Word of the day is threnody, stressed with the rhythm of melody, a poem or song of mourning or lamenting.

let’s

We’ve started using Things 3 to keep track of our To-Do lists. It’s fun using a pretty app. it’s really good just having a single place to put things instead of having decision paralysis every time i think of something.

blood soaked horses

a number of horses were on the loose in central london. there was a white one and he was drenched in blood. here’s how the headline on the live post by the independent changed over time:

• ‘Number of horses’ on the loose in central London - as one appears to be covered in blood
• Blood-soaked runaway cavalry horses charge through London as soldier injured
• Blood-soaked Household Cavalry horses loose in central London injuring people and hitting cars
• Three soldiers among those injured as blood-soaked cavalry horses rampage through city
• Runaway horses in serious condition ‘but still alive’ minister says
• London horses – live: Runaway horse Quaker’s condition ‘not looking good’ as Vida returns to stables

now, ignoring the transition to a somewhat accusatory tone directed at the horses, it is true that that one white horse was called Quaker as in tremble at the word of god which evokes Revelation “and behold a white horse, clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word Of God”. the only thing john the revelator got wrong is that Christ was not upon the horse, Christ was the horse and he trampled on some soldiers. There were 3 soldiers and one non-soldier taken to hospital for horse injuries. Their names have not been released so until we know for sure it’s best to operate with the assumption their names are Conquest, War, Famine, and the non-soldier Death.

brindisa

we went out for a wonderful spanish meal at Brindisa, LB to celebrate the schengen appointment and eat chorizo. great dinner. the beer hit a little too hard. i had a small chat with some irish people who were pretending not to be irish. i noticed my old vape shop has been replaced by an independent french patisserie which seems like the wrong way round for how these homecomings go and is quite pleasing. we met luke blaney, one of our planet’s strangest people, for a little empanada at porteña.

rooftop cinema

went to the rooftop cinema with dani to watch clueless. dani was a little late so i got our blankets and found some seats. dani is recovering from whooping cough because dani is a chimney sweep and/or news boy from victorian london and/or four year old child.

tell you what Peckham is wild these days. i moved out of there a few years ago and i thought i knew what direction it was going. lot of people who would’ve moved to shoreditch if the rent wasn’t high moving in. so i thought oh i know where this is going, but i’ll tell you what i was wrong. that place has the highest freak density in london, and i mean that in a good way. all kinds of wild people going around. now there’s bouncers at every bar because more students are drinking there, but there’s also man in the street making barbecue in an overturned barrel listening to reggae. in need of further analysis.

On the train home was a guy trying to get to “the next big town” after Lewisham. “Woolwich!” When I was reading out the steps when I’d got out of the bathroom and I read him the steps “Woolwich! Does this stop there?” And I checked and it does. He had a djembe and a few other drums and bells and he stank of piss and had bright clothes and he looked me right in the eyes with his icy blues and said thankyou and he bumped my fist. That kind of older red-sknned white man with close white hair covering his whole head but thin and spare and not dense. Once you’ve given someone time who everyone else is trying to ignore those other people won’t meet your gaze any more. Did I taint myself or do they just not know how to act? I’ve never known.

You cast a very interesting silhouette. that’s OK fox, I’m not here for you. trying the crackled path leading out from the cathedral to my home

While i was on the toilet zaina slapped me in the face with £500 cash and knocked my glasses off.

night mare

this night i had one of the strangest and most persistent nightmares of my life. we were all in a war and we could all cast these magic spells to attack and harm and maim our opponents and there was a crowd going around who’d figured out how to make us cast all our known spells on ourselves and they were much more powerful than us. i kept realizing it was a nightmare and waking up and being like “phew!” but then i’d fall back to sleep and be back in the same nightmare as though it was not a dream but just another reality that was running alongside the one in my waking life.

saturday after payday

a long day but a lot of fun. started out with a grand perigrination across the island of england from lewisham, south greenwich to a business park in north to eat an incredible lebanese breakfast at beit el zaytoun. house of olives. a sort of fairuz theme restaurant on the canal. i’d never been before but when we stepped down by the canal i realized i’d been right next to it a bunch of times as it sits on the Grand Union facing the Grand Junction Arms, a place i am by accident several times a year next to the mcvities biscuit factory. with the bakerloo line closure and Harlesden closed we may have picked the worst day of the year to make that journey, but a 2 hour morning constitutional (walk, not poop) puts you in the right frame of mind for a breakfast for two that could feed a family of five.

