05.02 BACKYARD

Translation: back garden. And a title better reflecting the rear end of the house I grew up in. My parents have thumbs as green as a leprechaun's and a garden abounding in flowers and veg. A haven for earthworms, and predatory birds alike. Both thriving under the till and hoe my parents put to the dirt. I might have forgotten just what a knack Reno and Judy have for gardening had I only stuck to visits when the yard was snowed over.

I have just got in from a neighbourhood run, caught in the rain in the last few miles - a refreshing and welcome soaking on a muggy afternoon. Reno is tinkering in the garage, while a documentary on orangutans (he immediately points out their resemblance to mine) airs on an old 14-inch screen in the background. Judy is multitasking, as usual - managing to pause, pose and smile for the camera before returning to her primary task - nailing dinner. She is keeping an eye and nose on a dish of im-quarun - my favourite Maltese food - baking and crisping just in time for me to gobble up in the fashion of the cookie monster met with a dish of hot gooey biscuits.

Its a pretty relaxing scene, I took a snap, then took it all in over a good long stretch of the legs.

05.01 WELCOME PACKAGE

I was in London for breakfast and Windsor by lunchtime. Judy was anxiously awaiting at arrivals in Detroit Metro, while Reno kept the trusty old Sebring running and ready to shuttle me across the border, home.

In spite of telling mom not to bother bringing food for the road, she was equipped, as ever, with enough provisions to cover me through the journey to Windsor and back - which, I realised, given my father's Sunday driving on this Saturday was not a bad idea at all.

Politely, I turned down the healthy options to allow room to stuff myself with Timbits, collecting them in my cheeks in the fashion of my hamster John McPhee, and with the similar primal motive that tomorrow there might be none. I rifled through the pack of 10 until I found my first choice - an old fashioned glazed (a preference I am reluctant to disclose as I edge on 30 - my younger palate would have gone straight for the chocolate). Delicious.

A warm and stodgy welcome to warm and smoggy Windsor.

04.30 SWEDISH BERRIES

I met Rasmus and Camilla last year in Gothenburg, at the wedding of our mutual friends, Helena and Hristo. It is a Swedish tradition to lay out the seating plan at a weddings so that couples and friends are split, to encourage mingling among the guest list. It is a beautiful idea - I had attended the wedding single, with my friends Marieke and Barend, and for once wasn't left bitter by an overdose of romantic antics.

I was seated beside Rasmus, and we soon found common ground in the subject of sweets - this before the first course was even served. Indeed, we had plenty in common and the conversation flowed about as fast as the liquor. Before the night was over, we had agreed to exchange candy from our respective countries - Last winter I sent him a bag of Maynard's Swedish Berries, of course.

As it happens, Rasmus and Camilla were visiting London this weekend. We met for lunch in Leadenhall and I was pleasantly surprised first when they presented a quirky paper lunch-bag full of their own version of the berry candy, which they don't call Swedish because that would just be redundant, or like calling muffins English.

Rasmus and Camilla were engaged recently, and said they will stick to the seating plan tradition - I can only wish that their occasion sparks similar friendships, and perhaps even international sugar trade.

04.29 END OF THE CURSE

Maddy has an unfortunate streak with hamsters.

When she was a kid, she treated her pet to a luxurious bubble bath, only to find that hamsters don't stay afloat very easily. The second was hugged a little to hard - think of the nurturing but overbearing tendency of Lenny in Of Mice and Men. The third victim was fed a carrot; harmless enough. But Maddy supposed he might also require a knife to chop his dinner up. He slashed himself on it instead.

When we acquired John McPhee, Maddy was reluctant, but agreed to keep him, as long as he wasn't her responsibility. Salma and I roared 'Aye' to that (with one eye shut and in the affirmative, husky voice of a hamster-pirate comrade) on behalf of the McPheester. When he went missing, she spent two nights away, afraid she might step on him, sit on him or by some other fateful means, kill yet another. It comes as a surprise, then, that after a long 49-hour stretch of hiding, J-Mac mad his first appearance upon her return, in a midnight scramble across her bedroom rug, from one corner of the room to his hiding place under the bed. Maddy had only been home an hour or so, and might have mistaken him for a 'ghost of hamsters past' if it weren't for his distinguising missing eyeball.

