This is a comment from Matt Finish on the previous post, reproduced here to make sure no one misses it.

Hello to all of Davids friends out there. We have now got a date for my dear Brothers funeral. It is to be held at; Randalls Park Crematorium. Randalls Road, Leatherhead, Surrey. KT22 0AG. On WEDNESDAY 7th JULY @ 10.15am.
If you would like to bring flowers, could we suggest fresh wild flowers (which he loved) or some flowers from the garden or if you live on a boat or in a flat then something of that nature from the florists. If you would prefer to make a donation, please Google ‘Diabetes Research & Wellness Foundation”
Davids family would be very pleased to see and meet any of his friends and acquaintances who feel that they would like to attend. Kind regards to you all out there. Matt, Lucy, and Family x

(This is just a placeholder for now. I’ll update it when more details are known. Anyone who wants input on what goes here, email sprocket@simong.org)

henry the thirst, as he was known to his many internet friends - David Windsor in real life - died on or around 19th June 2010. The cause isn’t yet known, but it seems like he went peacefully.

He was a kind, loving, and very funny man, and a lot of people will miss him greatly. If you knew him, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Why I bother listening to the traffic news is quite a mystery.
In the last week, or so, there has only been ONE day when junction 10 has not been mentioned. Today it was on again, yes, how boring, it was on AGAIN.

There was a smash-up and the A3 was backed right up to Painshill and yesterday there was a lorry on fire.

I used to drive a lorry or two and I have driven, and walked, from down there to up there. But was is it with junction 10? Blah blah clockwise, backed up to Motorway 23. What is it?

Dame Helen Mirren should tear up her passport and flush it down the bog. Silly cow. Don’t bother coming back, luvvie. That platform was built by Amerikans and worked by Amerikans. BP is 40% owned by Amerikans. Embarrassed to be British? No problem. Just stay in Kalifornia and watch your career follow your passport. And feel free to hand back your Damehood.

Lorry on fire? None of mine ever did. How did that happen? Fag-end out the window? I dunno.

I don’t know if I’ve bored you with this before but a friend of mine was driving a lorry and he was pulling out onto a more major road. He looked through the offside window, as you do, and saw two cars coming towards him. Two cars, exactly the same. He had had a stroke.

At the hospital he got asked how he felt about what had happened. Now then, this is Police humour.

“I feel really angry”

“Angry you say. And why would that be?”

“Because I have just bought another set of lights to go on the Christmas Tree but if I had known this was going to happen I needn’t have bothered”

Boom Tish!

Got to go, I’ve just missed a call. Probably the hospital or a bill.

Are you talking to me?
Well, I don’t see anyone else round here.

It’s alright. Just calm down. Yes, I know that you knew where she was and that must have been very hurtful for you. I know, I know. Well, I know that you can tie better knots than, ahem, that what you called him, but that means you are sort of better.

We are just here to listen. I can’t tell you what to do. But calm down and have a think. Do you think that you might feel better if?… I see what you mean. We are always here to listen. Go to bed and not wake up? You sound so upset but I’m listening. It will be alright.

Rivers flow. So thanks for that. They flow and they will never, can never, stop. Thanks very much for an IQ of 170. Thanks for a brain that won’t leave me alone. Thanks for everything and nothing. Thanks for the head that won’t let me read books and won’t let me go on holiday. Thanks, so bloody much, for the evil in me that won’t let me go; for my childhood.

I live and I breathe (though lawks knows how) and tomorrow is another day. Another day and another battle. Kicking boots. Maybe I should make another Pixie Door and run away and hide. Live in a tent and hear the rain coming down.

“Press 1 if you want to waste some money. Press 2 if you are stupid. Your call is important to us. Press 1 if you want to waste some Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. If you are an idiot please press your head against the wall; no, harder. We value your customer opinions so please press 39347734739834 if you would like someone who can’t even speak fucking English to talk rubbish to you.

Please press 367-86766-67637 if you like Vivaldi. If you would like like a depressingly long wait, just press 7.

If you want to grow some opium please hold the line.

We are experiencing a great deal of demand at the moment (we haven’t got enough staff) so you may have to wait a few Wagner’s Ring and the whole of the Pink Floyd moments.

“Hello, this is”

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrring".

All I had to bloody well do was get a signature. A signature that meant that they had witnessed me signing my letting agreement. Mani is on holiday so I tried the lezzers. Then I tried the twat with the dog etc.

His girlfriend came up and I distinctly heard him say “That weirdo".

Oh, a fucking weirdo am I? Well let’s put in a call to the RSPCA and see who is the weirdo. For a start you should not keep a dog in a flat. For second his dog is sick as fuck and should be put down. Thirdly he is a bloody nutcase.

All he had to do (and the lezzers) was witness a signature. Don’t want to do it? Don’t want to do it. Yup, hard luck to me.But it will be fucking hard luck for anyone that I catch at it. Weirdo indeed.

I hope that he pays Council Tax for his live-in partner. I hope he has a good excuse for that poor dog.

Make an enemy of me and you do it for life.

There aren’t many things that require the services of an angle-grinder. Yes. grinding an angle maybe, you at the back. One thing that the angle-grinder is NOT for is to piss me right off.

Scene: Kitchen window.
“Oi! Shut that up NOW!”

FX: Zzzzzscreezzzzscree

“Oi! shut up!”

So then I put on my kicking boots (handy hint - always have a pair) and then went down to, ahem, negotiate.

There was a spool that got the first taste. I kicked it about 3 metres. Then I met ‘Darren’ (what an awful name) and he thought that he might want to to have a fight with me.

“I’ve asked you once, I’ve asked you twice, and now here I am.”

I always let them have the first go because a) I am expecting it and b) they don’t know what I’m going to do.

I have shaved off most of my beard and I was wearing my leather. Although I am in my fifties I still don’t look like someone you would want a ruck with. I started to pull on the cable and out came the gaffer. He was quite nice but Darren wasn’t.

“Go on then, go on, go on….”

Young Darren seemed reluctant to lay the first one and good for him because it would all have got a bit messy. What’s that, Darren? Are you phoning your Mum or the Police? Beep beep beep, Well you can phone the Police for all I care BECAUSE I AM ONE. (I am a liar, of course, but quite a good one).

They packed up and went away. I didn’t have to have a fight which is a shame because I’m quite good at that kind of thing.

The secret is to get them on the floor - doesn’t matter how you do it so long as you are on top. Then you poke their eyes out and boot their throat. If you want to kill them you kick them in the nose so hard that it goes into their brain. I think that it is this knowledge that means that I haven’t had to have a real fight for ages. I just look like I can kill you and probably will.

I shook hands with the gaffer before they went. He knew.

At skool. you had to support some sort of stupid foopball club or another.

But get this.

A lot of boys supported the Cheleseas and made out out that they went up the Shed. Which they didn’t. There were harder girls with feather-cuts than grammar school boys.

I loved Charlie George because he had long hair and that made me an Arsenal fan. When Arsenal did the double and George booted in the best of goals I was so happy and I didn’t even like football. I still don’t.

First of all, listen to this.

The cover from ‘Bryter Layter’ is rather strange. The photograph is in a 19th Century mood. The graphics are from a century later. Leaning on artwork from the 1910s it always bent me. The photograph on the reverse shows Nick leaning against a motorway. The lights and the traffic.

The central shot is oval and might as well be a bankrobber. But it’s Nick, with kicked off shoes. Work that one out. What on Earth is he saying? It’s Robert Johnson. It’s Jesse James. It’s fucking cool; that’s what it is.

On my bidomadal (I don’t know if that’s a proper word because I just made it up. If hebdomadal means weekly then bidomadal should mean every other day) trip to the unSupermarket I got my bank account even redder at the cashpoint.

Hello, there’s a face I recognized; ’twas Dave who works for the Trust and manages a Lock which I shall not name. He looks a lot better now. He was ill for a long time, done his back in (and his brain from what the Towpath Telegraph told me), and he bought one of those things that you can dangle yourself upside-down with. It cost hime 240 English quids but he could feel all his vertebrae go sproing and now he looks so much better.

We talked about the Navigation and he hadn’t a clue who I was. The Charley, the Charley Rose. Looked like a Vietnamese gun boat. Pirate flag. And then he remembered.

We talked about boats (with which I shall not bore you) and he told me that this coming weekend is all set up for a barby. Bring your own and all that. I am no longer a member of the boat club but Dave assured me that anyone with a face is welcome. I think I may go because I have some stuff to return to Rodders so he had better let me in or he’ll never see them again.

I can’t quite decide whether to take venison or sushi. I fully expect Old Trev to be there and it will be interesting to see what he loses this time. Last I heard was that there was a suspect carp going round with his specs on (accident) and his false choppers (he was sick over the side of his boat. Serves him right for drinking half-pints of mysterious green stuff) and the carp should have phoned him up on his mobile phone (accident).

I might pop along but don’t tell Vodka because everyone hates him anyway.

Should anyone boaty feel like a night out I should be there on Saturday. Floor provided. Dave threatened that a ‘live’ (barely, I should think seeing as Rodders has booked them) band should be making nuisances of themselves.

You take care,
H.

As everyone knows I hate tattoos so, since I have started wearing my too small biker jacket again and seeing as I have got a set of Rotring pens stuffed full of ‘free’ Indian ink I have started writing on my hands.

It will soon wash off if I bother to wash.

Most of it is on my right hand because I am lefty. Most of it is scribble in a kind of Celtic way and some of it is writing. Looks good with leather even though I say so myself. I was talking to my Mum about me being asexual and she informed me that I have a lesbotic cousin. True fact. She had a Civil doo-dah just the other day. Well I never.

Leaf-blowing man was back today. He was keeping a crafty eye about and then he saw the magisterial bedroom window of Thirst Hall being thrown open and it stopped him in his tracks.

“Just five minutes, I promise.”
“Your bloody life expectancy will be about five bloody minutes. Why don’t you buy a bloody rake?”

Hot news from next-door where the dog the size of a horse lives. His back legs fell off and it cost 3000 English quids to have them bolted back on. The other day I saw him and his left eye looked all sore. I said to the owner that I had some drops from when I had conjunctivitis but he said there was no need. Apparently his eyes had fallen out and needed welding back in. Gawd knows how much that must have cost.

The bicycle boys? They were very well behaved but they thought I was taking the piss when I thanked them. Life isn’t easy for anyone these days.

Yours, asexually,
Henry.

“Hello, Radio Station and I would like to talk to him on there”
“And what would you like to say?”
“Well, I think that all Police Officers should be armed to the teeth and…”
“Sorry but I have to go now”
Beeeeeeeeeeeep.

So that just goes to show, doesn’t it?
This all makes me so depressed that I want to listen to a Lesbotic Tracy Chapman record.
Do you know what ‘chapman’ means? No, I thought not. It has a special meaning for me so I looked it up. So I know and you don’t.

My arm hurts so much. As I am nearly a quack I don’t think that they got everything right at the fracture clinic. My diagnosis? It’s dislocated and, what a fucker, its my most important arm.

I am REALLY disabled and it’s not very funny. Okay, so now I can do my shoes and I have taught myself to type again.I still can’t write or paint and I would love to get back on the water where I could steer with the small of my back. How dare they? Oh, brilliant - a stick. I only used mine for breaking windows and for getting into a flat where there was an old girl with Alzheimers. After a discussion I used my stick to open the door. Bingo!

As all proper Coppers should I kept a piece of industrial tape inside my silly hat. It’s for breaking into cars.

Next time: Me and the bicycle boys.

Hello, Henry bloody Meldrew here again or, should I say, Henry bastard Meldrew.
I had to go to the shop which meant me opening the door and we all know what that means; a bloody good job in Africa for a start.

I had a fag with Mani out on the balcony and he reckoned the rain was set in. So, I went back home and got my brolly and put on my leather biking jacket which appears to have shrunk. Then I set off for the shop, all dressed in black, and a car came past on the other side of the road. Now is it me or is this a local speciality? “BASTARD” came the friendly greeting and I responded with the traditional reply which begins with F and ends in OFF. And I don’t mean FOFF.

About a hundred yards later I realised that I had forgotten THE LOCK PRINCIPLE. There is a certain fellow who has experienced my wrath at Triggs Lock. Some readers may remember that unhappy day. Now that car was heading for a set of traffic lights at the bridge and I was armed with a deadly umbrella. What I should have done was to turn back, drag out the driver, snatched the keys and offered to poke his eyes out before I dropped said keys down a drain. But I didn’t.

Since my compluter went on the blink I have lost everything that I kept for speedy reference. There was a word that I wanted to look up but I couldn’t be bothered to go all the way to my bedroom to get my Chambers. I Googled for a dictionary. About 4th or 5th on the list was something that offered ‘Dictionarys’. Dictionarys? Never heard of them; must be run by a bloke who sells ’satsuma’s’ off a market stall. Have a look yourself if you don’t believe me.

TESCO GAME CODA:

I did my shopping and included a DVDVDVDVD (Borstal Boy, if you must know) which was priced at a reasonable 3 quids. As everyone knows, especially those silly people at the telly licence who have so far sent me 30 quids to shut me up, I don’t have a telly or want one. So I buy a cheapo DVDVD every now and then.

I paid up but I was careful to read my receipt. To customer services I made my way and admired a bottom (female) and then it was my turn.

“What can I do for you?”
“You’ve already done me”

I then produced the paperwork and explained that the DDDDDD whatever was clearly marked at 3 of the Queen’s quids whereas I had been charged 4.

“Have you got it with you?”

What? Did she think I’d gone in the bogs and eaten it?

Anyway. Double the difference. She gave me 2 shiny quids back. After the knock they got it looks as if the Tesco Game is back in action. So who’s the BASTARD now, eh? Tight bastard I’ll grant you but I have 2 golden quids to rattle in my pocket. Until I spend them.

Tarrah!

A quick introduction; here.
Never met him, never knew him, but one of his paintings is my wallpaper. Even I can paint better than that but I haven’t dropped about eleven million tabs of LSD.

When the Floyd were recording ‘Crazy Diamond’, which is about him, he appeared in the studio. Fat, bald and almost unrecognisable. He went.

Back to his mother’s house in Cambridge. Diabetes got the better of him and, I suppose he lived on royalties and, maybe, a bung from the band.

At a market in Walden I overheard (always listen) some traders talking and one of them knew where ‘Syd’ lived and he was going to get him to sign a guitar that he could sell in Amerika. I hope that flopped.

He painted and smoked roll-ups. His rabbits died because he forgot to look after them.

Mental illness? I could have looked after him better than that and I would have done.

Please call him Roger as he called himself.

Shine On.

Here’s a lovely song.

I’m surprised that no one ever got me. In the Job there were rumours but I started going out with Cath and then there was the abortion and all that. I’m just sick of all the lies so I have to start at square one.

My family is full of lies. But I’m no liar (although I have turned some smarters in Court) so, before I go, I have to tell the truth and all the rest of it.

Yes, if you are interested, I have shared a bed with a man. I shagged his sister. For the last few years I have found sexual activity boring beyond belief. What on earth is the point in trying to get bits of yourself into bits of someone else. Look up ‘meatus’ in the dictionary; I bet you don’t know…

Now I’m not gay or bi or straight or lesbotic. I’m nothing. Being nothing is a bit difficult but at least I can claim to be asexual and be proud of that. I don’t have to dress up as a laydee or get my head kicked in. What’s done is done.

Being diabetic has done it for me. We have all done things that we don’t talk about. When the price of cider goes through the roof I shall make my own or buy canna**s and eat it.

Ah, now that’s a weight off my mind. Yes, I did do this and I did do that. Thr*esomes actually.

If you don’t like this it can’t turn back the clock. I did what I did, just like you did, but at least I have the nads to say so.

Cheerio.

Here’s a quicky. Hold out your hand because it’s coming round round the corner just about NOW!

Much as I would like to snog Kate I have a feeling that this desire is not reciprocal.

Guess what. We have new neighbours on the landing but whenever I say ‘Hello!’ to them they ignore me. I spoke to a friend of mine and he assured me that they like to play golf in comfortable shoes.

Bloody Hell.

The best actor in the whole world ever is…
And I will brook no argument on this one because I am completely right and anyone who disagrees is completely wrong.
The best actor in the whole world ever is Robert De Niro.
So shove that in your bong and smoke it.

I got to thinking (Uh Oh) about a few things that I have seen and done. Probably not a good idea.

In the Job you get to see quite a lot. I never got to see the sporty car that flipped down Brixton Hill and smeared the top half of the driver like a snail trail. We never got jumpers because Brixton was at the end of the Victoria Line. But I have seen some things.

One morning, at about 5 or 6 I got booted by the driver of Lima 3. I had been keeping a close observation on the insides of my eyelids. She said “We’ll take that” and shoved her foot down on the loud pedal. “Eh, Wassah?” but I got on the wireless and acknowledged that Lima 3 were on way. I asked her what the bloody hell we were going to and she told me that it was an ‘approach with caution’. Oh dear. ‘Aproach with caution’ meant exactly that. We were the first ones there.

You have probably never seen anyone who has come off a tall building. He was obviously dead and had a mangled broken leg to go with it. He had a black bin-bag over his face and tucked into a denim jacket. Not much point in an ambulance and we were nearly off duty and had to get the wireless car back for early turn.

Up the building I went. On the landings were louvre glass slats and on the 8th floor he must have put his bin-bag on his head, tidied himself up, and taken a run down the landing and out into space. Then the wind must have caught him because he blew a load of slats out on the 5th floor and then bounced out, to his death, on the concrete beneath.

Half the Factory turned out for this one. The Skipper found the letter in his jacket pocket. We just took the car back and went home, probably to get drunk.

It turned out that his brother had jumped into the next world off a building in Clapham.

The first dead body that I ever saw had been murdered. Nude, up an alleyway, and she’d done a poo. The Guv introduced me to this like I was supposed to be scared or something. Except I wasn’t. Just really interested. I kept my guard and it wasn’t me who let the bin men empty the bins, oh no. Someone else got a massive bollocking for that but that was later when I was back at the Section House getting wrapped round a bottle of Scotch.

Another night a flat went up in flames. Booze + Chip Pan = Death. The Brigade had pulled this poor sod out to die on the grass so I had to stick to him until the mortuary for continuation of identification purposes. He had conked out next to the gas fire and burned his leg off. His sister turned up but we would only show her his face and she cried and cried.

These days, well, things like this don’t bother me. Little things can really tick me off but dead is dead and that’s that. I can go into a kind of autopilot mode where feelings don’t get anywhere near it. When a friend of mine got murdered and they found her head on a roof I just blanked it all out.

The world can, indeed, be cruel but tomorrow is another day. One day will be your last and, on that special day, you will be right. But don’t make it too soon, eh? I’ve seen some horrible things and done some things that I am frankly ashamed of.

But tomorrow is another day. Forgive yourself. If you don’t then I will do it for you - I’ve seen too much.

There is a lot to do, even when you are pretending to be half-asleep.
A lot of my life is like a film. The Director can control the sound but this is something I can do inside my own head. Realising this now, I know where a lot of my pictures come from. Walking through the unSupermarket I can train my ears just to hear my feet on the floor and the babies screaming. It’s like acid (which I thoroughly recommend) but I can do it now just with my own head.

All that you have to do is watch, look, listen and learn. It really isn’t difficult. At the very least it means that you don’t get back home with your shoes all covered with dogshit and, at best, you get home knowing more than you did before.

Try to live past 27. This is the age when many people disappear for ever. I’ve been watching Ian Curtis and looking at Cobain. What on Earth is it with 27? Joplin, Hendrix, Jones? 27? What’s that all about?

Watching is important. It teaches you what people buy and, probably, why they do. Watching teaches you about how people live and about how to paint.

Art painting is more than a mirror. It is an often bitter look at life and watching gives you everything that you need. Why those shoes? Why that ice-cream or pizza? Why that car? Why that sex in it (my next work) with knicker marks up against the gearstick?

Why the bloody anything why?

The only way to find out is by watching.

You know that Dutch bloke I was telling you about, the one that couldn’t find his arse with both hands and certainly couldn’t drive an artic.?
Well, Mani came round and invited me for Sunday lunch. It cost me 20 Marlboro and a bottle of Fleurie. Seeing as how he is my European Art Dealer and that I have stopped cooking I could hardly refuse.

We had a fag outside.

Inside I had another look at one of my works, ‘The End Of The Earth’, which he has, quite rightly in my opinion, refused to have framed. I took some photos of it in situ and I think it looks well. Central on a blank magnolia wall. He has visitors and they ask him what the frying pan is that all about? He asks them what they think.

I still have to finish ‘The Smoker’, which I promised to him ages ago. It still needs finishing and varnishing. These things can’t be hurried and he’ll get it when he gets it. I’ve already SOLD more paintings than Vincent and if I feel like giving things away then I bloody well will.

