Feet On The Brain

Heel. NOT BROKEN.

Ha.

Naminals and Faminals

I had a bit of a confusing weekend. My parents travelled from Sheffield to London to visit me and do some fussing/cheering up. It was really really lovely to see them, and they brought a wheelchair and surprised me and Tom with a visit to Whipsnade Zoo. It was brilliant being outdoors and not having to worry about the pain and misery of crutches. Also... 7 WEEK OLD BABY ELEPHANT. 7. Week. Old. BABY. Elephant. Ridiculously adorable, by all accounts.

We were making our way from the penguins to the rhinos when we came across the elephants out of their enclosure on their daily walk. I still can't believe I was 5 feet away from elephants with no fence between us. Needless to say, I almost died when I saw the aforementioned tiny elephant attempting to copy her Mum's trunk action.

Later in the day we saw them walking (linking tails/trunks) back to their enclosure and little nelephant was running alongside trying her best to keep up. This was too cute, so I got Tom to run besides them while pushing me so I could watch for longer. I still keep thinking about her little trunk bouncing as she was running along and - I'm not gonna lie - experiencing massive maternal twangs.

Lovely day at the zoo. Obviously there were other animals too but I'm a bit of a fan of the old naminals and would be here all day if I wrote about all the ones that I liked. What I will say that I was surprised at how big a pygmy hippo's flacid penis is. As I say: lovely day at the zoo. The loveliness spilled over into Sunday with a family day including my Aunt and Cousins. First day of Eid meant a fuckload of home-baked cakes and biscuits which I welcomed whole-heartedly into my stomach. Good food just contributed to the whole fussing vibe of the weekend which I really needed.

Monday was the last day of the parental visit and brought a trip to the supermarket where I did my weekly shop. How exciting! Yes, fuckers: EXCITING. Due to me being a broken woman I haven't been able to do any shopping for weeks and I miss it. This, teamed with the fact that I was riding a mobility scooter around the place, made for perhaps THE most enjoyable shopping trip of the century. Forget Paris, Milan and New York - just give me Colney Hatch Tescos. Ma and Pa bought us some meat and then whisked me off to WH Smiths so I could spend the £20 that my Grandma sent me on drawing pens. They also bought me a necklace that I was eyeing up in TK Maxx which was sweet of them.

So where's the confusion element of all this? Well, I had to make the decision - again - whether to go back to Sheffield and stay with them or stay here in London with my Tom. It is tricky because even though Tom is looking after me really well he is out of the house for 12 hours a day whereas my parents don't work so I would have the help and company all the time pretty much. It makes a lot of sense, as at the moment I am being naughty and using my foot when I shouldn't be because everything is such a pain on crutches. Getting upstairs to the kitchen and making food is a nightmare, for example. It was so nice getting out and about aswell, without the limitations of crutches. I hate being effectively trapped indoors feeling lonely most of the time and I also feel bad that tom is working full time, commuting to Croydon every day from North London, and then having to be the house-wife too. Being in Sheffield would make a lot of things a lot easier.

I couldn't leave him behind though. I think I might be turning into a massive sap. Granted, I've spent last night and today crying about being left behind but I know I'd feel a million times worse if I was seperated from my other half.

RIP The Swaz

I'm not going to pretend to be too cool to love The Swaz. I'm certainly not going to play down my immense feelings for Dirty Dancing. Let's get a few things straight here. I was born in 1986, a year before Dirty Dancing came out. I grew up watching this bloody film over and over. I loved it.

I've heard people saying that The Swaz made them "a woman", which I was a bit too young for but it did teach me a thing or two. As previously stated, I used to watch it all the time when I was a child. It's the way he manhandles 'Baby' (that pathetic snivelling piece of whinge) with such conviction. It's the fact that his hands are massive against her petite (pathetic) frame. It's his ridiculous sensitive side and yearning for Daddy Houseman to accept him, like he did in the dream...

