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.

it's gonna be a cold night!

had a nice moroccan meal last week. then there was monday. unrelenting monday. some throat infection from brighton came to make me sick with it. it spread to my teeth and gums by wednesday. wednesday was the first day that i felt a little better than the day before, but now it was in the teeth and gums and earholes. zipper got sick too, and i made lemsip.

the new passport arrived. it's nice. hard plastic on the photo page, easier to open to the photo page. and i'm peeking through a little hole.

what else? nice chicken. ingredients from the butcher and the village fruit and veg. there was a mouse in her house. text me telling me she was scared. next time i went over she was wearing a matching "i love mice" pyjama set. tops and tails.

a little wine today. busy trains. sometimes whatever way i'm dressed there's dudes mean mugging me on the train all day like they want me to give them a chance to hurt me. i prefer that to the times they look at me like i'm a joke.

mood: erratic, changeable. the good things are very good, the bad things are quite dreadful. maybe i'm doing everything wrong. how hard are good things supposed to be?

more to write but no more vigor, hardihood nor spunk. no get up and go. this'll have to do. hope you have a good week.

the world is over but it's a-ok!
because i kissed a pretty girl yesterday

monday. again my fucking guts. feels like i’m being reupholstered. it’s cold as fuck in this house. can’t find the thermostat. had a dream, i'd finally found a useful organization app, but i'd signed up in such a way it kept dead-naming me when i logged in. Hello Shadows! had to break into a government facility through the gym locker room. a little hazy.

feeling ill, throwing up, a stomach bug? the day off, can't get too far from the bathroom, can't focus. ring ring, ring ring. back in london. okay, okay. well, i'll forget about it. it'll be okay. better this way. better this way.

okay. shower, breakfast, make-up, clothes.

leave early, arrive early, green valley, around the block. a handsome young arab gentleman stops me outside the restaurant and gestures for me to take off my headphones. i take off my headphones. he fingerguns, points me up and down with bost index fingers, "i love your outfit. very cool". i say thank-you and i love your outfit too. okay. so i have the arab vote. that's all i need. 4 mins. maybe this is goodbye. but it’s dinner? is dinner goodbye?

i give her some gifts, she has some for me too, we eat lentil soup, we hold hands and we cry and i say everything i wanted to say, it's so easy, it's fun to talk, we lean over table and we kiss, we split the bill, the bill is £44.44 (so that’s £22.22 each), we barely touched our dinner, we’ve never left so much food uneaten before, we walk around and talk about music and politics and laugh and laugh and she is smart and pretty, and we leaned against a little post and stare into each others eyes a long time. someone wolf whistles from a passing bicycle. someone rolling past in a chair shouts "kiss her, kiss her!" and she kisses me and we go home

you know when you're smiling and you can feel it strange and foreign in your face like you haven't used your smile muscles in a minute?

oh, i found the thermostat. goodnight.

choo-choo. and zoo-zoo. and choo-choo. and conf. and belgian fries. and choo-choo.

met a nice lady on the train. she's from small country. she reads tarot. never for herself. she's from small country. very sweet, very gentle. i enjoyed her company in the 1g network area between there and here.

bourbon, curry, justified. timothy olyphant is so pretty. beautiful day. beautiful night. beautiful day. vashti bunyan, train song.

seem to have caught a throat bug at the ffconf. i'm like a super-getter. i'll catch anything everywhere.

just so you know, guys. we're closing in five minutes.