Chickens and burgers - but not chicken burgers

I saw a dirty van yesterday on which someone had written with their finger “this van was cleaned by the NHS”. I thought it was a lot more original than ‘clean me’ and ‘I wish my wife were as dirty as this van’.

On Monday we met our two new family members; chicken one and chicken two. It really was a series of strange coincidences: we have been thinking about getting chickens for ages, a friend (who lives in the same road as us) saw some random Facebook status update I did about chickens, his housemate has two ex-battery hens that need new homes and well, you can figure out the rest! We popped round Monday evening to see Artha and Martha (we had to call them something) and they are quite lovely in a chickeny sort of way. My partner sent off our cheque the very next day to order our brand new hen house and run and it should arrive within two weeks after which we can go and pick up the girls! They were in a terrible state before arriving at our neighbour’s but he has looked after them so well they are re-growing feathers, putting on weight and seem calm and contented. I’m very excited about the whole thing.

My partner and I had the day off on Tuesday for an appointment and afterwards we went for lunch at the Gourmet Burger Kitchen in Dulwich. It was great! I had a pesterello (burger with pesto and mozzarella) only because I saw it and started singing ‘spinderella cut it up one time…’ (This caused my beloved to gently shake her head and laugh at me - not with me, at me!)

She had the mushroom burger and each one was about the size of our heads and was absolutely delicious. I also had an Oreo milkshake which was fantastic and more of a desert than a drink. The staff were nice too. Can’t tell you what it’s like on a busy evening but our experience was very good.

I received a pointless email yesterday that really annoyed me. Someone who was potentially going to represent me/give advice with reference to the film script I’ve sold has turned out to be not very helpful at all and it makes me despair of an industry that is so confusing, unhelpful and unwelcoming to new writers. She actually wrote the email a while ago but I only got it this morning and it was just a waste of time: a few bits of advice that any writer worth their salt already knows and that was it. So I still have no representation and no real legal support but I am apparently a good enough writer to sell a script. Go figure…

Anyway, final thing from me – driving home yesterday, there was this guy in a Ford Focus that was driving quite carelessly but I slowed down and kept my distance and didn’t think much more of it. Until he wound down his window and chucked a load of litter out! I honked my horn and as I passed him (he was turning right I was carrying straight on) he yelled at me and I yelled back that he was a bloody idiot for chucking litter. So he decided to follow me. Instead of turning right, he shot after me and tailed me for just over a mile, presumably so I would be scared and intimidated. I could rant on about this, but just answer me this, when did it make you more of a man to drive badly, chuck litter and then try and intimidate a woman? If you think that makes you a real man, that would make you an even bigger fuckwit mongrel than he was…