Woken up at 6.15am by a very polite policewoman looking for someone who doesn't live here any more, if he ever did (certainly not one of the previous owners). Nothing like a quick dawn raid precursor to get your weekend off to a thrilling start.

Speaking of thrilling starts, though, I just realised I have my scanner-set up sorted now. Not mention piles of old sketchbooks in the new old sketchbook pile. But, shock! There's something already on the glass. Of course -- I started doing doodles based on people's twitters.

Now I just need to get the desk clear enough for colouring. At the moment it's a bit cluttered with: some cables which might be important, a roll of packing tape, a playmobile pirate table, a phone cosy in the shape of a lobster, three tiny fairy tales in a box, a keyring bible, a moneybox in the shape of a time capsule, a green envelope full of wedding RSVPs, a body spray given to me by girlycomic, a Gundam, three godzilla monsters (one holding a mirror ball), an ink stone, a mini crayon set, some polaroids, a pile of bills, some CDs I might be getting rid of, a sketching pencil, some sealing wax, a shell, a penguin, a velociraptor and a frankly puzzling porcelain worm that functions as a pen rest as and when I have space to use a pen*.

iamjamesward on oversized sweet potatoes This is what happens when I click on the star next to your twitter.

*Be thankful I spared you the full list.

... and, worryingly, there are still things I haven't seen. As the final boxes are mostly CDs, the chance of these items being within is dwindling. I did pass on a lot of things to charity shops, maybe including several of the things I've been missing.

The spaces I live in -- the cluttered shelves, the mobiles, the things hanging from other things, the cushions toys scraps objects and more might suggest a vast homogeneous mass of bewildering colour, but it is not just one thing, like pattern or colour. Things have derivations, stories, individuality. There are reasons for why they are where. I relate to each object or object group as an individual.

Those I fail to do this with, those that fail the three questions of good clutter ("is it individual" "do I really like it" and "does it make me pleased") I pass on to the charity shop, but because memory is not perfect and sometimes I'm just in a bad mood, on occasion things leaves that should maybe have stayed, and later I find myself missing them.

Although sometimes I wonder if my mind fills in a list of likely things over the spaces where I can't quite remember what things I had and I am instead missing the ghosts of memories of things I thought I had.

The registrar made a face over our choice of readings, but accepted them anyway. Our write-in vow, though, apparently belongs to the church and we must write another one. We can send it in by email, so that'll be wednesday, along with checking for occult vegetarians -- nearly there!

Had guests round to the new place yesterday and it functioned well; six boxes remain in the living room but I'm tackling them, day on day. Speaking of day, the day bed is in my studio now, closed up to its narrowest setting and shoved between the desk and the shelves. Yay! Teasel celebrated by disappearing for hours; I found him curled up on it, camouflaged against the black and white disturbance pattern fabric that covers the matress, purring with his paws over his head. I understand, fluff. It is a nice place to lounge. Though, right now -- not if you're tall!

At moment it looks a bit like someone set the room up as a set ("Jeremy Dennis's studio") rather than the place in which I sit and work but I'm sure a thin layer of dust and the remaining three boxes of playmobil and dinosaurs will take care of that.

P.S. For the first time, educated crow and little plastic owl are in the same room. I've put them at opposite ends of the topmost glass shelf of the desk, but they're still looking at each other funny. "I could take you" (flap) "no, dear ... um (it is hard to tell with little owls) ... I think you'll find that I am the one who will take you... back to school! Cawcawcawcaw!". Oh dear.

I spent an invigorating hour this afternoon watching the database majestically migrate across nominal space from one server to another, doubtless in the same, humming, overcooled room. Not that I'd know, it was on the other end of the phone, where a man called Stephen reacted to my having a series of quick tests ready to run while he listened in with faintly bewildered surprise. Maybe people just usually don't bother checking, and spend the rest of the month ringing back and shouting.

It safely dodged the crocodiles, so I went back to the vast read/research list which hopefully will bring me up to stage on IAG and checking the information schedule for the next few months. Which was when I found out that National Samaritans Day is on my birthday. I mean, I don't begrudge them and the whole 24/7 thing makes it an obvious choice, and yes, OK, but nevertheless it was a real Saturday's child moment.

Got home to discover that we'd achieved wall and Handy Andy the Indie Builder came round with some beer to regale us with tales of backstage boosh and relieve us of some of our savings. Upstairs, last night's sealant fit had made the shower uglier but less inclined to wash water down the wall. Me last night: I thought the black stuff between the tiles was dirt, not gaps! More learning from last night; check how to get silicon sealant off your hand before your hands are covered with the stuff.

