::

Notice how the blue sky coaxes me out of the house and then calls out clouds

Thanks a lot
anyway you think that'd defeat us? Clouds like scoops of whipped cream?
We love whipped cream! (Dairy variety.) (We're specific.)

and besides we're ok just digesting scraps of conversation from last night's junket
a Saturday timetable is in operation as we rattle past Kew of course we would queue but only to forgo the £8 entrance fee and besides we have another plan. (I think.) ("Do we?")

We arrive and abseil off Richmond Bridge and hit the riverbank like commandos.

Here people are rowing on the water and the river laps along the wall and there's a lot of flesh and booze along the bank too. The river surface is ripped with ripples and wakes and Corporation Island is a glorious gush of willow and other trees ("we don't do trees, really, do we?") but the best thing the best thing of course is
huge jets gliding into Heathrow so low that you can almost tickle their underbelly!

"But that's not why we came here, is it?" No. "Why do we come on these expeditions, Craner?"

Marli admires houses, remarks upon: Victorian brickwork, "crumbling like lemon cake"; lattice ironwork on gates and lamps; white sash windows and velvet curtains; creeping ivy, and roses in terracotta pots. I can smell grass and water. Gnats bother Marli's (delicious) flesh and clouds still curl around sunny spells that dapple the path as they sneak through gaps between branches and leaves ("but why aren't they bothering you, you bastard?") you're nicer

and alongside Old Deer Park ("I can't see any deer") (nor can I) forming a rough plan to break into Kew from the blind side over a wall or something BUT we don't even get past Isleworth: we're thirsty and we spot a pub on the other side, so now we need to find a bridge

My hero this season is Usher. "Of course it is." He speaks to me. I feel his pain. "Of course you do."

we get there and settle on a patch of grass by a quay with a couple of boats
we have Kronenburg, salt & vinegar crisps, ham sandwiches, Marlboro Lights and Gauloises and we can see ring-necked parakeets swooping and jumping between trees on the other side of the river and we admire their extraordinary long tails and dexterity

"they fly like soft adders, or bloody bats..." she says, alarmed, as they skim our scalps soon after 4pm.

By the time it gets cold we've done nothing but drink and discuss parakeets, friends and fear of failure,
from which we both suffer (failure and fear of it).

BBC Security Analyst Frank Garner made me laugh out loud while I was slicing pancetta in the kitchen this evening. He was on Radio 4's The World Tonight talking about the imminent extradition of Abu 'The Hook' Hamza to the US and described the British hostages Hamza is accused of kidnapping in Yemen in 1998. "These weren't kids out there to get drunk and get a suntan on the beach," he said, "these were educated middle class travelers exploring Yemen and open to the culture. So much so that when they were kidnapped one of them said, 'ooh, I've got a copy of the Qu'ran. Can you explain some bits to me?' To which the kidnappers replied 'You understand nothing! Your sons and daughters are monkeys and pigs!'"

+

I really liked Scott's intricate and anxious one-man debate about Chomsky and Pilger and Steyn and Monbiot. What he said about Chomsky was interesting, particularly this: "you're frustrated at his conclusions for grass-roots alliances, everything's vague, the classifying of public opinion as another super-power seems a bit airy-fairy; is it just me or is it genuinely difficult to sometimes discern what he actually thinks."

Because, it seems to me at least, Chomsky isn't often explicit about his actual agenda, but he is here; and that's useful because, in the way the world reads sinister objectives into US Administration words and deeds, the same rigor should be applied elsewhere and everywhere, including Chomsky and Pilger and Monbiot. What I mean is this: whenever you read a Chomsky litany it should be understood that this "critique" emerges from a specific North American revisionist anarchism.

I don't enjoy reading Chomsky because he's dreadfully monotonous: in analysis, tone and style. His technique is relentless and pays decreasing dividends: no gradations or nuances or, if you look at it that way, complexities or complications. It's programmatic, without ever revealing its programme.

We're bonded by our hopeless condition: an incapacity for real contact. Thus, paradoxically, providing a precedent for contact. Lucky to find each other and like each other (just about) in that respect. Or not.

