The Kindness of Strangers

A kind Mr Usman Abudu has offered to put thousands of pounds into my bank account! This is my lucky day! Watch this space!

I went to the quilts exhibition again today with Offsprog One.
It is such a good exhibition; I think my favourite is the one made by inmates at Wandsworth prison: each little section depicts a different attitude to incarceration, some positive and some negative, and of course they are all separated by lines of stitching, a poignant reminder that its creators exist in separate cells just like the painstakingly-embroidered sections of material that make up the whole quilt.

When I got back I did some more work on the Medea pictures. They have to be finished by Monday and I'll post the whole 12-page sequence when they are done. I think each page has taken a day, although I have been working of three or four at once sometimes so the ink can dry properly. They have been done of special paper called CS10 which you can't get any more, according to Mr Art Shop Man. If you make a mistake, you can scrape it away even though it is done in pen, and the paper is white again, ready for you to make another mistake.

Was that Dennis Bovell we saw in Digital Village yesterday? We couldn't decide; he was involved for a while with the Daintees, almost producing the track Boat to Bolivia.
I have moaned about the shop assistants there (yes, guys, thats what you are, although you clearly believe you are the Kings of Digital Music Equipment and Far Too Important to talk to mortals who walk in with tedious questions about microphones) and true to form, they were completely uninterested in anything except themselves, indulging in a form of collective onanism that almost warrants a TV documentary to investigate the phenomenon.
I know I am a meanie about things like this; it comes from doing lots of menial jobs in my time, and trying to do them well.
I have cleaned guest houses (horrible things stuffed down the back of the dressing tables), worked in shops (adventures with awkward customers), washed dishes in a French restaurant (garlic butter all up my arms), cleaned old people's homes (lift your feet up while I hoover underneath them), worked in pubs (you get your bum pinched), collected glasses in night clubs (look at the floor next to the bar: you find money), developed x-rays (the chemicals stink), worked in a press office (Tim Lott the journalist and now author asked me on the phone if he could speak to someone intelligent, please!) and various other selected occupations.
I have tried never to be snotty to the public in any of these jobs and it does get on my wick when people are snotty to customers in shops.
 I could be Prince Charles in disguise!
I could be Britney Spears in oldface make-up!
I could be the secret millionaire, thinking about taking them away from their daily routine with a cheque for £25,000!
I could be a genii, offering them anything their hearts desired!
What would they wish for?
'I wish the customers would go away.'