I harvested my first aubergine. Tim used it to bulk out a kedgeree. It was delicious.

Woke up this morning from a strange dream of a being a hang-around in a central Oxford bookshop, down one of those little alleys, a huge sprawling place full of tiny rooms crammed with shelves, leather armchairs and sofas and other and places for a quick lie-down. I was spelling on the till, realising that I was transitioning from hang-around to staff, in the way regulars sometimes do. Someone who often got their parcels delivered to the shop was really pushing it this time, with two huge parcels which made a freaky sound as they hit the ground. I laughed and launched myself backwards onto one; only one thing makes a sound like that! A mattress! I turned my head sideways and saw that the electro-bugs were already invading the mattress through a tear in the brown paper, they looked like little grasshoppers but neon green and yellow. They were all over the bookshop, another problem to add to the pile of problems that stacked up around us, that lurked behind the shelves, that we breathed in with the dust that danced in the yellow bars of afternoon sunshine slanting through narrow windows.

I've had a bad couple of days with my all my attention playing pass the parcel between work, house, wedding. No time for comics, so instead I get paranoid, anxious and start to confabulate in an uncontrolled and unhelpful way. At which point I get worse at doing the work, house, wedding round, and the problem tightens. Have to spike that circuit if I can, somehow. But writing the comics is no good if I can't find the time to finish them, it just adds to the narrative load.

Thursday: Big Yellow Storage no longer does late nights. The tip does. I need a compost bin. To measure the space I have and the space the base of a compost bin would take and then to come up with an innovative solution, possibly involving that pile of dirt from where our retaining wall should be.

Friday: Lots of cleaning. Water meter guy brings us our new steampunk dial. Damp man, full of portents and dark advice. Scrabbling through the various accounts trying to figure out what's cocked up this time. In an absent moment find myself wondering if our mortgage account is being used to error test the new computer system. We should get some sort of beta testing bonus.

Saturday: A bit hungover from a mini housewarming party, and the little surprise Teasel left for us as a thank-you for introducing him to many exciting people. Out to storage. My stuff's been in storage for too long, too hot, too humid. Go punting in the afternoon, astonished by how slow I am. Once I could keep up, practically race. Not now, and I'll feel this on monday. All the same I manage to bring us alongside a friend's punt smoothly enough that drinks can be served from one to the other. They then went careening into nettles but oh well.

Sunday: How many runs to storage can we make? Ate my first tomatoes today; they were disappointing, watery. Tradescantia "osprey" closes when the sun becomes too bright and high, preferring the morning and evening. Should plant them out. Must have time soon. Fiddle with fairy lights. Combine book collections. We now have a shelf section for poetry and Gene Wolfe under W. Greater love hath no man.

Still not sure where the Man from U.N.C.L.E books are going.

My journey to the "Pride Illustrated" talk yesterday descended, scrap by scrap, into a nightmare scenario reminiscent of the worst of the Film 4 comedies. A series of increasingly plaintive twitters mark the progress of the disaster; the exploding car transporter, the broken air conditioning, the two school parties of children coming back from their Oxford Open Day. I arrived in London after a journey of four and a half hours, all information heat-blasted from my brain save the location of a rather nice cocktail bar near Charing Cross. I made it to the counter, gasped out an order, turned around, and saw an old school friend and the son of a former colleague sharing a private moment -- which I promptly invaded, trailing heat and disaster in my wake. Eventually I felt strong enough to walk round the block to the pub where the Pride Illustrated gang had repaired to, just as everyone was leaving. I met David Shenton in the end, shook his hand and croaked, "how nice to meet you". Smooth, Jeremy, really smooth.

Somehow one last drink turned into a wide-ranging and fascinating debate about art, the nature of queer identity, politics, self expression and the most stylish thing to wear to gay shame. Alas, I then had to haul myself back onto a stuffy bus for the journey home. I'm not very well today. Heat exhaustion, I think.

Oh, and do you remember Gormley's plan for the plinth? In a sense I already partyicipated, back in the voting rounds when I made this:

me on anthony's plinth I may not opt for standing on one leg, though....

But nevertheless:

Oh dear, that widget's NOT going to embed. People, JUST USE VANILLA HTML. Let me try again.

No, all of the widget's are script heavy. Here's the link so you can make your own application.

We have the internet again, and are unpacked down to the last few boxes. Except for eveything in storage, of course.

