under another sun

L and I to the Twitten this morning, and met Sonia there who had agreed to do a deep clean on the house. Lorraine took the car home, and I sloped off to the obnoxious Budgens by the station, where I had to browbeat them into helping me find oven cleaner. I painted out a small gold tag scrawled on the green wood. But the green I painted on was the wrong green, so I will have to repaint the pesky thing when it isn't raining. D'oh. Met Hilary one of my old neighbours and had a chat with her while her dog, who has always disliked me, barked and strained malignantly at its leash. Unfathomable are the suspicions of hounds. Mooched around town town, where I encountered Adrian carrying a bag of fresh fish. Chatted about work, and photographing the contents of women's handbags. A brave man. Pressed on buying a plug adaptor and drain unblocker. Met Lorraine in the Laines and we snacked in the Délice before Lorraine left for an afternoon of song with Hullabaloo. Home to tinker wit...

Lorraine had a few bits of work to do today, but otherwise we took an extended lunch. A fire had led to signalling chaos and so we drove Beth off to Eastbourne, from where she is going to Switzerland with pals for Christmas. Stopped off at the garden centre to buy plants for the aquarium, food for cats and so on, and to drop some broken things at the dump and then to Middle Farm where we nosed about in the farm shop, paused to look at cows being striped by the low sun falling through wooden walls of the cowsheds. Some of them were heavily pregnant. After fond farewells with Beth, having delivered her into the hands of her pals Sarah and Matt, off to a nearby butcher to sort out some meaty goodness for Christmas. In the evening Cath called around and we went down to see the burning of the clocks. This event always makes me cheery and proud of the creativity that is present in abundance in Brighton. Hundreds of people  in the parade of drummers, musicians dancers, costumes and of c...

Thank God for the weekend and not having to get up before dawn. Lorraine and I didn't spring out of bed till late. Worked on poems today, and had one or two excellent suggestions from Jane. Lorraine doing some work too. Rain all day outside. Spoke to Mum and Mase for a bit, had a pre-going out sleep and then set off in a taxi with Betty and Lorraine. A really fun night out. Off to the Hove Kitchen for drinks to celebrate Betty's birthday last week. Lots of all our friends, including Wayne and Matt, Jonathan, Rosie, Ross and Lene, and lots of Beth's pals too. Good to see Ross, who I'd not had a pointless beer with for a while.  Jonathan told me that he used to have a speciality juggling with seven or eight lemons. Much taken with this as I have always had the name of a story called "The Man Who Juggled With Lemons" for about 30 years without ever having the story itself. He told me that in the eighties he played classical guitar very well and was employed on ...