This little guy was hanging about at my work today. Excuse the crappy photos, hopefully you can still see he’s a character from an unwritten children’s illustrated book. Unfortunately Fantastic Mr Fox is already taken, so I’ll need a new title – if you’ve got any ideas??
Erk! Having looked it up to check, I’ve discovered that Fantastic Mr Fox got made into a film where the fox looks like a chewed slipper. My fox would do a way better job. Look at that quizzical smile, those bright eyes.
And here:
He’s winking!
Presumably at some point me and the fox will have a tea party together along with a cranky elf. We’ll go through a magic door, and then work out how to fly a rusty car abandoned in a field.
It occurred to me walking to work today, that London may never look this empty again once the virus is over, so I took a couple of photos. Although Dan reckons that London is changed forever now, the people won’t return.
‘So London will become a rotting husk? Just the occasional cyclist and confused tourist wandering about?’ I asked. He nodded.
Okey doke. We know the movies and the TV series, the plague comes and the busy city life never returns. We end up huddled around a camp fire roasting cockroaches on sticks and trying to open a tin of beans with a plastic spork. And yes, I am aware of how melodramatic I am, it doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
Not a wildly exciting day today, but I found this cannon in the office garden. Maybe someone is preparing for that Covid Apocalypse. I will keep a close eye out for tanks and fighter planes, and keep you posted,
In more important news, I had a dream last night that one of our gardens was filled with hundreds of tiny sloths (you could fit a few in your hand). They were definitely sloths and had little sloth faces, but they were also a bit slimy and could run about very fast, so they weren’t your average sloth. I told my boss about the dream and suggested we should work out where you can buy them and she reluctantly agreed. So hopefully I’ll be working with slimy sloths soon.
Now I’m watching Tiger King (a few months late as always) and wondering if you’d have the same fuss over sloths as pets. To be clear, I think keeping tigers OR sloths as pets is wrong, but I still imagine sloth breeders being a bit more chill. I guess it’s difficult to be macho over a sloth.
My boss asked me to clear out a corner of the garden under some shrubs. Hidden away behind a wall, under a load of Fatsia leaves, I found this penguin. He was about knee height.
I asked my boss and she said that he was out in front of someone’s house a few years ago and she hid him. Apparently penguins are not appropriate for our gardens. I think he’s great, I shall be saying hello next time I’m there.
I haven’t written for a few days. With everything going on in the US with BLM protests and then protests in UK, it feels rude to chatter about 3-legged cats.
I’m not gone though. And I hope that any of you bloggers in the US, (I know Darnell Cureton, Boo and Shameful Narcissist are, so I hope they’re all ok) are safe. And I really hope that all this leads to change. The UK definitely has it’s problems with institutional racism in our police force, but the violence is so much less and there is usually some accountability. I’m a long way away and only get to see videos and pictures, but the shameless misuse of power by cops in the US looks terrifying.
Also, I got a call from my boss today. I’m back to work in a week and a half. I can’t pretend I’ve hated being off, laziness and isolation suit me fine, but I can’t wait to see my colleagues and to be outside with the plants all day. And it means I can stop doing proper exercises, like aerobics and all that bastardry. I’ve learned to tolerate it, but I would always rather be digging up something than leaping around to a perky presenter.
So my boss has sent a few of us home, while the rest stay working. It’s ridiculous that many people with non-essential jobs are still going into work, but the problem is how contradictory the gov.uk information is.
Following on from the government’s guidance on social distancing in relation to COVID-19, people should avoid travelling unless it is essential.
Also gov.uk
So, draconian measures, but for any boss with a construction or gardening company who wants to keep his non-essential business open, the line saying you can travel to work if you can’t work from home is a get out.
More frustratingly when Gove decided to clarify things, he only added to the misinformation. Reported in the Guardian
Gove said construction workers should still be going to work while staying two metres apart and tradespeople, such as plumbers and electricians, could attend emergencies in people’s homes.
Ok, so construction workers should carry on. But then in the same article:
Gove issued a series of stark warnings about the consequences of flouting the ban. Shown pictures on Sky News of construction workers gathering close together, he said: “Unless you stay at home, then the people you love most may die.”