we walked to north acton, got some documents printed by the guy who owns anakin skywalker in star wars episode 1, and took a choochoo train to TCR where we visited the graveyard of the british invasion and got some stationery and saw a girl being carried around on a ladder ladder by several gay men and 1 straight man in a kilt and bought some undergarments and ate mexican food at the first mexican restaurent in the UK and drank beer and ate koshari and drank beer and ate nuggets and pork buns and drank beer and went to zoozoo’s with big dreams of packing up some little boxes for her move and getting a 2am Bolt (cheaper and fast) but maybe we’ll just lie down for a little bit cozy for a few minutes before we get started and oh we’re waking up and oh it’s 7am and i have to rush off to get a washing machine and none of the packing has happened.

now, this looks delicious:

you know those weird pubs that don’t know who they are? house music and pub grub… pickled eggs and 909 hats shouldn’t be in close proximity, it is unhygienic

sunday machine

and now i’m at home waiting for that washing machine that hasn’t been delivered yet. made a breakfast of humous and a corn tortilla with cheese and za’atar and now i’m drinking beer and waiting for the new washing machine.

i can’t wait to have a washing machine with a countdown clock on it and one that doesn’t leave a strange smell! i am less enthuastic about the bluetooth icon i’ve seen on the washing machine in the pictures, but we’ll see. maybe it’ll be fun and i’ll be able to link it with Shortcuts.app (my favourite programming language) to have a certain song play when the wash is done and automatically add a reminder to empty the machine!

i’ve got a thing now where every time i come home my phone automatically adds a reminder to type up all my paper notes into my digital notes.

click here to join my secret society The Meeting of the Blood-Soaked Horses.

• 🌄 sunrise 5 a.m. British Summer Time
• 🌇 sunset 8 p.m. British Summer Time
• 9℃ and Mostly Clear

old business

i forgot to mention it last week, but look at this super cute collage postcard lb made and sent over

new business

little springs

we have no ruffled grouses nor spring peepers here but there were plenty of moths. zoozoo was staying the week and we cleaned out the everything. i realized the masa harina incident never truly ended because around the corner in that haunted cupboard there was an unseen organic granola full of breeding henries. we have since destroyed their habitat and defeated them, it would seem, for good.

schengen area

imagine a visa application system where you had to have tickets for a flight and hotel before you apply for the appointment to ask for permission to use the flight and hotel, and where very few of the visa appointments are given out every month, and where they are snatched up quickly, and then you only get 90 days if you’re lucky. eventually we managed to get an appointment and have accidentally booked a trip to spain in june.

macedonia

in other news, if you have a UK Biometric Residence Permit you can visit Macedonia for 15 days without a visa this year only apparently.

https://www.mfa.gov.mk/en/page/432/visa-requirements-for-entering-the-republic-of-north-macedonia

All foreign nationals who are holders of valid USA, UK-British, and Canadian visas, with multiple entries can enter the Republic of North Macedonia without requiring a short-stay (visa C) issued from the Republic of North Macedonia. The length of the stay at one entrance should not exceed 15 (fifteen) days, while the duration and the validity of the USA, British, and Canadian visa should be 5 (five) days longer than the planned stay in the Republic of North Macedonia. This decision is of a temporary character and shall be in force from 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2024.

good news for roasted red pepper fans.

other business

i didn’t take any notes this week, so it’s hard to retrace my steps. i think we mostly just tidied and tidied and tidied. the apartment looks lovely. and i cooked lots of nice meals. roasted red pepper and feta dip; and curry; and lemon and garlic and olive oil and butter codfish; and keto-ejjeh; a beef sausage tomato and roast pepper casserole; many cheese flatbreads, one very pizza; labneh. a nice fat omelete this morning with grilled bacon and philadelphia.

i’m reading the john dolan book, enjoying his surprisingly parallel struggles as he sees the world by accident. it’s good company to know you can be 60 years old and still not have your shit together but survive and eat mcdonalds.

