It works a treat

I'm starting to fall behind and haven't written about last weekend yet. On Saturday I made one of my thrice-weekly visits to see Ellie, who now weighs 8 lbs 12 oz and is cuter than ever. She smiles now and is able to lift her head a little; I sit and read stories to her and take her for walks in the park. She's lovely.





Sunday, Buffy and I went to help my fellow Nova*-victim Tamara celebrate her 26th birthday in Clissold Park, Stoke Newington. The journey from south to north London felt like the journey from the south to north poles. What is it about hot weather that f*cks up the trains and buses so badly? Heat on the line? Drivers absent due to sunbathing? Is it beyond the wit of man, etc, etc? It was good to see Tamara, though, and there were deer and turtles and toilets just like the ones in Trainspotting. We drank two bottles of wine in about two hours, resulting in us being in the following state:





There's a hole in my memory where the journey home should be, but apparently I disgraced myself by loudly mocking two goths on the bus (being an ex-goth is a bit like being an ex-smoker; we're the biggest critics). Well, one of them was wearing a T-shirt that said 'Dark is my call' which doesn't even makes sense. I also have a vague memory of wandering around Sainsbury's in Brixton holding a tin of boilable veggie hot dogs. Boilable! It's not even a word!

Buffy has already written about our journey home from Bletchley - where we saw that famous code-breaking machine plus some really cool old BBC computers and ZX Spectrums; I didn't know they had them during the war - which was truly epic. We entertained ourselves for 30 minutes by writing a poem. This is part of our get-rich-slowly scheme. Every week, Buffy's fave real life mag, Pick Me Up! publishes a poem sent in by a reader, for which they pay £25. Read this, and you'll see we already have that £25 in the bag. It's written in the voice of a typical PMU reader:

Thursday morning - get kids dressed
Leave the house, feel really stressed
Late for work, the boss is grumpy
This uniform is really frumpy
I hate this shift, it's oh-so-busy
Come five o'clock I feel quite dizzy!
Oh no it's raining, forgot my brolly
At the shops can't find a trolley
Lug my basket down the aisle
The magazine stand makes me smile
When you need a tonic, there's one you can't beat
That's Pick Me Up - it works a treat!

*Nova was the language school in Japan where I 'taught' (in the loosest sense of the word) English for a year.