Another valued haunt which, in fact, edges towards Fitzrovia; on Hanway St. behind Virgin Megastore, nestled in a corner connecting Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road: The Spanish Quarter

is the tiniest national cluster in the city; it amounts to one beautfiul old bar (Bradley's), two subterranean bars, and a restaurant. Signs are back-lit red and yellow, and smeared with grease and dirt. The street is littered with bin bags and cigarette ends and newspaper pages. Pools of water, dust and oil clog up gutters. Above rooves, a strip of sky; at night, a channel of grubby stars. We frequent Sevilla Mia (AKA, with obvious imagination on our part, The Spanish Bar). You go in through a dodgy doorway, walk through a hall, down dirty steps, and enter an inferno or bunker (depending). A secret cave, bristling and dank. Somewhere to drink and argue. And the appeal is: you imagine that nobody could ever locate you there. You're right. They wouldn't want to. It's a last resort, to which we often resort. Claim a rickety table, light cigarettes, and let battle commence. Ashley owes Lucy money.

"You owe me money."
"I don't have any."
"When will you have some?"
"I don't know. But I think, in the meantime, you should buy me a drink."
"Why should I buy you a drink?"
"You prefer me drunk."
"I want you sober, you fuck."
"You don't mean that."
"Assume I do."
"I know you don't."
"How?"
"Because you always say you don't and then you do."
"No I don't."

So very little happens and there is always so much blah to get through: minute details and mood shifts to dissect; also, secrect loathings to list, or keep secret. If we don't begin soon, hours slip away. If that happens, and we don't notice, the mood will turn morose. Ashely will worry. Ashley is worried. He's decided to learn Arabic so that he can negotiate with Islamic terrorists. So I tell everybody about an incident that happened in Iraq a few weeks ago. An Italian was captured by Mahdi militants who tried to videotape his execution. It backfired because he refused to cooperate with them: he wouldn't kneel down; he tried to rip off his blindfold; he kept shouting, "I'll show you how an Italian dies!!!" (in Italian). But Lucy's like "Yeah, great, but he still died, didn't he? He still died horribly, didn't he, and on his own" and "Shut up, you shit." And Ashley looks worried, and excited, and Jackie looks lovely. "What makes horse-faced Sarah Jessica Parker fucking famous and not me?" Jackie's been doing nothing all week. She enjoys that luxury. She has money, somewhere. We'd all like to know from where. (Is she somebody's mistress? Are her parents dead?) Which is precisely why she won't tell us. I don't care. In fact, I admire that. In fact, I'm the same. (Minus the money.) I'm just happy that Jackie can afford to buy all those wonderful skirts and dresses and bracelets and earrings and keep her hair in such good condition. "Lux ad?" adds Lucy. "Exactly!" says Jackie. "She looks like a peeled banana with weird lumps in weird places. I don't get it."

I don't want to have to admit anything else tonight, if that's alright with you. It continues with spirit and other spirits that hit the back of the throat like battery acid. We can't pile on compliments thick or fast because that would just kill us, of course. Pretty soon we're back to what we do best: doing our best to rip at each other's defenses. Soon eyes will be awash and woozy. Another success. Yes. Another success. And it's another one of Jackie's moon things and it's another thing where her teeth are shining in low light. Then she reclines like a lizard and lobs in an Arp curve or two; nice and rotund and lumpy. It's another soft focus thing. Easy to forgive. We're jousting with sticks of dynamite at one point. Interruptions attempt to decode our crackle NOT A CHANCE because even we can't. Ashley has fine brown hair caught in tortoiseshell glasses. Slightly rouge cheeks and anxious eyes and charm and stray nerves and exact intellect. Clutches tan leather file containing poems and essay notes. When I first met Lucy she had henna red hair down to her shoulders held off her face with a skyblue silk scarf and, furthermore, she was wearing a yellow PVC angler's mac. To say I was startled by her would be to say nothing so much as
I was really startled by her.
She hits us with Tzara and I hit back with Tamara.
Who wins?

Jackie usually.

To keep one's fingers crossed. To hope for success, to try to ensure against disaster. From the superstition that making the sign of the CROSS will avert bad luck...

I, just for once, just this once, hope things work out...

well / better than expected / beautifully

I hope it's destiny (and just doubt it will be). Damn it doubt! Always find a way back in
I exude confidence for a night and then
There're holes in my pockets and keys and pennies and pound coins fall through and even worse
this morning I tried to lock my keys in the locker and the only thing that stopped me doing it was the fact that I couldn't: it was actually impossible, actually

this morning I was once again woozy with delight with all the blue sky and sweet heat because, what with winter and everything, I'd forgotten all about it all over again; in fact, I know when I will know that old age has hit me or crept up on me becuase I'll stop being surprised by the arrival of summer, and wonder what's taken it so long rather than wonder at its sudden appearence STOP ME NOW

Oh Thank God. I don't know what came over me.

