knitting, studying, dreaming of japan

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100 broken windows

It snowed last night. The kitchen window hasn’t been fixed yet. It is freezing inside the house. I keep thinking of a short story Haruki Murakami wrote years ago, called My Poverty was a Piece of Cheesecake. Mine is more like a pressure cooker full of green peas, but still. I seem to remember Haruki also wrote an essay once about how the way not to surrender to poverty (or was it old age?) is to make sure you always wear clean underwear. I might have made that up, but I am pleased to report I am defiantly wearing clean underwear today.

*

An expressionless man came to fix the window just now. I think he might have been an android. He has gone away again, but the window still isn’t fixed, because he broke what would have been the new one as he was putting it in, so now there are two broken windows in the kitchen. There isn’t even a whiteboard hammered to the window frame any more, so it is even colder than before. I am huddled up at my computer in the blanket my best friend gave me for Christmas.

*

The landlord’s brother who thinks he is Jay Z has just been round. He told me about his drinking problem, and gave me a blank cheque to pay for the window, which with any luck will eventually no longer be broken. Jay Z told me about Bob out of Twin Peaks’ drinking problem, too. He asked me if I have a drinking problem, and I said that I don’t. He stared at me with a sinister smile, and said that everyone around here has a drinking problem.

Perhaps Jay Z has a drinking problem because he is a failed popstar. When I was clearing the garden the other day, I found dozens of homemade albums of his, with photos of him on the inlay sleeves posing like a popstar. I found the CDs under a pile of rotting vegetables and feminine hygiene products.

Now I am wondering if the window man wasn’t an android at all. Maybe he just had a drinking problem. I am almost enjoying living here again. Today has been fun.

*

My brother and his wife went to London this morning. They have gone to see Monkey: Journey to the West. I hope they enjoy it as much as I did. There were a lot of good things about Monkey, but I think my favourite was the woman with the faraway eyes who was suspended by a rope in a starfish costume, and went bobbing across the top of the stage during the underwater scene.

So it is just me, the dog, the cat and our drunken neighbours for the next few days. I have cleaned the house. I have moved my stuff upstairs and put some more pictures up in my little room, because from next week I will be spending most of my time up here, studying. I have picked up where I left off burning all my CDs on to the hard drive my best friend gave me for my birthday. If the window ever gets fixed I will go with the dog to the big park with the trees. In the meantime I plan to finish reading Volume One of The Complete Short Stories of J G Ballard, at long last. I have been reading this book for almost three months.

welcome to royston vasey

It has been a long over-a-month. I spent the rest of November cramming and earning a living, and as planned spent a weekend in London at the beginning of this month. The B&B did turn out to be a lot like Fawlty Towers, but I didn’t see any mice. I went to the Dome (sorry, O2 Arena) and saw Monkey, spent a wad of book tokens at Dillons (sorry, Waterstones), and hung out with a friend and his cat. All of these things were good, but the main reason I went to London of course was to sit exam number one, which was bad, and the less said about that the better, I think, at least until March, anyway, which is when the results come out.

I have spent most of the rest of this month eating, smoking, not sleeping, and watching crap TV with my housemates. Not much happened, until our house was burgled ten days ago. A lot of stuff was stolen, including the Nintendo Wii I did buy my brother and his girlfriend (now wife) for their wedding, after all. But the worst thing was the dog had had a molar surgically extracted the previous day, and he was in an opiate haze at home alone save for the cat — who isn’t much use in situations like these, or let’s face it in any situation, really — when the kitchen window was smashed in. The poor dog had a tubful of chews thrown at him, plus a measuring jug and a shovel. He would have been over the moon with the chews on any other day, but I can imagine the blank, painful expression he would have stared at the burglars with, plus the trail of bloody drool from his mouth, hence I suppose the jug and the shovel. He was cowering upstairs when I got home, with the cat jumping up and down on him. The landlord hasn’t fixed the kitchen window yet. Bob out of Twin Peaks came over, though, and hammered a whiteboard to the window frame, which made everything all right, obviously.

I spent Christmas with my best friend, which was nice, and about the only good thing that has happened since the good things that happened in London. As I was driving home on Boxing day in my brother’s little red car, I decided I was sick of feeling fat, sluggish, and all clogged up with tar and reality TV. I resolved that I am not going to let myself be dragged down to the depths to which my life has sunk of late, and especially not down to the depths of our mollusc and rodent infested house.

