under another sun

Up early and working on my poetry manuscript. I have had a good couple of days on this, which is very pleasing. Broke off for a cup of tea with Keith and caught up. He is very worried that everything seems so quiet on the work front. Lorraine had to zoom off to the opticians but was back in 25 minutes.  Greg and Dan hard at work and the red dining room, and the blue and white of the kitchen vast improvements. Lorraine and I also chose colours for the hallway, two colours called Jasmine Blush and Autumn Embrace... which is a bold autumnal orange below the dado rail. Colour is not to be shied away from and Lorraine and I are feeling really happy with bold choices. I mooched off to the Brewers the paint shop and got some tester paints (or tasters as Lorraine keeps calling them) and we slapped these onto sheets of paper and held them up in the right places. A bit of light gardening in the afternoon. Soberingly, I heard from the excellent new doctor who recommended I go on low dose of s...

Lorraine and I into Brighton together this morning. Lorraine off to have her hair cut. I popped into Churchill Square and saw an exhibition Beth had organised, on up cycling clothes. From there I went to my old ideologically unsound Starbucks and sat there sipping their largest oat milk latte and working on some poems for a couple of hours. Lorraine on her way, I mooched across the road into the Library where they were holding a poetry and spoken word performance, by trans writers. I stayed for a bit. There is a hard polarisation happening these days. Trans exclusionary feminists who don't think calling yourself a woman suddenly makes you a woman and that trans women who are really men in women's spaces is threatening. Meanwhile trans folks, especially trans women who most of the ire seems directed at,  feel victimised and don't feel that their reality is acknowledged, and that they really are women. I have no dog in this fight and just look on aghast at the viciousness tha...

Woke to a dusting of snow which soon disappeared after sunrise. Worked on poems, and sent off some poems. Pretty clear now about which poems will be in Sin Cycle . Walked over 14 kilometres by the end of the day some of it in the evening, and a few walks during the day thinking about what I was writing, or listening to Rabbit, Run by John Updike. I've never read or listened to a book by Updike before. Reflective of the times and attitudes. Excellently written but I find it hard to warm to the central character. Met up with Anton in the Great Eastern, talking among other things about the meditation he has been doing. I am attracted to the idea of Anton in a lotus position thinking about the gateless gate.  He's enjoying it and doing it at the Buddhist Centre. We then followed a hot tip from Betty and walked to East Street. The smell of skunk drifting in the streets. We found a cafe called The Bok Shop which served hot wings. We ordered lots of wings, but when they arrived the...

Foul weather. Two things from Amazon The End of the Party, by Andrew Rawnsley, which is an account of the Labour government from Tony Blair's re-election in 2001 to the end of the Brown government. Also Laura Mvula's first album, just released. On the album, she sounds like the middle ground between Nina Simone and a sedate Bjork. I'd not heard of Laura Mvula until a week or so ago, but she is splendid. Lorraine and I up and about. Drove up to the racecourse where there is a garden centre and tropical fish place. After a big Sainsbury's shop, Bought some plants and fish food, and I spent the afternoon happily pottering about with buckets, cleaning the tanks and planting. Lorraine off rehearsing with Hullabaloo. I also finished Arthur Schnitzler's Dream Story . Very dreamlike it was too, and Freudian. I finished it in bed this morning, and then told the whole story to Lorraine. In the evening off to meet Anton to talk about books and hear how he is painting the A...