Fungus

I'm sitting in a living room. I'm waiting for a close friend to come home from work. I'm a tiny bit bored even thought there are plenty of entertaining things to do. I just popped out to look at the foul weather and decided I couldn't stand venturing out in such inclement of atmospheric conditions. I found this unusual fungus growing under one of the trees in the garden. Can any amateur mycologists, or any laypersons indeed, tell me what it is? I'm afraid it's not a very good photo as it was quite tricky to get a hold of on my own. See what you think and let me know.

The Folding Stuff

Today was a day off work. And what better way to spend it than in the company of the F.G. down at the nearest main shopping street to my comfy little abode.

She suffers so in the dimming of winter, (she is effectively solar powered) and so we gathered what light this drear November day could offer, and strolled abroad, about the merry folk as they yabbered in West country accents, weaving their tales of joy with old fashioned working class bonhomie to all and sundry.

I've become partially obsessed with the task of finding a cheap egg-poacher of late, and this visit to a pound shop paradise turned out to be precisely how to do it. A fiver, what a bargain! Now all my eggs will be perfect, though it has been pointed out that my cholesterol level may bump up a bit as a result. I remarked lately that I refused to go for one at a tenner, but a bluey would be the fair exchange that proves no robbery. And so, I felt duty bound to hand over the aforementioned Princely sum and scuttle off with the goods.

A mere minute or so later, barely time to explain how ecstatic I was to F.G., I found myself glancing downwards at the pavement as I walked. Hush my cotton socks and go to the foot of my stairs, if there wasn't a tenner on the deck. I stuck my foot on it, in that cool way that finding cash brings out in a miserly old scrote like myself, and swept it into my pocket. This is, after all, the payback for being so short.
Now scarcely able to put my elation into words, but able nonetheless, I strolled on hand in hand with my girl, who was expressing her wonder about how it was I always found money in the street.

Then the first pangs of guilt began. What if somebody really needed that cash? It was found with a receipt from the greatest retail outlet of them all, (Not Harrods you fools, Wilkinsons) Perhaps I should find out whose cash it was as the purchase was only a few minutes previous. I was talked out of it by the kind of common sense as used by girlfriends who are being driven mad by verbose sidekicks apparently pushed to the edge of apoplectic hysteria by a gross profit of £5 and the prospect of neater breakfasts.

I like walking about with this woman. She brings the paradox of calm insanity to my day. I feel though that we should always walk in step with each other, opposite feet treading at the same time ie. not like marching soldiers. Normally, I have to adjust my gait in order to achieve this by doing a sort of one pace skip. With this in mind on the way home, walking up the 99 steps to where my house sits atop an urban hill, amid the other jostling architecture, I contemplated all my good fortune of the afternoon so far, and could ask myself only this question.
Why is it that some people fold their arms right over left, and others left over right? Can any of you out there help in my quest for the answer to this query as there is no logic behind the answer, I fear, and it's beginning to fry my grey matter?

Lucky Me.

I'm going to bed to read my book because I can't talk much about the predictable nature of the England football team's demise this evening. I wrote a post about the domestic violence which may take place around the country as a result of this defeat. I deleted it because though it was heartfelt enough, I don't really know what I'm talking about and perhaps that subject is so very close to so many peoples' lives I should at least do some reading or talking about it first. Suffice to say, ya basta.
I've driven myself around in circles now and but cannot just delete and run away, so I'm just filling another piece of cyber space with more conjoined phrases and thoughts. No jokes, no funny asides. I'll just keep myself to myself.
And later, when the coffee wears off and the fatigue of another day finally strokes my eyelids toward each other, I can sleep safe and sound in my womb of dreams and Western World comfort.
Lucky me.

Embarrassing A Dead Tree.

I've written about trees and the tiny people who live and scurry about them recently.

I have an ongoing project which may end up as a blog or as a series of photos to be exhibited, assuming I could find a mug to exhibit them.

I'm gonna witter on about one tree though, because recently this tree has suffered perhaps the greatest of all indignities, and has been cut down. I am probably the last person in the world to have taken a photograph of this tree. This tree has been on television, at least once, in an adaptation of Terry Pratchet's 'Johnny and the Bomb'. I thought it looked quite healthy, though my friend who is a tree surgeon may have been able to inform me otherwise had he ever seen it in all it's arboreal splendour.

