Consolidated Report of Various Non-Events

I find myself writing less and less these days.

Not because the days at work or home have grown more dreary but because I feel spread a little thin, like someone being stingy with the butter on my toast.

I don’t think I can manage both drawing and blogging.

That being said I have now accumulated a decent backlog of fascinating non-events to report

1. I lost a piece of chocolate fudge cake the other day at work.
I bought it for lunch.
Then I ate lunch.
Then I went back upstairs.
Much later I realised I had left the cake downstairs.
I went downstairs to check. It was gone.
I was devastated.
There is no pain greater than losing a piece of moist cake.
That is also the only acceptable use of the word ‘moist’ in a sentence.

2. A client bought in a red velvet and buttercream icing cake.
It was a goliath of a cake.
A huge red velvet monster with an inch of buttercream top and middle.
I ate just one slice of this cake and was plunged into a sated, bloated cake depression, butter cream oozing through my pores.
The whole office developed a strange lack luster lethargy after eating this cake.
I started calling it the cake of depression.
Except Lottie, who had a fairly rock hard pice nearly a week later without particularly bad effects.

Side note
It may seem like there is a lot of cake in our office but I just tend to remember events that involve cake far more clearly than any other events.

Cake of Depression

3. I have a lot of spam to report.
The most recent one, which I particularly enjoyed, was an email,
converted into a jpg,
and then that jpg was emailed to me.
The subject title was “THANK YOU!!”
I like this man’s style.

4. Giant Eggs

I’ve been trying really hard to get Emma (Leo’s girlfriend) to cultivate hens that lay giant eggs because of an article I read in the Metro. (A worthy supplement if there ever was one)

I can’t even begin to tell you how much effort I’ve put into emailing her various words of encouragement with no success.

Apparently all you need you just need to feed them lots of broccoli but Emma is worried laying a giant egg will hurt them.

Emma has no scientific curiosity.

But I havent yet despaired. I’m going to try to convince her to invite us down to Cambridge and try feeding Honey, Sugar & Treacle (the hens) broccoli myself surreptitiously.

5. Monty has been sending me emails.
Then sends me texts to check if I’ve received the emails.
On principle I ignore those texts.
When did Monty turn into my great-aunt?
That’s what she does, but then she only just found out about the internet at 70+ something

6a. Regular Lunch

I briefly, sporadically made a huge effort of social skills and went out for lunch with the guys at work for nearly a week.
Shortly afterwards this burst of social energy died as suddenly as it began.
The guys at work eat far too early.
I like my work day split up neatly into 2 relatively equal chunks.

6b. Birthday Lunch

Yesterday the chaps at work all said

“Hey! Where do you want to go for your birthday lunch!?”

I was enthused! Yay! Birthday lunch.

“Yes! Can we go to Pizza East??”

They have the thinnest, yummiest pizzas I’ve ever . Their Margherita is particularly good.

JO & AL, who have lunch notoriously early said they couldn’t even wait until 1:30 pm.

We were in the middle of negotiating them down to a more reasonable time of 1:00 pm when Adam, killed the scheme and said we all had to go at 12:30 for some work related reason.

There is no way in hell I’m having lunch that early in the day. It leaves you with 5 hours of work without a break. The afternoon stretches out interminably.

So I didn’t attend what was presumably my own birthday lunch.

Mark later sent me an email with a photo of them all eating at Pizza East.

I sent him an email back rejecting his photo.

I refuse to acknowledge a birthday lunch for MY birthday when:

1. I’m not present
2. It’s practically breakfast.

They got me back a piece of cake though and a helium balloon. Which was so nice of them.

This post features a heck of a lot of cake.

Now for some photos for flowers I took a couple of days ago in the Canal park, which is exactly where I’m off to today. Its going to be a sunny day! Yay!

Dull stuff but its MY birthday and it’s MY blog.

SO SCREW YOU, REJECTED EARLY BIRTHDAY LUNCH!!

I don’t think anyone uses telephone boxes except sex workers and Trannies anymore.

Green Shoot close up. Very delicate. I looked like an idiot taking these photos.

Green Shoots. I like the way these were scattered.

