under another sun

Fudging it Up at Lorraine's house and after making her a cup of tea shuffled home to do some copy for a press ad. This done the day was my lobster to work creatively. Annoyingly I have been struggling for progress this week. So have agreed to do a couple of days work from home writing some non-creative website copy. Looking through my Penguin version of Timaeus and Critias by Plato as it contains the first mention of Atlantis in literature. I thought it was just a passing reference, but there is a surprising amount of material about it. I'm not particularly interested in the madcap theories about Atlantis, but Plato seems to have used it symbolically, although added lots of detail, so I'll take my steer from the great Greek. Dawn's birthday today, and I popped out in the evening to the Basketmakers, where I met Dawn, Lorraine, Beth and, for the first time, Dawn's daughter Ellie who after a gap year has just started college. Some present giving to Dawn. I got her a ...

Pass the pitchfork This morning painting out some gold and red graffiti tags which had appeared in the Twitten on Saturday night. Chatting with Joy and Wan as I did so. Took a briefing at noon for a branding campaign for a Vodka I'd never heard of. Worked on this during the afternoon, being troubled by a croaking like that of a giant toad, which has been a bizarre feature of my neighbourhood for the last few weeks. It has put me in mind of various Victorian horror stories by someone like MR James, and I am pleased Lorraine has also heard it and that it is not some manifestation of a troubled mind. Actually it could be my subconscious objectifying the notion of work, a la Philip Larkin. Why should I let the toad work Squat on my life? Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork And drive the brute off? After I finished my toadery this evening, I listened to A Passage to India , which I have now almost finished. I was about to take myself out for a walk, when Matt called as I left and we had a...

A turbulent twitten Decided to strip and sand my front door and repaint it, as the varnish was peeling and the brown of the wood looks horrid with the blue and white colour scheme of my house. How long can stripping and sanding a door take? Untold hours. It did give me time to stand in the sun and talk to the neighbours, who were mostly talking about graffiti. The white walls of the Twitten have been targeted every night by the same person, judging by his dire tags. What is heartening is that the denizens of the twitten simply paint it out within hours. Eventually the boy will get tired of it. Made me think of The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell where there is an example of graffiti in the New York subway system. A policy of zero tolerance was adopted for it, and the book argues that this precipitated a change in behaviour, resulting in a significant drop in all crime on the subway. Tonight there was the detritus from a stolen purse: the twitten looks so idyllic and is such a nice p...