Salutations

A blog about books, curly hair, gardening and a few other miscellaneous things.

Firstly though, I have (somehow!) gained 6 followers on here. I just wanted to say thanks really! I know its just a blog, but it means a lot to me. And before this turns into an Oscars speech, furthermore I would like to apologise to anyone who commented on my last post, because I am a lazy shit and haven't replied yet. From now on, I will respond with haste.

Anyway, back to the business at hand! I don't know why I keep leaving massive gaps between blogs lately, but I'm gonna try and not do that any more. Writing a blog, I find anyway, for me is like writing a diary entry. There's usually only a small window where I feel like doing it, and I do feel quite strongly like doing it. But also usually I miss the window cause I'm always farting about doing other pointless things and then a few minutes later I don't wanna write anymore. But anyway, here I am, I wanted to write tonight. Cause its been so long, there's a lot of pictures I wanted to include. But anyone who's on blogger will know how much of a massive pain in the arse it is, the picture system on here. For some reason, it likes to mess up what you've written, leave big gaps, and generally be impossible to move your picture around. So this time, I'm not putting up with that. All the pictures from the following post will be at the bottom of this no doubt huge wall of text. This is why I need to blog more frequently, so I don't have a massive build up of pictures I wanna post! But this is a one off, next time will be normal.

Hay fever is kicking my ass today, well tonight, it kicked my ass all yesterday, now its night time and its still kicking my ass, and its looking like its going to kick my ass again tomorrow. Urgh, anyway, I guess I should write about all the pictures I've just uploaded.

First off, here's some pictures from the derelict church I was on about in my last post. I had a wander down and it was really cool. Quite busy as well, for some reason I thought I'd be the only one there! It was smaller than I expected, it was obviously totally bare so there wasn't really much to photograph. But who knows when I'll get to go in again, so I made the most of it. I would really like it if it was still a functioning church, or at least had more to it. But it was still quite good.

Yesterday I went to my grandads house for a few hours with my mam to do the gardening. I don't know how much I've wrote about this on here, but basically when my grandad died about 2 years ago, he didn't leave a will and his house has been up for sale pretty much ever since. Its empty, nobody wants to buy it. The garden was getting overgrown as, so yeah, hence we tidied it. Gardening sucks. Too many spiders for my liking. And it takes ages. But theres a few little delights in my grandads yarden. Last year we discovered strawberries growing in there. Absolutely no idea where they came from, either from next door or a bird dropping a seed. Unfortunately by the time we found out about them, the slugs had had a nice feast and we never got to taste any. This time though, we took all the weeds from around it, and they're getting good sunlight. The slugs are clever and are probably waiting for them to ripen up before digging in. Gonna make sure we get in there first this year though. I'll google for ways to keep the bastards off. Other garden delights were lots of snails (I know they probably eat plants too, but there is just something friendly about them) and a little green caterpillar I found.

On the topic of fruit, I had a bit of a health kick the other week and bought loads from the market. Apples, plums, a watermelon, a pineapple, and cherries. Cherries are delicious, and I can tie knots in the stalks using my tongue. A good party trick, but one that I've only just realised, I have never performed at a party. But is something I'm strangely proud of. I have a vivid memory of when I learnt it. I spent about a week trying to teach myself using a little length of elastic I had butchered from a bobble. I was probably about 16, and was walking around on a lovely sunny evening with my friends when I suddenly realised I had done it. Anyway, this isn't about that.

On the topic of food, I went for an Indian with my mam and auntie the other week. It was delicious. I manged to accidentally make my hair curly which was a nice surprise. Why does hair always turn out better when you don't put any effort into it? Anyway, it was from having my hair up in a bun while I had a shower a few hours before. It got a bit damp but I forgot about it, and when I took it down, it was all wavy curly.

I was sat in my yard this afternoon when I looked up and noticed these two planes. Normally that's something I would notice, but this crept up on me. Good job I knew where my camera was. Chem trails are nice.

I know I've only mentioned this once in my blog, but I did some paper cuttings recently. I didn't do any for ages cause I'm lazy, but I always wanted to, and the other night I got round to doing one. I got the template off the Internet, so I don't really feel like I've actually created anything, but it was still enjoyable to do. I'll have to make my own template, and cut that out, before I really can consider any of these to be my own work.

