The lawnmower has had enough of our shit. After sitting most of the long scorching summer in the shed, as there is no need to mow dry yellow chaff, it got called into action to deal with the sudden growth spurt the last couple of weeks’ worth of rain had brought about in making it a jungle out there. It managed three quarters of the “lawn” before some very ominous looking smoke came out of the bottom of it as the motor packed up. A new model will be required. Even so, I’m not convinced I would have been poking it and trying to get it to move whilst it was still plugged into the mains, unlike Nathan who was doing the mowing.
In case I missed anyone with my blanket social media approach in the week. I’m more than excited that I have some of my writing in print. In a proper book. Two collections of work have been published with my work in. A collection of writing about and from the Home Counties, in which I have one piece in the Sussex section. And a collection from the East Midlands, in which I have a poem and two short stories in the Leicestershire section. Next step – get something published which has my name on the cover.
I went to the doctor’s Friday morning. They wanted a routine blood pressure test. Which is never routine where I am concerned, as they take it, look at the reading, look at me – the fat blob sat in front of them – and take it again. Only to get the same result and be surprised that fat doesn’t equal high blood pressure.
What was more interesting about the trip to the doctors was the Crawley wildlife I passed on the way there and back.
On the way there, a couple, in their thirties, possibly early forties, were walking along Wakehurst Drive in the opposite direction to me, and on the other side of the road. There’s a stretch with a long wall / fence with some grass in front of it, but no houses. He was stopping to have a piss. She was squealing at him not to do it in the middle of the street in the middle of the day. He was saying that if you’ve gotta go, then you’ve gotta go. She said she also desperately needed to go, but you wouldn’t catch her pissing in the street. All this not much more than a minute’s walk away from the Downsman, which was open.
Coming back, I got as far as coming out of Best One after getting the local paper (a bumper edition, but nearly fifty of its pages were Queen’s death related filler) and a scruffy bloke of indeterminate age was saying, ‘is that a trick question?’ To which, a woman equally as scruffy and also of an indeterminate age replied, ‘no it isn’t a trick question, do you want a pot noodle to eat?’ I don’t know what the response was as he proceeded to neck the remaining contents in his bottle of cider before answering, and by then I was out of earshot.
Only to turn in Baker Close and find the piss couple sat on the wall at the top of the close, now with a little dog in tow. Which they hadn’t had half an hour before. I’m not sure that little puppy is going to get the best toilet training.
Over the last couple of months there has been a new phenomenon of scantily clad tarts whose profile pictures are mainly made up of their cleavage, following me on Instagram. Some are hawking for business on Only Fans, a couple are blatantly selling sex, but the majority have profiles saying they are ‘looking for love,’ ‘need the right man,’ ‘single and looking for a good man.’ As if it’s fucking Tinder. It’s amazing how many black holes are using Instagram as a dating site. A lot of them also have a large side of fanatical Christianity mentioned alongside their barely clothed bodies and man hunting. I must have missed the part in the Bible where it was saying to advertise your bits like a hooker to find ‘real love.’
We wandered over to Horsham on Saturday afternoon. Helen needed to return some things to a Cancer Research charity shop, and we don’t have one in Crawley, so it was the closest place. As she was getting a refund, I was finding a nice haul of vintage Ladybird books, a vinyl Motown box set I didn’t already own, and some trousers. Horsham also still has their H&M, as they think they are too posh for Crawley. Helen spent her refund in there instead. And there was that awkward forced social interaction moment. The one where someone from work sees you before you can hide, and worse still they speak to you.
Additionally, Horsham still has an Ask. Whereas Crawley are only left with Prezzo, and their microwave meals. So, we went for dinner there. We had nearly finished when they seated four women on the table next to us. One had a tight t-shirt with Abercrombie and Fitch across the chest. I thought it was a strange thing to call your tits.
We passed on dessert so that we could go to Rockafella’s instead. A good decision. I went for a massive sundae (even though it was only Saturday), but narrowing the choice down to just a single sundae was tricky.
On the way to Horsham, we drove through the village of Colgate. And do you know what? We didn’t spot a single person brushing their teeth anywhere in the village.
Meanwhile, the recent unbeaten run of Crawley Town came to a halt away at Crewe Alexandra. Judging by the difference in the match stats between half time and full time, it would appear that they didn’t bother coming out from the dressing rooms after half time at all this week, and not just their traditional two minutes later than the opposition.
On the plus side the 49ers played well and rolled over the Seahawks 27-7. Always good to give the dirty birds a bit of a shellacking. The game also saw us sort out any quarterback controversy for the rest of the season. Unfortunately, this was because Trey Lance is now out for the season with a broken angle, and therefore we are back to Jimmy G.
I think I haven’t been writing much over the last few months, and that I’m more up to date with my filing than I am. I came to file the copies of my recent writing, and there were two inches worth of sheets of A4. And that was before they went in plastic wallets. Of which I thought I had plenty, only to get close to the bottom of the pile before I ran out of paper to put in them. Then I found that some of the folders I was filing away in were full to bursting. This would suggest that there appears to be nothing wrong with the quantity (and with being published now, the quality can’t be that bad either), it’s just that the effort needs to be put into the correct channels. Less rubbish blogging like this and more work on the various novels that I have as works in progress. What I though would be a twenty-minute task ended up taking the best (or worst) part of three hours.
At least it meant that I wasn’t watching Mourn Hub. Helen put it on briefly whilst the big box was in Westminster Abbey. It got turned off when Liz Truss came on and started blathering something or other. Helen said she hadn’t noticed before that Liz Truss was speaking out of the side of her mouth, like some kind of untrustworthy spiv. I thought that it was an improvement from where she usually spoke out of.
We could still hear the whole ceremony through the wall though. But they were on satellite delay, as they were at least three minutes behind live TV.