This was a much better creative week for me, and I got to use the word ‘Mojo’ in my facebook status. I did look it up first, just to check there weren’t any unexpectedly worrying connotations, but it seemed to be quite appropriate, as this was the week I got my Mojo back. Great relief and a slightly mad feeling. I think it’s time to move to another dimension with my poetry and the ground feels mighty unsteady but quite exciting too.

 

The return of the Mojo was partly down to Penelope Shuttle, a great poet but also very kind and attentive friend, who took note when I told her I was stuck, and photocopied a couple of very useful exercises for me. We met at the Hayward Gallery and went to the Warhol Exhibition. That exhibition itself was disappointing. Like watching lots and lots of very bad Youtube. We agreed that Warhol was very prescient, and indeed he did predict what was to happen almost thirty years before it did, but now his work looks oddly imitative, or even like a bad version of stuff you can google at the touch of a button. I’m glad I went to the exhibition although hours and hours of black and white TV footage can make you feel slightly ill. There was one lovely room filled with silver pillows with helium inside them and we were allowed to stand inside and push them around. That was the highlight for me, although probably not the point.

 

On another subject altogether, we were shocked to find the cafe in our local park commandeered by the police who had cordoned it off and erected one of those white tents you normally see in Prime Suspect and Silent Witness. There were people in blue overalls looking for clues too. This is really frightening - something I had always consigned to the world of bad television had actually happened in my local park, the one where we take the dog for a walk most days. I heard today on the grapevine that a woman was seriously assaulted there. Makes you think.

 

And then today I had to have two old amalgam fillings drilled out and new white plastic ones put in. The dentist does me in. It stems from an early experience with Mr Joffe, my first ever dentist, and I seem to remember, a bit of a sadist. Or it felt like that anyway. Dentists are funny creatures, aren’t they? A bit like builders really, having to be quite practical. My current dentist has a great sense of pride in her quick and efficient work. She did ask me, after she’d taken out the amalgam, whether I’d like to see the decay underneath? What? Was she mad? Of course I didn’t even want to KNOW about it, let alone SEE it. Well, all’s well that ends well and my mouth looks better for it now it’s all filled and everything’s been covered up so I don’t have to look at it. I have been researching amalgam and mercury on the internet today, and I’m sure it’s better out than in.

 

Whoah, what a ragbag blog. Ah well. Some weeks are just like that. I just can’t pull it all together. Sums up my life eh?