Reflection

Positive psychologists say that taking the time every day to write down three good things makes you happy. Even if it's "I enjoyed eating blueberries and raspberries on toast in the sun this morning" (which I did).

Today's post will selfishly and narcissistically serve this purpose.

So three good things about today:
1. Walking out of my back door on to the green to see some friends and eat an unexpected and tasty BBQ lunch (thanks Katie).
2. Learning to use a reflector in photography. F bought a brilliant circular one that folds up small and then springs into action on request. It has 3 surfaces: gold, silver and white. My favourite is gold, which gives the subject a beautiful warm buttercup glow.
3. Having a peek at the University of Greenwich's contribution to the Graduate Art and Design show, Free Range , in Brick Lane.

Here's a picture to illustrate today's mood. It a view from Camille's Provencal house, taken last April.

photography portrait competition

Going to assist F take a photo portrait of his friend P in East London. P's house has the most junk-filled back garden I have ever seen. A piano from 1820, a bath, shoes, and a lock-up owned by the kebab restaurant opposite. Every now and then the restaurant workers rummage through its mysterious contents. The garden crawls with rats.
Should make for a good photo.

Outdoors and indoors

Spent all day on the Heath, swimming in the ponds and eating crisps asynchronously.

It's now 8pm and F has just woken me, which is just as well because this time two weeks ago my disco nap turned into a fully-blown slumber party. I woke alone and anxious at 9.30pm, unable to leave the house.

I'm off to Camden the minute I can get out of my dressing gown.

Ethnicity and poetry

So Book Slam last night was fun and wine-filled(feeling a bit delicate this morning).

Apart from David Simon, a self-described bald lumpy middle-aged Jewish guy, all the other acts were Black. The compere Charlie Dark, a female performance artist with a beautiful voice Zena Edwards , and a female MC Speech Debelle .

It is interesting how many of the Black poets/spoken word artists I have seen at Book Slam seem to be angry, particularly about things to do with being Black. Similarly, a lot of female artists go on endlessly about the unfairness that women experience.

I'm not naive enough to think that the fight for equality and justice has been won. And why shouldn't people talk about their experiences?

The problem is that when people present themselves in a rather uni-dimensional way it makes it harder for me to view them as individuals, rather than as stereotypes. So much of Charlie Dark's material was about Black gun crime and in the end I was desperate to know more about some other aspects of his life. There were a few titbits - he went to private school and teaches kids - but the overall impression from him I thought reinforced stereotypes, as well as being a bit boring after a while.

The last act, Speech Debelle with her brilliant band The Therapists, was much more individual. She spoke about getting sick of your boyfriend, living off the pitiful Job Seeker's Allowance, and a fantastic finale about her absent father.

did it work?

Mysterious lack of slugs last night...

Wired

Going to Book Slam tonight in West London to hear the guy who wrote the Wire talk about...that, I presume. Not actually totally sure.

Because BBC2 insist on showing the Wire at 11.30pm on a school night I nearly always fall asleep half way through and have to be put to bed at midnight like Cinderella/an old woman/young child.

Hopefully I should be able to fight off the dozes tonight. A good dose of V to the D to the C (as F calls it) should do the trick I reckon.

Are bloggers lonely? Or just creative?

I've just read a few studies about the personality types of bloggers.

Apparently, women who are high in Neuroticism (the personality trait associated with depression, anxiety, paranoia and loneliness) are attracted to using the internet (Amichai-Hamburger & Ben-Artzi. Computers in Human Behavior, 2003) and prefer chatting online rather than face-to-face (Amichai-Hamburger, Wainapel & Fox. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 2002) .

I am brand new to blogging. Never felt the desire to do it before. Now all of a sudden I feel the urge to write about the slugs in my garden.

Am I lonely?

Maybe when it comes to talking about slugs I am alone. At least in real non-cyber life. My friends are interested in partying, politics, other people, music, books, boys/girls, clothes and art. Not gardening. And until about 2 months ago I was the same. Now that I've got a new flat, I've started reading Country Living instead of Vogue and looking at chaffinches on the BBC Springwatch webcams.

Although I still feel odd if I don't go out on a Saturday night.

What a relief to read a more recent study showing that bloggers are higher on Openess to Experience which is the personality trait associated with creativity, interest in the world and being intellectual (Guadagno, Okdiea & Enoa. Computers in Human Behavior, 2007)

That's more like it.

Gourmet gastropods

Gastropod sounds like a boutique gourmet lunch spot, which is how snails seem to view my young sunflower. Grr.

Nick gave me the hardy-looking seedling last week to add to my urban, mainly paved, garden. Being a complete novice, my garden contained a grand total of four plants:

1. a new honeysuckle (courtesy of Homebase)

2. ivy

3. those purple-flowing plants that grow out of walls

4. some kind of laurel-type plant left by the previous inhabitant of my tiny flat.

So I was delighted to get a newcomer.

I lovingly transferred the sunflower seedling to a bigger pot, added compost, watered, and set it in the sunniest part of my basement garden to watch it grow. I even considered measuring it every day, but had to have a word with myself at that point.

Last night was beautifully balmy - summer has definitely arrived in NW6. Stepping out of my backdoor in the twilight I just about avoided skidding on a large brown slug. Looking down I saw my garden's resident toad crossly creeping back to his log, hungry no doubt. My clodding great feet had just interrupted his slug patrol. Damn.

I spent the next 5 minutes picking up the slimy buggers and throwing them in to the neighbour's garden, holding back the urge to run away. Slugs make me feel wierd. By the way, before you go thinking how antisocial I am, the neighbour is an office and their garden is entirely paved with no plants whatsoever.

After ridding the paving stones of as many slimy friends as I could find, I looked up at my sunflower, calmy resting on its ledge.

Hang on.

Even in the gloom I could see a dark patch under its crown of bright green new foliage....

As I pulled the snail off, rudely interrupting its meal, it gave a crunching sort of slurp, and left behind a delightful trail of slime. Yuk.

I've now put coffee grinds in the sunflower's pot, which hopefully will poison the snails/slugs and not the flower. Any other suggestions?