The Gasbag Cometh

LONG LIVE THE SHED

2010-08-31T18:24:00.000+01:00

Greetings once again from Rex.

Thank you for visiting/revisiting. It's been a while and I suppose apathy and distraction have torn my attention from this blog to such things as cricket, children moving schools, and work. None of these things are capable of stopping the creative flow. They actually are or can become the conduit for one's creativity to blossom.

And so, inevitably, to the issue of the hitherto unseen new shed.

Here is a summary of comments elicited from those who have laid eyes upon the shed's unique form and astonishingly intricate and thoroughly appropriate design. The content of these statements is subject to possible digressions from the original due to time induced recall lapse.

I have also changed or omitted names to protect the innocent/guilty.

"...I was talking to a friend who built a shed from a patchwork of different bits of wood. I had envisaged something like that, but this is something really different." remarked friend and neighbour Ozwald Guillimot.

Socialite stalwarts the Ming-Bunters, who were over for the annual Art and Mindbend Soiree, were moved to point out the conflict between it's use as either leisure or practical space. However, lover and Director of Weekend Entertainment Doris Blotch had this to say " That's nice dear, what is it?"

To some, it seems, my work has become inappreciable.

During the many hours of labour, though it was not the hottest of summers, teabreaks were a-plenty. Pictured here is the scene of one of those many pauses for refreshment. To the right can be seen the cunning use of internal doors as a large window. Sheds can be such dauntiingly dark places, and I decided to make mine quite the reverse. It helps when looking for those screws/nails/little bits of stuff which ping off into the otherwise dingier recesses during the process of junk shifting I call D.I.Y.

Here is a brief pictorial summary of the type of chaos I seem to prefer to work by whilst constructing anything bigger or more complex than a cheese sandwich. Surely, I hear you cry, somebody as reluctant to employ the necessary organisational skills or regard to health and safety regimes usually attributed to adult humans should never be allowed to purchase let alone use power tools such as the one depicted.

It's a free-ish country however, people can keep caged birds, cycle without helmets, drink strong coffee etc. So I figure I can tempt fate with a speedily rotating saw blade which would have ones digits reduced to mere bloody stumps within a split second.

And as those heady days back in 2008 rolled on, and the cricket season in it's politeness gave way to another brash and noisy bunch of overpaid oiks in football kits, the ediface began slowly to take shape.

Recycling all I could gather in my locale, the greatest aquisition I believe was the 4' square kitchen window. Whole, unbroken, in full working order and fully waterproof. It weighed quite a bit, so controlling the skateboard upon which I chose to transport it was tricky at first.

But control it I did and after several months of sitting under a tarp in the garden, the installation was a success and it looked like this. Note the flowering fennel in front of it, attracting as it does a variety of hoverflies and their nectar-guzzling cousins

Artists impression of what transporting windows on a skatebord could have looked liked to an innocent bystander.

Here I can show you the interior doors that were in the best condition put to use as the comely face of the shed. It faces the house this way and I wash up looking straight at it. Washing up needs a decent view if possible. I'll allow you to make your own judgements, but I can stomach looking at this for 10 minutes at a stretch.

And here is one of those arty-farty oblique sort of views.

You may note that the tree in the background looks bare and yet this was reportedly the end of summer. Well, it's down to the ravenous nature of sawfly lavae. Those little bastards stripped every single piece of greenery from next door's spunky smelling tree inside two weeks of spring, reducing it to the skeletal form which it holds to this day.

A couple of years after completion, in the spirit of Alan Titchmarsh and the Ground Force team but without the smarm or wobbley boobs, I am proud to revisit the scene where architecture meets a junk yard. It is a unique construction, and is a place of solace and solitude without which I would get rained on, and so would quite a few of my rag-tag possessions.

Ladies and gentlemen, raise your glasses to that most characterful of garden dwellers,

THE SHED.

Hmm..

2010-08-30T21:27:00.004+01:00

I travel in my mind to a thousand different places a day. If only my body could follow. I know very little of astral projection, but if I could get some in a jar nearby and reconstitute it by simply adding hot water I would. I despise the modern era of instant life via credit, coffee jars, dvd links on the net. This virtual reality we are fed every waking minute of every day is killing so many of us from within and yet even those of us who are aware of this are apparently powerless to alter the cataclysmic course these invasions are taking us on.

(Written in January this year, somewhere in a dark place I surmise.)

DISCOVERIES

2009-12-15T22:50:00.004Z

I'll write this all in large type for the hard of hearing.

Here is something utterly stupid I have learnt to do whilst I have been away from the blogosphere. It's not all I've been doing. There has been work, decorating, cricket, drinking tea, visiting The B.F.G. and watching the days get shorter and shorter and shorter.

Soon I will be watching the days get longer and longer again. There is a possibility many more works of depth and integrity may ensue in time, but for now, all you lovely people will have to put up with this one addition to the wonderful world of utterly ridiculous 'art'.

Please enjoy.

I apologise for my lack of posting, especially about the shed as some of you will have burst with the suspense by now, of that I am sure.

I also apologise for not continuing to comment on your own efforts blogging about all manner of interests, but I lost all enthusiasm for doing so and hope to be back to my facetious and sardonic japes forthwith.

Until then good fellows, adieu and be good at least till Santa stuffs your stockings.

Happy Solstice!

JUST SOME FUNNY THINGS TO THINK ABOUT.

2009-07-29T22:46:00.011+01:00

ANTROPOLIS

CITY OF A MILLION LEGS

This photo of the Great City of Antropolis was taken last year when the sun shone. It shone again I'm sure this year, but the rain today got into my ear at a funny angle and appears to have washed my memory bank clean so I can't remember it.

And here is my next door neighbour, the tree. It's performing an astonishing feat of balance here, by balancing millions of tiny pieces of frozen water on top of each other. I don't know how it keeps so still. Probably practises when nobody is looking.

I think also I should show you all that there are lovely places to look at in this Sceptred Isle and that I've been to one or two of them. I went alongside The B.F.G. to the faraway land known locally as Kernow. It has a jagged edge which gets you wet if you stand too close to it. This was the view from the B.&B. Not bad if I may say so myself.

Anyway, Enough of the raiding of my hard drive for inspiration and a few memories. It's time to tuck up in a little bed with a cuppa and start a new and B.F.G. recommended funny book.

Nite Nite.

SHED OR ALIVE !

2009-07-17T00:22:00.004+01:00

Reports of my death would have been greatly exaggerated if there had been any.

Sorry about the lack of shed stuff.

It's still stands and doesn't leak.

I broke another finger.

My head aches, not presumably related to a finger snapping incident.

My cricket team hasn't won any games this year.

I have accidentally usurped the captain to regain my rightful place as The Big Cheese.

My son is growing at an alarming rate.

My daughter is a legal adult, but struggles daily with the real implications therein.

I have been a legal adult for 28 years and 2 weeks and I still struggle with the legal, moral and other general implications therein.

I still wish for the extermination of all advertising executives.

I have completed Meta's questionnaire, a life achievement akin to climbing Everest or discovering time travel.

I still have a job.

I still love the B.F.G.

It's still fuckin' rainin' here!

Solstice came and went and I hardly noticed it.

I haven't had an alcoholic drink for 10 days.

Elderflower champagne doesn't count because it's far too weak.

If I ruled the World, every day would be the first day of last week.

I'm so very glad I'm not called Percival.

How much wood can a woodchuck chuck?

I should write to my Australian mate.

My neck hurts.

Cheese can possibly save the world from annihilation.

I'm just trying to find the bridge.

Moffs enjoy the environs surrounding my bathroom light, even they probably know it isn't good for them.

Bob Dylan can't sing.

Is this the eighth wonder of the world?

GANG OF TEDS

2009-01-22T23:26:00.006Z

This took me back to a much older persons childhood. A gang of Teds hanging around the street in the dark.
I expect they were all just off to listen to some Elvis or comb their D.A. 'Barnets' incessantly whilst trying to chain smoke Chesterfields without removing them from their pursed lips.

Actually, I could be making all that up. They may have been waiting for a bus.

When they got on it, they would probably have hogged the backseat upstairs and tried to dodge their fares, and then when they got off they would have said

"GET STUFFED GRANDAD !!!"

to the conductor as they bounced away on their beetlecrushers and winklepickers.

To tell the truth, once I'd plucked up the Dutch Courage, I asked the nicest looking one of them what such a fine upstanding socio-economic sub-group was doing at that time of the evening.

He replied that Paul McCartney was doing a photo shoot for his new album, 'Band on the Run Again' and had asked for a group of hip kids to pose for the cover, and not to forget the spotlight.

Bastard never showed up, did he!

No wonder they look so glum

TINY LITTLE DUDE.

2009-01-21T20:54:00.007Z

Here is a photo of a tiny little dude.

I dont think at first he was aware of the camera, but once he did notice it,
he
became

an

absolUTe

SLUT
for the lens!!!
Quite frankly, this particular reproduction is the only offering
which is possible
to put up on a blog without fear of being flagged as leud.

If you see a very small person, male or female about your house or maybe even whilst walking your ferrets, please make sure you dont accept a cheque from one in payment for any goods or services. Very little dudes have aquired almost unimaginable notoriety as con artists and swindlers. They would gull the last stitch from their own favourite Auntie. They can't help it, just second nature. In fact, in some necks of the woods it's rude not to.

SUN IN CANCER, ARSE IN GEAR.

2008-06-24T01:02:00.009+01:00

Yes, all you good people of the omniverse, the Earth has beetled around once again to the part of it's orbit that floats a great deal of boats. As a result, a new and Tigger like energy has risen in me which is usually the case come Solstice. Being a Cancerian is cool. Birthdays are usually sunny affairs.

I am filling my days with "buildin' fings", 16 hours a week I get paid for it, thanks to a renewed career as a handyman.

The other Buddha-knows-how-many hours construction work has gone into the previously much touted shed project.

I'm not in a position to show any photos of progress because it's all very hush-hush, don't ya know. You'll just have to wait. Gadzooks, I can almost smell the tension from here.

Needless to say, the postage stamp sized urban garden is littered with piles of wood and rusty old nails. It's a health and safety nightmare, an A&E admittance waiting to happen. But I prefer to run the gauntlet, it lends life a sense of derring-do. Besides, there's no point in clearing up until the wobbly woman warbles.

The next week or so will produce a camping holiday, cricket, an annual visit, loud music from my revamped car stereo, outdoor fires (upon which I usually sacrifice at least one piece of clothing albeit mistakenly), birdwatching, peoplewatching, a lack of watchwatching, beer drinking and hopefully a modicum of sunburn, all of which you may well get to read about.

Until then, here are some random things captured for your delectation and perhaps, if you will, even amusement.

Here, we can clearly see that a junk food empire has been brought to it's knees by a renegade sparrow. Some kind of alliance has obviously been struck between it and it's feathered friends which commonly appear on the menu dressed in tight fitting batter suits.

The upshot of this I suspect was probably several dozen spotty ill-looking natives frantically scouring the locale for a similarly puke-worthy helping of feral pigeon in a bap.

They wouldn't have to go very far in this neck of the woods.

Next on the agenda is my own fascinating experimentation with Do-it-Yourself brain surgery. The tricky part is getting the bread knife and chisels clean again afterwards. Of course, I wouldn't recommend this form of amateur neuro slicing to the feint hearted, but the more adventurous among you will be pleasantly surprised by your children's next exam results if you get it right. However, if you get it wrong they are only capable of watching Big Brother until you've gone back to the old drawing board before another well intentioned stab at it.

And here is a monster from the deep which I fished out of my garden pond. The fucker took me 8 hours to land and left me with a vicious hickey which I quite clearly cant go to the medical services with in case they think I'm one of those weird people who can only become romantically attached to lampreys.

For those among you who believe I had to turn my back on it to get attacked in this region, think again, it's not how it looks. It does however, bring a whole new meaning to the words 'blue tit'.

And that, my crusty little old barnacles upon the hull of humanity, is that. Be good to yourselves and to those immediately to your right. Anybody on the left can get stuffed.

OF CHANGING CARS AND SHIFTING SHEDS

2008-05-14T00:35:00.011+01:00

I've been awfully quiet, in bloggy respects, of late. There are a few reasons. Attempting and failing to mend a car and then selling it for a pittance. That was a wee bit disappointing but as soon as the horrid thing was gone, I felt better, even though it wasn't my car. I hadn't stolen it or anything silly, just doing the B.F.G. a favour because she has no time for such tasks. I polished it until it stood resplendent in the spring sun, awaiting a new mug to throw good money after bad at it.

Having sold it, I then realised that trying to buy a bargainatious runaround for the similar pittance plus a maximum of £250 was going to be nigh on impossible, especially now I had no car to go and view them with. This is because my chivalrous nature has conspired to shoot myself squarely below the ankle region by lending my lovely shiny car to the aforementioned B.F.G. so she could get to work and keep me in the style to which I have become accustomed, ie piss poor.

However, after the next two weeks endlessly picking over thousands of car adds and websites about best buys and parts, the Car Fairies turned up a much better car for my lover at only £15 more than the old French charabanc. And there endeth the tale on a happy, nay ecstatic, Japanese note.

And then so on to the shed.

My garden shed is, or should I say was, much loved (by me at least). It contains/contained as you hopefully can see by the video tour, all manor of the types of crap that men in their forties have accumulated by the natural course of events. Well, events such as skip scrounging and never throwing anything away anyhow. And so when it ceases/ceased to hold out the rain and smells/smelt of rot and is/was clearly suffering in it's old age it is/was time to put it down.

So I did/have.

You can't take a shed to a vet, or flush them down the toilet like unwanted pets, so I tore it down with a claw hammer, and when that wasn't manly enough, my bare hands. Spiders of varying shapes, sizes and hues scuttled willy-nilly hither and thither as bits of mouldy plywood and 2x2 flew in all manner of directions at the mercy of a tea crazed loon in the midday heat.

Part one of my rebuild was all but done and most of the fallout taken to the dump. The rest goes tomorrow, excepting all the salvaged pieces, of which there are few.

I will shop for new (recycled) timber, and stick to my design which involves interior doors and a PVC window all scrounged for nowt locally over the past few years and weeks.

Eat yer 'eart out, The Feckin' Wombles. I'm building an architectural masterpiece. An Ediface to the Gods. Builders of similar shacks will flock from miles around just to be in it's looming shadow. Upon it, cats will sit and birds will shit. Molluscs will slime and wind and rain batter at it's corners like banshees. But it will resist because it will be held fast by love....and about 500 2"screws.

Keep your eyes on this space for hot news of the Great Project as it nears completion.

I will try my damnedest not to leave it for so long that you burst with anxiety before the next post.

Oh, and I genuinely hope you are all beginning to enjoy the summer at last, except those of you who burn easily or who live in the Southern hemisphere.

RESPLENDENT SPRING!

2008-04-03T19:55:00.014+01:00

A blue sky, clear but for a random scattering of gently metamorphosing clouds, plays host to bleached white gulls. The seabirds laugh and wheel in a seasonally appropriate oxymoronic state of manic nonchalance, utilising the languid updraughts billowing invisibly from city streets stimulated by the first truly warm day of the year.

Far below their raucous cackling, I sun myself greedily, soaking up as many rays as I can before this most fickle of seasons turns it's many faced head to reveal an altogether less clement mien.Today though, a patient breeze has replaced the recent rash or hasty gales. It casually transports tender offerings of mingled light fragrances across the neighbouring environs to my hitherto starved olfactory sense. Tree blossom plays an unlikely bedfellow to warm skin.

Twittering finches alert my gaze skyward again. They commute across the azure with staccato flurries of wing beats which give their flight the look of a shuttle weaving an imperceptible thread under and over through the jet streams miles above them, perhaps manufacturing a simple tapestry upon which the ensuing months will eventually embroider the full heated passion of summer. Love sick buzzards arc and soar in lordly fashion above, their presence betrayed only by their eerie monotonous wails which pierce the erstwhile serenity of the afternoon firmament.

As the evening wanders on towards it's close, illuminated by a decreasing effulgence, the disorganised intricacy of trills and whistles that is blackbird song will echo around the urban environs displaying their territorial intent as they lay claim to the treetops by unremitting aria. The common toad who comes hither to feed on various tiny lifeforms will doubtless appear as is her custom on relatively balmy nights.

For now, my eye is caught by the fiery lily beetle as it prepares to gorge itself on the fresh growth bursting through the soil. I hear bumble bees amble drunkenly through the air on a constant vigil for nectar filled blossoms upon which they can fuel a cool night in waiting for yet another day. I can look on as a sunfly hovers erratically, vacillating violently between the ivy leaves as if shadow boxing for fun.

I love the spring for it's renewed sense of hope and life, it's light and the feeling that something exciting is about to happen.

And I suppose it is, if you count the rest of your life.

LUDWIG VAN SPIDER; A STORY OF CROSS SPECIES COMMUNICATION

2008-03-16T16:32:00.001Z

It takes an absolute age to teach a common garden spider to play Beethoven on a web. Firstly one has to link the intricate silken threads through a midi interface, no mean feat I can tell you. I had to enlist the help of one or two of our visitor friends for that one, but therein lies another long winded tale of intergalactic travel and other-worldly antics I can tell you just wouldn't wish to be burdened with, so I'll not bother today.