Kind of cloud like tree

White flowers closeup.

Daffodil Closeup. Riddhi says flowers are phallic and make her horny

Park Shadows. I wish I had a buddy nearby to chill with in the park.

Red Hellebore. Actually I have no idea what this is.

This is a particularly pretty tree. It has no leaves. Just the flowers

Apple Blossoms? I don’t know what these are either.

I’m very fond of this telephone box.

Apple Blossoms Closeup. Well…I assume it’s apple

Yellow Flower Buds

Pink Tree Barbed Wire. See its a metaphor about blah de bloo de yawn

The Strollers Brigade. Angel is full of ‘em.

The King

Grafitti Man Outline. Someone defaced him recently. Sad face.

The Breakfast CLub always has good signs and a long queue.

Milky Way Window

Rock Garden Sunny

I like the shadows in the rock garden

A contrast. You know…

Misc photos so I feel like I’ve posted something

I’ve actually got 4-5 written and saved drafts but I keep posting from work just before my lunch break, so the most I can do is upload photos.

So spring has sprung and now begins a whole series of totally mediocre flower photos.

But don’t worry. I’m going to work up to it, slowly.

For now, just one.

Westbourne Bridge at twilight

Double rainbow, a sure sign that Spring is coming

Purdy Purdy

The best cat. Did I post this already? I can’t remember

Work meme

Public Post To The Man Who Cannot Aim His Pee

Angry message to the man who doesn’t / can’t or just wont lift the seat and then peed all over it.

I know who you are.

I saw you walking away quickly from the scene of the crime.

Don’t tell me you were walking that fast because you had an “important meeting”.

I KNOW a hit and run when I see one.

I’ve had the misfortune of walking into a loo just after you’ve done your filthy little business,

I’M LODGING A COMPLAINT YOU FUCK!!

The history of the Loo I did ages and ages ago for a magazine in Bombay. I never got the final print so I don’t have the copy that should be inserted in-between the piping. Boo hiss.

New Camera! Test Run! Exclamations!

Test run from the photos I took with my new Camera. That’s camera with a capital ‘C’.

Very exciting.

It’s an expensive birthday present to myself.

I finally figured out how to use manual mode.

White Blossoms, maybe apple.

White Blossoms again

Pink Flowers

The temporary office dog. She leaves on Tuesday.

At first I thought she looked like a rat, then a colleague suggested a Gremlin.

We never feed her after midnight.

A tear in a sofa. Someone said this looked sexual. That someone is a pervert.

Mystery Unfinished Sentences on London Bus Stops: Update

The mystery deepens.

It gets curiouser and curiouser.

Yesterday on the bus home from work I definitely noted that 3 of the 4 sentence-signs were missing.

I was actively looking out for them you see. (Sometimes I forget and don’t watch the stops.)

In fact that was sort of why I published that post a few days ago (I wrote it in late Jan), I figured it’d better go up while it was still partly relevant and at least one sign was left.

I assumed someone working at TFL was just taking them down. (Vandalism and all that. You know how uptight they are.)

However today I looked out for them, just to see if they’d all be gone, and lo and behold!

They were back!

Not just back, but looking distinctly cleaner than before!

What is going on?? Who is this person taking these signs down, cleaning them and putting them back up again?

Or is my mind playing tricks on me?

Is my fragile eggshell mind cracking??

Oh god.

My mind is all gone.

I must try to get better photographs if possible. Maybe tomorrow or on Sunday.

(Indolence allowing, and man, am I indolent.)

A Few Grubby London Photos

I’ve had a lot of stress lately, both at work and at home over the last 2 weeks.

Stress on issues I can’t even blog about.

As soon as home issues were resolved happily, work issues began.

I have a hard knot of anxiety in the pit of my stomach that won’t go away and there is at the moment a lot of pressure on me to do something that would be really wrong for me.

No amount of mal is going to make that knot go away.

I’m hoping that it’s going to get smoothed out eventually because it really is a storm in a tea-cup.

I just need to be calm, be reasonable and just stand my ground (Fine last words! Fingers crossed.)

Here are some photos.

