Treat yourself
I've had a good sweaty afternoon's humping with Ned, the new lodger. We both enjoyed it.
It came from the excellent local freecyling group so cost me nothing apart from £20 for White Van Man to pick it up. While we were driving back with it to my house I saw a rather foxy former colleague of mine from Bloom and Doom. I stuck my head out of the window and wolf-whistled at her. "Do you mind?" said White Van Man. "We've got an image problem."
In the pub with Trina. A tall man orders drinks in an unsually formal way: "I hear that you stock toffee cider. Is that the case? Good, two pints then please." He is with a younger, pretty woman who is smiling. They sit down and start chatting. A few moments later he is leaning over her, pushing her backwards. She seems to be shaking and resisting, turning her head away from him in an expression of fright. I am fearful of what is happening, and am reminded of the response that Bertrand Russell, a pacifist, once gave to someone who challenged him about what he would do if he saw someone being raped. "I would endeavour to interpose my person." I judge it is time for me to interpose my person.
As I stand up, she slumps slowly to the floor, fitting; it is epilepsy, not rape. A very attractive woman in a black and white striped woolen minidress calls an ambulance. After it is all over, she calls us to her table. Clumsily, I say "Well, if I ever have an epileptic fit in a pub I hope I'd wake up and see an attractive woman in a minidress standing over me." We chat for a few minutes and then she starts forward to give me a farewell hug. I lean backwards to compensate for my forwardness earlier, and shake her hand instead.
To Glasgow, for Mahler's Fifth with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, but before the concert, we sidled into the back of a group being shown round the City Halls, pretending not to see the notice saying that the tour was full. We marvelled at and stroked the tallest marble staircase in Europe, which beats the pretender in the Vatican into second place. In the 1880s, the budget was £180,000; it eventually cost £500,000. As we are both aesthetes of tender febrility, we sought balm after such a surfeit of beauty in the Horseshoe Bar.
We met a train driver of my acquaintance and his Nicaraguan girlfriend in Blackfriars. She had acquitted herself poorly last time we met, doing that infantile private whispering to her husband about a headache or something to do with gluten. This time, she's pleasant, in a careful way; someone I can't see lasting long in Drumchapel.
Donald Runnicles, conducting, did his best to confirm the stereotype of the up-himself artiste, jumping up and down on the podium in the loud bits, as if resentful that Mahler and the orchestra were gaining an unfair proportion of the attention. Thomas Hampson sang some of Mahler's songs, which sounded pertly Alpine and made me think of those green hats with little feathers in.
We stay in a cheap hotel, where Trina spills half a pint of beer over the quilt, and I write my card to Kim.
I Wanna Be Yours
The errant lodger, who owes me £360, has moved out. I rang his exasperated Dad who said that he is constantly doing this. Dad said he'd send me a cheque; ten days later I am still waiting for it. A couple more phone calls, hinting at an action in the Small Claims Court, have been swallowed by the answering machine. This is more bluster than actual threat, since I have no records of the haphazard way in which he paid his rent.
On Thursday the new couple, from Cornwall, arrived. I had been anxious for a while about meeting them, as the whole thing has been arranged over the internet. They are amiably hippyish, likely to be tolerant of the house's failings.
We sat down to an Indian meal I'd made. I gave them the Rough Guide to 44 Acacia Avenue, about how the cold water inlet to the washing machine leaks and how you have to kick the back door shut sometimes before it will open again. Next morning they asked if they could use the bread knife to cut the memory foam mattress down a little, as it's a bit too big for the bed frame.
The Guardian has been inviting people to send in pictures of their breakfasts. This unleashed a sun-washed tide of mango, agave nectar and baked figs, served with lashings of self-love, which roused me to strip off, and do something to prick their bubble.
My contribution is entitled "Baked beans, placcy cider, and internet porn". The Guardian's section editor wrote back asking me I'd mind if it were displayed later this year at the Photographers' Gallery in London.
I told the new lodgers that I was going to a Soul and House weekender in St Annes. "You don't look the type," he said.
We danced for three days solid, and had a couple of drunken afternoons in the pubs of St Annes and Lytham, with a reader of this blog who comes up all the way from Hampshire every year, together with a bloke I met on place book when I suggested a pre-dance pint or four in a decent real ale pub, and Trina.
Dancing, drinking--and flirting, of course, mainly with a gorgeous woman in an equally beautiful dress which was flared from a high waistband and had a simple pattern of black circles on a white ground. The lasciviously hopeful should pay close attention to a few brief frames at 0.25 and 2.07.
