things I once thought unbelieveable in my life have all taken place
This is what the darkly luminous PJ Harvey sings in Good Fortune on her fab album Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. Its been a week of crisp sun, so afternoons I've been wandering stridefully round the west end listing to some choice tunes: this one on repeat. It makes me smile, and walk fast in time to its beat. In order to not take things for granted, I am going to draw up a list of things I once thought unbelievable in my life that have all taken place:
developing a liking for smoked salmon
finding out less is more when applying makeup
spending sunday baking at the behest of my live-in lover
having a live-in lover
becoming a nurse
Today, fuggy with the toxic effects of drink I heard for the millionth time these words from Stan: 'this is the worst film I've ever seen'. Didn't he suspect from the title, Reptilian, that he would be wasting two hours of his life watching it? That time I spent baking a beautiful carrot cake, half of which now remains.
In some recent correspondence, this phenomenon - blogging - was compared to the publishing of one's collected letters. Now anyone knowing me will attest to the fact I am a terrible penfriend, but I agree with the point. However when 'collected letters' are published, the scribe in question tends to be dead, and famous or notorious: in anycase, their writings are considered to have importance to someone. Blogging though to me reeks of vanity publishing: no one will pay me to publish my homilies on life and baking so by god I will distribute my word myself. My word!... readers across the globe say when they take in what facet of my private life has made it to the digital silver screen ... what use to me is knowing that?!
Sunday 15 2004
the 15th....the day after Valetine's day, when people across the land soothe their visa cards and lament their chaffed bits: a night of lovin' is a pricey thing. Alas for me, it is my nose that is chaffed: not through exotic sexual practises, but because, pleep, I have a goddamn cold. It's as if I have ablast of Alzheimers: my Hansel & Gretel trail of snotty tissues will remind me of my path back to bed/to the sofa. Poor Stan has a fear of snot so unlike Gretel & her brother, my path will not be eaten by little birdies.
Sniff!
Wednesday 11 2004
Sigh...Valentine's day soon. I always hated it at school which was entirely down to the fact I got no cards: well except one year - I was 10ish - when I got an unsigned card. Debbie got one too, written in the same writing, but in black pen. I thought there was no connection, but years later my Ma tells me: she sent them. That was during primary school: love then was a word which made me giggle and liking a boy meant being awful to them. I once called a poor cretter I had the 8 year-old hots for Thomas the Tink Engine. Oh the wit. He wasn't even called Thomas. He kicked me, I remember, by the sloping concrete football pitch.
Love in secondry school was a turgid affair: every word spoken to the object of my affection remembered & analysed. On Valentine's Day: the cruelest day for a girl with no va-va-voom, the older years of the school arranged for secret valetine's notes to be delivered to paramours in class for 50p or so. That chap at the door would herald a hushed and expectant silence, and as the seemingly glam older kids dished out little cards there was that fear that it would be my turn that year to get the 'joke', the card sent to someone just to make her feel really horrid about herself.
It happened, but never to me: I just got none at all.
Woe is me and my lack of satin padded mightmares. Stan makes me cards all the time - yes day in day out I find little notes, like 'your phone stinks' which to the trained eye means 'you oh sweet princess, are the light of my soul and the rushing waters of my heart. I embrace you.' He thinks I look like an eskimo, which beats looking like Patrick Swayze, as some horrid girls whispered one day at school.
Lunch today, slorped at my desk, was a sonic-silver flask of soup. Now, I don't know about the healing powers of Chicken soup, but by gum, The Lovely Stan's Hoof Soup is both filling and restoratative (the stress of library work is not to be under-estimated).
Here follows his definitive recipe:
Hoof Soup
1 hoof (a.k.a a Ham Hough)
1 medium onion, chopped finely
2 medium carrots, chopped small
equal amount of turnip, chopped small
1¼ mug of red lentils
fill a large saucepan with water & tip all the above into it so it's close to the brim.
Simmer, covered for about 1½ hours then remove hoof: cut all meat off the trotter
bones & chop into bits & return to the pot. Serve.
Tuesday 03 2004
Yesterday I got a new phone. It's sleek, slick and technologically advanced, just like my old one was. But, you know, I feel sorry for old phone, my cute silver squiggle. Should one feel pity and sympathy for an object? Does this mean I am ultra-materialistic, bestowing human feelings on a communication device? Or.. am I a peedie bit touched?
When I was very young, say 7 or 8, I used to hate being sent to brush my teeth & wash my face before bed. To make this more interesting, I would play imaginary games, they way young girls do. You know the sort: each girl takes a role, be it 2 girls, 2 cats or two elves up to no good in the forest.
By the Amritage Shanks (pictured Armitage as a white-headed man, looking like Mr. Skene) sink I would act out the roles of two hands: the right was the one that always seemed superior, the stonger of the two. The left was always left out in games, being as I'm right-handed, and so I felt so sorry for it: my left hand. Thus I enacted scenarios whereby my left hand would get to triumph over the tyranny of the right. It made my night-time toilet ever so much fun!
Saturday 31st (January) 2004
I'm fed up with January: it's been a very dry month for me - the best thoughts I had were extemporising on the differing number of holes men & women have, so I'm going to haul myself into February on the coat-tails of dour January.
The lovely Stan is in bed having got up at 8 this morning. As it's now half 11, he is an utter disgrace. However he is continuing our test-run of our new Dual Control Dreamland Electric Blanket, so I shall overlook it this time. (Ever since I got my other great eBay purchase - a welsh woolen cape from the 70s, my inner school marm has bubbled out of control) Indeed, that very cape would go well with my pointy glasses...
Anyhoo...last night we had a fab time drinking vodka with various fruit juices & watching Sex & the City. To make us feel as if we were in a dazzling local other than Partick, our shaped ice-cubes transport us to Glitz-ville. Take a look at Stan's fabulous Flash movie featuring my glass of vodka. cranberry & orange...
It is the month of love bairns....
It's begun to snow here in Glasgow...Snuggled in my warm house with no need to go out, I wish it would lie so I can imagine I might go plumfing through deep drifts with red cheeks and frozen fingers. However, the chewing-gummed pavements are wet with last night's rain so for all the enthusiasm and energy the little snowflakes put into giving us a carpet of innocent white, it is a wasted effort.
