Hello again.

All's well in Lisbon, I am thinking of home though and especially all of the people who I haven't spoken to, (did you find me a Che Guevara?)

Today I heard fresh rain outside my window for the first time in weeks and it made me crave Great Western Road. So I'm going to eat chocolate cake and shut my eyes - I will see grey clouds and I will smell sausage suppers.

But it is beatiful here, I am taking mental photos that I will show you when I get home over a pint in Ishkies.

I have been up to these things recently...

FMM Sines
Festival Sudoeste

I hope to post more, if not, see you when I get backx

Dearest,

I have thought of forty-two different ways to deliver bad writing. Firstly, but not obviously lastly, through pigeons. It's problems are compounded in part in parks. Secondly, one word could spell the end. Thirdly, watching DVDs. Fourthly, typing out all your pointlessness in a cocoon. Fifthly, chopsticks are two-fold origasmi. Sixly, we regret to say, "crumble!" but "crumble!". Seventhly, and probably heavenly, create three hibernating weavels from knitted noodles soaked in cardboard lobsters' claws. Eighthly, invoice bulky baggage by beggar blinking.

So, ninethly, but not before bedtime, I usually ask folk whose eyes crossstitch, PLEASE would someone STOP.
Tenthly, will I ever teach the bastards that manners are not more expensive than trout? I flee.
...
Forty-twothly, one good method is to wish upon your wrinkliest grandma for thirty-one others.

Thankyou for your tenacity. Wally.

Lots more love than you need or deserve,

Gilly. and bean. and my cringeworthy companion roy.

I feel so bad for the man with the storm cloud above his head.

I met him on Sunday night. He was standing opposite me with rain trickling down his long, black coat. Fresh, bubbly rain. He looked at me and said "looks like rain again..." And I turned away from the TV for a moment and agreed, perfectly dry.

I don't know what he did in the past or the future to deserve the unpleasant lingering of a particularly busy rain cloud. It must have been pretty bad though so I'm going to try harder to watch my Ps and Qs from now on. I get sick of the grey days as it is but at least I know that it's dull everywhere, for everyone and that there's a chance that it will be a juggling-in-the-park day tomorrow

But for storm cloud Carl, it's grey everyday.

The wind wants my new hat. I won't give it up because I like it.

It might be nice to be swept away with the wind. I'd like to be picked up and flown somewhere. Or nowhere in particular. I could just keep flying, gliding on the gusts. I could split into a million little dots and be lifted here and there and into peoples eyes, up their noses and into their ears. I could sit in their bags for a little bit until I'm free and I'm away ZoooooooooooM. I could fly over their heads and grab their hats as they walk to the shops "dammit-I LIKed that hat!" And then I'm away again flying whoooooOOOSH. I would run up to the shoppers as fast as I could, throw my weight into my shoulder and try to scoop them up with me, so that I didn't have to be on my own, as tiny dots. I don't think I would get empty crisp packets or the sports pages or bin bags. I wouldn't touch lorries on bridges or ferries at sea.

Arrrrghh!! What is that pain in the soles of your feet when you just come in from walking about and sit down? Is it something to do with circulation? It is so bloody sore, maybe I need to go to casualty.

I wrote a post about the play that we just did but when I tried to publish it, the computer crashed, so I wrote it on a piece of paper and will publish it when I get a chance. It is basically thankyou for all the support. But I mangaed to dress that up as lamb, somehow.

Today, when I walked into uni there was more dry rice scattered for the pigeons, I saw a woman doing it the other day and desperately wanted to hang about to see if it was all just urban legend about the rice then expanding in their stomachs and them exploding but I had to go because I was late. And today there were no sodding pigeons anywhere, probably staying out of the rain like clever pigeons or blown away by the gales.

Oooh. Or maybe they all exploded the other day.

Oooh.

It is autumn and as quick as my new leaf was turned, it blew away. It was so windy this morning I just stayed in bed.

Autumn is unravelling with me still inside it, it's making me dizzy.

When I tell her she's glowing, it's radiance instead of radiation. It's not blushing or anything that might be painfully extracted from her embarrassment. It's those eyes and that big smile. I'm truly happy and maybe more excited for her than she is for herself. Because unlike her, all I see when I look at her is good and sweet. Those eyes and that big smile. She is glowing again.

It is happening more often now. I saw a survey which said that when a group of sixty year olds were asked what the happiest decade of their lives was they said their sixties. Behind that, their fifties and behind that, their forties, descending all the way to their twenties. Is it that in this one year we are that little bit closer to being sixty? I don't think so, uft, I hope not.

I'm happy to be back, happy to be with new people. Happy that my friends are happy. Happy watching them smile with each other, thinking of them smiling when I'm not around. I think that, rather than the fact that we are all one year closer to being sixty (!), we are just enjoying ourselves and each other even more. Myself, I like the possiblities that Glasgow brings. Saying that, university hasn't started yet, September is a beautiful month in Scotland and the winter still seems far off somewhere, dancing around the north pole. Not pole dancing, incidentally.

I can't wait to have you all back. I miss you terrible like. But I wonder again, when you get back, will your eyes be even bigger? Will your brains be exploding with new information and new details of foreign smells and sights? Will you have a tan? A mullet? A Norwegian prince? A slab of Yak butter? Stories? Photos? Diaries?

I can't wait.