Maybe it's because I MADE A FRIEND!
I may be doing myself down here, as I guess I've probably had a small number of what could technically be referred to as friends here in Hebden Bridge for a few months now. But no one had taken me on an outing before, and that's what friends are for, right?
Me and Rachel had a fun day of adventures... she took me to Halifax with her and we went to loads of plumbers merchants! Woohoo! (My tap broke and we needed a particularly tricky to get hold of part, and what are friends for if not driving you round industrial estates to speak to lots of burly plumbers about quarter turns)
That evening was the Egg Factory social, we played games and ate chilli, and it was lovely.
Rachel offered me a lift home as she passes my house, and I was like 'Yay, she's not sick of me yet!'
On our drive home, we saw a man lying in the road in central Hebden. We pulled over because... was he okay? We, and some blokes from a nearby pub went to check. He was clearly very drunk, but maybe also hurt, as he'd obviously fallen over and possibly hit his head... Not entirely knowing what else to do, we called an ambulance. A passing off-duty policeman joined us, and agreed we'd made the right decision. We then all waited OVER AN HOUR IN THE COLD WITH THIS DRUNK MAN for the ambulance and no ambulance came.
Obviously having described the guy and the situation, they'd decided he was low priority... And the NHS has been so decimated that no one could come. No ambulance, no paramedic, no help of any kind. An hour on, the guy could still barely stand, although his condition hadn't deteriorated in any way, so he clearly wasn't seriously injured. No taxi would take him in case he did a vom, which was fair, but what the hell were we supposed to do, just leave him lying there incapable in the cold?
We'd managed to get out of him that his sister in law lived about 5 minutes drive away, so in the end with the help of the policeman we loaded him into Rachel's car and took him over there, which was simultaneously far above and beyond the call of duty, but to leave him behind would have been like... not cool... and there wasn't really any middle ground... Grim.
A lot of residual horror because I've always been lucky enough to live in a country where you think that if you need help, you can call a number and help will come. And yes, most of the time, for major things, it still does. But this man needed help. Lots of help of lots of different kinds, and society is failing him, and countless others.
I've been having a lot of feelings of powerlessness this month around the slow but systematic dismantling of this country's support systems... The NHS, the benefits system, all the protections that we all assume will be there for us if we need them, and which most of us hope are currently helping the most vulnerable. They're not there, or they're barely there. The most vulnerable in our society are being failed and we can't even see it, because most of us are sheltered from it. There's a creeping horror building and I don't know how we're going to get out of this mess.
Anyway, back in our sheltered little bubble of niceness, Alex battered and deep fried some of that new vegan halloumi and it was A++++
Anna and Amy came to visit, yay!
I think I mentioned I got stung by a wasp towards the end of August. It went kinda weird and gross and I started freaking out because a) infections are horrible, b) antibiotics mess up my insides and c) fears of an antibiotic resistance induced apocalyse haunt me, so it's pretty much a lose lose lose situation. Grim.
Also got really excited about getting momos at the Fox and Goose but then they didn't have any and I was sad and got Indian food instead, but then proceeded to spill rice everywhere. And we came last in the pub quiz. OH DEAR.
Yeah, it went real gross. At this point I did go to the doctor.
TMI time guys: I have IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) and really didn't want to take antibiotics, because as well as killing the gross wasp sting bacteria they're meant to kill, they can also kill the 'friendly bacteria' in your gut, which for some people makes the symptoms of IBS worse. My IBS has been getting kind of worse and worse over the last few months in a way that I'd mostly been ignorning and hoping would go away...
Anyway, I took the antibiotics because I didn't want my leg to rot and fall off, and HEY HO my IBS is LOADS better, it's either fluke coincidence, or my gut had actually got all full of unfriendly bacteria and this cleared them out. Woohoo!
Went to see hero Nat before she moves down to London for BEST JOB EVER, I am very sad to lose her from the North but it's pretty hard to argue with her life choices right now. We shopped some shops and ate some burgers and all was good.
Alex still on that deep frying game, but with added exciting other yellow extras. YES.
Tabled at Leeds zine fair next to hero Jade (Queerarcana). Wonderful day, spent all my profits on other people's zines and chinese takeaway. As it should be.
IT'S HAPPENING / DEATH COMES FOR US ALL
Every couple of weeks a couple of lovely chaps come along our street and clean the windows on the street side of our house. I asked them if they'd do the tricky to access back side (fnarr), and for a tenner they cleaned them ALL INSIDE AND OUT WTF, best tenner I've spent all month.