market business

we went for a nice walk today to the market. then to see where the marathon began, it was noisy. we stopped in at a coffee shop and bought some cute amber glass cups and saucers and new filters and came home and some nice coffee with lunch that was leftover dinner. it’s funny how all those marathon strangers peering up at the tops of the buildings on my local high street like it was some foreign land made it all feel new again. with april threatening to shine a summer sun and take its clouds in the days feel long and hopeful, like they could have a joy in them.

well, have a nice week. plenty more. plenty more.

lovely week, really

zoozoo was over at my rabbit hutch for a few days, and on tuesday we went out to slade green to collect my . it was fun riding the train and drinking canned beers. the instrument is great fun! very playful.

she had a friend coming over for Eid so left on Wednesday morning, we had kind of a strange night but it was just a lot of pressure from feeling like there isn’t much time to make a lot of big decisions.

more silly things on this website

i spent some of my free time this week adding a micropub endpoint so i can write posts from (for instance) IA Writer.app or Drafts.app on my phone and computer.

i’m having a lot of fun making little icons and preparing for interactive and art posts. hopefully soon i’ll actually have some art inside me again to put in them. but for now it’s a lot of fun laying brick.

sneaking through the night

i took a bolt at about 2am on friday morning, intending to stay for only a few hours or so. but then i stayed until sunday. i met her friend Sam, who is lovely and interesting. we all made vine leaves together on saturday for workingman’s eid.

they were extremely delicious. we used laila’s recipe from The Gaza Kitchen. that’s a really great book that intertwines eloquent and vivid recipes with eloquent and vivid stories of gaza. the potatoes were like lemons.

we said our goodbyes on sunday morning. zoozer and i made plans for the next day, she’s coming to visit for a week.

sunday lounging scrounging

the dlr is in fact NOT RUNNING today which means it is not possible to travel between any two places in London. so we’re gonna stay here another night before we do our little choo-choo + chee + zoo-zoo experiment of living together at my place for a week or two to see if we’d like to life together at my place for a month or three while we bank dollar after dollar on Half Price Rent.

i made a delicious tangy curry with freshly stewed tomatos and everything else in the fridge. and a cucumber yoghurt sauce with all the juice a lemon had and a little vinegar. it was extremely delicious. freshly stewed tomatos really bare almost no resemblance to canned chopped tomatos.

other matters

weather forecast says

🌞 ¿where is picnic? 🌞

why do wifi 7 routers look like that? like they were sent here by an alien race of spider people?

well, i think it’s time that we all had a little hazy jane and watched an episode of lodge 49 don’t you?

have a little think about biggly-winks.

xxx

hello!

i spent most of the week’s spare time porting my blog from wordpress to eleventy. there’s a lot left to do, still . but it works really well and i have a lot of fun new features that make it easier to post individual posts that are completely independent pieces of computer art. so that’s exciting. it’s easier to exclude stuff from the home page and/or the main feed now too, so i can reduce the amount of noise for rss feed users while still providing all the extra info needed for a microsub/micropub user.

hehe

i zoomed off in the middle of the night on monday and creeped into zoozer’s room to say hello, and then we spent the week together at her place. it

on thursday got something working at work which i didn’t expect to get to work on thursday.

on friday i though of an old friend of mine. country boy. very funny. great drinker. ended up in a ditch at big al’s festival. drew sileage, loved tractors, “are ye bai?”. an all round good lad. we spent a lot of time together for 8 months 14 years ago. i looked him up. to see if he has an on-line presence. a lot of my favourite people from back then, back there, they don’t. not at all. not even mentioned when you go on google. i thought, i’ll look him up and maybe i’ll send him a little message and get in touch if he’s on the web. see what his life is like now. turns out he’s dead. washed up on the shore of a lough two years ago. it’s strange mourning someone two years after their death. he’s two years in the ground but he’s just now dead for me. anyway, rest in peace m.m. you absolute mental case. i miss you and wish that you were not dead.

you’ll enjoy reading this really excellent article by Zea about gaza and family and being born away from home

i opened a bottle of wine with a shoe on saturday. i’ve always wanted to do that ever since i heard about it but never did. it reminds me of that time me and marty smashed the top of a wine bottle off with the garden wall in a street in belfast and drank wine with shards of glass all night. that same night i’d spent our bottle of bombay sapphire gin, smashed it into pieces in the street before we had even a sip. not on purpose. i was on the telephone with gloria melafuji and she called me her little mango and it slipped out of my hand like on television.

if you know the tonic you can listen for the third.

sorry, thanks!