In everything, well, nearly, I’ve done I can see mistakes but they are not obvious to eyes other than mine. ‘The End Of The Earth’ will not be going to Europe yet but it’s signed and has a letter. It can go anywhere as far as I am concerned but Mani likes it. His other friends like it and it intrigues them so I just get famousererer and he tells people ‘Look, I know this ARTIST’…’ When he told me that it nearly blew my socks off. I’m an artist. How weird is that?

Oh, before I forget, that Dutch bloke that can’t drive a lorry, well according to Mani he was WELSH! My bloody ancestors, generations of them , were married in Bangor Cathedral and then this twat turns up, lets down the nation, and hasn’t even got the decency to be Dutch.

It’s no wonder that my paintings never get finished. Time to cry.

Hello, Henry Meldrew here.
You would not bloody believe what happened yesterday. The good thing was that the neighbourhood society that I have spent years trying to build actually started to work. The bad thing was the Dutch lorry driver.

Those unlucky enough to have spent time at Thirst Hall will know that all the car-dumping areas are used by commuters who whizz up to Londinium having not passed their parking tests. I’m quite used to this and enjoy looking out of the window as they slag each other off. The special treat is whan a lorry does what’s called a ‘bridge strike’ but, more often, they get to the bridge (never rely on Tom-Tom) and realise that they will have to turn round.

Because I am so posh I live in a private road and I have plans from the County Council to prove it. No one can get up here without my say-so and therefore they must rely on my goodwill. Brrrrm brrrrm brrrrm. What the frying-pan is that? Oh, a massive lorry trying to turn round because the driver can’t read road-signs. Out of the window shot my head and I advised the Dutch driver to reverse. Then there began a three hour comedy of errors.

I phoned the police.

There was no way that a fire-engine or an ambulance could have got in. A punch-up could have started at any time. A proper policeman and a Happy-Shopper-Copper turned up and did nothing. Meanwhile there wasn’t a square inch that this Dutch twat hadn’t explored while all the neighbours shouted “No!” and “Stop!” at him. He took off some wall and tried to knock down a garage. Then the police helicopter turned up and, eventually, the traffic division (Black Rats) and they all stood there for hours, scratching their heads, and wondering what to do. My idea was to leave it there until Tuesday but, as per usual, no one listens to me.

We all agreed that we should have a sort of street party, like in the War, and then got back to watching the mess. The policemen thought he could back down onto the lawn
behind the houses. “No!” said I, “You don’t know what’s under there. this is all National Grid and there are massive cables with oil-cooled wrappers under there, it’s not just a lawn for nothing you know". I know that they run power to Guildford from here (not under the garden but the thought of a 250K bill shitted them up a bit).

Even the Black Rats didn’t want to have a go at moving this thing, although they are quite qualified so to do, but they did find a car with no tax disc so they were happy.

So now some neighbours know each other and we might have a little party on our back lawn with a barby and sarnies and swig. Mark from number 8 didn’t have to go to see Sex in the Shitty 2, featuring her, the bloke who looks like a horse, so he was happy.

I’m such a lazy bugger. Maybe I should organise a little party. Notes through doors; that kind of thing.

I wish I’d filmed that lorry - 200 squillion hits on BoobToob in one hour, guaranteed.

Happy holiday weekend.

H.

Out in the wilds, slowly goes the wind.
At the corner throw the sack and climb aboard where you can’t be seen.

The wood smells of cedar and musk. There is no one else here.
Five apples.

On the wall, graffiti.
‘Vietnam. I always hated you.’

The grinding wakes.
Grab the sack, prepare to go, this could be it.

At the corner jump and roll.
Three apples.

Hills and, maybe , water.
The empty car.

The clack and groan as the train passes.
Never to be seen again.

Always the same.
Two apples.

Under the trees as the rain falls.
Tarp from the sack and sleep.

Oregon.
Tomorrow another train.

One apple.
Riding blind.

One apple.

If you were me you would hate yourself.
I can’t even read the books you’ve read.

There’s a stream down here that boils and spoils but I don’t care. Carry on, carry on.

There is a pitch that you might hit. I doubt it, in the midnight hours. There is a picture that you might paint but it is most unlikely. There is a snowscape you might see but after all is said and done it will never happen.

All of these things that I have done, all of these these things, they are mine and not yours. All of these things are in my collection and they are mine, not yours.

The horses shake their heads. The cruel spite of the puff-adder hiss.

You know what you did. You know. And so do I.

Goodbye.

CAUTION:

Do not proceed unless you understand the title of this blog. Do not proceed if you are of a nervous disposition. Certiflicate 18+. Not suitable for work, skool or parental harmony. In fact, don’t read it as it is for edjermacational porpoises only.

Now, where to begin?

Ahem. There are certain medicaments that contain op**m. These can, and do, have an effect on what us doctors call the ‘bum zone’. The ‘bottom’ may seize up leading to a desire to do what we may call a ‘poo’. Now I’m no proctologist but I know when a ‘poo’ is imminent. Have a sit down and read the freebie local rag. Nothing happens. Walk about thirty feet and then sit down again. Nothing happens.

CAUTION:

Next you will need the following ingredients and assistance.

KY Jelly.
Bog roll.
Lavatory pan.
Midwife.
Sou’ Wester.
Gin.
Bible.
Letter to Coroner and Next of Kin.
Warm water and soap.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Lubricate nimble finger and poke up arse.
Locate fist-sized lump of clay/plasticene.
Remove what is possible and retire.

After 30/60 seconds repeat the above.

The midwife may then recommend a mixture of gas and air or, possibly, an epidural injection.

Make face like suicide Japanese Mitsubishi Zero pilot about to hit enemy aircraft carrier.

Ensure that 20cm dilation is in ‘go’ position.

Go.

AND THERE WE HAVE IT:

Have bath.

Call plumber and notify local water authority.

(CAVEAT: The author suggests that you seek advice from your G.P. before following any of the lunatic advice suggested above.)

And where, exactly, have you been, my blue-eyed son?

I’ve been around a bit and landed up where I want to be; in the woods and the water of Surrey. This is a magical place and it’s no Berlin or Brighton.

This morning I wasted some time watching tree-surgeons taking down two massive oaks. I knew that they were oaks from the bark and my my time wasn’t wasted because I learned a lot from what they were doing. Oh for a wheelbarrow and my log grenade.

Here’s a tip for you… Always speak to people. They will tell you EVERYTHING because they just have to. Find a buyer and make sure that you are the seller.

In the meantime, life is as about as hard as you want it to be. Stand up straight and be trustworthy. Then try to get through the eye of a needle.

Nighty night,
H.

Scene: Hosp. int. bedside.

Quack: “Well you are fit and able”
Me: “No, I’m not”

(Quacks are called quacks because of 17th C. plague beaks - a haunting image)

Quack: “Yes you are”
Me: “No, I’m not”

How you can tell someone in hospital that they are fit and well beats me. I scared him away. Mebbe I should have been in the lending library or the the tyre-fitters.

Today I thought I should have a go at having my scrip fixed so, instead of driving myself mental on the phone I walked to the surgery. I would have had to have gone there anyway so I just walked there.

She: “I might be able to fit you in for this evening”
Me: ” That’s okay, I’ll wait”

Suits me. I’ve got nothing else to do. I have newspapers.

Ninety minutes later I got myself a cup of cold water and and asked if there was no one in the entire practice with two minutes to spare.

Apparently not. Funny how they knew my name without me giving it. My fame must precede me.

Two minutes later: ” Mr Henry Ex”
Me: “I don’t want a consultation but I’ve just come out of hospital so I need to swap that for that and that for that and I’ll have have some diazepam - Fank Oo, Goodbye”

Then I found a cheap caff where I might invite my brother to join me one day when the blue-arse has stopped flying.

At the chemist I picked up my new stylee scrip and headed for the station. I was nice to everyone that I met. A smile costs nothing.

On the platform was a boy with one of those phones that plays rap music to the delight of everyone within a km radius.

I’ve lost four stone but, if anything, it makes me look more deadly than I did before.

Me: “Haven’t you got a pair of earphones to pump that drivel right into your head?”
I said this right into his personal space.
Him: Not a single word. He wouldn’t look at me.

I no longer care. I’m nice to nice people and I know loads of them. I’ve been called ‘manipulative ‘ before and I suppose that I must be. I have got out of a load of scrapes by being the size that I am and having an air of confidence.

Having nothing left to leave to my children I wish them this talent and hope that they use it wisely.

Brute force - but never the ignorance that so often goes with it.

The reason that I wound up in hospital was that I got captured by the wily pharmacist at Pestco when I asked him for an anti-emetic. He lured me into his consulting room and locked the door.

A wise move; can’t be too careful with all controlled drurgs lying about.

He said, “I can’t give you an anti-emetic but I’ve called an ambulance for you".

My blood/sugars were a mere 6 times what they should be and I had a whopping chest infection. A few days later and I was allowed to go home. With different insulin. And with antibiotic capsules the size of mini-subs. And a new style testing machine.

I’ll tell you where I have been. I’ve spent the last four days in hospital.

But I feel a lot better now.

Yup. Awake nearly all night AGAIN. I’m getting right fed up with this, I can tell you.

Disturbed sleep patterns are a CLASSIC symptom of depression and it classically cheeses one right off. An hour here and there isn’t good enough and getting out of bed to go for a wee and having stout for breakfast isn’t very funny.

I’m tired all time and, although I was ‘up’ for a few days, I can feel the dark walls closing in on me. It’s all happening AGAIN and there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t draw or paint or go out and about. The fucking Social Services are fucking useless and if they can’t see the ship going down it’s not my fault.

I DO try and I’m quite a convincing pretender. I can talk quite cheerfully on the ‘phone and am always polite to the staff of Pestco’s. I’m on nodding and waving terms with the Polish car-washers but I don’t even go near the cut anymore. I don’t do anything. My children won’t talk to me and they ain’t the only ones. Sometimes I think it would be easier to do an Ian Curtis but that won’t happen just yet. I’ll just get back into bed and read Private Eye and, if I ever get to sleep, hope that I don’t wake up. There is no one to talk to any more. There is no one and nothing - a bleak prospect for a man in his 50s.

Fuck it. This will pass (again and again) and I’m sorry to sound such a loser but sometimes you get so stretched that it’s near snapping point. I’m so tired and I live in a tip. No longer being what you might call attractive and, thanks to diabetes, having lost the bonk I know that I will never have a relationship again.

It could all have been so different.

What is it now? One of the clock in the morn. that’s what. But I made myself laugh so I thought I should share it about.

I have to have the wireless on ALL the time or I can’t sleep. I don’t really listen to it but, as any laydees who have been lucky enough to share my four-poster will confirm, I just have to have it on in an OCD stylee. I went to bed, drug-free, at ten of the clock last night. I was having a nice dream about:

Well, you know them sort of clamp hangers that you should use to to rack your trousis up? I was dreaming about using a set of them with a green baize lining to get the petrol cap on a lawnmower off. Now I don’t know why because I hang my clothes up on the floor and Thirst Hall, being a flat, doesn’t have a lawn let alone a lawnmower. But I was having this nice dream and I got woken up by this silly old bag banging on about there being no women in parliament worth buying an ice-cream for. Yeah? Well I’ll tell you why’ IT’S BECAUSE YOU HAVEN’T GOT A ‘Y’ CHROMOSOME schtyoopid.

In case she hadn’t noticed, Harriet Harperson is in charge of the shot-to-bits Labour Party so she should go round her house and have a nice cup of coffee, talk about how dreadful men are, and paint each others toenails with all glitter and that and yak about tampons and lipstick.

I’ll have to have some medication to get back to sleep now.

Honestly. It’s bad enough that every 28 days you have to put your tin hat on and retire to the Anderson Shelter to do some fretwork, smoke some fags, drink some sherry and listen to Black Sabbath records until the ‘All Clear’ sounds unless you want to put a head-shaped dent in the bottom of a frying pan.

I did think about phoning up the radio station to make my position quite clear but I didn’t think that they would have me on. Why they can’t have an embargo on women called ‘River’ banging on about the Rigor Mortis inducing election is well beyond me. I was dead of boredom before it even started but they will insist on going on and on about it. Listen to this, dearie, if you lack a Y chromosome then you go ahead and vote for the party that got us into two illegal wars and was responsible for, or complicit in, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of women and children and spent billions getting hundreds of our troops blown up. Or ask a nice man to help you tick the right box.

Where’s my Diaz*pam? I need to get back to kip and get the top off this lawnmower.

There is a problem with DVDVDVDs and that is how to get into the bastards. I shall now explain:

Firstly you must remove your usual blunt choppers because they will be no good. Then you have to get the railings out of your dog, Nipper’s, gob and wind them up to ‘extra sharp’ on a grinding wheel.

Then, you have to put them in place with a dental fixative or some superglue.

After all that you have to chew the packaging for about 15 minutes until you have made a hole in it and then spend a leisurely 10 getting the blasted cellophane off. You could use a thermic lance but that might make the picture wobble.

Recently, when I have not been knocking out cobblers to the unwary, I have watched ‘Human Traffic’ what has got that John Simm in and a blasting soundtrack and ‘The very best of One Foot In The Grave’ what has got Annette Crosbie and Hannah Gordon in. I fancy both of them like mad.

Written all on his lonesome by David Renwick it is the story of Everyman. I think he must have been reading my diary. Everything that Meldrew does is completely acceptable to me. He is right normal and watching the story of the put-upon rings bells all over the place. Renwick is a genius.

Does Margaret kill the killer at the end? We don’t really know but I suspect that she does.

Due to an intake of food my weight has shot up to 85 kgs which I am not at all happy about. I can still remove my trousis without undoing them but I still have a few boxes of lard to shift. Nah well.

I must get around to finishing ‘The Smoker’ and I have another half-done landscape to finish which I have a few ideas about. A lot of my pictures feature a guest appearance by the Sun which is a bit odd. Happy or what?

Off to market they must go, Eee I Eee I Oh.

I’ll crack this, sure I will, and it will be easier than opening a DVDVDVD.

Another painting gone away.
It will wind up in Europe, somewhere, where I have a strong following.
I would like to crack Germany but most of it seems to be winding up on the Med.

I suppose I could pull my finger out and start bashing away but I can’t just turn stuff out like pseudo-Meissen pots. Thanks to OCD everything has to be just so. The bloody thing only got varnished this morning and then handed over to my dealer to whom I owe a bundle. He supported me and fed me through the bad times and the picture that he really wanted, The Smoker’, still isn’t finished yet. I don’t want to fuck it all up because I can see the greatness in it. Neo-Brutalist you see and you have to be in the right mood to paint it.

Still, he likes what he got and it will go well with his decor. That’s a laugh; one of mine going with the magnolia. I could finish ‘The Smoker’ right now except I’m not on piece-work and the time has to be right. As soon as it is done it will be whisked away to Europeland and will make me even more famous than what I am already.

It’s such an odd feeling to be successful at something for once. I am an artist and people will pay for the things that I produce. Everything I do is down to me. I can lie in bed until tea-time if I want. I have no Guv to suck up to and, I suppose, I can charge what I like. Art art is not like graphic art. I have no patron to nod to and I can do what I please. I have sold a few but mostly I give stuff away to friends and family and people that I owe. Maybe this is all part of a plan and when my stuff starts to hit the market there may be some monetary value to it all. “Is that a real ‘Henry’?” - I often stick a letter in the frame for the sake of provenance and then wish it well and kiss it goodbye. When these things start to get about… Well…

I will never paint to order and you can think yourself lucky if you ever get your hands on one. I paint by sight and it all comes out of my own head. People beating a path to my door, flattering though it may be, doesn’t interest me because I am not interested in money. I am popular in Europeland and Canadaland and that’s pretty good. I think I shall stop putting copies on the net because I’m too thick to do it and so much of it got blagged off. I don’t mind the blagging but scarcity and rarity are important virtues.

No one else can do what I do. No one in the whole wide world. That’s quite a thing.

Gawd love yer,
H.

Something very odd has happened to my sleep-pattern. Perhaps I’m an owl or a badger because I sort of nod-out here and there while the sun is up and then really wake up at midnight and that’s that, wide-awake with nothing to do, until the mercy of dawn and I can go to sleep again.

I was having a look at one of my ‘unfinished’ masterworks and I thought to myself, ‘that’s not too bad really - less is more’ so I hung it on the wall. Thanks to me being thick, I can’t show you a picture of it but it’s really funny. Funny peculiar. It’s sort of a cross between an abstract and a landscape and the more I look at it, the more I like it. So this just goes to show that even if you can’t paint or draw a ‘thing’ it doesn’t mean that you can’t paint. Chimpanzees can do it - I saw one on Animal Magic when I was little and Johnny Morris was doing the narrating on behalf of the monkey. He (or she) was doing this painting and Johhny Morris said that it was called ‘Man Don’t Care’ in a kind of hippy way. A very interesting man, that Morris. He had an arboretum and he reckoned that it was the work of his life and how pleased he was with it. I wish he could come back to life and see it now.

You know, the more I look at that painting the more I like it. It’s rather pale, like a ghost.

What’s that you say? ‘Shut up about your daubing and tell us about your latest earworm’? You’ll never guess but luckily here it comes again; just about NOW!

To many people, the works of Damien Hirst are incomprehensible and, therefore, up for a bit of a snurk. But I disagree. I shall never get my hands on one of his pieces because I don’t get enough pocket-money. However, I like to think that I know what he’s getting at.

Many is the time when I have heard people say “I could do that", or words to that effect. Trouble is that they didn’t but he did.

I loved his dots and his Pharmacy works. You either get it or you don’t, I suppose.

So what is this ‘art’ that we tremble at the foot of? Is it The Nightwatch or a Bernini sculpture? Is it poppies and cornflowers? Is it soup tins or the minute works of Dadd? Goya? Black paintings? or maybe Banksy and his murals? Is it the ‘Shake and Vac ad.? Is it the pot of pansies from the day-centre?

Is it something that is supposed to ‘look like something’ or is it something other, something to look at, something that turns your head right round?

I’ll tell you what I think it is. ‘Art’ is something that exists in the mind of the creator and, like a hand reaching out from under the rubble, if it touches then the connexion is made.

Make something. Even if your hand touches nothing at least you are still waving.

In the hallway is my bicycle. It has only been ridden about 100 metres because I fell off it and nearly gave myself two Colles fractures but I was successful in giving myself an inguinal hernia. And in the hallway it remains as the tyres slowly deflate. But my bicycle anchor IS a work of art. 30 kilos of skill and serendipity. I made it and there it shall remain - maybe I should sign it.

I’ve already sold more pictures than van Gogh ever did and a lot of them are in Europe, mostly Portugal for some reason, and a lot of them have been blagged off the net which is good too. I don’t care about money; the originals are in good homes or under my bed or on my walls. One, which is under my bed and out of daylight, is the infamous ‘Glittercock’ which I was thinking about in the early hours as I stumbled about and moaning all the while.

The reason I was thinking about this work (I did send a copy to Vivienne Westwood - she has yet to reply) is because of my busted arm. This was the only work that I had to do right-handed and this was while I was going to art-therapy at the hospital. I knew what I was going to do. I went to the Pound Shop in Addlestone and bought a perfect glitter kit. Now, I suppose I should post the image again but enough people have seen it already and I can’t remember the image number but that doesn’t really matter. The point being that the art therapist, who is supposed to be a psychiatrist, failed to pick up at all where this had come from still confounds me.

So, at about 6 of the morn I started to pick things apart and work it out for myself. The picture, if you haven’t already seen it, is of a spunking cock but it’s corrupted with glitter. The cock is multi-coloured and the cum is all spangly silver. Mmmm, nice. Actually the image is quite devastating. The first person to see it was the art therapist and I might just as well have punched her really hard in the face. She should have asked me where this had come from but she didn’t just like when I completed my ‘Drowned Man’ in 20 minutes of trance and she asked me if I had been practicing.

I only worked all this out in an hour or so this morning. I had to ‘paint’ Glittercock’ (which has caused a monumental family rift) with my right hand to put a degree of separation in between. The original inspiration was on a wall in a public bog in Muswell Hill which I saw when I was about 9 or so. Joe Orton had probably been cottaging in there. The artist must have been right-handed ( I know this because I am so left-handed that I can tell from manuscript and I always spot lefties in films and things) so, subconsciously, I had to do my work right-handed. I went over my pencil drawing with PVA glue and sprinkled on the glitter.

This piece of work is SO disturbing that it has to stay under my bed and away from sunlight (it’s on black paper) and it might even upset Emin to see it.

I love my art and it has no boundaries. Next I might do some upsetting cross-stitch until my arm gets well better.