I reckon this little chap seems to have embraced the subtle nuances and minor to major key changes of one of the world's most enigmatic and recognisable piano pieces, even if I, his mentor, may say so myself.

It took a great deal of patience and understanding, not helped tremendously by my own ineptitude on the old Joanna, which knows no bounds. I haven't even got as far as 'Chopsticks.'

However, through unparallelled diligence and a rigorous diet of flies and woodlice, (I hate bluebottles especially, and those invertebrates get stuck between your teeth, yeeuk!) myself and Ludwig struck up a rapport musical which may go a very long way towards furthering homo-arachnid relations beyond anything the space program and all those experiments with L.S.D. ever managed.

At first, he found it easier to play if he went too fast. Impassioned cries of 'Adagio! Adagio!' could be heard across the haphazard urban landscape, as I pleaded with him to slow the piece down from the Andante he seemed to have settled upon. I was almost at the end of my tether, and so literally was Ludwig, when one beautiful Autumn morning, I took my early cuppa into the garden to find Little Luddy, concentration etched across his tiny multi-eyed brow, winding his way around the web, calmly and with such concupiscence as to bring a tear to even the most hard hearted of fellows. Each gentle up rise in tempo, each contour of the sound so delicately navigated it put me in mind of a youthful Evgeny Kissin.

And so, today, you can hear the piece in it's entirety. I hope you can enjoy it and perhaps it may inspire you to take up the challenge of inter-species communication. Let me know if you decide to train a centipede to tap dance, or encourage an ant colony to form a Welsh Style Voice Choir. It is difficult, but if you can handle the constant knock backs, the rewards are bountiful and uplifting beyond your wildest imaginations.

Good Luck, comrades in artistic ventures. With your success, the world will owe you a debt of immeasurable gratitude.

(All music composed by Ludwig Van Beethoven)

THE ALPHABET TREE

2008-03-10T12:41:00.007Z

Wandering around with one's mind at best only partially fixed to any particular task at hand is one of life's pleasures. It was not too long ago now, whilst in one of these meandering ruminations back in the Autumn of last year, that I made a quite astonishing discovery. I have discovered a tree in the park.
Now, at this juncture I can hear cogs a-whirring and jaws a-flapping saying things like

"A tree in the park isn't unusual, you silly old Rexy"
or
"A tree in the park is akin to finding a shell on the beach"
Well that's all true, but don't pick that shell up, it may still be live and blow your hands off!

And since that kind of surprise is what can be chanced upon in life, the R.A.F. and U.S.A.F. being messy people who leave things like depleted uranium lying around in other countries, a result being less pianists, I refer you all back to the tree in the park. It's no ordinary tree. The photograph above is of some of it's fallen leaves, and of it's bizarre windblown fruits. Yes, it is indeed Dendrofallacium Lexicographii, an alphabet tree.

The alphabet tree is fairly ordinary to the eye in many respects, except of course it's fruits which fall to earth around November and scatter themselves a short distance from the tree. Not every fruit contains a seed which is one of the reasons that the alphabet tree is not as common as many of it's indigenous counterparts. Imported to Britain from as far away as Greece and Turkey by the great arboretum collectors of the 17th to 19th century, this broad leaved deciduous has few uses to man in industry or leisure, and has therefore rarely been introduced to the wider countryside on a large scale.
The fruits are not eaten by many creatures, but it is a widely held folklore belief that animals with the ability to pick things up with their forepaws such as squirrels or rats have used the fruits as educational devices for their young or even to hang above the entrances to their drays, burrows etc as signs for predators to stay away. Flocks of carrion crows were often to be seen wearing large fruits around their necks to delineate between the various rival murders.

Another folklore tale surrounds how each seed containing fruit would lend itself to growing different sized trees depending on the letter shape of it. Though I'm aware of no scientific studies or evidence to back up the 'wives tales', some old verses still get passed on in the oral tradition. One such rhyme goes, to memory, something like this;

The tree of the letter shaped A through to H
Will not grow an inch above yon garden gate
A bough or a branch grown from I to an M
Will wither and die when the size of most men
From N to the Y seeds are not quite as high
As a tree from the letter shaped as a Z
Which will always stand twig branch wood shoulder and head
Above any other in forest or glade
Which are all the letters from which our words are made.

I think it's lost something in translation, but you get the basic drift.
In the days before the tree was introduced to the bounds of these shores, the natives of it's origins had their own stories bound by it. Of course, in Turkey, the Turkish trees had a different alphabet, as they did in Greece. When imported to Russia, a similar thing occurs. It's as though the tree has a very close bond with the people around it, like it can understand the basic language of those humans around it. Everybody in those countries will tell of how their ancestors could almost feel the trees listening to their thoughts, eager for human contact or even symbiosis.

The ancient Gods of Greece had their own favourite letters from the tree seeds.

I suppose we could all pick our own favourites too. Some would be quite partial to an E, and there are those for whom there is great comfort in an R. I asked the B.F.G. what her favourite is.
I'll leave you to guess what her answer was.

SCHOOL TRIP

2008-03-04T01:07:00.003Z

Back in December, before the school Christmas break was upon us, my son went on his first trip away with the school. Not just a day trip, but a full on activity holiday involving the kind of dampness which can only be truly achieved by going to Wales during the winter. Dutifully, I bought him a new rucky and some ill fitting strides, pairs 2, muddy waters for the absorption of. It was suggested he take plenty of spare clothing. We packed it all, including wellies strapped to the outside of his backpack.

On the morning he was due to leave, the bag became the focus for all his pent up excitement, as he carried it around the house in preparation to go. He was driving me nuts with it up and down the stairs like Sherpa Tensing on speed at least half an hour before we were due to leave, bumping into the furniture and just generally getting in my bleary eyed way at what is best described as a part of the day when I'm not at my most organised or patient.
But leave we did, astonishingly on time, down to meet the bus outside the school. Dozens of other parents were there seeing off their excited and some slightly anxious kids. I suppose there was a little twang of 'My Baby is going away' stuff, but I just thought of all that spare time and peace and quiet, and what fun he was going to have compared with yet another week of school. Besides, one week away from a T.V. blethering on about impending Christmas was gonna be good for this kids soul and probably my bank balance.

There was a slight feeling of apprehension as the bus was late, then showed up looking like this.

In the early hours of the morning (before ten am anyway) I'm easily confused, and my first thoughts were that the bus company name had been written by an artistically very talented dyslexic. Perhaps I've been doing too many crosswords of late, because my next fleeting cogitation upon the matter was that this must be an anagram. Reaching swiftly for my pen and paper, (which I always carry for quick note emergencies, a trick learnt whilst tracking the movement and locations of urban skips) I established the obvious reason this particular coach had been sent, the anagram emblazoned on it being "Ya cab must wif". Well I expect that'll be years of pukey kids and fat arsed drivers in it, I mused.

And then, as my grey matter lurched into slovenly action, things stated to add up.

Welsh! Aha! Of course, what an oaf I felt. Send a coach from Wales. Why not? Much easier to keep your carbon footprint maximised by sending a coach from Wales over the bridge and then drive back to Wales with some kids.

Bit by bit, child by child, the vehicle loaded to just about it's full potential. I thought I'd use this valuable time to check the credentials of the cabin crew. What better recommendation could they have than this.

A 'Hendy men' can do anything. They're always reliable and so my mind was put at ease by this comforting sight.

And so the time came for the bus to roll out toward its destination. Final hugs and kisses ensued until even the potential bed wetters were crammed in and the doors were closed on a bus full of over excited youths destined for a foreign land.

This is the last view of it disappearing.

And from that moment until four and a half days later, my house was quiet. And I came home to write a poem which you can look back to if you want. (Leavings, Dec 10th 2007)

I MEAN, GORDON BENNETT !!?**!

2008-02-04T17:27:00.004Z

I don't wish anybody to get alarmed, but I believe there is a national, even global plot afoot which surrounds one of the most notorious men in expletive history. I speak of course, of Gordon Bennett. It has become clear to me that one of the nefarious activities of Mr. Gordon Bennett is the recycling of discarded materials into shop goods to be sold back to the general public, only a short while before that same public realise it's all shit and take it to the nearest skip.

And so on, and so on, ad infinitum until Mr. B is rolling in piles of crisp £20 notes.

When investigating such criminal behavior, I must call upon my amazing powers of under-cover disguise. I wrapped myself in a couple of old bin liners and hid inside this skip for several days, living off food scraps, until it was collected and taken to an outlet for the recycled crap.
I had not wasted my time in the skip at night, and by the light of a nearby street lamp had managed to cobble together a working if not terribly attractive camera from bog roll tubes and a bottle-bottom. Through this device, I managed to take this tell tale picture of the outlet in a town in the South West of England.

Potentially thousands if not millions of pounds per day cross the palms of the vendors of misery inside. Shortly after this photo was taken, I was spotted by security and had to make a desperate dash for freedom. I'd have got(ten) away with it if it weren't for those meddling security guards. I've only just returned from one of their sweat shops making Easter bunnies out of discarded Christmas tree baubles. My fingers are still sore.

Don't be sucked into this nightmare. Avoid any contact with Gordon Bennett at all costs.

BIRDWATCHING IN THE CITY

2008-01-29T23:56:00.000Z

WARNING; DO NOT SCROLL DOWN IF YOU HAVE JUST EATEN.

Not that long ago, my wonderful children and I were off to the nearest train station. They were off to catch a train to Wiltshire to see one of their grandparents. I don't go to Wiltshire unless under cover of darkness and preferably in a fast moving vehicle. I still don't trust the coppers there. Prone to the annual Hippie Cull they were. And did you know it's illegal not to eat a pork pie every 60 minutes in Wiltshire. They still have the stocks and angry crowds of ill mannered wurzels turn up in their thousands to hurl soggy, mouldy vegetables at anybody who doesn't have pig in aspic stuck between their teeth and traces of greasy pastry on their smock.

However, on the way to the station, there was a bird. This bird was right in front of us, bang smack in the middle of the pavement if you please. And it was very still. It's one of those sorts of birds which you periodically see stationary, because it's stone cold dead. Not just a bit dead mind you, absolutely horror show, intestines out sort of dead.

There are many cats in our area, and parked cars often afford them an excellent sculking or hiding place from which to pounce upon their prey. On this occasion, the unsuspecting bird, probably humming a crisp tune to itself, was stalked and done in.

So feast your mince on it's last attempt at modelling for the camera, immortalised as long as this hard drive and blog keep a-rollin' on. I hope it didn't suffer.

BEHOLD, THE TRANSLAT-O-CAM

2008-01-23T22:42:00.000Z

Well, fancy that. I've just had the most amazing thing happen.
"What's that?" I hear you all cry. (not cry as in tearful and upset, I meant cry like a town crier, only ssh, cos you'll wake the neighbours)
I was returning from the local weeny supermarket, when I looked up into the night sky. And guess what I saw. You'll never believe me. I mean, I wouldn't believe anybody that told me this. Well, I may believe some people, because some people are just very good at explaining things in a way which means virtually everybody believes them. (There's a song about that by a band called "The Wizards of Twiddley" I rather like it.) Some folk can just go on saying stuff, using all the best and most accurate terminology and descriptive powers, and still nobody would think that they were telling the truth. If they went on too long, most people would just get a bit bored.

When bored, all sorts of occupations will skip into the mind. They will send minute electrical charges merrily across the synapses in order to get one to do something.

Earlier, when I was bored, I cut all the words in my dictionary out. It took me bloody ages. I've been telling people I've been decorating, but that, my friends, has been a cunning cover story. Once they were all chopped like a wordy spag bol, I climbed up the nearest mountain (just next door as it happens) and threw them into the breeze. Just scattered them randomly. I had considered throwing them one by one, but I'm not an idiot, that would've taken me far too long and I really must get on with the decorating. (DOH!)

Anyhow, having thrown them, I hurriedly sprinted down the mountain to see where the wind had taken them and what might be written.

As if Casting the Runes, these words appeared before my extremely eyes. That's even more than my very eyes, which is quite a bit of eyes, but extremely eyes is noticeably more. If it had been in front of my totally eyes, or even even my wow man, far out dude eyes, I'm not sure if I'd have believed them. I can handle extremely eyes because , though that's, well, extreme, it's not as extreme as wow man far out dude eyes. I mean, what could be?

The words, to return to the point, were laid out as plain as the nose on my face. Actually, the nose on my face isn't terribly plain. I don't mean that in a 'oh, my nose is so gorgeous' sort of way, or the 'I wish my nose wasn't so unusual' sort of way. No, I mean it in the plain to see sort of way, like most people mean. Really, do you all think I'm so strange that I can't use normal expressions such as 'plain as the nose on my face'?

Hey, why don't I post a piccy of the nose on my face? Obviously, I couldn't post a piccy of the nose not on my face, cos it stays on my face on a permanent basis. If my nose was off my face, how would I smell? Like a dog in a German stand up comedy routine probably. But that's beside the point. Not beside the point of my nose. My nose isn't really pointy, it's kind of rounded, a fact with which you will probably concur when you see the photo.

This is me a couple of years ago, when I looked like a girl. If you look closely, you can see my nose. For those who are easily confused, my nose is on the left of my face as we see it here. It's not on the left of my face when you see it from the front. Then it's in the middle, even since the World Title bout, which I only narrowly lost to another bloke who looked like a girl. He was called Daphne, which is odd for a Tiddley Winks Champion.

Now I know what you're thinking. Well, not everything obviously. I'd have to be some kind of deity for that, which means that sooner or later I'd have to ban everybody from commenting on this blogsite. What you are thinking may be this.

Yes, that. But that's a daft thing to think, even when your on holiday in a swimsuit. I know this isn't you, but it's just a photo to illustrate a person thinking. I know, there are two people here, but only one of them would be thinking this thought. The other one is just a figment of the thinking one's imagination. Actually, that was a bit of a fib, there are two here really. You can tell that because cameras can't really pick up people's thoughts. It would be handy if they could, because I would just take a photo of myself in the mirror every time I lost concentration, and I'd be back on the right thread quite soon.

The original piccy of me up there was taken on the same beach as those two. I think they were both Russian, but it's hard to tell from their accents in a photo. Photos can't pick up accents or dialects either, or translate other languages to English. It would be good if they could, because then I could take a photo of people from eg. Russia and look at it to see exactly what they were saying to me, or even about me. They'd probably be saying;

"Why, English bloke, are taking you a the photos and us?" (I know, I know. It's a cheap camera, O.K.)

Of course, my Russian is non-existent from my mouth as well as to my ears, so I'd have to take a picture of me thinking or saying something and show it to them. Since it takes up to 7 days for my photos to get back from the developers, I expect they'd have forgotten what they'd asked me, and the conversation would go rather limp. That's probably the only reason the Translat-o-cam was never invented. Or the Thought-a-matic.

Anyway, since Daphne is a cheat, I'm going to appeal against the result. The least I feel I should get is a rematch.

However, the wind was fairly strong, so once I'd got to the bottom of the mountain, most of the short, and hence, lighter words had blown away. The best I could do to make sense of them all was ask a passer-by. As there weren't any passer's by, I ran around the corner to find one. Eventually I did, and he kindly followed me back to where the words were, despite the atypical nature of my request.

Upon asking him about the scattering words, he looked at me rather oddly. I asked him why he was looking at me rather oddly. Was it an unusual request to ask a total stranger to look at the ground to see if the chopped up words from my dictionary would spell out some sort of message? Most folk would comply wouldn't they, without a funny look? He said no, not at all. It's just that it's Wednesday which means he has to fulfill his New Year resolution to randomly present total strangers with a bizarre countenance. I looked at him strangely. He asked me if that was that my New Year resolution too? I said no, that sort of coincidence would be utterly ridiculous.

After careful consideration, he came to the conclusion that the only coherent message the words spelt out was "Go to the shops and buy a beer"

WWHOAH! That was really weird. Before I'd got bored, I had been wondering if I should just pop up to the shops and buy a beer. Sometimes the Universe is just irrefutably synchronized, isn't it?

That wasn't the weird thing that happened to me though. No, the weird thing was on the way back from the shops, I distinctly made out the shape of a spaceship traversing the Northern part of the sky. Oh, wait a minute. It's still there! Oh No, I'm wrong. It's just an eyelash.

Silly me, I've probably wasted quite a bit of your time, haven't I?

OH CAROL!

2007-12-24T13:26:00.002Z

Deck the halls with bits of plastic
Fa la la la laah, la la la laah
One day left, it's getting drastic
Fa la la la laah, la la la laah
Stuff the bird right up it's column
Fa la lah, fa la lah, fa la laah
Feckin' Slade, let's kill the volume!
Fa la la la laah, la la la laah

Grannie snoozes, spills her sherry
Fa la la la laah, la la la laah
Dad's impression of Chuck Berry
Fa la la la laah, la la la laah
Kids with cola agitation
Fa la lah, fa la lah, fa la laah
Wizard deafens half the nation
Fa la la la laah, la la la laah

( up one tone)

Bloggers! Let's all have a party!
Fa la la la laah, la la la laah
Mags, Lorenzo, Meta, Marty,
Fa la la la laah, la la la laah
Scriptor Senex, and Raehla
Fa la lah, fa la lah, fa la laah
J.L.S. (who's not a fella)
Fa la la la laah, la la la laah

Not forgetting old man Maalie
Fa la la la laah, la la la laah
Who, like me, is not called Charlie
Fa la la la laah, la la la laah
Tortoishell and even Plumpy.
Fa la lah, fa la lah, fa la laah
Let's get pissed so no-ones grumpy.
Fa la la la laah, la la la laah

Then, of course, there's me, T. Rexy.
Fa la la la laah, la la la laah
Charming, erudite and sexy.
Fa la la la laah, la la la laah
Wine, gin, sherry flow, abundant
Fa la lah, fa la lah, fa la laah
Shame I just got made redundant
Fa la la la laah, la la la laah

FAH LAH LAH LAH LAAAH, LAH LAH LLAAAHMMAAAAAGH!!!!

