under another sun

Owl day, white night Off to Lewes Garden centre this morning with Lorraine and a hangover to meet First Matie, as Katie had spotted during the week that there would be owls there. I am rather fond of owls. Met First Matie in the carpark and wandered inside the garden centre to find several people with owls, with reinforcements sitting on stumps. I approached a gentleman with a large Indian eagle owl. Before I knew it, I was sporting a leather glove and a large fierce looking owl with captivating orange eyes, and a tufted head. The owner made me touch the owls talons and the pads on its feet, and then the thickness of the glove. An enthusiastic gentleman, he explained that the owl could go through that leather as if it were butter, and could crush cat's heads. After a few minutes I handed it back with a certain relief. Lorraine, Kate and I all looked at owls and stroked them. Barn owls are particularly downy and lovely to the touch, but have no natural oils in their feathers, so whe...

Burgling Lorraine and I off to visit Dawn this morning in Lorraine's old street. Dawn is about to embark on a PhD about the meaning of life in postwar Britain, and to help finance this she is making space for a lodger, and so was giving Lorraine a table. As we managed the table's thick glass top down the stairs into a camper van Dawn had borrowed, and the door slammed locking us all out. Cue several essays at burglary, and involving various neighbours including JD, the French rock journalist who I have met several times, who tore himself away from being filmed in his house by a documentary TV crew, to spend half an hour attempting in a borderline obsessive way to force the lock with credit cards. Eventually Lorraine borrowed a long ladder from the people who had bought her old house, and the sparrowy Dawn shinned up this and disappeared into a firstfloor window. Once safely back at Lorraine's house with the table, Lorraine forced me to help her assemble a flatpack kitchen i...