 

No Entry Sign

Decorated bicycle in Portabello

Key Cut Van with Perched Tiger

Key Cut Van Signage

Missing Tube Sign at Westbourne Park

Levels of paint - Missing Tube sign

Rose Bollard

Rose Bollard Up Close

Rainbow

High-End Lifestyle

Printed on the first page of a beautifully bound, hard-back A5 booklet type thing.

It looked expensive.

Lets hope those High-End Lifestyle people don't spell too good.

Indian Woman – Prints and Skins

Indian Woman Portrait Print

Prints! Skins! Good shit! The T-shirt! Go on! Click here! 

This is the final version of a little drawing from my sketch book.

I scanned in the line drawing, converted it to a vector shape in Illustrator and then imported it into Photoshop to colour it in.

I find working in Illustrator nearly impossible and extremely frustrating. I don’t understand why they can’t allow you to use the same tools and method as you do in Photoshop to create and edit vector shapes. Illustrator is so fucking non-intuitive.

I just use it for the bare minimum and then do the rest in Photoshop. I also got some textures from my favourite texture repository Lost and Taken just for good measure and used them for the background. They took a week of fiddling about, leaving it, looking at it later, then some more fiddling to get it right.

I’ve not been as prolific with my sketch book as I should be.

My rape rick drawing stalled after 2 weeks because that app project (which has been going on for over a year) finally reached its long overdue climax. Even though the client made various attempts to impede progress by changing their mind constantly. (Sigh. I can’t even bear to go into it.)

So my bosses said the other say that they wanted to have a chat with me.

“Uhm…is this a good chat or a bad chat?”

I felt dubious about this so-called ‘chat’.

“No no it’s a good chat, to discuss your work and stuff.”

“Oh good, as long as I’m not getting fired…”

They said they were very pleased that of all the people in the office I stay behind and work late and want to reward me so I keep it up etc etc.

I said since it wasn’t going to a bad chat we could have it when I come back from my holiday.

The ex said I was a dolt and I should have had the chat right then and there. The ex is constantly collaring the bosses to ‘chat’ about the ex’s inevitable world domination.

That’s all very well (working late and so on), but my illustration is being severely impeded by all this enthuness in the work department. I’ve been too tired when I come home to pick up the illustration slack even though I’ve populated my shop and have been doing stuff like this. (Digital illustration I mean)

Indian Woman iPhone Skin. I don't know how many people want flowery lotus breasts on the back of their phone. Should I remove them?

I’m rather pleased with myself for colouring this in digitally. All the shapes inside the woman are vectors, so she can be stretched to fit nearly any format.

I also wanted her to be printable on colour T-shirts (I don’t know how colour prints turn out on pre-coloured T’s). So there’s a black and white line version for the green, red, blue and yellow T-shirts.  I think I’m going to buy this or the red one.

Indian Woman Line T-Shirt

Indian Woman Unisex sweatshirt

Indian Woman Laptop Skin

Then I was so carried away I even created a landscape version for the Laptop skins. (Which I rather preferred in the end to the portrait so I made some prints of those too.) It it cuts the boobs in half so they don’t seem so…uh…booby.

I could probably change the letter in the circle. I dunno.

Indian Woman Landscape Print

Ooof so much effort! Reward me by promoting me, pretty please! 

A New Client At Work

Arthur

The building is very dog friendly. It’s one of the nicest things about the place

Dogs come in with their humans nearly everyday.

Sometimes they stroll into the office, asking for a doggie website or an angry cats app.

They are very demanding clients.

“Arthur, you cannot pay for an app in dog biscuits!”

“No, not even if you look at us with those eyes!”

Another Day

Yet another day at work,

where I find myself once again

wearing my top

not just inside out,

but backwards as well.

Which just goes to show

my morning state of mind.

Early morning door-slamming (that’s me) and yelling (that’s both) with the ex this morning.

Ah, domestic bliss.

Other good news is my boss managed to brow-beat his phone company into giving him insurance and apologizing for not offering it sooner (Hah!).

And it only took 6 or 7 phone calls and various quiet threats. He is customer service’s worst nightmare and my role-model.