Thursday 13 June 2013

The (Bone) Marrow boat

today


The Italian in me house has taken over the breakfast.
The coffee is good again.
But the biscuits go faster.
That's politics, isn't it?

~   ~   ~   ~   ~   ~

Things seem to slowly come back to a natural state. And yet.

I am starting to acknowledge rib pain as a way of life.

I am looking around the house and think about what can be done with restricted movements.
I am contemplating where I would like to have shelves.
I like my new rug. It's got colours. It's made of recycled plastic.
I have two  friends with great make-up who call it up-cycled.
I make kefir with water and dates.
And lemon.
I make vinegar. The mother is growing.

I am domesticating myself.
But I am taking it slowly.

I start seeing things from a counter-chauvinist point of view, which is, for a Mediterranean man quite a progress already, even though Dr Block told me at the beginning of this adventure * that  I must do as little as possible and rest (that, on another hand, is most manageable for a Mediterranean man).
Hence being served breakfast and enjoying it.
Not having to worry about cleaning up.
Doing as little as possible.
But if I am true to myself, this goes against the root of my up-bringing. I ain't no machist.

I have been raised as a boy who can iron socks, fold tissues and pretend to take a shower by turning the tap on for twenty minutes while sitting on the tub reading comics, cook meals for more than one without microwave or pizzaioli but enjoying eating honey in bed from the pot with the finger, sew on buttons or even make alterations to clothes and do DIY almost at the same time, watch TV like it was a radio set while doing the dishes...
The list goes on, but I'll stop, it brings all sorts of memories... and shows that I might be slightly psycho-neurotic... which is a paradox. But does one know the difference between a psychotic and a neurotic person?
As Pierre would say, a psychotic is a firm believer that 2+2=5 and is very content about that. A neurotic is someone who pertinently knows that 2+2=4 and that makes him sad.

I have been raised like that, although I did not choose to.
Now, I might be at odds with the truth and merely articulated, but I have learnt a few things,
for I have sworn that it was fair and have regarded it as beautiful practically and morally, although it was as boring as hell, as gloomy as night.
I have learnt one thing. Big thing.
But I cannot say really, that'd be spoiling it for too many.
I can't do that.
I shall not spoil.
I saw it, the other day.
The act of 'spoiling'.
I saw it with my eyes.
In vivo.
Or even medias res. 
(yep, Mediterranean men can speak Latin...)
I saw the reaction the other day, in people's eyes, on the tube...
Anger.
Anger, because one of the free abominationalist newspaper made an article about The Game of Thrones, revealing a major twist in the serie.
People were not pleased... so they wrote letters to the editor... actually no, they texted their angst to the editor.
I saw this commuter.
Let's call him Roger.
I saw Roger the Commuter, fulminating.
Crushing teeth against teeth. Because he does not have Sky TV, Roger... he could not see the episode before hand... But Roger can read the free newspaper and no, Roger was not pleased so Roger took his phone and offloaded his besmirched ignorance onto his iPhone.
Someone had to be the recipient of his wrath and like a sailor fearing raging seas he jumped on the next train like it was a life raft, leaving behind the proscribed newspaper that sunk his imagination, before he could fall prey for madness.
Folly awaits and I can only recommend, Roger and others, this.

So I won't say. And I will continue to take it slowly.

Scarecrow 


What separates me from a scarecrow?
I wear a hat rather well.
Birds don't come near me or if they do they usually end up regretting it...
The latter usually takes a few years though.

But I have realised, since I started paying attention, that scarecrows are scary.
And ugly.
So I made one, rather pretty and fit.
I needed help for the garden and needed to talk to someone who does not necessarily need to tell me to take paracetamol. But I did not want to freak out anytime I go home or go out.
So I shaped him nice and welcoming. I gave him clothes. A good hat.



Mine is an activist.
He has an Amnesty International T-shirt.
On a boat with a cracked rib, I can have an activist scarecrow.

He protects my suspended garden while I am recovering.
He has duties. Mostly chasing the bastards who have consistently been eating my seeds.
Six seeds of corn, six seeds of cherry tomatoes and twelve seeds of garden peas. Straight from the wooden box where they try to grow**.

If he could make sure that I don't get broken into, that'd be a bonus.
Last week two boats were broken into. That happens a lot here, in Victoria Park.
In fact it seems encouraged by the authority. Not that I want to cast a stone at the council but I thought that removing street lights from the park and subsequently from our temporary garden was not the most effective way to tackle night vandalism. I guess the scarecrow might not be very useful during night time anyway.

It is a constant question. Is it safe to be on a boat in London?
I don't personally think about it as a threat. I have lived a few years in a house and I got broken into once.
I have lived four years on a boat and I have never been broken into. They attempted it once.
On a Tuesday evening. At three in the morning.
I had been occasionally thinking about what my reaction would be, if something like that would happen. How should I react? I never found the answer but I put an axe under the bed.
When I awoke to the sound of a crow bar trying to crack open the side hatch, it made my blood boil and I jumped off bed and grabbed the axe.
Maybe five seconds passed. I was standing quietly, gripping firmly on the handle of the steel tool turned weapon, waiting. Listening to the housebreaker owls.
Was that plan A?
At the time I had not read the Walking Dead but I surely looked like a survivor surrounded by a herd of zombies.
In fact I did not have a plan. I only had a vague idea of what my instinctive reaction should be.
I switched. I felt like I had to get the owls away from here. By all means.  But then I switched back.
I dropped the axe. I put all the lights on. I opened a window. I shouted at them.
They eventually left.
That seemed to be a better plan.

I suppose scarecrows are no good with owls.


And then 


I guess I am feeling a little edgy today.
A bit like when I ring someone and they don't pick up.

Summer was nice last week, but it might be already over. It does not matter.
What matters is to get my joints and bones repaired. I am no man of straws. I want my ribs back. Being on a  boat with cracked ribs for too long, I could spend afternoons standing, looking scary. But I have a better plan.


I leave with this one


*See previous posts for info about Dr Block. Recently I have been in contact with them and they assured me that if I waited a bit longer I would be on the road to recovery. They insisted that I should rest and take paracetamol. I enjoy this sense of medical pragmatism. 

**My neighbour, who has a good eye for things, it's even his job, has been consistently pointing out that I should not have stolen that wooden box, that is why I get roamers of some sorts eating my meager crops. My neighbour believes in karma and is convinced that crime never pays. My neighbour is a good man. I may expend on that later. 


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