Allergic reaction

I'm feeling quite sorry for myself. We visited my wife's cousin today, who lives in a house with three cats, two dogs (one small, the other a pony-sized Great Dane), three children, and thus a cloud of hair, dust and dander that could block out the moon. We stayed for two hours, of which I spent one hour and fifty-nine minutes sneezing, my eyes streaming, my throat burning, until finally everyone had enough of laughing at my reaction and we drove back to Halifax. My eyes are still red raw now and I'm draining through my nose, which suggests whatever I'm reacting to is going to take as long to get back out as it took to go in.

Waiting for JetBlue

Last night I trod in a dog turd. It was exactly outside the doorway of the apartment block, and I spent ten minutes hopping up and down on my other foot, hopping mad as I tried to clean the muck off.

Balls to dogs

Today we drove the Black Boat, our unfeasibly large hire car, to my wife's cousin's place. There was her, three of her kids, two befuddled cats, a toy poodle, a rabbit and a Great Dane, all incredibly excited to see us.

Dreaming of dogs

I had a strange dream this morning about a Mardi Gras parade in Hong Kong, which consisted of five West Highland terriers swinging around a metal pole hung off the back of a truck. My fiancee thought the dogs were enjoying it, whereas I thought it was cruel of my subconscious to send small dogs spinning through the air in ever decreaasing circles around the pole. On the other hand, I have a pathological dislike of small yappy dogs and always want to kick them over a convenient fence, so I was probably complicit in this canine-carnival-abuse.

Strangely when I woke up and asked my fiancee about this, she feigned ignorance of the spinning, swinging dogs. But I'm sure she was in the dream with me. Why wouldn't she remember?

A doggone shame

Today I went to an office to be an extra in 'Supercapitalist'. This involved sitting at a desk looking at a computer, which was a bit of a stretch, but I think I managed to draw on all my experience of sitting at desks and looking at computers, to deliver a nuanced and deeply felt performance that will probably show up as an unidentified back of head-shot, slightly out of focus in a deleted scene on the special edition DVD.

You may think I'm just a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Really. There's eight other blokes in suits, all trying to look busy and productive. Since they work for banks, they probably have lots of practice at that.

Challenging, weakened

It was a challenging weekend to get through. My girlfriend was laid low with the sickness she'd had from Thursday night onward, and I was at the clutching-at-the-floor stage of my hangover. So rather than achieve anything epic and salutary on Saturday, we lay about the flat trying to avoid movement. I did read to her from Kolymsky Heights, my favourite deeply-implausible spy thriller, but there wasn't much else worth attempting.

Cats and dogs

My girlfriend wasn't particularly enamoured of the painting that I brought home, reacting to it in the same way that you might when your cat fetches in a dead mouse for your delectation. Well, to be exact about this, she said the picture was scary, which I feel is stretching the point. Once a cat is nailed to a cross, even if it has a pair of breasts and a teddy bear attached to it, it's not much of a physical threat.

I assume. It's not like I frequently crucify cats, as I hope I explained yesterday.

Peng Chau

Today we took a ferry to Peng Chau, a small island near Lantau. On the way there, the ferry passed Disneyland, that Hong Kong money pit that I keep meaning to go to, but haven't quite get round to.

Manic depression, a frustrating mess

Jimi Hendrix has released a new album, Valleys of Neptune.  I'm not impressed.  Frankly, it smacks of nothing but self-indulgence and laziness that he'd spend forty years without putting out anything new.  I mean, even Chinese Democracy didn't take Axl Rose that long.