floatykatja - @ 20six.co.uk

Stuff and things

There is spooky stuff going on. I logged into my account to write a blog about being chatted up by random strangers (three times in the past 10 days!) and see that my blog is currently advertising mysinglefriend.com. Is there something going on that I don't know about, involving getting me hitched?
The other day, as I walked along Kilburn High Road, I noticed various strange chalk markings on the pavement. One of them looked like a hopscotch game and another like a random circle of numbers. Then, when I walked along there today, I noticed that they had been changed and now there is an actual hopscotch game set into the pavement, along with a sort of sundial thingy. All in the name of making Kilburn into a cutesy little village, one assumes. Actually, I may mock, but you can bet your life that I'll be down there playing hopscotch before the week is out. Anyone fancy a game?

Katja on 21.5.07 10:25
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The Other

Sorry I've not been around much recently - busy busy busy (and maybe just a little bit lazy). Anyway, to keep you entertained, here is a story I wrote to order for a writer's group I've joined recently. Sleep well, my pretties...
He told me that it's over between us. He says he can't cope with the lies any more and he is choosing her. I smiled and told him I understood. Not for me the histrionics of other women. There are better ways to deal with a situation like this.

It's all about research and knowing your enemy. I enjoy this part of it. I know quite a lot already: who her friends are, where she goes on a Thursday afternoon, what her favourite drink is. The challenging bit is working out how to get close enough to her to use this information. It's a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Finding some common ground. If you find the right 'in' then it's easy. In this case, it was as simple as joining her gym and going to the same swim class as she does. I'm the only other woman there under the age of 65, so it was natural that I should strike up a conversation with her. She thought nothing of it - why would she? It was a short step from there to going for a quick coffee and before long she was confiding all her secrets to me.

There are ways and means of getting rid of somebody. There's a certain excitement in the up-close-and-personal nature of a bullet to the brain, but it's far from subtle. Poison is infinitely more attractive. The classical connotations of it appeal to me. Finding a hemlock plant in her garden was a stroke of luck. She had no idea what it was. I harvested the roots carefully and waited for my moment.

In the event, it was easy enough to administer; she is both hypochondriac and untrusting of conventional medicine. All I had to do was tell her the drink I was offering her was a restorative herbal tisane and she gulped it down like an obedient child. Watching the process was fascinating. The one worry that I had was that she would vomit the poison back up before it had been absorbed. I therefore mixed an anti-emetic into the solution and so the first sign of the poison working was the convulsions, which were spectacular. Who would have thought the woman had so much energy in her?

The wonderful thing about hemlock poisoning is that the brain remains functioning throughout. This is one of the reasons given for its popularity as an execution method in Ancient Greece. The victim had plenty of opportunity to think on, and potentially repent, their sins as they died. After the initial stimulation, the poison begins to work its way through the system, slowly paralysing as it goes, before eventually the respiratory system fails and the subject dies of suffocation. It took a few hours; hours in which I let her know exactly what was happening to her, and why. She had no idea of what she had done. The stupid fool had believed him when he said he was divorced. I laughed in her face when she told me that. She's not the first to fall for his lies.

Once she was safely dead I forged the suicide note. Years of practice have made me very good at this bit of the process. Simple and to the point, I was pleased with the final result. Now that she is out of the way he will come back to me.

He always does.

Katja on 17.5.07 01:02
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To Wit ...

So - Bank Holiday weekend. Long, wasn't it? Sunday and Monday were about the most boring days I've had in ages. Saturday, however, was ace! I went to Kew Gardens with Arty and we watched Morris Dancers, heavy horses, hawks and all sorts of things, as part of the Woodland Festival. We also saw the world's largest compost heaps - I kid you not. Rather more exciting than the heaps, however, was the peacock sitting happily on the viewing platform, not 3 feet away from us. Therefore, continuing my current theme of animal portraits in this blog, voila:

Noisy bird
The hawking display was fabulous. There was a beautiful European Eagle Owl called Igor, who was very lazy and didn't like to fly too much. However, when one saw the size of him it was hardly surprising. Even with a four foot wingspan, it has to be hard work for him staying aloft. Look!

He really was quite beautiful. The woman on the left makes me laugh. Not sure what the handler had just said to her, but it appears to have been quite disturbing.

