i saw felinity tonight after my work, she who had been drifting around not working while i was working.... reversal of things...
we met in green park by the canada memorial, the second time in the last month or so that i've shared it with other people, (the first time was that great cycling day with hilda & spski), and we dipped our feet into the rippling water, something that it has never occurred to me to do...i set my camera up for another of my slowing bicycle wheel videos and went off to buy lollies while she lay down and gazed at the trees... altogether utopian... her birthday was yesterday and she very sensibly took these two days off work...
we eventually ambled up to waterstones on picadilly (the simpsons building) where we had tea & cake (although not in such high style as claridges where her & G had been yesterday) before idly looking for books for her present... eventually i got her the virgin suicides (her choice) and kitchen by banana yoshimoto (my choice) and i couldn't resist i am a cat by soseki natsume for myself... which came to more than her two together - which is often the way with buying presents... and which provides us with the title of todays post, taken from this line:
For surely even human beings will not flourish forever. I think it best to wait in patience for the Day of the Cats.
it is my next book, having finished amanda & the 11 million high dancer last night, oh and i read a great short story today in manolis's, the lotus by jean rhys... that collection of shortstories he has in there is stuffed full of good ones...
anyway back to tonight, we ate in Getti's just along from the back entrance of Waterstones, quite pricey for not much food, but tasty...
after i dropped her at the tube i went over to somerset house to check out how easy it is to get to that high place i mentioned before... whether it was a fluke of that day or whether the way is open all the time...
which meant that as the light gradually bled out of the sky i was sat on a rooftop overlooking the fountains of somerset house... somewhere i'd like to take dinah - also felinity -oh and what a joy it was today to have a functioning bicycle... i got it fixed up this morning after yesterday... as i was cycling from here to blackheath... just as i got to the bottom of the isle of dogs, about to go under the grenwich foot tunnel... i got a puncture... and no stuff with me to fix it...
a friendly passing cyclist pumped up my tire for me but it was dead by the time i got to the other side of the river, it just meant i had to walk through grenwich park to blackheath, fortunate that it happened so late in the journey and probably paying for the luck i had last month, getting that drawing pin in the tire and not getting a puncture...
grenwich park was heavenly, this was 6ish and the day was glorious (as was today) and there were so many smiling people strolling along... i felt it even through the slight funk i was in (joycean funk rather than james brown funk) as not only had i got a puncture but i'd also lost the batteries to my camera... it was dangling from my handlebars as i raced down the canal and the battery lid bit had worked it's way open and those batteries flew out before i even noticed... losing recharchables and polluting the canal all in one fell swoop...
and of course once i couldn't use my camera the visual world erupted in perfect pictures... a warehouse frame that was psychedelic, a path in grenwich park lined by trees that give off pink blossom... the path dusted with pink...
i met uncle filmo and we saw a modern classical concert given by ian pace, an excellent pianist, playing stuff by xanakis and finisee (i don't know how he spells his name the second one)... very good, more than a little mad... filmo said a piano string snapped in the xanakis, there was also a piece involving some technology with the piano written by the woman presenting the night - eva... somebody, based, it seems, on the novels of juan rolfo... whose pedro paramo i read a few months back... good stuff, less to filmo's taste but i liked it, intriguing use of technology... the pianist was a kookie guy, strange concert hall mannerisms...
oh and talking of concert hall mannerisms i met skinnyman in the bike shop this morning, he of the conscious lyrics UK hiphop... often does stuff for the stop the war demos... certain of my students have told me he's great, nice fella, council estate of mind is his latest album, he said to download it and then if i liked it to give money to wateraid...
groovy cat...
x
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