The little door that I made to go in a tree on the towpath was a very good one. It didn’t last all that long but I did notice that some little fingers had pulled off the door handle (a brass paper-fastener) trying to get in.

Maybe I should make another. I felt like Father Christmas putting that one in.

Go on, have a go. You can do it if you just do it.

Love and kisses and a Happy Holiday to Trouty who is probably holding tight to her brolly,
H.

How come so many of my fave songs feature the use of the capo?
‘The capo?’, you ask.
Yes, the fucking capo, deaf-aid. Here’s a simple explanation coming up right about now.

Maybe they should make shorter guitars because LOADS of my faves are played on capo.

I did like the warning to players of the 12-string guitar not to notch it up a crank or two. P’doing - Oh shit, man. Now my axe is like, um, firewood.

Luckily for me this is an ‘up’ day and so I can make myself laugh. And I just did.

‘Yeah, hey you guys. I just said my axe is like firewood and it cost me three hundred.

Well. Wood you put it on the fire then please.

Listen you dumb-ass creeps, that was my 12 string!

Bet you don’t start crying when you bust your cherry.

As I walked under the tunnel at Worst Byfleet I decided that I should bore everyone else in the world as much as I bore myself.

Today, I have accomplished quite a lot, for me, because I have got up and dressed and cleaned my teeth and went to the station and had a laugh with Ken who thought it was Monday when even I know that it’s Tuesday. He’s no Bernard Cribbens with a turnip watch. I had a double espresso (always ask for a double) and went to see the doctor. Went to chemist and the bank and the Fartrose shop. Collected prescription, went home, phoned council, sorted rent, phoned landlord and wrote him a kite, paid council tax, spoke to Ma, and all this before 12:30.

Now, this is where I start to get REALLY boring. Because I’m so OCD that I sometimes wonder if I’m autistic I get obsessions and at the moment the lucky winner is Ian Anderson.

I’ve got a link to the appallingly misspelled lyrics of the album, ‘Aqualung’. I think I’ll put it here.

Now this is modern poetry and, combined with his musicianship and stagecraft, earns him a place on my wall of inspiration. The other day I made mention of the track ‘Wond’ring Aloud’ which is off the Aqualung album. I think it’s a beautiful love song. “My hands in her hair” are just five words but they let off fireworks for me.

You can see a fairly early live version of this song here.

One of the many things that I love about Ian Anderson is the way the he tore up the rule book. He will often leave the last word in a line about half a beat too long and then drop it in. He knows exactly what he’s doing. Or, maybe, he will just drop in a “Yeah” in what I believe is a contrapunctual manner and it makes the song seem like a conversation in a windswept cafe on a Sunday morning autumn beach.

God bless the boy. He’s our Dylan.

This morning I got hardly any sleep. This was a shame because I had to go to the fracture clinic and the bus takes 40 mins to get to the hospital. I haven’t been out for a while because I felt so ill and on the bus I started getting car-sick (it’s only a little bus and was going too fast and swerving about.

At the hospital I bought a nice cold tin of 7-Up Lite and went for a wait in the clinic. I thought I was due to get x-rayed again but the doctor that I saw asked me a few questions. He was a really nice bloke. He looked through my old x-rays and asked me to put my arms behind my head or behind my back and up in the air; all that kind of thing.

He said he was pleased how it was healing up and there was no need for me to come back again! We looked at the x-rays and he explained them to me. I told him about the horrible ‘clack’ that my shoulder sometimes makes but he said that this would pass with time.

So that’s about as good as it can be.

AND I weighed myself the other day and I’m down to 13.5 stone / 85 kilos. I probably haven’t weighed that for about 15 years. So I’m (apart from feeling horribly ill) I feel pretty good about myself.

Hope YOU are feeling well; have a good holiday weekend.

Waking up, surrounded by strangers, is not very funny but I lived through it.
Let me see if I can post this..
Ian Anderson is probably the best living musician in the country. I’ve seen him a few times and never been disappointed.
Today I talked to a certain doctor (now DO bear in mind that I know more than most of them if they clamped their heads together).
I said that I needed a prescription for Tram*dol and HypoStop and some Co-cod*mol. He said that he couldn’t give me all that. “Are you in pain?” “Yes, I’ve got a broken shoulder you idiot” so I plumped for the Tram*dol because I can buy the rest at Pestco.
Hope you enjoyed the Tull if the link works. ‘Wond’rin Aloud’ is such a lovely love song. She shakes her head and they’re crumbs in the bed. Listen to it right now.

I walked back from Byfleet and I felt a bit groggy. The pub of ultimate swearification had all metal shutters on and a notice on the door.
I thought that I should have a look and that is the last thing that I remember.

The next thing was some cars had stopped because they had seen me lying on the pavement. Someone called for an ambulance but I pointed at my bag and told them where my diabetic stuff was. I had a glug of HypoStop and soon was feeling much better. The ambulance got cancelled.

The horrible thing about all this is that I no longer get any warning signs. I just go over and that’s how I broke my shoulder. I can tolerate very low blood/glucose levels and don’t even notice it and then BANG, game over.

I was very lucky this evening. The people who stopped were kind and understood about diabetes. I got a lift home. I was incredibly lucky. The fellow who helped me home was the nephew of the bloke who I had been having a drink with after Buffs. Everyone round here knows everybody else. Sorry to go on but I have no one else to moan to.

Hey, nice to have you on board.
Have a quick whip around the old site and I hope that you find it funny.
I was walking through the carpark at Pestco’s last night and I was imagining what a horror it would be if I had to turn up at the JobCentre thingy (where my ex-wife now works. AAAAAH!) and explain what I actually DID.

The answer to that one is ‘Nothing’ but, if pressed, I would say that I construct jokes. “Construct jokes, you say?” It’s the only thing I’m good at. Human beans are the only things that can construct jokes or understand them so there’s no point in being miserable about that. In fact, when you think about it, it’s one of the most complicated gifts of them all.

Welcome Steve. You saved my life and now you are gone I welcome you into my little world. If you behave yourself I’ll give you a link to where this all started.

I now weigh 14 stone with my clothes on. I’m thinking of releasing a slimming DVD called ‘Stop stuffing your face, you fat bastard’.

Happy retirement but no thanks for leaving me alone with those two idiots.

Wishing you well,
H.

I KNEW I would get there in the end.
Here’s the picture of the green alkanet that I took today:

It’s a pretty plant and too overlooked.

I did take a picture of some green alkanet this afternoon. A lovely plant with blue flowers. The seasons change but this is a plant that I always like to see. You would be able to see it too except my compluter got in a muddle.

Instead, here’s a picture of the James Gang. Well, not all of them but this is a photo of Frank and Jesse James. I like this picture just like I like certain films. These were men; not nice but men indeed. Maybe I’ll make a t-shirt out of it. They robbed and killed people but here they are and look at where the right hands are. Over the breast like they’re taking an oath.

To the outlaw, Jesse James! (swig)

Thanks to SimonG I can now post photos.

Here’s a good one. Not only do you get to buy the pens but you get FREE INK inside them. A pen WITH ink?!

Thank you, Simers!

IT’S A GOOD ONE!

As I was wandering about, making a nuisance of myself, at about ten to the eleven I saw the blue flashing lights coming towards me under the bridge.

There was no sirens sounding but every time I see them it takes me back a few decades. In a wireless car you can’t actually hear the ‘twos’; it just sounds like clicking because the sound is projected forwards. In the olden days when the blues went round and round you could see the light reflected off the walls especially when negotiating the railway bridge up Coldharbour Lane on two wheels and a wing-mirror at about 70mph.

Tonight it was an ambulance. ‘Ah Hah’, thought I, Ten to eleven. I know what that’s about. Someone has been glassed in a pub.

When I had a proper job there was a Class 1 driver who used to hear a shout coming over the main set. Then he used to put the blues and twos on and drive extremely fast. He didn’t know where he was going at all. He used to wear a dog-handlers’ jacket and really tear the arse out of the poor old Rovers that we had.

From the canteen I used to look out from the balcony and admire the boat-shaped tail of the wireless cars.

There was a colleague who used to go out into the yard and smell the tyres and brakes after certain occasions.

There was a tannoy in the canteen and if a ’suspects on’ or an ‘urgent assistance’ came over there was a right bundle to get down the stairs and fill the vehicles.

When I saw the Ambulance tonight I wished them luck. Gawd bless ‘em all.

Having spent the last two days lying in bed and feeling depressed I really did have to visit the shop. And I wasn’t disappointed. In the queueueue for the till I became aware of some small commotion.

Radios were being used.

Security type men in hi-viz descended.

I was gawping as my special offer rubbish was totted but I did hear a few things…

“I don’t know - he’s just gone".
“He was here but now he’s not".

The object of all this activity was a trolley. The front bit, you know, where you put the baguettes and things, had a 12 pack of bog-rolls stuffed into it. The main body of the trolley (ew, that sounds like Danny Kaye) contained two flatscreen tellies and about ten boxes of wine.

I couldn’t help it, I just started laughing. This was at the middle door which was bang next-door to where I was paying.I asked till-man whether someone had just tried to nick it all and he said ‘Yes’. He was trying not to laugh, I was trying not to laugh.

Shoplifting is a serious offence, an arrestable offence (which probably doesn’t mean what you think) against, erm, section 1 of the Theft Act of 1961 and because it’s ‘arrestable’ (punishable by 5 years in the Clink) YOU TOO can nick people (under certain circumstances).

And the ’security’ bloke had lost his perp. Oh dear.

A few days ago I was having a bit of a chew on something chewy (a Braeburn apple or something - yum, my fave kind). ‘Hello’, I thought. ‘Hello, that feels a bit toothachey at the back there’. So, I did what all sensible people should do and ignored it.

Here’s some history for you. I go to the dentist once a decade whether I need to or not. I last went to a lovely dentist in Weybridge but they had a falling-out with the NHS so I got left in dental limboland.

Looking at my speshul certiflicate I realised that it had expired a year ago. No problem, I shall ring up and get a new one. Oh no I won’t. The entire procedure is made as difficult as possible. Then there would be the problem of finding an NHS dentist that I could visit by bus instead of space rocket. The wretched forms haven’t even arrived yet, let alone the speshul certiflicate, let alone there being no dentist.

As I dentally limped through my dinner I thought I detected a gum-boil situation. As well as being a doctor I am also a dental surgeon so I should know. My prescription pad had run out (must get a new one) so I couldn’t prescribe myself any diam**phine or antibiotics. What was I to do?

The answer to that, ladies and gents, is simple (Quick sidetrack - once I was up Atlantic Road heading for Railton Road and I saw three getting-on-a-bit local folk enjoying a refreshing Red Stripe or Spesh in a shop doorway. “Morning Gents!” said I. The reply I got was, “Don’t call me a toilet". You can’t win, can you?)

Anyway. The answer is simple. Sort it out yourself otherwise your railings will look like you’ve got a gobful of burnt chips or they might start falling out. So, I sorted my surgical equipment and anaesthetised myself and set to work. I figured that there can’t be much difference between a narrowboat cooling system and a domestic central-heating sytem and my gob so they should ALL be mendable by someone as crafty as what I am.

Now then, I really must get around to writing a paper for The Lancet or Dental Weekly emphasising the virtues of using a wooden barbecue skewer in this kind of procedure.

I can’t give away all my secrets. My ability to fix things has taken me years to develop but let me assure you of this; I no longer need to visit a dentist and plunder the coffers of the NHS. Yeah, it DID bleed a bit but seeing as the contents of my mouth are about as toxic as that of a Komodo Dragon I don’t think that mere bacteria will survive.

Happy days. Munch, munch, munch.
H.

Here’s a word of advice; don’t ever bust your shoulder.

I have been given exercizes (Oxford Z) to do but as per usual I know best so I don’t do them. What I do is to ignore the sling of misery that I was given at the hospital of St No-Use (honestly, I could have made a better one myself and my brother DID make a better one using the triangular bandage from his shop first-aid kit).

What I do is pretend that that it never happened and I try to get on and use the bastard like an arm instead of a dead thing that just happens to be stuck to me. It still hurts. Sometimes it goes ‘clack’ which I don’t like. After all, I am sinister and I can’t cope without it. I haven’t written (properly) nor drawn or painted for a long time.

Now it’s three of the morn but I had to get up to find some painkillers.

But ‘I’ve got to admit, it’s getting better, getting better all the time’.

A nice Swedish massage might help (not now Sven, you perv) and my ribs don’t hurt any more.

Oh, I forgot to tell you. Mallers clipped my hair off and a couple of days ago I finished the job and my Victorian beard has gone. I no longer look like a right paraffin and like I might start a fight with myself in a park after a soothing 6 litres of Shrieking Witch.

Sometimes I make myself laugh. I might be just walking to the shop or typing in my pants but there is a quiet snigger to be had along the way. Last night I heard some suspicious noises so I looked out of the window. As usual it was the train persons but when I looked out I could see that the downstairs flat had steam or smoke or something coming from their boiler. I only had my heating on for two days this winter. Thank goodness for hypothermics and that the sparks fly upwards.

Tomorrow I might attempt a press-up or two but I doubt it. I now weigh the same as I did a decade ago. When my arm and legs get chopped off I’ll weigh even less!

Nighty night.

Today, on my compluter, I watched a programme, all 90 odd minutes of it. Should be still available on BBCi if you are interested.

It was a concert by, largely, people that I had never heard of and was dedicated to the music of Nick Drake. I think that Danny Thompson (on bass) was the only one who had ever met him.

I will never forget the first time that I ever heard Nick Drake. I stayed in a farmhouse in Kent for a weekend and somebody put on ‘Bryter Layter’ which was his second (out of three) album.

My friends, at the time, mocked me for my fondness for ‘Nick Duck’ as they called him, but my love for his music never died and never will. I believe that when Chris Blackwell sold Island Records he did so on the understanding that none of his work would ever be deleted.

Horrible as this mess was (to the purist) it was strange to hear those old, familiar songs through other people. Some of it was a horror-show with guest vocalists showing-off and middle-eights piddled about with BUT.

It was like hearing these songs through new ears. Bits that I loved were missing. Bits that I didn’t want were stuck in BUT.

I listened and I realised that almost without exception his songs were about

Loneliness

Loss

Death.

It’s no wonder that his young life was taken from him. It was almost as if I had never heard the words before although I had listened to them so many times. Oh, Nick, I think I get the message and I’m truly sorry that I wasn’t there for you.

God love you.

As we are all well aware, Iceland has its problems.
Someone told me that they grow bananananananas there on account of the thermal doings but I don’t believe it.

Iceland is severely expensive to visit even though it is stuffed with pretty girls. And Bjork.

What the Icelandic Government should do is convert the ASH into HASH and then we could all live in beautiful harmony. If they had thought to squirt Europe with hash they would soon be rich enough to pay us back and we couldn’t care if we went there or not because even tyre mechanics would look lovely.

As per usual, they should have asked me first. Tchoh!
Frustratedly,

H.

Those magnificent men near their flying machines
They went up diddly-up, they came down diddly-own down.
They’re not especially clean
‘Cos they ain’t had a wash since they left Aberdeen.

Down, down, hanging around
Smoking a fag and defying the sky (?)
The Captain keeps his goggles on
While he knobs all the stewardesses in the Hilton.

The passengers say, ‘Well, this day is our third’
But from the loudspeakers, not a word is heard
To get bloody home they’re terrifically keen
Those magnificent plebs on the fruity machines….

(continues ad nauseam)

I must say I love this Vulcan malarkey. There is a difference ‘twixt want and need, you know.
On the wireless a question was posed along the lines of ‘What about all the people who need to fly back-and-forth regularly from here?’

Apart from pilots I couldn’t think of anybody.

I WANT a wheelbarrow full of diamonds but I don’t actually NEED one.

We have telephones and compluters. We have ships and ferries and submarines full of atoms and trains and lorries and cars.

Just because you CAN travel doesn’t mean that you HAVE to. If it ain’t worth the walk it’s not worth going.

Mind you, when all the food runs out I’ll be a bit miffed.

My brother and I have an odd relationship.
It was his birthday on the 6th but, although I have actually bought him a card, it has yet to be delivered.

It’s a triple roll-over on Wednesday so I thought I’d get him some tickets.

Anyhoo, he hates David Essex nearly as much as I do so I wondered if anyone felt like it they could call his shop number and ask for Matt and sing him the Essex number of your choice.

He’d like that.

Anyone know how to bung photos into WordPress?
There must be a way, surely.

Hah!
Well I’ve got the bastard going again.
I’m not sure if it was someone else or if it was just plain old me but let me tell you what I did.
At the bottom of the horror/death message was a tiny clue. Ah Hah. I fired off a message to the server and then went to see my unlovely new doctor.

“What do you want?”
“Well, I’ve got an appointment to see you.”
“You saw Doc Hid the other day”
“I did, and I found him both rude and unpleasant”

There was a pause in the conversation.

My blood pressure was super normal (120 over 80 I think) and then we went on. But he is a young man and keen to prove hinself. Fair enough but he failed to prove anything with me. I’ve seen loads of doctors and I know more than most of them on certain subjects.

This one said that I should have no more C**alopram and then promptly prescribed me some more.

As I left the surgery I noticed a rather lovely painting.

“That’s nice. I wonder who did it”
“I don’t know; he left some things for me”
“I’ll tell you who did it - ME”

The painting is of a woman changing clothes, in the dark, backstage. The original is on my sister’s wall. I only paint from my brain. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. But when they do…

He said that he wanted to see me in three weeks (why?) and that I should make an appointment. I asked why he couldn’t do it from his compluter but he said that it didn’t work like that any more so off I went.

My Nude Octor is a ’scuse me.

At least this bag of shite seems to be working again.

Have a good day.

When I was a very small I was whipped and made to go to school. I had to wear a gaberdine coat but I did the belt up so tight that my mother said that I looked like a sack of potatoes.

This was in Hemel Hempstead (so named for growing hemp - for the fibres, you see, and also my place of birth. After I was born St Paul’s Hospital was knocked down, probably because I was born there. I am one of the few people who can remember being born. No, I can, I really can).

At school we had to say our prayers. Mine was probably for Scalextric or Super-Powers or being in ‘Man From Uncle’, something easy like that but NO. So I realised that praying was rubbish.

But there was this boy, his name was Richard, and he couldn’t put his hands together to pray. His right hand was straight and orderly but his left was a bit floppy. His left fingers could only reach about halfway up the erect fingers of his right. Now how cool is that?

Well, now I know. Having bust my arm my 46 year old wish has come true. Poor Richard. Maybe he had polio or something. Is this something that I prayed for? Good job he hadn’t had one of his legs chopped off. Being a diabetic, that delight is looming.

Be good and take care,
H.

Nope,
I still can’t post pictures or do links.

Today I had the, ahem, plops so I stayed indoors and suffered most bravely. Still, I did get on the radio and made myself laugh so that was a good.

I DO hope the man nextdoor wasn’t listening or I might suffer a kicking but humour is the best thing of all so it might be worth it.

It’s my brother’s birthday tomorrow (well, now I suppose) but can I face the four-mile walk? I’ve got him a card and stuff but four miles is a long way with a leak.

Mum’s phone is broken. I bet I could fix it because I love fixing things. The thing to find is the master socket. Then you unscrew it and use the socket that is inside it. Honestly, the things that I have found out by being inquisitive are quite amazing. I can mend loads of things (not fridges, don’t ever touch fridges. They are poisonous) just by looking at them and seeing how they work and understanding why they don’t work.

I can’t make a compluter work but that doesn’t really matter. I can make old cars work - it’s a shame that I can’t make myself work. My arm IS getting better though.

Happy birthday, dear boy.

love,
D, x.

here

Type yourself into You Tube and have a look at the wonderful collection of John Martyn (Oh FFS, will you never shut up about blooody John Martyn?) and the biographical stuff that’s on there (not suitable for work or children aged less than four).

Mallers came to stay and we had the most deeeelish curry. Now THAT’S a through the door menu I’m going to hang onto. Pizza? No. More shitty pizza from Maddlestone? No. BUT… Curry from the Jholpai in Parvis Road, Worst Byfleet, YES, YES AND YES again. It cost a mere 26 of your Earth Quids for starters and main and boy, were we stuffed. That’s 13 quids each and you can spend that on three pints and a packet of salt and vinegar in the boozer. So, we kicked off our shoes and watched Steptoe and Son. Then we stayed up until 4 o’clock of the morn watching the Rutles and refreshing ourselves.

