under another sun

Feeling positive this morning, and as if I have all the components for a new phase at my fingertips. Now I have accepted the idea of putting things on kindle, I will also put my dormant marketing project on there too. It was sufficiently interesting for at least one publisher to call me in to talk about it, and the other rejections I had were because it was a bit niche. Amazon is the perfect medium for niche stuff, so I will give it a go too. The children's book is now with an editor. So damn the torpedoes! This buoyancy fine till one of the poetry MS I sent out yesterday was rejected in record time. Gah. Swings and roundabouts. Lorraine came home early, and we went off to Phoenix arts building for 4:30, where Sue Kay and Madeline had organised a tribute to Janet. There was all kinds of interesting work there from Janet's archives, a cookbook she had written, and letters and several publications and editorships, even her old PhD thesis which I read and am thanked in the intr...

A glorious day. Lorraine and I got up quite late. Dawn came around this morning, as we ate toast and chatted. Afterwards, as the weather was so warm, we went into the garden and rearranged some ferns, and had a general tidy up. In the course of which we encountered a large frog, perhaps confused by the warm weather, who slipped into the bucket pond. We also went for a trip to Lidl in Whitehawk, and Lorraine and I spent lots of time in the kitchen, Lorraine testing out various vegetarian curry dishes, which eventually became a vegetarian feast. One dish with beetroot was sweet and hot and lovely. A confused frog.

The hottest May bank holiday weekend ever apparently. Warmer here than in all kinds of places further south. Lorraine and I spent it very happily working in the back garden, making stern decisions and taking plants out, and planting the purple flowering magnolia Anton gave us among other things. We repositioned the composter, and we did a lot of shovelling of compost into the garden. Lovely chocolatey stuff it was too. Lorraine miraculously got the lawn mower to work, which although a good thing was also faintly annoying after I had given it a bath of WD40 and had several bouts of wrestling it using foul language and brute strength to no avail.   There was an interlude of our next door neighbours igniting a barbecue which Chernobylled into our garden. When the worst of this smog cleared another neighbour began using some kind of soil flattener, which made a noise like a WW1 tank. He then laid artificial turf for his twin boys to scuff footballs on. Eventually, however, tranquilit...

Properly hung over this morning. Went downstairs and discovered I was standing a few inches away from a dried up frog, brought in by one of the cats, probably Brian. Spent time clearing the scraped off wallpaper out of the big bedroom, although bending down repeatedly set my head throbbing. I don't think the dust agrees with me, making my sinuses sore straight after.  Otherwise, a quiet day. I had send lots of information off to Paddington. Ended up having to take photographs of the documents and then turn them into PDFs, rather than simply scanning them as which took a ridiculously long time. Today the person whose bicycle had been left on the road turned up. Lorraine's hairdresser Paul had put a message on a Brighton community page. The owner lived at number 111 on our road, and as we are 11 it was a bit strange. The thief had obviously cut through the lock, then cycled it a hundred yards or so and then got off it. Weird, and annoying.  Lorraine home late, so we m...

Woken around 5pm by a cat fight crashing through the cat flap. Before I'd woken up, Lorraine had sprang out of bed and shooed off a gang of them loitering outside. Brian fighting again, and we'd not heard the like since the EBC (evil black cat). Meanwhile Calliope had picked up a nastily scratched ear, and at the end of the day Lorraine bathed it in salty water, while I held her. Calliope submits completely to any kind of medical stuff, flea applications, eye drops and wound washing without a squeak. I could learn a thing or two from that cat. Otherwise the day spent on a job, coming up with concepts about fertility in cows. Am beginning to improve health wise, as I worked all afternoon without needing to crash out. Had lunch and stretched my legs for a ten minutes in the park where I noticed the frogs were involved in some kind of motionless amphibian orgy. Back to work. Lorraine home early, and we sauntered around the park in the dark this evening before feeding. Drank ...

Slogging on with final changes and also working on covering letters and synopsis and so on. However still feeling not particularly well, which is making everything seem harder. Short walk in the sun and peered into the nearby artificial pond which has been drained and its bottom repaired. Newts and frogs have been reintroduced into the pond. The water is clear, and there is as almost no vegetation. Snapped a frog, and a few were breeding in the water too. As I mooched about I listened to the last episodes of Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. Entertaining enough stuff, and quite funny in parts. Back to work. Lorraine came home at 4:30 and shortly after I fell asleep for an hour while we lay chatting on the bed. We crept across the road to the Shahi afterwards and had put the world to rights, and chatted to our friends there. Later, I enjoyed watching Aliens, the sequel to Alien.

Frog and Angel Started writing a new poem on the train in the morning, despite the elbows of the Times reading buffoon next to me. Have this idea about focus groups, where you sit behind two way mirrors and watch people being interviewed. The news full of bird flu and turkeys being slaughtered (they must think it's Christmas every day). The BBC and other establishment organs are radiating calm, so you know something well dodgy is going down. Thank goodness for a letter bomb in London today to take everyone's mind off it. Met a woman called Rachel who I worked with at IBM many years ago, and is now one of the agency's clients. Had a short nostalgic chat with her before doing actual work. Still feeling somewhat frustrated. I did attend a meeting in which I had to give a short presentation. During the course of this I found a frog glove puppet, which I employed to stare and gape at The Gnome across the table as things progressed. Otherwise, there was little of note to report. ...