Rain, Cornwall, Cocktails

I've not been blogging as much as I should - which is a bit rubbish really. I have been doing things but I've been naughty and got out of the habit of writing something on here every day. BAD LOUCHE, GO TO YOUR ROOM.

I have been doing some exciting things, I mean it's not all been breaking rocks here, oh no. On Tuesday I visited a chum for cocktails which was excellent. The trip over was exciting as I managed to get comprehensively lost in the middle of nowhere, well the upper-middle of nowhere. It was a special lost of lost as the place I was trying to get to was vaguely like where I was so some of the instructions still worked. This added to the confusion.

I made it in the end, after a couple of phone calls and a bit of time spent frowning at maps. The road was very wiggly which made me want to be on it on a motorbike. Well on a motorbike when it was nice weather - it had been raining constantly in Devon for what seems like years.

It's also been raining in Cornwall, my little brother went on a camping trip which was cut short because the weather was so bad. On the day that I went Tall Ship sailing I had to rescue him in the evening, from Cornwall so I clocked up about 500 miles. I was exhausted from sailing all day so it was even more tough than usual. Still I managed it without crashing so that is good. It has rather put me off driving for a bit.

The only other news is that an ex seemingly didn't understand when I said 'please don't contat me again' several times. I've had say I'll contact the police if she keeps badgering me. Hopefully this will finally get through to her.

Cornish Waterworld

The West Country is damp, super damp. I've actually abandoned Cornwall because it was so wet. Well not entirely, I did have to come back to Devon to pick up some things before I could go and mess around on Tall Ships but I think I'll stay in Devon for the rest of the week instead of going back to Cornwall for more camping.

The surfing photo shoot went well, the photographer this time was amazing, really amazing. Photographers and their subjects should get along as you both have to do something a bit weird together. If you do get on then it's great fun and you can tell it's fun from the photos, if you don't it's awful.

We only had a few hours to get all the shots we needed and I had to borrow clothes off strangers (I'm quite proud of being able to get someone to give me their hoodie for half an hour when they had no idea who I was) and get women I'd never met before to pose in photos but we managed it and it was good. I even had time to have a light brunch with the photographer while we waited for the instructor to return.

Posing strangers was fun as they kept acting all stiff because the camera was on them. We didn't have time to give them a few drinks because we had to take photos fast so we had to resort to being silly. Also we needed some 'wine' for the photos and I suggested we use black current juice and water which looked the part and made me feel like a special effects person, albeit one in someone else's hoodie.

It was a good day, and the photos are stunning. I'm tempted to post one even though it would out me and that is not good. Instead I'll save it for something else like an official work website which I should have set up years ago.

Do they really work? Has anyone got work through their website?

Steampunk Camping

Louche found himself camping on Saturday night, a chance remark to his little brother became a mission. An ancient tent was found in the garage and brave attempts were made to put it together in the dark after one too many gin and tonics.

Sadly the years had not been kind to the tent so some repairs had to be made. Louche couldn't find any gaffa tape, or a tarpaulin so he had to do the best with what was available. The broken connections on the polls were fixed by using copper piping as a sort of splint and he found an old bit of canvas to throw over the tent to cover the holes. Louche and his little brother stood back and admired their work. What had once been a fairly normal tent was now a twinkling construction of canvas and copper. A tent worthy of a Jules Verne novel or the sort of thing The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen would take on a weekend trip to Cornwall.

Once the tent was constructed they set about filling it with bedding then went to sleep, the door was left open so the cats could amble in and out. This was a double edged sword.

While the little furry things were quite pleasant to have in the tent, later in the night the cats would charge in and then bap sleeping chaps in the face before scampering off again. Later on the cats used the tent as a handy place to store mice while they were hunting more things that go squeak.

At one point there were three terrified mice in the tent as well as two naughty cats having a great time hunting them down across the bodies of not-really-sleeping people. Thankfully the cats juggled the mice out of the tent while playing with them so there was a chance to get a little sleep before the next round of 'bap and run' began.

Morning came not a moment too soon, and the cats were rather despondent when the tent was taken down but soon discovered that tents were good fun to attack when they were being disassembled. Louche crossed 'cats' of the list of good things to take camping.

Practical Magic

Louche found himself almost rigid with stress on Friday, so he decided to decamp to Devon to visit the ancestral pile. He also decided that he would describe the event in the third person since this trip to Devon as a holiday from everything.

He arrived late on Friday night, so late that there was little time for anything but a light supper and sleep. On Saturday he woke up to the sort of golden dewy sunshine that only exists in Constable paintings and memories.

The day didn't involve much, some lounging around with cats and eating cakes while looking at geese. The sort of things a chap needs to do when London gets a little bit too much.

In the afternoon there was some farm work to be done. A pair of pigs were about to move in to a luxury condo near the orchard so a source of water had to be found for them. No-one could remember the exact location of the pipe that ran across the field so a stout dowsing rod was brought out and used to locate it as simply as a chap bringing out his pocket watch to tell the time.

The West Country isn't that far away really, but sometimes it feels like a different world. A world where bits of stick can tell you where water is, kittens make stress disappear and every tin in the kitchen hides another interesting cake

Louche was glad to be home.

