Nutriment Milk

Baby Tapir
Originally uploaded by Dolores Luxedo.

So I was sitting on my porch on an upturned Safeway green box, and suddenly I realised, that every item of clothing I was wearing, I have been given in the last 6 months. Now I'm sure that's quite a new experience for me, although I've never really considered it as an option before. Pants (vertical stripes) and socks (brown) from Father Christmas. 29' (no belt required) jeans from family in Florida. Tweed shoes from TK Maxx, care of my kindly mother. Stripy (horizontal) black and white gondolier's t-shirt from family in Venice. Red and yellow shirt with a crab on it from Anna. Green and white checky shirt from TK Maxx (see above). Orange and Grey stripy jumper for Christmas. I'm so lucky!

So it's been a weekend of Albanians and sliding. Of teasmaids and green lights. Of blistered fingers and blistered eyes. St. Albans Abbey, the oldest bridge still in use in Hertfordshire (no doubt with George and Parge still poised upon it). The largest baby ever born in St. Albans City Hospital. Drum Solo. Felt necklaces. The big blue cat who travels backwards in time. Racial Harmony Mr January Homo-erotic Scarf Sliding. "Well now I've seen everything! At this time of year? Coots fighting! Sticking their feathers out! I wish I was at home in bed with a good woman!". Being tripped over by a video camera. "Is there a singer/songwriter in the house?". Suddenly I turned to find myself being wrapped up in a net of sellotape. Onto the stage with a wayward accessory. Colonial India. Deflato. Cups of tea in bed. Whistling. Ollie's blanket full of girls. Snap happy.

Fly safely.

trip to london, part 2

Clambake
Originally uploaded by Jon Fodor.

so I thought I ought to return to our trip to london as I promised to. so on sunday morning we woke on ollie's bedsofa and he has a swedish housemate called honey, seriously; "hi honey!". however we do not see honey and just roll around on the bedsofa and bring ollie tea in bed and then we go to the 24 hour bagel shop and get ourselves some bagels and then we go see the flower market and there is an accordion band and we see the device for placing a christmas tree in a net and see some ornamental cabbages and various bulb-sellers and then we wander through the streets of liverpool street and reaching the station set off for ealing where we meet anna's grandma who gives us tea and talks to us about cherie blair and the yoga centre and then takes us out for lunch and we wait for the bus. late bus. but we go on the bus in the end and it takes us to this place where we cross the road and overlooking the river we eat curry. I don't know what happened to me this weekend, it might have been all the walking, but I found myself on an eat frenzy and ate so much food once again. i swear I shall get fat if I am not careful. but we eat curry and talk to anna's grandma and then we have a cup of tea and stroll along the river where there are lots of old boats moored, some with dogs on them, one with a dog and an easel and plants and a whole house. we wander down the river and then gradually stroll back, where we go back to anna's grandma's house for a cup of tea, and then after a while where we look at photos and then we go and get on the train. anna's grandma is cool. but we go along to hammersmith and we call robbie and it turns out we should have got off at hammersmith because to go to robbie (what, THE robbie ennis? who works for the BBC? my god!) 's house we have to get off at bloody earls court. i hate earls court station. they never tell you what train to get on and how to get somewhere and you can't even smoke! in your frustration about getting lost. by some miracle we ended up on the right train and went to robbie's house, where he offered us coffee and then jumped over the wall into the shop and bought us beers, and showed us photos of all the people me and robbie went to school with naked. pictures of them from when they were grown up and put a guitar covering their 'presence' and e-mailed it to rob. and then he took us to his local pub where we drank ale. we then got on a bus and drove past the old lady anna used to look after and then got to liverpool st. station and paid 20p to go wee and then went to the vibe bar where tim was playing his gig. fee and tim and seamus and mooky and moses and sylvie and some people who knew neil balmer and some people who knew amy and some people I've blatantly forgotten were there. ollie gimp turned up in a bit. and then robbie bought us beer and we 'mingled' for a while and then there was a crackling which was the air conditioner about to set on fire. tim's band played and it was incredible, one chap was playing with some decks and the other fellow was playing with a laptop, whilst tim and this girl were mc'ing over the top. it was cool. i danced briefly in a mock-slinky style but I can't really hack the dancing.

the gig was amazing. most excellent. we ended up buying much expensive booze from the vibe bar, and then the brighton cru went home, and we brought robbie back to ollie's house, where we answered the big golden boat. it got later and later. robbie needed to cross half of london. ollie made a big pepperoni pizza but as me and anna didn't eat meat and robbie can't eat cheese he ate it all himself. eventually rob actually went home, apparently (in his words_; "Ive then gotta walk back to liverpool st. hop on a bus to oxford st... change busses and get on one going to notting hill gate stop for a kebab then walk from there. i could probably hang around for a more direct bus but i get too impatient sometimes... if i leave just after 1am that`ll take me till 2.30-3ish to get home.

but im sure ill get home just fine."

