Orificial

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

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

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

'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

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!

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!

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.