yellowhut

I was released on to the main throughways and thoroughfares of England today for the first time in over fifteen years.

I haven't ridden a bike on the road since I was about ten years old. I had a rubbish bike then - probably a hand me down from both my sister and brother, so as soon as I got to an age where looks mattered, the poor red and blue bastard got left in the shed to go rusty. I say shed, it was actually an abandoned yellow rail carriage that my dad acquired and hid in the corner of the garden behind the gooseberry bushes. A shed substitute. Which we affectionately termed the 'yellowhut'. One word.

My parents sold my childhood home (ever a sore subject) when I was twenty. It was on the market for two or three years before it eventually sold, and over that time we gradually tarted it up and cleared out all my memories.

Big house, big garden. A garden with lots of secret corners and overgrown enclaves, which only a long loved garden can cultivate. We emptied out boxes of photographs and old clocks, and burned the yellowhut down.

My uncle came down especially, and he, my dad and I pulled decades worth of climbing roses and green creepers down from the roof and walls. We uncovered the insignia on the sides and for the first time in my lifetime the yellowhut looked like a train carriage again. The green moss and the red rust on the yellow peeling paint was beautiful and I photographed it for posterity. Then my uncle proceeded to rip down its wooden walls and burn them on an enormous sweet smelling bonfire, while my dad chopped up the metal structure inside. I took more pictures.

I don't know where my rubbish bike went. I'm fairly sure we didn't burn it. Although the ten year old me would not have objected.

Either way, I've waited a long time for a nice, shiny new bike. And on my sunny, chilly ride today, avoiding puddles, and more importantly the cars behind me, while dodging said puddles, I felt ten years old again.

Fridge Space

A lovely boy named Mark sent me an email yesterday. It consisted of a questionnaire he'd written, designed to find out more about me. We've known each other for eight years, so to achieve that, the questions had to be a little, shall we say, eccentric.

Question number 7 was: "If I opened your fridge right now, what is the first thing I'd see, dead-centre on the top shelf?"

Or a little, shall we say, specific.

The answer, care ye at all, is: brie.

Fascinating.

What will he learn about me, when I send back his completed questionnaire? He will learn, if nothing else, that I like semi posh cheese. Or, conversely, if he reads this he will learn that I am in fact so common, that I think brie qualifies as posh. When of course it's not nearly smelly enough.

Question 13 was: "On the shelf where you keep your dvds, count 4 in... now, what are the next four titles?"

This is what I have learned about him: He is a very shelf oriented person.

The answer by the way, fact fans is: Brokeback Mountain, Death in Venice, Queer as Folk and Top Gun.

Apparently it's my gay shelf.

In Hell

Dante and Virgil in Hell (1850) William Bouguereau

Rather idiotically, I keep thinking that I've found all the artists whose work I will like. Basquiat, Beardsley, Kandinsky, Shrigley, Warhol, Caravaggio, and dozens of others. But of course, if I looked hard enough, I could probably find artists whose work I find strikingly beautiful or funny at a rate of one per week for the rest of my life.

William-Adolphe Bouguereau is this week's discovery. Dante and Virgil are the dark figures on the left, observing the suffering sinners in the fifth circle of hell, and the slothful are lying in the background, watching the two figures, the wrathful, in an eternal scrap.

A bit Caravaggio, a bit dark and sulphury, a lot homoerotic. It combines, let's face it, all of my favourite things!

I look forward to next week's discovery.

Foul

sunday scribblings challenge

Trying to sign up for googlemail today, that was foul. Tried fifteen times, wasted half an hour of my life, then discovered it had worked the first time. The new bike I ordered finally came yesterday - found I had to make it myself. MAKE a bike! If I could do that I wouldn't have ordered one, I'd have crafted my own from bits of old garden furniture and sticky back plastic. The week old coleslaw I rescued from the back of the fridge for my lunch today - that was pretty foul. I tried to disguise it with some fresh ham and potato salad, but if you don't hear from me again you'll know why. The zombie film I'm watching is superb, but the blood, blue tinged skin and brain tissue splattering the screen isn't the only foulness featured. Acting doesn't seem to have been the main concern in George A Romero films from the late 1970s. But foulest of all - and I've checked the definition in Webster's dictionary and this definitely counts, despite the lack of physical stinkiness and gore - is that my best friend in all the world is sad. She keeps updating her status on facebook. I've just visited, and her current update reads 'Mary just wants the nightmare to end now please', making my own update 'Laura has a papercut' look ever so slightly... well, foul.