This morn we went fishing. No! Not for smelly gudgeon because fishing is out of bounds for the time being. No, we were after a much tastier catch. Fully magged up we only hit one lock, New Haw, and I have had successes there before. I had the first worthwhile hit on what I suspect was a crayfish trap. Minutes later, Mallers bought up one the same except his was a bit bashed. Still, nothing that a workbench and a ball-pein hammer wouldn’t put right. The lids were missing but nothing that couldn’t be put right with a knackered old lady’s pair of tights. Sorry, I meant a pair of tights that were knackered. I think they got left on the bankside. I might go up there tomorrow and see if they are stilll there. A quid’s a quid, you know.

Now Mallers has gone away to buy some cat-shit grit and I’m all alone once more.

I still don’t know how to do links or upload my fab photos of my new Apple lappy. Still, he did cut my hair for me. Now all I need is a Strimmer for my beard.

Don’t eat all your Easter Eggs at once (Trouty).

Have a great holiday!

h. x

Have I bored you with this before?
Well too bad if I have.
We got sent up to St James Park or somewhere for a demo and then we got let out to go and get some grub.
I was walking with this bloke and I’ll call him Cody for the sake of the tale. Cody was enormous and for my first two years he really hated me but in the end we got on after I had proved myself by walking straight through trouble and being set on fire. He used to be the first to go into a ’suspects on’.
We were walking through Green Park or somewhere and I saw this trampy bloke slumped over on a bench.
I said to Cody, “That bloke’s dead".
“Yeah, he is".
“Don’t you think we ought to do something?”
“Yeah, we should go and get our grub".
“But he’s dead".
“Do you you want to spend the afternoon filling out an IRB or do you want some grub? It’s not our manor anyway".

We went and had some lunch and walked back a different way.

At least he had looked peaceful. Some of them that I saw were certainly not.

Birth, taxes, nurses and death.

I have decided to hate my doctor. It’s not his fault that he’s rubbish, he just is, so I can hate him without feeling guilty.

The receptionist said that I can send a card to Doc Holiday (marked Poisonal and Confidentional) and that they would send it on to him. What a bitter note that will be. I can’t believe I have been left like this with a sour-faced quack who could not give the proverbial.

So be it. I need doctors about as much as they need me. The trouble for them is that I KNOW and they know that I KNOW. Your average GP is supposed to know most things about everything, but they can’t, and they are scared, because they don’t and they can’t. But I do.

Well, I don’t know how to ride a horse or build a bridge but there are some things that I DO know about. I can cut glass, drive a forklift and nick people. And I can read. I can smell lies and draw and, oh, loads of things. I can drive a boat and I can smell a doctor who isn’t quite sure.

I used to keep snakes and I could see them waiting for the mouse.

There will come a time. There will.

H.

Doc’s today for the first time since Doc Holiday retired.
I had to see Doc Hid.(eous). He looked at me like some kind of monkfish with facial necrotising fasciitis and bubonic plague who had flopped into his insulting room.
He is supposed to be a specialist in diabetes but he didn’t ask me a single question about my case which I have had for twenty years.
“Why have you come to see me?”
“Because Doc Holiday told me to. I come to see him every week, you see, and so he told me tha…”
“Well, there’s no need for that".

I don’t suppose that he will ever realise how close he came to defenestration.

Bedside manner? More like a roadside manor if I had my way and could boot him onto a bench with a P45 for a duvet.

There will be trouble ahead, of that I am sure. Maybe he just likes looking at fannies and all that stuff and I disappointed him.

How does he know there’s “No need for that"? I’ve been seeing Doc Holiday every week for YEARS so how come, all of a sudden, there’s “No need"?

Maybe Dr Hid thinks he knows better than Doc Holiday. I don’t think so.

As medical professionals go (and, believe me, I’ve seen a few) he was, ahem, fucking pathetic.

I could hear the cogs in his brain going round as he thought to himself ‘I’ll have this bone-idle, broken-armed, agoraphobic, incontinent, OCD, diabetic, brain-apostrophic, mentally-ill, chronically depressed, lazy twat back to work in no time’.

Or will he?

It would be awful if I started complaining because, although I have time on my hands, I do realise that doctors are very busy.

I’m 51. I’m busted. There isn’t an employer in the country would take me on. “Any questions?” - “Ooh yes, which pub do we all go to at lunchtime?”

Why don’t people understand? There isn’t any point. I know more about medicine than your average nurse (except the poo bits) and I will never be forced into anything, thanks very much, so just leave me alone.

That’s all.

Tomorrow (Wednesday) I don’t have to do anything but on Turdsday I have to go and see A NEW DOCTOR.
I’m not really looking forward to this but seeing as Doc Holiday has retired I have no choice.

At the moment, the only thing I’m interested in is whether he has got Doc Holiday’s surgery and if my painting is still on the wall. I wonder if he took it with him or threw it in the bin or what. It was one of my better ones and my sis has the original. Sorry if I’ve bored you with this already but it’s a picture of a woman getting changed, backstage, in the dark.

I never paint from life - hence the subtitle of my blog. I know roughly how anatomy works and I’m interested in it all. I know roughly how light works and that’s really all I need to know. My picture of The Drowned Man is really a study of light and my Art Therapist asked me if I had been practicing. I hadn’t, I just started with the highlights and then mixed the paint darker and darker. It took me 20 minutes.

I was thinking about him today because I had to go to Woking (oh poo) where the Coroner’s Court is. Vodka Mick told me that he had topped himself because all his pockets were full of chains and I suppose - if this is true- that he must have jumped from the horse bridge. The painting took me 20 minutes in a right trance. There are several mistakes in it but I don’t suppose that I will ever sell it.

Then there was the painting of the Bluebell Wood which I painted from a memory of when I was about 2 or 3. My Mum reckons it’s nothing like but I only paint things from out of my head. The original is on my Ma’s wall.

I’ve sold more paintings than van Gogh ever did and a few of them are now in Europe. A woman in Canada liked my stuff so much that she made an e-gallery of things that I had posted so I am truly International.

Trouble is, that now I have smashed my arm I can no longer write, draw nor paint. Sometimes I feel sorry for myself because I liked what I did. I can’t even type very well and I have to go over and over to correct the mistakes.

Still, it could have been worse. I never came off either of my motorbikes and, considering what a piss-artist I am, I’m lucky to be alive at the ripe old age of 51.

Don’t ever break your arm. The exercizes they make you do are painful to say the least.

Love and luck,
H.x

Today I had to go for physio; the first time that I’ve been with this particular injury.
The nice lady said that I did better than she had expected, having run her hungry eyes over my supermanly torso.
Actually I was in bloody agony.
And she made me do something with a walking stick which I would rather not go into. If you see what I mean.

The worst thing of the day was buying a rail ticket.

The ticket office is only open for 30 seconds a day and as I had an afternoon appointment I made sure that I had loose change to feed the ticket machine’s greedy gob with.

I inserted a golden pound but it got spat back at me. Yip. it was a dud. A fake. A forgery

It was a bloody good one though. On closer inspection the Queenly hat was a bit weak but the obverse lined up. The writing along the edge was crap though, I must have got it from Pestco because that’s the only place I go. If I try to spend it I would be a CRIMINAL but how someone could take advantage of a one-armed cripple beats me. I shall keep it as a souvenir and annoy everyone by closely examining every quid I get in the future.

I suggest that you do the same - apparently these bloody things are everywhere.

Nighty night, sleep tight,
H.

It is sort of my intention to become a vegetarian (parp). I’m about half the way (pffft) there but I do have cravings for bacon. They sell it pre-cooked and all (thrrrp) crispy in Waitrose but not in Pestco’s.

I do like eati(phrrr)ng vegetables but the prepping is so boring. Pestco’s do a rather nice cauliflower whiff (sorry, I meant cheese) but I’ll be blowed (off) before I peel a carrot.

Today I saw something rather sad in Parpco’s. A single Dad (well turds of a feather flock together) and he was looking at the cheap meat. Phpppppp. Would he choose the fartfurters? No, he went for a 70 ppppees off pffork pie instead.

Mallers is coming next Fffffrrrriday and he likes brocodile soup. I’d better get some more bog-roll in.

‘Scuse me. I really must GO.

Talking to Trouty on the phone I reminded her to adjust ALL her timepieces by the hour.
I had wound my wristwatch forward yesterday so I didn’t get caught out.
Hah! I checked my clock on the wall and it was bang on. Guess why.

I hadn’t moved it since last autumn.

Thick or what? I hadn’t even noticed.

I shouldn’t be allowed out on my own.

One of the few benefits of having smashed my left arm to pieces is some tablets I was prescribed for the pain.
My stupid new ISP has decided that I must not name it (it begins with a T) but these tablets contain something that comes from poppies (and begins with an O).

The amazing and often confusing result of these things is that I have the most vivid dreams. I can hardly wait until bedtime and then, when my shoulder goes CRACK, I don’t much care.

When I wake, during the night, I often think that I am in bed with at least one other person and I think I am in another building altogether. If I need to go to the loo I think I’d better go upstairs. But I live in a flat. There isn’t an upstairs.

Then, in the day, I can’t remember who I have told what so it might be a dream or it might not, thus I am New Haw’s most annoying person. I repeat myself so it’s no wonder that people get cross with me.

Anyhoo, my arm is getting a bit better although I still can’t write or paint or draw. The physioterrorist date is looming and I bet that’s going to hurt. It might be a Swedish gorge-pants but probably just ag.

(Yes, nosey govt. That WAS the ‘T’ word but it was a joke)

I’d better go. And, Hey, you be careful out there.

You know what I’m like, and, if you don’t you should do by now.
One week one thing and then, two days later, another.

I’m thinking of having my ears pierced and getting some proper gold hoops stuck in. Sailors and wanderers used to have these to pay for the funeral when they were found dead. I’m still thinking about it but I will probably forgotten by next Tuesday.

Now, here’s a young man, playing at Reading in the 70s. Watch the beginning very closely. It must be the start of the set. Runny nose, John?

He plugs in and all is about to start and then. what’s this? A massive snort, that’s what it is, and if that isn’t cocaine then call me Thijs van Leer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beh7g6Iz4Vg

Please forgive my John Martyn OCD or, maybe, find some for yourself.

Cheerio,
h.

Whilst making a nuisance of myself up at Pestco’s

The government rang about some pesky forms and now I I have forgotten what I was going to say.

The brain-scan that I had wasn’t exactly happy.

AH! Having looked at the title once more I remembered.

In Pestco’s they have a photo-station thing . Hang on. I forgot.

Nope, they have a photo thing where you can print out your own jigsaws and table-mats and stationAry.

StationAry?

I told the bloke at the counter and he told me that I was the second person that day to give him the nod.

Poor old Pestco’s

As everyone knows, there is nothing I like better than noise. Luckily for me The Creeper seems to to be hammering some more wooden flooring onto his existing wooden flooring (not allowed, I know my rights) and the other day someone was mending a garage roof with a bit of ply and some 9″ nails.

If I see someone flobbing gum or chucking litter about I really do my my best to do something about it but now that I am old and crippled it’s not so easy.

In the olden days I collected the nippers from school and took them to the park for an ice-cream and muck-about..

Guess what happened next. Apart from when we had had a guest who coughed and both the children said “hand", this time could have been worse. There were some scummers (have I told you this before?) and one of them chucked a kebab wrapper aside. Melissa (aka Twizzle) was only small, small, small but she went went up to him and said “LITTER” and I thought I’d get a kicking. But I didn’t and the wrappings got put in the bin.

In the last few weeks I have seen lots of men in orange space-suits cleaning up the roadsides. Yes, we all know why they are doing it but what I say is this:

“Thank you for taking the time to clear up all this mess, It looks so much better now (or words to that effect)".

As regards monster noise, at least wthose railway twats have gone on strike ( or threabouts). Aaaaah, lovely sleep without me having to take more drugs than usual and vidding the pests.

Peace and quiet,
H.

This morning I made my mother cry by phoning her at 9 of the morning.
I didn’t quite realise because I had been up up since 6, been out, done the shopping, got in, watched some compluter and all that.

And then I made my Mum cry.

I managed this by the sinister method of telephoning her in the morning because I know she is not well. What a cunty thing to do.

No one has contacted me to lament the loss of Doc Holiday. Every time that I am at the surgery I shall try to see a sneaky look; is the copy of my oil painting still on the wall?

That will be a discovery. I know his Porsche and I know his personal index plate. He knows far too much about what is wrong with me.

So what do I do now? Put myself in the hands of the the new diabetic specialist (seeing as Dr Speedy retired last Crimbo), or put my gonads in the hands of the fruity new doctor whose name I can’t remember.

Will someone stop this black dog from chewing at me?

Thought not.

Why do all bills come at once?
For a start I get my gas and electrickery from British Gas. They read the meters at the same time so I get the pleasure of having two bills at the same time. Where oh where is the tree that money grows on?

Then the Water Bill. Why you have to pay in advance for something that you haven’t (and probably will not) use is beyond me.

Council Tax. Luckily I have won the Foopball Pools so I shall send my chauffeuse in my Bentley round to the Civic Offices with a sackful of diamonds to pay that off.

Talk about skint. I owe more money than the RBS.

Tchoh!

‘H to He, Who am the only one’ was an album released by Messrs Van der Graaf Generator in about 1970.
I never knew what it meant but this evening I watched a programme about the Sun.

Did you know that there are about 200 BILLION stars in our galaxy? We have satellites up there that are so far away that what they transmit takes about a quarter of an hour to get to Chile and that’s at the speed of light.

As far as stars go we have about 5 billion years left before it turns into a Red Giant.

Hydrogen and Helium, that’s what it’s made of. At last I can go to sleep without worrying about that bloody album title.

Sleep well,
H.

Since I swapped from AOHell to BT I have regretted it. I just don’t understand how it works.

My shoulder clicks in rather a painful way every now and then.

I had rather a nasty disagreement with my Pa on the phone. He was pissed and most unpleasant. Still, it will save me going to his funeral. Having hated him as a youngster I did try for over a decade to make up for things. He used to hit me when I was a boy and then, one day, when I was a teenager, my Mother thought I was going to really whack him. Of course I didn’t because I was well brought up but it was close.

He is aggresive and a bully and I will never speak to him ever again if I can help it.

Does anyone know how BT works? I can’t suss it for the life of me. Bloody compluters, I wish that I had never bought one.

Peace and love,
H.

Using my super new tin-opener I whipped the top off a tin of pineapple chunks from the fridge. Mmmmm, how sweet and delish.
I sat on the edge of the bed, tucking in with a spoon. Uh oh, the muscle in my broken arm started to get involved.
Oh dear, my bedroom is now carpeted with Chineapple Punx plus juice.
It seeped through my bedsocks.

Rather a depressing day seeing as how my fave jumper now smells of pineapple and I didn’t realise until I was on the train to the Doc’s.

Fracture clinic tomorrow. Great.

H.

Doc Holiday retires next Wednesday. This means that I will never see him again.
There is a book but I can’t write anymore so I had to dictate a message.
I started to cry because I will miss him so much. He saved my life.

I went to the bog to wash my face and I saw him coming the other way. “Now look what you’ve done” says I, “You made me cry". He promised to run me over in his Porsche next time he sees me in Osyter Lane.

But I know his personalised index plate (that shocked him) so I can duck out of the way.

He is the best doctor that I have ever had. He saved my life. Maybe next time I’ll get a lady doctor (see Graham Parker and the Rumour’s 1st album) or maybe not.

Tomorrow I have to go back to the fracture clinic. Luckily Doc Holiday prescribed me about a million d****pam and t****dol, maybe as a goodbye present.

We shook hands and he told me that he was very pleased with the way I have got on. I had to get the receptionist to write a tribute in the Goodbye Book seeing as I can’t write anymore.

Gawd, I’m going to miss him.

Tearfully,
H.

As her Ladyship, Dame Truite de Eltham, will confirm I hardly ever check my lottery tickets. There is a good reason for this; if I don’t know that I have lost then I might have won and I can spend a loot (geddit?) of time thinking about what to do with my winnings. I might buy a lifeboat to be called the Charlotte Rose.

Anyway, I won six quids on a ticket from last October. See, I told you.

My thoughts for the moment revolve around ’should dogs wear nappies’ (that’s diapers in Amerikanese).

It would stop them pooing all over the place and put an instant stop to scummers with attack dogs.

What do you think?

People that know me will know that I have about twenty-minute interests. I could never have gone to University because my interest span is in minutes rather than years.How I managed the police force is a miracle but I do remember getting 98% in one exam (it was about the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1971).

This weekend’s interest has been Detroit. I’m not much keen on Motown (who packed their bags and moved west), but I do like the MC5 and the Stooges.

Detroit is now Amerika’s murder capital and is nearly all burnt out.

Watch out, England.

There is plenty to see in compluterland. Gawd help us all.

In the good old days,when the Pestco game actually worked, there were spoils for everyone with a sharp eye. Nowadays they just give you double the difference which is fairly hopeless.

Today. having visited Mama, I popped in to buy some vegetarian nosh and made for the frozen pizzas where they keep a cheesy one (RRP £1.89) which I quite like. But what was this? The freezer cabinet (which is a big bastard - about 3 or 4 front doors wide) was hotter inside than it was in the shop. I asked an old lady who was passing buy to stick her hand in there to confirm whether I was right or mental. We checked the entire cabinet and it was definitely warm.

I passed by a ‘team leader’.

“Do you know that your pizza freezer is knackered?”
“No.”
“Well, it is. I think I should get this one for free for being so public-spirited.”
“I can’t do that.”
(Why the fuck not I don’t know seeing as they would have to throw the entire stock away into the skip that they keep locked-up to stop the Freegans getting in.)
“When you get to the till ask them to page Dan and I’ll see what I can do for you.”

At the till I spoke to a nice young man. The puzzer on his top lip was just about ready to burst. He told me about the amount of stuff that they just throw away, and lock away, while he tried to contact Dan. But Dan was nowhere to be found. He may have been taking a sauna in the ‘freezer’ cabinet.

After about quarter of an hour he caved and let me have my pizza for 50 pees so, HOORAH, that’s £1.39 to me. ‘Free’ would have been better but there you go. It didn’t really matter to me as I have all the time in the world but not much money.

So the Pestco game lives on; in its way.

Happy Muvvers’ Day to all you Muvvers out there.

The only mothers that I like are ‘The Mothers of Invention’. Babies are irritating until they can speak. Then they spend three years being brilliant until they are whipped into school.

I remember pushing number one son in a shopping trolley round Vileburys in Hove. For the next half an hour all we heard was the constant repetition of “Feminine Hygiene” because he could read the aisle notices.

Should have gone down the blue sweets and pop aisle instead.

Have a nice day,
H.

Today I had to write an address on an envelope. It toook me about twenty minutes.

I am SO left-handed when it comes to writing; I hope it comes back soon.

Happy Muvvers’ Day, my dear Trouty. I wish you well.

H.

When I was 19 I moved to Goimany, to the city of Boilin.
At a party, or something, I was talking to this fellow who had been working in a garden centre kind of a place.
A customer enquired about hedge-trimmers so he picked one up to show him.
You can see what happened.
Rule 1: Never hand a hedge-trimmer, handle first, to a customer whilst you are holding the bladed end.

The customer turned it on and cut the tops off his fingers.

When I came back I joined the police FORCE and, boy, did I enjoy the first-aid course.

Shortly after, my Dad was cutting the hedge and guess what?

He’d only snipped one finger but I made him hold it up as high as possible. This lessens blood loss. I improvised a dressing and made him some sweet tea.

One night at the Neptune in Hove a drunk punched a hole through the glass in the door. I grabbed a bar-towel and shouted for an ambulance. I took him outside with the the towel wrapped round his wrist (held up high) and waited for the twos and blues.

I’ve had quite an exciting life, I suppose.

More medical tales another time.

Today, five weeks later, I decided to try life without my sling. It hurt. I don’t know whether I was supposed to do this but I am very stubborn. As I walked back from the shop I saw a lorry pulled in on the other side of the road. Oh dear, he must have been going on compluter-drive beccause he would never have got under the bridge.

Half of the bridge is Victorian and was built for horses and cartses. I told him to take the next left into Abbot Close which is an industrial estate and he could swivel easy.

Then I went into the Bentley showroom. I’d never been in there before but what a lovely new car smell. They didn’t offer me a lift with my shopping but I asked them if anyone had reported the pothole outside their entrance. “Oh", says she, “we know about that".

If someone had hit that hole on a motorbike they would be dead. D.E.A.D.

Later in the day I went to the garage to buy some sweets and some swig. Magicka magicka and hey presto the pothole had been filled in (rather badly).

There are some rubbish bins along the road. The other day, when I still had my sling on, I picked up some crap and binned it. I hope that the people in the traffic-jam noticed and felt a twinge of shame.

This is my ‘hood. I like to take care of it.

Have a good day.
H.

The other day I decided to walk to the shop. This is getting a bit boring now, seeing as I have to nearly every day, come rain or shine and I have no car. Anyway, I was about a third of the way there when I thought ‘Uh Oh’ because I could feel a hypo coming on.

