2026/w39

i write this sitting in the kitchen sink but that’s okay because this is a motorcycle, quoi?

The beginning of the week was a very very long time ago now, and took no notes.

When we last spoke, i’d just accidentally dosed myself with magic mushrooms while trying to microdose. I met a seagull. He knock on my hotel room window. We became fast friends, we shared a dark xocolatl sea salt nut bar through the small anti-suicide crack in my hotel room window. He did not understand that the poetry of the moment was in its evanescence, and lingered longer than i liked. i closed the curtains to hide from him, and any time i reöpened them he was ready, peering. i hated him. When he was gone, i missed him.

The week was stressful and unpleasant. i enjoyed seeing some people. i enjoyed sitting on the couch with a few colleagues watching the Bake Off with a matrix display trying its absolute darndest to keep up generating subtitles and failing.

I was ill. I’ve been ill since Canada. I show only passing interest in convalescence. On my last night, the train train’t and i returned to my hotel room and slept in my clothes. In the morning, as much as we tried to avoid it, mimi and me went for a lovely coffee and then sat on the pebble beach at the edge of England and watched the waves. We got on separate trains going the same direction. Back to London.

A few months ago i attended a permacomputing club meeting. It was at the Tonk office, because SET was closed.

We’re introducing ourselves, clockwise from my 12.

At my 4, “i’m Addie; i’m an anthropologist; i’m a friend of Jenny’s”

Jenny _[whispering] tell them about the farm

Adelaide oh, i work on a farm

i’m, and like. ok. okay, so. so.

i am not in the headspace to write this part right now. partly because my teeth hurt from eating chicken. i should have written about it at the time. and i’m extraordinarily dehydrated.

ok. to be quick: i kinda stop the whole meeting to grill adelaide on her raw vegetables, and then when the meeting is over, we’re all round the corner at the Love Shack, and Goblin calls me to say someone left a pink bag behind. Everybody denies any knowledge of the pink bag. Somebody, maybe May, says i should ask addie and jenny who are outside Love Shack on the street leaving. i hang up on goblin and i step with alacrity out onto the street. i position myself within an area of personal space some might consider “too near” and say “i want to eat your vegetables” addie says “oh do you have instagram”

A few days later there’s a story and a post inviting all and sundry to come to the farm and eat the vegetables.

A few weeks later, distracted, anxious and fatigued i’m walking down a country road not far outside Lewes in the hot hot sun with a laptop in one hand and a san pel in the other trying to finish an idea that Dan Ingalls would later accidentally kill by encouragingly and sweetly and generously comparing it to something he built in 1984. I see one of those little Grey Wagtails standing on the road and greet it like an old friend (“you’re so far from water!”), though we’d only recently been introduced via MS Paint. There’s the gate, the grass, two lost people, a hill, a turn, a bouzouki (greek), an oak tree, a table like Alice in Wonderland, a slip in crumpled blue linen, a fig leaf, a pickle, a rice ball, a turnip, a dip, a chitter, a finger pointed indicating prior discussion of the matter, and a vague but unconvincing plan for another time later.

And then Berlin. And Canada. You were there for all of this. And in Montrèal especially. Suddenly there was music, because there was a chance. It’d only been a week, and of course a wedding.

A laptop in one hand and sentimentos peligrosamente tontos in the other. I mean, not that exactly. More like first light. Or… but there’d been a lot, the thrashing crashing, you remember.

And then there was return and weird misery, fear and sickness, shivering weak, sweating in the bedsheets, horrifying green circles over little faces, distance, embrace, collapse… and Imogen Heap was there for part of it. Close, and far, and open and close, and far away again.

Convalescence oscillations, large vibrations, bad vibrations. Eventually i felt good enough i got on a train and then the mushrooms and the seagull and the week and the pebbles and okay we’re here again. When i get to London i’m feeling somewhat better, Adelaide has text me feeling worse. I drop my jade green bag off and board the old mauve snake with a pocket full of Lemsip Max All-In-One. It has an extra ingredient, but a slightly less aesthetic box. A cold silver, harsh like aluminium, rather than a healing green.

The narrowboat is green, like the dark leaf of a white camellia. We drink vinegar out of teacups and watch the sunset (lilac and tangerine, sometimes grey with secret mint, tight light clouds). Chittered for a bit. She dresses like eternal flowers, you know those everlasting bouquets? They dehydrate the larkspur, cockscomb, dill and fennel, rosehip, roses, anyway. You know, chitter chatter in the sun and then i take a nice walk home with full moon and we’ve a plan. The flower market. For chili plants. For the roof. On Sunday. And move the boat to a waterpoint.

