Dr Blog bought me this treatise on modern manners. Or lack thereof. It is about 200 pages too long, so yes, a Haiku will do for review.

Talk to the hand, please,
Lynne, or should I say Ms Truss?
Your book is boring.

What happens when you blog when you’re not in the mood?

I am far from authentic when it comes to blogging on a religious level – that is every day without fail. Perhaps the blog becomes something of a confessional. Yes, I did covet my neighbour’s gifts, well one or two. Particularly the rather fun book I eyed in the bookshop and didn’t buy for myself via somebody else, ie Dr Blog, as I did with Nick Clee’s (cool bloke, took him for lunch at Quo Vadis once when he was editor of the Bookseller and I used to lunch editors) Don’t Sweat the Aubergine a cookbook that tells you how not to follow recipes – not that I need that, I quite naturally do not follow recipes. Anyway, I digress (which for me will definitely be a result of blogging when I don’t feel like it – it’s tough enough keeping me on subject at the best of times) – the coveted volume was in the same format as Schott’s – published by Penguin – gloriously frivolous, a list book no less – 100 great books summarised in Haiku. Some very funny examples. Of course, I can’t now quote from it, as it is only Boxing Day, and making away with one’s sister not-in-law’s presents is not yet possible. Also realised I write very little about what I read. I know I hold back on ‘reviewing’ but I thought I might try the great Haiku game as a limber up and aide memoir. Hence, am reading Haruki Murakami’s Dance Dance Dance – not having finished it, a Haiku seems a little premature I have to say. However, here’s a starter:

Jaded divorcee
hotels, dark corridors, girls
and then a murder

Off to the sea soon. It’s bluer than June out there…

If only life was as clearly signposted. This time of year is always awash with thoughts of a brighter, better future – you know, where everything is fresh and perfect as a Persil ad. Revelry precedes the cold bare fact of January, where life is stripped down to the minimum. It’s a long, everlasting month with its 31 days. Of course you have to know what your priorities are to change them. That’s the tricky bit. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself, or rather, should I say, the darkest day is over. We are the other side of the winter solstice. Apparently, the Earth is actually nearer the sun in January than it is in June — by three million miles: check out this website www.candlegrove.com for everything you need to know about the winter solstice and how it’s celebrated across the world. It is the tilt, the angle, not the proximity which creates the seasons. I like winter, with its stark black trees against white skies and its dark afternoons. There is something fatalistic about it: in summer I need to thrive, I need constant wonderfulness, more more more. In winter it is enough just to know you’ve survived.

Oh yah…Lady Bling’s Christmas party…the ladeez represented. The boyzzz…well, I had to draft in a professional.
Laters.
BL

North London

And this is the best I can come up with. Go easy on me please. I blame the mulled wine and the mince pies and the general air of wanton abandon that pervades London and its environs this time of year. Or something. It’s stinky, it’s nasty, it’s pub loo grafitti. Fromage a trois. Lord. And I thought Hoxton was sophisticated. Still, it’s better perhaps than the traditional scrawlings on the bus stop outside the church at Lambeth North. Christian sucks cock, which in a truly puerile manner, I reimagine as christians suck cock: wow, that is so much more funny now. I think I may be overwhelmed. Perhaps I have Seasonal Overdrive Disorder, or something.

Time Out sports a North versus South (London) issue this week. Well here it is, Blag Lady’s own great grafitti challenge. Hoxton or Lambeth North? SE1 or E1?

South London

Answers on a postcard please.

Also, graffito, graffitti, grafitti, graffiti, oh I can never remember.

Caught the last 159 today. Well, the Routemaster. The 159 used to terminate at West End Green, West Hampstead, where the Family Blag still resides. Now, I’m at the other end of town, Streatham Hill, and catch the bus in to the Spread the Word office (See also my first ever entry Bikes and Bombs). The 159 was a link to the past in so many ways. Saw Abe Gibson at Melanie Abrahams’ London Liming at the Great Eastern Hotel the other night (top event). He was the London Transport Museum’s poet in residence for 2 years, and I started bemoaning the loss with some hesitation as I thought he’d be sick of it. Not at all. He was grieving too. Londoners came out in their droves all week, geeks with cameras, and anoraks and notebooks. TFL or whoever runs these things pushed the boat out – or rather pushed all the old models out, on a day-long parade for the public and the paparazzi. I even saw one in the twilight with the yellow light bulbs. (Why did they ever change them for neon strip?) A good mate of mine – let’s call him The Economist – spends his days working out how to make the tube more efficient with more graphs, grids and spreadsheets than you could shake a stick at. He is very clever and his heart is in the right place, and I am sure he would be able to persuade me that replacing a load of clapped out old buses that 10 per cent of the population can’t get on is the only option and it should have happened years ago. But that is not the point. I don’t care that the Routemaster costs more to run. Conductors on buses are a good thing. Redesign them with disabled access. I would put my money where my mouth is and pay extra for the pleasure. And that’s the point. Pleasure. I could go on, but you know where this is going…going…gone.

Remember I ran off to Cornwall with three artists for a few days back in October? The exhibition launches next week and is open from 16 December. My contribution is a series of haikus.

One faces east, one faces west, neither knows which view is best.

Had to stick this up. My obsession with signage is unabating, but I’m now also into grim windows (see The Day of Missing Pets). I know I shouldn’t be pedantic, but that window just isn’t cutting it in the ‘merry’ stakes. King’s College evensong was sublime, the music was heavenly, and the man who looked like a cross between Black Rod and the Grim Reaper just added to the ambience. It was a special Founders Day service (‘thanks for that two million quid’ etc etc), which added something of a materialistic edge to the proceedings. Still, it is good to give thanks, and I am thankful for that song in those magnificent surroundings, it was quite beautiful. Also, the lights from the library, warm and yellow in the cold December twilight. A midwinter festival, with beer tasting, that also advertised an insect circus. Critical Mass who were not really very critical, or much of a mass, but they were out there. Cycling. Good samosa from the Pakistani cafe on Mills Road. And celery from the fens, still covered in and smelling of earth.

Jack is a miniature doberman, very cute looking, he has 777 tattooed on his left ear (so clearly his owners have a gsoh), and he has been missing for 2 weeks. Sushi, a gorgeous grey svelte moggy, also missing. Saw these signs near two big roads. What a worry for the poor owners. Made me think of the time our beloved ginger fellow ran off to Caterham for a fortnight. He came back fatter than he left, which was typical. He is a resourceful creature. Anyway, I made door to door enquiries with my colour posters and one nice man who had a menagerie in the next street suggested I contact a pet psychic who had found his missing cat. He was on that programme Psychic Pets apparently. I phoned and sent a picture (he never asked for any money); apparently my fickle feline had run off with a character who was probably called ‘Mark’. I decided I hated all Marks in the area. He was near a bridge and some railway tracks. I rushed to the bridge and the railway tracks and got momentarily embroiled with the local crazy cat lady who fed the foxes. I started stalking a house with ‘white steps leading up to the front door’. Finally, the call came in from a cat sanctuary in Surrey, he was found in the car park of a solicitors office and had lots of fun new friends. Hmmm. Meanwhile, my reputation as someone who was not the local crazy cat lady was in tatters. How did they track us down? Microchip of course.

Saw in Saturday’s Guardian that in La-La-La-La-La America parents are tracking their kids with EPOS mobile phones and backpacks. This means that very soon we will surely be able to track our cat, and find out how our neutered tom made it out to the edge of civilization (M25 borders). I will follow the beep beep beep all the way to that Mark’s house and tell him to get a cat of his own.