Oils

1.People of Blogland, I’ve come back from Home with a sufficiently renewed sense of horror and a suitcase full of life basics: paperbacks, new socks and a bottle of Gewurztraminer Vendanges tardives.
I also carried, carefully wrapped, a painting.

2. Blogfolks, did I mention that my mother is a painter? Not professional, no, but she’s good. (I have tales of naked hippie communes/painting courses I had to tag along to as a child. Some other time.)

3. Excuse me, Miss. Does this item belong to you? The Custom security man asked as I was boarding the Eurostar.
Yes….?
Was it a gift or a purchase? Would you mind unwrapping it?I laughed.
No, it’s not a precious work of art freshly nicked out of the Louvre, which I’d try to sneak out of the country.. actually you’ll clearly see it’s pretty much got to be mine.
Oh, I see, you modelled for it, he smiled.
Well, yeah. And this is my grandmother, and this is her kitchen.
4. My mother was positively chuffed.

5. Look, blogfolks, this blog is two (2) years old now! Happy birthday, blog. Oh, and, the best new year’s eve to you all. Mine looks promising. Special Lady friend, amazing food, and, well, yes.

Yes, I do spend Christmas with my mother

1. So.
I think this year we ignored Christmas with even more than our usual helping of oomph.
No tree, no cards, no family, no turkey.
I sat by the fire with a book and sipped some fuckingtastic wine.
Then in bed by 11pm on Christmas eve.

2. But!
Around 3am, some rustling-tumbling-scratching woke me up.
Mmm. Closed door. Still, it looked like a ‘the cat brought in a mouse’ situation. I jumped out of bed, put on my riot gear (a tshirt) and investigated. One by one, I lifted every piece of furniture for the cat to pounce. The mouse was found, delicately seized between sharp teeth, and released for more fun and games. I gave up around 4am, left the situation, and slept on the sofa.

3. As I type, we have no idea of the whereabouts of my nocturnal christmas present. it could be anywhere. I dare not sleep.

4. Merry bleeding Christmas to me.

Crunch, crunch, crunch

1. Yesterday, Bloglanders, I huffed and puffed and climbed one of those snowy mountain/volcano things we have around here. Up and up and up a narrow path under white trees, then out into the open ,1200 or so metres high with a view all the way to China.
I’d left the fog lower down, in the valley.

Then I came down, mostly on my ass.

It was well worth it, partly because after that I hardly spoke another word for the rest of the day.

2. I almost forgot to wish you a merry christmas, if you’re into that kind of thing. So, yes.

Still, nevertheless, but

1. This morning my therapist was wearing a pair of those slouchy things that are half socks, half slippers. With anti-slip soles. Chromatically, they blended perfectly into his usual range of grey blues, possibly carefully chosen so as not to distract his clients/patients. Still, I was distracted. I didn't say anything, it surely would have been analysed. I wonder if he was testing me?

2. Later on, the assistant in the Shody Bop referred to me as ‘Sweetie’, and I was still wondering about the half-socks half-slippers so it took me a few seconds to realise that was me. People don’t usually call me sweetie, but I still turned down the Christmas special gift pack. Nevertheless, I’ll be smelling of lavender later on.

3. This feline orphan of ours is growing at what I think is commonly termed an Alarming Rate. Bloglanders, have you ever tried putting on a duvet cover with the help of a kitten with ADHD? I have, and I think the kitten is still in there somewhere. She’s also right in the middle of the Buoyant Child phase, and some of it is exhausting. But! I’m going away tomorrow for a week, so with some luck I might completely miss the Jaded/Aggressive Teenager phase.

Pawn

-Play ! Play ! Play !
-Just a sec, Francis, we need a rest.
-A rest? But I need to play, it’s essential for my future development!
-I know. But lemme sit down for a second.
-If you don’t play with me constantly, my behaviour will exhibit pathological traits later!
-Just chill for a minute, will you?
-Play now! or I’ll be fucked up in the head!
-Look, the whole kitchen floor is covered in bits of string and corks and little balls just for you to play with. Just pounce on that for a while. Not my hands. Nooot my haaaaaaaaaands.
-Play! I was abandoned, you know!
-………...
-I was a child of the streets! If you don’t pay attention to me, I’ll go back down the infernal spiral of negligence, possibly juvenile delinquency!
-Why don’t you climb up the curtains? Play with the bits of coloured paper? C’mon, pounce, jump, trash. This is how people make confetti, you know. We can sell them later to carnival organisers to help you earn your keep.
-Do your duty as a parent! Or I’ll call Battersea and they’ll take me back!
-Francis, where do you get all this energy from?
-Oh. I drank some of your coffee earlier. By accident.

Festive?

1. I never thought that one day I’d post pictures of kittens on this blog – or on any other- but what can I say, bloglanders, I go overwhelmed by a tidal wave of feline cuteness. Sorry about that. I’ll try to curb it from now on, or you might get cavities, and it’ll all be my fault.

2. People of blogland, I’m on holiday and a day earlier than planned, too. Yay! Earlier I couldn’t decide if that was a good or a bad thing; J, who knows me better than if he had knitted me, thinks it’s probably bad, since I’ll have more time to fret over the fact that I’m not enjoying my time off as much as I should, and I only have a week left, and I better start enjoying I right now, etc, and, he’s right. I’m hoping to take lessons in chilling from our new feline recruit. She can fall asleep across a row of hangers in the pantry, you know.