So it all worked out okay. We listened to some of Pulp's back catalogue, and Ian Dury and the Block Heads, before going to sleep again on the bedsofa.

I was meant to be at University for my final lesson and "drinks with the class" at eleven o clock but given that I've been neglecting my studies lately and am not even getting close to reading 25,000 words by Umberto Eco, let alone writing them about him, it didn't really surprise me that I didn't make it. We lay around in bed, eventually got up, Anna woke Ollie Gimp whilst I went out for bagels. We had tea, ate bagels, and then Ollie walked us to the station, to make our way back to Brighton. I think I fell asleep on the train. I can't remember. What happened that evening? Oh yes. Classic Rock.

"The Festive Season is drawing nigh ... I will blist you in your one eye ..."

Nativity Scene
Originally uploaded by Dolores Luxedo.

Wishing you the most excellent of Festive Seasons. It's the first year in about eight or nine that I haven't managed to make Christmas Cards. I feel ashamed, like I'm getting less productive as I age. The Nativity Scene photoshoot is the closest I've got.

But anyway, enough dwelling on Christmas past. Like a massive jug of mulled wine, the wave of Jesus's Birth flows towards us, hopefully un-reminiscent of a Boxing Day tsunami. I need to buy things for my family. I'm going to go walk up Hatfield Road.

Wishing you all good joy and fun tricks for this time of year, indeed.

Tapir and capybara pool party

Tapir and capybara pool party
Originally uploaded by zombie squirrels.

"The capybara or "capy", as it is known by American afficionados, is found predominantly in Southern Brazil, Northern Argentina, Venezuela and Uruguay. They are either hunted or, more recently, farmed as a source of leather and meat. Indeed, in Venezuela, the capybara is considered a delicacy, costing up to $4.50 a pound as of 1999. The pork-like meat is "tender and tasty yet low in fat", 1.5% versus up to 20% for beef. For at least one Venezuelan, it is "the most scrumptious dish that exists."

In the 16th century, capybara-addicted Venezuelans appealed to the Vatican to classify it as fish so that it could be eaten during Lent. After all, capybara can hold their breath while swimming underwater for at leats 5 minutes. They also have a slightly fishy taste. To the delight of Venezuelan Catholics, the church granted the request effectively associating capybara to Lent like Thanksgiving turkey."

Tapir and Capybara in the same picture! That's like finding a picture of Richard Branson and his kids swimming with dolphins folded up in your wallet when you really needed one.

i don't like the santa heads

i don't like the santa heads
Originally uploaded by bumpoowilly.

so here i am back in st albans

so here i am

so the poetry slam final was on monday. twitching, dedicated mouseheads and chips. into the polar bar. jimmy in a suit. angie in a top that said andy. the naked mystic caught a cold. comedy berkson narrators. i'm first. expensive guinness. gravel spills everywhere. cardboard cut outs and cussing. big bombs. buses. politics. heckling gently. forgotten lines. suddenly in bursts elemental. like a swooping bat hooded figure he makes his hip hop presence felt. never since run B.R.I.E. have cheese-themed MCs discuss quirky shops with such effect. much flustering. little wee tom is dragged down a flight of stairs. venue packed. gardens. immigrants. brigton hip hop mcs. flowers. glass eyes roll everywhere. emmental once again does his thing. me jimmy and emmental in grand final. american girls. funk drummers. too much fat, not enough sex. hot girls in yellow dresses. andy going crazy with a blue paint marker. onto the stage comes shiny mc shine. a verse about 1997 (it was the sonnet what won it). bowing under portillo's all-night-lips, fido and josie, where you are now, whoever you are now. free Tom Waits! finally "for is it so bad / that we can rock a mic / or an a4 lined pad" hip hopping it up against spoken word. 21 seconds over time. jimmy castigates unruly pupil tom. emmental considers the importance of music. victory for emmental! shiny is in second plaice but only because jimmy over-ran the time limit by about two and a half minutes. i'm in the semi-final in oxford. marvellous.

other than that, me, andy, tom and daniel taylor are going to form a meat-themed-gabba-breakcore-beatles-covers-band called The Meatles, featuring John Lenin (little wee tom), Ringo Stalin (andy james nelson), Senator Paul Mc Carthy (me) and Dorian Gray (daniel taylor). It's going to be amazing. Let it beef.

