Yesterday Pete told us about 'save-the-frogs' operation at the villas, aka Hoak. R decided to clean his paint brushes in the frog pond. When Pete found out half the frogs were already dead. He took the rest out of the pond and cleaned them - it's the oil in the paint that kills them, they suffocate, that's how they died, the poor souls, he said, nearly crying. He cleaned them very carefully with his toothbrush to get the oil off their skin.
"Did you still use the toothbrush afterwards?" I asked.
Very carefully, said E.
Then he had to take the water out of the pond and scrub the paint sediments off the bottom. Another two frogs died overnight but two survived. He had to bury the dead ones in a special frog cemetery at the garden.
But now there's a new generation of tadpoles.

"Did you say anything?"
I told him he was an idiot, Pete said with a serious face, but then laughed: I don't think it will happen again.

* * *

We were drinking the red-wine-bladder pinched from Kali's Degree show. Pete said he could write a novel if he was living in no. 19. I told him I thought so too before I moved to this flat, but it's like a prison cell, I'm not enjoying it and I can't work there. It's a hovel, a dive, said S. We were talking about recent Clifton troubles, (for another post) there's a lot of aggression, homophobic shit, threats of violence. "And yesterday" said S. "somebody graffitied all around the front doors a long inscription about how he was righteous and in the image of Jehovah and how all the artists in Clifton Mansions are EVIL".