Uneventful

Beans: growing.
Work: yes.
Weather: cloudy.
Thoughts: Tra la la la lum de la la la....

Questions, questions

Do you ever get into that phase with character design where you suddenly realise you've been having completely inane conversations with a piece of paper for the last hour? I do.

Don't Scare the Horses

I am working on a very weird project at the moment... it might feature horses in high heels.

Why Not Just Write With Ink???

You know what? I am having a rubbish day! That is, even another rubbish day has just started after five solid hours of computer fixing. I hope it gets less rubbish after I had some sleep. I hate computers. I wish I could write long-hand and paint only with real paint. I have loads of fond memories from before everyone had computers. I liked the one I just got until it stopped working properly... it just worked amazingly perfectly for long enough for me to relax and decide that it wasn't going to go wrong. Now I'm sitting in a heap of cables after midnight again, totally square-eyed. I wish I had a computer-savvy friend who I could bribe into fixing my gadgets, but sadly I am the computer-savvy friend who fixes everybody else's. Why are theirs always fixable while mine drive me round the bend? I have learned so much more about Linux and WiFi today than I ever wanted to know.
Rah rah rah rah raaaaah!!!



Good thing that Ben is watching over us from the shelf, reminding me not to throw things.

It's Raining Again

The Sad Spoon is watching over the herbs.



Tifa is watching the beans grow and grow.



:)

Nice Weather

:) It's raining and raining and my runner beans have their chins up already on the strings I tied to the remains of the cherry tree on the balcony to give them some support on their way up. They really look like they want to go somewhere. I liked the way they were stretching towards the window from their little pots on the sill before I planted them out. I think they are making a very small noise like this: EEEEEEEHNNNNNNNNNnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn......gggnnnrrr....!!!!

Storm Brewing

Huh! Strange Athmosphere. Something's coming up says the weather report.
I've planted out my first bean, and went to the Curries' to swap my eeePC, which was a dud with faulty WiFi. In fact, the shop guys noticed that I'd been sold (at another branch) a pre-owned, returned one that they'd re-sealed into the original box in the shop, with the shop's own security tape (hence obvious to shop guys themselves, not to me, though it should have been a giveaway that someone else's password was already installed on the thing when I witched it on). How rude is that!
So there was no fuss at all about exchanging it, even though I couldn't prove that it wasn't working properly. And this new one is the best thing ever. Everybody go buy one. Blah blah boring computer talk...

I hope the storm won't uproot the beanstalk already... Huh I feel electric...

Downer

This morning my Vibram Five Finger shoes arrived that I'd ordered from the US - they are IMPOSSIBLE to get here. I tried them on and they were to big, and I suddenly got struck by complete and utter dissappointment, the sort that makes you sit down and cry. I spent so long researching, I measured my feet so carefully, and they came all the way from America, and arrived just when I was back from my holiday which was meant to be a week's hiking and was just two days hiking and three days having a cold in Edinburgh, and after spending most of yesterday trying to install a new operating system on my EeePc (eeeXubuntu) with no success at all but a headache, and generally feeling pretty useless in the world.
But miraculously my landlady had just seen someone wear Vibrams on the train and liked them, tried my too-big ones on and they fit like gloves. So next month I'll pay less rent and she had happy feet now, and I am feeling better again. I sent a mail to the shoe shop asking for advice of ordering the right size next, and in a bit I'll set off school-visiting, and there'll be kids and fun and stuff. Now all I need is someone more geeky than myself who can make this UBUNTU installation work...

And I might sit in my balcony garden a while... I planted a Pepper yesterday, and the runner beans are sprouting... all good really.

More Holiday Photos

All Right! I'm sure you all want to see some pictures of me looking like a Hobbit. Especially if you're my mum.
I don't know what happened here, but somehow all our holiday snaps came out looking like Inga Kristin has a load of sleek hawk-fletched arrows in her backpack and I am carrying a ring that sucks my life-power.
I like the one where I look like the tree I lived under just fell over.





