...

Yes, I thought I could lure you in with my karate-chopping nun picture; it never fails. Of course, this was a deliberate ploy - my thinking is that by showing you a picture from my new Nuns Having Fun calendar, somehow it'll make up to my more avid readers for the fact that I haven't written in over two weeks.

Secondly, I'm doing what I do every few months - and trying to convince readers that I'm not just some morbidly obsessed, writer-y-type, always banging on about her mother dying and how life is full of loss and disappointment and mediocre television game shows such as Deal-Or-No-Deal (though one day I'll share with you the esoteric side of D-O-N-D).

No. I'm also a fun-loving, light-hearted kind of gal, who can take pictures of quirky things around her flat and share them with you, dear reader, and therefore is always capable of more than just long blog posts full of beauty and woe. So here's a picture of some sweets. Aren't they lovely? Straight from the mouth of God. Well, Elephant and Castle, to be precise.



Jesus Sweets. Mmm, Strawberries and Cream. Oh, ok, I've just spotted the words 'mourn' and 'burden' in there, so... ok, here's a picture of a Basset hound instead. This is a dog I hope to one day own (after I have all my other dogs), and whom I aspire even more, in old age, to becoming like. Yes, it sounds fucking weird, I know, but I want nothing more than to become like a Bassett hound. Ohh, the saggy nobility of it.

My friend sent me this the other day, and I have to say I'm well on my way to believing that it could be the remedy for all my dog-longings. Like many of my friends, my desire to have a canine companion has been foreshadowed by the fact that I live in a distinctly bijou attic flat, three floors up. So that means a major trek whenever they wanted the loo, and anything but a drugged, ancient or legless dog would be driven mad by its confining size.

The double blessing of crocheting my own dog would be that it might help solve my financial crisis (I won't be spending any money if I'm perpetually crocheting plus I won't have to pay out any vet fees) and also I get to while away my Winter immersed in crocheting bliss instead of perpetually mulling over tedious existential questions such as where the fuck is my life is going? Handy.

Also, it would mean that I can finally fill the dog basket that lies mournfully empty in my hallway, waiting for some furry fellow to come and grace its sheepskin interior.

Dog Fever

So now that my quest for finding out exactly what the breed of the dog of my dreams is has come to an end, and I now know that the dog I'm after is in fact known as a Bearded Collie, my dog obsession has reached fever pitch, resulting last night in partial insanity.

I want a Bearded Collie so bad. Now I know it, even the name is unbearably endearing. This is no transient longing. I have been ruminating over it for the last eighteen months, fantasising and wrangling with my conscience as I have known I could neither a) afford it, nor b) justify housing any dog of reasonable size in my little flat.

The man I talked to outside the cafe yesterday, who was accompanying the said dog of my dreams, told me that they are apparently the most intelligent of dogs, but also need the most extraordinary amounts of walking; miles and miles as a puppy, slightly less as an adult.

Does this mean now that I have to move to the country to fulfill my dream, or at the very least install a small treadmill in my flat? I want to get a rescue dog really, and if by luck he happened to be a Bearded Collie too, in order then for us both to live happily side by side he would have to be either very old, thus not in need of so much walking, or blind. Thus he wouldn't see how inadequate his home was, or perhaps with only two legs or something, you know, the front two working, the back of him mounted on wheels, then I could just roll him along the seafront and he'd be happy as larry.

I'll stop there, I think.

What am I to do? I know if I even venture to Shoreham Dogs' Home to take a peek at the dogs there, I will return home with at least one of them in my arms.

Another alternative is to fall in love with another breed, a breed of tiny, tired dogs, who are puffed out after five minutes of walking and fit in my handbag. I'm not sure if that breed actually exists, nor if I'd like them. They sound quite weird.

The third option, the sensible, bigger person-ed, less egomaniacal, over-the-top romanticised option is to take a dog which most needs a home and is neither tiny nor huge, not a puppy but not at death's door and who has all his own legs, and leave the rest up to the universe.

Nope. I want a Bearded Collie.

Stagger into the Light

I am so fed up at the moment. As my Mum would say, fed up "to the back teeth". I feel at the moment like my life is being lived on a high wire, and I am some untrained circus performer who was just minding her own business taking money for the show before being dragged up there by a couple of brutish clowns without a safety net. This isn't what I signed up for. Though one gets to experience a certain existential wisdom and inner knowledge at such times as these, I have to say, as a compensation for how bollocks everything can feel, that is not the greatest source of comfort to me.

And yet, it has its moments. After working out my finances and discovering that I have a total of 27p to live off for the whole month of February, hearing that my Mum's health had taken another turn for the worse and realising that I do not know what the fuck I am doing with my life at the moment, on any single level, today I prised myself out of my hidey hole and took to the sea-front in what felt like my very last attempt at bothering with life and its doings at all.

And I was startled by beauty. All along the prom, out far from the shore, in each direction, East and West, from Shoreham harbour up past Palmeira Square, Sussex Heights to the Palace Pier and beyond, the afternoon light fell like strands of golden hair over the coastline, over and around the enormous mass of human beings enjoying the first clear blue sky day in Brighton for weeks. The tall cream buildings lining the road past Hove Lawns stood quietly luminous and everything I saw was softening in the glow of the afternoon. I tilted my head back and felt the skin on my face lit up by the gleam of the sky.