(Roll on feckin' summer!!!!)

It's Tough Being Magnus (reincarnate)

2007-12-21T21:21:00.000Z

So many comments, so little time. Ok, The Winner Is.............................Metamatician with 86 pts. He was followed by Scriptor Senex, 63 and then Raehla, 55. Empath, 38 and a half, LtL with 35, JLS with 33 Mags a sulkworthy 31, and Bytedoc aways back from that. Total pts available were about 160.
I think Byte had a bad cold that affected his short, long and medium term memories. I thank him for his sterling efforts, pop by any time, dude.
JLS gave a full and frank military style orienteering super trigonometry answer for Qu. Z, but could have tried better earlier for a podium finish. Be fair though, she does live upside down on the other side of the world, which must be awfully tiring.
What can I say about "The Llama" which hasn't been said already? Well, here goes. In all my born days I've never read such extraordinary brown-nosing, but since it was by invitation in effect, fair play to our four legged inebriate. It didn't do her any good whatsoever, as I decided that playing God is more like acting the goat with a llama and her farmers (I assume you must have had 'farmers' at least once in your life. Quite painful, don't use the bullet shaped suppositories.) Even changing answers was of no use at all. Let me know if you can't remember anything you gave as an answer, I'll send 'em on. Many thanks for your many long hours of hard work.
Empath, my sweet, quiet, unassuming friend. One of three Americans, who all got the baseball question right. Bless you for finishing though it was way past your bedtime (naps count as bedtime). Great try with Sussex, which I will be in next week visiting my parents (and borders Kent and is nearly as pretty). My rectal temp was 106, time to get in a bath or shove some ice up my Khyber. Half point for being 0.2 mtrs outside the 1 pt region (I'm such a pig, but a benevolent pig at least)

And so onto the podium finishers.

Raehla. A late entry gains the bronze gong, and after engaging any number of bored Spaniards on the war Prime ministers of Great Britain over the odd Rioja, consistently good all round knowledge. Beef up your U.S. history or bribe me to include anything Spanish and you're onto a winner. Hope the Solstice party is in full flow and the mulled people are being drunk by the laughing, happy wine.
Scriptor Senex, the unashamed Dark Horse of this competition, and a lot of punters(me) outside bet for the title, has rolled home in a creditable second place. An imaginary silver medal adorns his stately sternum as we speak. The ONLY person to score on the tricky and pivotal Qu.V. Listening to odd music in his youth would have put him closer to the title. Many thanks for his published support to my blog space, and for giving this quiz a 'ruddy good stab'

And now, for your eyes and delectation, I hereby announce that the winner is a pain in the ass. Quite clearly his persistent calling into question of my sexuality and hassling for results has ground me into the dirt. So I'm up far too late again, tippy-tapping away to satisfy his every cyber need (well, nearly!!!) Talk about odd, he got FULL MARKS on the U.S. presidents section. Who was history teachers pet at school, then hmm? Knows his films but was second on that to the lovely Raelha. Unusual not to get the baseball/Clooney connection.

And so, to Meta dude, REX'S BIG BRAINIAC GRAND CHAMPION OF THE WORLD FOREVER COMPETITION WINNER, goes a big congratulatory and manly slap on the rump with a wet towel. You can have the trumpet back now. I've wiped and sterilised the soggy end. Go to the top of the class and the foot of my stairs.

Is there something I've forgotten to say? Oh, yes!!! Of course there is. Many huge heart-and-soul-felt thanks to Magdalene. She was the first to complete the quiz even though she was hanging and rinsed from a hard day at the office. I consider this to be the very meaning of the word support. However, I think a long series of intensive one to one tutorials is in order to enhance her chances in future tests of knowledge. I shall swap the now totally greasy uniform for a pair of brown corduroys and a green jacket with leather patches on the elbows. Excuse me whilst I grow some dangerous sideburns (nesting bird life optional) and become an absolute boon in her erstwhile gappy education.

Be happy in your hearts my fellow humans, for knowledge itself is not the point of life. The experiences had whilst attempting to gain it and the wisdom to use it once it has been captured pale it's acquisition into the shadows.

Happy Solstice!

Rex's Big Bad Quiz Results.

2007-12-19T17:12:00.000Z

And so, here are the answers you've all been waiting for. Sorry it took so long. My p.c. decided to fecked up last week and then I had to go and do my Nurse Rexy bit. I can only just fit into that uniform with a bit of help from a giant shoe horn type device and plenty of grease. Still, whatever turns me on, eh.

A; He cannot smell, he has no nose. ( German stand up comedian answer)2 pts (1pt for any silly answer regarding dogs)

B; 9. Look at a Brit keyboard. Sorry to all who don't have one. 2pts

C; First woman in space. 2pts

D; Built 1904-1906, sunk by U-boat 1915, effectively bringing U.S. into the 1st world war. 4pts

E; George Michael. 2pts (1pt for anybody who put a gay person down as an answer.)

F; Barry Bonds (big news stateside, the rest of us don't like rounders much)

G; Magical Mystery Tour. (can't believe those who were teenagers in the 60's didn't get this)

H; All 2pts each

i Marty Scorcese
ii Stan Kubrick
iii Steve Spielberg
iv Alf Hitchcock
v Olly Stone (kicking yourself, anybody in Spain?)
vi Bruce Robinson (likewise any Americans?)
vii Ridley Scott
viii George Roy Hill (who?)
ix Arthur Hiller (whoer???)
x Spike Jonze

I; Scooby-doo, Shaggy, Velma, Fred, Daphne. 1pt each ( nobody ever gets Vela so Selma, Themla, etc got point)

J; Vermont (verte, green; mont, mountains) 2pts

K; Kent (guess where I'm from) 2pts

L1; Arsenal (the clue was in the cough for dedicated Morecombe and Wise fans)

L2; Mitch Mitchell (Jimi Hendrix Experience)

LSD; No answer scores points. This question was the tie breaker, each answer given a judged score out of ten by me cos I'm the quiz dude.

M; Addis Ababa 9.03 N
Brasilia 15.5 S
Kathmandu 27.2 N
Tokyo 35.4 N
Washington DC 38.5 N
Beijing 39.3 N
Paris 48.5 N
Prague 50 N
London 51.3 N
Rekjavik 64.1 N
Brasilia being the only Southern hemisphere city is therefore furthes from the North pole. 2pts each answer in correct place in order 1-10

N; Phillip Pullman

O; U.K.-'It's All Over Now', (bad luck to the quadrupeds among us)
U.S.-'Satisfaction' 2pts each

P; Herbert Henry Asquith
David Lloyd George
Neville 'Piece of paper' Chamberlain
Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill 2pts each

Q; Sir David Attenborough

R; Cincinatti Reds,
Sparky the gay dog,
6/5/1961,
Timothy. (snigger)

S; Spike Lee,
Spike Jones,
Spike Milligan,
Spike Robinson.(Who?)

T; James Monroe,
Andrew Jackson,
Abe "Ssshh, I'm trying to hear the operaaaagghh!!" Lincoln,
Ulysses S. Grant,
Grover "not really a Muppet" Cleveland,
Theodore "bang! shit was that a bear? Hey, guys, bury it and don't tell or you're fired" Roosevelt,
Calvin 'Klein' Coolidge,
F.D.R. Roosevelt,
George H.W. "best adverisement for contraception I've ever seen" Bush,
Bill 'The Inhaler' Clinton.

F.D.R. had the most V.P. numbering three. 2pts each and 2pts for bonus

U; Blue. (bet you wish you'd guessed now, huh) 2pts

V; aye-aye 4, X llama 4, X spider 8, X human 2, X scorpion 8 = 2048
cerberus 3, + minataur, 1 + hippocamp 1, + gorgon, 1 + centaur 1, + sphinx 1= 8
2048/8=256 12 pts

W; Any answer gets a 2 pt gimme. Everybody answered.

X; Graham Chapman

Y;
i American black bear
ii duck billed platypus
iii Tasmanian devil
iv brown bear
v russian hamster
vi guinea pig
vii ring tailed lemur
viii raccoon
ix channel islands spotted skunk
x badger (The ones you find in Britain, usually viewed as roadkill, sadly) 2pts each(not if you kill one, silly, in the quiz)

Z; J.L.S. gave the best answer, with all the working. She therefore gets 5pts +1pt for being a bloody smartass. I just did my calcs on a bit of graph paper. So the answer is 4.45m apparently. 5 pts for bang on or within one metre and 1 pt for within six metres.

And that's it folks. I thank you all from the heart of my bottom. Now it's so cold in my house I'm gonna hug the radiator. B.F.N.

Ladies and Gentlemen, We Have a Winner

2007-12-17T22:33:00.000Z

But I'm not gonna tell you who it is until tomorrow at least cos I'm looking after a poorly chum and can't do it right now. I will not embarrass the lower scorers by posting scores, nor tell anybody what they got. You'll have to work it out by yourselves because tomorrow I'll post the answers and how much each correct one was worth. Then, when you've worked out what you think you've got, you can post it back to me. Or not, as you see fit. If you so wish, you can all discuss the matter between yourselves, behind my cyber-back if necessary, and decide probably never to do one of my quizzes again.

Thank you all for entering, it did make me laugh and give me a chance to put on the mortar board and gown. Thanks Lorenzo for all the terrible crawling, which had an effect which you will figure out when the results become apparent. I'm still waiting on the brown envelope. Bloody x(christ)mas post, I expect.

To mix my sign offs somewhat, toodle-pipski, y'all! Da svidenya, moi drug.

Leavings

2007-12-10T20:16:00.000Z

I live lost in solitude,
Kindred spirits my only connection
To reality.
Here in a warm womb of melancholic nirvana,
There is a soft sadness born of sweet joy
That my heart is held safe by distant hands.
And I will hold their hearts forever
For within the purity of their wisdom
Lies no wish for greater love.
And I could not ask my Mother, The Earth
For greater trust.

It's Quiz Time.

2007-12-05T00:16:00.000Z

Not to be outdone by a certain American gentleman, (you know who you are) I have decide to throw my ring into a hat and write a quiz.

I don't know why, just wasting some of the time I could be using to plan the single handed ascent of Everest I had pencilled in for next wednesday after work.

Still, I expect it would've rained anyhow.

I must point out the 'Rules' before you all go straight to wikipedia.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PRETTY PLEASE, UGLY THREAT PLEASE DO NOT USE WIKIPEDIA OR ANY BOOKS OR OTHER REFERENCE STUFF.

It's not much fun just looking things up. That's just like doing your homework. This is supposed to be a pub quiz type quiz. So I would suggest you get yourself a nice glass of beer, or perhaps meths in some cases, and pretend you're in a boozer. No books to look at, and on this occasion, you are Billy/Betty Nomates. You're on your own, you poor old saddo. Nobody is near enough for you to peep over their shoulder or read their lips as they blurt out the answers to their team-mates.

Besides, there really isn't any point in cheating cos there's only an imaginary prize. However, the greater your imagination, the more you stand to win. But just imagine if you will, how bad you'll feel when all your winnings have been gained not only by imagination, but also by cribbing. You'll only be fooling yourselves. And of course, a certain Mr. Clause will find out and then a certain stocking will be several pounds lighter in a few weeks. There are some dudes over whose eyes there is no wool to be found, and upon whom, there are no flies.

So, I have enabled the comment moderation again for the duration of this post only cos I don't want an email address on the blog for obvious reasons. This means that should anybody actually take part in the quiz of the day, (queeez de jour) they won't spoil it for everybody else unless I'm stupid enough to post their comment. However, if anybody posts a set of answers which are entirely incorrect, I'll post that comment and shame them forever.

Extra points may be awarded to crawlers who tell me I'm just super and all that, but points may be deducted for uber-creepyness.

Hey, I make up 'The Rules', O.K.

I will of course, endeavour to be fair and honest in the marking. Forgive me if any of the answers I give, should we all get that far, are actually incorrect. After all, I'm not the reincarnation of Magnus Sodding Magnusson, (correct)?

Disputes will be settled by a calm rewriting of 'The Rules' and history as we have previously known it.

And so, having made myself utterly clear to all and sundry,

"Let The Games begin!"

A; My dog's got no nose, how does he smell?

B; £ is to 5 as & is to ...what?

C; For what is Valentina Tereshkova most famously known?

D; What year was the R.M.S. Lusitania built and in which year did it sink?

E; Which British 'pop star' bought John Lennon's piano upon which Lennon wrote the song 'Imagine'

F; Which Major League baseball (rounders) star holds the world record for the most home runs ever?

G; On which Beatles album is the song 'Your mother should know'?

H; Who directed the following cult or blockbusting movies.
i) The King of Comedy
ii) 2001 A space Odyssy
iii) Jaws
iv) The 39 steps
v) The Doors
vi)Withnail and I
vii) Alien
viii) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
ix)Love Story
x)Being John Malcovich

I; Name the five usual passengers of 'The Mystery Machine'

J; Which U.S. state is known as 'The Green Mountain State'

K; Which English county is known as 'The Garden of England'

L1; Who won the F.A. cup in 1936? (cough)

L2; 'If 6 was 9' , who was the drummer?

L.S.D; If it takes three men thirteen days per month to walk a fortnight, how many apples in a barrel of grapes?

M; Please put these capital cities in order determined by their distance from the equator, closest first.
London, Rekyavik, Kathmandu, Tokyo, Addis Ababa, Prague, Brasilia, Paris, WashingtonD.C. Beijing. Bonus points for saying which is furthest from the North Pole.

N; Who wrote the 1995 novel, 'The Northern Lights'

O; What was The Rolling Stones first U.K. no 1 hit single? What was their first U.S.no 1 single?

P; Who were the four U.K. prime ministers in office during W.W.1. and W.W.2?

Q; Which 'Knight of the Realm' was the controller of B.B.C. 2 from 1965 - 1968?

R; Famous actor and all round attractive hunk George Clooney tried out for which U.S. baseball team? Played which character in 'South Park'? Was born on what date? And has what middle name, if any????

S; The following names are the forenames of four famous, or famous(ish) people all nicknamed 'Spike'.
Shelton Jackson; Lindley Armstrong; Terence Alan Patrick Sean; Henry Bertold.
What are their surnames?

T; Please put these U.S. presidents into chronological order.
George H.W. Bush; Grover Cleveland; Abe Lincoln; Andrew Jackson; Theo Roosevelt; Calvin Coolidge; Bill (cigar-box) Clinton; Franklin D.R. Roosevelt; James Monroe; Ulysses S. Grant.
For a bonus five points, which one had the most vice presidents serve under them.

U; What colour shirt am I currently wearing?

V; If you were to multiply together the number of legs which the following real creatures would usually have :- spider, aye-aye, human, scorpion, llama; and then divide it by the total number of heads from these mythical creatures :- cerberus, minataur, hippocamp, gorgon, sphinx, centaur; what number do you arrive at?

W; What time is it?

X; Who played King Arthur in the epic film, 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'?

Y; The following are latin names for animals. What are their common or English names?
i) ursus americanus
ii) ornithorynchus anatinus
iii) sarcophillus harrisii
iv) ursus arctos
v) phodopus cambelli
vi) cavie porcellus
vii) lemur catta
viii) procyon lotor
ix) spirogale gracilis amphiala
x) meles meles

Z; You are on a large flat surface, like an airfield. (disused). You walk 10 metres to the south, then 10 metres to the east, then 10 metres to the north, then 9 metres to the east, 10 metres to the south west, 15 metres to the north, and finally 10.6 metres to the south west to the nearest metre, how many metres are you from where you started.

Good luck everybody, you're gonna need it. Remember NOT TO CHEAT cos it took me BLOODY AGES to write this all out and then type it and do the research(?) in the first place and it'll spoil EVERYBODY'S FUN if you do. The closing date is open, probably about a week or when I'm bored or can't mark any more.....cos I'm bored or it's all too much and threatening to ruin my kids x(christ)mas. Oh and one more thing. One of the above questions is for tie break purposes only. You don't know which one it is, but I do. So you'd better try to answer them all well, cos you may end up in a dead heat with somebody and then all your imaginary prizes will vanish in a puff of apathy.

Fungus

2007-11-30T15:31:00.000Z

I'm sitting in a living room. I'm waiting for a close friend to come home from work. I'm a tiny bit bored even thought there are plenty of entertaining things to do. I just popped out to look at the foul weather and decided I couldn't stand venturing out in such inclement of atmospheric conditions. I found this unusual fungus growing under one of the trees in the garden. Can any amateur mycologists, or any laypersons indeed, tell me what it is? I'm afraid it's not a very good photo as it was quite tricky to get a hold of on my own. See what you think and let me know.

