Fairy Cow

Drove up into the hills near where my mum and dad live today, to look at the Stone Circle of Mitchell's Fold. Bronze Age in origin, it has a more recent legend that a good fairy once grazed her cow here, which doled out milk to the hungry in (adopts movie trailer guy's voice) "a time of great famine". This was strictly rationed out however at the rate of one bucket o' fairy milk per person (the period is unclear but given that that'd last me a month it seems like quite a lot).

This arrangement was working out fine, but someone's always got to fucking ruin it for everyone else, and the evil witch Mitchell snuck up and started milking the cow into a sieve. The fairy cow clocked what was going on, shimmered out of existence and turned the witch into a lump of stone, which the villagers – presumably quite miffed about the loss of their free milk ticket – surrounded with a circle of other rocks, to ensure she never again escaped (she's a rock now guys, relax).

It was nice. The surrounding hills were shrouded in mist, it was wet and slightly windy. The ground underfoot was spongey with moss. Other than than my mum and dads' car and our respective mobile phones, the most technologically advanced artefact in the immediate vicinity was a cattle grid, steeped in muddy water. It was a landscape weirdly unpunctuated by technology.

Living in London is something of a full frontal sensory assault from the minute you step out of your front door, and I suspect a good part of my waking mind is occupied screening and filtering this barrage of media into some kind of rational order.

No such problem here, in a landscape almost completely devoid of branding apart from a lonely National Trust logo on a bit of rock. Everything seemed wierdly undifferentiated and peaceful. I kept looking around for 'cool stuff', perhaps expecting to see a critically acclaimed new rave compilation leaning against an enterprising bit of rock, but no, nothing.

After that, we drove down into Welshpool. I wandered up the high street and looked in a couple of charity shops. The records therein were the usual suspects, of the order of James Last LPs and the popular 'Mrs Mills' compilations of the seventies. I didn't buy anything.

This evening went for a bite to eat at the local, The Sun, which is two miles up the road. It was very nice. I had a Wild Boar Steak. There was a three legged dog running round, though I don't think this was in any way linked with the food.

Getting the train to Manchester tomorrow, at mid-dayish. Yawn. Off to bed now.

Wales, Henz uv Deth

I'm at my mum and dad's in Wales. It's very rural.

There's fields nearby, full of lambs gamboling around, a dirty dozen or so cows in a corrugated tin shed, the ususal array of evolution-defyingly unintelligent pheasants (strutting calmly into the road like targets in a practise range) plus a new addition to the local agricultural portfolio: a large hen house out the back.

Ah hens. Even allowing for Colonel Saunders and Chicken Cottage, the image that usually springs to mind when I think of hens in the countryside is of plump satisfied chooks ambling round pecking at seed in an arcadian utopia: a benign avian sisterhood if you will.

But after an inspection today I can report.. it's nothing like that at all, in fact: it's like Prisoner Cell Block H up in there.

Which is not to say they're not well looked after. My mum isn't Bernard Matthews (obviously) and it's quite a nice hen house (I guess) but these sisters are doing it to themselves, with various of the inmates sporting a variety of nasty-looking peckwounds, and I can tell you with some certainty having viewed the injured: "These beaks weren't made for walking".

I suppose this is the origing of the phrase 'pecking order', and 'Top Dog' of this cell block when the lights go out is the slightly sinister Mrs Black, a terrifying matronly bird with dark plumage, who metes out her own violent form of authority as savagely as the bosun of a 17th century naval frigate might, if they were a hen.

As the other hens sport ever more painful looking beak marks and diminish in stature, the maniacal Mrs Black prospers inversely, and walks with an ever more pronounced swagger. In ten years she'll probably be ripping up flagstones and holding tanks at bay in Parliament Square. You watch and see.

Anyway. There isn't much to do here apart from walk around, breathe in the air, and blog about hens. I'm in the final stretch of an Ian M Banks novel which I just want to finish now. I sometimes find myself really craving a dirty fix of science fiction, only to be distinctly underwhelmed when I actually set about reading it. This is no exception. It's got some neat ideas in there, but the characterisation is a bit bland and for a thriller, it's actually quite unexciting. That said, I've enjoyed others of his books much more.

Not sure what I'm up to tomorrow, though the weather here is much warmer than I expected, so perhaps a walk, followed by some crate digging in the charity shops of Welshpool.

Tuesday, Pens, Black Narcissus.

I've just got back in from Ed's, having watched Black Narcissus: a 1947 film shot in glorious super-saturated technicolour, about a convent of nuns in the Himalayas (though do bear with me on this one). Watching things like this always gives me a warm nostalgic thrill, despite it actually being quite dark in places. It was all filmed on set at Pinewood (Ed tells me) though it is very well done, and some of the painted backdrops are stunningly effective – one trompe-l'œil in particular creating the illusion of an incredibly vertiginous drop down a mountainside. The lighting is incredibly atmospheric too, making it suitably dramatic and theatrical, wheras it might overwise have felt flat and stagey.

I went and talked pens with a guy in the graphics shop on Camberwell New Road today. I got a couple of Pentel 'Fountains', as I like the variance in stroke you can achieve by applying different pressure. He was right in pointing out however, that the nibs do blunt somewhat quickly, so I may invest in a more traditional dip pen with a stylus and seperate nib. At one point he whipped forth a calligraphic number from his pocket to demonstrate its stroke, and I observed a large ink stain blossoming on the left hand side of his shirt – the sign of a true pen fanatic.

I'm off to Wales tomorrow, and thence to Manchester on Friday. Annoyingly, the two connecting trains heading north cost less than my returning one on Sunday. Logic dictates that this is the busier line, so I assume it's a moneyspinner on Virgin's part.

Really looking forward to a change of scene for the rest of the week, though doubtless it'll be colder—and wetter—than Camberwell could ever hope to be (in both Wales and Manchester).

Rang Vic yesterday, but couldn't get through. Peed informs me however that she was at a Northern Soul weekender in Prestatyn, so doubtless the two are connected. In any event, I hope to catch up with her and various other people.