Pollen

Writing to you on location. Direct from the garden. Can't see a thing. The glare is very intense on my little crappy laptop. With everything stopped, I'm grateful for our little ghetto garden. Let me take you on a tour! It has a rotten shed! White walls, with a gentle green tint! "Eau de Mould", they called it in the magazines. A ghetto bbq made by Wife! And me, sitting in it, on a little fold out chair. Although every normal thing has stopped, it's different out here (on location). Our back garden's flooded with dandelions and happy bees. Loud flappy birds with thousands of weird names fly overhead.  Rare birds, I'm sure you've never heard of them. I've studied them carefully for years and thus know their names.  MR. PIDGE, Señor SEAGULL, MONSIEUR MAGPIE and Tim Heron.  It's strange how all their weird croaks mean something in their planet. Do you think they know about the lockdown?

It's another blursdsday in lockdownaforina, costa del crumlin. The weather is magnificent. There's a chorus of barking dogs, screeching birds and buzzy bees. Reminds you that normality continues for most creatures.

Sadly, I too am continuing with normal body stuff. Like LADY TIME. That part of the month. Where your belly explodes and you bleed and you groan and you moan and you're an awful, horrible person. I can't believe we don't get time off from that. Mine's been particularly bad this time. I sometimes get ones so bad that I have these fainting episodes. They are suitable only for women in corsets who live in the 16th century, swooning onto a chaise longue. Here in the future, I stagger up a staircase. I manage to finally throw myself on our big white bed. Sweat dripping, deep breathing, wife looking over thinking this time, I'll definitely die.

The ache is so unimaginable, it almost takes away from the regular old homely KORONA anxiety. I was up most of the night with this pain as a refreshing change. Wife wibbling about in the bed beside me, I'd restructure her hand so that it worked as a human hot water bottle for me. She woke herself at one stage, shouting out "FAKE BABY!" in the middle of the night. Fabulous entertainment!! Distracted from the ball of daggers in my lower stomach. I cannot believe that both of these are natural things too. Wife sleep shouting. Me hugging my stomach as if it would help.

Such is the glare on my lil laptop, I now wonder if I'm actually writing any sentences. I can see nothing. This might read like a Mary Poppins song. (It didn't! Bless my million years of being an administrator typist woman!)

I'm in a full black outfit. The heat is fabulous. Radiating off my body. Wife is playing a Fiona Apple song while preparing THE DINS. A dark Fiona Apple song. Very suitable for this little garden goth. Very at odds with the cheerful springy bees. I saw one bee so excited about our prized collection of dandelions that he went full upside down on the flower. Doing a drunk flip. Adorable.

All those webinars everyone was losing their reason over are starting to get going now. So I have loads to do. Fun jobs. Designing invites. Photoshopping people's head-shots in perfect little circles to fit into templates. Peaceful activities. I still have that dense document hanging over my head from a few weeks ago. Still have no notion what's going on with it BUT I CHIP AWAY. It's like a vortex of the mind, that document, screaming at me with long paragraphs of legal shpeeeagel. I sit there dizzy, watching it, and go back to my pretty jobs of turning faces into circles. Are documents my pollen? That's sad.

I had a revelation yesterday evening where I started to think about if our former lives are now in the past. How I didn't appreciate my little free life enough. It's always the same, that last moment you've had and how you don't realise it's the last one. Thinking about how my last club night was so good but not the best one I've ever had. How we dropped into a friends house on a weekday evening. Supped tae as they ate a gorgeous risotto. How I now can't touch this tiny dog we saw outside yesterday. She came up fiercely barking at us, then being so friendly when she arrived at her little gate. I was talking to her like she was a little baby. Because she was. A perfect little baby pup. And I couldn't touch her, so I motioned a weird leg towards her. I'm not sure what message that gave, but the sentiment was pure adoration. I hope she got that. Might wibble my leg at her again today. My neighbours must love me.

Speaking of! I can hear a human neighbour now. He keeps shouting WHA! Someone calling him in for the dinner I imagine. We are having a celebratory BBQ this eve is WHA , good sir! Thanks for asking. It's 'cause I got good news in my real human lady life work job today! Do you like my collection of dandelions and all my bees? Thank you.

Nature update: a bird altercation! Between a magpie and a crow! On my very own roof.  Wildlife eh! Is this like I'm in a pub? A garden pub! They're my entertainment. May have something to do with the glass of wine served to me a moment ago. I love watching a good bird altercation. My very favourite Valentine's Day ever included one actually! Wife and I ended up in the basement of Pantibar. We watched the single most entertaining altercation between a young lady couple. One forgot to get the other a card. There were ructions! She seemed then to have run to the closest spar and gotten an emergency one. HARMONY! JOY! Romance! Rapture! There was lots of kissing and face touching and all those forbidden things nowadays. They got very into it. I'm talking rolling around on other people's tables. Slamming themselves into booths. Mounting each other. A kind of 90's boy-band lap-dance happened? UNMISSABLE. Anyway, THERE WAS A TURN. Card giver was no longer pleased. She ripped up her own emergency card in front of card-ee. She stormed out, the shredded card pieces floating like confetti in her wake. Romance had died. Never to be seen again. It was like something from a lesbian web series I would definitely watch on YouTube. BUT IT WAS REAL LIFE. I still wonder about them. And thank them. With my spirit. From my little goth garden chair. Clink! Goes my red wine glass. Against my teeth.

Since I last blogged, not much else has happened, really. I've been bleeding to death! And my last MIF workout seems to have turned my little left knee inside out. So, I've not been doing my chub lady ninja walkies today. My main hobby is now watching bees bury their faces in a big yellow dandelion. I'll be back to being a person tomorrow I'm sure. Another Friday in lock-in. I'm so fortunate to have little Wife and our little gaff. It's a happy and comfortable place to be. I can't believe we own it. I often sit in the garden and think I own this?! Although I'll be 37 this year, I still feel like an absolute child. That's LATE THIRTIES. I guess clubbing's due to be dead for me by now anyway.

If it is all over, life as we knew it I mean, it makes me realise how good my life actually was. You don't have that lens of 'this will be the last time' you do something until you can't do it anymore. That weekday evening, as we watched our friends eat risotto, and we had cuppas. At my favourite little white round table. I didn't realise it would be the last time I'd sit at their little white round table for months. The same little white round table I've sat at for thousands of parties. I like to think of a time-lapse of me sitting there. Friends swirling past. Flashes of colour! A whip of a homosexual fan. Crisp bowls filling and emptying. BBQ foods piling up, then gobbling up. Gay boyfriends dancing on chairs in wigs. Hugging me with their moist beards and fresh scents. Chats through the barn door. And me, in the centre. Sitting at that little white round table. Happy. Like those upside down bees. One day I'll be the bee. I won't be bleeding. I'll be at the top of a little white round table, flurries of friends passing me like whirlwinds. I remember it now, but not well enough. Next time, I'm going to taste it. I'm going to drink it in. I'm going to touch them on their faces and I'm going to say thank you for being my lovely friend. For adding colour to my life. For swirling around me with dizzying joy. My pollen.