Seeing as I have been a type 1 diabetic for over twenty years you would think that I would know better but, if anything, it has trained me to be worse because I can tolerate blood/glucose levels of about 1.0 without noticing. And then I fall over. When I did myself in in the kitchen it looked as if Quentin Tarantino had popped round for a cuppa.

Being wily, I carry about three tons of glucose about with me which I munched all the way to the shop and promptly forgot to buy some more. At the in-store caff I disenjoyed ‘El Breakfasto de la Disgustino’ and started to feel a bit better. I bought a cheapo DVDVDVD of ‘A beautiful mind’ which appears to be about a nutcase who likes doing hard sums. He wins the Dynamite Prize but there’s no moiders or anything. Pah!

HOT NEWS:
I have had a lot of trouble with my stupid oven. You know them oven trays? Well, they don’t fit. They are about 10mm too wide. I supposed (note past tense) that they were for even more stupid continental ovens or the ones that you see on the cookery progs. I thought about going round the factory estate and getting them ground down so that they would fit on the grille things in the oven without me going mental.

But.

The other day I made an amazing discovery. What you do, right, is take out the grille thing and the oven tray fits in perfick. Why the scummers who make these things don’t explain - IN ENGLISH - how they work defeats me.

MEDICAL NEWS:
At the shop today I chose William to ping my groceries. He is a cool black dude with a shaven head and I really like him. It’s a good job that I am nearly a doctor (note: must buy white coat, stethoscope and bow-tie) because he asked me how I was. I pointed at my sling and told him that I had broken my shoulder. Then he told me about HIS shoulder. My diagnosis was immediate. “William” I said as the queue built up, ” You have adhesive encapsulitis, otherwise known as a frozen shoulder". The queue started to tut but when you have a sling on they tut with shame. I gave him some exercises to do and bade him farewell.

I’m a bit of a twat, really.

There was a time when I had lovely handwriting. It was unusual because I am left-handed. People of the sinister persuasion have to learn things differently and I can generally spot the manuscript of a left-hander.

I watch out for them too. A lot of actors are lefties and a lot of interesting people. But I can’t write any more. Well, I can, but in teeny weeny capitals. I hope that this situation improves over the coming weeks because my handwriting was, at one time, quite beautiful in its way. I can’t paint and I write like a three-year old.

Buffs was good last night and I saw a certain person shudder all down when he spotted me. It could probably have been recorded on the Richter Scale.

My arm hurts so I’m going to go back to bed, take the eighth pill of the day, perchance to dream.

Have a good one yourselves.

H.

(They seem to have upped the speed on my compluter so I’m a bit happier)

A letter arrived. It’s a copy of a letter sent from the hospital of no public transport and much diarhhoea.

I have got a ‘left proximal humerus fracture’ and the icing on the cake is ‘a slight varus deformity’.

Apparently I was ‘encouraged’ to ‘commence pendulum excercises’ which I don’t remember at all but I have had two more falls since then so perhaps I have some brainial dementia thing as well.

Having read the kind comments I think I shall go to Buffs tonight. The cuff and sling will be worn with pride (what’s the difference ‘twixt ‘will’ and ’shall’?). My contribution to the raffle will be be a jar of ‘chicken tonight’ which is only vegetables so I can have that if nobody else wants it - I’m sick to death of bloody humbugs and cheap cakes.

Upon return I shall see if the telly streaming is working. A swap to Virgin seemed an idea but it’s a bit on the dear side.

On the way to Buffs I often treat myself to a crispy pancake roll or some chips. It gives me something to look forward to.

Decisions, decisions…

As my brother mentioned, the squirminess should be interesting. And, in case you are interested, a ‘varus deformity’ means that it hasn’t set right. Looks like my Olympic dreams are as knackered as the rest of me.

Love and luck,
H.

It’s Buffs tomorrow evening.
Should I stay or should I go now?

I think I’ll give it a whirl; after all, I have nothing to lose. It’s supposed to be a fraternity and it must be about five weeks since I broke shoulder. It still hurts like bloody hell and I still can’t write but at least I have learned how to tie my laces and put a jumper on.

Should I stay or should I go?

Yes. I’ll give it a spin and see what happens. There might be a massive cake with a nude bird jumping out of it. Or possibly not.

Ho Hum.
H.

The Torment Squad from the Snailway were here again tonight.
So was a great deal of rain.
The harder down that it buckets, the quieter it seems to get.

The temptation to snigger is almost overwhelming.

It seems to work. Don’t ask me how but it does.
Trouty has my proper message but you can always try mine. Bloody compluters; why are they always so rubbish?

AND, the Creeper had a Pisco last night starting at 01:00 and I had had to wear the headblockers what Omally gave me.

Let’s se if THIS works…

I’m on about router number six or something like that. Yesterday a new one arrived but I was too depressed to open the box but I had a bash today and fingers crossed…

I’ve still no idea how this things works but there is no smoke coming out of it it yet and maybe I’ll get used to it in the end. All the other ones dropped more often than a whore’s drawers so maybe this time I’ll be lucky.

As I unpacked this one I noticed that there was a plastic stick-on cover. ‘Funny’, I thought - there wasn’t one on the last one they sent. Surely they can’t have sent me a reboxed knackered one?

Talk about learning curve.

Have a great weekend!

Unless I have made a predictable cock-up I have a new email address.

henrythethirst@btinternet.com

Go on, give it a try and then I can stay up all night trying to mend it.

One of the good things about this time of year is that the water comes out of the tap really nice and chilled much like the water machine at the surgery.

But, my thought for the day is this:

Only drink water from the kitchen tap. Kitchen water comes from the mains but bathroom water comes from a tank in the loft - a bit like the water in your lavatory cistern. When did you last inspect your tank or trawl it?

Contrary to popular belief, I DO enjoy the occasional schooner of water but it has to be at the right temperature.

Cheers!

The first person who calls me ‘Bandit’ because I have only one arm should be reminded that I still have another one that works pretty well.

Having spent the day going nearly nuts I retired ‘twixt my silken sheets this afternoon.
But, at about 10pm on my way to the kitchen I noticed that my broadband light was shiny shiny.
I suspect that someone ‘pon the same line is downloading some prawngraphy and nicking the meagre amount of megs that I should have.

Good job that a man from BeeTee should be here tomorrow morning.

Fetch your Webley, Watson. The game is afoot.

I would like to thank you all for your kind messages and hey, Trouty, I found that scarf you keep banging on about. So that’s two then. Now all I have to do is check my lottery tickets unless the price of postage has gone down.

X

H.

What a delight. You know my neighbour what has a dog the size of a horse, well he hates me and I don’t know why. It could be be be becuse his dog barked at me a few times but now me and the Shetland Doggly get on on alright.

Tonight there was a rare old punch-up. Placing a glass to the wall to amplify the joyful sounds I heard quite a bit of it. Although it lacked in eff words it was was high in volume. Had I still been in the Job I would have kicked the door in and nicked at least one of them for breach of the peace.

On the way to the garage I saw Mani and he has new neighbours. They play loud music. He has got a boofer or woofer or whatever it’s called. As he works nights I advised him that the works of Richard Wagner might be a good idea..

Ooh, my arm hurts.

Nighty night.

AOL are pants - true fact.
I decided to switch to another group of pantophiles, BT.

This may explain why I haven’t enbloggified of late.

An extra reason is my smashed arm. Thursday’s visit to the Hospital of St Diarrhroea. The nice doctor showed me an X-Ray of my shoulder. I couldn’t have done it better with a hammer and chisel. The top of my humurus is cracked right across just below the ball-joint in my left shoulder. It is a little displaced but not worth operating on.

You try tying shoelaces with one hand or making a bed or putting on a jumper.

BT are utter pants.
Hello, is that Mumbai or New Delhi?
“I wish to speak to Customer Services”
“"That department is closed”
“Have you got a a pen and paper?”
“No, this is is a paperless office”
“Then send them an email”
“They have no email”

Don’t know about you, but this is when I start to lose my temper - I hate being lied to.

Hey Presto. Two calls later and my broadband suddenly worked.

I wish my arm did; I’m left-handed.

Love to you and yours.
H

I bet that if you could find a rented mule that was more stubborn than me, it would cost you more than ten bob.

This evening it took me half an hour to get dressed; I don’t think I’ll be going to Buffs tomorrow.

The thing with being stubborn is that it never goes away. Stubbornness never leaves you alone - like a party that nobody comes to.

To look at me, you might think that I am am happy and all that. But I am not.

However, I am stubborn so I can do things that other people can’t.

(caution: may contantain nuts)

My brother sharpened his pen and attended forthwith.

Let me explain; a broken arm is a broken arm. Hooray for me because I managed to get get dresssed.

Maybe tomorrow I shall sit in my OCD seat and wait until Doc Holiday sees me.

My other thanks go to Mani who did some laundry and, of course, Omally

yarroo!

this one really hurts i tell you.
my left arm is bust right at the neck. at the shoulder.

thanks to my brother he has kept me supplied. sometimes i feel like crying but that won’t do any good.

back to bed for me.

stay safe.

Seeing as how the Hornby Dublo trainset that exists around here can’t cope with a couple of inches of snow and, seeing as I was supposed to see Doc Holiday, I decided to hoof it.

It was quite a nice day but the black-ice was treacherous. I reached the surgery bang on time, had the chat and then went to the bank. Oh dear - I am a ton in the red.

I bought a little basket of stuff and made for the tills.

At the ‘baskets only’ thing there was a woman in front of me. Well, that’s alright because I’ve got all day anyway. So I stood and waited and then I heard the magic words:

“Oi, you.”

Then I got a prod in the back.

“There is a queue, you know.”

Well, to me, a queue is a line and not a load of morons bumbling about. The man who had prodded me was about my age (although I look much younger) and he was in a right strop. Now I don’t much like being ‘Oi youd’ and I certainly don’t like being prodded. I explained that I wasn’t aware of being a queue jumper and made my apologies and and retired to the rear of the milling crowd.

I started to converse with a nice lady. She said, “Look - till rage", and it was the same bloke going raving bonkers. All I had was an apple and some Aunt Bessie’s spuds (no chance of them thawing out) and then the fight nearly started. There was a woman paying for some stuff and matey started chiming in and then another bloke thought it would be a good idea to have a go. The row really started to kick off.

Scummer number one could have been decked with one good punch but I had decided to behave myself and so me and this lady just shook our heads. We talked about the weather. Then, the alert supermarket team sprang into action and fired-up all tills.

Outside, in the carpark, I nearly got killed by a man in a 4X4 who had decided to drive on the pedestrian walkway. Another woman said, “You just can’t believe it, can you?”

The trains were dead. One broken at Berrylands and so I started talking to a fellow and we had both lived in Berlin. He was ex-services but I never told him what I did there. He probably thinks I did ’secret’ things.

I drank my coffee and walked home.

I’m now friends with a neighbour and, hey, Omally might well be arriving soonish.

Don’t forget to hold hands when you cross the road.

H.

(my regards to, hmmm, Robert Heinlein, unless I am very much mistaken)

Ever seen me sorely vexed? What? Never? Happy-go-lucky old me? No answer required from Trouty but I bet the rest of you can hardly imagine it for a million pounds.

You should have seen me yesterday. It was the first time that I had actually cried for years. Barbie Henry cries real tears.

Half of it has stopped working so then I have to rewire everything to see the other half and so-on and so-forth.

The font on the lappytoppy is so small that even a leprechaun couldn’t read it and my speakers won’t plug into it and, and, and…

I hope that this message in a bottle finds its way into your safe hands.

Don’t take sweets from strangers, especially those who have found themselves in a strange land.

Love and kisses,
H.

Unless you want to drive yourself absolutely nutbags, never, ever get a a new compluter.
In my humble experience you will find that they don’t work the same and will destroy everything that you ever had before.
All I ever wanted was something that worked the same, something that I understood.
Now, everything is different.
I have to revert to the clockwork one just to blah, blah and, indeed, blah.

I’m SO depressed.

How does this new thing work? I dunno. How does the old one work? Search me.

The new router seems to work but I am too old for learning curves.

Why can’t it just be the same? I am very miserable.

There seems to have been a bit of a mix-up in the interwebular world.
For a start my router blew up which is why I havent been about for a while. In order to try to sort this out involved (and I am NOT joking) over two hours on the phone to New Delhi at Gawd knows what cost.

I gave up on my D-Link router (the second one, may I add) and I went and bought a Belkin router for a million pounds. Eventually, after more calls to the sub-continent, I got the thing thing going and, hooray, I was back on line. Or was I?

Everything is different, which I do not like, and I can’t do the things that I need to do. I just want it to be the same - that’s all. At least I am half back on line. I can’t get SimonG’s site to work properly, or mine come to that.

AOSmell say that they do not support Belkin and I suspect there may be some awful battle of the firewalls going on. I can still post but my blog is lost and this wretched thing thinks I should sign up to Blogger but I can’t manage it.

I really am at my wit’s end with it all.

Where’s my blog gone?

When I walk to the garage I prefer to walk on the adverse side. The puddles are fewer and I can see what’s coming. Plus, it’s only right and proper.

Today is NYE and I have wished everyone a HNY and all that cack. Good for me that I keep my eyes open. I saw the fag-end coming out of the car and I nutmegged it.

For those who do not care a whistling fart about foopball this is where the ball goes between the legs of a defender. How I know this I’m not sure but I sure did see the fag-end and, no, it did not hit me. It wouldn’t really have done me any damage, even if it had, but at least it prevented the scummers in the car shouting ‘GOAL’ or something stupid like that.

So today is NYE. I’ve tried to be nice for once and then this happens. I’ve found out some very interesting things which might explain how odd I am. You wait until my brother comes back from Egypt and then there will be some talking to do.

Throwing lit fag-ends at me as I walk along is not so very bloody funny at all. I wish the carful all that they so richly deserve for the coming year.

In the meantime, may I wish my readers a very happy 2010 and send my love and gratitude to each and every one.

Have a good one.

Love,
H.

I have been learning a lot. I spent 11 years at school looking out of the window and I don’t think that I learned a single thing. I am an auto-didact and everything that I now know I have picked up for myself. University? No way. I find it hard to be interested in anything for 3 weeks, let alone 3 years. My mind doesn’t work like that and, with exception of boating (which is life-long) I have always stuck to the same regime; things are interesting until they become uninteresting. I’ll do the Times crozzy for a while and then I won’t buy a newspaper for 3 years.

Then I met the Compaq lappytoppy. Hmmmmm. Not having an 8 year old technical supporter I realised that I would have to do all this myself AND I’m getting there. No one here to help me but I did have the usual boatmanly tools of brute-force and ignorance. Once you have these, there is very little that can get in the way. If all else fails use bloody great nails.

The Compaq will die before I do and it had better realise the fact.

As regards the neighbours…
Upstairs I have the Creeper and his mates. It does kick off but only once in a while (although I must admit that the water coming through my bathroom light was a bit strong).

Next door I have another neighbour. He’s the one with a dog the size of a Shetland pony.
One night the Creeper and his mates were having a noisy party and at about 02:00 the doorbell rang. Outside was dog-bloke and he was actually shimmering with rage. I just shrugged and pointed upstairs to where the Creeper lives. What can you do? Dog-bloke turned on his heel and went.

Next day I felt a bit cross so I rang his bell…
“I’d rather that you didn’t ring my bell at 02:00 and give me the evils”
“Well, I said sorry”
And with that he shut the door in my face.

All well and good BUT no, he did NOT say fucking sorry; he didn’t say anything at all. He didn’t say anything to the Creeper because I would have heard it.

This morning I was loafing about kicking ice off the puddles and attending to my Parishional Nuisencical duties. I started to wonder why Dog-bloke hates me so much. And then I had it. He doesn’t like me because he has to go to work yet I do not.

That must really irk him.

To him, I must look perfectly normal. To him I must look like some workshy benefit scrounger but I’ve seen pools of blood that would make him spew. He might think he’s hard but the shouts that I’ve been on would make him wee his panties.

Now all I have to do is make the Compaq see sense and, maybe, we’ll all be happy.

I’m no longer in the mood for the ‘C’ word. In fact it makes me angry to hear it or even see it written. No, I’m not talking about Christmas, I’m talking about something far, far worse; that’s right! C***luters.

Well, what happened was is that I bent the familial ‘no presents’ treaty and I thought I might try to drag my Mother into the 21st C. by buying her a ‘C’ word. She could e-mail and look at prawnography; that sort of thing. I bought a Compaq lappytoppy and got charged the wrong price for it which saved me a lot of money. I am therefore reluctant to take it back - in fact I won’t.

It’s very nice, shiny, shiny, and so, when she invited me for a post-festivalian lunch I revealed the wretched thing. It works off Windows 7 (whatever that might be) and we got it all plugged in and fired-up. Oh dear, it hasn’t got a mouse (which she has used before at my sister’s) and the loudest I could get it to go was barely audible, to her, as she is a tad Mutt and Jeff. Also, she has no ISP so she couldn’t use it for anything much. She thought that the screen was nice and clear though and started rubbing her fingers on it.

I made the Oliver Hardy face.

Now my electronical, candle-powered, telly typewriter on which I bang out this message in a bottle is about 7 years old, runs on Windows XP and, frankly, belongs in a museum.

Sometimes decisions have to be made, difficult though they may be. I took the sorry ensemble home with me (and the robdog cabby charged me 12 quids for the pleasure - it was only a Saturday).

I spent a great deal of Sunday on the phone to Mumbai - 8 calls, something like that - but whenever I got to a difficult bit like, ‘How do I make this work?’ the line mysteriously disconnected.

So.
I have a c***luter that should be on the Antiques Roadshow but which works. It is connected to the router by a yellow cable. I can unplug the cable and plug it into the lappy but the lappy is not AO Hellified and all I want it to do is BE THE SAME so that I can use it.

Thinking caps on, please.

In the box, and it’s an ammo box, goes a birthday card, some weird minihighlighters (although I’m, not sure about them. because they smell), an eraser and sharpener set, a pen, a crazy kite, sticky notes and a notebook.

This is where the problems arise. Will it get blown up? My printer is blown so I can’t put anything inside but what would be the point in that? There isn’t much point in sticking a sticker on the outside, come to that.

Yes, I did swear that I would not put the heating on.

However, the sub-Arctic nature of the weather made me rethink.

The half-hour of heating of last year was but a test to see if it all still worked. This year, as I sat in my many layers, I did start to wonder a bit. What if a pipe split?

There is a difference between ‘accept’ and ‘inure’.

So, using my skillful skills I set the heating going. As a boatman there are things that have to be done. My fingers got burned but I still got things going. Consequence: No pipes split (as yet), and I feel a tad warmer.

My resolution to turn my back on the Festival has now slipped and I feel bad about that but today is the shortest day of the year.

One day I shall tidy up this slum and get back to painting and writing. But, today, I gave in.

But, just for today, I gave in.

Sometimes I think I must have gone a bit bonkers.

At the just about end of the film, which I saw again the other day (SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!) is a lovely quote.

Replicant Roy knows that he has to die; it is built into him but he doesn’t know when.

Is the Blade Runner, himself, a Replicant? He has fallen in love with a Replicant but none of us knows what is around the corner.

A great film. Don’t miss it.

No, it’s not all that cold here, but I refuse to put the heating on.
Have you seen the size of a gas bill of late?
My cunning plan is to use the layering technique.

I have my jim-jam trousers underneath my jeans and, should it get much colder, I shall find another jumper and build up my top layers from three to four.

My cycle gloves from the boat are a boon and I have a hat, fleeces, and a couple of puffa jackets.

Call me stubborn and you would be right. I have two duvets and a blanket on my bed but I will NOT have the heating on; I would rather freeze to death.

I have been reading about Scott and Shackleton and I would rather that they thought me no weakling. I mean, it’s not exactly minus 40 in my Parish. Yet.

It is a bit chilly but I prefer cold weather to hot and, if push comes to shove, I shall use newspaper, much like a Harold Ramp, to keep the frost off.

It is nearly the shortest day of the year and the weather should start to warm. The hypothermics who used to live downstairs must have moved out and that’s a shame because, as sure as the sparks fly upwards, so did their heat.

Never mind. I am the greenest of Green and my carbon-footprint must be virtually nil.

Layers are the secret plus a bit of swig and to not break any more of my ribs which I did, yet again, the other day.

Go on, wear more jumpers until you look like Bibendum.

Compliments of the season,
Frosty the Snowman.

This morning I got a telephone call from a certain police station.
Apparently my report of an offence had been written off.

‘Nah, leave it, H., it’s not worf it!’