The Folding Stuff

2007-11-27T01:33:00.000Z

Today was a day off work. And what better way to spend it than in the company of the F.G. down at the nearest main shopping street to my comfy little abode.

She suffers so in the dimming of winter, (she is effectively solar powered) and so we gathered what light this drear November day could offer, and strolled abroad, about the merry folk as they yabbered in West country accents, weaving their tales of joy with old fashioned working class bonhomie to all and sundry.

I've become partially obsessed with the task of finding a cheap egg-poacher of late, and this visit to a pound shop paradise turned out to be precisely how to do it. A fiver, what a bargain! Now all my eggs will be perfect, though it has been pointed out that my cholesterol level may bump up a bit as a result. I remarked lately that I refused to go for one at a tenner, but a bluey would be the fair exchange that proves no robbery. And so, I felt duty bound to hand over the aforementioned Princely sum and scuttle off with the goods.

A mere minute or so later, barely time to explain how ecstatic I was to F.G., I found myself glancing downwards at the pavement as I walked. Hush my cotton socks and go to the foot of my stairs, if there wasn't a tenner on the deck. I stuck my foot on it, in that cool way that finding cash brings out in a miserly old scrote like myself, and swept it into my pocket. This is, after all, the payback for being so short.
Now scarcely able to put my elation into words, but able nonetheless, I strolled on hand in hand with my girl, who was expressing her wonder about how it was I always found money in the street.

Then the first pangs of guilt began. What if somebody really needed that cash? It was found with a receipt from the greatest retail outlet of them all, (Not Harrods you fools, Wilkinsons) Perhaps I should find out whose cash it was as the purchase was only a few minutes previous. I was talked out of it by the kind of common sense as used by girlfriends who are being driven mad by verbose sidekicks apparently pushed to the edge of apoplectic hysteria by a gross profit of £5 and the prospect of neater breakfasts.

I like walking about with this woman. She brings the paradox of calm insanity to my day. I feel though that we should always walk in step with each other, opposite feet treading at the same time ie. not like marching soldiers. Normally, I have to adjust my gait in order to achieve this by doing a sort of one pace skip. With this in mind on the way home, walking up the 99 steps to where my house sits atop an urban hill, amid the other jostling architecture, I contemplated all my good fortune of the afternoon so far, and could ask myself only this question.
Why is it that some people fold their arms right over left, and others left over right? Can any of you out there help in my quest for the answer to this query as there is no logic behind the answer, I fear, and it's beginning to fry my grey matter?

Lucky Me.

2007-11-21T23:47:00.000Z

I'm going to bed to read my book because I can't talk much about the predictable nature of the England football team's demise this evening. I wrote a post about the domestic violence which may take place around the country as a result of this defeat. I deleted it because though it was heartfelt enough, I don't really know what I'm talking about and perhaps that subject is so very close to so many peoples' lives I should at least do some reading or talking about it first. Suffice to say, ya basta.
I've driven myself around in circles now and but cannot just delete and run away, so I'm just filling another piece of cyber space with more conjoined phrases and thoughts. No jokes, no funny asides. I'll just keep myself to myself.
And later, when the coffee wears off and the fatigue of another day finally strokes my eyelids toward each other, I can sleep safe and sound in my womb of dreams and Western World comfort.
Lucky me.

Embarrassing A Dead Tree.

2007-11-20T21:07:00.000Z

I've written about trees and the tiny people who live and scurry about them recently.

I have an ongoing project which may end up as a blog or as a series of photos to be exhibited, assuming I could find a mug to exhibit them.

I'm gonna witter on about one tree though, because recently this tree has suffered perhaps the greatest of all indignities, and has been cut down. I am probably the last person in the world to have taken a photograph of this tree. This tree has been on television, at least once, in an adaptation of Terry Pratchet's 'Johnny and the Bomb'. I thought it looked quite healthy, though my friend who is a tree surgeon may have been able to inform me otherwise had he ever seen it in all it's arboreal splendour.

However, the shot I took of this tree was not of it's regal limbs extending into a Wintry sky, or of it's Autumnal leaves cast confetti like into a whistling wind, to sail unto some hitherto unknown destiny, perhaps to become a coracle for some pond skimming faerie folk.

No, I took a picture of it's arse, because that's the kind of guy I am.

Now, I know what some of you may be thinking. Trees, to the best of your knowledge don't have arses. Well no, in the traditional sense of the word, they do not. But neither do many things which people describe perfectly understandably as having an arse end.

And so, as if to cause this formerly grand, now reduced to council park mulch, tree embarrassment beyond it's temporal existence, here is it's bumhole.

It All Comes Flooding Back

2007-11-08T01:02:00.000Z

After a day at work and an evening spent doing a little washing and defragging the ailing and geriatric computer, I spent half an hour on the phone to my long distance lover, partner and all round top woman. I was expecting my 16 year old daughter to come back home any minute. She's been up the road gabbling with her goopy mates all evening. I thought maybe I could escape to my room as soon as she did, having said hello and goodnight. There's nothing quite like a relaxing read in the comfort of ones own bed. Or maybe I could listen to one of my bird call cds and pretend I'm on a farm in late spring surrounded by wildlife abounding.

As it is, these options were not to be open to me this evening.

My daughter is not a delicate girlie girl. She's a good kid, but can be a tad brusque and bullish at times.

She had asked if a mate could stay over tonight as well. Considering I was supposed to be having a quiet night in totally alone, this was not first choice but hey, what can you do?

So, just as I'm finishing the aforementioned phone call, in crash Daughter and Friend, another 16 year old, who I've met before.

Only this time she's rather drunk. Actually, she's totally pissed, but being a polite girl, waves absentmindedly from the sofa when I say hi.

I prepare for my retreat to the inner sanctum upstairs, but just as I'm issuing instructions for the teens part in the peaceful remainder of the evening, Friend, who has gone awfully quiet, lurches forward. And with a mighty heave, regurgitates a pot noodle and half a pint of snakebite onto my living room carpet, her lap, and the corner of the sofa.

Oh what joy!!!

A vomiting teenager. To cut a not very long story short enough to allow me some sleep tonight, I and Daughter, who is not drunk at all, spent the next hour holding this poor girl's head over a bucket whilst she did that heartrending uuuuerchhhhaaah! noise over and over again.

We've all been there, (well, most of us anyway) I suppose. I have a history which involves doses of alcohol as an emetic. At her age, I was a past master at the old Technicolour Yawn, and I wasn't always in control enough to be too fussy about where it landed. Let's face it, discretion is not top priority when you've got to call God on the Great Porcelain Phone and you just don't have the strength or coordination to get to it.

Her mum came to pick her up. It took a while to get her moving but I'm confident that she'll be ok.

And so I'm winding down in front of the revved up P.C.

Soon I'm off to bed. Far too soon after that I'm up and off to work. Soon after that, Daughter will continue the sterling efforts we have both made to render the living room odour free. Of course, that wont be possible but we have to try at least.

Goodnight everybody, and please comment with your best/worst teenage overdrinking til vomit stories.

And so....

2007-11-01T02:18:00.000Z

And so I have gone and been to another gig. The drummer from the first band was great. A throwback to what drummers should be. Tight and in their own world. As if the band they're in is just a figment of their imagination, bizarrely in time with their own bedroom/bedsit/othersideoftheworld thoughts. He only had a guitarist/singer for company as one of the guitarists couldn't turn up. Rock 'n' roll, eh.

The guys I came to see were great. Just garage rock shit of an ilk that kids get but they don't know why, and growed ups get but they forgot they did cos generally they're too busy at home watching shit or being asleep or just can't remember etc, just like I can't in general.
Yeah the bass player wore a dress. But I was usually sexier, my skirt was usually tighter. Actually, I was usually sexier, more pissed, more talented and can sing, for fucks sake.
Yeah, the songs were of a balls-out-go-for-it genre, but really everyone involved knows the old ones were so much more musically, well, musical. Didn't mean anybody came to see us or hear those songs though.

The drummer was on a planet of his own, which means the best guitar player in this city of his type is probably never gonna find a rhythm he can ingratiate without compromise.
In the end, talking to boring boys and girls out on yet another Bristol night out became dull. So here I am, talking to you guys.

Thank fuck all you guys exist. Without you, I would be asleep.

Old Gits Growing Older and Less Gracious

2007-10-31T19:39:00.000Z

I'm off out to a gig in a minute or sixty. The two main dudes of the band, a brash loud affair no doubt, were in a band with me for 11 years. I gave in because my crushed ego couldn't take it any more. They carried on cos they are less egotistical and until recently when one of them fathered a child, neither were dads.

It's gonna be a bit like watching your old girlfriend dance with her new guy. However, I shan't envy them carrying all that nasty 1960's heavy muvvafukka equipment back into the van and home.
No doubt I'll find it within my bigheaded capabilities to be able to criticise the bass player. Drummers rarely impress beyond the fact that I can't do it for real, only in my head.

The Guitarist, Sol, is the best I've ever played alongside. Nobody can stump Baz for his enthusiasm and grit, not to mention fuck off bar chord mania.
I can't be arsed with all that dressing up for Halloween either. What a grumpy old sod I've become.

No matter, a couple of beers and all will seem cordial, loud and fluffy. Let's just try to keep a lid on the hooch guzzling though. Hangovers are such a bore at work.

Walks Among the Wild Folk

2007-10-23T00:10:00.000+01:00

Not long ago, in a land called Brigstocke, I went on a journey to a faraway unusual landscape. Deep in this landscape lived a great many beautiful beings. These beings are known historically and up to this very day as 'trees'. Trees are unusual creatures in that they all huddle together. When they do so, we humans call them a 'forest' or 'wood'.

The wood is a wonderful magical arena of smells and sights many of us puny humans are not likely to witness in the third dimension, or actuality, as they are often difficult to see from the safety and seclusion of our 'sofas'.

I have included some rare photos of 'forests' to show the Lesser Spotty Couch Potato exactly what they may be missing. Look, if you will, at the variety of green colours and brown tints in just one frame.

I know, it's difficult to believe isn't it. Sometimes, deep inside these verdant playpens, it is possible to catch sight of small creatures who come to visit in order to avail themselves of the magnificence therein.On this occasion, I was lucky enough to capture a pair of such playpals, unaware of my presence, probably in some sort of trance. This is another rare and magical image of just what may be expected around any corner.

Just look at the social, almost human nature and stance of these two forest animals as they forage for food. Or at least, that's what I suppose they were up to. Oh, the misleading power that is anthropomorphosis.

I spent several hours tracking these most elusive of creatures. Every time I thought I had them pegged, they used some form of distraction technique, and just vanished into the canopy.

I tried several of my bushcraft skills to gain their confidence, until eventually, I actually got one of them to nervously take a tortilla wrap from my hand. What an incredible privilege!

This for me was proof positive that the conservation of these astonishing beasts' natural habitat is of paramount import to, not only their survival, but perhaps the benefit of all of us as we dodge the traffic and live our sedentary and oh so complex lives.

One day, when I've saved up or stolen enough of other peoples' money, I hope to return to this fantastic land, this oasis of life as we imagine in our wildest dreams.

Until then, I'll just have to gaze fondly upon these images and think of the times I spent in the company of these little hooded characters.

Glorious Food and Smug Cook of the Day

2007-10-18T19:50:00.001+01:00

An expedition to a well known supermarket that naked chefs go to is usually a glance into how the other half live. I took the glance on the off chance it would be less crowded after England got turned over by Russia.

Some of the food is bog standard, and some is kinda better looking than it's counterparts in other local outlets. There were on this occasion lots of "knockdown eat within 24 hours" fresh organic bits and bobs. I gathered many into the basket, cantered over to the wine section, grabbed a bottle and zoomed home. Being a total penny pincher, I calculated I had just got about £20 worth of good food for about £4. Result! I started tucking into the Aussie red plonk, remarkably better than the price would suggest, by way of a celebration.

I've been preparing food for three days at work. I have to say that today was the first time I've actually felt largely in control of the utterly hectic process that is fast food to order. Just cos it's fast, don't mean it's bad. There's no "Mc" about it. So today was a good day. And the sun shone bright upon the city's usual urban glower.

Once home, knowing that tomorrow is the start of my 4 day weekend, I can expend energy on other stuff. I can enjoy a languid soak in the tub. I've done my parental duty writing a covering letter to the school admissions board assertively pointing out that they must put my son into a certain school in order to preserve the quite complex family dynamic. Fat chance of them actually listening, but hey, you gotta try.

And so on to the evening meal. My boy just got a large fresh salad of mange tout, baby sweetcorn, red pepper, shredded little gem, organic vine tomato, grated carrot and courgette and onion. There was a basil garnish and olive oil and balsamic English mustard dressing. This was served with fresh spinach and ricotta tortellini and for a bit of protein a boiled free-range egg, perfectly cooked for a change, sliced and scattered over the salad. There was also a banana and strawberry bio-yoghurt milkshake with crushed ice and a dash of fresh squeezed organic lime juice. AND one of those funky bendy roller-coaster shaped straws to try to suck it through.

Bloggers and readers of the world, if you went into your local cafe/deli and sat down to this, if I may say so myself, you would probably be impressed a tiny bit. Remember, this is a child I'm cooking for here, and the reward I get is to see the plate empty and a cheery face hung over it.
Apart from that, it would set you back a prettier penny than that which I lavished upon it.

Sometimes, being a smug bastard is not wrong, you know. I believe it could also be called getting something right, enjoying doing it, and ticking one of the myriad boxes in life with vim and aplomb for a change.

Phwish, peeyoo!

2007-10-09T22:00:00.000+01:00

Just a quickie tonight. I've just been shopping and was forced into agreeing to take my 10 year old son to 'toys r us' to buy Ben 10 action figures. Being an affable and at times malleable little chap, we negotiated that I would, on this occasion, pay for one of the toys if he payed for the other one and also did the washing up, wiped down the kitchen tops, and swept the floor. 15 minutes easy work for £4 worth of toy. I don't get paid that much!! Though I have to say, if my bank balance read 1234.47 tiddlywinks I'd struggle at most retail outlets not to mention the boozer.

He did the work, we duly hit the road on the lookout for bits of shaped coloured plastic. It's his latest obsession, replacing the remarkably long lived Dr. Who bits of shaped coloured plastic. Before them it was Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean. The list is seemedly endless.

However, he gets great mileage out of these things and so keeps himself to himself playing all over the place. Whatever happened to conkers? And those hoops for rolling along the lane with a stick that would see road calamity in the modern era?

He keeps himself to himself in all aspects except one. He can't stop making all the dialogue for these guys. His Dalek impersonation is reaching folklore proportions at school I imagine. Fair enough, you can't build a plot with no dialogue terribly easily. And believe me, there is one hell of a plot going on in his multi-faceted mind of cartoonesque mayhem. And alongside the dialogue, he does all the onomatapoeic movement and action noises too. Phwish! is his all time favourite. Peeyoo! runs a reasonable second place. Pbbwwuurggh! for explosions and so on until my throat would hurt. His goes on from dawn 'til dusk on some days.

Tonight, I said he could get the thingies out of the packet in the car. As soon as the noise of crunching packaging stopped, the action began, opening with, of course, Phwish as the latest alien jettisons onto the arena of good verses evil to which it has been assigned. I fought back the tears of mirth as I drove down to a supermarket to shop for far less exciting things. I made him leave the toys in the car. He really is an absolute pest with them supermarkets. Intergalactic hostilities among the cornflakes threatening collateral damage across aisle 23, the jam section. A sticky conflict that could turn out to be, I can tell you.

Still, it's all in his head. He never displays any violence anywhere real, which is a blessing. Like him really, the greatest blessing I ever had bestowed upon me, my wacky, weird baby.

Now the wacky weird baby's oddball dad must go, off to make an important phone call. Wish me luck. Bye.

PHWISSSHHH!

My Goddess Moon

2007-09-27T00:03:00.001+01:00

My beautiful lover the moon
Is my Goddess
Framed by a pallid sky
She draws me into the cold of night
My gaze upon her argent allure is brief
I am shamed by her piercing stare.
It looks straight through my skin.
She leaves moon sized scars of moonlight
Patterns repeated in my moonmind's eye.

Raise The Nation's Children.

2007-09-23T23:34:00.000+01:00

If you have a problem
You know that it shows
Don't tell me your problem
I don't really want to know
Carry your problem
'Til you break down to your knees
And beg the world you're living in
For pity and forgiveness
Mercy, mercy help you out
You have the shoulder the world cries on
You have raised the nation's children
And fought all of the wars
Now it's time to rest
Forget about the cause you believe in.

Your back is unbroken
Your heart beats fast and strong
There're voices crying inside your head
And they cry loud and woefully long
They cry from the cauldron
Of messages left unsaid
They fill the space between in and out
And bleed from the halo circling your head.

Sometimes

2007-09-23T23:28:00.000+01:00

"I have of late- but wherefore I know not- lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises; and, indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this mighty o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire; why it appears no other thing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving, how express and admirable in action, how like an angel in apprehension, how like a God! The beauty of the world, paragon of animals; and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me, no, nor women neither, nor women neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so."

W.Shakespeare.
Hamlet
Act II Scene II

My Glittering Career.

