Various Assortments, but mostly CREAM!! CREEEAAMM!

There are days I wish I could pluck the weirdness like flowers and weeds. I would create a bouquet of sound bites and images to carry with me, the stems wrapped in damp paper towel.
Deep, deep, ridiculous pleasure. Moments when I am filled with delight. (I believe that if delight were a candy, it would be pink and slightly opaque, hard on the outside but giving way to a central gush of sweet goo in the middle)

Things from the past week that keep me afloat:

Watching Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie in the “CREAM! Custard CREAM! Strawberries and CREAM!” sketch. CREAMY ENGLAND! CREAM!! Oh!

Seeing three people in one day who had one leg that was dramatically shorter than the other. Each wore one shoe with a specially designed platform sole, in order to balance out the tilt.

The man that intrigued me most wore a cream (“CREAM!”) coloured suit and matching hat, with polished brown shoes. The specially made shoe had a sole that was about a foot high, and each step the man took included a conscious effort to lift this extra weight. I could see that his spine had twisted over time to accommodate the imbalance, and I lingered in the train station in order to watch him move and feed my writer’s desire to build a character of the mysterious presence before me. But I am too easily distracted, and he is still nameless in my mind.

Walking home after 9pm when the flock of geese flew over me, heading down to the loch. There was something bold about their language, like they could feel the pressure of the curve from one season to the next. I rely on them to move me in the annual earth cycle – to pull me out of my own numb habits.

Feryal Oney. I have listened to her sing Aynali Koruk about 40 times in the last five days, and each times the drums are irresistible to me. Magnificent.

Gentlemen and Players. Not Joanne Harris’ best book, but I am into the story now and am grateful for the tug of the plot, which pulls me along during the train journey to and from Edinburgh.

The beautiful, wondrous girls at work. The bursts of limb-jousting interpretive dance. The hats. Spirit fingers. The exquisite pleasure of giving into mad eccentricity before becoming tired and collapsing against the giant monkey.

Knowing that my brand-new laptop will be arriving any day. £500 of pure electronic joy coming my way. CREAM! Ohhhh!

Seeing The Friday Night Project’s Alan Carr in the Marks and Spencer at Waverly train station. A small reminder that as I work like mad in the Tattoo bubble, the rest of the city is bulging with artists and entertainers and comedians and people with too many piercings. Just knowing they are there brings me mental and spiritual relief.

Here are some photos: Piper Charlie “Chick” Allan from the (running-through-the-heather-full-of-rage-and-thunder) band Saor Patrol, a man playing a guitar next to a dancing industrial Hoover, and two acrobats in their pants.

Enjoy!

CREAM! England and cream!
Creamy old England!CREEAMMM!!!! EENNNGGGLLLAAANNNDDD!!!