And the next day was Feeling of Computing. i emceed. It was really a very beautiful and special night. All kinds of little things that sometimes happen happened and it felt like nearly all of them. It was the best one we’ve done. Every single talk was so special to me. And it was so nice to see so many friends, and several of them on stage. May in particular was incredible. She was last, and spoke so beautifully and perfectly and made the whole night feel like it was about making stuff with your little paws, to learn, and to tell your friends. Placement of talks is so important, the last talk really gets to set the tone for the night by how conclusion creates narrative. (when there are many little details, how a story ends tells you what the story was about, and the details that don’t fit fade a little out). It was a little bittersweet, as it may well be the last FoC i’m able to be a part of. If that’s so, it could not have been a better goodbye. What beautiful people.

What happened on Saturday? I made a little computer program to find the midpoint between some starting points by public transit time. Did anything else happen? Oh! I had coffee with dear Brooklyn, and lunch with dear River, and collected Cyrus’s suitcase from Newspeak House. And then i curled up in my little basket and went to sleep.

In the morning I wake so bright eyed and bushy tailed. Flower market. For chili plants. For the roof. And then to move the boat. Flower market. 9:20am. Limes for sale. Lemons. Coffee first. I’m not sure how much to write. All the details are so sharp, nothing is in the background faded. They do have chili plants, normally only cut flowers, the supplier made a mistake. Magic, kismet, cosmic business. Winter heathers, chili peppers. Olives, maybe, dehydrated larkspur. Adelaide leaves with cabbage, mint and chili plants and some pretty little flowers.

The last lady, boat lady, her plants have died on the roof. We walk back. Occasionally Adelaide stops and says something like “i have to pick up some fennel” as though she were popping into a Tesco, before hopping into a bush.

Dogs, a little song, it’s so easy that i’m overwhelmed; boat, engine won’t start.

Pot the plants, soil in the fingernails, chili bright and chili happy.

Friendly little cabbage.

Nice boy next door boards and he goes into the hole with many electric snakes, and the engine clicks but will not start.

Click click click.

A man on a bike with a child on a bike goes into the hole with many electric snakes. Noises, instructions, turning keys.

Click click click.

We make new plans, we’ll go and we will walk with empty bottles and fill them at the park’s taps.

Click click click.

Unexpectedly, vroom.

And suddenly the movie Speed. The engine’s going, we can move but if we stop we’ll never start. Needs a part. Tomorrow, call me. He has my number, I have to go, things of this nature.

Black rope, blue rope. Chair in left lateral recumbent. On the roof, toss me that, pass it over plant by plant. Blue rope, black rope. Pull and easy, pushing out. Nose to left. Twist around the wrist and pull, ease it in. Knot around the mooring ring. Hop like Frogger, boat to boat. Through the house and out the front. And we’re off.

We try to turn, the space is tight, the wind’s against us. Another plan, a different spot. Turn again, the wind’s against us. Shouting down the boat 1 word in every 9 can make the distance over motor sounds. Plans change. Once in a while i run through the house to deliver a message or a hug or a wishing of good will. And occasionally it’s beautiful. And occasionally there’s a little table with two brown chairs, or a father with his daughters on a bridge. “Look, a house! And there’s a garden on the roof of the house!” and i tell him “We just got the chilis today!” and wish him well and wave at the girls and then on other occasions my wrist is twisted crushed between the nose of the boat and another boat i’m trying not to pierce. The wind’s against us. I pop my little legs off and push against the broadside of one to turn us, and above my feet there is an open window, a family eating toast.

I’m smiling the whole time. Everything that happens. The things that are hard are hard in a way that feels reasonable, explainable, tangible and occasionally wet.

We’re trying to get to the further point, get water by the marina. A nice lady’s on her roof with a paintbrush, tells us we might like to try again tomorrow. The marina’s where the water is. The marina’s closed on weekends. Tomorrow you can call them, and they’ll sort you with a slot. We move again and plan to moor, a man with a blocked engine says he needs that spot. Soon after, we find ourselves an open stretch where no one lives and park it. Two nice boys, one called Max, come and help us out by catching ropes. I run up and down the boat tying and untying, and we pull in and we tie up. And we’re beat. There’s a little cafe on the corner. A stranger walking by kindly lets me know we’re somewhere close to Tottenham. It’s interesting in a boat that you can move house by surprise. Couple wee bottles of San Pel, and a little sit and a chat, and that’ll be be me away off down the road.

Tomorrow I’ll wake up and do a day of work. At lunchtime i’ll be meeting with Agnes which will be a delight. In the afternoon I’ll hopefully have thought enough about the 12 months that i can speak eloquently about them. It’s lb’s birthday this week, happy birthday sweet lb. Tuesday I have booked in 3 events, and hope I will attend no more than 1. But it’s a good week for keeping busy.

What are you doing for the new moon? Would you like to board a train for 40 minutes, and another train for 40 minutes, and then a bus for 10 and walk for 40 more so that we can lay on our backs on Bignor Hill and look up in the sky and see the Milky Way?