Had a wedding anxiety dream this morning. I was running around in a chemise trying to get stuff sorted. In a corridoor, I ran into Wolverine, in a foul mood and a short red tunic, one of the honour guard of superheroes holding flaming torches aloft. I was glad to see he was ready, but remembered that I had to get the torches into the main hall. The entrance had flames on either side of the stairs which was fun, what with the floaty chemise and the armful of highly flammable torches. In the main hall, some Duke was trying to force my Dad to abdicate on threat of ruining my wedding. 'I have 80 men poised to kill everyone in this room... Blah blah blah.' From the look of the place this sort of shit had been going on all morning. I stormed over to him, pushed him down the stairs in mid bwa-ha-ha and started beating him to bits, yelling 'WHO'S THE BRIDE!!??'

At some point during the moving process, a rapid exchange of facebook messages and emails led to me being invited to a panel discussion as part of the (wow, huge) Pride Festival in London this year, called Pride Illustrated (you have to scroll down a bit). It's at 6.30pm at Foyles, 113-119, Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0EB next Wednesday 1st July.

Here's the spot about it, but for some reason Kate Charlesworth isn't mentioned. She's coming, as is the amazing Rachael House who I have not seen in too many years, and David Shenton whose comics I absolutely love -- so I'm sure to clam up/act like an absolute ninny. Oh, and Sina and Howard the badger and Paul Gravett (of course) is chairing.

PRIDE ILLUSTRATED - Wednesday 1st July

Illustrators, cartoonists, artists David Shenton, Sina Shamsavari, Rachael House, Howard Harrison, Jeremy Dennis (female) discuss the wonder of graphic literature and queer culture. Comic fan and expert, journalist, curator and broadcaster Paul Gravett chairs the discussion. David Shenton's work is currently on show at the Glasgow Musesum of Modern Art as part of sh(OUT). Sina's latest has recently been released in the UK: The Book of Boy Trouble Vol. 2 edited by Robert Kirby and David Kelly. Rachael House is included in the Us anthology ‘Spilling Over'. Howard Harrison produces work on www.cutebutsad.co.uk. Jeremy Dennis is getting married (Congratulations!) and is producing comics with the Whores of Mensa.
Foyles, 113-119 Charing Cross Road London WC2H 0EB 6.30pm £5 http://www.foyles.co.uk http://www.londongaytheatreclub.co.uk using promotional code: LGP1

I was up front with them both about being female and about to marry a man, but in our brave new world, apparently having gender and sexuality identities that shift over time is less of a problem than it once was. Possibly. We'll have to see how the Q&A goes.

Needless to say, I'd love to have a few people who know who I am in the audience!

Be relieved! I'm about to stop whining :D Exchange has happened, and we're moving on Friday (this Friday) as originally planned. We'll be on intermittent internet until at least the 27th, though. Mobiles will still be fine.

I'm now training Teasel to jump in and out of the 42 boxes we just had delivered by a slightly confused moving man. I'm using strokes and chicken cheesy bites! He does love the chicken cheesy bites, and timscience says it's possible to train cats, it must be worth a try.

Some of the results are here, and one is below:

Kitten is going in In the box, anyway

I was actually looking for that bit of James Bond/Sapphire and Steel slash I found stashed on a harddrive (with no memory of how it got there) for my first cross-post from Dreamwidth. But it seems to have disappeared back into whatever anomaly it came from. Never mind, this was on top of the pile on my desk this morning:



All from one, particularly memorable, presentation. May you never see one as bad.

I've set it up so that anything posted on DW automatically comes over here (I hope). So no need for anyone to take any action whatsoever (except possibly friend me over on DW to stop me feeling like Billie no-mates).

I went for a walk at lunchtime, and it was starting to hit that heat where everything starts to move slower. I headed for the towpath, where I found a decidedly scruff duck island, local candidates doorstopping the narrowboats, people enjoying the sun. It was very green, fishes rising through the hot water, yellow iris running riot, roses and clematis escaping from the tiny front gardens.

In other springtime news, I think I can add a family of fledging blue tits to jinty's back garden wildlife. They'll probably be gone by the time she gets back... but as long as it doesn't get too hot there should be more along later, though; the way insects are this year, it's going to be a good year for tiny birds.

Got home to find that my tomatoes (although rounding out nicely) are going truly pestilential in their tiny little home, I think I'll have to pull them out and give them a good scrub at the weekend.

Oh my god there are Great Bustards on Springwatch this evening!

ETA: Springwatch want us to name a Great Bustard chick. Its mum's name is Fanny, if that's any help. Oooooh badgers.

