Musings

Spent all of yesterday spanking Eliot, and trying to decide whether or not one can think Yeats both a genius and a Dirty Old Man.

Home to cook dinner, with a breadandbutter pudding for afters. Comfort food. I am preparing for hibernation, clearly.

I miss P. I miss the effortless way he dealt with life. I miss having him treat every worry and panic and inability-to-make-small-decisions-day as something to shrug off like a silk shirt without even thinking about it. Not mollycoddling, but just living on a even keel.

He could get himself into some states, though, mind. Somehow we seemed to manage to always have one of us crazy and one of us sane, providing a shoulder to cry on and a hand up from the ground, even if only the say before you'd been the one down there. Maybe that's why we were good at it; we could recognise the signs, and knew the way out of the hole.

And there is so much I want to tell him about my course, about how the girls are all thin and pretty but everyone is nice, and there's a boy who wears wifebeaters and a boy who has an epic moustache (but are both lovely), and the work is challenging but always interesting.

I've never studied modernism before, as the Oxford English degree doesn't seem to recognise the modern age (Finals stop at the end of the Romantics) so I've been filling my head with modernisme, modernism, modernisms, modernity, modernities, and attempting to sound intelligent at the end of it.

Still. It's fun. Being a student again. And being in London libraries reminds me of P quite a bit, when I used to meet him and help him track down back issues of Vogue and have the people in the British Library shush us when we giggled trying to find the way out.

Orienteering never his strong point.

But so many other things were, and I miss that.

(Dark blue with little white dots.)

Domestic / Academic

Yesterday I read (and annotated) Dubliners (focusing on 'The Dead') , Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man (both for Post-Colonial Ireland), Four Quartets ('modernism and religion') and The Wasteland ('modernism as modern life').

I don't like James Joyce or T.S.Eliot very much at the moment. Not sure if I'll ever forgive either of them. My brain hurts.

Today was light in comparison - Heart Of Darkness and Conrad's Congo Diary ('modernism and the other'), and am part way through Nightwood ('modernism and sex').

But enough of this. At the weekend there was baking, and it was good. Herewith picamatures:

FLAN

I decided on Friday that I was going to make a flan. Mainly because I like the word. It is shortcrust pastry (blindbaked), a layer of (homemade) blackcurrant jam, and frangipan with roasted pear slices laid across the top. I created it myself - even down to the recipe for the frangipan, which I only knew was a success when people actually ate it!





Chocolate Mousse Cake

Again this was a spur of the moment dessert. I made a simple 2oz chocolate sponge, baked in a loose-bottomed tall-sided tin lined with greaseproof paper. Then I cadged a dark mousse recipe from my Green & Black's cookbook, and smoothed it on top of the sponge. When it was set I pushed up the bottom of the tin with some trepidation and removed the greaseproof. It worked! The mousse had set, it didn't cling to the paper and it stood up beautifully! To go with it, I made a quick raspberry, strawberry, and elderflower coulis, and we served it with creme fraiche. The mousse cake was dark and decadent. It went really well with the coulis. YUM.




Tomorrow I enrol!

(Purple striped shorties.)

Just the ticket for a Wednesday night!

So, how was your week, Drinker?

Well.

I went to London on Monday, armed with a picnic and a pretty skirt. We hunkered down in St. James' park, eating tasty foods and having story and snuggles in the slightly chilly air. Later that afternoon we took a turn round the BP Portraits Competition 2009 - loving the non-prize winners, and discussing photo-realistic canvas oils. On the train to his - after a long wait for a driver - I read volume 10 of The Walking Dead, the Boy flicked through thelondonpaper (ceasing distribution imminently - what will we do without lovestruck?!).

Tuesday was the awesome Aladdin marathon, being in bed all day, with kisses and Disney. Quizzing in the evening with sodden shoes was less fun but we did rather well. Kudos to the Boy knowing 'Roc' was the answer to the Sinbad question.

And then there was Wednesday.

Fine, in the day. I read some more Thomas Mann ('Little Herr Friedemann' and 'Death In Venice', if you must know), making copious notes on German Naturalism, the novellen as veiled autobiography, Mann's relationship to Nietzsche, how Schopenhauer's theory of the will relates to Friedemann and Aschenbach's struggles with sexual desire, the fundamental problem of relating geist (spirit, intellect) to leben (life) and which is the superior force, and the loss of dignity which both geist-led protagonists find when faced with the power of leben, and what this means Mann's own philosophy held to be the correct path.

