It’s the way of things! You can’t mess with the way of things!

Posted on by inkbiotic

What’s your unusual outrage-trigger? What will give you the wrath no matter how trivial?

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Weather: alright

Mood: ok

Word of the day: Agowilt – sudden sickening and unnecessary fear

The hedgehog cake face is still in the fridge. It gives me a shock every time I open the door and it’s grinning up at me like something out of a horror film. Nobody wants to throw it away, because it’s food. Nobody wants to eat it because it’s a cute hedgehog. We are stuck with it forever.

Today’s work drama was the big boss wanting Mike to cut the grass on a 1 (the possible settings are 1-5, the lowest we go is 3.) Mike stomped into the smoking area red-faced and raging.

‘What is he thinking? The man is mad! Mad! I’ve never cut that fucking lawn on a one! I’ve been cutting this grass for thirty years, never on a one!’ He sat down, hunched over into his fury, tugging on his vape to calm himself. At that point Nobby (another boss, nobody knows what of, something to do with pavements) came storming around the corner.

‘Did that twat just ask you to cut the grass on a one?’

‘Yes!’ said Mike, fists balled, eyes popping.

‘What’s the matter with him? I worked on a golf course for ten years, you never cut on a one! He’s an idiot!’

‘You cut on a three,’ said Mike howling like a wounded animal, ‘everyone knows you cut on a three!’

‘He’s lost his mind,’ said Nobby.

‘He’s changing everything, this is the beginning of the end!’ said Mike.

It took a while for Mike to calm down, and then we compromised by cutting the grass on a two. Contrary to expectations, it was fine and looked quite nice.

Picking up skills and massacring animals

Posted on by inkbiotic

 

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Look at those eyes! They have seen horror.

Monday is a shock it takes me all week to recover from.

Weather: a bit iffy

Mood: hermit crab in a bucket

Word of the day: Decarnate  – denied or deprived of physical bodily form

Really enjoying my new connection to Mateo. Today he taught me how to make a simple bomb using a bolt, two nuts and some match heads. ‘For if you ever need to fight off the police,’ he explained.

For his birthday, Dan brought in a selection of cakes. One of the cakes was a large cute hedgehog (in pic). So cute that nobody could bring themselves to cut it.

‘I can’t do it!’ cried Mike. ‘Just look at his face!’ Over break everyone was milling in and out of the room, looking at the delicious cake sadly, unable to take a knife to it. Finally, somebody greedy enough (it may have been me) cut off the arse end. Slowly, everybody took a slice, reducing the cake bit by bit, leaving the face. Nobody could cut the face, so it now sits in the fridge. I’m told this is the only time a cake hasn’t been completely eaten in one sitting.

Duel identity

Posted on by inkbiotic
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Before today, I hadn’t noticed the fruits of an Elaeagnus. They’re like jewels.

Weather: Sun and hail happening at the same time, that should mean a magical rainbow, but there was NOTHING.

Mood: a bit dazed

Word of the day:  Aceldama   (n)  site or scene of violence or bloodshed

Last night the bathroom light cord wouldn’t switch on, no matter how I pinged it, so I had to clean my teeth in the dark and then wait until this morning to see if I’d sprayed toothpaste everywhere.

Got to spend the day with Mateo today, he always avoids me when we walk the same way to the tube station, so I assumed he didn’t like me much. It turns out he’s generally reluctant to talk to anyone, but once he relaxed a bit we got on well. He looks like a weathered Leonard Cohen and can build anything out of anything. If we find a bit of metal tubing or a sheet of plastic dumped in the gardens, our boss will say, ‘Take that back to Matee-o [how everyone pronounces his name] he can build something with it.’

Anyway, today we were building a climbing frame for Clematis out of some packing crates. Went pretty well in that nothing collapsed and it looked smart at the end. I also got to hear Mateo ‘s story. I started by asking him if his name is really pronounced Matee-o , which is what everyone seems to call him. He said no, ‘it’s pronounced Azider’.

‘Ah,’ I said, ‘of course.’

Turns out that he’s a Basque separatist, and grew up under the oppression of the Spanish. Not allowed to speak his own language in the schools, not allowed to have his own name on any official documents, so officially he is Mateo, but it isn’t his name. He reckons Azider is too difficult to pronounce for English folk, so keeps it simple (even though we can’t get Mateo right either).

His teenage years were spent in and out of prison because of fighting with the police. To him it was a war, to the government, they were terrorists.

(The conflict ended in 2011)

Another chat with Neville

Posted on by inkbiotic

 

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I’m not ready for this kind of commitment! I have Netflix to watch!

Weather: beautiful sunshine, HAIL! beautiful sunshine

Mood: yellow with a splash of blue

Phrase of the day: vrane su mu popile mozak (Croatian) he’s crazy. Literally meaning ‘cows have drunk his brain’.

I decided to take the plunge again and be sociable. I went into the kitchen where I met Neville for the second time. He was cooking sausages (I wonder what happened to all the bacon.) We got into a conversation about the whole Brexit Bollocks. It was a good exchange of views at first, but then he started telling me the history of the EU, with all the dates, who started it, why, who else got involved, why etc. I didn’t really need to know all this.

