Bangkok is having a very long, very hot summer — which is to say, it’s fucking hot. Every day since I’ve been back, the temperature has been a steamy 37-40C, overnight low 27-29, and the forecast is for more of the same. I’m not venturing out all that much.

I feel moody and jittery. Both times things went pear-shaped in my head, it was this time of year. I don’t feel like that’s going to happen again, but I recognise the sensations of unfocused worry, pessimism and aggression — butterflies in the stomach, the sense that all is not well. They talk about “going troppo”, and I wonder if this is it — something to do with air pressure, maybe? It can’t be the heat itself, as the aircon takes care of that.

Or it could be as simple as the fact that not going out in the sun, and keeping blinds shut much of the day = not getting vitamin D. Must remember to take vitamin pills.

I did leave the house for long enough to buy a slow cooker. I’ve made a tagine and meatballs. Both turned out ok, but lacked a certain richness and flavour, even though I added more garlic than the feeble online recipes indicated. The beef I made the meatballs with probably didn’t contain enough fat, as the shop didn’t have actual minced beef, so they minced up some beef that they did have — which looked very lean. I probably should have bought some lard and stirred that into the mix. And I used chicken breast for the tagine, thinking that the slow cooker might moisten it, but it was still dry, so I’ll use thigh pieces next time.

Nonetheless, given that my usual idea of cooking is fried eggs on toast, I’m quite proud that I followed recipes and made actual meals, without burning them.

Dear God,

Please smite all the people with boom cars. You know you can do it.

Thanks & amen,

Kirsten

Minor spoiler for The Avengers:

Went to see The Avengers the other day. Thought it was a load of by-the-numbers silly fun, easy to watch, and Loki is my kind of evil, despite the silly headgear.

Just wanted to mention one strange thing, though. Loki, in a pissed off state, calls Natasha/Black Widow a “mewling quim.”

My sainted aunt, I thought, how did that get past the censors? Quim is a good old-fashioned word for another good old-fashioned word. “Mewling quim”  = “whining cunt”.

Now, I thought it was a funny moment. Just for a second, we phased out of the Land of Sanitised Ultraviolence and Sexless Sexiness into a slightly more interesting place. Segue to fantasies of Black Widow teaching Loki respect in sundry wicked ways.

But — that’s a hell of a thing to call a woman. Natasha deserved an equally pungent comeback line. Next time, can we have a full-on slanging match of dirty archaic insults?

The ennui of Henri the cat.

The original Henri.

Like this, only better:

Relax…

Last night I had either very minor food poisoning or a bad reaction to a creamy sauce and took about 3 hours to get to sleep. When I did get there, I dreamt I was at a restaurant where they served hash cake. I ate the hash cake and a ganja candy and felt a little woozy. When I got home, there was a mysterious copy of The Etched City on my bookshelves. Without my permission, someone had made a comic-book version of the story in which the characters were furry animals. As well as the usual word balloons, there was English text mixed with Japanese and Chinese at the bottom of the pages. I didn’t take a good look at the pictures, as for some reason I was more interested in reading the front matter. There was a pile of forewords and introductions by various people, none of which seemed to have anything to do with the book. Different artists had worked on the project, which seemed to be from the UK. The furry animal theme disappeared at some point.

Then this nerdy-looking kid with dark hair and glasses came into my room and asked if I wouldn’t mind him giving me some advice. He told me that Gunpowder Tea obviously wasn’t going to work, and I should concentrate instead on the story where I had a lot of countries on a coloured map. (I don’t have any such story, though it gave me an idea when I thought about it on waking.) Then he went outside my house to catch a train. The train went to Pest — as in, the Pest half of Budapest — which surprised me, as I thought we were in Bangkok. He laughed and said something to the effect that the train just went in that direction. (Maybe I thought he was a pest?)

While I was reading the introductions, the dream did a detour into what I think was a kind of visual representation of the feeling the introductions gave me. It was a scene that felt like a model, with odd plastic figures in a little booth or kiosk. One of them was larger than the others and looked a bit like a tall, thinnish, zombie version of the Michelin Man. It had a very nasty mouth. There was a sign saying something like “We make the kind of kind and wiry body we like to make” — referring to the white figure.

Sea slugs are adorable, as everyone knows. Today I was admiring pictures of colourful cutie pie Hypselodoris bennetti, and after doing a general search for nudibranchs, encountered the astonishing Glaucus atlanticus, which is blue and silver and elaborate in the extreme, looking like some kind of feathery futuristic racing vehicle.

Sea slugs. They bring happiness.

Wheeeeeeeeee!

The bed is Mine…

…did I not make Myself clear?