I took this beautiful day by the waist and twirled it like the sexiest girl in the disco with the short skirt and kitten heels and it fell flat on its face

I had a swim: dived straight into a vat of chlorine which stung my eyes and clogged up pores (I'm used to South Wales seawater which cleans you from the outside in and lashes you with tasty salt like crushed crystal and it makes your skin and hair glow and eyes shine and there is nothing

else that can make you feel this new, this fresh, this healthy) especially not the Oasis Sports Centre's pit of liquid chemicals with Centre Point looming like a concrete overhang studded with malicious little eyes all glaring at my ribs

it's good, though, to dive into something watery and swim one length like a reef shark slicing through clear glazed sea. But I barely made 10 and only made 10 by stopping 4 times. No, I lie. 5 times.

It now transpires that I am 26 and 6' 1" tall and weigh 10 and a half stone - no fat, just muscle and bone - I am in my prime, but can hardly climb out of the pool from 10 slow laps with 4 stops (sorry, I'm lying again, 5 stops) and, sitting in the sun afterwards, actually feel a bit sick (I mean, I haven't swum since mid-september, but this is absurd, awful...)

I've decided that squash is for me. Last year I said the same about fencing, which was, for a while,

I made a dashing fencer (honestly) broad shoulders, all in white, but when it came to fight I didn't have it in me, not that I lack anger, but it just turned to pantomine, and the more seriously people took it (lunging at me with wobbling "sabres" like "wacky" wands) the more difficult I found it to stop

giggling.

At work a new girl has started working in the art department. This is her second week and I want to take her to bed and do bad things to her. It is an urge. (Obviously.) It began on Sunday. She was in the Cafe reading a copy of El Pais (she's Spanish) with her slender little neck bent and suddenly I could see

I mean I could feel myself kissing it; my lips fizzing against the static of her virtually invisible downy
and
my hand on her thigh, of course, and could see her knees go a little weak, and mine virtually give way,
I could've been brought to my knees at that moment just to beg or steal away one kiss and then another and then another, she had total power over me the psychotic little bitch, and she couldn't even see that I was there

anyway, in life outside my libido, we're on glaring terms, which means she likes me, obviously

unless it means she hates me. But she can't hate me because she doesn't know me. Only people who actually know me hate me. Otherwise they like me. That's their first mistake.

it certainly means I like her, damn her, and I don't even know why (she's pretty. she has dark hair. she's slim. she's artistic. she wears glasses. she doesn't smile at me or say "hello". she's Spanish. she reads El Pais) I know exactly why I like her (I want to take her to bed and do bad things to her)

I don't know her well enough yet, that's usually why.

We scowl at each other. I always get off to such a great start with girls I want to fuck and forget. What am I? Some kind of genius? When she scowls, in passing

I think about a balmy Valencian night with buckets of chilled beer and booms and bangs of semtex and fucking on sand and things, or at least I have done since Sunday, what with all this new heat and everything.

What I do hope will work out, though (I don't care either way about the girl, apart from when I do) something else: an important meeting I can't speak about for fear of turning the jinx onto it which always happens whenever I mention anything (like, for example, ticket inspectors on trains)

Bar Italia is where we go to kill a lunch hour. We drink coffee and watch pop videos sitting on fixed bar stools near the back.

Onions and garlic and ham and sausages hang from hooks attached to the ceiling. Framed black and white photos of Rocky Marciano and Italian-American actors and other hustlers adorn walls behind the counter and the bar. The shelves are lined with tins of peaches and biscuits and bottles of liquor and olive oil and fruit juice and various brands of coffee.

Along the opposite wall, where we sit, a mirror runs from one end of the cafe to the other. Shadows from whirling ceiling fans flicker over the floor and the red and yellow and white lights of fruit machines flash and pulsate and irritate our retina.

The Vines are on the large screen and Marli grimaces at me and I grimace back.

I drink latte and she drinks mocha.

Halogen lights are on because outside a heavy downpour lashes along Frith Street.

After watching the new Prince video (we both enjoy the dance routines and clothes) we leave. Too early, as the sky still spits rain and we're forced to shelter inside the Prince Edward Theatre stage door.

It's warm and humid and wet and she's in a light cotton vest that's just been worn one day too long because the lining is a bit dirty. Her dark hair is damp and there's rain on her skin and a loose eyelash on her cheek and the trace of old mascara has made her eyes all smoky. She looks magnificent.

Yes well ok right the day begins like a story with a weak plot and proceeds accordingly.