Luck be a lady last night

Last night was a busy one. I had a lunch with an editor who is really more of a friend. Anyway she insisted I do some work for her, sadly her magazine doesn't pay terribly well but it is extremely good fun. So I'm going to start trying to cogitate fresh nonsense.

After that I went to another meeting in a pub to talk about a project relating to motorbikes and to introduce some people to other people. I had to rush out of that after an hour and go to a party. This was a good party, there were lots of cocktails to drink and I breezed up to lots of interesting looking women to talk about anything that came to mind.

As part of the party a gambling company were running casino tables so I joined in the fun and ended up winning a prize. I would have won the top prize but the naughty lady on the table wouldn't let me cash out all my money because she said I had won too much. Still the top prize was a weekend in Devon (Not massively tempting considering Devon is home) so instead I walked off with a lovely mini-break in a flash hotel.

This is excellent but I've got no idea who I would take? It's quite forward to say to a stranger 'hello, I think you are rather scrummy, fancy a minibreak?' Or maybe it isn't, who knows eh?

Oh and another friend wants to take me to Japan to help sell art. I'm finding out today if that is happening. If it is I need to dig out my old Japanese books and relearn it frantically.

Amazing things happen if you go out in Austin Reed.

Zombies on the beach

I forgot to pay my phone bill, so I was cut off while in Devon. This combined with the complete lack of interspaz connection was a strangely welcome relief. It allowed me to concentrate of the important business of going to the beach, playing computer games with my little brother and eating as much as possible.

It was very relaxing and after a long walk on the beach where that ship (Napoli) crashed I felt much more relaxed. The ship-wreck is still there, along with a large selection of scrap which made me wonder. The price for scrap metal has gone up a lot in recent months so I was quite surprised that some enterprising person hadn't capitalised on this bountiful fortune washing up on the shore.

When we got back from our walk we were all soaked through, not because of the rain but because it seemed like a good idea to see if you can outrun waves. You can't, but it took a few goes to realise this, and by that point my jeans had turned from simple trousers into some sort of salt-water transporting device.

Thankfully we had toast and stood in front of the wood burning stove at my mothers house and steamed quietly while my little brother and I discussed what we would do in the event of a zombie attack. After a long debate over if zombies can swim we decided that being on a boat would probably be best - we would only return to land to raid for tinned food and books.

I'm back in London now, with a fully working phone and feeling much relaxed. I'm sure I can hold it together till I've finished the book, and after I've done that I'm going to take a long break and think.

Not think that much, I've got an interview on Monday which is pretty exciting especially after I googled the person I'm meeting.

Off

I'm off to Devon now, I need a weekend of R&R and Devon is perfect for that. I've had a crippling mirgrane today so I couldn't read the words on my computer earlier because my eyesight was all 'funny'. After an hour or so of being a dark room and taking pills it seemed to get better but I still feel decidedly strange.

I'm sure it call all be cured by a few days of looking at geese (which is amazingly calming and I would recommend it to anyone) and eating cake.

There are very few ills in this world that can't be cured with a lemon drizzle cake or a victora sponge.

Gordon Ramsey Vs The Buffalo

I heard about Gordon Ramsay's buffalo-herding car crash I lost all respect for him. What kind of man uses a 4x4 to herd animals? Back in my day we never had the luxury

I grew up in a small farm in Devon so our traditional method of rounding up cows was the bleary eyed 3am dash in pyjamas. Cows are escape artists second only to goats; they wait till everyone is fast asleep before crashing through hedges and trumpeting for joy as they dash for freedom or at least someone else’s garden.

There are three stages to a cow hunt, stage one is finding the cows. This is normally fairly easy as they leave a trail like a crashed spaceship through hedges and they fart when they are excited so you can hear them from miles away.

Stage two is to get behind the cows, so you can try and scare them towards the farm. This is probably the bit that Gordon had problems with. Heady with freedom the cows are strutting around like troubadours and so take any attempts to get around them as inspiration for more jumping and hooting.

The third stage is the actual herding; this is the point where you wish you were in a 4x4. Cows are bigger than humans, much bigger, so they really aren’t that scared of slightly unfit 8 year old boys in stripy pyjamas who would much rather be in bed. If you walk towards them they jump about a bit for effect and then charge.

If a cow charges at you the best thing to do is to not be there, the second best is to stand your ground. Cows, unlike Bulls tend to break off the charge at the last minute and pretend they didn’t mean to charge you anyway. If you run away the cows take this as encouragement and chase after you, mooing frantically to get other nearby bovines to join in.

Either way your father will tell you off for not grabbing the cows horns and wrestling it to the ground like a hero from a Greek legend. Farmer’s sons are the lowest of the low on the farm, somewhere under naughty sheepdogs and hens that don’t produce eggs. After all a cow can be worth a lot at market.

We tried rounding up cows on horseback using the overweight carthorses that were in the next field but they had got all excited by hearing how much fun the cows were having so they were impossible to catch. Motorbikes were used next but they ran out of petrol long before the cows had even finished doing their warm up excises.

Eventually we managed to get the cows back in through boredom more than anything else, they haughtily stepped back into the shed as if a early morning run was just part of their routine and the hedge was patched up using part of an old gate and my bicycle.

When ever someone tells me that eating a steak is bad I think back to the shivering 8 year old in his pyjamas chasing after cows, the meat always tastes better after that.