under another sun

An unhurried morning. I got up early and wrote before Lorraine was awake. All the driving had caught up with her.  Later I had chats with Mas and then Janet this morning. Deciding to go to the supermarket took some effort this afternoon. Lorraine and I slipped off, after a cheeky gold sofa doze, for a nice evening with Anton and Brian coming down to the Hare and Hounds where we met them for a cheeky drink. Because it was so noisy in the Hare and Hounds, we went across to Circus Circus and sat outside in the balmy summer heat and I diced with a gouty devil and had a couple of beer. Good to see a cheery well looking Brian, who we'd not seen since our wedding.  He had recently been to Japan so we compared notes. He found there were two Japanese people, the daytime ones and the nighttime ones. Anton looking relaxed and sun-tanned from sitting on Brighton Beach, and reading (at last) the marvellous  A Passage to India . Anton and I comparing photos of ourselves when we w...

Vodka in the rain Up early and working hard on some conceptual branding work for a Dutch Vodka. This went rather well, and had the bulk of the job done by lunchtime. A delighted client, and a few calls during the afternoon, but all well. Typically the thought they liked best was the one I had about five minutes after taking the brief. All this meant I was manacled to my desk, and only ran out to my 'larder', the Marks and Sparks in the station. The lovely rain fell steadily for the first time in a while, Calliope spent a good deal of time indoors and looking for trouble; rushing me unprovoked from across the room and wrapping her forelegs around my shins, getting a mouthful of trouser and shaking her head savagely, when not attempting to rest her head on my shoulder when typing. (It was me typing, not the cat.) I haven't heard the mysterious toad croak today. I thought that's what they did in the rain. Opened my window to listen for it, and looked down at a man in the T...

Beads and bearded ladies I like looking at beads of water on plant leaves or on duck's backs. The idea of work is like that for me at the moment, liable to slide away the second I think about it. It is with mixed feelings then I have accepted a random commission from an outfit in Shepherd's Bush. The good thing is that I can do it from home and it will be complete before my holiday. Went to the gym today. My arm was a bit sore, especially a tendon in the crook of my right arm. After exercise, listening to A Passage to India while I did so, it loosened it all up. In the evening however it seized up painfully again. Just loving my rereading of A Passage to India . The masterstroke of pivoting the novel about a half understood moment of confusion is extraordinarily successful. In the evening off to see Beth and Mark run through the show they are taking to Disneyland Paris. Chatted to Richard and Glenda, Mark's parents before an exhausting-looking twenty minutes of highly chor...

O soothest sleep Decided, as there was nothing pressing, to declare today a PK holiday. Pottered down to the gym, ironed 10 shirts, organised and folded everything in my airing cupboard, and saw Lorraine briefly in the afternoon as she was working from home. I'm craving sleep. I want to drift my boat into a lake of sleep for several weeks. But had an extra hour today, and when not sleeping and pottering, I listened to A Passage to India again. It is such a good book, and it is pure pleasure to hear it read, and rapier sharp after the occasionally plodding Stieg Larsson. Calliope bringing big moths into the house all evening, accelerating past me so that I could not rescue them in their attempts to blunder free. There must be a poem in this somehow, to go with the Moth Display poem which I already have.