I remember a time I met an old friend from IRC in person for lunch at a Japanese place in London near the "humble objects made of clay" gallery in the Autumn. After we'd left and we were walking home I was surprised to learn he used a Mac now; Kat and I had started using Macs towards the end of the channel's life and this man was quite strongly opposed to the whole idea. I asked if he was still using Emacs and he laughed like I'd reminded him of something we did at school, like I'd asked if he still plays hopscotch. "Sick of my config breaking," he'd said.

Last week I recall I reported to you from my first bed in Tuscany. Some hundred thousand steps ago, all uphill. I neglected to report my experience on the aeroplane. "Is there no end to the indignities I must face?" I'd asked my reflection. "Now I see that I am to contend with nasal hairs. The blotchy red skin around my nose and forehead, and the deep caverns around the eyes that stare back at me from this aeroplane bathroom mirror..." Moments before I'd been scolded by the man in blue and tartan for merely holding a vape.

    "What is that in your hand, sir?"

The "sir" always unexpected, cutting like a knife. I looked so pretty in a patterned jumpsuit and my makeup was perfect by aeroplane standards. And only minutes had passed since I'd valiantly stepped into an occupied aisle so that this gentleman could pass to the front of the plane and he had said "thank you so much" and i'd thought that we were on good terms.

"Oh! I'm just holding it."
    "You can't use that on the plane, sir"

So many "sir"s. Rapid fire from some people. South Asian men in cafes are the most fond of it, a sort of machine-gunning tactic they take with a "sir," at the start of every sentence and a "sir?" at the end, wrapping every question or statement in a kind of sir-shaped parenthesis. Why this is the case has its own unnatural weight that seems to compound the stress of it.

Sometimes the best moment of my day is a rotund Turkish man in a grocery shop risking a "ma'am" following a long moment of hesitation between the greeting and the honorific. Yet I'm always "sir" when I'm in trouble. And these tired red eyes are locked on themselves, with the peripheral focus on this black hair protuding from the olfactorial. Do I need a tool for this now? I tried pinching at it with my fingernails but I can't seem to get it pinced. I'll have to conduct the act with tweezers when we land.

At least they have Worcestershire Sauce for spicy tomato juice on board. That really puts the "British" in "British Airways".

The week in Italy was wonderful, though steppy. So sad when we fight, everything would be okay if we could talk to each other but we can't reach each other. At those times having holes in your personality the shape of the prongs in the other's is not the usual comfort, in fact it is deeply sickly. But it seems to get easier over time, as we learn that we're still there afterwards. As in all things, over time, the depths are not so deep and the time there not so long.

Shisha, taglietelle, creamy sauce, coffee, bad beds, good walks, some of the coldest days and warmest memories of my life. We went to see pulp fiction at a beautiful cinema with a stained glass ceiling and a bookshop in the middle of it. We scared ourselves silly in Lucca. Please put curtains on the windows, otherwise they become the kind that faces look in and haunt poor little animals like me. i read Ta-Nehisi Coates's The Message during the trip, and recommend it fervently to any readers or writers reading. We're sober now. I'd been looking forward to enjoying a nice Tuscan red but instead we decided to give up drinking alcohol for the rest of our lives.

I remember that time I was minding my own business working in my mother's shop, and then the boy beside me said "look at this" and showed me a video on his phone of someone chainsawing a live pig in half. I think it was a Sony Ericsson W910i.

She had a return flight to Florence, but was going over to the coast during the trip. Her flight ended up dropping her in Pisa and BA gave her a taxi to Fiorenze. I had two one ways. I drop in Florence, but I fly home from Pisa. It turned out in such a way that I brought her to LCY with all my bags in tow, then went off to Stanstead for my own flight. She dropped in Pisa, me in Florence, then we met on the Arno near the hotel. Then in Pisa she brought me to the airport, all her bags in tow and rushed back off to Fiorenze. I landed in Heathrow, then zipped off down to Gatwick to meet her as she landed.

In Pisa we stopped on the river and "it's so nice to see Arno again. haven't seen him since Fiorenze. he spent the morning with us, when i first got in from the plane station" and off we walked to a restaurant that turned out to be closed.

