Here are a selection of posts from facebook in February, that explain quite a lot of what goes on in The Outside World as it happened. See them as vignettes of a life less orderly…
Don’t I know you?
Do you ever have those moments of resignation, they call it ‘going with the flow’ I think. The other day after the big fella under the bus incident i went for birthday brunch at a friend’s house. I had spent the evening before in my house drinking too much red wine with another friend so was slightly silverskin onion eyed by this time. I arrived late, after getting slightly lost due to the fact that I was visiting someone elses endz, but was pleased to have finally got there. A delicious brunch was had when the party decided to head for Clissold Park, just opposite. I came out of the side road chatting to a friend but then saw someone who I thought i recognised, but he was a bit chunkier, with a larger head. By this time my arms were were raising up and out in a wonderful warm ‘welcoming an old mucker’ gesture and my mouth way saying ‘Hi, how are you I didn’t rec…’, this was the point when I realised that I had made a mistake and in fact I had absolutely no idea who this person was.
He looked at me quite surprised, but from my enthusiastic greeting obviously thought that he had forgotten who I was but was too embarrassed to say so. All we could both think of to do was to carry on with the clinch, ask each other how we were and me saying how great it was to see him. I said hello to his girlfriend and wished them both a cheery goodbye.
Meanwhile my friend Alice Urquhart was ten yards down the round happy to witness the whole encounter and to see me mouth ‘I DON’T KNOW THAT MAN AT ALL’ as I walked away from them towards her.
I blame all of those illegal raves…
29/02/2016
Everyday turns out to be one of those days, sometimes
There are some days in Hackney when everything seems slightly exaggerated, I find. Today the drunks were super sloshed as if all of the drink was suddenly more potent and the street drunks more, well, drunk.
Early this afternoon I got off the bus at Dalston Junction to see an enormous man so drunk that he walked into the front of the stationary bus, realising what he had done he tried to save himself by rolling his massive girth along the front past the driver, until he got to the point where there was no bus left at which point he fell, smashing the bottle of half decent vodka that he was carrying and cut his hand. on falling he managed to somehow wedge himself under the driver in front of the front wheel. By this time a crowd had formed, all of us looking at this mammoth figure who had decided to lie there and assess his situation. I looked and thought if I try to pull him up he’ll end up pulling me down on top of him and that’ll be two of us covered in his blood. It took three men to lift him and steer him to the pavement, where I issued stern instructions for him to sit down before he fell. I left others to deal with it as he wasn’t listening to me.
Then this evening at about 6.00pm I was turning into Hackney Road just behind a young lad of eleven or twelve who was being hounded by a middle aged drunken man for ‘a couple of quid mate’. I waited for the boy who was really shocked bless him and told him to walk with me and gave him advice about not standing still when contfronted by someone in that state. I walked him to the chicken shop and as he went in he thanked me. The world can be scary when you start going out at night on your own as a youngster. I really appreciated the thank you, sweet child his parents should be proud of him.
Just now as I was giving the dog his last spin around the block I saw a couple weaving all over the pavement, bumping into people. I gave them a very wide berth.
28/02/2016
‘Fat Birds Don’t Do Performance Art’
I went to the Tate to see ‘Performing for the Camera’ last night. The Invisible Woman can confirm that ‘Fat Birds Don’t Do Performance Art’ nor do Black Women.
Saying that, when I was a student I had to do my final perfomance for my degree in ‘Expressive Arts’, before I came up with my idea I was informed that my tutors felt that I had already explored the realms of comedy and I was not to do anything funny. So I decided upon a performance that dealt with the weighty subject how anorexia affected young women.
It involved turning a changing room attached to the gym into a ‘fat room’ loads of ripped up sponge all over walls and floor covered with painted calico. At one end of the room I had built a gauze covered ‘fat stage’ where I was to perform. I had had my hair done in a nice bob for the occasion and had built myself a ‘fat suit’. This involved a white body stocking, the sort with uncomfortable poppers on the gusset. This was covered with a rough string construction with sandwich bags filled with orange jelly tied to my face, my breasts, my belly and all the rest of it.
The performance started with me stuffing my face with half a dozen coconut pyramids and a custard slice, Then I took a big sharp knife and began to slash away covering myself in orange jelly. So there I am with my jelly smeared bob, my now orange body stocking and what by now looked like some S&M rope outfit knotted around my purple mottled legs, being serious and tackling issues and all that.
As the distorted music box soundtrack squealed along I pulled on a cerise satin slinky dress with black spots that I had borrowed from Fiona Flynn nee Mills and squeezed my feet into some pink snake skin stiiettos and surveyed myself in a mirror that wasnt there. Red bob, pink dress, orange jelly and string. I liked what I saw and reached for the cakes.
It all went very well, until the examiners began to snort and giggle which was I started acting soft of course. This was due entirely to the fact that the external examiner was a day late due to severe a stomach upset and my display of viscerality hardly helped matter with neither sound nor visual effects.
That children was when education was free and we could wear jelly if we wanted.
27/02/2016
‘I’m not that sort’
I just wore another coat that is not the adolescent’s hand me down that I have been wearing for the past three years. I took the dog for a walk in my fun fur. I might try some different shoes tomorrow, ones without laces. Come the Spring you may even catch me in a skurt, but I wouldn’t bank on it.
Speaking of which, yesterday I went to see the physio about one of my legs, she was very discreet and asked me ‘Do you have any shorts that you could change into?’
‘I’m not that sort’ I replied.
She has asked me to try to bring some next time.
25/02/2016
Clean for the Queen
I have just been invited to ‘Clean for The Queen’. Meaning I am invited to be undertaking a job that someone should be paid for. Don’t Drop Litter was a good enough campaign, which is where I feel that the emphasis should be placed.
Saying that, I was once fined £80 by Hackney Council for brushing back out from the doorway of the posh off licence that I was working in at the time. some dead leaves and a fag end that had blown in from the street The council workers who witnessed this heinous act fined me personally, not the shop, stating that because the broom that I was using had touched my hands in the shop then the litter and therefore the littering became mine although the cigarette end and the leaves were the property of the shop.
Innit Shaun Tillyard