annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary
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Gannet. It's a gannet
I got the car back. Not without being squeezed to the bones for every last drop of grit or whatever you call it that I have and then a bit more, with to-ing and fro-ing to the post office and standing outside in a queue because Tuesdays are late opening, ffs, and getting to the front with the form and needing the chassis number and having to call the pound and the bloke being grumpy and going to the back of the queue and all of that and then I drove into the lorry of the bloke who helped me get the giant sticker (bright orange - THIS CAR HAS BEEN IMPOUNDED!) off my car's windscreen, bending his bumper and I thought, "Take me now, just fucking take me now, I'm done," but he had one look at my face and waved me through, passing a bit that had fallen off my car through the window to me - I only just remembered that, I didn't even look at it, but it was small and round and probably not much, and I drove to art and did sticking things onto other things with my glue gun, quite frantically, but to some effect - this is big, about three feet wide, fuck knows where it can go, but I kind of like it:
I did the knitting and crochet bits quite a few years ago, when I lived in the little house at the top of the hill, and always wanted to do something like this with them but hadn't even heard of glue guns then.
Then to my niece's for her daughter's third birthday, just a drop-in visit and a giving of the present, always books from me. When I was buying them yesterday I envisioned an article-type rant about the lack of progress in the proportion of female lead characters in picture books for small children, but events have intervened and I'm sure you can imagine it anyway, you live in this world too. I didn't look through every single picture book as it was a big book shop but I would guess that there are nine books with male characters to every one with a female and of those females, nine out of ten are fucking princesses. When I asked for an alternative I was offered Princess Smartipants or The Worst Princess, both of which concern princesses being urged to marry fuckwitted men and discovering the pleasures of being single, but Jeeeeeeez, just give me a story about a girl doing stuff. I ended up with a Mog book (she's a cat) and Rosie's Hat, although from the look of it, you don't get much of Rosie as her hat blows away, but fucking fuck fuck fuck is all I have to say about that. Even when women write stories about animals they're almost always male and there we go, teaching pre-school children that males are at the centre of where it's at. So that was the rant, without the careful argument.
On the beach I found a beautifully worn knife handle with brass studs:
and a seagull's head:
which I did also bring home because that beak is beautiful - I knew someone who did road-kill couture, so I know I just have to boil it up for hours until all the flesh falls away, which sounds disgusting but it's long dead and what else would happen to it? I'm going to have to do it outside though as I hate to imagine what a seagull would smell like - it stank the car out within half an hour - and I'll have to get a pan from a charity shop as I can't imagine wanting to eat out of one that has been host to a dead seagull. Gannet, Bloke tells me, it's a gannet.
I hope you have had better days. I am grateful for: getting my car back; a lovely great niece who loves books; a walk on the beach; a visit with ED; a big roaring fire
Sleep tight xxx
12:47 a.m. - 15.02.17
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