Everything in Tuscany is closed most of the time. If something appears to be open, you'd best check Apple Maps and Google Maps. If they both say "open now" then there is a 75% chance it really will be, unless it's a Wednesday or Monday in which case the chances go down to around 10%.

It's hard to find a restaurant that isn't selling tagliatelle ragu but when you do and you're confronted with powdered speck and pig's blood and cow's guts and chicken gizzards and do you know what carbonara is just delicious actually isn't it or let's go to a tratoria.

My feet. My legs. No wonder these people have never won a war. But I had a wonderful time in Italy and I'd love to go again.

The rest of my life is fine. We had dinner at Imad's tonight. It's bed time now, and it's Christmas time too. Almost time to head to the butcher to pick up some sausage meat and the grocer will have parsley and rice crumb, enough for grandfather's stuffing.

tough one this one. it's a little nippy here in Toscana. 5°C and Drizzle.

let me tell you: life is good, but there are some drawbacks. i'm enjoying it, but i'm not sure i could recommend it to anyone else. it's good, though. it's good.

my notes for this week start with the note "the thing to know about Zonker is she's out of my league." and a meditation on how it has a way of crumbling the bricks. do you like the word crumble when used as a verb. and if holy people don’t reïncarnate wont earth eventually be hell

i passed a brass band playing outside the church, and stopped and listened, and then i ate a battered sausage with chips.

though it is nice to be in a loving relationship i must admit it has been difficult to adjust to the loss of favour with the checkout girl in my local grocer. we’d developed something of a rapport. nothing much, a little back and forth and whatnot. pleasantries. but since i entered the place with someone things have been markedly frigid.

when i was a kid "frigid" was a word like virgin but for someone who had never kissed. it looks it's mostly used to mean someone disinterested, but in northern ireland it meant someone who'd never kissed even if they wanted to.

on the train platform i eavesdropped on a group of Grade L Lads.

he’s all face no chat. all face. no chat. he’s gone to budapest, met a bird, first thing he does is he thinks "i'll send a text to the group chat." he’s a prick mate.

— he’s not a prick but he looks like an IT Professional

if you’ve got a chance to shag a single mum every wednesday why are you saying no? nah nah nah, she was nice mate, she was nice. show him the picture. see? she’s a dish. she comes home every wednesday and that’s all she wants. she’s a dish. BELLA!!! if i have to describe her she was 20 years on nora kensington with blonde hair. she was a good looking girl

it’s torture that nature made us love in different ways. to expect love the way we show it, and show it how we want it, and then to love people who love different.

“you tried to kiss him actually” said the little voice on the far side of the phone. and i was a ghost haunting my own body. something's happened again, and not for the first time. it's going to be okay, it's going to be a lot of work.

on Saturday i left Zonker at the toy airport, then I went downstairs for a long yellow and a flat white. i made a little music. why is it so hard to get out of airports on foot? just give me a little path.

the DLR replacement bus has wide sills on the windows wide enough to prop your arm. i pop my arm up there. comfortable. i nod approvingly. small details like this can really make a day feel worth taking on. they didn’t take any payment. maybe the DLR really is supposed to be free.

i'm in tuscany now. it's been a long couple of days. i drank tomato juice with worcestershire sauce on the plane. i a gluten free pizza. everything is going to be okay, as long as we get off the sauce.

i'm exhausted, tomorrow is the hedgehog's birthday. you know what that means.

the laptop nearly fell on my face twice, i keep falling asleep typing. i'll read a little (i just finished a good book that Sunbird recomended called "Whale Music". i really enjoyed it. now i'm ta-nehisi coates's the message). i'll see you again. i wrote something good down in my notebook i wanted to type up, but it'll have to be next week.

i love you, i'll be thinking of you as i eat cheese. the night music has started playing in my mind, louder than light or anything. i'd better get out of here before the whole dream kicks in.

Oh yes, it's nippy! There is a marked spot of the old nip to the air, wot?

