Bowlday Sweat

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Believe it or not, it's a year today since the first ever bowlpost. I know, gone fast, huh? No better way to celebrate, I thought, than reporting from the front line of post-run sweat. Mmmm. Birthday sweat for Bowlface, in honour of guilty pleasure song extreme Jeremih, 'Birthday Sex'. I think I'm pretty much the only person who's not fourteen and potentially 'gangsta' who wishes this was my ringtone, but hey, it's Bowlface's birthday and I can make it cry if I want to.

So, up-to-the-minute reportage on the Shire sheep front. I'd say unnervingly placid, but also present were a couple tractors and farmers. So maybe they were on good behaviour. Otherwise, there have been some lamb reshufflings, with new tiny baby lambs in field number three, and bleaty mcbleat lambs having mysteriously enlarged since Monday in field number six. The story continues.

Yesterday, however, saw my feelings to such livestock weaken as a gatecrashing of Stowe (stately home/mega public school) gardens resulted in some suitably posh lamb activity. They were fluffy, apparently innocent and did all the right kind of bleating, as in for their mums, rather than at me. Fortunately, when it came to scrambling over the Ha-Ha (if in doubt, there's an appropriate wiki entry here) there were no sheep nor official National Trust-looking types about to bleat, so a shred of dignity was maintained.

In a similar mode of 'days out', a.k.a, how best to avoid urgent deadlines in the name of family quality time, today the Bowlface family embarked upon Fulham Palace Gardens. Sad to say, no ancient wall activity was involved as it is entirely free and legal to enter the aforementioned, apart from perhaps those doing community service in the flowerbeds. Lambs replaced with small mini-Boden babies, and a fancy cup of tea in an oversized Georgian room later and I was all set for being Jane Austen in a breton top for the rest of the afternoon.

One last birthday treat for Bowlface regulars (because I'm guessing you can't get Jeremih's greatness out of your head) is another fantastically off-the-wall video launch from VBS's Vice Guide To Film.
Basically, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's film-makers went freedom crazy after 60 years of state-approved Socialist Realism. Now known as Parallel Cinema, VBS's Shane Smith travelled to Moscow to interview its founders. There's a lot of pretending to be animals (probably what I've been doing for the last week, judging by the high sheep content) and booze, and as well as being a nice way to pass the time you can impress film geeks in the pub with all your new found knowledge.

groundhog day

I reckon that if an artistic psychologist (ironically what I thought I was aged 17 - really should've done a project on that instead of making Kirchner-inspired lino prints of my face) was to do a diagram of my brain there would be a considerable section marked 'stuff I'd never have believed if you told me a year ago'. I had one of these moments today. Except, rather than being all 'wow, such amazing and unexpected progress!' it was 'ohemmgeez, I can't believe this sense of deja-vu is so horribly real'. Unfortunately, this is normally the case. However, today took it to a whole new level.

Because, bowlfans, this moment of deja vu is ACTUALLY RECORDED IN THE FIRST EVER BOWLPOST. Right here. I actually wouldn't advise you to read it, it's quite average. However, it is a Bank Holiday monday. The weather is distinctly average, and, although no family walk around the village perimeters is on the horizon - thank God - very little has changed. Sure, I've got more hair now, but I'm pretty sure I'm wearing the same cardigan and feeling similarly lardy from too much Shire food.

It gets wierder, though. After feeling smug at having finished my first dissertation draft only six words over the limit, and only one dissertation-related facebook status update, I decide to trot downstairs only to witness a blast from the past. It's also recorded in an early bowlpost. Clearly, a familial de-gunking of the water feature in the garden has become an annual tradition. I even braved the ludicriously unseasonal winds to ask if they knew this was exactly what they did last Easter Monday and they knew and seemed pretty chuffed about it. Maybe I'm odd for getting a bit weirded out about it.

After all, is this the start of a neverending groundhog day? Am I going to find myself encountering the same situations, blogging on the same things, coming out with yet another cringey-mcgee statement that I wished had passed through my brain before my vocal chords? I mean, a year ago today I was totally obsessed with the visiting cat. Today I had to repeatly ignore facebook friendship requests from a considerably inferior cat. Maybe I'm just in an episode of the Truman show. It's bringing a whole new philosophy to light.

In other news, the attentive of you will have noticed a smart new 'graphic' (?) at the top of the blog. Oh Herrow. It's me, with a bowl on my face, drawn by a chum who's tumblr is way more entertaining than this. It's got a better name too (whokilledcockrobin), check it out here. I spent two hours this morning battling with hmtl to get it as a dominating background. Once I'd achieved this I realised that its greatness far outweighed the blog content and so went for something a bit more subtle. Like, right at the top where you can't possibly avoid it.

Procrastination = Selfloathing

It's another beautiful day. It didn't take long for the sun to rise me out of the grumpy stupor I was in yesterday morning and join in with the mass family pond clearout. Surprisingly satisfying, picking up dead, sludgy leaf mulch and running down the garden with a wheelbarrow. Looked a little like this, except everyone being aged by about fifteen years.

After four days of avoiding the small mountain of books thrown into a corner of my room, I've decided to sit down and look like I'm doing something. Instead, I figured I'd just check out a few current fave style blogs, such as http://www.childhoodflames.blogspot.com/, and http://www.fashiontoast.blogspot.com/ ; only to realise that, even if I did have their wardrobes, I would never have their thighs, and if I did there is no way I'd be munching on pizza. This conclusion made all the more painful by arises whilst shoving large chunks of easter egg into my mouth.

On a good note, Keats, Hunt and The Cockney School's looking really attractive right now.