I'm in St. A right now. Various meatings with my extended family. Pints of ale in The Robin Hood with Paul Pepper (what, the Paul Pepper from Can't Snorkel?), Simon and Annie Hell. A train journey involving gushing fields of tweed and a broken schnechlier rauchbier. One for the road with weeping muttering relatives waving business cards and the Beard and Moustache championships. Small baby niece. Squashy quiche and prawn inquests. Dirty calendars. Ranting at poor little George and Chris doing their vegan washing. Oh, St. Albans.

Lady with Goat
Originally uploaded by Dolores Luxedo.

Grand Final. Chips. Salt. Pacing. Jimmy in a Suit. Small Person's Game. Pricy Guinness. Berkson Brothers Host. Genius. Blue Pen Door Check. Poetry Slam. First. Gravel. Cardboard Cutouts. Bombs. Politics. Kitkats. Girls. Then suddenly in bursts Emmental. Swooping around. Too much fat, not enough sex.

Grand Final

T. S. Eliot
Originally uploaded by Dolores Luxedo.

Dear god. It's happened. I'm shaking like a kid with ADHD high on inhalers and energy drink. Terrified. Wish me luck.

The Screaming Faun

Oh noes! My head is on fire!
Originally uploaded by Grim....

So this is how I ended up at the rowdiest poetry night I've ever been to. So me and Wee Little Tom went do the Great Eastern, where the staff were being educated in the tasting of wine. This involved eight Great Eastern staff, five regulars, Daniel Taylor, Alex Poofy, and Lou Carpy, all sipping from a great selection of wines, and tipping wines into a large silver bucket. Why, we shall discover later. So me and Little Wee Tom had a couple of glasses of wine, and Rosanne and Sam made long straws, and drank all the wine from the large silver bucket.

And then we set off to The Fringe Bar, for the launch of Get Lost, the Hammer and Tongue poetry magazine, which features one of my poems. (See 'Dumb and Explicit' for the poem itself). And so various people were there, including Alice (with large child in her womb) and Dom and Elizabeth and her friend Jo and Adam Cohen and Jimmy the Scotsman and a whole host of other people. And so I was performing two sets of poems, and so soon took the stage for the first one, and was greeted by great amounts of drunken heckling, most of which seemed to be coming from my three housemates, Ro-ro El-booshnell and Daniel Taylor shouting at me, and Tom performing on the 'Screaming Fawn', an accurate simulation of the sounds of a fawn in distress. Three poems on, I left the stage, but heckling continued until Jimmy laid down the law.

How does a poetry night become so rowdy? Some would blame the Great Eastern's free wine. I am sad to say that by the time the second set of poems came around I may possibly have also been slightly the worse for drink, as I leant over the mic and ranted poetry into the air. Apparently it went quite well, considering.

I'm in the grand final on Monday the 12th, upstairs at Polar Central, or 'The Lift'. Do come along if you get the chance.

trip to london, part 1 (nicky p stylee)

Brick Lane Restaurants
Originally uploaded by davidcharding.

so yesterday i brushed my teeth for way too long, i got a bit distracted and kept brushing and brushing absent mindedly and then the toothbrush was covered in blood. i can't believe i did that. i've done it once before but that was with an electric toothbrush.

so I worked in the pub on Friday night, which now involves an extra hour of real ale and belgian speciality beers for entheusiastic old men. and then Rosie and Daniel came into the pub after it was closed and i was sitting up at the bar with a pint of winter solstice and they had been to see the nightmare before christmas and were tripping and so rosie performed her five different kinds of whistle for my bosses and discussed beef jerky suppliers and daniel elaborated on how chef had told him that in australia the sun burns away the ears of farmers and dogs and cats have their ears amputated to save the pain of them later burning off; "get in quick.. ten years head start". we were going to go to the victory for a drink before three o clock due to its new late opening hours but as we stood on a traffic island half way to crossing to the lit up steps we sang "this is halloween" to each other and then it suddenly tipped down with rain so we thought more of it. anna has a picture of a mole emerging from the ground on her wall.

the next morning we got up early and went to sainsburies and bought mushrooms and bread and butter and hoops, and had a cup of tea and cooked breakfast and then went to the spar shop and saw matt and then went to the station and went to london.

we had a bottle of lilt on the train and it's the first time i've drunk lilt for about eight years but somehow it tastes familiar.

on the train we planned our sightseeing for the weekend. so as we alighted at victoria we got a map for the tourbus, and went to go to embankment in order to stroll along the river thames and possibly see areas that feature in the film four weddings and a funeral.