It is a wonder to walk the prom on a day like today. To witness life, to smell the sunlight, to feel the blueness of the air all around. It all becomes part of one single movement - the puppy in a green coat chasing its tail, the flat bodies of surfers, faces pressed to their boards, bodies black and shiny, waiting for a wave to break. The bare curved torso of a teenage boy as he skateboards down the pavement disappearing into a crowd of parents and prams, women selling trilby hats, a man selling hippy clothes, and thirty something media professionals recovering from the night before. The white lips of the waves coming in, the dark of the West Pier, the pinks, yellows and blues of the beach huts, the arc of a seagull wing, the smell of chips from the sea front cafe, the glittering row of hotels shrinking into the distance.

I pass huge dogs, tiny dogs, silly dogs, magnificent dogs, swimming dogs, sniffing dogs, dogs whose eyes look like they hold the key to every soul within them and I want to take every single one home with me. I decide: I will open a dog sanctuary, no, I will live in the country with twenty working dogs for company, no, I will ask one of the owners politely if it is hard work looking after their dog, and then gently offer to take it of their hands as an act of compassion.

I wasn't expecting this. I wasn't expecting to be lifted, or to feel joy for no other reason at all than being here, now, in this perfect sunlit scene. On the way home I took the last money from my purse and detoured up to Tesco's, threw caution to the wind and bought a chocolate cake, from their 'finest' range. I took my £1.65's worth of joy home with me, made a cup of tea, and ate a slice in silence. It has been many weeks since I have enjoyed the glory of a piece of chocolate cake, and it tasted good. Sitting in the fading sun of my front room, it tasted perfect.

Dinghies Rule.

Well I'm sizzled and sozzled by all this heat and sun, my skin is salty and red and my feet are sore and pummelled from all the walking upon sharp, pebbled beaches I have been doing today. But it's all been worth it for I have bought a dinghy! Well, more correctly, Jo and I are now the proud owners of 'Rapid 4000' (soon to be replaced by a fairer name when we think of one), a blue, white and yellow vision of loveliness and rubber.
     In my last post I talked about certain strange desires that come upon me from time to time. Well, I reckon that dinghies are the new 'answer to everything', and my desire for one today grew to such epic proportions that I could think of nothing else except the vision of Jo and I bobbing up and down like queens in our dinghy palace, gin and tonics in hand, a troop of lithe young men in fetching shorts trailing behind us attached to rubber rings.
     Jo and I braved the crowded stretch of beach between home and the Palace Pier at least three times seeking out the lowest price, (with preferable free pumping upon purchase), and so we were elated when we finally hunted out one that was the best price by far, and they even threw in a pair of oars for free.
     The only problem was getting it (fully inflated) all the way home again after our first outing in the sea. I had initially suggested that I row it all the way from Churchill Square, then around the West Pier, meeting Jo with the bags on the other side. But after it became clear that the only moves I seemed capable of were rotating us 360 degrees repeatedly until Jo had to take over, we decided that carrying it home would be safer. Since Jo's wrists were playing up, I had the joyful task of carrying all 8 feet by 4 feet of dinghy on my head, through the heaving hordes of holidaymakers making their way up the sea front.
     We finally made it to Hove and rewarded ourselves with delicious pizza and chips in Maroccos, before pushing the dinghy out again, by now, into the darkening sea of sunset. I was getting the hang of the oars finally, and we effortlessly sped out into the milky blue water as the shadows of the shoreline faded into the distance, and fireworks exploded silently over the Palace Pier. Brighton looks very different from this far out to sea, we were starting to slide out into silence, where there were only gulls, tinkling fish, and a yellow buoy in the distance. This is where I want to spend my days and nights in this town of mine, this side of the sea front. This is where the inspiration is, where poetry bobs up and down with the plastic under our hands. This is my kind of home. Jo put her head back and looked up at the electric blue sky. Stars were beginning to peep out from behind the clouds. The night was perfect.

After a gentle arrival back into shore, and a bumpy landing on the beach, we wobbled our way back to my flat, dinghy in tow, our legs exhausted from too much swimming, our arms weary from so much rowing, our skin smarting from the salt and the sun. But I, ever the impractical and slightly over sentimental one, decided that I couldn't bear to deflate our lovely new blue girl, and that she would have to be dragged, fully inflated, up to my top floor flat, where she could reside happy and fat in my exceedingly tiny hallway. So drag her I did, up three flights of narrow stairs, around squeaky corners and finally into my nine-foot hallway did we push in all eight-foot of her blue magnificence.
     Sitting here now I think, well, if I'm not to have a boyfriend at the moment, then I shall have a dog instead. But if I'm not to have a dog at the moment (I've got to think a way around the landlord), well, a dinghy it has to be. She's a lot less complicated than a man, and though she does take up more room, you can deflate her and fit her nicely in a little plastic carry all, and pump her up again when you need her. She doesn't poo and she doesn't break your heart, you don't have to take her for walks and she won't tell you how she just 'needs some space' at the moment. So there you have it, all existential problems undone. I now know how my days and nights this summer will be spent. Dinghys rule.