Night and day, you are the one… used to sing Frank Sinatra. But there are two today, not just one, as you can see from the picture. That may be due to a higher intake of food, or to psyllium husks revealing its laxative properties or to the excitement of going out in West London. Because I did go out in West London. And it was strange. And a bit underwhelming. Or maybe very underwhelming. It’s not like East London at all. People either go to dark cocktail bars where they play horrible house music or to touristy pubs with too much light. Maybe I just went to all the wrong places. But a stranger I met as I walked back offered me black truffle crisps. Black truffle crisps. I didn’t know they were a thing. Never seen them in East London. They were delicious. So much better than sea salt or chilly or cheese and onion or quinoa crisps.

Poo Bag wanted to fly with its new friend, Colourful Balloon, while good old friend the Gas Canister looked at them with envy. But it didn’t manage to. Too heavy. Oh well, shit happens.

The wind has been ferocious today. I love the wind, but since I live on water, I don’t very much anymore because it rocks my boat and that makes me anxious that it may sink as a result. It also keeps me awake at night fiddling with that horrible blue tarpaulin sheet that is supposed to shelter the bloody engine room from rain, but doesn’t really.

Had quite high hopes about this post, thinking it would be about how sometimes when we try to fly high we instead end up stepping on a shit. I thought it may be about pretty things against pretty backgrounds turning out to be dark bags of shit. But I’m so tired because I didn’t really sleep because of the wind that it’s going to end here. Which I think actually is exactly the concept of the whole thing. Like, I can’t really fly. Maybe.

Go to sleep for fuck’s sake.

Sometimes I have to chop wood. The logs I buy from the men who sell them to me are generally too big for my stove. So once in a while I chop them up. I had never chopped wood before, until now. It’s a rather satisfying job, especially when you strike the final blow that makes the log surrender and part in two smaller pieces. The trick is to follow the vein. That’s what the google says. That’s also what my father says. The best opinions you can ever get. And it’s not rocket science.

I was on the canal path, hammering away with rage and joy when a middle aged man walks past. But of course he doesn’t just walk past. He stops. And guess what. He’s got some advice for me. If he can suggest, I should be careful not to hammer my legs. Yes, if he can suggest, which he is doing even though I obviously have not asked for it, I should be careful with my legs. I knew this portion of mansplaining was coming as soon as I saw him approaching with the corner of my eye. Not because I was doing anything wrong – in fact, I had my legs wide in a pretty safe, if unfashionable, position. He mansplained it to me because, hmmm, I am a woman. And as you should know by now, women don’t quite know how to chop wood. If I was a man, I doubt the middle aged man would have stopped to tell me to be careful not to hammer my legs. But that’s because men know how to do it. Women don’t. And that’s why they need to be told, even if they don’t ask for advice. Especially if they don’t.

I’ve moved the boat. And parked right opposite the flat of a really old lover (old as in longstanding, not in age). But he’s a very busy person, so he’s not living there right now. Which is a shame, because I could have gone to take showers at his nice place and drink his fancy gin. I did send him a picture of me though, in front of the boat, holding a hammer, his flat in the background. He said it was amazing, although probably it was more like whatever. I doubt he’s reading, because he’s always so busy, but if you are, hello you. Pigeons are shitting on your balcony. And I’m shitting in plastic bags.

This new spot is such a pigeons hotspot. And it is because people come once a day to throw them bread, which they shouldn’t really because it’s bad for their intestines. It makes them bloated. Bring them some psyllium husks instead! (which, by the way, is working like magic! you should really try it too, jelly poo!) Anyway, this new spot. Right opposite this man’s flat. There was a time when I was quite obsessed with this man. Being parked outside his flat would have been, at the time, my dream as a stalker. No more. How comforting that is: everything passes, eventually. But also, you can overwrite the emotions attached to a particular place. When you’re going through a heartbreak, revisiting streets where you were together or even areas which are only partly connected to that time which is no more can be very painful. But then months or years pass and eventually you can go back to those places without having a fit. Of course you will always remember, but while memories may not fade, the sorrow attached to them becomes a relict which can no longer hurt you.

Since starting this blog I have received several videos, articles, books and songs relating to shit, love, or both. Then the other day a friend gave me this: a jar full of psyllium husks. You take one tsp a day with food and your poo becomes like jelly. This very natural substance helps you make such perfects poos that, apparently, you don’t even have to wipe your ass. I can tell you that I did feel the difference this morning. It was more jelly-like! And that was the result after having taken it for only a day. Imagine what will happen in a week. I will make such perfect poos that I will be able to sell them at my work’s canteen. Sweet chocolate Italian salami, £3.99 per slice. Then I will get one of my colleagues to interview me for the small business section. And I will finally make some money.

It doesn’t pass a day when I don’t hear from someone telling me this or that would be good for your blog, or this is for your inspiration folder. I love it how this shitty blog is keeping me in touch with friends who are near as well as those who are far away. Keep sending me stuff! There will always be a free bag for you.

