• 13:09 Downstairs, an automatic grand piano plays music bounced off the moon; and you can listen to the signal, a morse whisper wrapped in static. #
• 13:14 Upstairs, a disinterested peahen gets an eyeful of excited peacock's display, and retreats through a fairytale maze of concentric cages. #

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And I, for one, intend to decorate every cat I meet.

Whoever sent me the pink roses, you forgot to include a card! On the offchance that you're reading, thank you very much, they're lovely -- as were the chocolates, which came packaged with a delightful bow. And when you've got a cat and a bow in the same room, some actions are obvious:

this old thing? Designer headgear for the little cat.

If you click through to full size, you can see that the gentle flash I was using has left stars in his eyes!

After weeks of non-attendance, I seem to have been at gigs most evenings this week, which is a bummer as tonight Totally Extinct Enormous Dinosaurs are playing at the Cellar and I would like very much to see them, damnit.

But last night was my local for the lovely Scarlett's Well, who are like a fantastic act of cross-dimensional trickery, as if several different bands from entirely different genres (or possibly worlds) are (somehow, miraculously) occupying the same space.

And the night before that I was out on the Punt (Oxford's annual new bands festival) where Cat Matador won on both best name and most likely to feature on future compilations for everyone (not least because they gave out free CDs), while my heart was won by the supreme morosity of Elapse-o, playing to an empty basement while the scenester crowds flocked off to gather around the next big thing (Little Fish, who was missed on grounds of having been seen before). Winner of most stupidly danced to was lunatical Sikorski ... who gave me a bit of a flashback to Monday when I was getting my monthly dose of dance from Space Heroes, South Central and the Whip.

But I twittered that, so I'm repeating myself. Speaking of which -- Loudtwitter seems to be missing later evening twitters, I suppose i should probably figure out if I can fix that.

• 14:25 Crows half-heartedly mob a scruffy red kite in the skies over didcot. Endangered last year, this year the urban crack fox of the sky. #

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• 11:33 Processing one-minute films by young people from oxfordshire youth centres while the dynorod man surveys my drains. He's finding concrete. #

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A bit of a multimedia experience this morning as I sifted through one-minute films of young people, prepping them for the web, while taking the occasional break to go look at a very different film being shot by another young person -- the extremely gainfully employed Dynorod man. He was filming my drains for me (we'll get a DVD next week!) as part of our ongoing attempt to find out what their problem is. Problem is now identified; at some point in the past, a builder or similar rinsed concrete powder down the drain, where it solidified into a variable-width partial blockage which is as hard as -- well, concrete. Chunks of it have been coming off and washing down the drain to make new, exciting blockages, but lots of it is in firm enough that they'll need to cut it out. Apparently there is kit to do this, but f***ing f***.

In other news, this week's strip, which is really worth not reading. No, really, don't. It's just depressing.

detail - staying alive misery and rainbows.

• 10:16 On the inside of an upstairs window, someone has left a message sprayed in shaving foam. I decipher mirror writing; mine's bigger, it says. #

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• 09:51 On the stairs, i find a mysterious brigt green d20. The house has been playing d&d on the sly? But against who? #
• 19:05 There's country music playing in borders. My likelihood of committing suicide is increasing track on track. Oo! The bridge, for just £4.99! #
• 21:36 At an electro gig with a rucksack full of pillowcases and a glass of traditional lemonade. Howard Moon, i am your perfect woman. #

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Dream: I was back in the Department Store again this morning. I end up there a lot when I'm dreaming at the moment. I decided to take the lift to the top floor, and it was so narrow and tiny I had to cram myself into it, and when it started moving it was so slow I thought I would never get anywhere. The top floor had been abandoned and it was dark and dusty. Someone had sat all the broken old mannequins around a table where they sat in mismatched clothes and clownish make-up, heads lolling, like some zombie last supper pastiche. Around the top of the escalators (which were still running) there was an unabandoned space lit by yellow light, and I left that way. There was no boundary bewteen the abandoned and unabandoned shop, only convention dictated that no-one went beyond the reaches of the light.