2007-09-19T00:50:00.000+01:00

I was going to write a piece about how moving to a new job today has made my work life not only more bearable, but downright exciting. I'm afraid that upon the evidence of my first day, that post will never be forthcoming. I've been disappointed many times in my life, but today I received a stark reminder of how easy it is to try something slightly different to further your life just a tad, and feel it really may have been a total waste of time.
So, without further ado, the positive aspects are as follows;

1 At least I tried, though not too hard.

2 My new working buddies are nice enough people, and one of them may even be able to teach me how swear in Russian since he hails from Latvia and that's his first language. This should come in handy when England lose to them (Russia)in the Euro cup qualifier on the plastic pitch.

3 The day seemed to go quite quickly because there wasn't a moment to rest.

4 All the food there is healthy, so should I choose to eat any of it, I may lose a few pounds or enjoy the flavour. This is an improvement on the last job which mainly sold chips to drongoes.

5 Having a shite working environment gives one the kick up the arse one may need to get a real job that pays enough to afford to eat in the type of establishment one currently works.

6 It made me realise that moaning about things just eventually leads full circle back to the fact that I live in the Western world with what's left of a welfare state so I only have to work part time in order to have a few of the basics in life that humans should globally have. There're one fuck of a lot of people out there on this planet who do not have those basics and never will, and they still have to work very hard indeed to afford what they do have.

Aaaaaaaand here are the downsides;

1 Thought of the day "If I have to wash one more fucking plate whilst stood on my aching feet in the forgotten corner of some sweaty striplit rabbithole up to my elbows in greasy lukewarm water whilst being forced to endure the aural soul destruction that is radio fucking one with it's smarmy fucking D.J.s playing music, 75% of which is aimed at emotionally retarded 14 year olds, arresting the extension of my personal growth boundaries with all the resilience usually associated of 16 foot thick reinforced concrete wall when under attack from a tooth pick, then I will seize power forthwith using violence and a lack of fairness to my fellow man that would make Robert Mugabe wince, crushing the system which has put me in a situation I find depressing enough to actually want an innocent passer by to toot their car horn at me whilst I'm on my bike so I can forcibly decapitate them and feed their grey matter to the nearest fat bastard fucking disease-ridden pigeon walking wobbly headed past the scene."

2 There's no number 2 because number 1 was so all encompassing in it's headfuckyness, it took me all day til I was home, washed, fed, and had tucked my son into his bed before I could really think past it.

So there!

I don't feel any better for that rant. Neither has it secured me an interview for a new position as an overpaid under worked member of society. It really is nobody's fault but mine that I'm in this predicament. Nobody else will remove me from it, it's all down to me. That's a bit depressing, because I have a tremendous aptitude for apathy an even utter laziness.

Where is my metaphoric knight in shining armour.

Perhaps their jobs were cut as part of a necessary downsizing of metaphorical heroes due to unforeseen financial instability. Maybe they all have jobs like mine now and are currently decrying them in front of a computer.

Oh well, maybe if I play my cards right, I could move on and one of them could have my job.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRGGHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Kitchen Pig Has Left The Building!

2007-09-19T00:46:00.000+01:00

A job is a job, it's been said. There is a singular straight philosophy to that which is hard to argue against. However, like all aspects of human life, once past the simplistic, the complex begins. Today, I have stopped working at the place I have worked for almost three years. It was not a first choice to begin working there to start with. My last job ended with wages owed. There was anger and disappointment. I needed another one fast, and as is often the case, haste produces a certain lack of choice, a removal of the type of logic we would all use if given the time to use it.

I wonder what next week holds in store for me.

Garden

2007-09-13T17:53:00.000+01:00

These are a few images of a few flowers I grew in my garden this year.
The thing about growing stuff is that nobody has ever grown those molecules and atoms and all that tiny stuff in exactly that way before. Sure, millions of people have grown billions of plants but not these plants. These are MY PLANTS. I GREW THEM. They belong to me in a way that they do not belong to anybody else. By a similar token, they do not belong to anybody because, though I helped them burst into life by nurturing them with water etc, they grew themselves really. It's not like I had to go out there and tell them which way the sun is or how to suck up nutrients from the soil. I reckon they had that bit covered pretty well themselves.

And so this beautiful lily

and it's white friends and the gladiolus above have brought colour and pulchritude into my space without any noticable effort on their part. I may be doing them a diservice. It may be incredibly hard to grow if you're a plant, who knows, except of course Prince Charles who has been listening to them for years.
This isn't Prince Charles, not even on a bad day. This is actually a sky monster who flew over my garden to have a look at it because it was so gorgeous.

It popped in for a chat as well. Of course, like all monsters it couldn't shut up once it got onto the subject of it's own attempts at cultivating roses for various village fayres to which it flies nationwide. I wish it would come back, I lent it my spare planting trowel. Don't suppose I'll ever see that again.

Where's The Space

2007-09-12T01:27:00.000+01:00

Melt with the sound
Feel my way round
I'm lost but I've found
There are many ways up
And as many ways down
Where's the ground?
Where's the ground?
Where's the ground?
Where's the ground?

Gathering pace
Stealing your face
I'm taking your place
And I'll leave with no trace
Yes I'll leave with no trace
Where's the space?
Where's the space?
Where's the space?
Where's the space?

I can remember
A time in the future
When a truer way of being wasn't so far forward.
Got a real sort of feel
To the background confusion.
Cross the devide to the dangerous side
I can push out the boat
Take my world by the throat
And let it breathe all it's powers for free.
Having got to the part
Of my own pounding heart
Which will feed the emotional animal I call me.

It's been scattered through my life.
An awkward feeling that I cannot understand.
Has it happened in your life?
An awkward feeling that you cannot understand?

Where's the sound?
Where's the place?
Where's the ground?
Where's the space?

Back

2007-09-12T01:03:00.000+01:00

How wrong I am
To think a smile could be overpriced
It's almost free.
I took the scam
Shut off where anyone else
Could not see through to me.
I saw the game
As just surviving the next attack
It helped to be
One step behind
Just kinda drifting around the pack
Observing one rule
Watch your back!

Run away from your problems
They'll catch you you'll see
And wherever they find you
They'll haunt you.
Control and envelop you
'Til they
Break your back.

I'm checking in
To some emotional halfway house
Of my design.
I'm checking out
The possibilities from the chaos
That is my mind.
Is it a fact
That cornered animals always fight
Right to the last
And if I am
The beast inside of me
It's the only course of action
Just fight back.

Run away from your problems
They'll catch you you'll see
And wherever they find you
They'll haunt you
Control and envelop you
'Til they
Break your back

As it transpires
I am the curtain that hides my own
Mortality
Do I require
Eyes in the back of my head to see
What I might see
To know the task
Is not to hide in the shadows cast
By my own fear
Fear of fear itself
Because therein lies a madness
Madness that I know can
Break my back.

A Rock and A Hard Place

2007-09-12T00:18:00.000+01:00

Round peg, square hole
Made to measure for a life on the dole.
Not the part you wanted, why turn up for the audition?
Your other self sees you fall to the ground
Glassy eyes buried in a deepening frown
In a play with a terrible script
Grabbed by the gaze that has all of us gripped.

That other self can't see through to your head and your heart
That's what you get when they say go
And even if you get the drift
You must get out and
Steal the show.

I can lie when it seems
It get me closer to a realised dream.
But the nightmares might be coming back to frighten me. (HA ha ha, he he he)
And the night time thoughts are the worst,
Tear me apart with the boredom and thirst
Stare at the wall, push ideas from my being
It's not another life, it's just another way of seeing.

The lost ideas that have escaped from my head and my heart.
Nobody knows where they all g-g-g-go.
Maybe they hide away inside
And come around to
Rewrite the show.

It's been a while since lost ideas I'd like to
Come my way
Have sprung into my head and given me the
Strength to say
I live , I breathe, I love, I feel. I have the
Right to claim
A bright idea with second sight when it's so
Painfully plain.

It's obvious I'll fall apart if every
Piece of crap
Replaces opportunities that fall in-
-To my lap
Give too much credence to the bullshit factor
What's the crack.?
Right now the moment is upon me get them
Off my back.

It ain't right if I try
To take an image from another mind's eye
Then change it round and warp it in my own peculiar fashion
Cos that just makes me bitter and choked
My own worst enemy right at my throat
Reminds me that I can be right for this play
As long as I don't let the bullshit get in the way

Of lost ideas that have escaped from my head and my heart
Now that I know where they all go.

Touch

2007-09-11T23:51:00.000+01:00

In front of my face I see a story unfold
And then behind me, I see the hopes and they hold
Dearer. But I listened to tales
Of a different nature, and that's where I failed.
Not that I'm saying I never began
To be the male part of that woman/man
Experience, just soaking it up
Til my ego overflowed like a cup
Underwater. Well that is my sign.
Jumping about to the rhythm or rhyme
Or the 'thud, thud ,thud' that's a troubled head
Shoulda been paying attention to my heart instead.
But not me, I ain't done enough yet
Can't put a time on commitment or set
An agenda for life and it's trials.
Then it's 'bye-bye' There go the smiles.

Sink to the ground, bit by bit
See it swallow me up just a deep, deep,
Deeper despair. The interior
Lost self esteem makes you feel so inferior.
Sour grapes and delusions of grandeur
Don't tell people, so why should they understand ya
Don't give in, you know you've gotta relate
You've gotta listen, gotta learn
To put it all on a plate.
Then it's back to the heart where emotion is born
Temporary pain had sadly deformed.
And that negative/positive feeling had gone
But it's back now and I've got to hang on
To that love,
Ooh there's a buzz that goes with it hand in glove
Complex. Pure. Honest. Real.
Just touch, and you're beginning to feel.

In front of my face I see a life at it's start
Now I've got to be honest, put my hand on my heart
And say 'Look! It's a beautiful thing
That our temporal nature can help us all bring
Inner strength that can travel in waves
Pushing boundaries of personal growth to a stage
Where it weeps from your every pore
Get the picture, as pure as before
But it's changed,
Or have I? Or perhaps my perceptions have all rearranged
To a form only time can explain
Like the pleasure or pain
Which are simply devices we humans can use to find Love
Life and the buzz that goes with it, hand in glove.
Complex. Pure. Honest. Real. Just touch.

Orificial

2007-09-11T23:41:00.000+01:00

How do you do Mr. Nice Policeman
How do you do what you must think you must
With the people in down No. Ten
Their heads all turned in shame and pure disgust
Whose desperate measures have called on you
Your morals drowned in seas of spite
Your ideals sold for bloodstained gold
A force beyond the peoples' might

A day in devil's deeds begins
The gloom protectors draped in blue
A mist will shroud your naked sins
With words of fire I'll murder you.

Whose feet are sure on wicked means
In strong defence of hell's own ends
The day of your reckoning has yet to arrive
Your own survival now depends
On those who seek to save your soul
For what it's worth now you've stooped so low
To stamp on your rekindled hopes
By dealing out your wicked blow

And when the day is over soon
You'll sleep in brave innocence at night
Your poisoned offspring by your side
You'll kill them too, when the time is right.

The Hook

2007-09-11T23:21:00.000+01:00

Here's the hook! It's a self made miracle.

Coming to you to break through your own manacle.

Cloud and clutter and pain and suffering

Once you're in no room for no guessing game.

Feels like fire in ice cold veins

It's your party are you glad you came?

Music pumping up and pushing in sideways

Forward movement, squeeze like icing

Hope the cake is all that you never had

Fresh as the last thought that you have ever had

Jumping the queue for the roller-coaster

Passing other people as you roll over.

Turn to smile at the passive faces

All like mine, we've just changed places

Bumping on a track without an ending

Quicker than thought, but more mind bending

Just for a moment you're upside-down

Giving you a feeling that you're part of a sound

Take a warning, gonna be a firestorm

Inside, gotta get it under control

You've got savage ideas with no understanding

Building a life on advice but no plan

Take heart, take part, make a start

You know that you can handle it.

How do I feel, it's a fantasy world

Buzzing around me putting fears in my soul

Didn't quite get what there was to be gathered

Grabbing at life, there there it's all better

Putting my heart out for all to be seen

Massive rush in just to prove I'm as green

And as young as I'd ever have feared

Check my horizons to see if they've cleared

But no, there's the clutter again

Dragging me down like the virus within

Us all, I could make myself cry

Mindbomb, boom! Still dunno why

The unacceptable has to be heard

The unacceptable feelings and words

I don't want to hear but they can't be ignored

Cos to get where I am I'd have done that before

This point, where I sit and I say

Things I might understand in a different way.

Einstein

2007-09-11T17:15:00.000+01:00

Lay awake in a darkened room
Did I speak out too soon?
Did I say what I said?
Got an idea in my brain
I'm the wrong side of insane
And I can't hold back my head.

Now I've been talkin' jive with Einstein
And me and him's got the future all sorted out.
Yeah, I've been talkin' jive with Einstein,
And now I know I'm left without no doubt

'Bout the ways of the mind
And the way that your mind
Kinda leaves my mind
Way behind
And I'm standing in line
Behind those I can't find.
Like good meets bad
And I shoulda had
A voice saying "Boy,
You're gonna go mad
If you're so sad
You just can't spot the signs"

Now the room looks like it's grown
And I'll sit here all alone
But that's just how it goes.
Well the penny is about to drop
When all the moving pieces stop
And the truth and lies will show.

Now I don't talk that much with Einstein
'Cos me and that guy just don't see eye to eye.
No I don't want to talk with Einstein
And watch my life just gently go floating by.

'Cos when the shit hits the fan
Then me and the man
Are gonna make sparks
Like only we can
And the world around us
Might just catch alight.
But 'till that time
I'm standing in line
Just waiting for things
To turn out fine
And hoping dreams come true
And they just might.

Glastonbury;The Last Rites

2007-09-05T01:01:00.000+01:00

'Nothing quite like it for cooling the blood' Oh Flanders and Swann, how much fun would they have had with the phenomenon that is the 21st century mega music etc festival.

What can I say that hasn't been said by many after this year, and 2005 and all the other mud encrusted years down the line. It didn't ruin it, but FUCK ME SIDEWAYS, how much better is a music/arts/drugs/people/gathering/dance/everything festival when the sun is out. The photo here is proof that the sun did come out. This is it going down, a sunset on Solstice. I will always enjoy watching the sun setting.

I've had a couple of months to let all the memories fade into the kind of haze necessary to be my memories. Sort of confused, sort of tiny soundbites. They are like my dreams in that respect because I rarely remember my dreams in any massive detail. Shame because so few are nightmares of any genuine proportion. One nightmare though is where I'm in a field surrounded by people and everybody is wading through 6 inches of mud. Ah!

There is a human need it seems to say 'I was there' about many events. I've done it myself and am very glad I saw the poll tax riots, big festival stuff. I'm actually glad I heard Babyshambles because now I can categorically state the Pete Docherty is a thoroughly talentless cunt, which I would, with extraordinary venom, point out to him if he were in this room now. I wish now I'd been close enough to mud-chuck the twat off stage. In years to come, I may be happy that I listened to Bjork from a distance having suitably revitalized myself for Fat Boy Slim but disallowed myself from attending thanks to the appropriate 'byerk, byerk' sounds from my beautiful but puking girlfriend. I'm so very glad though that I was there watching the rediculous post-punk/still punk phenomenon that is Iggy Pop. I'm sure I'm not alone on that one.

It's still the big event on the calendar for many furry folk and kids and capitalistic opportunists. But evolution can turn the comely countenance that is bizarre free-form weirdness into the ugly physiognomy I have witnessed in part this time around.

I had plenty of laughs considering what piss miserable weather it was to be living in a tent. I saw a few bands through the usual wall of people taller than me, (which is virtually everybody) but if anybody ever says it's the same as previous decades, they lost the plot very badly in those previous decades and perhaps struggle to know what decade it is now. Sure, many things are the same. But it's all put together in an organised modern and leviathan package which flies in the face of the spontaneity and out of leftfield world which are it's roots.

I feel like a moaning old wanker just complaining that the world isn't what it used to be and desperate for somebody to give me the keys to the TARDIS so I can go back and witness those glory years again. But the thing is, I also know very well that I would find some of that boring as well. It's a sad part of my life that maybe I'm just not the kind of person to have done all the habitual and recreational drug stuff and still have the energy left to enjoy life for what it is on a minute by minute basis. I knew before I went that after an absence of 14 years that it was inevitable that I would compare the old days with the new. I tried not to, but it just kept throwing itself into my path like a suffragette in front of the king's horse. But I suppose that is the curse of any life. None of us get younger and we have no choice but to experience things and then compare them to things we have previously experienced. That is the essence of a life spent with eyes periodically wide open. There are alternatives, I don't think I'd prefer them.

The Holiday Is Almost Gone

2007-08-31T23:06:00.000+01:00

I've slacked off a bit lately. Taken time off work, got out into the weird and wonderful countryside. Party times and wild woolly Moorland chill. I've not been that cold in bed in August for as long as I can remember, and that's because I may never have been that cold in bed in August.I'm still slacking now and so tales of wild ponies and last over victories and 172 year old fires and can-can dancers and pink fur and cocktails must wait until my creative self awakes from slumber following it's activity (and spacious behavior) fuelled week.

