A Typical Sunday Morning

We tend to sleep in a bit on Sundays. I imagine it's because Sam and her kids don't wake us up. It was cold when I went out to feed the rabbits and birds, but now- mid-morning- I'm looking out the window and seeing sunshine splashed against the kitchen wall. I opened a new bag of bird food this morning and was bothered to see it didn't have any sunflower seeds in it. The birds like sunflower seeds. Right now there's a collared dove sitting on the bird table, filling up the entire space, and pecking away like it was powered by clockwork. "Are you missing the sunflower seeds, dovey?" Hmm possibly not.

Ailz has just informed me she has an aspidistra to pick up some time today from a free-cycler. She'll probably take her mother with her this afternoon- taking a detour from their planned trip to Lidl. We get through a lot of aspidistras. Ailz loves them and says they thrive on neglect- only they don't. She neglects them on principle and I neglect them because they're so boring I don't notice them and the consequence is they die. 

Ailz  drew attention to something moving across my armchair. I whisked a pillow away and behold a mouse!- a very tiny brown mouse- all pointy bits and clittering claws- that leaped to the floor and ran like fuck. "I'm a little worried about that" she said later.  "Afraid it's going to eat your aspidistra?" I asked. 

Critters seem to be the running theme this morning. Ralph Steadman has just produced a  book of paintings of extinct "Boids"- many of them imaginary- and there's an interview with him in this morning's Indy. The interviewer- admittedly a mate of his- says Steadman is a better artist than any of the people who get patronized by Saatchi and shown at Tate Modern- and I wouldn't be surprised if that didn't turn out to be true. He's as savage as  the likes of Hurst and Emin and even- though I hesitate a moment here- those wicked Chapman brothers- but also wittier and funnier and much more of a craftsman. Art withers and droops behind gallery walls. It needs to be in newspapers and websites and sellotaped to the fridge. A caricature of Alain de Botton is mentioned "so graphically disgusting I can't think of any mainstream magazine that would print it."  Sounds wonderful.

Alain de Botton is an arse.

Ailz continues to be worried about the mouse. She's had me down on the floor with a lamp strapped to my head investigating the bottom of the armchair  in search of a nest. I didn't find one. I'm glad because what would I have done with it if I had?  I like mouses. Always have done.

In Which We Acquire Three Dark Green Things

Our satnav is defunct so I got us to our destination the old fashioned way using maps. I like using maps.  Ailz says she'd like to replace the satnav and I say, "Why?"

The aspidistra people live in a rambly Victorian house filled to the rafters with antiquated stuff. There is a print after Magritte over the fireplace.  I saw some pewter tea things on a dresser and thought "Tudric" but it wasn't a social call so I didn't like to ask. The husband said they'd been made redundant and were decluttering. He has a beard and she has a central parting so I have them down as having been hippies in their youth and afterwards local government officers. She had divided her 50 year old aspidistra in four parts and we came away with two of them. Also an amaryllis. 

He asked Ailz how she could possibly have managed to kill an aspidistra and she blamed the rabbit.