Theremin: Thanks to mzdt I now have a working theremin! Well, insofar as any Jaycar Silicon Ship "theremin kit" is capable of producing a working theremin ... it's sold more as a home electronics kit than as an actual instrument, and various less-than-complimentary comments about its tone, sensitivity, interference issues, etc. are spattered across the internet. One site went so far as telling me that I shouldn't use it because I'd only get into bad theremin habits! Ha! Oddest thing -- I gain a significant improvement in tone and sensitivity (not to mention a more "theremin-like" response) by holding the power source (I'm using a 9V battery). I probably need to look at some diagrams in order to figure out what's going on there. Of course that means I don't have a hand free for the volume plate, but see above comments about sensitivity and interference for why that doesn't particularly matter.

Red leaves The scourge of my garden is back again. Young leaves that start red and stay red. The plant neither dies nor thrives, the leaves are undistorted but a bright red. It's clearly some sort of deficiency, but what? And why does it only take out some plants, while weeds and the like grow with undiminished enthusiasm?

• 14:21 Fig and vanilla daquiri unexpectedly delicious, also comes with free boquerones! Lunch made of win, before it has even started. #

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While I was getting up every five minutes to go to the loo (turned out my "fine" stomach wasn't quite as up to beer and pizza as I hoped) Tim was having a dream. We were looking after two really tiny brightly-coloured birds (one had a yellow crest, and one had iridescent green wings -- they were different species but obviously in love) for a friend, they lived in a marvellous elaborate cage, full of exotic foliage. There were also two exotic insects inside, which made him worry; were we supposed to be looking after them, too? Would the birds eat them? He took the birds out in the meantime, and then checked with the owners who told him not to worry; the cage was full of pupa and chrysalises which would hatch out insects and grubs for the birds and that was what they ate. Then, of course, he couldn't find the birds. His older brother (in the dream, he doesn't have an older brother IRL) was being all, "oh they're just birds" and being very unhelpful. The back door was open and he went out to look for the little birds in the huge passion vine that grows in his yard (no, really, it does) and he found a brightly coloured little songbird with a yellow ruff and purple flashes. He showed it to me and asked if it was the right bird. I said, "No, it's just a baby flamingo," and then went on to explain to him that young flamingos look like little songbirds and they fly up from Africa to live in England as juveniles for a while, where most of them die (as the climate is unsuitable for them). The survivors go back to Africa where their legs and neck grow long and they grow into the Flamingos we know and recognise. None of this was helping Tim, though, and he still hadn't found the birds when his alarm went off.

After he told me the dream, I told him there was a good chance that the little birds had gone back into their cage, thereby proving that Real Life Jeremy is both more helpful and more knowledgeable about the habits of birds than Tim's Subconscious's Dream Puppet Jeremy, and certainly more helpful than his non-existent older brother.

• 16:46 Every time i go past the robot bollards of templars square, they fill of with the fear. #
• 22:01 white noise sound have lovely introductions, and this track is all introduction. Shoegazer. #
• 22:45 Theo builds up his tracks like lego; his fans have beards and bags for life.#
• 11:39 I hope the keyboard choir get the chance to shoot a video in one of the didcot power station cooling towers before it gets decommissioned.

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• 18:08 The season's first goslings are twittering in the meadow. #

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I have a row of black tulips in my front garden. I'm confused because I planted alternate blue and black tulips, and last year that is how they came up. This year they've all reverted to black, except one that's sort of blackcurant and vanilla striped. I wonder what mechanism causes that? Found on the internet, the saying, "as goth as a row of black tulips". I wonder if you could do that for other flowers?

While we're on flowers, let me include a special electro bonus! Go to the website of electro queer boy Delphinium Blue, give him your email address, and you'll get taken to a page containing 12 free mp3s. Then (not that I'm denigrating the bizarre vampiric delights of "thickly buttered coffin" or anything) go to the fourth download, "I'll come find you". Happy Friday!

oh my duckie! He's just done something in a fancy college water feature that made the receptionist twitchy.

• 18:45 A cyclist races a bus up queen st, tight lycra, face split by an enormous summer grin. The bus driver smiles, slows up while he undertakes. #
• 18:53 Next, an elaborate sports wheelchair does similar with a dustcart- which doesn't slow, but he scoots to safety with an undiminished grin. #

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• 13:14 Trying on a bright yellow jacket. I had one just like it in the 80s. Nick said that i came out at night looking like a sunburned banana. #
• 14:54 @peteashton Well, there's this great place in Oxford where I got my Mah-Jong set called Gameskeeper, so suggest you try the local D&D store. #