Oh really? Well we shall see about that.
See, I am rather Old School and, as trivial as this offence may seem to some, it actually means something to me. Once the rot sets in it can only get worse.

I reminded the person who had the hard luck to phone me that the government’s intention is that if anyone reports an offence they should be visited and so on.

They can come round anytime they like. Yes, I will give a statement. Yes, I will go to court if I have to. Seeing as how I have already provided all the evidence they need the ripe smell of ‘Can’t be bothered’ came wafting down the line.

He said he would send them (Bone-Idle squad up North) a fax saying that I was not dropping anything and that I suggested that they had better get a move on before the Crimbo holidays started.

A fax? What’s that?

He would have been better off beating something out on his trusty Remington and sending it on the first steam train headed for the Midlands.

Honestly, these days we have COMPLUTERS and they work a bit better. What I suspect is that he was trying to was build the Friday into the holiday and fob me off. But I don’t get fobbed off. What I get is annoyed when people who are paid to do a job don’t just get on with it.

Anyway, that’s for another day.

In a recent blog, Rick informed that the Roman God of Farting was one Crepitus.
I shook my head because I knew that I was right. I just knew it. And guess what? We both were, in our ways.

Thank you for the card, Trouty. I wish you all the best and hope you have a good one and that there isn’t too much snow around you. I hear that Kent took quite a hammering.

Happy whatever you believe in,
H.

My pursuit of Mr Shit has to continue.
I have done just about all that I can think of but I won’t give up.
It really is quite amazing what you can find on the interweb and, having read the whole thing over, twice, I’m getting a bit better at it.

The trouble for Mr Shit is that he is nailed. A lot of information is there, in the open, so I now have sat. photos of where he is, I know who his ISP is, I know his first name and I know that he has been busted from other sites for sending offensive messages.

Now then, I am old and grey and I probably know some ruder words than he seems to.
I swear a lot on my blog but that’s only about Tony Bliar.

I have done my best but keep bumping into the Data Protection Act. However, never mind about that because it is now in the hands of the police. What they do with the information that I have passed on is up to them but I wasn’t a copper for nothing.

The more information that you can provide then the tighter the net closes.

Happy holidays to all and, especially, those in The Job. May it be a quiet one.

Love,
H.

As everybody well knows, I am allergic to Christmas.
But today I did a GOOD THING and I’ll tell you what it was.

My pursuit of Mr Shit still continues and I have got so close that I can just about touch him but that is by the by.

Today I was up the garage buying the usual and there was a woman in front of me at the till. Her bill came to over 20 quids but all she had was a score (that’s 20 quids) and she wanted to hand back some choclit and things so that she could pay.

Ahem.

I may be allergic to Christmas but I am also allergic to poverty. I said to till-man, “You take her twenty and I’ll cover the rest".

Of course, I didn’t want to embarrass her but I wished her the compliments of the season and she left.

How did I do this? Well, I had a pony in my pocket thanks to the brotherhood. Last meeting some cards came round and I thought ‘Oh, Nora’ but I opened them and in one was a pony (that’s 25 quids) and the card was simply signed ‘The Lodge’.

What goes round comes around.

Today, as usual, is Doc Holiday day. I went and moaned about depression and my aches and pains. A little while back I had yet another fall, hit some bedroom furniture, and either cracked or broke two of my ribs. It hurt ( and still does) like bloody hell but there’s nothing that can be done about it. I just took to my bed and cried (situation normal) but when I was talking to Doc Holiday about it today I described some symptoms like when I roll over in bed and I can feel and hear the crackling. “Hmm", said he. I said, “I know, its crepitus or crepitation” and he looked at me.

Sometimes I am really glad that I pay attention to things that interest me. I shouldn’t think that he has one patient in a thousand who knows what crepitus is. We talked about Concorde for a bit and agreed to meet on Crimbo Eve.

Later on, while I was waiting for my script to be filled, I went to the bank and then to Expensive-rose. In my basket was oranges and some sushi and an apple. Oh Lawks! who should be coming the other way but Doc Holiday himself. In his basket he had a lot of cakes. I held mine up and said, “Look, health food!”

I like to think that he was pleasantly surprised.

In the meantime, here is the best Crimbo song ever. Poor Kirsty, Gawd bless yer…

“Author : shit (IP: 92.43.64.70 , 92.43.64.70)

E-mail :

URI : http://piss off.com

Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=92.43.64.70

Comment:

suck a fat one you fucking prick AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA”

This charming comment came in today. It was in response to my blog entitled ‘OI BALDY’.

I shall not remove or alter it in any way. Everyone has a right to speak as they wish; even Tadpole Brain. Should anyone who is more compluter literate than I wish to reply to my Christmas messenger I have kept the message and will happily pass on the full details.

Never mind, I’ve got Buffs tonight and quite a lot to do.

It is usual to start a sentence with a capital letter but Happy Christmas to you, Mr Shit, and I hope that the festive season brings you all that you deserve.

Regards,

H.

As we all know Tesco Baiting was outlawed in the 19thC. but I, however, do allow myself the occasional game of chance.

Having spent the day in bed with my old chums Diazepam and Zopiclone (the very NAME of it makes you want to sleep) I realised that there were certain foodstuffs that I required. A lot of it frozen in case I get snowed-in. Plus, I also like to buy some things that don’t make me turn up at the till with a basket of cider like some washed-up alcoholic.

‘Me? No, I’m going to make a punch for all my friends with this cider, a tin of pineapple chunks and some fishfingers!’

Now I, and Trouty will agree with this, am not a bad shopper. Doesn’t matter to me where they put the decimal point, I can still move it IN MY HEAD. Here’s a tip; it’s where I live! Ha ha. No, here’s a tip; buy frozen mushrooms.

So, I was wandering about in the frozen zone when something rather strange struck me. In the glass-fronted compartment was the sweet, sweet cheese pizza that I had had before. It’s not called ‘Edge to edge’ for nothing. Mmmmm deeee-lish.

£2.59

But, stuck on the door, like some mad estate agent’s cardboard sign, was a big deal stating these things were only half price. Well, fetch me my Orgasmatron because I can feel one building.

Having filled my little trolley with the usual rubbish (why do Bags For Life always stay at home?) I went to the till. At the till they should have a mini-bar full of Super Lager and Shrieking Witch so that as you watch your tab go up, you can cool yourself down (drive safely!).

Do you know why they sell cans in packs? Have you seen the new ones on Spesh? It would take you a fortnight with a craft knife and an angle-grinder to get into one. Merry bloody Christmas to you too.

It’s because it makes them more difficult to steal. Unless you have a big pocket and want to steal four.

Where was I? Oh yes, I queueueueueued at the till but I had positioned my pizza most carefully upon the belt. Up it came; ‘£2.59′.

Yesssssssssssss, Goal, Get in!

I paid up and went straight to the Customer Services desk.

“Psst, Hoi, Scuse me but there’s a great big notice on your freezer saying this should be half price".
“I see. may I see your pizza , and your bill?”
“Why, of course”

Golden Rule of Tesco Game is to make sure that you have the correct product and WEIGHT. They’ve caught me before like this.

Eventually he came back with the ripped-down sign. Then got a calculator out. Now even I can work out what half of £2.59 is but I think it was the .5 that stymied him. He took my receipt and wrote £1.25 on it (?) and gave me some money. There was a two-pound coin in it so I didn’t check or argue. I just beat a hasty retreat.

The Tesco Game lives on!

Wednesday. It is Wednesday, isn’t it?
I spent yesterday evening talking with a man I know. He is having a lot of trouble with his wife because she denies him the old rumpy-pumpy.
He maintains that marriage is just legal prostitution; the man earns the money and the wife spends it. The other day she came home with a lappy and it didn’t make him happy.
It was on HP, which cheesed him, and she still denies him bunk-up procedures.

On the whole it was rather a sad discussion. I advised him not to leave the home because then he will have made himself intentially homeless and he will have to live under a bridge on the cut. All he wants is a little studio/bed-sit kind of thing. He’s a nice man and works very hard but he can’t understand why women use sex as a weapon. Well, it’s the only weapon that they have got, isn’t it? My advice was to get to get as much help as he can from the council (it’s a council house) and from the C.A.B. and not to go to a solicitor because they will rob you blind. He’s a nice man and doesn’t deserve the way he’s been treated.

Anyhow. I’ve got a shredder. It cuts both ways but look at this:

The other day I got the vacuum cleaner out and look what it did!

I don’t think I need bother with the shredder anymore. Just get out the masher and then dustpan and brush (no, Hutters, not the brush and dustpan) and Hey Presto, everything smashed to bits!

Love,

H.

I have got the worst earworm ever:

Horsey, horsey don’t you stop,
Just let your hooves go clippety clop,
Tail goes swish,
The wheels go round,
Giddy up, we’re homeward bound.

I think you will agree that THAT is a pants earworm.

Now then, have you ever heard a doctor say “bollocks"? Well I have and he wasn’t talking about my anatomy.

As you well know, I have led a very interesting life. I have done many things and seen things that no one should see. But I have never before heard a doctor say “bollocks". He wasn’t even talking about me or anything that I had said. Still, I found it hugely entertaining. I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with it and I certainly wouldn’t even think of reporting him for it. I love my doctor and he saved my life and, after all, what is life? Isn’t it just a load of bollocks?

Love and kisses,

H.

At the surgery, they know that I don’t know what day it is. I once lost a whole week in 24 hours.

Today I turned up for Buffs 24 hours early. AND I’d bought a pineapple for the raffle.

I have been asked to contribute my monumental skills to a play in Woking which is all about the Ockenden Venture. A tribute indeed but seeing as I don’t know the difference between Monday and Tuesday I’m not so sure.

Bloody brain atrophy. Do you think I want to be like this?

When I was up the shop yesterday and spotting bargains (Fray Bentos pies for only 1 quid, half-price pizzas etc) and I came round a corner and was presented with a JOKE OPPORTUNITY!

I can do quite a good Rob Newman impression but without trying to make it overly pervy.

What happened was that there were bottles of Bailey’s dreadful slime drink but it was done up all Christmassy with all bows on and that. They were on quite a low shelf and a little girl was gazing at them in wonder (this is getting worse, like something out of Dickens or the Little Match Girl) and she obviously thought they looked really special.

This was on a display at the end of an aisle and her Mum was half-way down it, buying some baked beans or bogroll or something.

Girl: “Mum, what’s this?”
Me (hobbling past): “That’s a special drink, for children".

I love to think of the repercussions of that one; I made myself laugh.

When I saw the scummers coming off the train I just KNEW that something was going to kick off.
Looking out from my twitchy-curtained porthole I reported what I could see; ten drunken scummers and I SAW them chase two boys down the road and under the bridge and come back rubbing their hands.

I SAW one of them kicking a bicycle to death. Yep, I saw all this. After a few hours I reported that they were headed North and, eventually, two Happy Shopper Coppers did turn up.

I met them outside and I was smoking a fag. When I flicked the dog-end into a puddle they didn’t blink an eye although I did see them look at each other.

Now, this is when I revert to job-talk.

They had caught up with the scummers who said that they had been to a party but had been turned away. What a surprise. Luckily my advice had been followed and the group had been split up. They had the name of the bicycle-kicker (who had run away) but the bike was obviously stolen. Repainted and knackered. Why it takes me to point out the obvious I don’t know but I did.

Oh for a stab-jacket and the last thirty years back.

When I go to see Doc Holiday he eyes me up. No, not like that, he eyes me up to see if my eyes are yellowish or if I am fat or thin. It’s doctorally stuff which you probably wouldn’t understand (how I’m not qualified I don’t know).

As he admired my traffic-stopper (a.k.a. my walking stick) he was eyeing me up. What I THINK he was trying to do was work out if the handle thingy was level with my hip joint.

When I told him of its magical powers he said that everyone should have one. So where was his? He told me that when he was 50 someone gave him a traffic-stopper with a bicycle bell attached to enable him to be a nuisance - just like me!

When I asked him where it was he said it might be in the garage or he might have thrown it away. So much for presents then.

If you really want to know why I use a stick (which I doubt) it’s because whilst I was attempting to enjoy the luxury of my boudoir I fell over (yes, again) and either cracked or broke two of my ribs. It hurt like bloody hell and still does and the traffic-stopper helps me walk a bit better.

LATE NEWS:
While I was hobbling back from the shop a train came in. Out of it got a load of scummers and they were shouting and Lord Mayoring and were suggesting a fight might be a good idea.

999

I can hear the two-tones as I type.

The man is a genius.
There is a programme about him on the BBC iPlayer and I suggest you watch it.

As you know all too well, Thursday is Doctor day. He admired my magical stick and professed it to be the right size. When I told him about its magical powers I could see the wheels in his mind going round and he was wondering about getting one for himself.

I asked him what he was going to do when he retires next year.

“Nothing", said he.

After a bit of prodding he said he would paint the window frames and mow his lawn and wash his car. I suggested that, like Sherlock Holmes, he should keep bees but he said he didn’t want to run round after them. I don’t think he has quite got the hang of apiary.

On the way home on the train I was dribbling and licking the window as is my wont when I saw something quite extraordinary down on the cut. What the frying pan is that? I got home and reached for my trusty 9mm Kodak Luger and headed for the Navigation.

This bag of old sh1t has been dumped, or it should be. I wasn’t even sure which way round it was at first. It’s parked under the Electric Bridge on the other side from the towpath. I hope to Him Upstairs that no one is trying to live on her. She has a nasty list to port at the bow and must be filling with delicious canal water. The stern, weirdly, seems fairly regular. Maybe the back is broken.

We live in troubled times.

Can someone give my daughter a job?

She’s as bright as a spark, takes after me, and as surely as the sparks fly upwards she will go.

She is 19 and doesn’t want to spend her life filling shelves or anything like that.

Life is hard; we all know that, but she is sick of working for a couple 0f months doing data-inputting and then getting redundified. Can’t say that I blame her.

Please, if you can think of a proper job that might be offered to the daughter of the House of Thirst then do let me know.

Don’t ask me what qualifications she might have (I have none) because she doesn’t talk to me. But she needs a job, a PROPER job, not a contract or temp cobblers.

Let me know. eh?

You know I was born in Hemel Hempstead (seek out the film ‘The Bargee’ where the anti-hero, played by Harry H Corbett, was called Hemel Pike because he, like me, was born in Hemel) well, scuse me if I’ve bored you with this one already…

You know that programme, ‘Pie in the sky’ where Richard Griffiths plays the highly unlikely combo of an overweight restauranteur stroke sleuth? Well, that was filmed in Hemel and the place that they used is still operating under the same name. I don’t think that Griffiths still works there though.

I could take you right there, right now, and I’ll tell you why.

When I was but a mere sproglet that very same place used to be called ‘The Spinning Wheel’. AND my ancient Ma used to work there. AND my ancient Pa did too. This was in the days of using a gas-poker to get the coal going in the fireplace. I did check on Google (other search engines are available) to see what had happened to the Roman Bath. It still looks like a field so that’s alright then.

The other thing that I had to catch up with was my magical stick. It’s a bit rickity but so am I. It’s been in the damp too long and the curve on the handle is slighty non-curved. It really needs to be put in a steamer and re-bent but what the hey? It cost me nowt because it was a gift from a Brother and I’m well pleased with it. It stops traffic and people hold doors open for me.

PLUS, unless the Prevention of Crime Act of 1953 has been superseded (the only word that ends in ’seded’) then an offensive weapon goes something like this…

Place to which the public have access whether paying or not.
Forgive me, this was 30 years ago.
The alledged ‘weapon’ has to be made, adapted or intended.

The advantage of the magic stick is that none of the above applies. And now I will tell you how to do it.

Don’t, whatever you do, start waving it about like some mad Colonel from the Home Counties. What you do is pick it up to about waist-height and ram it, as hard as you can, right in the guts. When they go over, which they will, you can apply boot to head.

Here endeth the lesson.

Sweet dreams.

On account of me having cracked or broken two of my ribs and being arthriticalised I blagged a walking stick.

Here’s a funny thing.

The stick helps me to walk better, obviously, and because I am an unqualified doctor, I know how to use one.

Let’s say your left leg has gone a bit crap. What you have to do is walk with the stick in time with your right leg. It’s easy peasy Lemon Sqezy (Yes, I do know how to spell Sqezy).

Ah, but what I didn’t know was the magical powers of the stick for stopping traffic. Usually I could be stuck there for aaaages waiting for a gap to cross in. Thanks to the powers of the magical stick all the traffic stops. I wave my thanks.

It’s like a wand - I recommend you get one too.

My back is feeling a lot better thanks to Co-codamol.

It wasn’t called Hempstead for nothing. There was watercress growing there. And hemp.

When I was about five, or so, I could already read and there was was a poster up in the Marlowes regarding Georgie Fame and his Blue Flames. This sounded good to me, like a circus or a magic trick. Well, I didn’t know, did I?

I was born in Hemel Hempstead in St Paul’s Hospital (which has been knocked down - probably because I was born there). Apparently there is a secret passage that comes up in the graveyard where I used to sit with my Grandpa and eat my Mivvi. I loved the the River Gade and I know where there is a Roman Bath under the fields with all mosaics and that.

It’s probably got crappy houses built on it now. Never mind, to cheer you up, here’s a bit of ‘Yeh Yeh’.

Enjoy!

My brother sent me this link and it really touched me.
VM says that the vocal is by Cilla Black.

Cop a load of this:

Vodka Mick mentioned this to me…

When he saw me struggling to empty the bog at one of the designated areas he thought to himself:

Chemi-Khazi pilot.

A good joke and copyright Vodka Mick.

And I just missed the train by 30 seconds. Bugger. I’ll just have to catch the next one.

Sad to say… But:
I no longer read books. I haven’t read one for years. I no longer look at art either. I no longer read blogs that much because I am no Fry and I do not twitter.

The reason for this is that I don’t wan’t to be accused of plagiarism and I can’t bear the thought of my head being all stuffed up.

You may, or might, have wondered why I have been quiet for a while. This is because I really, really need a quiet life; one in which I can sit alone and think about things.

It is probably what one might call depression or maybe a year of thoughtfulness. I’m not sure.

Maybe this mood will lift and the black dog will stop biting but I really don’t know; I didn’t make any of this up and I wish it would go away - but at least I recognise it.

In the meantime I read no books nor watch any films. I listen to no music. There are so many books to read but I cannot bear to have my mind infiltrated by anything any more, so, I think it best that I disappear for a while (World said, thank goodness for that; We’ve been wanting that for aaaages).

I might pop up from time to time but don’t put any money on it.

Thank you and love to all,

H.

It is a fact that people wearing ice-white trainers have just come out of prison.

A suit with arrows on and a ball and chain couldn’t make it more obvious.

To carry on; Blu, yes. Tac, no.

It is the most rubbish stuff ever.

Community service could be served by people wearing ice-white trainers to come round my majestic halls and try to stick my pictures back up using Gloy or Cow-Gum or some of the flavoured bubblegum that they flob all over the pavements.

Sometimes I get a bit annoyed.

You know that Jordan, that Katie Price, right?

According to the newspapers she likes horses and she has got a new boyfriend who is a bit odd.

Well, from what I’ve heard she likes to enjoy a jump or two with other people but her boyfriend sticks to a bit of cross-dressage.

I bet it’s not true though.

Doctor day. As I can never sleep I got there well early. I paid a visit to the bank…

How much?!?!?

Either someone has skimmed my card or about 850 direct debits have come out.

I spent this morning being really nice to people and watching how weirdly they behaved. At the surgery people were mostly nice but at the stations I got looked at as if I was a bit odd. It really doesn’t matter to me because it is a social experiment. You try smiling at people and wishing them a good day. It’s lucky for me because I do look a bit huge and, because of my previous, I’ve developed a face.

I always get out of the way of someone approaching because it is polite. If they don’t bid me some thanks I don’t really mind. If a car stops for me to cross the road I always make sure to wave and mouth a ‘Thank you’ because I am polite.

This reminds me, I want one of them fluorescent jackets that says ‘POLITE’ instead of police across the back. They are pink.

Anyhoo, where was I? Aah, I was going to have some grub in Worst Byfleet but I couldn’t really afford it. So home I came and this where I sit and it’s not even lunchtime.

Doc Holiday scripted me some tablets for my bladder disorder and upped the dosage on my diazepam because I never sleep.

And that’s what I did this morning.

I feel guilty.
I shopped my own mother. To the authorities.

I phoned about the whole family about what I had done but, to my surprise, they all agreed that I had done the right thing.

Now I am a bit of a disabled and I don’t have a car (’Thank goodness’ said the world) so there isn’t much that I can do. So, I shopped her.

I feel SO bad about what I have done but I can’t sit back and watch a disaster happening. She needs help, a help I cannot provide, so I did the only thing that I could.