Try to eat a sandwich standing on the top deck of a bus and fall over: that was the start of the day with, also, white sky oozing rain like grey pus. It's depressing weather, like the backdrop to an unspectacular suicide.

Norah Jones songs rippling from speakers everywhere like little gold orgasms. The effect is almost overwhelming, like choking on a Galaxy. It gets out of hand from here on in,

oh look, really, it's all too sane in a way sometimes, otherwise why all the world drama with such glee and all this sick stuff

why always apologising to friends for ridiculous statements or paltry convinctions or their phantom manifestations, or if not "sorry and so on" then why the indecent defiance and obscene pride. Hold on hold on, 'tis not over quite yet, as yet.

Love depends on a mutual wage. Throw your credit card at me; smuggle vodka into the library; read off constellations; study road maps. Learn the import of violence, or its export, historically.

Thus: love. Choking on a galaxy.

Your stride and shoes; tomatoe juice and jeans. I saw her!!!

enter Liverpool St. Station like a bad memory (it was a bad memory, to be precise) -

suggests a pretty pair of lips: "forget it..."

Nice advice. Lucky lips as tongue licks lipstick.

An owl's face smashed against glass.

Flowers spray vivid colours all over suit jackets and the pollen is slick and sticky all through hair styles messing it all up mmm delicious though

I saved a sparrow from cat's teeth and helped its little heart beat.

One day I may

No, one day I will take a blowtorch to the delicate joins holding all the parts together like old solder, make it flake away,

or rip the canvas down, once again, expose the sky, it needs to be naked

like Aishwarya Rai, cotton slip slipped off and hair falling everywhere, over my face

get the gold gushing once more and don't forget how good it can be one moment at a time, or more. Like a monsoon or something.

COMING SOON: name trees in a book and discuss dreams and read Metro horoscopes out loud. Eyes like balloons. Summer with rats back on Hackney streets and bin bags split. Strikes and serial killing and sex in Loos.

Sunday Sunday:

a very blue day, but heat blunted by a cool breeze and skirting clouds.

Up the Lea Valley like the Khyber: furrowed brows full of determination but footsteps skittish. To: Waltham Abbey (not a hope), directions given on a leaflet with photos, maps and arrows.

Buzz buzz like waylaid wasps.

The air is thick with herons. The canal a dank soup of frog spawn, aquatic flora, dead animals, and trash. Murky circles of scum and streaks of boat oil slur scars across reflections of vapour trails or jets banking low over tower blocks. There are weeds like star-explosions or chaotic constellations and others like ornamental objet d'art as tall as us and
no we cannot identify any of them not even with Luke's book.

Buzz buzz breakfast and etc. wonder wandering past reservoirs and filter beds lined with barbed wire and CAUTION! and DANGER! signs but before that a little brook with

tadpoles like wiggling inkspots, an alarming frog (I have a bad frog lurking in my unconscious, Dr. Freud), a tiny sliver of newt; and don't forget ultra-rare coppertip butterflies, which we identify with oblivious assurance, and also dusty field glasses whipped out for a sedge warbler jumping along reeds with acrobatic flair AND

a nightingale, in broad daylight, sounding a little croaky.

Buzz buzz we're locked out and then shocked out of our minds by the cormorant islands (Luke: "cormorant factories, where they generate them, and send them out around the city") which may or may not be real but try to imagine at least

two little islands in the centre of a vast reservoir crowded with very tall and dead trees, bark stripped white and roots extending skeletal fingers into the water and crooked branches tangled up and clogged with nests and cormorants chattering and mencacing like VULTURES OF BLACK DEATH and the islands seemingly circled with mist veils even in the bright blue of the brightest most blue Sunday this year (I think)

they may or may not exist, but they're here if you want to find them: London A-Z, Edition 5, 5J 33.

Damn it Janet locked out but we get in via other means (by paying a man a pound and signing our names on chits) so that later we're able to: befriend a Canada goose; watch a fisherman club a fish over the head with a hammer; sit in a hide and gawp at shelducks and pochards.

I'm bedazzled by the fast dance of an Artic tern. We gasp at herons perched on high branches. Finally, we're chased over a fence by a group of marauding, heat-crazed Greylag geese, hissing our names like witches or something from a Goblin soundtrack.

Anyway, later on it's champagne and cheese and brandy and bats under a fuzzy moon in Victoria Park.

We worship nature in style.

+

Audacious Cathy unhooks her spooky talent which, now, leaves me hanging around all heartbroken.