Kris, intrepid.



My Feet, Happy for a minute...



As mentioned above.



Kris having an Agent Cooper Moment in Nature.



The Swamp Thing, emerging.

Booktrust Gallery

Look at this! My own little gallery at booktrust! And look how incredibly skinny I used to be, too (I'm much better now). Isn't it NEAT?

By the way I am writing this on a train between Newcastle and London, on a very low on-train wifi connection and with the power running out any second (the on-board power sockets are dead) but still , gosh, technology these days, eh!

Campfire

I remembered at this point that I'd forgotten to check that I'd only used stones that wouldn't explode in the heat.



Also we'd only brought Mars Bars and Wriggly Worms to grill.

It was nice anyhow.

Surprisingly...

... I just bought a very very small computer. I was sitting in the park in Edinburgh, sniffling miserably to some extent due to a cold I developed at Loch Lomond and thought: I wish I could write a novel now. Then I thought: Hmmm I wonder how much these tinytiny computers are... and now I suddenly own an eePC and I am so excited... there seems to be naught wrong with it! It's tiny, with three hours battery life, a nice keyboard and it runs LINUX, so none of that Microsoft grief... and it even has a slot to read digital photos, and a wireless modem built in, so instead of having a machine that will be just for writing any time any place I am hooked back on the web whether I want it or not. Ah well!

Here's a picture of me being happy which it took with its gratiutous in-built web cam.



And have I started writing that novel? Yes I have.

Holidaaaay! Can it be? Hooray!

I've arrived in Scotland, and this is probably my last post before going on a hike along the east side of Loch Lomond... and right on time the heatwave is over, and the forecast is RAIN RAIN RAIN. Wish me luck!

Also - on the train I suddenly realised what to do with one of the ideas that I've been collecting in my book of stuff-that's-almost-stories. I think I have an idea for a novel, and a reasonable-sized one, not epic... so I'll have something to think about while I'm here, rained on or not!

Visit

My sister came to visit with her son, and we spent some days in the city.

We went on a bus to take a sight-seeing tour, which was so-so until we got to the MI6 where it turned and drove straight into the river Thames, and became a boat, which was much better.



We went and met animals in the parks.




And we went beach-combing under Tower Bridge.



Now I have to pack for my holiday in Edinburgh - apparently even though it's too hot to think here, it's basically still winter there... very confusing. See you in a week or so!

Old Photographs

I've been looking through old photographs for reference... I need to remind myself what it's like to be small.

Boxes are Good.



Dressing Up is Good.

Warm Weather Makes Me Sleepy

...but then, what doesn't... cup of tea came to late, evidently.

Owl

Helga in the Sun

Today we went and visited the garden downstairs...I got a lot of work done and Helga ate a bug (whoah) and was visited by an intrepid blue-tit (huh)!

Balkonien

I've got a new project... this is the third year (or so) that I'm thinking about making the balcony into a nice space. It's quite hard to clamber out of the window, so it's hard to get a watering can out there, or cushions, or anything... but if I somehow made it so that all the nice things are already there - a couple of chairs maybe and some hardy plants and somewhere to rest a cup of tea - it might be a lovely place to be sometimes! Not the same as a garden, but better than not. It's odd, I've often lived in rooms with balconies and never made any use of them. My very first room that I can remember (I think it was more a corridor than I room because there were about six doors going off it and it was really quite long) had a bare balcony at one end. I sometimes did go out there and because I was very small it always seemed like an incredible time since the last time I'd been out there, long enough so I was never sure if maybe it would be covered in a thick layer of moss and a wild forest with savage animals in it. I believe it was always covered in light green gloss paint instead.
I remember wondering why there was a door going to the outside when the outside was not real, but just a short slab of bare fenced-in concrete high above the real world. It was a great puzzlement to me. I figured probably the balcony had been put there so that people who walked out that door by mistake didn't fall down into the street.

Anyway... wouldn't it be nice, a little space out of doors just for me :)

Outside! Outside! Sun!!!!

