Too effing hot.
I’m thinking of starting every post with a one line weather round up. For the next month they’ll all start, too effing hot. I might challenge myself to find other ways of saying it, but if the meteorologists can be believed it’s going to be approaching hot as hell for the reasonably forecastable future.
My response to excessive heat is to stay indoors.
I’ve spent a large part of today spring cleaning. As you can see I’ve come late to it this traditional annual springtime spruce up, I’m not convinced that I bought into the concept at all last year. I might have, but not until December, in which case the name doesn’t work. That was just cleaning under furniture a bit more that usual.
I went to Pound Land for cleaning products, not that anything much cost a £. I have to say that I preferred The 99p Store, hard to say why exactly, the penny wouldn’t sway me one way or another. You’d have to buy a hundred items to save a pound. At least everything did cost 99p but that may well be why it’s gone.
Cornflake doesn’t love a bargain shop like I do. He doesn’t like greasy spoon cafes or charity shops either. Luckily none of those activities are high on my compatibility monitor. I’ve got friends for that. What is increasingly essential husband wise, is a love of wandering the streets of The City of London. Midweek we decided on a whim to visit Londinium, Roman London. The coliseum is a five minute walk from my studio. It’s under the Guildhall Art Gallery, free entry, good toilets. There’s the Roman temple of Mithraeum only a stones throw away, if you have a mechanical sling to hand. The temple is remarkably well preserved considering it had a city built on top of it that burnt down and then got rebuilt.
The Roman Forum was big, it was situated around the area where Leadenhall Market is now. The Gherkin would’ve looked down over it…had it existed then. From my old studio I could have seen the fire of London burn out near my door, I could have watched the fight that ended the peasants revolt from an upstairs window. In The City, history lives, if only in my head.
Where my studio is now it’s all about the Romans. Faticus Tarticus, that’s me.
I’m not just a bit obsessed.
My obsessions come and go, sometimes disappearing only to resurface in the future, sometimes leaving traces in my aesthetic choices, my reading material etm. Always they distract and protect me from unpleasant aspects of life. They also protect, along with my distaste for violence and lack of access to weaponry, figures who may otherwise be physically fighting off a deranged, grey haired, overweight, politically frustrated, woman. I’m still thinking of the johnson (when will that shabby bunt sniffer be called to account?) and his cronies, but this group of potential attackees can be extended to cover many labour members, not least the party leader.
As part of my current obsessive behaviour I spent some time this week laying a contemporary map of the city over a map of Londinium just so I know what my bus stop would have been near 2,000 years ago. It turns out that my regular bus would be perfect for the amphitheater, and the co-op on Moorgate is very well placed for me to buy a pasty on the way to watch a fight.
I’m currently still learning to use instagram, so with that in mind #getalifefattart
fat tart 