I was fond of the way he put that Robby loser in his place, getting all angry (bless him). That Robby was a real nobber. Although, to be frank, the scene where Freddy Mercury (right) discovers him having his end away with the bungalow bunny was the first time I ever realised that sex can involve a lady on top of a man. I just assumed that the penis would flop out if that was to happen. Yes, in those days a dick was just a flippy floppy piece of deflated sausage to me. Watching this film (and studying it in great depth with a critical mind and analytical eye) made the penis so much more than that for me, and opened my eyes to the joys of riding such a piece of apparatus. Well, mostly just to the possibility, but you've got to save a penny to save a pound.

Of course, I know that Patrick Swayze wasn't the film. He didn't write it or make it. But he MADE it. RIP Pat, you put up a good fight. alas, somebody DOES put Swayze in a coffin now my friend.

Also - I'm not gonna lie - I couldn't quite get away from how similar he looked to Ken, my barbie doll's hot bloke, and that's a beautiful thing.

That's Better

Last week got old really really quickly. Becki came round on Monday which was entertaining - not that she's a performing monkey or anything - and lovely as always. It was a good start to the week but she turned out to be the only visitor I had, and I was getting really really really bored of being trapped in the house. Hospital on Thursday brought a change from cast to spaceboot. I love a change. So now I can balance better but am not allowed to put weight on it so it's all a bit frustrating. I'm not gonna lie, I did celebrate my trip to the hospital with guiness. This is where it started to look up a bit really. However, by the weekend I was predictably an emotional blubbering pile of crap. I'm SOOOOOOOOOOOO LONELY! Everything is crap! Why does everything go wrong? Why can't I just get on with my life?!

So, yes, big mardy. Fortunately, I happen to live with the best man in the universe. He picked me up (The floor was my chosen location for this massive strop), dusted me down and took me to my favourite local pub. This was where things began to pick up. Guinness, pork scratchings, pool and cuddles are tried and tested methods. I think you should all know - it's really difficult to play pool when you're essentially one legged. Crutching around the pool table, falling over, lining shots up and getting into position. Not easy. But I pulled it off and beat Tom (who is loads better than me at the game) which was a bit of a high. Yes, a high, not that I have no life or anything. Also, you should probably know that using a crutch as a cue is pretty much made of fail.

John Bock

Oh John, how I love you so. One of the benefits of so much free time is I can go through my books and fantasise - ahem... READ - all about my favourite artist. Again. And Again. Yes, despite being an utter failure in terms of making any work for the past god knows how long, I am still very much in love with art, and Bock's work ticks all my arty bock-ses (see what I did there?) and gets my juices flowing (gushing, if I'm honest) every time.

He's one of the most important contemporary artists but yet is not that well-known in the UK. I have no idea why, and it seems to be getting better, but it's a real shame. He is an amazingly prolific and talented artist who truly delves into the absurd. He deals in nonsense, and uses it to create wonderfully accessible - and often interactive - art. He creates whole universes and epic quests for meaning, somehow neatly summing up the human condition.

Artist recommendation number 1. He's like a starting point and a finishing point, and as such I think all of my dedicated readers should get on it*.

*All 4 of you. Nah, there are more. Just lurking. yes, lurking.

Rules

I really like rules. Little ones though, not the big ones. That is I'm not too fussed about the rules that tell me what drugs I can and can't devour, but yet I adore the rules that dictate the way an onion should be cut (for example). I love jobs that have lots and lots of rules. I always learn all the rules and follow them as though the world would end if I served a pepsi in a 12oz glass as opposed to a 14oz. I love all this crap, and I take it one step further with my belief that the universe also goes by a set of rules.

Well, I say belief, but technically the universe does go by a set of rules and those are called science. I'm talking more about things like... I don't think it's possible to have a sunny and hot weekend two weeks in a row. I won't plan to go to the beach on saturday if the previous weekend brought beautiful sunshine and blue skies.