However, the shot I took of this tree was not of it's regal limbs extending into a Wintry sky, or of it's Autumnal leaves cast confetti like into a whistling wind, to sail unto some hitherto unknown destiny, perhaps to become a coracle for some pond skimming faerie folk.

No, I took a picture of it's arse, because that's the kind of guy I am.

Now, I know what some of you may be thinking. Trees, to the best of your knowledge don't have arses. Well no, in the traditional sense of the word, they do not. But neither do many things which people describe perfectly understandably as having an arse end.

And so, as if to cause this formerly grand, now reduced to council park mulch, tree embarrassment beyond it's temporal existence, here is it's bumhole.

It All Comes Flooding Back

After a day at work and an evening spent doing a little washing and defragging the ailing and geriatric computer, I spent half an hour on the phone to my long distance lover, partner and all round top woman. I was expecting my 16 year old daughter to come back home any minute. She's been up the road gabbling with her goopy mates all evening. I thought maybe I could escape to my room as soon as she did, having said hello and goodnight. There's nothing quite like a relaxing read in the comfort of ones own bed. Or maybe I could listen to one of my bird call cds and pretend I'm on a farm in late spring surrounded by wildlife abounding.

As it is, these options were not to be open to me this evening.

My daughter is not a delicate girlie girl. She's a good kid, but can be a tad brusque and bullish at times.

She had asked if a mate could stay over tonight as well. Considering I was supposed to be having a quiet night in totally alone, this was not first choice but hey, what can you do?

So, just as I'm finishing the aforementioned phone call, in crash Daughter and Friend, another 16 year old, who I've met before.

Only this time she's rather drunk. Actually, she's totally pissed, but being a polite girl, waves absentmindedly from the sofa when I say hi.

I prepare for my retreat to the inner sanctum upstairs, but just as I'm issuing instructions for the teens part in the peaceful remainder of the evening, Friend, who has gone awfully quiet, lurches forward. And with a mighty heave, regurgitates a pot noodle and half a pint of snakebite onto my living room carpet, her lap, and the corner of the sofa.

Oh what joy!!!

A vomiting teenager. To cut a not very long story short enough to allow me some sleep tonight, I and Daughter, who is not drunk at all, spent the next hour holding this poor girl's head over a bucket whilst she did that heartrending uuuuerchhhhaaah! noise over and over again.

We've all been there, (well, most of us anyway) I suppose. I have a history which involves doses of alcohol as an emetic. At her age, I was a past master at the old Technicolour Yawn, and I wasn't always in control enough to be too fussy about where it landed. Let's face it, discretion is not top priority when you've got to call God on the Great Porcelain Phone and you just don't have the strength or coordination to get to it.

Her mum came to pick her up. It took a while to get her moving but I'm confident that she'll be ok.

And so I'm winding down in front of the revved up P.C.

Soon I'm off to bed. Far too soon after that I'm up and off to work. Soon after that, Daughter will continue the sterling efforts we have both made to render the living room odour free. Of course, that wont be possible but we have to try at least.

Goodnight everybody, and please comment with your best/worst teenage overdrinking til vomit stories.

And so....

And so I have gone and been to another gig. The drummer from the first band was great. A throwback to what drummers should be. Tight and in their own world. As if the band they're in is just a figment of their imagination, bizarrely in time with their own bedroom/bedsit/othersideoftheworld thoughts. He only had a guitarist/singer for company as one of the guitarists couldn't turn up. Rock 'n' roll, eh.

The guys I came to see were great. Just garage rock shit of an ilk that kids get but they don't know why, and growed ups get but they forgot they did cos generally they're too busy at home watching shit or being asleep or just can't remember etc, just like I can't in general.
Yeah the bass player wore a dress. But I was usually sexier, my skirt was usually tighter. Actually, I was usually sexier, more pissed, more talented and can sing, for fucks sake.
Yeah, the songs were of a balls-out-go-for-it genre, but really everyone involved knows the old ones were so much more musically, well, musical. Didn't mean anybody came to see us or hear those songs though.

The drummer was on a planet of his own, which means the best guitar player in this city of his type is probably never gonna find a rhythm he can ingratiate without compromise.
In the end, talking to boring boys and girls out on yet another Bristol night out became dull. So here I am, talking to you guys.

Thank fuck all you guys exist. Without you, I would be asleep.