Some around me are lacking energy too. Soon I start a new job. Before then, my son goes back to school and my daughter goes to a new college. Soon they will move other house again, and fresh new foecal matter splatters haphazard into the air conditioning. The plucky little ship on the High Seas that is sometimes my family life will stir gently as more unpredictable ripples disturb the surface of the water, becoming less easily navigable. But it's spirit is never daunted, course bound still to a chart which unfolds ahead of it as it happens and not a moment before.

Rounding up the last rites of summer and looking onto equinox is the next task. I will need sleep and a clear mind. But I have no desire to sleep early, or clear my mind of wistful thoughts of distant loves and lives. I want to stay awake and let them wash through me again.

So it is not necessarily folly to fill my head with recent events, listen to my garden live around me, and wait for tomorrow in small, easily handled chunks.

Something for the weekend, Sir!

2007-08-23T00:21:00.000+01:00

Organised games with much tomfoolery to boot. That's what's about to jump in front of me this weekend.

At last a long weekend with the promise of that cheery co-pilot, Sunshine.

In all, it's influence throughout this inclement summer has been covert to say the least. Some doubt remained as to whether I would ever witness the casting of a midday shadow again.Would I feel the need for a shady tree, except to scuttle under it like a lizard when amidst the raindrops.

My game is a weather dependent activity. To sail across seas you need more than a whisper of a breeze. To ski, one requires the otherwise terrible inconvenience of snow.

For my game the sun has to shine so that grass grows, then be cut short and warped from it's untidy nature, trained and becalmed. Tamed.

Rain. It is a necessity. But it has made a summer into a drear affair so far. It's going to take some hardcore burn-me bank holiday rays to redeem itself.

That's what this weekend is about for me and my beautiful son. Sunshine, people, communication, friends, tents, fire, fancy dress, country air.

Cricket.

Fresh Strawberries; Get 'em While They're 'ot!

2007-08-14T19:28:00.002+01:00

Well, I can tell you, that was one of the more bizarre moments of my life up to that point. After such exertions it was quite obvious that I was going to require alcohol to calm the nerves. That or valium. In the absense of the latter, alcohol was going to have to suffice.

I love the smell of large sea going vessels. It's a mixture of diesel, fresh sea air, cheap scent from the duty free and cleaning products. I have no idea in which quantities. Perhaps I could get the olfactory talents of Giuseppe Baldini (so well played by Dustin Hoffman) from the film 'Perfume' to sprinkle some on a kerchief and diagnose. I love also the anticipation of going somewhere, a feeling of movement exemplified and accentuated by the gentle roll of an unstabilized ferry leaving port. I now had the task of settling down to a 10 hour boat trip. Once in the bar, looking fairly conspicuously different from many of my fellow travellers, I camouflaged myself behind a pint and began breathing sighs of relief.

Before too long, similar questions to those experienced on the train journey were asked. The groggy moggies were slowly beginning to stir once in a while. One of the people who was asking was a woman, about twenty-something. We chatted for a bit before we were rudely interrupted by the eeyuk-eeyuk sound of vomiting from one of the baskets. Oh yeah, just my luck! A seasick cat! I excused myself and went off to the toilet to cope admirably. Easier said than done. I had to clean up the puke from the cat blanket, simultaneously holding the cat now attempting somnambulistic escape. Everytime another passenger came into the loo, all this had to be conducted with soothing go-back-to-sleep voice spoken through a fixed grin resembling a donkey looking over a whitewashed paling fence. I am nothing if not a resourceful cat juggler, and thus I extricated myself from this predicament with a modicum of self respect still intact and no regurgitated Whiskas on my shirt. It was touch and go for a while.

Once back at the bar, surely I could relax into a conversation. The bar was filling slowly with a compliment of amused bystanders all with that look of 'I'm glad I'm not in his shoes' about them. The young woman I had been talking to was still there looking after the other cat basket. We'll call this woman Kate so as
a) not to reveal her true identity and
b) not to reveal my lack of memory.

Kate lived in Wales on the Gower Peninsular. We chatted about that, some inconsequentialities, some places we'd both been and what I should do with the nineteen tabs still stashed in my boot. I was tired, getting a tiny bit drunk, and beginning to stress up. My mind began working on silly 'What If' scenarios such as 'What if the coppers in Swansea were having second thoughts or were strategically letting me on the boat to catch me off my guard?'
'What if they've phoned Irish Customs and tipped them off as to their obvious suspicions?' Oh how the addled brain began working paranoic overtime. It was time to hatch a cunning plan. And so I contrived to wrap the contraband with whatever I could find to make them as water tight as possible, and neck the lot just before disembarking on Irish soil. Sound thinking, Dude! Hey, the worst thing that could happen is that they open up and I'm Zapped beyong Zargon, Munted to Mergatroid. A week long excursion to Pallookaville to converse with the tiny people whilst up a mountain in Ireland. Could be worse. So I wrapped them in a sticky label from a previous airline tag and waited til a short distance from the Coast before knocking them back. I bought some duty free vodka so I could drink that neat to help make myself vomit once past customs.

Irish customs on this day consisted of one diminutive chap, no moustache, in a wonky hat looking more tired than I did. He largely ignored everybody, including me.

Aha! It began to dawn on me that I had perhaps been somewhat over-zealous regarding my original plan of extreme furtiveness. Such obsession with covert behavior was less than required. In short, downright unnecessary. So off to the port dunny I went for a quick voddy and vomit. Could I regurgitate anything? Empirically, could I feck! I tried fingers down the throat, thinking of Margaret Thatchers sweaty arse, more vodka, imagining I was eating mouldy cheese and pickle sandwiches, more fingers for longer periods of time, more vodka but no more Tory arses cos once in a lifetime is enough for any sane human.

Nothing. Nil. Nowt.

"Great Scott!" I exclaimed most perturbed. How remiss to not have a contingency plan. I had arranged to get picked up at port by my ex/girlfriend and anyone she could coax into driving as she never learnt. They were late. This was pre-mobile days. I'd have to wait. As I'd promised her a lift to the interior somewhere, Kate patiently waited with me and the cats, who were now fully awake, hungry, and occasionally mewling in tones of increasing ire. An hour passed. Where the feck were the useless hippy wasters? They turned up in, wait for it, a Citroen 2CV. For those not familiar with the 'je-ne-sais-quoi' appearence of a 2CV, imagine a large corrugated rusty baked bean can with a small spindly wheel at each corner. Were there just two occupants? No! Not on your Nelly were there. Already four. FOUR!! How many hippies does it take to drive this tin crate? Do we have to pedal it or run like the Flintstones?

So here we all were at a deserted ferry port, two pathetic caged malkins, my ex, three of her 'just along for the ride' mates (all stoned which is why they were late), a very bemused Kate now probably wishing she wasn't putting her safety in our collective grubby hands, me, paranoid that I can feel the ground turning more marshmallow by the minute somehow combining a slur with a gibber the vague subject being chemists and syrup of figs, and a clapped out French car of dubious design and minuscule proportion to squeeze every last one of this exceedingly motley crew into.

We set off in milky sunshine, faces pushed up against windows, this poor old charabang straining in low gears across Ireland's rural south. For those of you who have never been to The Emerald Isle, the roads resemble Moon Base Alpha, a bit bumpy to say the least.
As planned, we shopped for strong laxatives along the way. Everybody knew why, so I was encouraged to take a dose. I did. Now, I don't know about you, dear reader, but my digestive/bowel system works quite well without help. With herbal encouragement, like a dream. Or actually more akin to a nightmare. Well nobody told me what dosage was enough, so I may have approached it with some largess. We arrived at the mountain just in time. My stomach was tightening like a duck's arse in a force ten gale. Toilets? Oh no! Just a quiet spot on a mountain river bank. A pleasant place to shit out the entire contents of ones bowels. And there, in the middle of the midden, encased in gelatinous syrup of figs coloured goo, were nineteen wrapped strawberry acid tabs.

RESULT!!!

I sold them all, one of them immediately to a member of the 2CV crew, others purveyed around the scattered mountainside collection of self-exiled English travellers and hippies. I probably made enough profit to cover the laxatives and the vodka. I've never possessed much in the way of business acumen, but life isn't always about an emolument. It's just memories once the events have taken place.

Cats on Drugs?: A Moustache Investigates.

2007-08-02T02:07:00.000+01:00

Many moons ago, when myself, the World, and even Cilla Black were younger, I took a journey. It was a journey through space and time. No, I haven't been on the cane toads again, travelling through space and time is not as unusual as you would at first think. I mean, how many of you out there in my extensive readership have ever taken a journey that wasn't through space and time (unless you were on a Virgin train in rush hour). Have you ever gone on one which left you exactly where and when you started? Unlikely. That's just called 'being' Anybody can 'be' Where's the skill in that? Anybody of course except the dead. They just have a monopoly on 'were' They own the past tense in a way us living creatures just can't quite muster. Anyway, that's all just nonsense really, especially the bit about Cilla Black.

No, this journey was an errand. In fact it was a collection of errands. If I had been a spy or somesuch, I would have been offered a flat overlooking Red Square for this. I would have refused it. Not for any reasons involving altruism, it's just that I don't speak a word of Russian, I despise hanging around in queues, and I have a moral objection to wearing fur. The tasks I had set myself were simple enough. You may recall if you are Rexperienced, that I shared my life with cats once upon a time. There were quite a few of them. During a period of upheaval, also partly skimmed over, I relinquished my responsibility to a couple of them. I wasn't proud of the way I dealt with that situation, but I have always hoped that they went to good homes via the Cats Protection League and not ended life as a rather comfy pair of fur lined slippers. Two of the mogs were taken over by the ex-girlfriend who had shared them with me. Since we'd busted up, itself a longer than usual process, she had been on her own bizarre journey of self-enlightenment, self escapism and torment mixed together in a confusing cocktail which I was forced to imbibe on occasion, mainly though not entirely, through gritted teeth. She had eventually moved to Ireland during this period, leaving the cats in the care of a self-confessed sculptor and lunatic. Determined to make up some lost ground on Brownie points with Bastet, the Egyptian Cat Goddess, I accepted the charge of transporting the pussies over to The Emerald Isle.

My travels began in Bristol. I had a long day and night ahead, one which was going to be hindered by cats in baskets that didn't want to be in baskets. They yowl horribly when captive, so I took what I considered to be the kindest way for them, and filled them full of sedatives. What they lose in dignity and conciousness, they gain by not being scared, confused, vicious, multi-weaponed pains in the arse. I piled them into a taxi in order to get to the train station. Taxi drivers being licenced latter day highwaymen, there was a sudden claim of a surcharge for animals. Well, he did have a weed habit to support, so I surrendered the extra few quid. Once on the train, the cooing grannies and staring children asked all the relevant and obvious questions, to which were given the same simple and polite answers. 'Oh, about 18 months I think' 'Yes, ever since it was a kitten' 'Well fairly often, but the carpets quite old anyhow' How long was a sarcastic, facetious bastard like me going to be able to keep up this facade of truth and affable charm? Well, the train only takes 90 minutes to Swansea, so I didn't crack under the interrogation and remained urbane until it was time to alight.

Next, another taxi ride, no surcharge this time, proving as I at first had thought, the bullshit-o-meter did not need recalibrating. And so I hustled into Swansea dock on time to embark on an arduous 10 hour ferry journey to Cork. Now, I'd been this way before a number of times. Virtually every occasion upon which I'd walked past a certain Customs copper, he'd pulled me over for a little chat. Maybe it was the locks, (mine, not his, you lemon) or the rehearsed but never perfected look of fake innocence. Perhaps it was the 'Pigs die! Fuck pigs!' T shirt I'd bought cheap off a slaughterhouse necrophiliac (a less than wise move under any circumstances) . Who can be sure? Not me for a kick off, but two things were sure. Dolly Parton floats on her back, and this moustachioed butt-wipe jobsworth was gonna yank my collar yet again.
"Where are you going then?"
(Brain to Mouth, Brain to Mouth. DON'T BE SARCASTIC!!!)
"Erm... Ireland."
Sgt. Lipfuzz peers into cat carriers at comatose felines.
"What's in the baskets then?"
(Brain to Mouth, Brai... I KNOW, I KNOW)
"Well.. I reckon they're cats" (Ooohhh, bollox!!)
The Sarge, now smiling like a chess master about to pull his best ploy. "Passport? Right, wait there!"
He strode off in a sub-nasally hirsute sort of fashion and returned a minute later to announce the dreaded "Come with me!"
I went and sat in a near-featureless white room containing, amongst other furniture, the traditional two chairs each side of a desk. After the preliminary questions about name, reason for trip and all that shit, he began intimating his suspicions as to the hand carried livestock cargo, which he hadn't allowed me to take into the room. I reiterated that there were just cats in there and that they were probably best left undisturbed. His mustache twitched like an antennae picking up dodgy hippie vibes.
He could leave the mogs to the other cops out of view. I had visions of two sleepy cats being sat in white rooms whilst two big tabby hi-vis jacketed Customs grimalkins posed them a series of meows designed to trick them into a confession. They'd probably try to soften them up with the good mog/bad mog routine, nice bowls of warm milk, woolly jumper to knead, little stroke under the chin then just as you begin to purr.... GOTCHA!! You're coughing up secrets faster than furballs in molting season. I know the drill, diabolical psychological torture. It was gonna be tough for them not to break. I had every faith. Those years in the Marines (mascot, 1st class) were gonna stand them in good stead.

Back in the white room, Sgt. Bogeycatcher played his trump card.
"We're going to conduct a strip search" he announced matter-of-factly. "Remove all of your clothing one by one and hand them to the other officer."
"O.K." I said and proceeded to do so. Constable Other started feeling around my still warm discarded garments, including a very good up-side-down shake of my crusty para boots. Now this sort of behavior by rozzers is the part of the sequence of events which they feel is where embarrassed crooks wishing to hide their shortcomings may bottle out. They did not know at this or any stage of the game that I was an experienced life model. I'd been stark-bollock naked in front of whole rooms full of artists of both genders, all ages, and several sexual persuasions. In short, I didn't care a Tinker's Cuss for their assumed position of ascendancy. I began to care when a 'teenth of slate fell out of one of my socks and rolled conspicuously to a halt in the centre of the cheaply carpeted floor. Oh dear. Oh deary dear. Deafening pins could be heard dropping all around the three of us. Sgt. Soupsieve rose in his chair, looked at the blim now placed on the well lit table, and asked "So, what's this then?" I leaned forward to take a closer look, paused and replied "Looks like a piece of hashish to me"

The wheels were in motion. New and more numerous bits of paper came out from a nearby cabinet. I was asked to give up all my details which I did whilst explaining that I really did need to get on this boat and did he really want to be responsible for two cats when they woke up. Still he banged on about the baskets. He started the arrest process, blah blah intent to transport illegal contraband blah.. and then, perhaps in an epiphany, stopped speaking and left the room. The silence between me and Con. Other was leaden. Had I offended him in some way? Now seated, I scratched my divested scrotum, and patiently refolded my arms. When Sgt. Clittickler returned, he sat, cautioned me about the pot, and said that the ferry was just about to haul up the gangplank and if that I wanted to get on it I'd better be dressed and out of that room in 60 seconds. I managed it in around 53, grabbed the furry fiends, and scurried in quick, short steps aboard.

All I kept thinking as the large and protective doors slammed behind me, putting an end to the surreal close shave I had just encountered, was this. 'Thank feck they didn't search my boots properly. They might have found the acid!'

Nemesis Week. Angels in the Night

2007-07-27T12:25:00.000+01:00

July 18/19, 1992. The band I was in got a gig at a mate's birthday party. This mucker was at the time hanging with those cheery cheeky chaps collectively known as Hell's Angels. Aren't they lovely, all great big cuddly bunnies with Santa Claus smiles. Permanently full of the joys of spring but with guns under the floorboards. However, on this auspicious occasion, we were the troubadours and they supplied the barrel of farmhouse cider. Armed with a Transit and musical instruments, we rattled off into the Mendip Hills. Upon arriving we discovered that, silly lads that we were, we had left the picnic hamper on the veranda at home. What a bally oversight! Sensing our chagrin, and to stop us from getting hungry, the Angels also gave us that trusted old relative Uncle William to look after. We looked after him well by immediately sheltering him up our noses. Keen but amateur mycologists that we were however, we had remembered to pack a few samples from the previous autumn which had been partly spent scouring the damp Somerset ground for pixie hats. If the cap fits, trip over it.

Picture the scene. Four guys in a band playing swirling psychedelia and mashing monstrous punk metal. The stage is a six berth canvas ridge tent, circa 1966, on a gentle slope. Scattered around this archaic edifice are scary, mind altered, hairy-arsed grizzled old bikers in the gloom, and that was just the women. Virtually none of them paid the slightest attention to the racket we were making but insisted that we shouldn't discontinue. And so, as music be the food of love, and discretion is the better part of valour, we played on until our fingers went numb. We drank heartily of the barrel, smoked ourselves hoarse and awaited the dawn.

Dawn broke the damp cold over the Eastern horizon. It provided the lighting for the next bizarre spectacle. Bonnet skiing. The bonnet is removed from a car and is then attached to the tow bar by a length of rope, say about 30 feet. The car is then driven at break-neck pace around the environs by an inebriate with scant regard for health and safety regulations. A 'skier' is sat on the upside-down bonnet. He remains on the 'ski' until death or gravity plays it's part. On this day, the 'skier' was chased closely by an Alsatian which was quite obviously being driven apoplectic by all the jolly old high jinks.