Katja on 8.5.07 11:44
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Witches, Chinese Food, Wonder Serum, and Moz

Witchery last night was ace. I'm knackered now, though - when will I learn that staying up until 2am when I have to get up at 7 is not the cleverest idea? Ah well.
We ate chinese food last night. I haven't had it in ages and had forgotten the side effects - namely, exceptionally vivid dreams. Last night's dream featured Harry Enfield, although it didn't look like him. I was going out with him and very jealous (We Hate it When Our Friends Become Successful ...). We ended up being chased by an angry hippo and discussing mobile phones. Dream analysts of the world, unite.
I've noticed that, when I'm tired and hungry (this morning, for instance) I'm exceptionally grumpy. I could cheerfully have stabbed a woman for saying 'excuse me' on the bus this morning. In my defence, I was at the top of the stairs looking around for a seat and clearly realising that there were none. She was trying to come up the stairs behind me. I laughed inwardly as I let her get past and then she had to sheepishly come back down the stairs again.
Anyone planning on joining the scrum in Boots for their wonder serum today? I'm half-tempted - at 16 quid it's a lot cheaper than the one that I currently use, which costs me £70 and for which I have to go to an Elizabeth Arden spa, as it's not sold anywhere else. However, there's a part of me that fears change, especially when it comes to skincare. Call me vain, but I'd rather not end up looking like the kind of witch that Daxy was visualising yesterday.

Katja on 4.5.07 10:04
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When shall we three meet again?

It's such a lovely day. I have been outside for the last hour or so, mowing the lawn and pruning bushes andsoforth. I do like being out in the garden, but my skin can't take too much sunshine, so I have retreated inside to the safety of the computer. Tomorrow evening, however, I plan to spend many hours out there, drinking gin and cackling with two of my closest friends. The three witches of Kilburn, reunited by moonlight. Excellent.

Katja on 2.5.07 15:23
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And we can play all day!

I spent yesterday afternoon at London Zoo . It was ace! I was really impressed by how much it has changed since I last went there (probably when I was at drama school in about 1998/99). They're moving towards a much more interactive experience, rather more like a wildlife park than a zoo. Cages, it would seem, are on their way out, which can only be a good thing. I'm seriously considering going for annual membership. I used to have it when I was at drama school, and loved popping in and out of the zoo any time I felt like it. It only takes 3 visits for the membership to pay for itself, so it seems well worth the money.

My favourites, the otters, were hiding indoors yesterday, sadly, rather than playing in the water. However, the enclosure has been changed so that visitors can still see them, so I got to watch them playing their little juggling games. One of them had found a piece of silver paper from somewhere and was busy balancing it on his nose and flipping it over. They're so gorgeous! Sadly I didn't get any photos of them, but I got plenty of others. By the by, I'm really quite impressed with the camera on my new phone, now that I've worked out how to make it focus properly - d'oh! Just need to sort out the user errors now and we'll be away ...

The meerkats were also fabulous. They're so much smaller than one expects, but I love the way they're always busy. It did make them hell to photograph, though. There was a wee pile of them bundling for ages, but they just wriggled and wriggled, every so often casting a cheeky glance at me as if to laugh at my pathetic photographic efforts.

Sorry about the reflections - funky bag, though, huh?

I had a fabulous time in the petting zoo ('an EVIL petting zoo?') with Marilyn the goat. She was singularly bored by me, but graciously allowed me to pay court to her.

One day I shall have a goat in my back garden. Oh yes.

Right at the end of the day we made it over to the giraffes and other African animals. The giraffes are so beautiful - and (fact fans) they have the same number of vertebrae in their neck as humans do.

Another one for the fact fans, which I found very exciting and which made me dance in the aquarium, causing plenty of children to stop in their tracks, point, and laugh bemusedly: seahorses pair-bond for an entire mating season. Every morning, the couples greet each other by changing colour and dancing. Hooray! An underwater disco!

Conclusions from yesterday? I'm definitely still just a big kid.

Katja on 27.4.07 11:23
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Intriguing ...

...that, just as my blogging has reached a new low in content, my technoranki rating has gone back up again.
You're a highbrow lot, aren't you?

Katja on 25.4.07 11:21
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