And then I went to A&E. (I think maybe modernism was trying to kill me.) I'm fine, with tablets of strange name and plenty of boyfriend love. Stomach ulcer. Bah. There was so much pain, and dizziness, and nausea, standing in the middle of Theatreland hating the bright lights and wanting the Boy to make it go away. He was wonderful with me, the grumbly scared fat girl, and wrapped me up in bed with his arms after a long long wait in UCLH (who were very good, by the way. So if you decide to get ill in London make sure you're near Euston).

My doctor today poked me a bit more and was sweet about it. I now have three different pills to take in the mornings - I will rattle if you shake me. Three because I have these tummy-protector pills, my anti-baby oral contraceptive pill, and my stop-being-crazy-anxious Citalopram. Yep, I'm on the anti-depressants again. This time it seems to be working a treat - the Boy can testify that I have been in a sunny frame of mind since day one. Aside from last night, of course. But I think that's allowed.

Health update over. I trust y'all have had a good week?

(Candy striped.)

Please note the 'e'; that is very important.

I love hoeing. It is a satisfying motion, the back and forth of my arms and the blade in the soil.

I like the order of the allotment, how my father lines the rows and the seeds themselves demand a certain personal space which lends itself to such order. Onion sets like to be six inches apart from their neighbours, and a foot distances them from the next row. This is how I spent my Sunday morning.

-Hoe the space set aside, taking care to stick to the crop rotation: you should not plant brassicas in the same plot two years running. Vegetables like a little variety in their surroundings. Who can blame them really.
- Remove the weeds. Including bastard nettle and thistle which like to hide in the midst of other plants and surprise you with pain.
- Broadcast scatter garden lime (not remotely like a lemon in any way, no no no). With gloves, please, so as not to kill yourself. A handful is approx 1andaquarter ounces, and you want about 2 ounces a yard. This will encourage nitrogen, which is good for our kind of soil. I am so informed.
- Rake the lime in. This will also help to break up the harder soil, and create a desirable tilth. (Tilth is the best bit of the soil, the top soil in which things start to grow.)
- Mark out the rows, and make holes for the onion sets. Not too deep, not too shallow - they like to nestle in a little but still state their presence.
- Dribble fertiliser round the onions, but don't dribble on them yourself. These are organic, fair trade... handcrafted, nay, even artisan onions. Make sure you walk between the rows, don't go tramping all over the poor little things.
- Water.
- Stand back and admire handiwork.

But not for long. For my next trick, I ripped out all trace of the tomato plants which had blight. We don't have much luck with tomatoes round our way. First the blight strikes Keith, then it heads West with the wind and you think that the the New Zealand postman's allotment has stopped the spread as he has gone back to New Zealand and thus doesn't have tomatoes to get blighted. But no. It will come for you too. It really is quite exciting, this allotmenting.

It was nice to be with my dad, too. I like the work, it is hard but ultimately incredibly satisfying as you can see what you have achieved. I love the fact that I can eat something which I helped create. I love the fact that I am learning a skill which my grandfather taught my dad, so that maybe one day I can teach my children.

(Turquoise.)

Flashback

His eyes lock mine; mischievous, wide. I know what he is up to. He withdraws from me, sliding down the bed. My cunt misses his cock instantly, but there is no time at all before his tongue fills that space.

Hot breath. Stubble. I love him doing this with stubble.

His tongue trips across my clit, teasing down the length of my cunt and back up. He is reacquainting himself with the geography, taking in the view, taking his time. I, who have only recently come down from a G-spot orgasm caused by some vigorous cock action, am soon heading back up.

Flick. Lick. Flick. Lick. Wet tongue coursing the well-known path in almost painful leisure. Fingers exploring their own rhythm, and I succumb to the nudging sense of my body not being my own, my body being his plaything, my body being nothing more than sex.

I can almost feel him smiling as I start to quiver. The heat down there is palpable. I cannot contain myself. I cannot stop. Thighs nutcrackering, hands in his hair, head in the pillow to muffle screams.

But it doesn't end. He doesn't move away, and there is none of the sudden oversensitivity which usually ends these sessions. No. This time his tongue burrows and twists and there are kisses and strokes and all manner of waves and pulses and feelings taking over. My brain is detached from any notion or function than this. Focusing all my energies on keeping that feeling going.

Eventually he pulls away, but the synapses fail to reconnect. I am prone. There is nothing I can do but melt further into this bed. Aftershocks prick constant, pulling more and more out of the event.

My mouth forms words and sounds and my body slowly stops wallowing in its own pleasure when he slips back into bed next to me. The liquid form of me folds into his arms and I sigh. This is it, this is what the afternoons should be made of. I can feel his cock, hard on my hip - for he takes pleasure in my pleasure - but I am too far gone to do anything but be a conduit for my own orgasms. Selfish, but he did it to me, with his tongue and his fingers, and his desire to make my body wholly his own toy.

