too expensive

one of the grocers at the market was charging 2 euros 75 cents for a smallish bag of basil
i said i had to pin some more money
then i went to another grocer and bought a larger bag of basil for 1 euro 50 cents

slime

I bought slime for Ties. He said that he wanted slime, when Emmelie asked him what he wanted. That's what she said at least.

They had run out of chicken livers in De Boerenschuur. No crostinis after all.

Do not confuse scandals with sandals when you are attempting to buy the latter.

Lean In

The Wire's David Simon: "When you lean in, I've got you." And he said a lot of TV makes you lean right back.

Poetry that makes you lean in.

Bright lamp light (or sunlight) on paper brings extra life to a poem. Like Mark Ford's stuff i was reading last night.

This Josh Wink RA podcast has a section in the mix that sounds like a radiator pipe being scraped.

Stare out owl

The palm is in the back garden, to recover.
I have 3 long 'to-do' lists sellotaped to my desk. They overlap, not like wet petals. Soggy boxes.
Bit by bit, they are driving me peanuts.
Some of my dried grapefruits are rocking gently above my head. Must be a slight breeze in here but I don't feel it.
Here's to choppy style.

In the spirit of Benbenek I'm tired of the phrase 'it ticks all the boxes'.

Omar's coming.

Create!!

Willem has started a book called 'The Book of Willem'. It has 51 pages and these are tied together (it was too thick to staple).

He is reluctant to write anything in it. I'll force him to create.

I have reached episode 8 of the Wire Season 1.

Mos Def

Put More to BED

I'm keeping a record of who puts the kids to bed. I'll do it for a couple of weeks so as I can win one of our stupid petty arguments about who puts the most kids to bed.


e.g. "last week I put 15 kids to bed fuck nose"

Farmer

Willem's little Maoist classmate.

His blue farmer suit, little black cap and bag and red handkerchief round his neck.

Saint Saens' Carnaval of the Animals

Goats in cravats, stumbling on cobblestones in the old town, butting sexy girls in summer dresses in a summer evening, Antwerp.

Attic dormer window, steamed up, humidity affecting manuscripts.

broken bell

MY army BAG

My bag has been washed. The spilled cream is gone, all vestiges thereof.

The bag is starchy and stiff; it would hurt you to punch it.

I was drying it on a radiator yesterday and it fell off while I was watching Masterchef. I jumped,

thinking that there was an intruder in the house, (since the canvas noise was too heavy to be a

mouse).

SO WHAT

I do not like the taste of this tea, rooibos. Is it rose hip?
I was teaching English to tax inspectors from Rotterdam and I said that I did not like rooibos tea. "No'" a man said, faintly indignant, "That's from South Africa."

Brel

je prend un train à la banlieue

a highly useful thing to say when you are in certain situations

fragmented nurse

Naomi dropped a fragment of a nurse's costume on the floor. There was a wonkily stiched and charming red cross on the item of clothing, which was something to tie around the head but seemed like a shrunken and very kinky apron.

wave

Trapped in the middle of the road on my bike on the way to pick up my Prozac,

raised a hand apologise to oncoming cars for being a dangerous,

they must've thought I was waving at them in their SUVs,

fallen apples,

low acidity, starch, dreams of blank brown paper

xx

sit on kids

Daan asked me if I had ever sat on my children.

Only intentionally

absurdists

Ingrid Luyks said I should check out Kharms and Vvedensky, Russian absurdists

I used part of a lamp to cut out a circle of white bread as part of the process of making breakfast

A free range egg was fried in the hole

fire in the hold

the joy of text

inside out jumper and cream that did not freeze

i wore a jumper inside out yesterday.
Should i convince myself it was, at an unconscious level, deliberate, a bold
iconoclastic act?

no

A carton of cream leaked into my army bag. i left it outside and this morning the bag looked to have been frozen overnight, but..
the cream was still still sticky wet and shiny in the morn

rather beautiful and creamy

I'll hose it clean like Hercules, later

dubbel trippel

I'm bored of pils. I'm increasingly drawn to dubbel trappist beer.

A student of mine referred to someone who likes beer as a fan of the fluid.

ostriches and istanbul

Now, I am assuming that ostriches are farmed in a reasonably humane way. The meat is delicious. It's my new thing, and there's a recipe in "I hate hagelslag".

I just thought of Istanbul.

There's a smoky puddle in the alleyway.

Burgerij

The way Jacques Brel sings "Ik.." in his song "Burgerij" is great, the greatest 'ik' ever. Period.

en ikk...de ssuper arrroggganttt

Period?
Yeah, period.

vette burger clique
vette vieze varkens....

Go'a light mate?

10 or 11 years ago I was walking home up St Julian's Farm Road in West Norwood, south London. A bloke approached me and asked, in a strong south London accent'

"You wouldn't by any chance have a light would you?"

I would have expected him to ask, "Got a light mate."

I don't recall what I said to him. Maybe I said, "Nah mate, sorry" but I guess it was probably something like "I'm afraid I don't." More in line with his diction.

Reading aloud for taping purposes

I read poems for Mr Stovers yesterday. Most of it was in iambic tetrameter. It got slightly tedious hammering through the light verse, but there were a few more weighty gems among them (Hughes, Siegfried Sassoon).

I'm not a huge fan of strict rhyme schemes in poetry but I do like them in nursery rhymes.

He's a nice old fellow and pretty alert for 81