If I've calculated this correctly, this only leaves me with the topic of books. I'm only just realising how good books are. Some pictures of books are of course below. The tie book I came across in Stockton library and I thought it was significant because I think it might just be the most boring book ever written. The Holme House one I thought should be included cause it amused me, though I don't recall what it was even about. (If anyone is confused about Holme House, its the local prison)
The Picnic, is a book I got from a charity shop last week. I don't know why it stood out so much to me, I think it was the french-esq authors name, and the fact that it just looked pretty old and shabby. But the nice writing inside probably cinched it. I like getting little insights like that, I guess books are a good place to find them. The person who used to own this book was called Maurice Wedgewood. And the note at the bottom reads "best wishes for xmas + new year 1947. Roy". 1947 doesn't seem that long ago, but then I realise, this book is older than me. Loads older than me. No doubt Maurice and Roy are long gone, but I like to imagine where it came from. It was probably sat in Maurice's house for years, until he died and his house got cleared and the book sent to Oxfam. Maybe. I'll never know. Anyway, the book smells good. And the first story I read from it was quite weird. Which I like.
Also on a last interesting note, when I was browsing the bookshelf, I picked up another book that I thought looked interesting based on the spine. When I picked it up I seen that it was also a book that belonged to Maurice. I didn't get it, cause the contents didn't really interest me. But I thought it was a good little coincidence that I picked it up. Like I had some strange connection to Maurice based on our book taste. I'm a little sad that I'll never meet or know even the first thing about Maurice. I hope he was a cool guy. He could have been a miserable old sod for all I know, but nah, I dunno, I don't think he was. (also, how slow am I?! I only just realised the Moss/Roy/IT crowd connection. Haha!)
Anyway, yakkety yack. Its late, I'm gonna shut up now. Enjoy the pictures!

(P.s, note the tights. £2 from primark. I now have more tights than I know what to do with, they take up a whole drawer in my wardrobe and they're still packed in like sardines. But these are probably my favourite. White tights, and love hearts. Two of my favourite things combined. Schwing.)

fizzy tongue

Just ate a kiwi fruit and it killed my tongue. Sticking to apples and mango from now on.

stuff and nonsense

garlicHola, I haven't done many posts for a while, I know. But its okay, we'll all live.
I went to the flea market today, it was cold and starting to rain a bit. The last couple of times I've been, the weather has been the same, kinda pants. I had an annoying moment at the flea market today, I seen this little cute clock, just like this one -

picked it up, had a little look, put it down and looked at other stuff, vowing to come back on the way out and find out how much it was, hopefully just a coupla quid, and maybe buy it then. Schoolboy error. About 5 minutes later, me and my mam were in the next row, but I heard and seen some guy buying it. Goddamn! It was only 3 squid as well. Mainly I'm annoyed at myself for not getting it at the time, because I had no reason not to. I just thought "well I don't have much money, I'll hold off for a bit cause I might see something I like even more and then I'll have no money left to buy it".
Sigh.
So yeah, from now on, if I see something I want, I'm buying it immediately. Anyway, my luck isn't totally out cause ebay has thrown up some almost exactly the same, I'll see how my luck holds out in 2 days when the one I'm watching ends. I wanna make a miniature-clock-necklace.

And in another unrelated snippet, we got a leaflet through our door today about the church near my house. It got burned down by vandals in the 90's after it'd been stood empty for a couple of years. Anyway they're having an open day tomorrow, I'm gonna have a walk down and check it out, my mams at work so I'll be going on my own. Not sure how they're gonna host an open day, because it literally is just a stone shell. I'm interested in going in and seeing it anyway, they held carol services in it near Christmas time the last couple of years and we've never managed to go to them for whatever reasons.

I've got a proper lovely memory of the church from when I was about 15 or 16, and our art class came from school and we sat at this end of the church with out sketch pads and just spent a couple of hours drawing it.

