bee feast

Finally got out in the garden - blazing afternoon - and had a hack at the rampant flora. Too many types of greenery to count or attempt to identify. Left the gorgeous honeysuckle which grows over the fence from the student house, right by my door. Every time I open it there's a waft of perfume into the house. Everything else - including the honeysuckle-and-God-knows-what explosion by the gate (also growing over the fence, as students' landlord can only be bothered to do the garden once a year) got choppered. I don't think my implements were really the right ones for the job, but this was never going to be Diarmuid Wotsit Does Wot He Gets Paid For.

I tackled the spectacular jungle of four-foot triffids at the bottom of the garden. They had these fat hollow stalks that looked so much like a natural source of water I felt thirsty looking at them, they were like bamboo. Those chunky pale green pipes and the massive wide leaves made this satisfying flapping swooshing sound as they got scythed, like shaking shopping bags. In the rainforest. With a machete. I was sad to stop. And I have to admit, the garden looks a bit bare and mean without that gang of intruders sprawling in the corner. Who classifies weeds, anyway? Does it just come down to aesthetics? I should ask a . . . man who knows his verdure.

My hands have been wobbling since I came in - in fact since I took a break in the middle. It's not even half done, and there's so much rubbish and crap (literally, crap). I'll have to enlist some help. I hate to do that and find myself doing it all the time. I'd love to be a proper independent person in a practical sense, but I'll have to settle for that tedious only-child emotional semi-independence for now. Yawn. Rufus Wainwright has a song about that. Exaggerated for comic effect, obviously.

K has what looks very much like a tick on his muzzle. It's like a little tenacious plant shoot growing out of the short fur near his nose. Doesn't seem to bother him but apparently it needs taking out by a vet. If I do it myself the head might get left behind and much nastiness ensue. K is the healthiest beast now living, the vet practically pays me to see him, so it's a mild worry. No reason for it to be living in my garden either, although that has been happily fornicating with itself and any drifting seeds since early spring so ticks are probably the least of the interesting new species in there. If that's what it is.

The emotional quirks may need more than tweezers. Sensible was round last night, great company as always - K has always liked him very much but last night he developed some obsession with his lower legs and shoes, which he pawed, mouthed and rolled on every opportunity he had and a few he didn't. Very odd. But funny. Very funny. I finally watched 'Lost In Translation' - I was prepared for the terrible racist crap but it was in manageable chunks rather than running as a thread to be drawn out (hey, it's almost as if they wanted you to discard those bits). The rest I thought was very sweet and pretty and touching. Sensible knows everything about films and filled me in on all the thinly-veiled bitchy stuff Sofia Coppola put in there about Spike Jonze and Cameron Diaz. This irritates me. She'd done enough to besmirch a lovely story, why slap more unnecessary-to-the-plot-such-as-it-was muck onto the fragile thing? Too toothy by far, that woman. No one needs that much in their jaw. She should donate some to the needy.

It's a shame, though, the knee-jerk antipathy I often find I have towards successful women. As if they're taking up a spot I could occupy. Like, how dare they. The trouble is that I fear there is still some slim quota of women required and places rarely open up. Anywhere. Terrible though to be ready to do a Beatrix Kiddo and whip out the eye of any female rival. I could never step on people in reality, but the thought is there and I don't like it. There was one girl at the First Magazine who was about my age and who turned up around the same time, and although we had completely different styles and methods, and although there was room for both of us, and although we had equal novelty value and although I made a great effort to be her pal in the first instance, God, I came to despise her. OK, so she was unfriendly and snotty and cold and it wasn't all me by any means, but it made me sad occasionally that we were almost pitting ourselves against each other. As if anyone else would have cared. As if it would have made any difference to anything.

I think she's still working in mags. She's much better suited to it than I was. I don't know if that's meant to be bitchy or not. After a while you can no longer tell.

Anyway, we had beer beer beer. I like beer. We drank beer and laughed at the dog and complained bitterly about Sofia's Jap-bashing. (I had to admit though to a certain streak of prejudice myself. Japanese culture is so Other and in many ways unpalatable to me. They really do sell schoolgirl knickers from vending machines, y'know, or they did. But regardless, no one deserves that kind of infantile jerkery as in the film, and it would have been screamingly superfluous even if it was less off-colour. I hate that American tendency to over-simplify, over-explain, over-illustrate in film. Give me mystery or give me death.) Yes, it was a pleasant evening unfettered by any of the customary friendshit and I shall miss him very much when he naffs off around the world next month.

I'm back into The Shield, and dammit, looking for the stuff about the true story it was originally based on I've just discovered lots of things about the third season I didn't really want to know. Just as well there is more to my life than television. Ooh but look, Glenn Close is the new Captain. Brilliant.

Dammit. I can't find it. Curse you, internet.

My entire head feels like it's going to implode and it's not even a hangover. What's going on? What?

There's still wine in the fridge. Needs finishing. I could take up drinking, y'know.