She came up to me (yes, she came up to me) and I told her her dress was lovely. "Yes, I've had a few compliments about this one." I didn't tell her there's a photograph of me in my underpants on the Guardian's website.
The phenomenological turn in Alsatian architectural theory
Trina and I have an arrangment, that on the conclusion of congress, I will, if necessary, withdraw to the "fish finger"--that is, the old sofa cushion which serves as a makeshift bed and can be set up in the living room--in order to let her snore in peace and me sleep in a similarly restful condition.
On our return from Strasbourg, therefore, and once full relations had produced the desired outcome, I took myself downstairs. As I arrived in the living room, which is adjacent to the kitchen, I noticed that the old fridge was unusually noisy. I shut the door to the kitchen, curled up in my single bed and began to turn over, in my drunken head, pleasant thoughts of some of the features of the Alsatian urban fabric that I found particularly stimulating last week.
An attractive example of a Strasbourgeois pavement
I woke up in the middle of night, the fridge still making an irritatingly loud effort to cool my tins of Electric Pear cider (best before end October 2012). I clamped the communicating door fast shut and tried to think about pavements.
At about seven in the morning, Trina came down as she had to return to her obligations. Once she had left, I went to investigate the source of the sound. I had been wrong to accuse my fridge.
Ten or so doors down, an alarm was carelessly piercing the street with its oscillating tones. There was a sign in the window saying that the house is to rent, and a mobile number. The man at the other end put the phone down on me as I was politely requesting that someone come round and turn the alarm off.
I rang the Police and the Environmental Health Department. Half an hour later it suddenly stopped, so I went out immediately to stick my oar in check that everything was OK. I felt like a Man of Action as I walked down the road with my mobile in one hand, hoping that people were watching me.
With his refined sensitivity and artistic bent, Oxfam chic shirts and utter cluelessness when handed a spanner, Looby is often placed in the Friendzone by some girls and presumed gay by others. But a revelatory new film depicts a man who--behind a Huysmanesque presentation of his self in everyday life--has sorted out four women and an irritating noise this year alone. Andrzej Wadja's neo-realist essay Man of Action follows Looby as he BEDS a Senior Lecturer in Croatian Photosynthesis; CHARMS another with his souffle aux cerises; and TAKES CHARGE when a faulty alarm causes distress to his more timid and retiring neighbours. In selected cinemas from Thursday.
Question street
"Quick!" said Trina. "It's time for us to go to Strasbourg, for your belated birthday treat."
The very first thing I saw as we pulled into the station were three policemen with yard-long guns strolling down the platform. On our way to our hotel, we passed a one of the city's many "Ici caniniste" yards, which are small gravelled areas where dogs can shit.
And that, all over in the first half hour, was the worst I saw of Strasbourg. Even the tramps are civic-minded: a sleeping man woke up to make room for us on a bench in Place Kléber, then brusquely told a fellow gentleman of leisure "There's a bin over there," when the latter was about to walk off leaving a polystyrene cup on the bench.
We wandered into the old town. On our way, we were approached by some students who were raising money for charity by asking us to splat them with custard pies.
We quickly found the best bar in town, L'Artichaut, with its mixture of well-dressed twentysomethings, elderly locals, wiggers, and a huge black dog which wandered around proprietorily. We asked the barmaid to recommend a dark beer; when it arrived, it looked exactly like two pints of Coca-Cola but was in fact a rich, honey-flavoured Belgian beer.
But the prices! Two 50cl beers came to €11. Fortunately, the local offy provideed much cheaper ways of opening the doors of perception.
We walked to Germany; it's less than four miles away. We stood together, I in France and Trina over the border, and asked a passing German to take our photo.
Behind us you can see evidence of a local custom in which lovers engrave their names onto padlocks and fasten them to the bridge over the Rhine. You can always come back with a hacksaw I suppose, if necessary.
We walked a little way into Germany. Despite my profound, lifelong respect for German culture, I can't help it that, to me, the German language sounds ridiculous. We read out the street names and notices in an authoritarian and dictatorial voice.
Back in France, we explored a profound enquiry: is there an equally good but cheaper bar? And lo! We found a barge on the river where they sold Edelweiss for €2,40 (albeit for a Euroskimp 25cl measure).
We said our reluctant goodbyes to the city, promising to return. Paris felt coarse. A sex shop advertised "cabines automatiques €1"; but a hotel, continuing the German-as-ridiculous motif, had an amusing name.
While we were in L'Artichaut, the jukebox started playing what started as an innocent sounding-piece of American swing music, but which turned into the most profane piece of music I've ever heard played in public. It's not safe for any but the most liberal workplaces.
A bird in the hand