It was a gorgeous hot summer day and we were all just spread out on the grass in the sun having a lovely time. It was especially nice cause our GNVQ class was small, there was only about 10 of us, and also it was the afternoon and we just got to go home afterwards rather than going back to school, which would have been even better if I'd lived here at the time, it would literally took me 2 minutes to walk home. But anyway, I have dead fond memories of art class at school, and this one was dead good.
Back to the church though, the leaflet was dead interesting, here's a juicy snippet -

"it is believed that a mass grave from the 1640 "black death" plague and two mass graves from cholera outbreaks in 1832 and 1849 are located on the church site. One of the cholera pits is rumoured to be directly beneath the tree at the main entrance"

Which is creepy cause every single time I walk past that tree, I always think about how pretty it is, its just a really lovely little tree, and its got an old fashioned street lamp next to it which always makes me think of Narnia. I don't think I'm gonna see my little tree in the same way again!
The leaflet also says

"An old legend says that if you run around the church three times from the main entrance then look up you will see the face of the devil"
How fucking creepy! But also I do want to try it, ha. There was also something mentioned about road improvements in the 1970's which led to the exhumation of a thousand and something bodies. Writing that out, its only just hit me how many bodies that is. Pretty scary stuff. So yeah, I'm gonna check out the open day tomoz.

Also just before I go, I wanted to mention something I seen in the town today, well sort of seen.
It was a busy day, Wednesday is market day so its always packed. Anyway I noticed a little bit of a thing going on, an old man had fallen over. Which made me think, there is literally (man I say literally too much in this blog, but I really mean it this time) nothing worse than old people falling over. Theres a lot of fucking shit in the world, and theres probably a few hundred things worse than an old person falling over, but for me, it really is one of the worst. Maybe its cause I have such a love for old people, which might sound like a mental thing to say, I dunno, but I just have such immense appreciation for them. The things they've been through, the war and stuff, pretty much none of us would be here without the people who did that for us. That's why it makes me want to rip my own head off in anger when I seen on the news and in papers that fucking scallies beat old defenceless people up, break into their homes and stuff. Its the thing that makes me angriest in the world. My mam's uncle, my now dead grandads brother, the only living Brown man now, he's 88 and he's just the sweetest old man, and when he was a teenager, or maybe in his early 20's, he was a Japanese prisoner of war. I don't really have any idea what that means or was about, just that they got tortured. Apparently he never talks about it. But I'm so glad he came out of that, cause he's totally awesome.
Anyway, sorry, massive tangent. Conclusion, old people are lovely and wonderful.
And the fallen old man today didn't seem too hurt, he wasn't like sprawled all over the floor or anything, and I was so relieved that I didn't see him fall, cause it would have shaken me up a lot, so God knows how it made that poor guy feel. But I was so relieved to see there was a few people helping him. A few minutes later some paramedics came.
This is basically what this large tangent comes down to, as my mam mooched around a market stall, I kept my eye on the situation. The paramedics were a man and a woman, and I just watched them looking after him, talking to him and things. This is nothing I haven't thought before, its a pretty strong belief of mine, but seeing it today, re-enforced it. Paramedics are fucking amazing. Obviously, doctors and nurses and all of that are too, but paramedics, they're the first ones there, the ones that have to calm down the patient and be kind and friendly and make them feel at ease. Especially with this old man, I felt so sorry for him, although there was people helping him, I didn't think of this at the time that the people might have been his family, his daughter or whatever, but I got the impression that it was just passers by who had stopped to help him. So this poor guy was shaken up, and probably embarrassed, and all alone in a busy town centre, hurt. But they came and they probably made he him so much better. These guys are doing such an important job, and they basically get shit wages. I just hate the injustice, it seems, that they get so little for doing so much, when footballers get paid in the thousands daily or weekly or whatever. Urgh. Anyway. You know what I mean though?

Right thats it, apart from one last thing, Im going to bum a song to you now.
Its called Blue Skies and its by Noah and the whale. Here's a link - http://www.last.fm/music/Noah+and+the+Whale/_/Blue+Skies
I am so in love with this (the regular version), I've listened to it about 20 times today, its just magical and wonderful and ohh its just so ace. Its kind of a sad song, but it makes me very happy. Love love love LOVELOVE. Fanfuckingtastic.

