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.