She woke me in a start, fearful of catching him herself and, well, pulling a Lenny again - so I hustled to her room where we caught him mid-flight across the rug and replaced him safely in his cage. I might have felt guilty, reincarcerating McPhee, if it weren't for the ravenous state we found him in - he immediately stuffed his cheeks like a melon, washed it down with the complete bowlful of water, and then nestled himself in his favourite corner, curled into a foetal position and fell fast asleep.

We all slept well last night. Especially Maddy, who has finally broken the haunting curse.

04.28 FLASHBACK: A&E

Call this cheating, but its my blog and I can bend the rules as I please. I took this photo a year ago today, for the purpose of the blog.

Here I am. Waiting patiently, as a patient does, for a GP to see me. A few days prior, at the tail end of a nasty cold and cough, I felt a sharp pain between my ribcage - muscle strain?! fracture?? Days later the pain hadn't subsided, but worsened instead.

Hypochondria set in and I was determined I had a tumour in my spine or some rare and incurable conditoin that would do me in. So I took myself to Westminster's A&E, albeit reluctantly, because I pretty much knew what I was in for.

Three long and tedious hours surrounded by coughing, snotting, bleeding, aching people before I was taken into the clinic only to be placed behing this blue curtain - a visual shield but not sound proof, allowing me to listen in on the dialogue between patient who needs psychological support and GP. That could be me in a few years, I suspect, if I don't get over this hypononsense.

Finally, a friendly GP allowed himself into my quarter, checked the usual signs - pulses, breathing, heart rate - and told me that I probably just pulled a muscle and any further diagnosis would require x-ray or MRI - another long waiting time during which I'd most likely just recover. He was young, assertive and good looking, so I believed him.

He sent me home with a wink, and I can attest one year later that the pain has not returned, and that I will think twice before submitting myself to A&E for such frivolous niggling aches and pains. Neither will I attend for what in hindsight I realise was a session of 'psych therapy' - for a GP to just tell me I'm gonna be alright. I'm alright.

04.27 NOT SO BLACK AND WHITE

It's week two of my oil painting course. As demonstrated, I have a long way to go before I create anything worth framing, anything worth forcing upon my parents, even. After the age of 10, mothers and fathers have no obligation, nor any reason, to cling to such artifacts post them on the fridge, or even to put them into storage into retired bedrooms, like my own, currently a sanctuary commemorating the first 20 years of my life - medals, trophies, old photos, and trinkets that hold random memories, some gaining others losing their sentiment.

The subject today was a bowl, laid out on a blue cloth-covered table, containing an unorthodox blend of fruit, root and veg. A pale yellow lemon rubbed rind with a branching clove of garlic. Alongside rested a reddish-green apple and in the forefront, I suspect was a sweet potato, although I would like to hope it was an overripe pear. I still don't know what this object was, but the purpose of today's exercise was to paint what you see - and we can't always trust our interpretation anyways. To the left of the bowl was a sweet red pepper - the longish kind. I decided to frame the painting so that I cut most of this out, as the angle of the pepper meant it probably would have turned out looking somewhat vulgar in my version. A semi-opaque plastic jug was set behind the bowl and in front of a draping backdrop that required shading in grey. This fed into the most important lesson today - grey is not a blend of black and white.

Grey is burnt sienna, white and a touch of blue (declared, like a child who just nailed the 12x12 times table).

04.26 RUNAWAY

This is not how I hoped to re-launch the blog today. I had a niggling feeling as I fell asleep last night, that I had forgotten to do something. I had double-checked the front door was locked before crawling under the duvet, but what I realised this morning was that I had double-checked the wrong door. I had left my hamster's cage wide open, and found it empty, without even a trail of woodchip bedding for a clue of his whereabouts.

John McPhee is my one-eyed hamsterman. I picked him up in the autumn, and named him appropriately after the American journalist and author of a book called Oranges - the colour of J-Mac's fur. I had been reading the book Blindness by Jose Saramago at the time, and figure I was ultrasensative to the hamster's case, supposing the missing eyeball might make him a weaker candidate for a home.

He could be anywhere by now - on his own little adventure - a la Feivel. I suspect that he is lying low - his climbing skills are poor on account of his skewed depth perception. I searched the nooks and crannies of our flat, in the hopes I might spot a furry orange ball tucked someplace rather obvious, but to no avail. I feel vaguely like I want to vomit. I have left small portions of food in the hallway, hoping to lure him. I am hanging my head in absentminded and irresponsible shame.

I can only hope that Johnny Mac will return in the next 2 months, and that you will see more than his empty cage featured in the tail-end of three-year-long 366-day blog.