I interjected with a wrong fact (I thought Switzerland was in the EU, I was just trying to get him to stop) and so he began to list every country that’s a member.

Ok, so I tried to change the subject, but he started listing every country that wanted to be in the EU, but wasn’t. And then countries that had entered or left. At that point I edged my way out of the kitchen to end the conversation, but he just couldn’t seem to pick up on the cue. I had to close the door while he was still speaking or I’d have ended up digging my grave in the kitchen. Or his. He may still be there now, listing things he knows. This is why I don’t cook.

I’m leaving my room! I’m going into the kitchen!

Posted on by inkbiotic

Graffiti

When you think about it, the whole world is a ‘lifestyle café’.

Weather: the kind of wind that tries to snatch you out of the world by your hoody

Mood: adventurous

Phrase of the day: Hablar hasta por los codos (Spanish) to talk non-stop, literally to talk even through the elbows

I took a walk down my street to see what changes have happened this week. There’s always something. Either somebody will have knocked down a wall to reveal a toilet in their garden or they’ll be a gathering of body builders at the church.

About half-way down the road is a furniture shop with no particular wares. Last week they had thirty washing machines, before that it was microwaves and sofas. I’m assuming it depends on what warehouse got broken into. The guys who like to hang out there are sociable and friendly, always playing music and having a smoke and a chat together. I walked past it today and it had turned into a garden centre. It had the same group of guys hanging out, but with rows of dry brown box bushes and withered geraniums.

I’m impressed they managed to change their entire product line and kill it, all within a week.

Bolstered by this go-getting attitude of can-do, when I got home I decided I wouldn’t spend the whole evening hiding in my room. I’d venture out and talk to my new flatmates. As I’ve mentioned, I tend to hide from them and only sneak out long enough to get some cheese from the fridge. I keep the crackers in my room. That’s dinner.

However, today, when I heard someone bashing around the kitchen I went out to say hi under the pretence of getting some cereal. And I encountered Neville. Neville is super woke, super friendly, and was wearing a t-shirt that said ‘Feminist as fuck’. He told me about his hometown in Delaware and how he grew up poor in what sounded like a mansion (three flights of stairs and a pool??), all the while he was cooking up a big pack of bacon. Just putting slice after slice in the frying pan. Then he began telling me all the countries that are good at making bacon and I felt the need to escape the conversation. This was more words than I’d heard in a long time and my brain was also starting to fry, but it was difficult to find a moment of pause. Apparently Denmark is not the best country for bacon, that’s just PR. In the end I had to shout that I’d heard my phone ringing and run for my room.

Still, that’s a first step in becoming a fully integrated member of society. I’m on the up and up!

A big, awkward giant

Posted on by inkbiotic

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‘I seem to be having a tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle’ Arthur Dent

Weather: storm Gareth turned me into a mud Midas. Everything I touched turned to mud.

Mood: tentatively anxious

Word of the day: oofless – poor and oofy – rich

My new job is sort of like my old job, in that I play with plants all day, but now I work with bigger machinery than before, and much nicer people. Today the rain and wind were let loose, so I spent the morning turning into a mud-monster, and the afternoon driving around looking for dangerous tree limbs. I’d never driven a van before this job, and I was keeping that on the down-low from my boss, but these vans are 3.5 tonnes, which feels HUGE. My old car was smaller than a mini and I’ve never driven anything else, so trying to squeeze through narrow roads lined with Jaguars feels like wearing an Iron Man suit in a climbing frame. As yet I haven’t hit anything. Except for a fence post and my boss didn’t see that, so it doesn’t count. Everyone is being very patient.

At home I’m keeping in my room. There are many people milling about the corridors outside, and they seem friendly, I assume some of them live here. I’m eating popcorn for dinner, I’ve got a carton of juice, hopefully I can hide in my room until they’ve cleared.

I’m back! From outer space!

Posted on by inkbiotic

“When you throw everything up in the air anything becomes possible.”  ― Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses

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Helleborus

Weather: sunny with a bitter wind

Mood: happy!

Word of the day: ideolocator – the name for the ‘you are here’ sign.

For anyone who still remembers old inkbiotic, I’m back! How are you all doing? I’ll be taking a wander around to find out in a bit.

I’ve not been here for a while, and I’ve missed the blogosphere and you delightful people who inhabit it.

Part of the reason I’ve been away, is that everything has changed for me in the last six months. I now have a new home, a new job, a new goddamn attitude (actually, I’m lying, the attitude is much the same). I’m still a gardener, but working for a much smaller organisation made up of quirks and oddballs. I’m living in a house with four people I don’t know, two Canadians, an American and another Englander. Everyone seems friendly, but I’m still trying to figure out routines and moods. So all is kind of chaotic at the moment and I’m hoping this will make for entertaining blogs in the weeks to come.

But for now, I’m going to have an explore of the WordPress world. See you soon.