iceland a little as we fall asleep.monday 19th april.Wake up, hurt much much less and don't appear to have been bitten in the night. Beds are beautiful things. Get self and N ready to leave for the seaside where we plan to meet Cate and Nate and Talia for lunch and squidging and a little nibbling. N observes that I should probably neither squidge nor nibble Cate or Nate and I agree. He is also dubious about the advisability of nibbling another women's baby. On they way home he seems to have changed his mind and laments that I didn't let him 'have a go of the baby'. He also rhapsodizes over how ridiculously bloody adorable she is. I mention the effect she had on my ovaries, he responds with 'she made your ovaries ache? She made my ovaries explode!' Silence ensues as we pass through Croydon. As bed time approaches news reaches our ears that British airspace will reopen in the morning. We go to bed happy.tuesday 20th april.what a fucking joke. British airspace will never reopen. Oh sure, a flight went from Glasgow to Stornoway but big fucking deal. Stornoway's shite, and you can get there on the ferry. My patience and zen and 'oh well, I like London, let's just enjoy ourselves while we're here' have gone to be replaced with alternating wrath, frustration and deep deep depression. Coldsore, pimples and weird hives on my hands. It appears that body is done with being calm about everything too. Get dressed, give up and go back to bed. Fuck this. Half an hour later am scraped out of my heap and dragged to Battersea. There is an incident on the way to the train station that involves sitting on the kerbside and sobbing. There might even be foot stomping. After that things improve. The last of our cash is handed over to the children's zoo. There are rabbits and lemurs and a donkey. They all help. There is also a chicken rolling in the dirt. From there a walk is had to Buckingham Palace to laugh at the guards who do weird waggling things with their legs every few minutes and through Green Park to Bond Street where eyes go misty over the sparkly things in the windows. I rather fall for a tiara. Chris Eubanks is standing outside Hermes, he is wearing a pink tie. In Selfridges we eat ice cream and buy fancy caramels and then we get the train to Brixton. Apparently Brixton is part of London we might be able to afford to live in. We think my brother in law is over-estimating our finances. I love Brixton. We buy a very big fish for dinner and then we get the bus home. Mood is improved. We decide that if our flights don't go on Thursday we will give up and go home. So we book bus tickets. I'm strangely enamored by the thought of being back in Glasgow. My spirit is clearly broken.(later)Well bugger me with a bunch of bananas. A plane just flew over the house.* photo of London by javiy
So the girl did cry and she did stomp and she slammed doors and punched pillows. She shouted at her husband and at the world and she declared that it was all simply 'no use'. Her eyes itched from the tears and her head ached from the shouting. And so she did retire to bed, but not before everybody everywhere knew that it was all no use too.And then.Two hours later, when she crawled out of her bed a hundred million thousand friends had appeared in her little internet place and they wished her well and they wished her hugs and they told her it would get better. And so it did.It was 6.30pm and good things started to happen. The good things were thus:Her boy, who was terribly worried about seeing his football team play in the semi-finals of Some Football League Or Other while he was in New York discovered that by some magical twist of magic his girl had found them an apartment on the 'xact same street as the pub that is host to The Aforementioned Football Team Fanclub of New York. And so he was happy. In the face of such a happy boy the girl started to ease a little.And then there was dinner. The boy and the girl had been quite convinced that there was 'no dinner'. There is usually 'no dinner' on days that are 'no use'. But low and behold, there was dinner. There was baby vegetables and there was pesto dressing and there was fancy smoked salmon with a cracked pepper and mustard crust hidden in the back of the fridge and so there was the first salad dinner of the summer. It was eaten in the sun.And THEN. Well and then the sun didn't vanish. The sun had been vanishing a lot recently. And so the girl and the boy, instead of lying in a post-dinner stupor, waddled to the park. In the park they saw two Really good dogs. Really big, really fluffy, really toe-curling dogs. The kind that make the girl squeak. And then they helped a man in a bobble hat look for his dog, whom he had very carelessly lost in the bushes. I say 'helped' but mostly they sat on a bench giggling while Bobble Hat Man shouted "Steve! Steve you wee bastard, come here. STEVE!!!!" but at one crucial moment they did point and shout "there he is!" They also saw a bunny, which eased the pain of sending their very own bunny off off and away for a month. And they stood under the trees and listened to the birds as the sun set. And so the girl was happy again.But then. Then it got even better. For the girl and the boy came home and when they came home they found ice cream in their freezer, strawberry and chocolate. And they found chocolate in their cupboard, Dominican, organic, yummy. And so they melted the chocolate and they poured it on the ice cream and then they went to bed where they ate ice cream (strawberry and chocolate) and they watch silly television for many hours while the girl had her post-ice cream belly rubbed. And it was bliss and she was happy.And that is how a single day can turn from poop on a stick to blissful and fluffy and all ice creamy.* photo by Lena Corwin
I'm having a poop day.A foot-stomping,tear-shedding,rabbit-leaving,grey-sky,unsolicited-advice,pillow-punchingpoop-on-a-stick day.But one day I'm going to live here and this is going to be my life and it will all be lovely all the time and when it's not lovely I will be here and I can throw sticks in the woods and sob into my dog and eat home grown yummies and drink rum and it will be fine.photos of Dan Martensen and Shannan Click's home via The Selby
I kind of love Hannah for leaving a comment with a link to this post and I kind of want to kill her because I haven't been able to look at another damn thing all day.