3. In my pre-holiday zen, some things still manage to make me want to pull out my nose hair and scream: at a play based on a Jane Austen novel a few days ago I was asked if ‘the language wasn’t too difficult for me’. A few hundred (possibly arrogant) retorts flashed through my mind but I just smiled sweetly. Where did she think I learned English from, fortune cookies? Ah well. I know; it doesn’t matter.

4. Presents. Presents. Problem. So far, I have purchased one (1) item, for my mother, and returned to the shop to buy the exact same thing for myself. I am aware of how wrong this is, especially from a psychoanalytical/financial/organisational point of view. I have three hundred different ideas for my Special lady Friend, 297 of which I cannot afford.
J will probably get Lego.

Damn paparazzi


I'm so cute I can get away with just about anything.


Now, Bloglanders, I can't stay. I'm needed for a major play session.

Ok, but just a minute then

1. People of blogland, today is the day when little Francis is coming home. She’s had all her jabs and everything, and she’s been told we’re coming; yay!
I only have a minute – call me boring but I made you a promise and promises are made to be kept.

2. Last weekend my Special Lady Friend borrowed her housemate’s almost brand new lesbian porn DVD – we don’t know where she got it from, except from ‘abroad’- in order to spice up our evening. Not that there is anything wrong with our usual way of passing time: I pick on her, she fights back, we fall to the floor wrestling, I try to pull out her nose hair, she breaks my arm; it’s good clean fun.
The filmDVD was entitled ‘pink velvet 3’ and we could barely contain ourselves because it had a plot. Oh, and it was lesbian porn, too.
A plot!
All I can say is: ouch.
Those long, painted pink nails.
That went into places they should not under any circumstances have gone into.
The close ups.
We covered our eyes and I squealed like a clubbed baby seal.

Anyway, I think we watched 50 minutes of it and decided that we could do so much better.

3. I have to leave you now, Francis is waiting. Pictures of her furry loveliness will follow.

About 40% mohair

1. Bloglanders! It has struck me that The Perfect Christmas/Birthday/Whatever Present for just about every single person I know is a homemade hand-knitted pair of socks.
Yes.
You know it makes sense. Who would be foolish enough to not jump for joy when given a proper pair of socks? Personally, I would kill for one, but I have a grandmother firmly determined to keep me on the right side of the law, and she is knitting as I type. Of course I can’t knit, but I’m writing it down as part of my personal development plan for 2006. In the meantime, I’ll just buy people craptrinkets and books as usual.

2. I wonder if little Francis, alone in her glass cubicle in Battersea Dogs and cats home, is counting the days too. Probably not, because she’s only a kitten and she hasn’t learnt to count yet, but if she had she would know that we shall be picking her up on Saturday morning, and that is three days from now, and I cannot wait. On Thursday night J and I have got a date to make her a little house out to hide in of a cardboard box. Yay!

3. Next time, people of blogland, we'll broach the topic of long nails in lesbian porn flicks, but first I need a drink.

Public announcement

1. The dark side of cookies has now crumbled.
I have a list of pusillanimous reasons, don’t ask.
The new title, ‘Never too tired to tango’, is what my middle name should be, according to J.

2. We’re getting a little Francis on Saturday! Francis is 9 weeks old, grey and fluffy with white socks and carefully made-up eyes. She is gorgeous. We think she’ll be very happy in the House of J and Y, as soon as she’s had her vaccinations. Yay!

What’s in a name Part Deux

1.The cat lady came to visit, so I wore my fluffiest, most caring and respectable jumper.
We got approved, but we had to jump through loops first.
I knew I had her when I said that I’d rather give my child away than my cat. I do think she understood it was a joke. I don’t have a child.
J surpassed me in the nodding, agreeing and smiling stakes, though; but then he usually does. It’s a gift he has:‘You know how when you want to get cash out of a machine, you need to press the right buttons? well I kind of see it a little bit like that with some people. It’s not really lying, because I’m genuinely quite nice underneath’, he said after she left.

2. Later on we made a tentative list of possible names for our future feline; so J stood by our bookshelves and called out: Seamus, Francis, Flan –I’m not calling my cat after a type of dessert - Plato – Plato? No way, that’s so pretentious, I exclaim. Oh yeah, how is that less pretentious than Francis? And you said yes to Francis. No, Plato is more pretentious.
Later still we are browsing the list of Nobel Prize winners, because this is where socially ambitious parents get names from if they want to give their offspring a head start. Victor, Ernest, Edouard, Hakan. J rather likes Hakan….up a fur ball, he chuckles.

I’m afraid he’s not taking this matter very seriously.

Oh, and, that's me.

AAA

I knew I had to call in sick this morning: I am so tired-drained-I-need-my-batteries-replaced-exhausted that if my toothbrush wasn’t electric I simply couldn’t have mustered the strength to brush at all. And that, people of blogland, is a sure sign of exhaustion. Thank the Lord for Sonicare and my lovely pale pink gums. And anyway, I can’t work, I have to get this house in order, because we’re expecting a visit from the Cat Rescue Place Lady, and we need all the approval we can get if we want to adopt a moggy. I’m a bit nervous. Should I wear an angora jumper to make me look respectable, warm and caring? And refrain from making jokes like ‘we ate the last one with seasonal mushrooms and made a cool furry hat with his pelt, would you like to see it?’ Perhaps even offer her a cup of tea?