I didn’t do anything about my resolution yesterday because I had to go to work, but I woke up this morning and cleared all the rubbish (trampoline, mattresses, beer cans, glass, rubble, rotting food and worse) from the garden. I had a shower and washed my clothes. I haven’t watched any television today. I did some knitting. I have eaten my last piece of carrot cake. I am drinking my last cup of milky-sugary coffee. I will do something about stopping smoking next week, maybe. And studying for exam number two, because I am desperate not to never leave.

confessions of a hedgehog wrestler

It has been a busy week. I have managed not to completely mess up being my brother and his girlfriend (now wife) ‘s wedding photographer. Or at least I don’t think I have. I have unblocked all the drains in my flat. I have been knitting thin wool in ever-decreasing circles with a set of five tiny double pointed needles, which is a bit like wrestling a hedgehog. I have sat in a park with a bunch of pigeons, plus a friend I haven’t seen for a while. I have eaten carrot cake and banoffee pie. And a cheese and onion pasty. I have continued to work on being a logical person. I am one week ahead of schedule, which is a good thing, because I am on holiday as of this afternoon, and I intend to spend my week off being as illogical a person as I possibly can.

The dog and I had a fight on Thursday. Or not really a fight. We just got tired of each other. I was tired of only being around to 1. make sure he eats sensibly, and 2. stop him being run over by cars, and he was tired of me spoiling his fun when, for example, I shout at him when he is about to launch himself into a busy road in pursuit of some kid or other’s cast off McDonalds or KFC or whatever it was. The dog and I sulked and didn’t speak to each other for a few days, but I challenged him to a game of tug of war earlier, and we became friends again. Our relationship was cemented when I turned a blind eye as he ate something unidentifiably disgusting in the Cholera Pit before supper.

The most exciting thing I have done since I have been on holiday is buy a ticket for Monkey — Journey to the West. I am going to see it in London a couple of nights before the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, which I am sitting in December. At least that’s something to look forward to. Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s opera, I mean, not the JLPT. The next exciting thing I am doing is going to the Light House tonight to see Man on Wire. Tomorrow morning I am having a lie in. Tomorrow afternoon I am going to my brother and his wife’s flat to play on their Nintendo Wii and eat sukiyaki. And tomorrow night I am catching a train to the West Country with the dog, to see my best friend. I like being on holiday. Holidays are exciting.

they’re coming to take duane barry away

I finished knitting my X File friend’s Duane Barry Alien Delusion Scarf on Monday night. It’s a bit clever because the whole thing looks stripy head on, but when you angle it backwards and forwards the aliens come in and go out of focus. I like it, but I’m not sure my X Files friend will ever wear it, unless she happens to go on an Arctic expedition one day. Perhaps she will keep it somewhere, rolled up like a scroll. Maybe she will unroll it one day when I am far far away, and remember the time we wanted to believe.

Apart from knitting, I have mostly been skiving off trying to be a logical person. I have been reading Monkey by Wu Ch’êng-ên instead, and listening to Damon Albarn’s music project based on the same. The dog is moulting, and I have been pulling out his hair by the handful. I have taken the jigsaw puzzle to pieces, and hidden the pieces from the cat. I have relapsed into date addiction. I have been invited to have a flu vaccine with the over-65s next month. I feel old and tired enough to take the doctors up on it this year. I’ll be sure to take some knitting to do while I wait.

the nature of monkey is irrepressible!

My brother dropped in earlier. He was playing with my camera, looking at some more photos of the jigsaw-wrecking ginger one I took yesterday. Unfortunately, also in the camera was a top secret photo he wasn’t meant to see yet of his birthday present, which I forgot about until it was too late. To cut a long story short, here is my twenty-nine year old brother looking extremely simian and pleased with himself, and possibly also with the monkey-buttoned mobile phone thing I knitted for his thirtieth birthday, which is still over two weeks away.

My brother seems to think he will be able to trick me into giving him his wedding present early as well, but he will definitely not be having that until Saturday, and maybe not even then, because I have decided I am giving it to his girlfriend, who will be his wife by then, instead. My brother also seems to think he knows what his wedding present is already, but there isn’t a photo of it in my camera, and perhaps my brother isn’t as clever as he thinks. Perhaps I have knitted him something really disappointing, like a woolly Nintendo Wii he won’t be able to play games on.