When you think that things cannot get worse, a beautiful bird of the canal comes dying in front of your kitchen window, just on time for lunch. Throughout the preparation of my vegetable soup, I stared at my little dead friend, and cried. Those thin bent legs, as if it tried to take one last step but couldn’t and died in that uncomfortable position. Why. Did it eat too much plastic? Was it old age? A stroke? Did I kill it? The Sunday parade of people taking a stroll on the canal showcased all of your typical range of human responses to death. From the horrified look, with wide eyes and open lips, to the sad-eyes-bent-head, to the indifferent gaze. Some stopped to check if the creature was still alive, poking it with a piece of cardboard. A young girl with pink trousers used the said piece of cardboard to caress the dead beast for a whole, long minute. I had my lunch in silence, and when I finished I went to the window to check if the dead bird was still there. The dead bird was still there, unmoved. So I put my bag of shit inside a black bin bag and went outside. I grabbed the dead bird with the piece of cardboard, gently squeezing its soft belly of plumes, put it inside the black bin bag with my shit and threw them both in a bin on the main road. Amen.

Shit and death are two things which many people in the West don’t like to talk about. They may find them a bit scary and a bit disgusting. Yet we all experience them at some point, sometimes simultaneously. Since I was a child I have been taken around to see dead relatives lying in coffins or on their own beds, waiting to be buried, so I don’t find it strange nor disgusting. Dead people never really resemble their alive selves anyway. I don’t know if birds do. I didn’t know this bird before its death, so it’s hard to tell. It was incredibly sad nevertheless.

Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that the bird has died outside my window today, which was the first day when the reality of the end of love started to sink in. Just in case I was going to have any other second thoughts, dead bird swept them all away.

Death is always present in love, for each relationship bears the seed of its end within. And maybe that’s why many of us find every way to avoid loving and being loved.

For the first time in a month I didn’t sleep on the boat on Friday. But the toilet experience has been pretty much the same as on my boat, the only difference being the lack of plastic bag, because my friend’s toilet was FREEZING. I don’t know how she has been handling this for 10 years. Habit I guess. But at least I have managed to have a poo in peace, no idiots knocking off bottles of whisky during the important act.

People sometimes find it difficult to poo in toilets other than theirs. I used to be like that. But with time, I have learnt to trust other people’s toilets, to stop giving a shit about my shit ending up there and worrying about what other people may think about me shitting in their toilets. But there’s an exception: I generally can’t shit at a guy’s home if I don’t know him well. And that is why I think I fell in love with the man who doesn’t love me. The morning after the first night I stayed over I took a shit in his bathroom. It was not one of those fully satisfactory shits when absolutely everything comes out and you feel content and light and ready to take on the world no matter what. But it was good enough considering that usually, as I said, I don’t shit at men’s places early on in our relationship. I don’t mostly because I can’t. Even if I feel like it may happen, a series of shameful thoughts trigger a nervous response – the least ideal emotional state for a shit to happen – and after short consideration I lose interest and conclude that taking it back home is the best option. And so it happens that I happily drag myself and my intestine full of shit to a cafe to have a romantic breakfast, but all I want to do, really, is go home and take a big one while reading a poem chosen at random from one of the contemporary anthologies. So you may understand that when that morning I managed to poo in his bathroom, I had no doubt it was an auspicious sign. But it turns out it wasn’t. Taking a shit is not enough apparently. For a relationship to work, it needs a bit more than that. It needs both people to give a shit. They need to like giving their shit to each other. Maybe I should have post him one of my bags. Maybe if I did that, he may post me one of his bags back. And maybe then we will be together. Or maybe not. Never trust this kind of shit. Never.

This is a nice song that has a beautiful line about shitting in other people’s toilets. I’ve been listening to it quite a lot recently.

After drying the bloody engine room, I finally went for a poo. I sat down and just as I was taking a shit some smart ass with a smart ass boat passed by so fast that the wave knocked down my whisky bottle from the table. And the cork broke. Is there anything more annoying than a broken cork? Yeah. People who pass by too fast with their boats while you’re taking a well-deserved shit. Or people who bump into you because they’re zombie-walking looking at their phones. Or people who ask you to repeat what you just said even though they have heard what you just said. Greasy tupperware. Clean, white trousers with thin belts. Small dogs. But broken corks are pretty annoying too, though.

Things get broken all the time. And then it’s good practice to try find a way to fix them, most of the time they are worth the effort – I am all for repair! Same with people, including yourself. It would be better to try fix yourself instead of throwing yourself into the bin, but who am I to judge, frankly. What does it even mean to fix oneself. Therapy? I had a friend who refused a priori to go to therapy, not because of a political choice (some people don’t believe in therapists because they say most of them only blame your parents for your problems instead of also blaming the fucked up world we live in) but because he believed people should preserve part of their ‘dark side’. Because, he said, that’s what makes us interesting and unique. Which I partly agree with – but anyway no amount of therapy will ever fix everything, nor should it. But also, to what extent does that dark side allow you to live a decent life? And what if you fuck up people all around you with your pretty, dark side? Because that’s what happens. All these damaged people having breakfast, taking a shit and then going out in the streets and doing damage to each other. We all do it, most of the time, no one exempt. Except that some are smart asses with smart ass fast boats that never stop until they run out of petrol, some are walking watching their phones and wake up only when they bang their head of a lamp post and others I don’t know, they just step on a shit and fall and drag someone else down by mistake.

Smart ass with the fast boat passed by a second time. But I have now put the bottle of whisky in a place where it can’t fall. Screw you.