Mum, I’m really sorry that I grassed you up and I hope that you will find it in your heart to forgive me.

It is, with sadness, that I have report that John the Bosh is dead.

He had suffered cancer for a number of years and now, as we all must, he has passed into another world.

Dear John. Everyone knew he was on the way out but I only found out about this last night. He was cremated two weeks ago.

Dear John. I saw him up at the hospital when I was being wheeled one way and him the other and we waved. The last time I saw him was in the Queen’s.

Dear God, please take him into your loving arms and give him peace, a bottle and a crossword.

John, rest in peace. You were a good man.

I went to a little party,

Then there came a problem. The number to dial is 999 and ask for the fire brigade. Having a barbecue on a coffee table INSIDE your house is a tad short of foolish but here we go…

No, don’t cry. The ceiling didn’t didn’t actually catch fire.

Sweet dreams!

What does he do?
No one seems to know and I don’t think that he knows either.
‘Hey, Fatty, your job is to walk up and down and don’t do anything.’

If you want to see something that will make you laugh then (bearing in mind this is not suitable for children, schools, places of work and blah de blah) cop a look at this.

Or, maybe, at this.

Thank you, Onion, for brightening up my life.

Here we go:

“You know Flemish people, Flemish people, right?

Do they come from Qatar?”

I made this up when I was asleep so I thought I should copyright it before I forgot it.
If you don’t get it then let me explain:

It’s a double-play on words.

Well, I thought it was funny.

Fed up?
No, I eat very little although I’m quite keen on sushi.
The rain is falling and I like the sound. Inside the Charley the sound of rain on the roof was very soothing and the knowledge that there was nowhere or nothing to reach was special.
Do you know, the ability to park up for a day or two and keep the stove going, makes everything worthwhile.
As the rain falls all you have to do is check the lines and keep the stove going.

Once, when the Ocean had fallen had fallen out of the sky I did set off (I’m sure I’ve told you this before) and as soon as I had done it I knew I had made a big mistake. It’s so lucky that I am such a brilliant boatman; I cut the corners (which you should never do) and took the surge behind me as I wound down through Guildford.

Look, I’m still fed up. You would be if you were me. I might have cancer and I have fuck all to live on. I have no boat. I am depressed out of my fucking arse.

Beep, beep fucking squeak is all I have to listen to.

On the other hand, I still have a moderate walking ability albeit about 2mph. I still have the Buffs and my interest in wild flora. So I shouldn’t moan, really.

Thursday was rather a busy, medical day for me. First up was a blood extraction so that I could be tested for this, that, and indeed, the other.

An HBA means a fasting blood test so you can have nothing but water for 14 hours. In the small hours I woke up, asweat, but I didn’t dare have anything because the HBA would have been ruined. It’s a historical blood test which shows how shite you are at controlling your diabetes. I could have had some glucose but I didn’t wan’t to muck it all up so I sweated my way through. In the morning I staggered into the surgery and gave up the usual armful. On the way I bought a tin of Fanta and, as soon as it had been done, I glugged it down and started to feel better. But this wasn’t it, oh no, there were other tests to be done.

The day before I had to have an ultrasound on my prostate and I was told that my kidneys looked good (bit like in the shop) and that my prostate looked normal - BUT…

If your prostate looks normal it doesn’t mean that it is.

So, some of my tests involved a PSA which involves checking for a prostate cancer indicator. Doc Holiday had cunningly slipped in a blood/glucose check and a liver function check.

Anyway, on the Thursday, I had my phlebotomisation and then went to see DH and then had to go away for an hour before I could have my swine-flu jab.

When I went back the nurse had gone off soo DH had to do my swine-flu jab and it didn’t hurt one bit. It’s an IM jab but it didn’t hurt, I promise, and then I caught the train home.

That was Thursday. At 04:00 on Friday morning I had been awake for hours because my sleeping patterns are so knackered. I was listening to the radio. Briing briing… off went the telephone at 4 in the bloody morning.

“Hello, is that Mr W? This is ThamesDoc”

I was sober and I expect that he was too.

“Speaking. How can I help you?”
“Did you phone earlier?”
“No, I did not.”

Mental flurry - had I phoned ThamesDoc? I can’t have done because I haven’t got his number.

“Have you had a blood test recently?”
“Yes, at 10:30 yesterday morning - a fasting blood test”
“Hmmm, well I’ve had an alert that your blood/glucose came back at 2.1″

Yeah, well, I’ve had readings at well less than that (oh, and the problems THAT caused), but what if I had not answered the phone all sprightly and brightly at 4am?

It’s quite a funny thing. What if I had not been sober and answered the phone? Would the door have been kicked in? I really don’t know.

As for the rest of the results, I shall have to wait until next week to find out if I have prostate cancer or anything ghastly. My blood/sugar levels are about what I thought and here’s a funny thing; I’ve been doing this for twenty years, every day, and THEY think that they know more than me.

When I go over I do a couple of things. I either go over and smash myself to bits or I get on the phone. Obvously it’s easier when there are people about but, living alone, I have to try a bit harder.

It’s a bit sad when the overworked paramedics turn up and one says to the other “I know him".

I’ve had this bitch for twenty years and if I can get another score out of it then I shall think myself lucky.

Meantime, I shall try to copy the beardstyle of Will Self what I saw the other day. The smaller the ambition, the greater chance of success. Innit?

In the year of about 1979 I moved to West Berlin. It was shortly before my 20th and could only speak about three words of German.

Anyway, I’ve been watching this programme:
The Secret Life of the Berlin Wall.

I can only understand a little bit of German now so I had to rely on the subtitles.

This was all long before the Wall came down and the VOPO got on the train as we were going through East Germany, the DDR. They ran dogs under the train and had all machine guns and everything.

It was bitterly cold and I never even saw a blade of grass for months because of all the snow. I never even realised that there must have been a STASI file on me for a few months yet.

As the ice flowed down the Havel I just went to work and in the summer I went nudey swimming at the Glienicke See which is a lake out near Kladow. In the middle of the lake were a string of buoys and on the far side was a machine gun tower. I got told that in the towers they have a young man with a family and an old geezer. One will shoot the other. I also got told that if you swam the wrong side of the line that the DDR had divers who would pull you under.

All day long there were helicopters patrolling the wall (I lived out in Spandau) and every now and then the Russians would let off bloody great guns to scare us.

Until I watched this programme I never thought the STASI might have a file on me. You were supposed to carry ID everywhere but I never bothered, I just used to get a bit boozed-up and go round riding three on a motorcycle with no crash helmet on.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun and I was just a boy. Until I got home to dear old Blighty.

Off the train I got and I was wandering about and a man in a greasy mac (bit like Columbo) came up to me.

“May I see your passport please?”

“Yes, of course but, err, what for?”

Knowing what I now know I realise that he was Special Branch (or worse) and they knew exactly where I had been to and come back from.

I think that the trouble was that the Germans were going mental about [not published]hoff and other [not published]ist organisations. But it really made me think. I couldn’t give a frying pan about what anyone wants to find out about me; all they have to do is ask.

Berlin is a nice place, it’s very green.

Have a good weekend and don’t stick a sparkler in your eye.

H.

I read Private Eye a lot and there was a cartoon in a recent edition that I found most amusing. You know how if you want your video (eh, wassat then, Grandpa?) or your alarm clock to work you have to get your kids to do it for you?

Now I don’t understand how my stupid mobile phone works and I wish that I could just shout at it and it would do what it was told. Hang on, I’m going to spoil the joke at this rate.

Anyhow, there was this cartoon in the Eye but I’ve thrown it away (err, I’m sure I meant ‘recycled’) so I don’t know who to credit for this great joke. Sorry, cartoonist, but you really made me laugh and I don’t laugh at much, let me tell you.

Now you will have to use your imagination (unless you saw the original) and it’s a one-frame drawing and I think the caption beneath might have been something like ‘Ha ha, very funny’.

The drawing was of a bloke sitting at his compluter with all, like steam coming out of his ears and he obviously can’t make the bloody thing work. Coming through the door is a little kid who is about three or four or something.

The child is wearing a t-shirt and printed on it are the following words:

TECHNICAL SUPPORT

Sorry, cartoonist bloke, I would credit you if I could but I’m bigging you up big-stylee anyway.

Thanks for the laugh.

Today I was looking at my prehensile toes and thought how disgusting they are.

I remember way back when and I was reading, oh, Cosmopolitan or something and the laydees all thought that mens’ toes were gross. I quite agree; having studied mine.

Were I to visit a chiropodist for a pedicure then they had better have a sick-bowl handy.

Hating your own toes? How weird is that?

Mind you, at least I can count up to twenty.

I have had yet another brilliant idea.

You know how porksters keep whining that ‘it’s my glands!’ Well, let’s swap glands with thin people. If massive porksters swapped their glands with some thin people, say in some parts of Africa, then the fat people would get thin and the thin people would get fat!

Err, except it wouldn’t work at all.

It only takes a brain the size of a lentil to work that one out.

Come on, Fatties. Swap those glands NOW!

Every now and then, as you may know, I go trawling with the magnets along the navigation. I have only been bollocked once and that was because I made a dog bark at Triggs. Well, haha, because I had already found a windlass.

I usually just bother with locks and I do the moorings below and above and when I do the lock itself I concentrate on the steps and near the paddles; after all, that is where most windlasses go in. Windlasses are what I’m after because they are worth something. When I lived in Brighton I used to see people fishing of the beach or off the marina wall and maybe they might catch a Sea Bass (Suzuki in Japanese) and then they would flog them on to restaurants. I gave up fishing years ago because it didn’t seem right to me but magging is different.

Magging locks is easier when the lock is full. Whatever you pull up weighs less by the amount of water it displaces and when you feel the click you just have to draw it up ever so slowly and then catch it in your hand before it breaks the surface. I rarely bother with the middle of locks; I just do the edges but Omally had a spectacular at Pyrford where I never thought he’d get anything. He got a windlass out of nowhere. Pyrford is so full of windlasses (it’s next to a pub) that it’s surprising that you can even get a boat in there.

I’ve caught loads of things, the biggest was a bicycle and I got a nice mooring line off the cill at Pyrford. I’ve had two Coolies out of Newark in exactly the same place.

At one time I must have had about half a ton of windlasses but now they have all gone. The only pound that I actually trawl is between Parvis Bridge and Pyrford because the towpath is so soft. I still have a mooring pin from there which is at least 100 years old. It’s really beautiful and might even be 18th C. I keep it for hitting burglars with.

People often stop to ask me what I’m doing. Usually I say that I’m teaching my dog to swim underwater or that I have a pet dogfish but if they are really interested I tell them all about it and maybe give them an old nail that was popped from a barge or a horseshoe in years gone by. These old nails are so obvious; all made by hand.

And then Millmead.

Millmead lock is in the middle of Guildford and I caught a windlass. You can tell when you have one just by the feel of it. There were people watching so I pulled it up and did a happy dance. So then I threw the magnet back in and caught something but I couldn’t tell what it was; it could have been a Spam tin (lots of them about) and up came a spoon.

No ordinary spoon, this one. As soon as I saw it I knew what it was. It had been bent right over for the sole purpose of cooking up heroin. The flat of the handle keeps it stable and the bowl is bent right back so that it can heated from beneath. I knew what it was and I threw it back in. It’s probably still there.

Thursday. Doc Holiday day.

The usual rigmarole. I told him that I was really depressed. I have lost so much weight that I can take my trousers off without undoing them or my belt. Doc Holiday always has to try to outdo me so that made him miserable. Apparently I now have planar warts on my left hand and he hasn’t got any at all; that made him more miserable.

He said that I should seek some therapeutic work so I asked him, like, from where? But he didn’t know.

I left the best bit until last.

I said, “You know how patients present and then, when they are going out of the door, they say ‘Oh, and there’s blood coming out of my arse’ and he said “Yeeeeesss".

So I told him that sometimes I wake up because I need a wee so I go and have one and get back into bed. Thirty seconds later I realise that I need to go and have another wee.

With the medical alacrity for which he is famed he informed me that it was because I hadn’t fully emptied my bladder. Well, goodness me, I hadn’t even thought of that one. Then I mooted that I might have prostate cancer seeing as I have lost a lot of weight and all that. He said that I might have an enlarged prostate and, instead of sticking his finger up my arse, I now have to be ultra-sounded and have yet another fasting blood test.

I asked if I could have seven morphine tablets and he said “You’ll be lucky” which, funnily enough, was what he said the last time I asked for some. There must be some doctoring manual with a script in.

As I was unlucky I went to the chemist and handed in my usual, boring, prescription and went for a half-hour trot round the shops before my train was due.

Passing by a job shop I had a look in the window to see if they had any therapeutic work on the go. They didn’t seem to but the notices certainly therapised me. One was for a ‘LETTINGS CON'’ which seemed obviously honest and another that boasted ‘four week’s holiday’. Now, I wasn’t even pissed-up but I couldn’t help myself; in I went.

Seeing as how they wanted literate people for some of their rubbish jobs I stuck my head in and informed them that their posters could do with someone literate to write them. They told me, after getting a bit shirty, that CON was short for consultant (Oh, really?) and I pointed out that ‘weeks’ needed no apostrophe.

Rub hands, job done.

Then I went back to the chemist (bollocks, forgot the zopiclone) and just made the train.

And now I’m back home.

In the past there has been correspondence relating to if you posted some helium to yourself would the Post Office owe you some money because it weighs less than nothing.

Well, I was loafing about today and thinking about how, if I only had some short scaffolding planks, I could get into my bedroom that I had when I was seven. Then there was some cobblers on the wireless about how moo-cows are to blame for polar bears having to balance on a Fox’s Glacier Mint and all the monkeys in the jungle dying.

This started me thinking - and we all know how dangerous that can be.

So I did some intense research (five secs on Google) and found that methane is, indeed, lighter than air.

But, hang on there, a lot of ‘anes’ are heavier than air. Butane, Propane, Windowpane… I know all this because I am such a fab boatman.

Stay with me and listen to this. Ahem. If you done a massive blow-off would that mean you were heavier? The answer has to be YES. See, if you had a balloon full of methane and weighed it, it would weigh less than nothing but, if you popped it, it would weigh the weight of the balloon itself.

I’m going to start a business where fatties can come and eat sprouts and baked beans and see the weight drop off. Okay, so they might get a bit visibly bigger and (until they blew off) the weight loss would be great.

copyright Henry the Thirst at whatever date and time this goes WWW

Do you know, I once worked with a woman who had met that twat, Adolf Hitler, and also Carlos Castaneda.
It’s a weirdly small world.

Thanks to the wisdom of elderly Lois a problem that has puzzled me for over forty years has been solved.

Please put your hands together and welcome Mr Adam Faith singing his hit song, ‘Lettuce, Tomato’.

Go for it, Adam…

As you know I cannily avoid paying for a telly licence by watching cookery programmes in a compluterisational way. But, Oh no, it’s happened again. Can you believe it?

After the misery of ‘One Woolwich ferry’ I was watching a cookery programme and to the same wretched tune and got caught in the maelstrom of Earworm Plus yet again.

This time it was even even worse.

The chef was talking about sugar and he said the horrible words, “some demerera".

Click.

‘Some demerera,
there’s only some demerera,
some demererahhhhh,
there’s only some demererahhhh’.

What on earth am I to do about this vile condition? I’m getting well cheesed with it.

I remember that in about 1966 there was this song on the radio and I can’t find it now but I think that the proper lyrics had something to do with ‘letters to Martha, letters to Martha’

I thought he was singing ‘Lettuce tomato, lettuce tomato’.

Well, I was only seven. Made sense to me. If someone wanted to make a record about lettuces and tomatoes then go ahead. Does anyone else remember this? Please put me out of my misery. It was a man singing it. I think it was about the time that ‘See Emily play’ came out. But I might be wrong.

What I’m going on about is the hair-don’t that is sported by members of boybands and lads of about twenty or so before their male pattern baldness kicks in.

Yes, you know the one that I mean. Have they got their head stuck in a tumble-drier or what?

It’s a sort of whiffy arrangement that you might see on a till-assistant where all their Barnet has been whipped around.

What on earth do they ask for at the barbershop? “Scuse me, but I want to look like like my head was made by Mr Whippy but don’t stick a flake in it".

FFS.

Hello!
Doc Holiday day today. He couldn’t wait to jab me with influenza germs. I can’t have the piggy flu one until next week. As it’s an I.M. jab they don’t let me do it myself although I have to do (tech term) skin-popping every day. Probably I shall spend the weekend feeling like the proverbial bag of.
I.M. and I.V. jabs I really hate.

This afternoon I had a visit. It was you-know-who.

I tore him off a right strip but then he went away to his beloved Woking. Poo, gosh, I can smell Woking. Last seen heading for the station with a can of Shrieking Witch in hand.

Mebbe I shall spend the rest of the day in darkness and listen to the wireless.

He said he was sorry but saying that is not a ‘Get out of jail free’ card.

Have a good one!

I blame IRN BRU for TXT SPK.

As you can probably tell, I have gone a bit Sundays mad.

I like this video because it reminds me of the Navigation. Locking. Dropping down all that way. I would not do it for fun and I tell you that for nothing. I have been under a boat and I wouldn’t go into a lock with two boats in it for all the tea in far Cathay. It doesn’t matter who has fallen in. You are much better off running about with a boathook and pole and if someone gets crushed they shouldn’t have fallen in in the first place. So long as you stay on the boat and don’t start poking your limbs over the side you should make it. Start going over or swimming near the prop or anything daft and then that’s when the trouble starts.

I have got over being furious. I’m just sort of mid-angry now.

When I think about it, there is nothing that I have done that is what I would consider ‘WRONG’.

Maybe it’s about time I went to bed.

People of a certain age, I’m sure, must be like me. As you know I listen to the wireless all the time but I only have to hear the name “Gordon Brown” and my brain goes ‘texture like sun’. It’s just automatic.

Lately I have developed another one. The traffic reports out of London always filter through even though I haven’t been there for years and couldn’t care less if it got flattened. There are a few paintings that I would miss and I wouldn’t like to think of Trouty’s or my aunt’s houses getting involved but I still listen to the traffic reports. Usually this is because I want to know what’s going on at junction 10 on the Motorway 25.

Now it’s the blinking ferry. It goes across the Thames from sort of Greenwich and is operated by two separate ferries that ply back and forth. Have you seen where this is going yet?

Well, on the wireless the traffic lady often says that there is a problem with the Woolwich ferry and owing to technical difficulties there is only one Woolwich ferry (today there weren’t any - they had both bust).

“One Woolwich ferry…”

(Brane engages and clicks body back into life)

‘there’s only one Woolwich ferry,
one Woolwich ferrrry,
there’s only one Woolwich ferrry…’

This is sung to the tune of Quanto de la Merdo or whatever it’s called.

Now I didn’t ask for this and I don’t like it but it just happens.

If you don’t like me you might be pleased to know that I have had a fairly bollocks day. My neighbour, Mani, called round to see if I was alright and took away two great big bags of rubbish which made me feel ashamed. Later I found out that someone who should know better had been going about calling me a “shit” and saying that we had fallen out. It wasn’t true then but it bloody well is now.

I’ve been using my breadmaker again and I think I’ll try to take a loaf to Buffs every week with a little extra from the SooperDooperMarket. I only make savoury breads so this time I went for thyme, cumin, poppy seeds and mustard. It does smell nice. I popped in a tin of soup to dunk it in. I don’t know whether anyone has eaten any of this stuff yet; they probably throw it out of the car window on their way home.

Guess what. At Buffs this evening I got a charge stuck on me and I am the City Constable (until next month). The charge was that I had ‘Impoverished a fellow and elderly Brother’. What had actually happened was this Brother I had espied doing handbrake turns and breaking the speed limit in his electronical go-kart and I offered to help him with his shopping in case he wanted a 5kg box of Omo off a top shelf. He stopped at the bananananas and chose two whopping great blackened and bruised ones. I said “Oi! No! You don’t want to have those manky things, Have these three small yellow ones”

I got found Not Guilty and he’s still got a banananana left. Ruddy pensioners.

There was a time, a while ago, when I made something up and it has now become common parlance. Never mind my intellectual copyright. I don’t know if it got copied by a paper because I don’t waste my hard-scrounged money on ‘em. What I did was refer to Mr T. Bliar as ‘Teflon Tony’ because nothing ever seemed to stick to him. It must have been quite late because I think it was Clive Bull that I telephoned. Since that day I have heard my joke referred to about once a week and I heard it again today. I don’t particularly mind as imitation is flattery (usually).

Now I’ve got another one. I want this in writing with the date and time on it. You know them PCSOs that wander about? Well, I refer to them as ‘Happy Shopper Coppers’.

