Tuesday 21 August 2007

Friday 17 August 2007

waiting for a man.
builder, courier, lover.
they never turn up.

The gasman was due to come round today to give my boiler its annual inspection. ‘Between 8am and 5 pm’ they said.
At two o’clock, the doorbell rang and a brummy voice said ‘I’m just checking you’re in, I’m doing an inspection down the road and I’ll be with you in half an hour.’
Forty minutes later he rang the bell again to tell me he’d been called to an emergency and would get back to me.
At four o’clock, the contractors rang me to say that he’d been called to yet another emergency and unfortunately, would not be coming to my house today.
Unsurprisingly I was vexed.
I went to Hammersmith and bought some chicken and a large bottle of vodka, noticing a headline in The London Lite as I left the train which read ‘Feral Children Arrested in Possession of Tactical Nukes’.
The UO made a blinding curry and we got drunk and watched ‘Big Brother’.
BB, for its own reasons, seems to have been targeting Carole this week. Admittedly, the woman has control issues and seems compelled to give instructions or advice to anyone venturing within a teabag’s throw of the kitchen. I cannot imagine, however, that the rest of the housemates’ behaviour was so dull that the producers were left with no alternative but to show relentless scenes of Carole arguing about slices of bread and whether carafes of water should be placed on the dining table or not.
So, the public voted from a pool of six housemates and Carole and Gerry garnered the highest figures.
Earlier in the week, the housemates had competed to become gurus in tasks of self-improvement, and the three gurus (Tracy, Ziggy and The Twins – who are now considered as a single entity) had to decide which of them to evict.
Obviously BB was hoping for some drama and tears, but Gerry, bless him, scuppered all that by volunteering himself before anyone could cast a single vote.

Thursday 16 August 2007

exploding manholes?
yes. outside the job centre.
it could be methane.

Talking of explosions, Brixton Road was cordoned off this morning after a manhole exploded outside the job centre. I left the bunker for a restorative cigarette and mosied down to the corner where I found some of our engineers, watching the emergency investigators and the police.
They’re very good speculators, and ran though all the possibilities known to man from terrorism to methane build up beneath the pavement.
I think it was feral children with tactical nukes, personally, but the engineers dismissed my suggestion as being far-fetched.

Wednesday 15 August 2007

swipe my oyster card!
shiver my new allegro,
jim lad! things have changed.

We had chicken kievs this evening, a delicacy to which I’m rather partial. I am still suffering from something bronchial and am waking up in the night and coughing.Thankfully, most of the time, the Ugly One sleeps the sleep of the just and won’t be woken by anything short of a landmine going off under the bed.

Tuesday 14 August 2007

on holby city
the evil surgeons battle
for time and air space

My stalker was not there today. What sort of stalker is he? I expect a certain level of commitment from obsessives. Very poor!
It’s no wonder standards are falling in the UK.

Monday 13 August 2007

a tall ginger man
stalked me at hammersmith tube.
i was so grateful

Coming out of Hammersmith Tube this evening I was smiled at by a tall ginger man. I smiled back, as is my habit, and then was followed to Marks & Spencer, after even at one point having to cross the road because someone had blown up the cash machine at Lloyds Bank.
He did not follow me in and stalk me through the Italian aisle, which I feel shows a lack of dedication to his craft.

Sunday 12 August 2007

sun on edgware road
falls on woolworths, makes it shine.
argos gleams less bright.

Monday 20 August 2007

Saturday 11 August 2007

costa at tesco.
an iced americano;
large cappuccino.

The Ugly One and I went off to the DIY centre to sort out some paint for the walls, reasoning that as the living room was more or less cleared of the usual clutter we might as well take the opportunity to paint it. Ranges of paints are given evocative names, as I suspect they always have been, and I am concerned that our choices were affected by the quality of the names, rather than the colours themselves. We had already selected our choices, which were Bongo Jazz 1 and African Adventure 3. They might just as well have been called Terracotta Lust and Slightly Toasted Tangerine which at least bears some relationship to the colours they represent.
There’s a man there who mixes the colours for you. He is French and has the eyes of a serial killer. He is, no doubt, a decent law-abiding chap, and I am maligning him unjustly, but if I am to be honest in my feelings, I suspect there are bodies buried under the grapevines in the Garden Centre Area.
I also think it may be he who invents the names for the colour schemes.

Friday 10 August 2007

robots in disguise.
that’s transformers. they could be
smart george forman grills.

‘Transformers’ was surprisingly good. Not being a huge fan of the animated series, I had no nostalgic baggage which might cause me to run out shrieking ‘Noooooo! How could they have done this to Optimus Prime?’
Refreshingly, and surprisingly, the acting was rather good, and there was some attention paid to character. One can forgive the producers for the lack of plot since films like this tend not to be that intellectually challenging.
The Transformers (for those not acquainted with the concept) are robots from a distant planet, divided into good robots (Autobots, led by Optimus Prime) and bad robots (The Decepticons, led by Megatron) who are searching for the Allspark, a mystical robot cube which will… well, it doesn’t matter what it does. Both lots of robots are after it. The humans, who have the cube hidden in a secure bunker in the middle of the desert, decide, in a moment of pure genius, to take the cube and hide it ‘somewhere in the city’.
Not surprisingly, the robots battle it out in the main street, smashing up cars, buildings and, hopefully, many branches of Starbucks and McDonalds. I cheer every time one of those dies.
Go robots!

Thursday 9 August 2007

pink and turquoise skies
hung over the railway bridge
at which lamp posts beamed.

Our laminated flooring arrived some days ago and the Ugly One, having filled the rest of the house with the junk from the living room, has very nearly completed the whole floor. Very nice it looks too.

Wednesday 8 August 2007

men, across the road.
one, shirtless, fanned the other.
hot, he googled on.

Tuesday 7 August 2007

the flu’s aftermath
those landmines left in my lungs.
each morning. cough. bang.

Monday 6 August 2007

he passed me at dusk
like a face on a fast bus.
a smile. he was gone.

Sunday 5 August 2007

people ask directions
then ignore what I have said.
what is that about?

Saturday 4 August 2007

i slept while someone
bashed scarlatti’s harpsichord.
i saw it in dreams.

Friday 3 August 2007

we smoke outside now.
the new social networking
on the old pavement.

As an anniversary treat The Ugly One and I took Robert and The Wise Woman of Wigan to The Barnes Grill, Anthony Wozzer-Thompson’s restaurant in Barnes.
The décor is a little confusing. A huge mounted Spanish bullhead is mounted on one wall with a big bell round its neck. On the other walls are giant flowers made of red, purple and white feathers. For a restaurant which is promoting traditional British food, it is somewhat confusing.
However, the food was fantastic. I had chilli squid as a starter and then duck breast in red wine sauce.The WWoW and Robert came back with us, and we stayed up till about eight in the morning, discussing the early music of Cilla Black, The Tony Blair musical and what sauces would best complement roasted children.

Wednesday 15 August 2007

Thursday 2 August 2007

meet me at green park.
the shadow of the palace
seems fictional. daft.

Wednesday 1 August 2007

shags are like buses
you wait forever for one
then three don’t turn up.

Tuesday 31 July 2007

some nice post arrived
clean and square and full of words.
good post always is.

Monday 30 July 2007

the sun made us slow
and we ticked with heavy beats
inching through the day

Ian Reddington must be an Omen of Disease as I have been struck down by the evil lurgi of flu-ness.
Please list him in your Celebrity Omen Almanacs under Pestilence.