Behold the Randomness....

As the title suggests, this one is going to be a tad on the random side. But most of you are well versed in the the randomness of Rants. Any newbie readers, welcome and enjoy, you get used to it.

In a week where I have been out three nights in a row, - unheard of and freakin' exhausting - I've seen three live bands/musicians, and caught up with an old friend over some vino. There's been a lot going on in the world of Rants.

Don't you hate it when you go to a bar/restaurant, ask for a soft drink  - coke or lemonade - then they pour it out of a multi-pack bottle that you can buy at the supermarket, then they charge you about £1.50 more than they paid for the entire 2 litre bottle? That really gets my goat. £2.50 for a lemonade in barely a half pint glass, in fact I think it was smaller than that. Say what? £5.00 for two soft drinks, I might as well have had half a cider. Robbin' bastards. That was Tuesday night. On Monday night we'd been in Shoreditch and managed to get a lemonade, not poured out of a cheap bottle right in front of me, but out of one of those pressy button snakey things. You know what I mean. Oh, and half a cider for £3.60 and that was in Shoreditch. Baffled!

Anyway, from day light robbery to day light rattery. After leaving my first school on Wednesday, after teaching my morning classes - bearing in mind this was 11.40am - I walked on the opposite side of the road than I usually do as there was a big lorry parked. And running through one of the gardens under a bush was a freakin' massive rat. Ahhhh! Rats are one of those things that I'm technically not scared of, until I see one. Man it was huge and fat. God knows what it's been eating. *shudders just thinking about it* Back to the other side of the road next week.

Something else I noticed on Wednesday was that my tube from Earl's Court to Wimbledon - I get off at East Putney - was way busier than usual, yet both my other tube journeys had been quieter.
*cogs turning, clocks ticking*
Oh yeah, it's Wimbledon. Ha.

Now to vermin of the flying world. The pigeons are back in full force, terrorising the balcony area and in this hot Summery weather, their cooing and scratching and general annoying behaviour is going on right behind my writing desk and I have to have the door open or I actually go up in flames. I spend at least twenty minutes a day running up to the window, yelling 'piss off' and shaking the curtains to get them to fly away. Honestly, it's like they're having little mother's meetings or something. It's the frickin' Pigeon PTA. Find somewhere else you buggers. I'm trying to write.

Now they're becoming sneaky too. They sit on the balcony trying to peck through to A's herbs that he is desperately trying to grow, and when you chase them off, they fly to the adjacent roof top and wait for you to disappear before flying back again. I swear it's the same ones every time. Sneaky little conniving *******
It's almost as if they enjoy the scare. They sit and coo, even earlier every morning - damn sunlight - and keep going until you get up to scare them off. They are essentially daring each other to coo the loudest and then are playing chicken with each other. Who can keep cooing the longest and not be scared when the big bad humans come to yell at them. Pigeon's playing chicken.....whoever would have guessed.

Just as I pause to write the next line, guess who was flapping behind me? They make so much noise just flapping their wings. Such a nuisance. And to think I always used to stick up for them, especially when the kids I look after, chase after them and roar and do anything they can to scare them. Now I'll be routing the kids on, unless you stop disturbing me. #grumpywriterwheninterrupted

Oh and in Kate Bush news, it's less than 2 months till opening night and she's already been in an underwater tank for 3 days, and crew have said her voice is phenomenal. So the giddiness continues.

And in sports news, it's nice to have Wimbledon and the World Cup on at the same time, but sometimes it's just, what to watch angst. Come on Murray and any other Brits that may happen to be left. And as for the footy, well the only Flat 19 team that is left in the competition, rather shockingly, is Greece. (England and Italy out.) So I guess we'll be supporting them as far as they get, then we'll choose a new favourite.

And on writing news, I think I am emotionally stunted and have thus made my characters so. Either that or I chopped half the emotional bumpf out when I was editing. I was probably playing the strong northern woman role and decided that all the mushy sentimental emotional stuff was just padding. Hmmm. Now it seems I need to inject a lot of that back in. Which means another god damn edit. There've been so many. *wah*
But, I will do it, if not for myself, for Ebony. She deserves not to be emotionally stunted, though giving her upbringing, she's completely screwed up anyway. (Ebony is the protagonist of my novel and we've been through a lot together in the 6 years since I conceived her.) In the mean time I am attempting some flash fiction, which is super short, even shorter than a short story, normally around 500 words. Of course my first attempt was 683. But come on, a whole story in that many words, for me that's genius. Just look how long this blog is. I have also been working on my new picture book idea, trying to make this one a rhyming one. Difficult.

So there you go. I think you have been significantly updated with all things Rants. Enjoy your weekend, whatever you may be doing and enjoy the last days of June.

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