I have rules for all places and events. In the pub, pork scratchings can only be consumed after 3 pints. S&V can provide salty goodness after 1 pint. I have a 4 pint rule when playing pool. Karaoke is basically a 4/5 pint game and I'm not getting up there without at least 15 audience members. That could just be me being a diva though.

A lot of my rules revolve around my bed. Under no circumstances can you wear your clothes under the covers when the bed is fresh. It is massively important that you have a shower before getting in clean sheets, and this counts for 3 days after they have been washed. If they haven't been washed in a while I might forgive you wearing your outdoor clothes in the bed but only if you're really drunk. There are plenty more. It's a miracle I have a boyfriend who wants to live with me really.

Don't even get me started on the rules of mashed potato.

The Incident

Summer is a beautiful season, full of hope and potential (perhaps a leftover from the lengthy summer holidays of back in t'day). I'm going to visit my old haunts in Cornwall, and the friends that still - in my mind at least - spend their days joyfully beaching around and their evenings sipping scrumpy on the harbour. I'm going to drink wine with my lover in the under-ground bar we had our third date at. I'm going to go to my first festival with my new LondonFriends... and so on. You get the picture. Summer: woohoo, yay, bring it on! Apart from, in reality, these plans never quite materialised.

So, here I was, August bank holiday. Nearing the end of a summer that - while yielding many delightful experiences and exquisite people - never did quite deliver in terms of those plans. After a particularly financially demanding few months we sold our festival tickets, thus kissing goodbye to hazy summer music-framed-fuckery. Never mind, all will work out in the end. Here comes the carnival, who needs a festival when you have such an amazing street party on your doorstep (LondonDoorstep, that is. one tube away? doorstep). I didn't know what exactly to expect but I was sold at Tom's mention of jerk chicken and drum n bass. Before I knew it we were on a sweaty tube, laiden with Strongbow and Red Stripe and my face may or may not have had blue metallic stuff on it. Leaving the tube and venturing into the party we cracked our beers open and headed for the sound systems.

Pretty early on I realised that Tom - my lovely boyfriend - hadn't really got the feel of the carnival across to me before. He'd sold the party but that's just standard. It was sensory overload - my actual favourite thing in the universe. I was running around like a kid in a sweetshop. Let's dance! My nose is wibbling... run through the crowd. Follow the parade, blow my whistle, dance dance dance. GIVE ME THE CHICKENS! dance dance dance. cocktail. Look at those costumes! daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaance. wibble wibble. I am making my first real piece of art since moving to London about this experience. It's just what I'm doing. This experience probably IS my first piece of art since moving to London. The only problem was the weeing. At first there was not much queuing for the toilets but by the evening when we'd got a few cans inside us there was much more need for the weeing and far fewer facilities for it. Never mind, that's what people's garden shrubbery is for.

A beautiful day, a party party. What better way to end it than with my pants around my ankles and a breeze against my thighs? After a spot of the old weeing-willy japes (yes, we're very close) it was time to exit our beautiful flowery potty. ONWARDS! OUR PARTY AWAi-- shit. Who left a rock there? And I didn't know feet are supposed to bend like that.

Well, it turns out that they're not. After a long journey home involving a rickshaw and crawling on my knees, 2 days spent crying in pain, falling over, and... more crawling... I ended up in a&e in a wheelchair getting prodded and X-rayed and put in plaster. As they awarded me with drugs and crutches, and gave me strict instructions about elevation and rest and fracture clinic all I could think about was 5-6 weeks off work. 5-6 weeks on statutory sick pay that doesn't cover my rent. While slightly going into shock about this I forgot that I live in an upstairs flat that is the opposite of crutch-friendly. The reality of that only hit home when I found myself crawling up the stairs in agony with my aunt (who had kindly driven me to the hospital to spare me the joys of £20 in taxi fares) worrying over me and holding my crutches and pointless shoe.

Utterly pointless shoe, now focus of all my anguish.