Apologies for mass over use of the words fuck, fucking, and literally in this blog.

Time to sleep
(and listen to Blue Skies one more time)

Chinese babies

Every so often, I ask my mam if we can adopt a Chinese baby. She always, unsurprisingly, says no. I'm not sure where I got the idea from, or why it pops into my head occasionally. Obviously I'm not being serious, not now. But I'm pretty sure I want to adopt, you know, when I'm a grown up. I don't really know where from.
Anyway, blah blah blah, what I mean to say in this blog, is that a few weeks ago I was at the library with my mam and she found this book and pointed it out to me, and I got it out.
It was called "Wuhu diary"

It was ace, it was all about an American lady named Emily who adopted a baby named Lulu from China, obviously heh. When Lulu was almost 5 they both went back to the town she came from. They wanted to get into the orphanage that she had spent the first 7 months of her life, to find records and hunt for any scraps of information about Lulu they could find, and generally just have a poke about and see the place I guess. Anyway, it was a really brilliant book, really interesting, about the journey, the place and the people, the country, politics, everything really.

I couldn't put it down, I took it everywhere with me, read it at bus stops, on the bus, other peoples places, in the bath! Yeah, so if you're ever in the library, or you see this book in a charity shop or a flea market, ya know, get it! Its proper good.

Donkey

I was sitting at home last night, when I got a text message, it was from a number I didn't have saved in my phone, or otherwise know. It said

"donkey says hello. I have named him Jean Pierre-Francois x"

And it had this picture of a donkey attached -

This made me very happy, and very amused. However it has since became a bit of a mystery. At first I thought it was probably one of my friends with some obscure reference to something that I didn't quite get. Basically, here's the text conversation I've had with the person since-

me- I like your donkey, but who are you?

?- Erm what?

me- I just got a message from this number, a picture of a donkey called jean pierre francois?

?- Not from this number you didn't

me- Um I can guarantee I did, how else would I know your number? I can send it back to you if you'd like?

[no response until 7am today, who the hell texts at 7am?!]

?- Who is this?

me- I'm Bianca. Who are you? I'm honestly not messing you about, I really did get a message from this number

?- And what did they say?

me - It said something about a donkey with a french name, and a picture of said donkey attached. I'll forward it to you now.

[forwards message]

?- But I have no idea who you are or where your number has come from

me - Ditto haha. All I know is that I got that message at 9.40 last night from the same number I'm texting you on now. I guess the network just screwed up. I'm t-mobile, are you with them too?

?- No I'm not

me - Oh well, I guess it was just some weird mistake then

? - Oh right ok

And that's the end of that. I couldn't be arsed texting back any more. I thought I might be meeting a new and exciting person via the medium of mixed up texts, but this person was obviously just some boring dickhead. Stupid too, judging by how much they seemed to struggle with my quite clear responses. It definitely all came from the same number though. So I have no idea, was this the text version of crossed lines? Was it a genuine mistake by the network? Did someone jack this persons phone and they were too stupid to realise? Or was it that person all along who was just messing me about for shits and giggles?
I just don't understand how it could have been from someone else altogether not in the equation, but be from this morons phone number. I'm not bothered by it, It was a dead good accidental text to get. I'm just disappointed that I'll never get to talk to, providing it all was just some weird network screw up, the person on the other end, who shares my love of french things, and donkeys. And who lives somewhere nice enough to have a thatched cottage.
Sigh.
Anyone has any answers, please lemme know.

Horses

So! Last Friday I went horse riding for the first time. It was kind of out of the blue, my friend's friend who I had only ever met once before, a few weeks ago, so it was really nice of her to say I could come with.
For some reason, when I was first asked, I jumped at the chance. I just thought "haha ace, I bet that's pretty good!". I surprised myself a little bit, thinking that, because for as long as I could remember, I had maintained that I was quite scared of horses. But I guess I just thought, screw it.

