under another sun

A much-needed calm day, both feeling a bit tired. Slow breakfast, and a food shop (I always enjoy food shopping with Lorraine), Lorraine did some gardening, I went to the gym to atone for the last two evenings. Then studio. I am exploring in sketches what I am now beginning to write about. It accesses a different part of my brain -- which I should not find surprising after decades of image plus copy advertising, I don't really understand. I seem to learn the same things over and over throughout my life. I have a vague idea of doing a hybrid project, if I can get my art standard high enough. Spoke to Mum and arranged to see her in Hampstead next Tuesday. Arranged a haircut for Monday as it's all gone into clown mode. Air fried chicken tonight, with delicious beans I picked from the garden among the veg. Football tonight. An interesting game between France and Paraguay, who played with callous gamesmanship and thuggishness, and confined their beating to 1-0 because of it. France,...

Good news on the Mum front... Having explored Mum's pension payment suspension problem with Chat GPT yesterday, which suggested one of the reasons for non-payment could have been her non-completion of a form which basically tells them she's still in good health. By coincidence this form arrived today, and she mum told me. she would complete and return it the same day. Once this is processed, normal service should be resumed. This is great. I'm discovering the only thing worse than bureaucracy is foreign bureaucracy.  Also this morning, I simply sat down and wrote a new poem, which I am pleased with, which is a sort of fever dream about the hatchling of a giant seagull egg. Not been writing much lately, but this felt decent.  Then a day with Enzo, who wriggled happily when he saw me, and held his arms out to be taken. It is a culture shock to see him crawling now, it's still slow but it's such a game changer already.  We went off to Drusilla's for lunch, and look...

A pinch and a punch for the start of the month. Romy has been marvellous and sent me a tax form, plus an outline letter to the California tax people to complete. This is brilliant. I also used Chat GPT to investigate mum's US widow's pension, and got lots of useful advice, although it also said we'd done all the right things so far, say what you like about AI but it is bloody useful in such circumstances. Spoke to Mum about it all. Gym again today, and pressed on with editing my long interview with Will Harris, which seems to be taking ages. Succumbed to the torture of watching England, we started to watch just after England were already one goal down to the Democratic Republic of Congo, who played really well. England ragged and as ever going through patches of appearing never to have been formally introduced to each other. But Harry Kane scored two goals late in the second half to save the day. Then went to play about in the studio with Lorraine afterwards. Lorraine happi...