Yes, that's a bunny butt, on a baby. There's more...... Go on........
* bunny butt courtesy of Fay at Baby and Wool.
A couple of months ago I ordered a diana lens and adapter for my dslr. I have a diana camera but I can't afford film or getting it developed.
On Thursday I finally managed to track it down to a local post office (oh they're a bunch of bastards) and bring it home. I played around with it a bit over the weekend and while I've yet to take anything worth keeping I thought I'd share my first effort (and my easter weekend) with you.
Be kind.
The aforementioned hoaching park (it means busy people, busy). See those three tiny bundles of fluff? They're baby cows and that's a WHITE one. I'm in love with the white one.
hairy mummy cows.
'mooching in the park.
reasons 462 that I love my husband: when on the way home, on easter Friday, his woman decides that only M&S's honey roast ham crisps will do, he lets her stay in the car while he battles the hoards of people who think hear 'long weekend' and think 'shopping!'.
We have two wedding CDs, 'Before Tea' and 'After Tea'. For the first year we were married they were the only things we listened to in the car. We're trying to branch out.
I started packing for New York. I'm only taking hand luggage. For a month long trip. This is partly because I hate carrying luggage but partly because over the last year I've been dumping my clothes in the charity bin with abandon. The above is what I have left.
Apart form this stuff, which is what is left in my wardrobe when everything grey, black and purple is taken out.
I have got the hang of neither focus nor exposure. Focus because it appears that the lens has none, and exposure because I haven't had to think about exposure for, well, ever.
I'll get there though. I bought it because it's so much lighter than either of my other lenses which I couldn't really face carrying around Noo York when I'm out exploring. N is very amused that we've spent £(toomany)thousands on crystal clear, super sharp, very fast lenses (and effing heavy) over the last couple of years and now I'm buying £30 plastic lenses that aren't sharp or clear or even very easy to get a picture out of.
I really want a Sharon Montrose print but I don't know which one. Actually, I really want a set of three but we're supposed to be on a diet (you know, financially) and I'm going to have a hard time convincing N that we need one, let alone three.I love the rabbits, obviously. Perhaps a little too obviously though. Geese make me smile. Hell, all poultry makes me smile. And then there's the deer with all of his little legs who really really does it for me. Today I think that Baby Porcupine is my animal of choice. Tomorrow, who knows.At the moment seeing as we don't really have walls, buying art would be a little silly. Which gives me time to save my lunch money for ALL THE BABEEEE ANIMALZ.
We leave for New York two weeks today.I'm. Not. Ready.I don't even know what I need to do to get ready. I have no list. I never have no list.I don't know where my passport is, what I'm going to wear on the plane or what I'll say if they ask me to go through one of those scary naked scanner things in the airport.I do however know where to buy notebooks, cupcakes, Chinese food and architectural antiques. So I'm not worried.Today we sent a stranger all of our money and she posted us keys to our apartment to us. At least, she says she did (pleasegoddon'tletitbeascam) and in two weeks we'll be going to sleep in the middle of Greenwich Village. And ohsweetjesus I'm so excited.*Oh Gosh picture from The Internet. I'm bad, I saved it with the ambiguous filename 'cocoacocoa'. I have no idea what that means.