We took dinner this week on board The Cheese Barge. A place of much merriment and cheese. The curried curds are marvelous, and the cheese boards are well accompanied with pickles and jams. Afterwards, exiting the Barge, we was cutting right across the canal's walkway to the bench that lies opposite. A whiny-voiced cyclist of the newt-watching variety called out "watch where you're going!" an inch from my ear. He had a mean turn in his tone that I didn't like a bit, and so I told him "why don't you watch where you're going, mate?" He didn't much approve of this, observing "f-f-f-uck you, you little fucking shit!!!" stuttering and huffing like he'd been hit in the belly with a brick. I should have liked to slap him into the water with a copy of The Highway Code.

The next day I found myself in Selfridge's. It's a difficult moment in adult life when one looks at a Christmas card in a department store and thinks to oneself "that speaks to me. i see myself in that." On my exit I saw a beautiful blonde woman in a powerful suit raise her hand and seem to summon a black cab out of the thin air. Then she jumped right into the back as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world.

Zaina and I were having dates for breakfast. She spoke up. "I think these dates are pipless". Having just removed a pip myself I offered "oh, they're not". She was assertive, "mine is!" and then proceeded in no short order to bite right down on the pip with her front teeth. "I see," she said, with a tone as though the pip had made a new argument worthy of consideration, but not one that was immediately convincing.

On Wednesday evening Christabel and me attended Anora at the cinema. A 3/5 97 minute movie that went on for two and a half hours for some reason. Christabel had asked the staff if we could drink two large cups of boiling hot milk, but they hadn't the facilities. On Thursday it was a delightful dinner at borough market's mallow with becky. becky told the staff it was our birthday, and they brought us a little card and some chocolate truffles to celebrate our gigasecond. My gigasecond was a few megaminutes ago, but as our natal recurrences are so near to one another's, and what with the pandemic had preventing my giga s' jubilee being marked by the appropriate corroberee we felt that it could be justified. I brought Lucky home the leftovers, and they were well recieved. They do impressive things with a vegetable over there.

The birthday is coming up next week. As is the Tuscan outing. I prepared for her a practical gift, but not one without sentiment. A new backpack that she wanted badly, stuffed up with Tuscan stuff and a compact disc of Christmas songs by her favoured performer. Related: I regret to report that a £35 bottle of wine really tastes like a £35 bottle of wine.

The time has come to drink a little bourbon and read for a few hours before making a little music. My father has kindly sent over the MRS-1608 MultiTrak recording i used to capture the music i made as a teenager. I'm going through its 105 projects to find if there is anything on there worth salvaging. Unfortunately at this period I was singing with some absurd accent. I'd always liked singers like Syd Barrett, Formby, Chas & Dave, those who sang in their own vernacular. It seems my tenderfooted homage was to copy the aesthetics of this (by aping their accent) rather than the essence of it, as i do now, singing in my own speaking voice. It's the sort of thing that would be fascinating, perhaps even sweet, if it were to be early recordings of anyone else but quite agonizing to listen to when you are the one on the tape. So that shall be my day: pressing play and wincing.

I hope that your week is lovely, despite its mysteries and limitations. If all goes to plan, my next transmission should reach you from la provinca di Firenze. The glass is half empty when you're drinking, half full when you're pouring.

week #47, what a good week week 47 is.

optimism.

it was a hard week, but effective, a teacher. the end of the week wasn't hard at all. rewarding, rewards, rewarded.

we connected the world
far away places got so much closer
but the neighbourhood got further away

i'm extremely sleepy. subi came over on frinight. met up in the street, a little bourbon, a little walk. it's getting to be very nippy out, isn't it? little wander around the wine shop. big long talk.

long day, good day, out to town for koshari and backpacks and mystery. making some plans, drinking bourbon on the underground. back home i cooked a bolognese with the leftover wine and red lentil spaghetti noodles. quite nice.

today picked up a second generation ipod touch for £25 at the CeX and i've loaded up some of my iTunes library onto it. going to a show tonight. too sleepy for the week to start again yet. it's exhausting trying to grow and change. don't know how or why anyone does it.

i've banned podcasts, television and movies when alone. can't have that pneumatic drilling my skullbones into the plastic brain where the spaces should be.

now i know how joan of arc felt. as her 2nd generation ipod touch (£25 at CeX) started to melt.