Letters from a Banged-Up Princess

Dear world,

The rubbish is smelling up my front hall again. I wish I'd remembered to stick it in small bags, so I could carry it downstairs. I went and put it in all big bags again. Big bags are all right for cornhusks and packing peanuts, but I filled them with glass jars, old mail, and squashed-up boxes. If I'd thought of it last week, or even the week before, I might have repacked the rubbish. It wouldn't have been too late, then. The organic bits wouldn't have turned to liquid and infected the papery bits. It's a bloody biohazard, is what it is. You can't expect me to go picking through that lot.

Still, what else can I do? Soon, that horrid vegetable sludge will turn acidic, and eat its way through the bags. It'll pool on the floor, and then bond with the floor. I'll never get it off. The smell will infiltrate the very foundations of my home. I'll have to move. I'll lose my damage deposit. My entire life will be ruined by garbage.

This is what happens when the princess is imprisoned in the tower. She can't take the dust out, and when the prince finally arrives, he finds her surrounded by fruit-flies and takeout boxes. She's as pale as a fish, and as thin as a beanpole. She's got nothing to talk about: all she ever does is stare out the window, while one of her Claudio Villa records wears itself out in the background. The prince takes one look at her and marries the butcher's daughter, instead.

I'll tell you something, though. Us princesses, we hardly rate these skyvey prince types. If they're not sailing the Bristol channel with a jib sheet on one ear and Camilla Parker-Bowles on the other, they're on the front page of the Mirror, all got up in embarrassing disguises. If that's who we can expect climbing our ivied walls, it's time for a spot of pruning, what?

Still and all, it is rather unpleasant, having one's hall smell like garbage.

Yours,

--Socar M.

Dear world,

Still haven't taken out the dust. It's been three weeks now, and the bags are starting to pile up. For a while, the ones on top were muffling in the smell from the ones beneath, but now those ones smell too. I stood in something wet the other day, and thought one bag or another had finally ruptured, but it was only a pool of orange squash. Apparently, my mouth isn't quite where I thought it was.

I've been taking lots of pictures with the new camera. Most of them, of course, have been pants incarnate. I was a terrible photographer in art school, and not much has changed since then. No, I lie: one very important thing has changed. Now that I don't have to pay for film, I get an infinite number of chances at a decent shot. I can click and click till my memory card is full, then empty it out and click some more. I'm Shakespeare's monkeys, visual edition. Visual M++. How I love the digital age!

Please find attached some of my less objectionable efforts:

Here, a necklace set with an alexandrine stone. Under bright incandescent light, it's red as a ruby. The morning sun turns it green, and in the afternoon, it's blue. And in the Rat's Nest, it is as it seems in this picture: a dull purplish-red.

It used to belong to my grandmother, who got it in India. I was in India, once, but I didn't get anything nice.

These are my grocery-shopping shoes. You can't tell from this angle, but they're really tap-dancing shoes. I had such fun with these, over in Sweden. Swedes, see, especially the northern ones, observe an iron-clad anti-stranger code. They don't look at strangers on the bus, or ask them directions in the street. If a stranger steps out into traffic, they don't raise their voices in warning. If a stranger is trapped under her bicycle in the Statoil parking lot, they make no effort to free her. (Bastards!) And should that stranger, all vengeful, clatter it up in the frozen-foods section, they don't make a peep of protest. They might, if they think themselves unobserved, frown bitterly into their beards, or mouth something unrepeatable under their breath, but not one will offer a direct rebuke.

This here, this is Norville. Norville is a rat. Twelve years ago, or thereabouts, Norville fell asleep on the engine-block of someone's motorbike, and never woke up. He wasn't discovered for nearly a decade, by which time he'd gone all brittle and flakey. If it wasn't for the big ol' ratty teeth, you'd probably take him for a fallen leaf.

Two years ago, I bought Norville on eBay. I've been meaning to have him preserved in glass, so I can use him as a paperweight, but no reputable glass-blower wants to touch him. Seems they're afraid of catching leptospirosis, the wussies.

This, I include under protest. It's all her fault--my bad, bad sister, that is. She made me swear to post the first picture taken of me with the new camera, however rotten. And here I am, all wet and looking like a goblin. Ah, well. If nothing else, it's an honest representation.

Really, someone ought to take the camera away from me. As testament to my ineptitude, I bought the bloody thing mainly for recording my adventures in birdwatching--but I haven't got a single decent bird shot yet! I saw a pair of binoculars with a digital camera attached for sale on eBay. That, now, that's what I need. A birdwatcher without binoculars is like a fisherman without worms: bloody ineffectual.

On the subject of birdwatching, I think I saw another black swift last Wednesday. That's two swifts in two years. Not bad, for an urban birder without binoculars.

Cheers,

--Socar M.

Dear world,

Richard showed me how to fix my garbage disposal, so now it's working again. I'm thinking of feeding the massive dustpile in my hallway down the sink, paper by paper, leek by leek. Is this a good idea?

Curiously,

--Socar M.

Dear world,

Who knew you couldn't stick plastic down the trash-grinder?

In flummoxment,

--Socar M.