By the time

Saturday came around my back was fit enough to get the sewing machine out again. My purpose was to make a little bag to hang from my indoor clothes dryer to contain all my clothes pegs, which have until now been lined up along the drying rails and need to be relocated whenever I perform an act of laundry.

A rummage through my collected textiles unearthed a tee-shirt dress which was OK as a cover-up over swimwear in a little open motor-boat in the Aegean, but not really fit for purpose in real life.

I couldn't bring myself to carve it up and so I spent several happy hours rendering it usable in my new lifestyle.

Also in the sewing chest was the strap I had detached from the favourite bag I had bought in Barcelona in 2015. The bag has long since expired but the strap far too good to consign to the bin. 

During my preparation for Glastonbury I had hit upon the idea of converting the strap into a utility belt, from which I might be able to suspend a variety of appropriately tailored pockets for cash, ATM cards, mobile phone, water bottle. There is no urgency for that any more but I could at least see how well the strap worked as a belt. Perfect! Its only minor impracticality is that it works most sweetly as a closed but adjustable continuous loop. It has to be stepped into and then adjusted, which is fine for everything except for the stupid camera case which came with a belt loop but no neck strap. details.

Finally I got around to making the peg-bag. Jolly happy with that! I have never understood the ones based on clothes-hangers with an odd letter-box in one face. I guess one day someone had a spare clothes hanger and nobody has since seen fit to rethink that idea.

With all my sewing projects concluded on Saturday I have spent Sunday drawing imaginary house layouts on squared paper for no reason other than that is what I enjoy doing. I read books of course, and am currently thoroughly enjoying “Adults in the Room” by my greatest living hero, and fond as I might be of mathematical conundrums, I cannot read economic theory for sixteen hours a day no matter how juicily it is described, so I need to find other distractions.

Even as a ten year-old in primary school I was perfectly capable of spending hours on end quietly in my bedroom drawing up floor plans of imaginary houses on squared paper filched from my dad's workplace. Not altogether surprising then when he suggested to me at age 19 that working in a drawing office might suit me well, having already exhausted the other career options I had lined up for myself. Thank you Dad! :-)

Yet there's more. The street corner on which I live does not only attract huge piles of garbage and unloved furniture, it also attracts the kind of people who would rather have a loud altercation in the street than to take their troubles home with them. I have toyed with the idea of dropping stink-bombs in the hope of discouraging them to loiter, but have decided against that. Tensions were raised of course when the squatter across the street became obnoxious, and that made me re-think a little.

What I want is a catapult, a little hand-held jobby to fire high-velocity missiles at idiots from the security of my home. But that is probably assault. A general conversation at work revealed that it is perfectly possible to purchase a completely legal hand-held catapult from a fishing shop. There's a fishing shop just a few doors along from me. All I had noticed about that place since moving here is that the same Japanese company who makes bicycle gears, also makes fishing reels. Similar technology I suppose.

But what ammunition could I use in a hand-held catapult from my upstairs window to cause no bodily harm yet express just the right amount of displeasure to encourage idiots to relocate?
I'm thinking marshmallows.

Meanwhile, because I am still not as active as I would like to be, but still need to change my posture from time to time, I have spent more time than usual sitting at my window casually gazing out. There's not a great deal to look at and so my attention is sometimes drawn to activity visible in the windows across the street. Not much to look at besides the squatter's visits to his fridge. I'm not interested, I'm not clocking it, but I am getting a strong vibe that he and his mates think I might be a twitchy-curtained old snoop. His woolly-hatted pal has taken to staring up at my window.

No catapult, no marshmallows, this evening I have repurposed Veera's sash which is now wrapped around my insect screens.