17.02.26 - February and dog walking thoughts

 So I did say I was going to do this more often and I'm going to try and get more of my thoughts down rather than just 'here's a bunch of pictures I took'.

With that in mind, this entry is going to be a mixture of pictures from the first half of February, and random thoughts I've had today. Maybe I'll even get the two to relate to each other somehow, but don't count on it. 

Let's start off with a nice, romantic rose

Early in the month we went on a ferret walk, although clearly bed would have been preferable to all involved. 

But the walk was local, so we bundled up and brought Philbert, Nancy and Madison (the three fluffiest) to look outside. Philbert did do a bit of walking, mainly zigzagging across the path and trying to get tangled in branches. The girls mainly got carried in the bag and enjoyed the view 😄

outside? No thank you

But I think Philbert particularly liked the but where we sat down for a coffee, and he got cuddles from my mam who had hand warmers in her gloves.

Oh, we also saw this in a tree which was a bit folk-horror. There was a load of flowers and stuff by a nearby tree, so I hope I'm not mocking someone's memorial, but this did seem to be a separate thing. 

Meanwhile,  'love' has been in the air. 

Books !

I started/ finished reading this one recently (it's 5 short stories, so a real pocket-sized book)

I have read the title story but the rest were new to me. 

And I am not above being amusing by a good rubbing. 

Now I can think!

I also picked this one up in a charity shop for 50p. Another old medical book for the collection. 

And this one I bought on our book club day out in Durham

 

And then these are other ones I've picked up recently. The Joy Division/New Order one is by a discord friend, the others I either found by accident in charity shops, or deliberately looked up online (second hand)

There are whole series of these for various decades of her life, the titles are all fantastic, but I thought I'd start with the most appropriate for me. 

My bedtime reading at the minute (ie What's in my kobo rather) is Naked Lunch which certainly seems to be making my dreams extra interesting (although I've been dreaming of institutions, holidays, experiments and apocalypse for some time now anyway).

Sometimes I'll read quite a bit before I go to sleep, sometimes I get quite into the style, then other times I'll read the same paragraph or page again send again trying to get my brain to take it in. One thing I find is that a word or phrase in a book will remind me of something else, and then I'm not reading anymore because I'm playing clips of a favourite tv show or film in my head (Tipping the Velvet comes up quite a lot with the theatrical talk in the Gielgud biography, for example).

In Naked Lunch it's mostly just the odd word, with the language being so colourful, but I did get really stuck on a phrase the other night,  in a different way. It was silly really, the scene was an addict trying to get paregoric, claiming his dogs were sick. He yells rather hysterically. Now I read some pretty grim stuff, but hysterics and hurt animals are two things I always find particularly uncomfortable. I can't explain why, but there it is. So that paragraph just kept dragging my eyes back to it, like when you keep prodding a sore spot to check if it still hurts. What is especially ridiculous is that the dogs are doubly fictional. Even within the fictional world of the book, the junkie doesn't actually HAVE dogs. 

Anyway, I'm going to call it a night because I  went on longer than I thought. More tomorrow. 

If anyone wants to know when I post these, and not be at the mercy of Facebook actually showing links, give me a shout on whatever channel. I don't know how to make a proper mailing this, but I can at least save a list of emails of people to send links too. 

15.02.26 - another overdue catch up

 At some point I'd love to be able to get into that nice rhythm of posting every few days with what I've done recently. As it is I go from 'oh nothing has happened, I'll give it a day or so more' to 'now it's been three weeks'.

I also rely on my camera roll to remind me what to talk about, the only trouble is the longer i leave it, he more look likely it is that I'll forget thoughts without accompanying pictures, or not think of things to write about pictures. 

Here I'm starting with a picture of Precious looking distraught about the weather because a) it's cute and b) the weather has been bloody awful all year so far, so as far as you're concerned this could have been taken tonight. 

A lot lot the time, however, my photos are just of random horrors from the shops.

That's CREAMY spicy!

I finally got round to dyeing my hair again, and I do LOVE this purple. And it lasted fairly well.  However it has now been 3 weeks so it is back to brown with bleachy-blue-blonde bits.

I would do this more regularly but when it doesn't last that long, i feel like I should do it right Before something. Of course, right before something i often don't have time to wash my hair, let it dry a bit, put dye on, wait more and then rinse it and THEN get ready. Then i show up to whatever it is with purple ears (and possibly fingers).

I also finished reading issue of of The Aftershock Review, which I highly recommend to any poetry-minded people. I don't know what to say about poetry, I don't understand a lot of it,  I just know when words sound good to my brain. I liked a lot of these words.

You can even read intelligent poetry while wearing fluffy unicorn pajamas, which I also recommend 

At the end of January we had two evenings/ days out. The first was Dans birthday (or, a week later) when we went to Kato Pan Asian in Whickham.

We've been here twice now and it's been excellent both times, the staff are so enthusiastic about their food. Dan wanted to order the 'crab stick balls' starter (sounds awful but it's his birthday). The waiter asked if he was gluten free. On hearing that he wasn't, the waiter told us that no one liked them, they were on the menu to have a gluten free option, but were going to be taken off the menu soon. So, maybe not great for celiacs, but the honesty is nice. 

Visit to Kato was followed by visit to Catto

Curly, one of my parents cats

Following on from this, our silent book club had our first bookish day out. This was to Collected books in Durham. I thought this would be ok for me to get to, considering I live in County Durham, but it actually took longer on the bus than it usually does for me to get the train to Newcastle and walk over to Gateshead for book club 😄

Still, Durham is pretty. 

And I saw dogs!

Both Lauren and I ignored the pram at first, thinking it contained a human child and not dogs

After coffee, cake and much book browsing, Peachy and I went to the cathedral to take lots of photos. 

This entry is going to be quite photo heavy because it was so very, very pretty. 

This floor is cool but I find the pattern a bit confusing

Some art and bits

This stunning window (and my attempt to copy Peachy's technique of highlighting colours)

And sooo many arches

As it got dark we had to leave the cathedral and went to go get some food

Durham night life 

And the food

Right I think I've said and definitely shown enough for one post so I'll leave off for now. 

I'll be back soon with an early feb update.