Jungle man

Serendipity; one of those words that is equally soft and lovely as its meaning. Someone used it to me today and I realised that I should have used it in my meanderings on coincidence the other day, as in many ways it captures the feeling better. Coincidence is very scientific and precise, while serendipity is a blowsy warm meadow evening of a word.

Her use of it echoed my own experience also; it was serendipity that brought her to live in Edinburgh. I always say that I moved here on a whim and a prayer, but her version is more poetic, so I may steal it and rewrite my own history a little - we all do it after all...

Dreamed I had resorted to prostitution last night and was in some kind of a fix, having failed to show up for work (as a prostitute?!). Not sure how the career structure actually works, but I'm pretty sure my unconscious fantasy version was pretty wide of the mark; it was all very James Bond, with drama, bold lighting and thriller style plot. Quite glad to wake up really.

Another observation of the day is based on the sighting of a favourite couple of mine, who I do not know, but smile at anyway. They smile back, so we must share at least that trait; we are also secret partners in lack of style. Mad dressers- genuinely off-planet, not pretentiously put together - are something I have great affection for. The lady in question was today sporting a purple dress which was interesting in its purity of colour and total lack of fit; this was accessorised with some wonderfully random button badges, a stripy floaty scarf and a kind of tweedy jacket. I find it far easier to trust someone who has this quality of artlessness and strive to find it in myself; but alas, this is when it vanishes like Brigadoon, for this is a thing that cannot be faked or copied. It has the quality of serendipity; a chance arrangement of garments that 'happen' or 'occur'; forcing them into communion is not the same, they must chance upon each other.

I hasten to add that my own style comes from another place entirely and I fear that my mum nailed it long, long ago when she asked wistfully 'Will you ever stop dressing like a fourteen year old schoolboy?' Um... looks like that could be a no, then. I do vary into dresses on occasion, but only of the sort I might have worn at age nine, and even then I feel faintly ridiculous. I can think of nothing worse than being over-dressed, besides being undressed (inappropriately of course).

The mad dresser was carrying, serendipitously, a jigsaw of Rousseau's jungle painting. This was a warm smily evening meadow of a happening because I love Rousseau, especially for his 'outsider' status. I feel slightly defensive when I see him tagged 'naive' or 'primitive', terms which to me never seem anything less than a little smug and elitist - surely there is a more positive term? His pictures make me smile and want to rush off and paint - there is definately an infectious joy in them, for me at least. I should read up on 'Le Douanier' - Rousseau and I have something in common in that we fell at the first hurdle and had to get a day job to provide for ourselves, which obviously distracts from the task at hand of being a painter! The urge to paint is such a strange one - it is so hard to articulate the sense of necessity and inevitablilty to create. To stop drawing, painting, creating; would be to remove a fundamental part of what makes me, me - it drives me nuts, I doubt myself incessantly, but that all seems to be part and parcel of it.

Dinner was a bit of a comfort meal; Stu starts a weeks' holiday today, for the first time he is able to relax as he is day-jobbing now and no longer in charge of a kitchen, so his mood is light. He used to go on frequently about orzo, a little rice shaped pasta that he had tried in Greece but failed to find in this country; now it seems to have made the crossing and we can find it readily. He treated it tonight as if it were rice and made a risotto with some of the chicken stock, defrosted, some broad beans and peas and the usual onion, garlic, some chilli and so on. I love the way risotto takes on such a creaminess as the stock is absorbed despite there being not a whiff of dairy in this one; you can use butter I guess, but this was just oil, so the creaminess is merely texure, not fact. We just had a really simply fried white fish fillet with it which was actually pretty meagre, but the other joy of risotto of all kinds, and especially a bastardised orzo version, is that it is mighty filling, so the fish just filled in the right amount of space and gave a good accompanying texture and flavour. Stu usually raids the ice cream tub after tea but not tonight - he's away to bed on a holiday high with a tum full of peas and pasta. Time to follow...