Being of a tidy disposition and wishing to play no part even as a spectator to this mayhem, I left the danger behind and began picking up the inevitable litter now strewn about the place. I had been doing so for a while, minding my own business, when the deranged dog appeared from behind a parked car. Ignoring the usual etiquette of a warning growl, it advanced with some speed toward me as I bent to pick up a beer can, and sunk it's teeth into my flesh. Motherfucka!

I sidled off to nurse the wound, cursing the cur, addled mind already envisaging some very nasty rabies shots to the gut. A short while later, as if to take my mind off the spreading infection, some guffawing hoodlums pulled into the field in 4x4's and silly green padded waistcoats and began blasting clay pigeons out of the skies with 12 bores. Would the surreality never cease? Since these strange beings from a different tax bracket had assaulted the senses with their graceless invasion, we bump started the trusty tranny and headed back for the city as soon as the drummer was arguably sober. I didn't live in the city, so I was dropped off first to my small rented cottage. No sign of human habitation, the four cats and I looked forward to a spot of breakfast. Since I'm not too partial to Whiskas, I put on the chip pan. After all, what better to follow a sleepless night of excess than a greasy pile of 'Pomme de Terre Anglais'. Stout nourishment, it's so rarely erroneous. Upstairs to wash for brekky, a little sit down on my comfy bed, and everything is just..zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I awoke to see a rather concerned looking feline at the foot of the bed, quite clearly visible considering all the smoke in the room. Smoke? SMOKE!!! FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK?!**!

I dashed downstairs, my feet dancing around sprinting cats, to witness the dying flames of a chip pan which had burnt away all of the fat in it. The chips, acting as a wick, were jet black and still smouldering, resembling some gruesome charred village scene after a visit from Ghenghis. The cottage was filling fast with thick choking greasy smoke. I rushed about ushering panicked cats into the garden. One, two, three. Kerist All-bleedin'-mighty! Where's the fourth one? I tried to remember all those public info films about what to do in the event of a housefire, but failed. Somehow my mind just kept re-routing to Fred Astaire in Towering Inferno. I spent the next ten minutes attempting to breathe through a wet towel crawling around on all fours under the billowing murk trying to find a grey cat in a house full of grey smoke. I wish I had been old Fred, maybe the cat would've been ginger. I found it cowering in a tiny gap under a wardrobe, grabbed it despite it's lacerating talons and chucked it out. I rescued a couple of sofa cushions and lay on them under a blue sky in the garden until I sweated gently into a calm sleep among oscillating flowers in the fresh air.

Nemesis Week. Sporting Excellence

2007-07-27T11:40:00.000+01:00

This week is nemesis week. Not this actual week 2007, but just this week of the year, third one in July, has commonly been one which has produced a gentle ripple on the old mill pond of Rex, perhaps even a quake measuring 8.2 on the Rexter Scale on occasion.

In 2001 sporting injury reared it's homely countenance. July 22, in a league cricket match, I ignored all usual common sense and dived forward to attempt to catch a ball which was obviously going to reach me on the half-volley. Indeed it did, landing on the ground in front of my mid-air body and outstretched hand. It hit terra firma at the precise moment it hit the end of my right third finger, stopping the first two bones of said digit abruptly. As misfortune would have it, the other 150 lbs of my body carried on.

There was a flash of brilliant white light in my head. Intense pain began coursing through more nerve ..er... thingies than should be expected. Other cricketers, being of a caring and empathic disposition, began shouting calming words like "Get up, get the fuckin' ball" Not possible, I was 100% endorphin rush, a quivering wreck of my former self. After a short walk in heat to the pavilion, watched by my 4 year old son who still remembers his literally watery-eyed dad running a fast swelling finger under a cold tap, it was considered best to strap the finger to it's immediate neighbour and go to hospital. However, cricket is a game involving 11 vs 11, and so Einstein here decides to return to the pitch because there wasn't a twelfth man. I fielded one ball, saving two runs. When I threw it to the 'keeper, my hand throbbed almost visibly as if in a Tom and Jerry sketch. In a close game, we won by the two runs I had saved by just being in the way.

Amidst all the typical victory celebrations, (large doobies all round) the hospital visit was totally forgotten. Indeed I toughed it (like a twat!) out for 7 weeks before seeking professional medical attention. Needless to say, despite surgery, it was all a trifle late by then. Re-calcification is a fickle bodily function. My son and I call that digit "The Gonzo Nose" To know what it resembles, visualise the space muppet's shnoz sideways on.

I don't like how it looks. The nail doesn't grow properly if at all. It doesn't bend more than 25 degrees. It hurts in a mildly arthritic way. The bones and cartilage were so smashed in places that the ligament now does the job of the cartilage because the cartilage doesn't exist any more.

Would I change anything? Would I travel back in time and back out of the altruistic dive forward to help my team?

As my old Aunt Flossie would have said if she'd ever existed, "Fat boy, you bet your arse I would!"

That Shallot!

2007-07-22T21:59:00.000+01:00

Having made an astonishingly speedy full recovery from my broken foot, I was back at "the office" today, and it was there that I struck upon a potentially new and arguably revolutionary method for chopping onions without tears. Mine is the sort of "office" where you will commonly find people chopping vegetables. I once walked in there to discover a 22 stone part time dvd salesperson cutting up whole dead ducks (mainly mallard, one or two teal) but that's another story. Usually this type of shenanigans would cause a rumpus, but as I have already said, that's another story.

My "office" is situated on the ground floor. One day, perhaps if I'm really good at what I do, when they've finished training the simian that has been lined up to replace me, I may receive some kind of promotion. I could move seamlessly into the next chapter of my chequered employment journal. Some folk have been moved upward in the past, never to be seen again. It's rumoured that they shape-shift into other-worldly beings and live out their hollow, dark existences wandering forever in ghostly mire and shadow on the first floor. But that's another storey!
"I've been on the R. & D. trail,
searching high and low for the Holy Grail"
I'm a poet, a fact of which
I'm fully aware".......(well, they don't have to rhyme you know. This isn't PlayAway, and though I may be called Brian, I'm not a total Cant )
The trail has left me and many like me in tears. But today's discovery has dried them up, raised the bar. Raised it high, so high that an aardvark can no longer walk into it, which destroys one time-honoured joke. It could have been a joke about a replete cow, too lazy to walk to the shed to be milked, but that's an udder story.

According to my extensive research, onions turn us into crybabies because they exude a juice which, upon evaporation into the air, turns into invisible tear gas of some kind. This I found very useful during my ill-fated single-handed assault on the North face of Michael Heseltine, but that's an utter Tory. The gas, or fumes perhaps would be a longer description, (only two letters longer) escape rather like I did, surreptitiously. However, their release into the air can be prevented to a large degree in the following way.

1: Arrange the chopping board ( correctly coloured to avoid cross contamination) squarely in front of you and secure it to the work surface.
4: Taking a freshly honed sturdy kitchen knife, remove both ends of each onion.
3: Before removing onion ends, place a suitably sized bowl next to your chopping board on the same side as your "cutting" hand.
2: Fill a bowl (correctly colour coordinated to avoid cross interior designers) with luke-warm water.
5: Drop each "top'n'tailed" onion into the bowl.
6: Boil a kettle of water.
8: Remove each onion individually from the bowl (of water) and cut into "halves" end to end. Place each half back into the bowl.
9: Re-remove each "half" onion individually from the bowl and peel the tough outer skin away. Return each skinned "half" onion to the bowl.
10: Re-re-remove each skinned "half" onion from the bowl, place on the chopping board, and finally, finely chop until fully finely chopped.(If your onions do not appear finally to be fully finely chopped, return
to point 7)
11: Place finally finely fully chopped onions in clean bowl.(colour optional)
12: Remove water from kettle and use it to make a nice cup of tea. After all, you deserve it since you've worked so hard learning a new skill today!

Et voila! That's ya lot.

More Old Hats To Throw Into The Ring.

2007-07-17T23:12:00.000+01:00

Here I am again, a little confused as usual, and once more discussing the world of cyber diaries. That's diaries not dairies. Who ever heard of a cyber dairy? Well lactose addicted computers of course, but besides them? O.K. I concede, cybermilkmen - perhaps the most feared and utterly ill-conceived of The Doctor's arch enemies.
Digression, digression, digression. It's what politics is all about. Cunning those politicians. Why just this year, New Liar members (and a right bunch of members they are at that) have openly, and without much studio make-up, condemned the execution of Saddam as deplorable etc. Well they're possibly correct. Who am I to say or judge? I'll tell you who! One of the many people who sat and watched news reports of R.A.F. and U.S.A.F. bombing raids which deliberately targeted and failed only to hit Saddam because he was too bloody well hidden. So assassination's O.K. then? Almost not like killing anybody at all!
Gosh, that all got a bit serious for a while. Must quickly inhale some more of that NO2........ That's more like it. I'll have to mug another midwife before too long, after all, the bottle's bound to run out sooner or later even if it looks pretty big by the desk here and boy, was it focken hard to get up all those stairs. Maybe I should just visit a doctor. (not to be confused with 'The Doctor' mentioned previously) Wish I hadn't dropped it on my sodding foot now. And that's why I'm confined to the desk. Broken foot. I tell you it could have been loads worse. If I'd been in favour of the metric system it so easily could have resulted in a broken metre. Then where would I be? Not just waylaying babycatchers but hijacking B.O.C. 7tonners on the A.4. that's where.
Anyway, I maintain I've constructed enough of this utter bollox now. I mean to say, with Wednesday fast approaching, I'm in grave danger of losing sleep my body desperately needs at the moment. I'd be a little fatigued even with slimming aids. There's nowt wrong with the creative endeavours associated with sleep deprivation, but even wolves at full moon slumber on occasion, don't they?

Beyond Yesterday's News

2007-07-10T01:06:00.000+01:00

I'm definitely getting there. However I maintain I am seriously confusing myself on a daily basis with all this blog nonsense. Even my partner, (A.K.A. B.F.G.) who claims to have (and apparently has) mastered all the ins and outs of the world of blogging in it's simplest form, couldn't figure out what the feck I'd done to all of the passwords and usernames and all that jazz. She is easily confused though. Her record at scrabble will tell the full story, or maybe she's been letting me win all this time? Perhaps I'm easily confused? After all, I never saw what was wrong with Betamax.
Anyway, I feel I must post this old tripe before the cyber world catches me succeeding at something and punishes me by some devilry. What this time I wonder? Maybe it'll make my P.C. just disappear overnight. Oh how innocent bystanders would laugh and laugh as I was hauled spitting and swearing from around the throat of some poor unsuspecting fool behind the paydesk at P.C.World.

And incidentally, why are bystanders always innocent? I mean, don't the guilty ever appear on the streets? I'm fairly certain somebody who is guilty of a genuine misdemeanour must have stood by me at some stage. And why are they always standing? I mean, isn't it just feasible that somebody who is wheelchair-bound may also be innocent (or guilty) and nearby when 'an incident' has taken place. One or two may have been on sun-loungers or even cycling past. The mind boggles at just how many types of 'being by' innocently (or even guiltily) there can be. Well my mind boggles anyway, but an adult lifetime involving myself in a love affair with alcohol, a love affair as yet undiminished by the passing of a couple of decades and counting, would go a long way towards explaining that. Other episodes of sideways recreational behavior take one all the way towards an explanation, but what the hey, that's for another time.
Read on, MacDuff, and at that other time I will promise you that you will be disappointed.

Positively Bored

2007-07-08T03:40:00.000+01:00

Here is a thingy entitled 'Positively Bored' which I wrote, without the aid or assurance of a safety net in the spring of 2006.

Anyone who says that only boring people get bored, bores me.

Anyone who says that they never get bored is only occupied in their spare time by deluding themselves about their own lack of boredom.

Being bored is a natural, nay quintessential part of the human condition.

It is absolutely normal to become less interested in what you are doing than in the possibilities of what you could otherwise be doing.

It does not mean you are skittish.

It does not mean that you are de-focussed.

It merely makes obvious your status as a human being.

If humans did not become bored, they would not have invented or discovered many of the more fascinating extremes of the human experience of being alive on this planet.

Indeed, they may never have been off this planet.

Being bored is not necessarily dysfunctional.

It is merely a facet of existence.

IF NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION, THEN BOREDOM IS IT'S INSPIRATIONAL BIG SISTER.

A Reply To Somebody Cleverer Than Me.

2007-07-07T03:16:00.000+01:00

Fantastic rejoinder! Touche! Or as they say in France, touche! With a sillier accent. I see I may have brushed against a raw nerve with all the aplomb of an Australian cultural attache. Since I had a few hours away from the daily grind of my booming multi-million Euro Astro-Physical Car Wash and Piss Powered Poodle Pamper Parlour (www.starcarpeepoopampar.co.ck), I have decided to topspin a lob in your general direction to see if your smash is up to scratch. I have little doubt we'll be picking the ball out of Row Z quite soon.
I arose, perhaps more orally hirsute thanks either to a higher than expected alcoholic imbibiositiness(?), or a hypothalamectomy(??) I was greeted by the mid-afternoon sunshine as it "poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses." Took me an absolute age to get those stains off the curtains I can tell you, which reminds me I must take my colostomy bag to the launderette. I have to read a little of your episodic history before I go on too much though cos from the first few bits back in '05 it's clear that I may employ flippancy which could be regarded as just plain insensitive.
I say read. I'm actually clinically illiterate, and have to suffer daily several tedious hours of Brazilian mouth-to-toe remedial massage administered by retired Okapi trainers before the postman arrives. Now I know what you must be thinking. Wrong rainforest! That's part of the reason it's so rare. Africa to South America. Very tough commute. Lemme tell you though, them gals can tongue toes like it's going out of fashion, and at only £25/second(that's $6.2 million or 18.5 used car tyres. Hmm, do I need a new calculator?) it's a sodding bargain the salesman and I.M.F. still assures me I can't refuse. Still it beats hands down the old medication for such conditions used in the past. Leeches. Horrible! Unless of course marinaded in one of Slater's own ready made Cook'N'Vom Sucker-Sludges. An absolute life-saver about the kitchen, the employment of which effectively guarantees avoiding any number of hirudinous dinner party faux pas.
Unfortunately, in the early pre-diagnosis years of my affliction, desperation drove me to all manner of panic measures. I tried Chinese medicine. However, due either to my somewhat rudimentary command of Cantonese, a typo or an overworked and quite bizarre Oriental sense of the ridiculous, I was charged 500 smackeroos to have lychees placed on my energy points. It may just have worked if I'd kept them on for the full 28 days, but I'll never know now because I was unfortunate enough to leave the practice at the precise moment that the 'Eat the First Far Eastern Fruit You See' support group left the 'Malcolm X' centre on the opposite side of the alley. Some days despite ones utmost efforts, it seems one is the statue and not the pigeon, n'est ce pas?
"3 o'clock in the morning, and it looks as though it's gonna be another sleepless night"
"So on the button" Sleep, it's like an untimely punctuation for the would-be restless. Some say it has its uses but I've yet to see the full evidence. Most folk find sleep a normal everynight occurrence, apart from fighter/bomber pilots, whose targeting indiscretions as a result are either notorious or still an undisclosed secret. It's a surprise Los Angeles is still standing.
I was reading the other day that the 'City of Angels' is actually a unfortunate mistranslation. Seems somebody's handwriting left a little to be desired and it is actually the city on jellies, which makes so much sense of all those nasty old earthquakes. Put one simple letter down wrong and W.W.IV would break out. That's if any of us survive W.W.III currently being waged. Of course, it's easy to identify who may survive W.W.III because they started it in the first place. Well it must have been sooo dull in the White House after Bill and Hil checked out, and what with the Cold War ending without a bang in such a disappointing way, and as you pointed out, the women out shopping, what better way to attempt to reduce the unemployment queues than by gathering all the disinterested, potentially disenfranchised layabouts and freeloaders, flying them halfway around the world and giving them new trousers into which they can shit themselves for a variety of reasons they would never have thought possible back home.
SPARRAZ! DO BE BRIEF GUV, LEEV IT AHT!!
Sorry that's just my Cockney Tourettes playing up. My grandad was a real Cockney, born within the sound of Bow bells. Lamentably, there are proportionally less Cocknies per Londoner now due to a few factors.
Firstly London keeps getting bigger both in population and it's acreage, which seems to expand halfway across the country these days. Indeed some of it's postal areas are in fact in Brittany. Secondly, lots of hospitals get closed here and the N.H.S. budget has been cunningly re-deployed on double glazing, so hearing Bow bells is more of a problem, though the government claims this is propaganda put about by the Cockney Proliferation Front(C.P.F.) (See note later) Fourthly, traffic, new airport, and other general noise and air pollution has meant that the sound of Bow bells now only carries a short distance, maybe as little as 48 lunar feet.(6215.2 km, Tut! feckin' calculator again!*?!) This means that in order to be a true Cockney nowadays you'd have to be born halfway up the steeple steps, an unacceptable situation even for the aforementioned Draconian N.H.S. cuts. One or two acrophobic midwives also raised quite unprecedented objections. This lead to the audacious attempt by the C.P.F., in a rare collaboration with the Fahckin' Real Front for the Proliferation of Cocknies F.R.F.P.C. ( see even later note) borrowing Batman garb from the recently disbanded Fathers for Justice campaign, to scale St. Mary le Bow church steeple and install a kick-ass sound system hired from the Brixton Ganga Crew for the Promotion of Deafness Posse.(righteous yoot an' yoot, I most catagorically assure you. Due to mind opening substances and general demeaner, see downright tardy note) Part of the deal was that Mad Professor could do a live mix of the peal, which made for an interesting bootleg C.D. (Bing bong bing bong-ong-ong-ong chanka boomph tich wobba-wobba, gungbin pissshhh. Rise up Lieeeaaaan-aaan-aaan!!) Thirdly, there is no thirdly because down there within the stench exuding melting pot that is the East End, that number is considered bad fortune. "Free? Nah meeyol' china, das unlukkee, naa'a'meen?"
The C.P.F. was founded in 1964 after the increasingly famous Michael Caine had been cast as a toff in "Zulu". Outraged by this apparent turncoat, they plotted a "bommin' campaign" which meant they would invade "swimmin' barvz" en masse and terrify "li'aw saucepanz" wiv, sorry, with hideous close quarters diving and big splashes. Local papers such as "The Cheeky Sparra" screamed the headlines. "C.P.F. Aahtovvawda 'n' Wellaahta Depf, Awri' Darlin' Oy Oy" The initial terror caused was not insignificant, as lidos all over "the smoke" began loosing custom, causing unemployment queues to lengthen by several inches. When Caine's next blockbuster "Alfie" was released in 1965, many toned the movement down to become less radical, with lame media driven P.R. stunts such as "bargin'" into ice lolly queues or "shakin'" the hands of Pearly Kings and Queens in Trafalgar Square for the cameras.
Those who had left the movement went "unddagrahn'" to form the radical F.R.F.P.C. After a vicious few months of hell in the backstreets, locals became " Right ol' Logie Baird" of "Da Frun'" after repeated incidences of "pissin' in yer chips, ya twa'" and the excruciating "Neeka'in'" involving several of the nobbliest knees in Shoreditch being cruelly exposed to unsuspecting innocents down at the old rubbadub. The movement almost folded in 1966 when it was discovered that dangerous hitman and kerbside yodeller, Barry 'doous a fayva' Dobbins was actually Christened at Winchester Cathedral as Barton Hesketh Inbred Doris Bashstreet Charwoman-Duffer III, 17TH Earl of Qua-QuaWestchestynecester (pronounced Quenya ;-). Street kudos slumped to an astounding all time low until the St. Mary le Bow Steeple climb/mashup ting.
The B.G.C.P.D.P. were formed at a party in Coldharbour Lane and disbanded 55 minutes later by the Metropolitan Police because there was, as Chief Commissioner Gobsmack so eloquently put it, "No BASTARD way we're gonna let a bunch of f?++*£g n*^^%.@ organise a party without OUR say so on OUR manor, savvy?" A spokesman for the Crew stated "Dem 'erb was take, yoot an yoot downtrodden, but day come and dem rise up again and mashup de police!" The people of the capital, as one, were was right behind them. The system was returned along with significantly less 'erb, which meant that dozens of rozzers were seen binge eating themselves silly at burger AND doughnut stalls for several weeks.

