under another sun

Spoke to Mum in the morning and evening. She went to see Mas with Robert and Tanya today. He's doing pretty well, but understandably a bit tired. A heatwave forecast, but what we got was rain and thunder for a good part of the day. After a breakfast of tomatoes on toast, Lorraine and I dropped Beth off at the station in the rain so she could travel up to London to hang with her bestie Olivia. Once she got through the downs it was all sun. L and I went to experience the glories of Sainsbury's. Actually I like shopping with Lorraine, and we hadn't shopped together for a while. A restful day, but in the evening we sauntered down to The Duke of York's Picturehouse to see Sing Street , a highly enjoyable film about teenagers setting up a band in Dublin in the 1980s. But it was also about the power of the imagination and creativity to transcend the mundane, and brotherhood, and lots of other stuff. Lorraine and I really enjoyed it. Then as we'd not eaten, it seeme...

A storm, Storm Katie, last night, very noisy up in our top bedroom. The storm uprooted trees and flattened fences in Brighton, one tree down about 100 metres from us. Another big one went very close to Janet and Ken. Lorraine and I had a lovely day today. Both of us feeling brighter and more healthy after a long sleep. Up and today's mission was creating a stumpery. Out of bits of stump and ferns. We've not anything in the garden this year, and it was warm enough to work happily. Off to Bolney first where we picked up some stumpy bits from a wind damaged garden centre, near Lorrafne's school. I'm sure we got a cheaper rate on our stumps when we told the man Lorraine was head of the local village school, and the man said head been there as a kid. Then to another garden centre for ferns. When we built it, we were so pleased with our stumpery, we are planning to extend it. It is excellent for the strip of the garden that gets little light. We have also added a wee barrel...

Beth creeping out of the house at a time starting with four this morning. Rain torrential. Luckily I was working from home, and uncharacteristically struggling with a brief. Partially this is because some of the information is not there yet. All difficult and making me twitchy. Not a particularly good day. The evening, however, a different matter. At a little before six, Lorraine and I sauntered off to the Duke of York's where we met Dawn and saw the movie A Walk in the Woods, based on a book by Bill Bryson I once read on a plane, In fact one of the few books I have ever read on a plane. Perfectly watchable, although liberties were taken as it starred Robert Redford and so had Bryson hiking as an older man, which he wasn't at the time. A perfectly pleasant watch, with a few chuckles. Emma Thompson fantastic as usual in her small role. Then home to hang out with Dawn who was going to have a sleepover. Lovely evening, eating a chicken stew and chatting. Beth and John arrived ...

Appropriately enough off to see Boyhood this morning. A gorgeous day, with sunlight that you could actually feel heat from. We walked down to the Duke of York, and met Rosie. The cinema in a state of confusion with a lamentable failure of a new computer system. Lorraine had booked for us online, but the tickets were paid for and not confirmed. At the cinema we were allocated new tickets and there were people with legitimate tickets in the seats we were sold. Eventually we were shown to the upper circle, so all was well.  We pitied the people having to work there when the systems are failing. Anyway it turned out that Boyhood, which I missed last year, was one of the best films I have ever seen. We all loved it. It is about the boyhood of an American boy, but the filming process took 12 years so all the characters age in real life, and the boy grows up to be 18. I can't quite pin down why the film is so fantastic. It just is. Emerged blinking into the strong sunlight, and stood ...

Into town with Lorraine most of the afternoon, dodging out of the rain into a few clothes shops, having coffee in a new cafe called Berties, buying a card for Pat's 80th next week. Then on to look at wedding rings. Window shopped for some time then were dragged into one place and shown various rings by a very annoying woman who spoke in a false sing-song voice, and didn't listen to anything we said. I thought it was just me being critical, but Lorraine leant forward in a moment of respite and hissed she's so annoying! We made our escape. Luckily there are many jewellery shops in the Old Lanes and we found one where a man took us through our options clearly and with some charm.  Lots of decisions to be made about wedding rings, such as their thickness and what they are made of, and what sort of cut they are. Seem to have found a very nice one for Lorraine, and I think I have chosen one for me. While so doing learned about palladium, which is a Russian metal newly classif...

Much needed slow, water sipping kind of day, and it was cooler too in Brighton. Spot of work first thing, followed by quite a bit of free-range lounging about and spending time simply chatting. Lorraine and I off in the evening to see The World's End movie at an early-evening showing at the Duke of York's. Had a nice cup of tea and really enjoyed this comedy with a poignant undertone, and I think I preferred it to Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz both of which were good fun too, had a few laugh out loud moments too, which is always a good thing in a comedy. Based around a bunch of middle aged guys attempting again a pub crawl they failed to complete when they were 18, and the evening going horribly wrong due to an alien invasion. Loved the sense of things getting completely out of hand which of course may happen during a pub crawl. Below  still from The World's End.

Another slow start to the day. Lorraine who has been nursing a cough in much need of recuperation, although still gripped by urge to work herself to the bone, which I talked her out of after we dragged a few objects around, and a stock take of the paint in the house.  In the fine non settling individual snowflakes I walked off to see Janet and Ken for a cheery cup of tea and a chat. Heartening to see Ken a good deal better than of late, and having been walking about quite a bit. He has a nasty cough though, which is gradually improving. In the evening Lorraine and I took ourselves to The Duke of York to see In the House an enjoyable French movie about a boy writing stories about a family he is insinuating himself into. We sat up in the balcony on a sofa, enjoying a tale of how the boy's stories were read by his teacher who considers them promising, and gets drawn into the web, eventually losing his job. It is unclear how true the stories the boy is telling are, and where the lin...