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I have signed up to do the London Underground comics thing at the end of May (exhibitors, Interviews, News and No Barcodes). Look! I'm on the autobiography table. Should be fun, I wonder if I can think of a good way to get some activity with members of the public. Some savagely cut down version of the "my awesome life" comics workshop maybe? I think in celebration that I must also do a new minicomic (also having some stock would be good). Also I just found my huge pot of Mardi Gras sequins. Sequinned minicomics! Give me my shiny! Am I saying "also" too often? Heroes was good, wasn't it!*

In the meantime, happy friday:



I got an email from someone who'd just broken their Antony Gormley snowglobe, wondering if mine was for sale. I got mine down off the shelf to look at it, and discovered that some sort of ongoing chemical process is progressively bubbling the base and stripping the gilt coating from the little metal man. After I'd taken about twenty photographs of it, catching the sun from the front window, I realised I wasn't going to sell it to anyone.

The best of them are over on Flickr (click through to see). They're kind of dreamy -- if I get one of those digital frames, I might fill it with a whole slideshow of sunny snowglobe pictures.

*Yes I have been at the cinder toffee again.

Last week I discovered that I can feed birds on worms by moving piles of rubbish! Up came the lelandia branches and underneath it was arthropod heaven, worms and slugs and woodlice gently grazing the savannah while centipedes and tiny frogs brought them down noble wildlife documentary stylee.

The moment I was out of the way, in came the robins. I have two, and they're fighting. Possibly they're rivals, or just a very acrimonious couple, it's hard to tell with robins. Hot on their heels came the blackbirds, a big roaring-girl female, the squabbling males (there's now a definite winner) and the quiet one. Then the magpies -- a pair, I think, strutting around like they owned the place. I think it's safe to say that everything got eaten, unless the frogs managed to get out of the magpies' way.

So I freecycled my birdtable and all the remaining bird food to a nice lady called Anita who lacks trees so needs cover for the birds, as I am clearly doing enough. Later the same day I discovered that there were ladybirds overwintering in the half-eaten rosehips I'd left on the bushes all winter! My scruffy ways surely encourage the wildlife, but I should remember that that can also be a bad thing.

Oh, and further to something, here's something else from je suis spamusement:

taking on the classics Not based on anyone I know oh dear me no.

It was a weird weekend.

Last weekend I ended up going through a box of old papers and letters, chucking it (well, about half of it). I was a frantic correspondent, it seems -- writing drama-laden screeds to various bewildered penpals, all of them close friends who had moved away. Without my letters I can only guess at the story behind a torn up and re-sellotaped letter which starts WELL YOU WILL BE GLAD TO KNOW YOU'VE HURT ME VERY MUCH or five pages of weird ramblings about Viz, drinking and having a shower in multi-coloured inks. But one thought persists: we'd have saved a lot of trees if the internet had been around when I was a teenager...

I also turned up a house photo, taken in the sixth form. The school had just recently gone mixed, and I was the first girl to have gone from the lower school into the sixth, the others were a bunch of nice girls having two years in a mixed before going to university, college, travelling, you know. They all look prosperous and well grooomed; I look like a mad grab-bag of signifiers, totally incoherent and decidedly scruffy. Which is fair enough.

So, in commemoration of my teenaged self, this week's strip. I started elaborately colouring it and then realised I was doing this for the pleasure of colouring and not for the sake of the strip. This one's the appropriately monochrome version.

it gets bitter with time - detail In which the washing up is not my friend

I had a long complicated dream last night which I don't remember, except for the bit where one of the characters called up Ardal O'Hanlon at an unreasonable time of the morning to mither about something. He stumbled out of bed, grabbed his phone and said: Can't talk sorry really busy bye! and then went back to bed, where, as I'd guessed from his tone, was a someone -- a guy with messy hair, just starting to wake up. Ardal bounced back into bed, and said: come on, wake up you! Bistos! (Which struck me as a bit odd, but who am I etc. etc.) And then the guy woke up, and Ardal hugged him and said, I'm terribly sorry, but I can't remember your name at all!

In other news, in order to satisfy Tim's cat's curiosity last night, I emptied everything out of my oh-so trendy but terribly badly-made rucksack. He's been wanting to jump inside it, but keeps getting spooked because of all the stuff. Instead of suddenly losing interest and becoming fixated on motes of dust or scratching furniture for the rest of the night, he jumped into the rucksack! Win! Alas I was a bit slow with the zip and he escaped before I could steal him.

dozy me In the sun oh yes.