Which is just a way of giving the bosses an excuse to carry on while demonising the actual builders doing the work.
With an economic depression looking inevitable, I get why the government are trying to keep it vague. Maybe it’s time the grand rulers of the world tried sorting the flaws in our economy. People shouldn’t starve while food is going to waste. If A.I. and robots can do our jobs, why is it still a problem for anyone to get fired? How can a global recession happen anyway? If we’re all broke, then we’re all equally rich, right? (Note: my understanding of economics is patchy.)
I refuse to be cowed by my robot masters of the future and the message they have chosen to bestow on me. While it wouldn’t be difficult to make a case for my huuuuuuuuge loserdom, I really like my life. I like its oddness, and all the green nature-y stuff in it. I like that I get enough time to let my mind wander to wherever it feels like going. And that the people I know make me laugh a lot and seem to like me. And today, I have given the book I’ve just written to a friend to read. Of course, when he reads it I’ll find out it’s not finished at all and I have a shit-load of work to do again, but for now, I can revel in the delusion of believing it’s great. So on the other hand, maybe that’s the point, I’m a huge loser, but it makes me happy, so that IS my style 🙂
Note to self: I think we all function by keeping ourselves somewhat deluded, delusion is essential for survival, nothing wrong with it all. However, other people don’t think this and won’t react well if I tell them they’re deluded. As I discovered a few weeks ago at a party. Don’t do that again, me.
Sub Tropical land. I need a short flower interlude from inspirational posters. So I decided to share with you some photos from our sub-tropical border, cos it’s beautiful.
I also thought I should let you know the bloke I see every day, who walks slowly up and down with his head hanging, I haven’t seen him since I wrote about him. I’ve decided for simplicity to call him Brennan, since that name means sorrow and he looks like the most desolate man I’ve seen. I’ll let you know when he comes back. I last saw him on his knees facing a house at seven in the morning so I’m a bit worried.
Word of the day: nullibicity – state of being nowhere
A woman on the tube today had a high vis vest on, she wasn’t acting oddly at all, just standing by the window at the end of the carriage looking out so that her back was turned towards me. Written in huge letters across the back of the high vis was
I’m straight, get it? Yes, I’m a woman and an engineer so keep your prejudices to yourself. Even in a high vis I’m straight.
Then on the front
Straight hetero engineer
I’m undecided what I think of this. On the one hand I’m sympathetic to the hassle women get for working in what are traditionally men’s roles, because I’ve had plenty over the years. It isn’t upsetting, but it’s irritating and it wears you down. On the other, writing it in huge letters on your clothes is somewhat stroppy and attention seeking, since 99% of people wouldn’t give a crap either way, and the only reason people were staring at her was because they were trying to work out what her high-vis said. On the other hand (I have three hands now) what’s the stress about being gay or straight? Does it matter if someone assumes she’s gay? On the other hand (now I have four hands, I’m a mutant!) I don’t know the circumstances surrounding this, maybe she didn’t even write the words herself.
Any other hands people can help me with?
Word of the day: paralipsis – fixing attention subject by pretending to neglect it
I’m not sure how long we’ve been in our new messroom now, a few weeks? I could look back, but I’m lazy. Anyway, after making a show of conforming to what the managers want (sitting inside, not messing around with the furniture etc) we have started to decorate and adapt, to bend our environment to suit what we want – after all, that’s what gardeners are good at.
I nicked a chair that was in one of the gardens, left there by a resident, and moved it inside so I don’t have to sit on one that slowly tips me off. We found two benches abandoned and put them outside in the shade. We emptied out the tin shed of bikes and unused cleaning products and turned it into a smoking room for when it’s raining. Mateo fixed a broken table and we put that between the benches. We even put a few paving slabs down, and added some plants, tinsel and an umbrella for decoration. It looks great.
The only downside is now the managers like to come and sit with us. Never more than one at a time, I don’t think they like sitting with each other.
Word of the day: labtebricole– living in holes
“Sticks and stones can break my bones and I have my Swiss Army Knife if they hit me and if I kill them it will be self defense and I won’t go to prison.”
― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
inkbiotic 