The closest thing to homework and still I manage to circumvent what's inevitable.

See, I'm supposed to be researching candidates for those up-and-coming elections so as to get my overseas ballot in the box asap...and to be perfectly frankly honest, the whole mess is a media circus I'd rather not choose for the squandering of my precious popcorn money (though the internet is free today.) I could be doing nothing, I could be doing my socio-patriotic duty, or I could be lettering again for the sake of placating loneliness or what-have-you.

Door number three.

Last weekend was what the London free papers were forecasting to be "the last good weekend." Whether or not (hah) this coldish-windish state of current events shall now be a permanent fixture of Life As We Know It remains to be seen and stuffed away in carbon-offset handbags....however, Paris being a moot point, I tooled off to Oxford for a Sunday of riverboats and academia. Times are busy, I did snap a few photos. When they'll see the light of day is another matter of conjecture entirely. Oh, I'm a girl of trees and rivers and old stones and a freshness to the air which doesn't smell of the Wendy's where I worked for three months in 2004. Or piss and 409.

I need a good Halloween costume. I mean really good. They don't really go crazy about it here, but this is still an excuse to put on the pretty shoes and giggle incessantly at the way people get after a few shots and a spritzer and a bag of chocolate kisses.  I suppose it's sugar what does most of the work. I often wonder if everyone's bought their new boards and boots yet or if the ones someone brought in to resell at the charity shop where I recently started for a few morning hours three days a week will ever sell as there seems to be a shortage of brah-friendly terrain round these parts. Siiiiiiiiiiiiick.....

Like autumn colours and shotgun weddings. Wish I coulda been there, kid! Truly...oh, but I'm leaving for an Irish weekend next Saturday! God save the theatre and a gracious gift of a few evenings off! You know I adore it, though. See the way that final bursting chorus echoes though every twisting cavernous corridor of the Shaftesbury, it feels like home or falling in love or winning the stuffed platypus after funnel cakes at the fair come August. Sometimes you find a few pounds on the floor after the dancing's over....but only a few rare sometimes.

And Friday night. For reals. The one concert I'll have managed to get in on due to schedules. And for reals it's AMANDA PALMER. Finally. There just aren't any words. I'm soaring.

I miss my sister. We don't talk much.

And I think I did fall in love for awhile but now it's little less than a windswept resurgence of affection that wells up and fades and pinpricks itself onto someone else's trousers for a stroll along the Thames now and then....hops the Tube or buses off to Hackney. Oh someday someboy should clasp my hand and cease to mind how the skin cracks and drips a saline composition down cheap guitar strings and shorts out the 4am radio awash in mindless muttering static. But not here. Not now.

In all these things I imagine it hasn't been so long since May and yet so much is already altered in that permanent way time has of taking what you once knew and maybe painting it green so the shape is still there but the function deviates. I'm weary. I long to see you again, friends. To see if my colour matches yours or what sort of poignant dissonances we might create.

Love,
Me