GLASTONBURGLARY: Eavis and the Tow Rope.

2007-07-04T19:59:00.000+01:00

...1992. I found myself at the very ragged and messy end of yet another long term boy/girl thing. We were supposed to go to Glastonbury together. She switched allegiance at the last minute to dreadlocks other than mine, lead astray by restless feet, and other occasionally private parts of her anatomy. So I went alone. I was like a coiled spring, a non-venomous but very entertaining asp. Good timing? Yeah, you feckin' betcha!! I spent four solid days in blazing temperatures surrounded by music with my mind bent very, very sideways indeed. Full of self-inflicted fuel for the wandering imagination, I perused the multifaceted diversions. Just a tangentially motivated grinning face disappearing into, nay willingly melding with, the mad, milling crowd. A loose animal at times. One remembers and utilises all of ones training at will, but when that isn't necessary, feral behavior is reverted to. Suffice to report, I gorged myself upon the gelatinous fruits of hidden Dutch laboratories.

Once the main festival was over, I had to fulfill my indentures by spending the next five days clearing up with, I think, Friends of the Earth. Me and the Earth got real friendly that week I can tell you. By Friday afternoon I was wearing only underwear and bin liners because it hadn't stopped raining since Monday afternoon. I'd run out of dry clothes. I lent somebody my last pair of dry socks. She was grateful. I spent my birthday there. An Aussie hippie I had befriended had found a sizable bag of billy the day before. Now everything tasted weird, and I didn't want to eat it anyway. The band I was in played in an edge-of-site cafe on Thursday night, which due to very serious noise abatement issues surrounding music licences and next years festival, was without doubt the quietest set a live amplified band has ever, EVER played. I found a few useful things, I lost a few excess pounds, and some that weren't so excessive. I walked as far in 8 days as I will probably ever walk in 8 days.

There are times when despite the inspiration and circumstances, you are in precisely the right place, even though you are not as you would usually be. Does this mean I am usually in the wrong place? Too philosophical, baby. Just know this. I feel, in fact I know, that week was a very good use of my time upon this goodly Earth.

For being a good boy and helping to clear up the mess 75,000 people left behind, they gave me all my pennies back. Just before I left the site, I lent Michael Eavis a tow rope so he could help somebody out of a ditch. What a host!! I left, car full of stragglers, wet tents and refugees, drove via Bristol to S.E London in my fecked up rusty Nissan 160sss Coupe with earsplitting grinding brake failure. You know the sort, pull up at the lights and babies within earshot (1000 yards) cry. Dogs howl, but their wailing is drowned by sheer metal-on-metal cacophony. This necessitated driving the breadth of "The Smoke" largely on gears and engine breaking, arriving in it's suburban dormitories at 3.30 a.m. Mum was so pleased to see me. After all it was my little sister's wedding that dawning day. I was 9 stone 2. That's 128 Lbs in American. I hadn't been that weight since I was 14 years old. I resembled Captain Black's happier alter ego. (You know, the guy that got taken over by the Mysterons in Captain Scarlet.) I needed dark glasses and eye shadow to lighten my eye sockets. The deepest, most bloodshot piss holes in any snow, ever!

Later that day, my sister got married. I was the only person who would dance to bangin' 'ardcore techno with her. We must've resembled Snoopy (in a wedding dress) and Woodstock (still speeding) when they used to wig out in Charlie Brown's back yard. Had I not spent the entire previous eight days off my gourd, the matrimonial proceedings would as usual have bored me pooless. As it was, they didn't. To credit my sister, her staying power means she is still married. Her anniversary is today.

I have two things to say to Mr. Eavis.
"Thanks for the party, see you again" and
"Where's my feckin' tow rope?"

GLASTONBURGER; Another Tale.

2007-07-03T01:42:00.000+01:00

It's been, and like a tempest at full strength it has blown through. It's fierce lashing tongues of rain are now but wispy tendrils irritating my memories like escaped pillow feathers upon a slumbering cheek. The roaring of the crowds, sky slicing lasers, soundbite lunacies of passers by all echo or flash again across the recollections I have of it's vast and tireless dynamism. And the most lasting image, the least forgettable aural experience of this 'thing' of which I write; the sight and sound of hoards of people shuffling and wading through 6 inches of brown, top drawer Somerset mud.

I speak of course of the Glastonbury Festival.

I've been before, starting in '83 I think. At least, I reckon that would be it based on the Festival History website artists line up. Myself, my girlfriend and half a dozen mates got our collective and personal shits together and made a dash from Kent to the West Country. I distinctly remember turning up partway through Marillion's set. I was queuing to get in. I was probably sat behind the wheel of my black 1500 Avenger, (L reg, twin headlights, Cooool!) all youthful, barely a grain of cynicism in my make-up. When you see those lasers for the first time, firing seemingly ad lib into the night sky, your spine tingles as if sprinkled with fairy dust. It's as though they might strike you to illuminate your skeleton. The imagery evoked is more H.G.Wells than south of Wells, Somerset. (Oops, there goes Guildford).
I don't remember much about that weekend. I deduce that since my life-long affair with alcoholic excess was well and truly launched by that point, this memory loss is duly explained. There were just a handful of sunny, deliciously naive days left to run in my teens. Oh how a life can "gently go floating by". I do recall having a wonderful few days smokin' an' drinkin' an' snoggin' an' laughin'. I must have logged it as a success because I've still got the program from the following year.

Back then in 1984 the organisers boasted a 160 acre site. Now it's close to 1000. There was less to see, but since being in one place at a time is my limit(sadly)I can't see it all now anyhow. Ian Dury, The Smiths, Black Uhuru. Just a few of the acts. Those names and the sounds they made before and after that midsummer weekend 23 years ago were bandied about millions of student parties, bedsit smoko sessions, lorry cabs, taxi cabs, bathrooms and bogs the world over. People have been conceived, born, and died with strains of those notes and screeching sax solos ushering them from one existence to another.

I've been reading through the program lately. Maybe this is just nostalgia, a disease known mainly to the old or at least middle aged. Or is it a piece of personal history transformed into a relevant if tiny part of the history of all who were on that part of the planet at that time. A kind of shared epitaph, written long before the idea arose that any of the living at the time could ever die, could we?

Beyond those first couple of escapades, other girlfriends became ex-girlfriends as if to reflect the ever changing dramatis personae on the stages. Artistes moving on, audiences blithely following, year on year their numbers increasing. Each summer, around Solstice, tens and then scores of thousands of joy seekers, thieves, Jesuphiles, New Age Booksellers, The Happy, The Professionally Sad, Old Aged Pensioners, dealers flogging Oxo cubes and oregano in the half light to the half baked. Jugglers!! So many people learnt how to juggle. Absolutely Feckin' Every-Feckin'-Where!!!

The event itself became a juggling trick, an ants nest of activity, a mass of turmoil. A very big and often unruly thronging of humanity. Inside it's decreasingly gentle boundaries, and about it's periphery, all at once the divisions of the mid and late Eighties had fully fermented into the elixir for the early Nineties. The brew really had become special. Alongside the unstoppable roller coaster party spirit aroma of the troubadours and their dancing hoards, an altogether less palatable whiff of confrontation, hatred and mistrust had begun to pervade the relationships between desperate people from many hues of the social and political rainbow. Some jagged experiences were had by many. I largely escaped genuine difficulty, but for quite a few friends and types who knew the types I knew, life became stained by the bitter cynicism and Draconian outlawing of Not Being Normal. It really does seem like something ain't quite right when families watch their home smashed up primarily because it's on wheels.

During all this time, mid 80's -1990, I missed a few big festivals, went to some others, moved city, knackered lots of brain cells, joined some bands, played some hippie festivals, drummed under the chalk white horse, lived in an old cottage with a selection of occasionally fantastic, sometimes utterly deranged human and feline companions. Some stories may abound from such times. But the big year which cemented my ongoing rapport with those sloping fields in Somerset, was 1992.........

GLASTONBUGGED; A Rant

2007-06-18T23:09:00.000+01:00

As has been reported in the press, the Pilton Pop Festival is once more about to pollute our airwaves, digital and cable networks and utterly spoil all Correctly-Thinking People's weekends virtually everywhere. I, for one, am appalled at the length of time I would be expected to have fun, Get On Down, Strut My Funky Stuff, (Sho' Nuff) and generally Shake the Old Rump of Steel Skin to The Groove That Makes Yo' Booty Move.

I certainly will not be experiencing anything like this event and I would deter any normal and self-tax assessing, dental appointment keeping, straight queuing upstanding pillars such as myself from doing so either.

Give us all the "Birch" that's what I say.

Can I do the techno bit first time?

2007-06-06T00:45:00.000+01:00

Apparently not first time but...wait...what image from yonder windows break?
This is a little chap I met upon my travels. What type of travels would one need to be on in order to meet such a fellow? Feckin' lengthy ones it may be surmised.

I used to read books and among them were a couple by Whitley Strieber. (or is it Streiber?) "Communion" and "Transformation" are tomes a person must suspend their disbelief for, if indeed one had any disbelief to suspend in the first place. The jury is still out on my suspenders(or is it judges who wear suspenders, hard to tell when they always sit behind big desks so you can't see their legs)

Anyway, these books cover the author's own experiences of alien abduction. I will say experiences and not alleged experiences because I don't think he's a good enough writer to have made it all up. Also, though at the time he seemed convinced enough that it was all a bit woo, there is no absolute statement that he left the planet, danced on spaceships etc. My views on the matter and related themes may well be discussed at some later stage. Suffice to say this. There has been more weird shite that has gone on, and is going on, in the human experience, both globally and historically, than any of us alive can get our heads fully around.

And so onto my little friend. He was made in what is best described as a fit of pique. Not the pique that is hurt pride, but that which is stimulation. I had suffered a shock to my system ie. the ending of a relationship. Huge pent up energy was spent on this and at the same time 8000 words of a "book" that I have yet to finish 11 years later. The relationship however was reconvened after a month long break, and went on to bear many fruits, one of which is my son(currently asleep just a few feet from my rattling keyboard.)

The grey guy pictured, who I call the High Priest, is one of what was supposed to be many. He is a he, despite the apparent lack of genitalia. He remains to this day the only piece of sculpture I have ever exhibited publicly. He is the High Priest because all the other dudes I have yet to manufacture were to be dancing around him. The inspiration came from Whitley's recounts, and the artwork of a brief flame in my distant past. I've seen quite a few images of rituals involving one being calling to the skies and several dancing around the one. It's not an uncommon theme in art. What the heck, there's a feckin' fine line between inspiration and plagiarism. Could you draw this line with absolute accuracy between all the so called original artworks and their alleged contemporaries? Yeah? Then drop me a line, cos you are the most talented and knowledgeable art critic on the planet. Or maybe you are the most opinionated? That's not for the likes of me to judge. That would make me opinionated beyond my usual sphere of practice.

Perhaps one day I could tell you a little about my dreams on the visitor stuff. Until then, I'll just have to sleep, perchance to dream, as a new day is soon to dawn and the gulls about this neighbourhood can be tireless in their aurally penetrative daybreak shrieking.
Adieu.

THE TOP OF AN INDIAN WOMAN'S HEAD

2007-06-02T01:12:00.001+01:00

Many, many years ago, when my world (this time around) was still young and relatively unadulterated by the crushing reality of despondency or the gleeful joy of natural mania, I was often simply a bit bored. My mother, bless her overstretched tan tights, was usually busy doing...well I was never quite sure, let's call it pottering. She alone was charged with the task of entertaining the boy beset by ennui. Once in a while, the plastic age into which I was born would produce a packet of bright coloured felt tip pens, and a small piece of Finland rehashed as a new sketchbook.

"Why don't you draw mummy a nice picture of something?" Looking back as adults, I expect all those drawing sessions blend into one for most of us. But I remember one as distinct from all the others. I remember picking up that pen and turning over the fresh, new smelling page. I crushed the spine of the sketchbook with the consummate skill of a bush hunter, and viewed the virgin sheet with coccyx-tingling anticipation.

And then...nothing. Not a sausage, no flicker, nowt, bugger all, zero, zilch. A kind of inspirationectomy had been performed without anaesthetic. No matter how hard I tried, I could not think of a single thing I should draw. And so I just drew a line, starting bottom left and climbing in a gentle arc to top right. Hmmm, what next? Another line, running down from the first a kind of oblique angled tangent. Aaha! Let's put a large dot right there. Hey! Now we're cookin'. Before long I had constructed a "pikcha", no great shakes, which had to resemble something. So how do I name it, cos you must name all your "pikchas". Well, take a look at it and see what it resembles. Eureka!!

And so my picture, that day's creational masterpiece was entitled "The Top of an Indian Woman's Head". One could quite clearly see resemblance.

I recall another session.

After one of those "Oh that's not fair" type conversations with my Dad, desperate and convulsing with indignation, I set about the pens with the gnashing fervour of a revolutionary in the grip of a coup. I produced the most damning likeness of my father imaginable (to me), and entitled it. "Dad, My Enemy"

I showed it to my Dad, expecting my declaration of hostilities to provoke the next volley of parental unfairness which would give rise to yet further indignation. His countenance broke into a smile, then emitted genuine laughter. How deflating. Oh, how my ire had been instantly disarmed.

And you see, the world beyond my childhood changes very little.

I am presented by the cyber world, with an infinite variety of fonts, formats and fantasia.

I could write most accusingly, with fire and spite borne of life's most bitter experiences.

I could look at these blank text boxes and know that it is just for me, me, ME that all of the computerised "small pieces of Finland" have been laid out like unadulterated drifts of snow, waiting for me to piss my name into them.

And you could be my Mum and say "That's nice darling, what is it?"

You could be my Dad and quell my deepest anger with laughter, not derision, just mirth.

And where would I be then?

Well I'd be in front of the computer, just like you are now.

Windy Rides Again

2007-05-31T22:42:00.000+01:00

We're off again, and this time it's personal. Of course, all writings are personal, so how can this be any different? Well, let's explore a myriad of possibilities, shall we?