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| Marble female figure 4500-4000 BC, from the Aegean islands |
Things broke - the phone developed a ring tone on constant, like an alarm, the Mac began to heat up and freeze in the middle of a crime drama, the reading group ended and the cat started to piss on the carpet. Mornings I was on my knees with white vinegar, scrubbing the wet patch.
The blow heater broke. Birds nesting in the brickwork by the kitchen sat on the washing line and shat on pillowcases I'd put out to dry. Airbnb guests came and went and the weeds grew tall on the allotment because of the rain.
Battalions of slugs ate everything I planted, every seedling that came up, they hid under the rhubarb, planks of wood, in the herbs, they stripped the four sunflowers I'd nurtured in the greenhouse.
The washing line broke with sheets, jeans, towels, the lot on. June passed and then there was the referendum. Days on Facebook. Still trying to break the habit.
But at the end of June I had the proofs for the Workshop Handbook from Arc. It's nearly ready. August is the month for Venda Sun. The odd poem emerges in between. I talked with Jane for Pighog at 88 London Road about our collaboration.
I bought a dehydrator for the soft fruit. At last the summer raspberries are starting to ripen, two weeks later than normal. There are black, white and red currants. Anarchist colours. Gooseberries and new potatoes.
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| 18th century tea bowl in the Metropolitan Museum |
And yesterday the Poetry Library dug out Black Slingbacks from a 1990 edition of The North and used it as their poem of the week.
Funnily enough, I might have written it at around this time because it came out of doing my accounts one year and finding a cheque stub for a taxi from the flat I shared with Mark off Jamaica Road, when there were still local shops down there, with grills on the windows.