---


Sitting in a garden with your friend, her teenage daughter, and elderly mother is perhaps not the best timed moment for such a flashback.

(Sky-blue with hearts.)

Meeeeed-ya

I have been listening to a lot of Johnny Flynn and Jeremy Warmsley recently, in a folky vibe. I think I may be turning into my father earlier than expected. Most girls, they say, end up like their mothers. Me? I am my father, without the beard or the Latin.

Yis. So. Aside from that. I thought I would write a reviewy type ramble about (300) Days Of Summer. This! Is! RomCom! Hehehehe. Well I thought it was funny...

Ahem. The Boy thought it was sad. It was, but that wasn't the point. It wasn't supposed to be a wallowing oh-that-poor-boy film. It was a film about how relationships go wonky and people are strange. It didn't end how you expected it would - although the last scene with the other girl was genius. And, yes, I would have liked to know what the hell happened to change Summer's mind, but I thought it was a great concept. The One exists, she's just not his One. Despite pretending to live in the showhome Ikea (which P and I used to do in Habitat), and all the romantic/sexual malarkey. People have relationships. Sometimes they end.

My favourite part was the construction of the film itself. They had a still of handdrawn buildings and a tree, in warm orangey wash, with the number of days. Then that would change (with accompanying grey wash change or not, depending on whether it was about to be awful or not) to another number and the film would come on. It made the film much more interesting than if it had been chronological. I thought it worked really well, too, with setting up the 'future' and referencing the past.

All in all it was a good film. I thought that the acting was great, and the plot well thought out, especially as I've said with the time-switching. But I don't know why the Boy and I had such a difference of opinion. I think he saw Summer as a heart-breaking bitch and Tom as a heart-broken nice chap who deserves a break. And whilst I don't disagree with the premise, I thought the film wanted you to look at the whole picture, rather than wallowing in the second half. It was attempting to be the anatomy of a relationship and the fall-out too, yes, but more about breaking the romcom formula - stylishly and slickly - than conforming to the flow chart writing (boy meets girl, things are great Y/N? boy loses girl, boy gets girl back Y/N?) which most films have done to rigor mortis.

The musical dance sequence was pretty damn awesome too.

(Black shorts with a little white bow.)

Well hello there...

Um. Sorry. Don't really know what happened there. Life, I suppose. It's been a while, huh? I know, I know, I'm a bad person. I should have said something. But you know what it's like. It's harder the longer it goes on - some sort of block, a feeling of wanting to say something important, of thinking that the longer it takes the less it matters. Well. Here I am.

Ah, life. I can hardly believe it is September already. I've finished working at the shop FOREVER. They asked if I wanted to be put on a zero hours contract and I said no, terminate the bitch. (Disclaimer: I may not have used those exact words.) And we had a leaving party of muchly fun, with plenty of strawberry beer and tasty pub food, and lots of shoptalk. I still haven't stopped saying 'we' but I will, I will, I will stop worrying about my systems and checks and balances and all the little things I did which will go undone. Still, I have chocolates and earrings and a card full of really quite unexpectedly nice things. And a lot of memories of nice customers; my South African Salvation Army officer, Professor "well how else would you spell it?" Seaman, the American lady who likes Winnie the Pooh and discussing how modernism is all wank, the hilarious old English gent in a wheelchair and his lovely Spanish wife... They kinda made up for the shit. And there was a lot of shit.

But it is over! And I am free! Free to disappear to Brighton with the lovely Boy. I am going to add some attempting-to-be-P photos to this post later. We had such fun, in our Pavilions themed hotel. Wonderfully firm mattress for excitable lovemaking. Shopping for awesome shoes - his vegetarian, mine with Poetic License. The pier at night, arcading away ten pence pieces. Being excited about the electric railway and stumbling over the stony beach laughing at the wind and the naturists. Walking round the Royal Pavilions sans audio guide and just soaking in the opulence. Sneaking back in the exit for afternoon tea, of tasty cake and wonderful views over the park. Using all the children's interactive panels in the Ancient Egyptian exhibition, and nosing into other people's wardrobes in the fashion rooms (well done Brighton Museum).

And do you know what? I was happy the entire time. Through the train delays and chilly manilly episodes. Just being with him, on our own, with nobody else to bother or stress us. That's when things is good. And the sex is grand. And the kisses are frequent. And everything is coming up roses.

I am off now to read a pile of books almost as tall as me in preparation for the start of term. Modernism, Ireland, Research, the East End. Books and books and books and books. Please expect more updates soon of sociopoliticaling and literarytheorising and cupcakes.

(Dark blue with polka dots and lace trim.)