It's just starting to rain now, after a beautiful weekend of sun, sun, slight haze and more sun. Kind of shocking for a bank-holiday weekend. We went to Bristol for multi-venue city festival Dot to Dot. It had scaling issues, but I enjoyed it. Failed to get into the Louisiana but Marina and the Diamonds had cancelled anyway, so no biggy. Had some beer, sat in the sun. Bought the first 99s of the season, timscience got his chocolate sauce everywhere, I prefer mine unadorned. Failed to get into the Cooler, Maps probably should have been in one of the bigger venues. Did get into the Thekla, saw Soft Toy Emergency, Kissy Sell Out and a band called Computer that were VERY LOUD and also are too hard to google.

Enough of that. I ate razor clams while hot air balloons flew overhead! Then we went to the O2 Academy, a very nice purpose-built venue which was unfortunately suffering some form of potty emergency. Bathed by a rather fecal smell, we watched Ladyhawke (Paris is Burning), then Friendly Fires (Paris). Took a break upstairs in their #2, a little atticky venue, we sat at the back while Fight Like Apes played, an occasional puff of hair visible above the crowd. Later I nearly bought their CD, which suggests that I liked them. Then nearly fell asleep until rescued by Future of the Left, the only band in existence which can soundcheck/adjust/tune onstage without annoying me, probably because they seem as pissed off about it as I am. Man, they're good. I went from zizz to mosh in half a song.

We then went back to the Thekla to laugh at the queue for Little Boots. Turns out there was real ale in the car-park, though, and the road outside is a great place to catch a cab home from. Thankyou, badasstronaut for hospitality, tasty aubergines and muffins with marmite. This moomin is for you:

Having shifted my annual appraisal to avoid the completion date, the completion date's now shifted itself straight back on top of it, ah-hahahaha. My boss, very sensibly, isn't returning the emails right now. I suspect he wants to know if we've exchanged contracts before he fixes a date for sure. Er, no.

Here's the strip I did for Jimi Gherkin's anthology, not sure if he'll go for it as it's not a very fresh observation and one I've been ranting on about for years on and off, from one perspective or another. But, it does feature an unusual appearance of my teenage self in a good mood, so worth reproducing here if only for that! In case you're wondering I'm the one with very bad hair behind the camera, rather than the pretty one with mad make-up in front of it.

famous for 50 people Aren't we all?

I was wondering about where my PMS had got too, when all of a sudden I spotted a rather eighties cheap cream suit in a charity shop and wanted to brutally murder Neil Gaiman. Ah, there it is. Hello, PMS.

It's not just Neil Gaiman. There's a host of other authors, some obscure unknowns, others big names (Iain Banks, Jerzy Kosinski) who wrote something once that I read and it got lodged in my head somehow, and that thing will rise, unbidden and unasked for, and fill me with existential horror. Perhaps one day I should make a list of them, and try to analyse why they linger when other things fade; perhaps that would make it even less likely I'll ever forget them. My memory and I; it's one of those difficult relationships.

There are amazing things, too, stuck sideways in my memory. Like the poem High Windows by Philip Larkin. Here, let me link you to it, on Bookake. I'm always vaguely amused to find people trying to interpret High Windows online; arguing that he's talking about sin or getting old or envy or some such stuff. The poem self-analyses, is almost like a dictionary entry:

High Windows : The feeling of hope/envy/awe felt by the older generation when considering the new advantages/opportunities/freedoms now so available to the current generation that they cannot conceive of a time when they did not exist, and therefore percieve them as ordinary, and their minds turn to the next improvement.

This weekend past I found myself talking about the internet and suffered a High Windows moment, future shock and nostalgia intermingled, faint wash of sorrow for the awesome novelty that has become only ordinary; wild flash of hope for wonders yet to come.

Some comics I forgot to post earlier. There may be more.

The bridesmaid's dresses came from the internet (thank you the internet) and I'm really quite pleased. They have a sort of kelpie (possibly also kelpy) feel that will blend nicely with the dinosaurs. Now I just have to sort out my dress requirements. I'm not going to be able to get out of Oxford for this, I think, so Oxfordites -- do you know anyone who might alter a dress, make an underdress/skirt and be a bit costumy/theatrical/strange for me? I've been looking at Japlene's online, but they look a bit square.

Also, thank-you the upstairs cats, one of which managed to spray the package containing the bridesmaid's dresses while it was in temporary holding space in upstairs' hall. Fortunately, Be Dottie, experienced with the vagaries of the post, had securely double wrapped everything in very thick plastic!

Also, bluedevi linked to tweetstats, which (in addition to identifying how and how often you tweet -- mine had an identifiable morning commute spike) will show you a cloud of your most commonly used words, mine made a sort of ( poem in alphabetical order )

... and now, a word from Teasel the cat, who is currently sat on my mouse:
...........................................................................
Well, it's good to remind yourself about keyboard shortcuts!