Bothered from abroad. Then back to ickle pretty flowers, cute doggy paws, stick figures and other miscellanea.

A cloud of dark and troubling thoughts about the US elections, and I've had little heart for posting here whilst under it. Leaving supportive messages in many people's comments boxes, abandoning others, yet not saying much for myself. Feeling outraged and appalled and powerless.

A little tired of hearts and flowers and being sensitive and poetic and caring about pleasing anyone and everyone and not giving offence. Other people don't seem to worry about this, they wear their political hearts on their sleeves on their blogs from the outset, and express themselves as they wish.

I don't do politics here, I've said before. I loathe blogs and forums full of acrimonious so-called debate, and heaven knows there are enough of them. They bore, depress and irritate me. I don't have the will or the head for that. I have always been frustrated by my own inarticulacy in these matters, the need to be fair and balanced, the fear of being browbeaten. I hate conflict. I want to feel safe and I want to be liked; I want to be able to share the trivia of all our comings and goings and troubles and joys with nice sympathetic readers. I hate the idea of losing friends, I'd like to think one could maintain friendships across divisions of political opinion, but...

This worldwide poll says nearly five to one of the Rest of the World want Obama for president. We know who we are.

This even larger number of American women, aged from 18 to 89, responded and offered their views voluntarily. I didn't read them all; even the fairly small selection of the 100,000 letters more or less of one accord became a little bit samey after a while, though in a good way. Nevertheless, it's heartening, I only hope they represent enough.

Enough, I'm not picking fights. I've got too much and too little to say. As I said, I leave sympathetic messages where I've sympathy, and leave the rest alone. It seems a good policy.

And now for more hearts and flowers, and cheery nonsense, on the basis that that's what I'm good at, and I need cheering up.

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On the way to Rosie's, a field of flowers to lift the heart. Perhaps half an acre of them, all blooming riotously. I just couldn't stop clicking.

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I finally took the plunge and took Molly to a poodle parlour. I was tired of the hideous knots in her fur, especially the paws, and of the battles involved in trying to groom or trim them out myself. I expected a terrible scene, but, up on the table with a restraining leash at each end, a muzzle and me holding her, she acknowledged herself beat and gave in with a fairly good grace.

The trouble is she now looks like a poodle. A very peculiar one, especially at the back end.

When she rolls around on her back Tom says she looks like a stranded beetle. But I have to say it is lovely to see her paws so clean and neat, and her shiny black toe-nails, which she even allowed them to cut.

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My latest favourite photo groups on Flickr are 'Stick Figures in Peril', and the smaller but equally important 'Stick Figures who have the Situation Under Control'. This was my contribution to the latter, which I noticed on a walk at the water mill.

I hadn't so far found any stick figures in peril, but while lying awake at 3 in the morning worrying about everything from the usual Tom's-and-Molly's-health to female genital mutilation via how we were going to wallpaper the ceiling over the stairs, the apparent impossibility of a post-oil economy, and Sarah Palin, I resolved to make myself feel better in the morning with some swift and wholesome action. I would take the Karcher first to my car, which had sweet little mossy Zen gardens growing in the corners of the windows and mudguards (Joe tells me his Morris Traveller grew so much greenery on the woodwork that it became invisible when parked under a tree...), and then to the bathroom extension wall, which I painted about ten years ago and had since turned from beige rose to mucky green.

The Karcher, and ours isn't, any more than our vacuum cleaner is a Hoover, is a high pressure water cleaner and de rigueur accessory for French households, where it is usually wielded by the man of the house. Something to do with the public peeing thing, I think ( 'a good Frenchman' our friend Jean-Jacques told us 'never pisses alone'). It also gained some notoriety as the tool with which Sarkozy claimed he was going to cleanse the racaille from the banlieux, which shows something of the extent of its assimilation into the cultural context.

Applying it to the BX, I was led to observe the resilience of spiders' webs; a jet capable of stripping the paint from the bumper left strands of them still hanging on in there.

Having rendered both car and extension free of moss, I noticed an example of Stick Figures in Peril on the body of the Karcher. One should on no account, it seems, aim one's Karcher at people walking dogs and carrying document wallets.

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I've been playing with the colouring sticks again. This was from a photo I took of some greengages last year. I was going to use the photo to illustrate an extract from Rumer Godden's book 'The Greengage Summer', but then I got a little bothered about copyright, contacted her estate website, but then rather lost interest in the whole project.

I'm getting some Derwent Inktense pencils; Tom's bought them already ( I'm not really supposed to know this) but I might have to wait till my birthday. They're deeper and more translucent than these ordinary ones.

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Blogger told me the other day I had a 'follower'. A little bonhomme in green showed up on my dashboard. This is evidently some new Blogger thing. It turned out to be Avus, ahead of the game as ever. Avus is Herhimnbryn's real life dad who rides Rudge bicycles, with which I have a family connection, so I'm very happy to have him as a follower, though he might overtake me on the Rudge. I doubt that he's a camp follower, probably more like a caravan one...

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My lovely sister is coming to stay for a week or so, as ever cause for great rejoicing, and making up somewhat for the trips I've had to cancel this year. So I'll likely be a bit absent hereabouts. I'll try to take some pictures.