Trivia

I had a completely free day today from beginning to end, and managed to fill it all productively, which makes a bloody change. As the weather was so good I managed to stay outdoors for a while and stay off the bloody computer, and I'd also worked out a few things to do in advance yesterday to stop me from pissing the day away playing mahjong and making clever comments on a selection of forums.
The good news is they just removed the tumour from grandma's kidney, and she's recovering in hospital. Apart from that at 95 her health is still good and has more or less got over her recent fall which had her in hospital for a month as she couldn't get around.

So apart from that, the trivia was all I had today personally. I did some gardening, which where I live is never going to be enough as the back garden's on a corner (well, next to one) which means it doesn't back on to another house and goes on for miles till it meets another garden fence. It's been cleared of half the bushes the previous residents planted for 'privacy and seclusion', which also meant no light and the possibility of blocking access completely to the garage door and 3/4 of the garden beyond. But the stuff that's left has just made up for whatever I removed, and fills any space I cleared within a fairly short time. Though I tried gravelling one area, which reverted to grass within the year, I'd never concrete the lot over as it would then become a yard and I may as well be living on an estate with no garden at all.
I also painted my second of possibly many more Hampstead Garden Suburb roads, I already made an album of 6X4 photos I'd taken of it a while ago, and now pick out a nice one each time to copy in watercolour, and the first only took me a few hours. I'll scan the next one tomorrow once it's dried enough to finish the corrections, and then I'll bite the bullet and try and sell them to the gallery who started me off on the project to begin with as they have a pile of cards already of the area. I don't really mind if they take them or not, as I'm happy with them anyway, but a commercial outlet is always useful as well.

Other than that I had to stay in a good few hours to watch the Open golf on TV, the last bastion of public major sport on TV. I had to pay for Sky anyway as otherwise I'd miss everything else, but of course if you want to visit someone who hasn't got it it doesn't help if you want to watch it there, does it. As I spend a large slice of the week at family with the TV on, I'm aware how little actual use having Sky at home is as I'm sure most people watch half their TV elsewhere and have to rely on whatever their friends and family have chosen to pay for (or not, as in everyone I know bar one). A new cat arrived in my garden today, who I heard long before I saw as I heard a familiar bell ringing outside, only my cat Lucy had long since ditched her collar with one on. He looked exactly like Felix in the ads, and wondered if I'm now actually living near a celebrity, but after a few minutes sitting in the front garden minding his own business, Lucy, who had been watching him intently through the window, and I hoped she'd ignore, decided to leave the house and in minutes had sent him packing up the road at about 50 mph. So much for getting on with the neighbours...

Otherwise my social life is plagued by the evil of Platonism. Of course every man alive knows exactly what I mean by this. Talking to a female friend while barely concentrating on what they're saying compared to your fascination with what you'd like to be doing with their body. The cruellest mismatch of creation is the reliability with which women latch on to men for friends where the man is crazy about her and she has absolutely no interest in him physically or emotionally. It's almost a rule of nature it's so consistent. And of course you can no more make yourself fancy a man as a man can stop fancying you. It's chemical, not a mental decision. What a bloody farce. And the power trip they go on once they suss out how you feel, talking about how they really aren't interested and can't you keep your mind on higher things etc., rubbing it in even more. They actually seem to get more pleasure from this power than they would having sex anyway. Is it no coincidence that every woman I've ever met who thinks and acts like a man (ie let's do it for fun and then if we like each other could go out together) looks like one. I suppose it's the only way they've learnt to get it as if they just sat back and waited like the rest nothing would ever happen. But it doesn't even seem a learned reaction, these women just have no inhibitions. But unlike bad things, it's not catching. Like the feminists, most women believe, consciously or more often subconsciously they've got something valuable to protect, and will only share it with someone who has gone through the labours of Hercules.

Other than all that, I went to see the last day Harry Hill was filming yesterday, and discoverd he'd written the programme, hence his attention to the production side rather than performing, but the plus side was it did give me the chance to go and talk to him again, and he took me on set to watch a scene till a heavy moved me off again. John Thompson from The fast show (among others) was the only person I recognised in it, I was never particuarly impressed with him, and after sitting on the grass giving me a dirty look I said 'I'm your one man studio audience' (I was the only one watching at the time) in case he thought I might be a terrorist hanging around, which was returned with a look of complete revulsion. Unlike Mr Hill he was not a gentlemanly type, and did not apparently give a shit (or two?) about his public. The show itself was a pilot mickey take of East Enders, I have to say when it comes to these type of shows I far preferred Stella Street, but hopefully when I see it Harry's personal humour will show through and overcome the sheer horrendousness of East Enders whether it's the real thing or a funny version. I could never see anyone making a public execution funny, and would put East Enders on a similar level.

Well, that was all deliberately collected to be the blog equivalent of what's left on the floor of a budgie's cage. But at least I was pretty well occupied today in a productive way for a change, though apart from bumping into a neighbour for a few minutes didn't speak to another soul. That's not just Kingsbury, that's London. That's the only bit that's wrong about East Enders, there isn't a community spirit in London any more like that, and if you actually go to the East End, those sort of people haven't lived there for about 30 years, they now all live in and around Essex. But why worry about accuracy when they're only there to entertain... oh...