"Is it raining? I hadn't noticed."

but as we stepped out of embankment underground station there was a massive march about climate change, and within minutes of smoking a rolly and watching the march we were set about by brighton vegan cider waving masses, and then we saw erica who invited us to come march with them, but we had too much sightseeing to do. shame on me.

and colin jumped on our back and then they all marched on and we watched for a bit and then we wandered through the streets and went to trafalgar square

PHONE MAST DAVE IS THIRTY

where there are much fewer pigeons and instructions not to feed them, and wee tiny seagulls far from the sea. it rained but fortunately we had a classy wooden handled executive umbrella and we saw the lions

and then after trafalgar square we went down to see the houses of parliament and westminster abbey and saw the march march past once again, and then we decided that as it was raining, we should go somewhere indoors, and so eating peanuts on the underground we went to the british museum.

in fact we got very lost on the way to the british museum and somehow ended up walking away from it and past the bank of england and the london school of economics and gordon brown lying in the street, glass eye twitching

but eventually we found our way there past 19th century oriental booksellers and japanese hot table cafes. a massive circular centre library with blue padded desks and great walls of books and doorways that look like shelves of books. then an incredible room which contained great tall sculptures of wood and totems and a doorway in the shape of an eagle on top of a lesser eagle with horns on top of a baleen whale, whose mouth formed the doorway. and cheery papau new guinea faces, and dancing carnival suits, and flying wooden creatures. there were also many rooms with other exciting things, including ancient models of cows and whales and birds.

once we left the british museum, there were two kids who also had to leave because it was the last straw, but we went to a cafe and had a pot of tea, and then set off to find brick lane and ollie gimp. after wandering the streets around liverpool street station for a bit, we eventually found brick lane, where a man lured us into a resteraunt and we were soon eating curry and bringing our own wine. behind us, a quiz show was being filmed, whilst the statement of greatness from Prince Charles (who shares a birthday with boutros-boutros ghali, but there is a 26 year age gap! fancy that!) played repeatedly over the music system. a fine meal it was. leaving the resteraunt, we phoned ollie gimp, who met us outside the vibe bar, and took us to an upstairs bar for hip young things, where we bought cans of beer and saw skater ollie's poem on the wall and we exchanged pleasantaries and gossip with gimp over pounding house music. we meet evá, who is dating young ollie gimp, but then she sets off to go somewhere else. somehow we end up going to some kind of benefit gig where we drink bass shandy and find our way into the abandoned house in stanmer park, where we stay on ollie's big fold-out-bed-sofa, one of two

Multicolored strap sandals with worn heel cap

Multicolored strap sandals with worn heel cap
Originally uploaded by metrovoyeur.

"Red sole heeled soft sandals with a net of seven multicolored straps and a center linking piece necessary for maintaining the straps' uniformity. Shoe makers design these types of shoes with multiple color straps in order to produce a one for all ocassion footwear to match different dressing scenarios the woman consumer may encounter. Problem with these plural number of straps is that if only one becomes detached, it may be very difficult to reattach it and render the shoe useless aesthetically. Also notice the worn heel cap. Judging by the picture, this lady likes to put a lot of strain on her heels by playing with it while standing. She puts the weight on the heel cap and then starts to turn it repetitively like trying to drill a hole on the floor. This wears the heel cap faster than normal. By the appearance of the shoes, I deduce it is a slip on sandal. The pants doesn't allow me to see any ankle strap, but the structure of the frontal design makes it very imrpobable the presence of any ankle strap"

This is pure genius. The photographer here takes photographs of womens shoes, or just women walking around the street, and presents a detailed analysis of their foot (and other health) conditions, occasionally making guesses at their lifestyle, and what they might have been up to on that particular day. In other words, he's a roving stalker foot fetishist with a camera and a vivid imagination. Brilliant!

So once me and Anna Hell and Alex were standing outside The Horn in St. Albans when we were approached by three aggressive foot fetishists. These young and vaguely threatening young men approached us, and for a moment we thought we may be about to be set upon by the angry youth of St. Albans. However, all they wanted to do was get a look at Anna's feet. "Size five! Ohhhh. Oh yes. That's my favourite. Please can you take your shoes off for me."

And that's how Anna Hell ended up with syphillis of the foot.

melted recorder

So more people buy free range eggs than buy fair trade coffee. Funny, really.