Then I had to have a filling because an old filling had gone wrong. The last (and only) time I had fillings, I had 5 done all at once and it was a nightmare... Getting just the one done was... just totally fine. Like... so fine that I was almost elated, because when they told me they needed to do it, and they could do it there and then, I was like 'oh no oh no oh no' and got all adrenaliney, and then it was just totally okay.
Then I went and had chips and curry from the non-lardy chip shop in halifax and bit my cheek loads because my face was still numb.
I've always kind of liked autumn, and I'd sort of forgotten that this year, because I'd been thinking too much about how much I'm dreading winter. I think it's a residual childhood thing of starting to get all psyched up for Christmas, which is ridiculous because I'm not even that excited about Christmas these days, but still, the crisp coldness, the smell of damp leaves and decay, distant bonfires... it's all associated with a certain excitement and contentment and cosiness that may in fact be fictional these days, but still, the feels are there.
Okay, this may take... a little explaining?
Just over a year ago, me, Alex and Justin got a bit over excited about the French Revolutionary Calendar. It was a short-lived alternative calendar system which ran in France between the years of 1793 and 1805... The year still has 12 months, each month has 30 days, and each month is made up of 3 weeks each consisting of 10 days. The months are called things like 'misty', 'frosty', 'rainy', 'germination' and 'summer heat', and EVERY SINGLE DAY is assigned an individual object, mostly foods, plants, animals and tools.
It's entirely impractical as an actual calendar but REALLY NICE, and we've been enjoying it all year. Oh yeah, and the year starts in late September. To balance out with the *actual* length of a year, there are 5 'festival days' at the end of each French Revolutionary year, before the new year kicks off on September 22nd (or thereabouts).
We had planned in advance to celebrate these as a house, according to their names. We did... Not particularly well, but the above and following few days are a chronicle of that.
First up, Le Fete De La Vertue! (The festival of virtue).
I've been running for the last few months, and challenged Justin and Alex to a short race. Justin won, because he's taller and better suited to short bursts of speed, but rest assured that in the event of a zombie apocalypse where the zombies are slow but persistant, I will be the last to die.
Next up was Genius. We failed at genius. We were gonna go to the pub quiz again (the one we came last at previously), but Justin was too PhD stressed and Alex had a terrible hayfever attack.
Irrelevant to genius, I ran my first ever 10k! I have NO IDEA HOW because before and since I've barely been able to struggle past 6k in one hit, but I think the knowledge that I'd be able to do a super smug post on social media afterwards powered me through.
Next up on the festival of labour, we all worked really hard and then went to the Trades Club for our dinner (socialist trade union club, appropriate)
On the festival of opinion, Justin's parents came to visit and we all agreed that Charlie is just THE BEST BOY
For the festival of honour Justin and Alex BOTH WENT AWAY AND LEFT ME so fine, whatever.
And with that, HAPPY NEW (French Revolutionary) YEAR!
I woke up at about 5 in the morning, and suddenly realised I could see the stars, incredibly bright and so many thousands of them. I am notoriously unsentimental about celestial stuff, but I had a brief sleepy moment. Mostly because, despite having lived here for 8 months now, I'd never seen them before, because IT'S ALWAYS SO DAMN CLOUDY (Alex said it's my fault for 'not looking' but seriously I really hadn't seen them at all until this night.)
Really enjoyed going to Thought Bubble comics festival for the first time. Finally got my amazing new blade pen from Dan Berry... As you should all know by now, my actual drawing skills are... still not great? (Hence one of the main reasons why I do this daily visual diary project, to make sure I'm practicing some form of mark making every day rather than just being tied to my screen)... These are terrible portraits of some of my fav comics folk who I met, but I enjoyed using the pen very much!
Talking of getting better at things... despite ostensibly having no interest in or desire to do schmaltzy watercolours of the bloody COUNTRYSIDE of all things, I live here now, I draws what I sees, and I have been enjoying creating crude renditions of new views I see every once in a while.
Tried a self-portrait with the blade pen. Perhaps intentionally making myself look a little elderly and blobby. I've been doing some freelance work designing posters for Students Union venues at one of the big London Universities. It's fun but also I am old now, hello.
(A jungbomb is like a jagerbomb but made out of jungfrau, a cheaper version of jagermeister. The more you know!)
It's your boy Charlie, blade pen style. Better than many other drawings I've done of him anyway...
A day in which everything turned out slightly better than expected.
The world is a big scary place with lots of big scary animals, and Charlie has opinions on them all.
Had such a great time at the Egg Factory clothes swap, got my A/W 17 looks sorted. Those folks have been wonderful to me ever since I rolled up on their doorstep back in February demanding friendship in exchange for contributions to their Wednesday pot-luck lunches. It's such a wonderful community and I'm lucky to be part of it!
Now... Hi October. Be good to me please. x