An excellent morning's work, with a clear head and song on my lips. Went out for a constitutional in the afternoon, walking around town. It was pretty cold, especially down by the sea but nevertheless bracing. Walked through the tiny Dolphin Square in the Lanes where the much missed Rounder Records used to be. Melancholy sight with Rounder Records and three other shops gone. As I took a few snaps a man from a jewellers peered out of his shop window balefully at me. A 'fasting' i.e. reduced calorie day, but again not much of a hardship: small porridge for breakfast, banana on Ryvita  and a cup of miso soup for lunch, and a bit of cold chicken, veggies and a wee bit of rice for supper, in total around 600 calories. The knowledge that you can eat normally the next day makes this bearable. Off tonight to see the film version of Les Misérables which was a good deal less dire than expected. I am no lover of musicals, but hearing good reviews and Lorraine mad for it after he...

Much of the day given over to fish business, prompted by an aquarium fail during the week. Draining and moving one tank, having caught the fish, put them in bags and floated them in the other tank, washing gravel for the new tank (which in itself took over an hour) planting, treating the water to remove harmful chemicals, seed in helpful bacteria, plant promoting chemicals, and ph adjustments, reintroducing fish and so on. L and I off to a late showing of 'Looper' at the Duke of York's picture house. An entertaining time travel yarn, which we, sat in the balcony with a drink, definitely enjoyed. Ticked the shooting with guns/fighty box, the SciFi box, the creepy kid box, tough sexy women box, the existential we're all trapped in life box, and the  child is father of the man  box. Good fun.

To score at last Lorraine and I off to the gym this morning. Felt sluggish to start with but then worked out for a long time. Lorraine did swimming, cross training and rowing machine too. I did weights of various types, a long rowing session and half an hour on the cross trainer. Home and Lorraine cooked a delicious chicken and broccoli dish for Betty and I and the three of us went to see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel , just round the corner in the Duke of York's picture house. Betty paid for Lorraine as a Mothers Day present. A nice movie, quite feelgood, and the odd sad moment to stop it being sickly. A round of applause at the end from the packed cinema. Home and chatted to Mum, and began reading Jeanette Winterson's Why be happy when you could be normal? which I am really enjoying. Betty back to university this afternoon, looking brave crutches and bags strapped to her back. In other news Fernando Torres, the Chelsea centre forward whose inability to score since October ...

Birdwatching Lots of time this weekend as Lorraine had at last finished her course. She hardly knew what to do with herself. To celebrate we drove off to Woods Mill. On the way there we stopped the car to look at two tractors in a field surrounded by hundreds of seagulls. A Hitchcockian sight. At Woods Mill we sought out snowdrops and sat in the bird hide looking at various woodland birds, mostly great tits, blue tits, long tailed tits, chaffinches and a robin, plus two small reddish rodents. A quick walk about in the woods and then home again. In the evening off to see A Dangerous Method , about Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. I quite enjoyed the film perhaps because I wasn't expecting too much from it. Lorraine quite liked it, though was dubious about the casting and Ikea Knightly's Russian accent. We saw it at The Duke of York Picturehouse a few hundred hards from home, which is always a pleasure. Below gulls, they seemed in a great hurry to roost in the freshly ploughed ear...

An afternoon delight To the Duke of York's Picture House this afternoon with Lorraine and Dawn to see My Afternoons With Marguerite La Tete En Friche)with Gérard Depardieu playing a lumbering odd-job man, who strikes up a friendship (over 19 pigeons) in the square of a small French town with the 95-year-old Margueritte (her father misspelt her name on the birth certificate). She is bookish and he barely literate. But it is a relationship that transforms him. It is tremendously sentimental (and the 60 year old Depardieu's shambling character, who lives in a trailer in his mother's garden, oddly attractive to a twenty-something French babe) still an excellent film for a rainy Sunday afternoon. Lorraine and Dawn both sniffing happily by the end. Lorraine sloped home to continue with a new set of hideous forms. I returned to my house to fly my computer game ME 109 while listening to podcasts and audiobooks before watching Match of the Day. An appalling turn of events with Chels...

Badly drawn boy Steady rain, and a better day working on my projects and some stuff for my French clients. The Atlantis poems beginning to adhere to one another, and may in fact be one large poem. Also found a new tonal approach for the Echoes story which feels much better. Matt came by at teatime and we went to see if we could have a look at the Nightingale theatre, just around the corner from me, where we may possibly stage the as yet unwritten Doppelganger piece. But we couldn't get into the theatre as it turns out the pub below and the theatre have nothing to do with one another. Call from Catriona in Guernsey about next May's Guernsey Literary Festival. I am being flown over, which makes me feel big and clever, and will be doing Skeleton based work with children on the morning of Friday the 13th, which is rather good, and then two or three poetry readings with Richard. In other news Salty returned home at 4.00am after a couple of days away with a large hunger on him. Mum...

Back in the magic cafe Up and working on some long-postponed admin this morning. Also talking to a new lovely French client, and sorting out some bits for my Guernsey trip. Took myself for a walk today down by the sea and along the pier, amazed by the novelty of it not raining. And taking some snaps for the sake of it. Very still and the sea calm, a spot of sun here and there, but inland brooding clouds. On the way home, stopped at my magic cafe and worked on a new poem for a while, one of a sequence I am writing about Atlantis. They are coming with deceptive ease. In the evening crashed a girl's night out and went to The Duke of York's Picture House in Brighton to see Made in Dagenham with Lorraine, Jan, Dawn and Dawn's cousin Hannah. It was a cheerful film, and made you feel proud to be a woman. Back to Lorraine's house to eat the pork joint she was cooking, but as she left for the cinema, she had forgotten to put the meat in the oven. Instead we had an emergency t...