As we pulled into the stables car park, I suddenly got a small hit of fear. By the time I got out of the car, I had forgotten all about it.
Anyway it was proper good. I can see why so many girls do horse riding, (if you know what I mean... Giggidy). My horse was called Buster. As a side note, one of the horses was called Kevin which I thought was a totally hilarious name for a horse (also there was one, and I swear it had a curly moustache). It was at a riding school in Saltburn, and we all went down to the beach. There was about 10 of us in the group, and 4 people from the riding school were with us. For some reason, maybe cause I said I'd never ridden before and had no idea about any of it, or maybe just because I was one of the first to get assigned and put on a horse, I was at the front. The girl who helped me on was dead nice though, and told me that basically all you need to do is pull the left reign left and the horse will go left, the same with right, and to stop it moving, just pull both. Simples. After a little while, my horse started to very slowly wander forwards. "stop moving!" I squeaked and pulled the reigns. He stopped. The system worked! So we just stood there for about 10 minutes while everyone else got on their horses. In the not so distant distance, another horse whinnied, and then from deep inside the guts of my horse, he whinnied back. Bit scary, but quite funny. I didn't realise a whinny was such a hearty thing.

Anyway, an older woman who I think was the boss, came along, put a lead on my horse and guided us all over the road, down some paths and eventually to the beach. She said to me, about halfway there "oh you've got your balance very quickly there". Everyone likes praise, I was beaming. Though I don't know if she just said it cause I was a total novice, and just wanted to boost my confidence. The hill down to the beach was quite steep, but I figured it must be fine for the horses seeing as they go every day, but the bottom few yards of it was proper steep and I was a little worried. Buster was a little champion though, and did not tip me off.

I think I did pretty good though, they even had us doing a little bit of trotting, which is a lot harder than it looks, also bruised my arse a lot, something which didn't take effect until I dismounted Buster afterwards. Trotting is exciting, but scary. I started getting a hang of it though, its like you've just got to match the rhythm of the horse, otherwise you just end up jiggling about a lot on top, trying not to fall off. Which is mainly how I did, but I did seem to get it right a couple of times. On the way back we had to stop and wait at the rail tracks, Buster took this opportunity to have a nibble of the hedge, nearly toppling me off, and then I couldn't get him back up. Greedy horse.
Anyway that about covers it, it was dead good, I enjoyed it loads. I had total saddle sore at the end, something which I didn't feel at all during the ride, but kicks in as soon as you get off. My aching thighs and bum only just recovered a couple of days ago. I didn't take any pictures, so this will be a pictureless blog.

Morning Wood, pidgeon

A week or so ago I was woken up by the familiar sound of "koo-coo...koo" you know the noise, I'm sure everyone does.
There is a satellite dish just outside my bedroom window, its been there since we moved in but doesn't work. But for couple of days in a row, a wood pigeon would come and land on it, and it'd wake me up, cooing. I thought ohh its gonna be a regular thing. It stopped for a little while but this morning it woke me up again at 7.30. I groggily got up and looked out of the window, it sort of tilted its head to look back at me, then flew off. Then it came back a bit later. I really like the thought of having a wild animal so close, and I guess its a really nice thing. But I really fucking hate being woken up early. One time in the beginning it woke me up at about 5.30am. So the second time this morning, as much as I wanted to be its friend, I thought "urhg no I'm too tired" and tapped on the window gently with my foot. I didn't hear it fly off, but the annoying cooing stopped so I guess it either shut up or went.

In conclusion, I'm a mixed bag when it comes to my feathery friend. I think its proper ace to have something right outside my window, but it always comes and wakes me up. I always thought I was a heavy sleeper, so I'm dead surprised that it even wakes me up at all. On the other hand though, its cooing is surprisingly loud, it is right outside my window after all, and we aren't double glazed. It just goes on forever though, coo-cooing for fucking ages.

Also I'm confused as to why its chosen my unused satellite dish to come to, its really weird, anyone got an explanation? I managed to get a photo of it one day, from the landing (thank you camera zoom) and as you can see, my pigeon doesn't even fit on it properly, so im baffled about why it insists on squeezing its arse in.
Oh well, I guess I do like it really. I'm going to do some research on google about it, I don't know why I haven't thought of that before now. I am slow.
I wonder if s/he'll come back tomorrow.