Mare Strange Folk

Wednesday 8:35 p.m.
After being intrigued by the buddha boy and Prahlad Jani, I came across Li Ching-yuen, who is supposed to have lived for over 250 years. Well, he might have lived till he was only 167 or so years, but his mother lost his birth certificate maybe!

He ate goji berries. I've never heard of goji berries. Maybe I could try growing a few bushes in the allotment. I wonder where I'd get the seeds. Anyway, he also did Qigong, which is a kind of tai chi, I think. The Taoists were into immortality, or becoming Immortals. I've never really understood Taoism. I mean, all I want to do, Jack, is to be able to emanate as a deity and then do a voluntary exit from my body. That's not asking for too much, is it? Why would anybody want to be immortal?

I was at the tai chi last night. You do a warm up, then a set of 108 moves (it's like a weird slow dance if you've never seen it) and then you have a break. Right at the end of the set, this joe comes up to moi, offers a handshake and says you look like a master.

I'm not any good at tai chi, but in the joe's defence he was just a beginner ... but afterwards thought this was a weird thing for one joe to say to another anyway. Then I remember putting something about masters and slaves into a dirty book I got published once and then I thought ... have I been getting chatted up by gay men all my life and never noticed?

A woman is never going to come up to you and introduce herself with a remark like that. You look like a master. Yeah? Hmmm?

Unlike the Iyengar yoga classes I used to go to, which were full of gorgeous bendy babes, and a great many with fabulous butts, I doubt if any of the women at the tai chi class are under sixty. The woman who teaches it was an old age pensioner fifteen years ago when I started going. She must be hitting eighty by now, and looks much the same actually. A wee sparrow, so she is. If the joe had decent eyes in his head he'd realise that she is a master of the 108 moves.

So I've got the verbal diarrhoea immediately when this joe starts talking to me. Strange flatheids make me nervous. It turns out he's a horticulturist. I asked him about the weeds. It seems I'm doing the right thing with the weeds as long as there aren't too many of them. He said something about biomass, whatever that is. He's involved in some ecology project in Portobello, hustling fruit trees into open spaces. He says he'd love to have an allotment. I told him I wanted to have a hut so I could sit in it. I can non-sequitur anybody, so I can. Just tell them you want a hut so you can learn to sit in it for days and days and days. Fung off, flatheids!

I was taking the weeds out from between the onions tonight. I found a strawberry the Domestic Bliss must have missed when she was up there last night. The lupins are turning into seed pods, passed their glorious best. They planted themselves as they have for years. I'm going to try seeding them in the slopes created by the disappearing ground.

Tomorrow, I will tell you about ra bliss, Jack! No jobbie tomorrow! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!