Today Alexia and I went for the first picnic of the year... well my first picnic of the year anyway. I got to take my new lunchbox, containing an artichoke, several sandwiches (cut diagonally), half an apple, some orange juice and fresh strawberries. She got some scotch eggs to go with that, which made it 100% perfect and brilliant.


Then we had some tea...



And on the way back home I saw an event advertised that I might actually go to. All the usual attractions? A bug hunt? Yayy! I wonder what the woodcraft may be.

Beautiful sunny day, and everyone is so friendly... hmmm! :)

Doorstep Surprise

This morning something arrived in the post...



Matthew knitted me a Tiny-cat!!!

Jeremiah again

...

I am using an amazing range of drawing pencils at the moment. Last night when I found myself too tired to work any more I lined them all up for no particular reason, just because it's reassuring to look at tools sometimes.



And all my recent drawings are secret, so here's a doodle.

Toes

For the last two weeks I've tried to track down some of these shoes in my size...



I can't believe how brilliant they seem. I would love to live in a world where everyone goes as barefoot as possible whenever they can. Shoes disturb me. Why do people want hooves when they got toes?
And why stuff like high heels? I understand high heels in a costume context, for short dressed-up events, but why do people shop or work in them for example? It's a total mystery to me. Does it mean "look, I don't have to do any sort of physical labour?" (uh... what's so wonderful about that then?) Or maybe does it say that like birds of paradise, "look, my genes are so good that I can survive even with physical restraints?"
When I was in school, I used to go barefoot everywhere and I only once hurt my foot when I stepped on a bee in a park. I trod on lots of glass and it never cut me because my soles were tough - but now I'm too old to not worry about cutting up my feet, and when I saw these shoes I KNEW I NEEDED THEM!!! I remember barefoot running - the only time I did o.k. at any sports-type thing and enjoyed it... and I remember reading The Hobbit, and thinking THAT'S ABOUT ME! I'm small and I got feel like that!!! Hooray!!!

And now I live in a city and stick my feet into hooves every day to walk over naught but hard flat surfaces, watching other people walk past who obviously have no connection to their feet any more, else they wouldn't torture them like they do. Have you ever really looked at city peoples'feet? Most of them are bent in weird angles at every step. It's depressing.

Anyway it's either long waiting times, huge amounts of money, or both, and generally whenever I find a source they don't have my size... now I am eagle-eyeing ebay... I will have them, I will I will I will.
And one day when I can I will move to a place where I can take them off and walk properly barefoot every day again.

Grmph...

I'm still in a mood. Thought I could get some sleep and have a lovely Sunday, but the new neighbors had a costume party, with all the windows wide open and the music turned up so loud that I felt quite sick after a while (all I got on my side of the house was relentless beats and distorted screams of probably joy). Someone called the police in the morning hours, I think, and they turned it down to just annoying. So I went and slept on the sofa, where it was louder but a bit less ghostly. Now I feel folded up and grouchy.

I'm depressed...

...I didn't vote hard enough, apparently.
Also I went for a routine blood test yesterday and fainted, and because there wasn't enough space to lie down in the hospital I had to faint sitting up which is not a nice experience at all. I fainted several times over, and each time I woke from a feeling of bliss into a feeling of confusion and horror and a friendly laughing nurse restraining me because I was flailing around like a loon.
Actually and in fact I am completely miffed.

I'm much cheered though by a lovely email I got from Rhode Island from a little boy called Fisher and his mum who tell me they liked "Timothy". There's a photo of Fisher included, in his strong dinosaur pajamas, and he looks so happy that I feel like starting the day after all... bring on coffee and pencils!

By the way, the sky has been amazing the last few days... I stopped for a second before boarding this train and took a picture (being momentarily worried of report and arrest for suspicious photographing of public transport)



and here is a view I walked past on the way to the hospital... unusual green and wild for this part of town.

London Mayoral Election

Just voted! Aaaah, feels good. Let's hope it helped.