Sunday 17 May 2009

stuck indoors


Blooming weather. It's been raining hard most of the day. Got out bright and early to the Downs cafe, where I met up with the naturalists. Nick Winn, the Peregrine Poet, has had a poem selected for displaying on buses in Bristol, so he was pleased, and we were pleased for him.

I don't know which poem it is, though, so I can't put it here. It got me thinking about poems for displaying on Bristol's buses, which have long been notorious for being expensive. And this was the result

How much, did you say?
-I want to go to Broadmead,
Not bloody New York.
..more agitprop than haiku, I suppose. I like this one much more, though it's about trains rather than buses. And I'm not going to change it now.

I can't hear it, though
I can see the crow crowing
Through the train window

Home again, I got down to some Useful Tasks. First, I fixed the strap on my favourite Doc Marten sandals, thus

...and am now ready for the summer.

And I made some more compost bin liners.

Bristol issued everyone with compost bins last year. The contents are collected weekly. I am very much in favour of the scheme, as I have no compost heap of my own. Unfortunately, keeping the bin clean is a bit of a bother. So I have taken to making liners out of old newspaper stuck together with wallpaper paste. I make a load of them in one go, thus


...which stops the bottom of the compost bin going manky and horrible, and saves loads of time and effort sluicing it out.

Next week: washing up, a joy for life. Or maybe not.




7 comments:

  1. We have a composting bin so kitchen refuse doesn't hang about in the kitchen but if it did and we needed liners yours really are the best! Nice repair on the sandal as well! God Bless wet Sundays...

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  2. nice bit of designer riveting on the sandals...x

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  3. Thank you, Paul. I used to keep the bin outside but it went horrible and had slugs living in it. The kitchen's cold most of the year, and the bin doesn't really pong. Or maybe my nose doesn't work...

    Thank you, Nicky! Very subtle, isn't it? :-)

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  4. A long time ago (thirty years ?) I wrote something like;

    Do the birds sing next to the motorway?
    I don’t know,
    Nobody stops to listen.

    As I didn’t work outside the home in March I missed the poetry on the buses this year.
    I love those sandals! Now they have an original edge to them. Hope you’ll be happy together for many summers to come. Dom bought herself pink Doc Martins for her 18th birthday – pink polish is hard to come by. I see they are in Poitiers so she’s still wearing them. I have a compost heap in my garden. I never get around to using the compost…

    Looking forward to your washing up ideas!

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  5. That's a nice piece about the motorway! I can imagine pink is not the easiest polish to find, though Woly do a pink shoe cream ...I had a good look through their range to find the right polish for my red boots.
    When I had a compost heap, most of the pleasure of it was creating something nice and good out of the odds and sods that went into it. It does seem such a waste that it should be carted away, but at least it isn;t going into landfill now.

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  6. Seattle busses are $2 for 2 hours, you can go anywhere in that time. Very cheap. People think it's expensive, but they have obviously never been on a Firstbus. My mum spent as much in a week getting to work as I did for the month! Disgusting. Don't get me started.. Most of her pay went on bus fare! She's much better off being unemployed at the moment, and Firstbus is responsible for that fact.
    Rant over, sorry... lol

    Ah, I miss Doc Martens. I should get some more. I lived in their boots all through my misspent teenage.

    We have paper grocery bags which get used for that. But those are slowly being phased out now for cloth reusable ones, which is good. But what to do with the kitty litter and the compost now? I don't have as many spare bags any more as I used to.. :-)

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  7. It's funny (not) that when I first came visiting Bristol the then Bristol Bus Co were about the most expensive in the country too.
    My last DM boots came from a charity shop and were really uncomfortable, despite lots of effort trying to break them in. I've given up. I have a nice pair of para boots for those occasions when boots are needed; I used to just about live in them years back when I had my motorbike.

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