Skank.

I have braces. I have skinny jeans. I have a sharp shirts and polos. I just need some DMs (oh god, how I need some DMs, Mustafa taunted me with the perfect pair, the list of objects of desire is growing rapidly). All this means it’s time to head into some serious ska. Serious serious ska.

Sung Tongs

Pop Songs, they’re all about love.

From: A very small array

Artex walls

I have my walls. My own walls. They are speckled, artex textured, slowly accumulating images.  The window is covered with a curtain, pale leaves on navy blue shutting the world out, just the sound of rain from the open window beyond. The fan slowly hums. A small ikea lamp and a vanilla candle give the colour and smell of custard (creme anglais). The personality bends the space. The sounds are jazz.

Beyond the room root beer sits in the fridge. Parmesan. An Aubergine. Recipes and possibilities skid into each other.

In the shelter cats sleep, content with the food left out for them.  Black and white on his favourite chair, lazily gazing at those who might disturb him. The cats have no names yet; they will, their personalities are becoming clear.

Past the curtain a small taoist shrine, incense drifting towards me, neighbour’s ancestors being venerated.

Bubbles

We’re just bubbles. Bubble worlds we share with those around us, as transient and delicate froth on a latte. Moving as foam on the crests of waves. Coalescing. Popping. Always moving. I want our bubbles to wash up on the same beach, to sit in the same mug. One day.

Mother’s Ruin

From Natalie Dee.

“Gin, otherwise known as Mother’s Ruin, Madam Geneva, The Makeshift, Slappy Bonita, and even ‘King Theodor of Corsica’”

From now on, I’m only going to be asking for a slappy bonita and tonic. If I don’t get it, there will be a riot. Londoners have form in this respect, see the gin craze for details of what might happen.

5 moments

1. That one when you finish a really good book, knowing that it’s changed you, even if it’s only subtly. The world feels different.

2. When you wake up on a weekend, it’s cold and raining outside, you can hear it outside on the window, the bed is warm and you know you don’t have to leave.

3. You’ve had a few drinks, not so many you’re drunk, but enough just to relax and be surfing along on that wave where everyone is cool and conversation just flows.

4. You talk about some obscure thing, and you realise someone else likes it too, then ensures a huge conversation about that time you saw the thing in that place and how great it was. Mutual taste reinforcement validation.

5. Going back home. When you get off whatever transport you’ve taken, and you look around and see something, it might be accents, or how people look, or even a place and you realise that you’re home.

Rósín

Music is according to a Badly Drawn Boy lyric swimming around the goldfish bowl of my head, “Just a soundtrack to a life.” That’s the secret, music as something that compliments the action instead of forcing it too far. If someone was making a film of you, right now, wherever you are, would the music fit? Rósín Murphy is just a bit special, a proper pop artist; the most apposite form for this moment.

She sings about love. Well mostly about love, but a lot about sex too, somewhere in that intersection between the two. That venn diagram is for another time, but her kind of intersection is mine too. There’s something razor sharp in her analysis of relationships and succinct filth. It’s the pop music for smart people.

The distorting effect of pop culture on perceptions of love or relationships is something that’s been much discussed. I’m no great consumer of romantic comedy, but its implicit expectations pervade society. In the light of so much anodyne ‘emotion’, Rósín feels like she’s lived every experience she sings about. Her love is not perfect, it hurts. It’s sometimes confused. It’s the thing that if worthwhile you will go to the end of the world for. The soundtrack for my now.

It’s a coffee and a scrawled expurgation, an ambiguous text message, a middle distance stare at drifting clouds and contrails. Other times it becomes  a bit lip, a cheeky grin, the time after alcohol and ice cream.

Records

Vinyl records.

Surprise.

There's a mouse in my tea.

Hidden animal teacup.

Instrumental Monday

Cleaned like a fiend. I will live in a clean house.

Satu ais milo, ‘kasih at the mamak shop. There was a sikh teenage crew with starter beards, an orthodox muslim with a more serious beard, two thai hostess girls complaining about getting fat to a mulleted gent from the 70s and a man with impeccable shoes. Joo Chiat at 3am.

Cycled  along the coast to the airport, watched teenagers with louis vuitton bags fishing.

Dealt with the body of a cat that’d been run over. Red stains on white fur. Sad.