For the benefit of Amerikalanders and those who do not pay attention I should explain that a PCSO is a Police Community Support Officer. This means that they are not a proper Policeperson (modern lingo) but they hang about telling 11 yearolds not to smoke crack in the shopping centre and have absolutely zero powers. ‘Happy Shopper’ meanwhile refers to a generic brand of goods bought from a cash and carry and flogged in corner shops. You can get Happy Shopper matches and washing-up liquid and biscuits and is the kind of hallmark which means ‘crappy’.

So, that’s my joke. ‘Happy Shopper Copper’.

I think the letter ‘P’ should be removed and that would save 25% on tunic labelling. And they shouldn’t be dressed up as attempted policepersons either. If they want to support the community that’s all well and good but they should be dressed in white or green or something.

Another attempt to impersonate the Constabulary is the ‘Special Police’. They have ‘Special’ written on the arms of their tunics but I like to think that it kind of means ‘Special Needs’. Tourists often think that means that these people are a bit more special than ordinary policepersons but in fact they are entirely voluntary and don’t they just show it.

At Brixton I was wandering about in the factory and one of my favourite sergeants said “Oi, Joe” (see, I’ve got a lot of names and I’ve been called a few more besides) “come and have a look at this!”

It was a crime-sheet that had been written out by two Specials. Oh deary me.

This sergeant was also responsible for a great gag. Some engineer had come round to see about installing some air-con or something and he had drawn some squares which were all cross-hatched and contained the word VENT in different places in the Comms Room. It didn’t take long before someone with a matching pen added a few more. Then, when my relief were off-duty (thank goodness) a builder type bloke came round and smashed holes through all the bits of wall that were marked VENT. One particular one was the one that went straight through the back of the secure property cupboard where all the drugs and flick-knives and stuff were kept.

Sometimes, on a night-duty, I used to stick my beak into the CID offices and all the usual stuff was there. Ashtrays and cold coffees and Scotch in the filing cabinets (this was getting on for 30 years ago). All the crime-sheets that had been completed went through these offices to see if anyone could be arsed to have a look at them. They used to photocopy some of the most crap ones and pin them on the noticeboard. I particularly remember one which read something like ‘records stolen by Cliff Richard and Rod Stewart’. Well, at least we knew who we were looking for.

At this time I was living in a section house up Newington Butts way. Funny name but it’s where people were compelled to pratice archery and hence the name. Just down the road from the Elephant and Castle which is a corruption of Infanta de Castille. I used to love my history up there.

It was quite a good place to live (except for one of the two times that I nearly got shot) and if you were to lie in the bath with your head underwater you could hear the tube trains going past a long way down. Oh, and where I got bottled and had my cheekbone broken in three places.

In the basement was a sort of ironing and locker room. I was down there one day tending my bicycle (Holdsworth Elan) and I found a pair of gigantic underpants. Big white ones. I made haste to show my colleague, Worzel, what I had discovered. He said that we could have some fun with these massive knickers and rushed to the shop to buy a Mars bar.
When he returned the Mars was applied, most lavishly, to the gusset of said pants.

Then we went to the canteen. The staff of the canteen were all black. You will see why I mention this in a minute or two. Worzel asked Grace if she knew how he could get his pants clean because he had an inspection in the morning. Then he picked off a bit of chocolate and ate it and she was nearly sick. We ran away and hid.

At Brixton there was a DC that Worzel didn’t like. I won’t type his name but Worzel wrote his name in Biro on the inside of the elasticated band of the above-mentioned underpants. Now, this DC was on holiday for a fortnight so, on nights, we went into the CID office and hung them, inside-out, on the coat hooks. The pants stayed there for about two weeks and five seconds when he got back to work.

In the Police FORCE (not Service) there is a very strange vein of humour. It’s not exactly funny but, at the same time, it’s the funniest job that I have ever had. After all the stress that you are under a very strange humour level developes. You laugh at death and you laugh with life. The first dead body that I ever saw was a murder victim. You can’t start crying.

One day I had a weekend off and you only got one once a month unless it was cancelled. As I recall it was about 8 in the morning and I was walking across the road to my car as I was planning a visit to the maternal home. There was a monumental BANG and I looked down the road but I couldn’t see anything so I started running. The section was built on a corner and when I got to the top of the road I was outside the canteen windows. There was a (I think) Mark 3 Cortina driven straight into the front of a 7.5 tonne lorry. I was the first one there. The impact speed must have been about 50 to 80 mph.

The lorry driver was walking so I didn’t bother about him. The canteen windows had started to open. The section house is full of working officers but at that time on a Saturday lots of them will have been asleep after nights or at work or gone away. I checked the car over. The family inside were black (I’m not a racist, it’s just why I mentioned colour above) and looking inside I reckoned the driver was either dead or dying and the woman in the passenger seat didn’t look too good either.

In the back of the car I found a little girl. She must have been about three but if she’s still alive she must be thirty or so by now. She hadn’t been in a kiddy-seat so I reckon she must have hit the back of the passenger seat and then bounced back. So I’ve got dead bloke, dying woman and screaming kid all covered in blood to deal with.

I gave this child the once over (I’m not bad at first-aid) and lifted her out of the car and handed her through the window to the canteen staff. It’s funny how your brain goes into automatic; it’s the training I suppose.

By then there were coppers jumping out of windows to get there. It was the second worst accident that I have ever seen. I did what I thought was right at the time. The last thing that that little girl needed was a load of beefy white blokes all over her. I do think of her from time to time and I hope that she is alright - the canteen staff will have looked after her, of that I’m sure.

Sometimes things aren’t very funny.

No, I’m not talking about compluter hackers, I’m talking about coughs.

At Thirst Hall the superstructure seems to be made, largely, of a mixture of cardboard and tissue paper - that’s how posh I am.

My favourite neighbours, as regular readers will well know, are The Creeper and the newly installed Mrs Creeper. Mrs Creeper has had a bit of a cough for a few weeks and thanks to the excellent transmission quality of the walls, floors, blah-de-blah, I could tell it was a cough of the feminine kind. I can’t say that I was exactly sorry because it was her that let the bath overflow and caused water to drip through my bathroom light fitting.

Then, the other day, I heard more hacking but this was of the male kind. I strongly suspect that during their no doubt juicy lovemaking procedures she had passed on her ovine/bovine/porcine influenza to drainage expert Mr Creeper himself.

Sometimes I wonder about myself. Am I harsh? Do I care? Is there really a God that wreaks revenge?

On a lighter note, I bumped into some neighbours that I do particularly like. They asked me whethether I had heard the news (which I hadn’t). They are moving to Finsbury Park in Norf Lahndon and invited me to a goodbye drink on Bonfire Night. I pointed out to them that Finsbury Park backwards is Krapy Rub Snif.

Well, I used to live in Lahndon and you got to edjercate people, ain’tcher?

“Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets. I go all over. I take people to the Bronx, Brooklyn, I take ‘em to Harlem. I don’t care. Don’t make no difference to me. “

“Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There’s no escape. I’m God’s lonely man… “

“I still can’t sleep. Damn. Days go on and on. They don’t end.”

I was trawling through the wisdom of Travis Bickle from, of course, the film, ‘Taxi Driver’.
My attention was drawn to a lunatic at the station and that’s why I started to think about the rain. He went on and on and after about 90 minutes of him shouting I called 999.

Two cars arrived but they didn’t nick him. Thanks to my expert description they had him straight away. Some you win and some you lose.

Someday a real rain will come.

.

I was watching Eggheads round at Vodka Mick’s Mum and Dad’s house the other day. I knew most of the answers before the selections came up.

In Private Eye they have a little thingy dedicated to daft answers. i.e.:
Q: What was Hitler’s first name?
A: Heil

Anyway, I was going to tell you a really funny thing but I can’t remember what it was (I have got brain atrophy) but I did do a funny one at Buffs the other night. They were were talking about a widow of a brother who had gone before and she had trouble with a door. So this bloke turned up to see about it but he said ‘I’m only a plumber’ so I said ‘Yeah, but there might have have been a tap on the door’.

See what I did there?

Then someone else said he ’should faucet’.

My joke was quicker though (although it was ripped from Les Dawson).

There was something I was going to tell you but I can’t remember, for the life of me, what it was.

Lah la…

The clocks go back soonish.

This is how I feel - Thanks Beatles.

“Your day breaks, your mind aches
You find that all her words of kindness linger on
When she no longer needs you

She wakes up, she makes up
She takes her time and doesn’t feel she has to hurry
She no longer needs you

And in her eyes you see nothing
No sign of love behind the tears
Cried for no one
A love that should have lasted years

You want her, you need her
And yet you don’t believe her when she says her love is dead
You think she needs you

And in her eyes you see nothing
No sign of love behind the tears
Cried for no one
A love that should have lasted years

You stay home, she goes out
She says that long ago she knew someone but now he’s gone
She doesn’t need him

Your day breaks, your mind aches
There will be times when all the things she said will fill your head
You won’t forget her

And in her eyes you see nothing
No sign of love behind the tears
Cried for no one
A love that should have lasted years”

For No One.
That’s just how I feel today. I’ve tried a few things but nothing fills the hole in my life. It’s Cathy that I miss. Now I will never see her again but no one will ever be the same as her.

Cath, please remember me as I remember you. If you ever read this be sure that I think of you.

Take care,
H.

(Meanwhile, upstairs, the dope-smoking, bath-overflowing, new Mrs Creeper is coughing her lungs up. This has been going on for several satisfactory days. I would advise haggis manufacturers to call at their earliest opportunity.)

Owing to popular demand I have decided to release a picture of some of the injuries I received in my most recent fall.

No. It is NOT a picture of my bumcrack. Mine is rather peachy and would probably make the World Wide Wait explode with the number of hits it got. No, this is a picture of my mid-thighs from when I went over the, ahem, ’safety’ rail on the Waltzer at the Unfair and bent it most considerably (and then got told to eff off).

The bruise is about mid-way between my knee and my hip so you can tell how high that rail of safety was. Luckily I only fell about five feet and landed on an unimportant part of my face. Don’t worry, gurls, because I have decided to be asexual so I don’t have to worry about going out on the pull (just like the last decade) so my once pretty features can take a fair bit of bashing. The nose things on my specs need a bit of rebending though.

As I am in a generous mood I shall let you all in on my secret recipe for my breadmaking machine. I use the white bread recipe but I add an extra teaspoon of yeast, a tablespoon of poppy seeds and a full teaspoon of good old mustard powder. Mmmmm, it tastes lovely and that’s how come my thighs look so delish. Not like bumcheeks at all. Oh, and it’s one third brown flour - nearly forgot.

Must dash; doc’s in the morning.

There is photographic evidence of the injuries I suffered at the Unfair. Unfortunately the picture doesn’t look like bruised thighs; it looks like a bum-crack.

Anyway, I’ve been making bread again and I have a secret recipe. It’s a savoury bread and should be good with ham, cheese or bacon sarnies or maybe with a Ploughman’s.

It’s good to have a secret recipe.

Shall I tell you?

No.

They are here again so lock up your garden sheds and hide your generators.

I went out with Mick today and made 6 quids on the windlass that I magged up recently. Then we went to dig up the bottle that I had had my eye on but it turned out to be rubbish. I found a decent, if filthy, mooring line in some debris and handed it over to Terry who still has a boat.

After a quart at The Pelican we made our way back home.

The Unfair was still on in the field by New Haw lock and Mick really wanted to have a go seeing as he used to be, ahem, a Fairground Worker. No, I didn’t say thieving p**ey at all.

We went on this thing that went round and round and then we went to have a go on the Whizzer or something. I got told that I couldn’t take my backpack on the ride and that they would look after it. Yeah. Right.

Having chosen to keep my belongings I chose not to ride. Then we had a hotdog. £2.50, I ask you.

Then we went on the Waltzer.

The Waltzer is supposed to make you feel all giddy and dizzy and all that. It certainly worked. After the ride I made my way towards the steps but failed to see the, ahem, ’safety’ barrier as it must have been made out of Meccano. I walked staight through it and landed on my face about six foot down. Mick made sure I was alright but I still had one boot jammed in the steps.

The helpful assistant didn’t ask me if I needed an ambulance or anything. No, he told us to FUCK OFF! and started pointing at his bent up rails. Looking back I realised that I had made quite an impression on them.

We laughed about it all the way home.

Having just coughed nigh on 80 quids on utility bills I feel a bit sick.

Just as soon as I have a couple of quids in the bank it all goes away again and I don’t know which tree they think this money grows on but I wish they would tell me.

The wireless is full of ‘getting sickies to work’ but as I am now am a disabled and over 50 I don’t suppose I’ll be first on the hunting list. But I thought about it.

My good idea is apiary. That’s right, beekeeping. If it was good enough for Sherlock Holmes then it’s good enough for me. The honey-bee is under attack from disease and from neonicotinoid pesticides and when they all die, according to Albert Einstein, the entire human race will have but four years to live. Four years and then we are all dead. That’s it. The End.

However, as a disabled, I reckon I could do a bit of beekeeping.

I was going to buy a new wristwatch (as mine has decided to be broken) or go away and hide over Crimbo but maybe I’ll buy a hive.

Best I do some reading up, eh?

As any fule kno…

Nigel Molesworth

Anyway, as I was saying, as any fule kno it is part of my Civic Duties as Official Parish Nuisance to listen to the wireless at all times. I listen to LBC 97.3 and my brane seems to connect with the travel reports. This is a bit weird seeing as how I haven’t owned a car since 1991 and haven’t driven one since 1997.

But the travel reports seep in and I’m caught, nearly every day by something along the lines of “…and massive tailbacks, anticlockwise, from junction 10 at Wisley because a car has turned over on the sliproad to the A3 and is spinning around on its roof. The air-ambulance is trying to land but traffic is backed-up to junction 14…”

Or

“…two lorries have crashed at junction 10 and traffic has backed-up to Gatwick. There is a spilled load of milk and one of the vehicles has split a fuel tank so the entire motorway will have to be resurfaced. Motorists are advised to take the A3 and then A31 along the Hog’s Back and may God have mercy on you all…”

Now, is it just me being sensitive to reports about a junction that I know well or is junction 10 on the Motorway 25 really one of the most dangerous places in the world?

You know, I always thought that I was six foot tall. Vodka Mick maintains that HE is six foot tall but when we stand together I am probably two inches taller than him. So either I am 6′2″ or he is telling porkies again.

Now then, usually I stumble about with my head bent and that’s how come I don’t tread in dogplop and I manage to find 18C pipes and live .38 rounds on the towpath. It’s part of my job as being a Parish Nuisance and telling people off for not locking properly. Honestly, a clove-hitch isn’t difficult.

This very evening I thought I had better go to the SooperDooperMarket and as I was plodding along I saw two scummers on the other side of the road. One of them had a run at me so I stood up straight. I also have the security of knowing that I have a razor in my bag.

He got half way across the road and then he retreated.

After I had been to the shop I went to walk home and who should I see loafing about? That’s right, the scummers. Now I have been trying the Will Self stare and I try to combine it with my own ‘dead eye’ look. I drew in my breath and pulled myself up to whatever my 6 foot plus might be. Killing people with your eyeballs is rather fun.

I saw (and I’m not joking) them look at each other and then they sort of disolved and melted away into the darkness. Maybe it’s what I used to do but I’m not actually scared of anyone. I have a head like a lighthouse and a razorblade. In the past I got my nose broken and, much later, got hit with something that broke my cheekbone in three places. I think it was a bottle that didn’t break.

A few months ago I was introduced to someone in a pub. ‘He’s a murderer’, like I was supposed to be scared. I said hello and asked him about his tatts. They weren’t coloured in and he explained to me all about them.

I’m glad to be 6 foot and maybe a bit and I’m glad that I don’t flinch. I might well be a disabled but I’ve got the stare and still look as if I could do you some damage. Ho hum…

Way back in the seventies, when I was 15, I hitched round France. I had a road map and a rucksack and got tipped out of the car by my parents on the grounds that I would see them in a week or two and then they roared off and left me in the middle of nowhere.

The first thing that I did was smoke a fag that I had cunningly bought on the ferry. Then I had to make my way to the Route National 10. I got stuck at Tours for seven hours. I got fed up and started to read my book and I wasn’t even hitching but a car stopped and I got in. I wanted to get to Poitiers to the Youth Hostel. We were going along, this bloke and me, and I realised that we were going down some backroads. “To tell ze truth", he said, “Ah am a ‘omosexual". I had a rather nice sheath knife attached to my belt on my left-hand side. I wondered if I would ever see Mummy again. It turned out that he had seen me hitching and gone away and turned around and come back to pick me up. That nice man got me to the hostel ten minutes before it shut for the night.

Those French; it’s like they have a different word for everything and I sort of wished that I had paid more attention at skool. One day, when it was hot and I was really thirsty I saw an old man tending his garden plants. I asked him if I might have a glass of water. He looked at me in a most suspicious way. He asked if I was German. I assured him that no, no I was Anglais. His eyes lit up and he gave me water and we bade each other a bon day.

I beat my parents to the Dordogne.

This was where I met Jaki Whitren:

This was when her song, ‘Give them a day’, was Tony Blackburn’s record of the week. I was SO in love with her - she must have been about 23 or so. She was beautiful and I actually went to her house in Brantome and sat about in the garden singing with her.

Scotty from Americaland told me how the video was recorded. The microphone that she thinks she is singing into is dead and the vocals come through that spit-filter thingy and are picked up by the very expensive mic behind.

On the way home I got picked up by a French couple near Chartres and in the morning I was listening to Bob Dylan in the kitchen with the man and his missus came down the stairs with nothing on. Nude French bird! Hoorah!

I got a lift off an English couple who took me back over the channel on the condition that they could have my duty-frees. They dropped me at East Ham.

When I eventually got home my mother told me that I smelled and I went and played ‘Isn’t it nice to be home again’ by James Taylor.

And that’s what I did on my holidays about a million years ago.

There were things that I had to do today. Therefore I did none of them. I wasn’t feeling all that great and the weather looked like it might wazz down at any second. But, hold on there, I needed to get to Maddlestone to show my paperwork relating to me being a disabled.

Problem.

Ah, but what is this? A telephone, you say. I wonder if it works.

‘Hello housing benefit person, glad you can help me because I am a disabled and I don’t want to get in trouble for not telling you but I’m not going out today or any other day if I can help it.’

The nice lady that I spoke to told me that she would look into my case and give me a bell back. And she did. And she told me what I should be paying my landlord which is 20 quids less than I have been paying. She checked all the info that I had given her and now I don’t have to go to Maddlestone after all. I still have to pay a monkey a year on the council tax but it’s all swings and roundabouts I suppose.

Then I thought I would chance my arm and try to get a bus-pass on account of being a disabled.

‘Hello Council Person, I’m wondering if I could have a bus-pass please thank you?’

‘Why do you want one?’

‘Because I am a disabled and it will help me broaden my horizons.’ Why the flying fuck they think I might want a bus-pass apart from going somewhere on a bus is beyond me.

Now I could tell that I wasn’t speaking to a doctor, not even one as good as me, so I just read out a paragraph from the DWP letter that awarded me raspberry status.

She said that she would send me a form and that it would have to be signed by ’someone in authority’. Like who? Seeing as how I used to be a copper and could have sticked her and thrown her into the back of a van I wasn’t sure how authoritarian she wanted me to get. We settled on Doc Holiday but I won’t be seeing him for a fortnight due to his scaffolding/lawnmower crisis.

Then I enjoyed watching The Sundays. I can’t embed this but have a try at this:

Summertime.

I’m quite worn out now.

Nighty night.

A little while ago I notified someone of a version of this song by John Martyn. Well, he is a man and so am I but the original is very womanly.

The album version has pops and clicks overlaid so that it sounds like vinyl but this is a live version. One of my all-time faves.

Laydees and gennelmen, please put your hands togethether and welcome Portishead doing Glory Box (and seek out the John Martyn version if you have a chance):

Lovely.

I was of a mind to call this piece, ‘Manual Evacuation’ but only the nursing sorority would get it and it’s not that funny either. Anyhow, the Dept. of W. and P. have come to their senses and I am now DISABLED.

Now all I have to do is disable myself all the way to Addlestone and hand in some bits of paper. I might even get a bus pass.

My new router has only disconnected once this evening so things are looking up. 18:25 and it went down half way through my last blog so I phoned AOHell (yet again) and they still want to send an engineer into my home. Ah, but I don’t want them to. They asked me to knock up the neighbours and ask if they have any bonkers home-made tellies or Crimbo lights or shite like that. Well, I don’t really get on with upstairs (overflowing bath and 02:00 pissed-up disco) or next door (dog the size of a Shetland pony and rather rude) so I maintained that I wouldn’t be doing that.

Fingers crossed.

Today was Doc Holiday day so I made sure I was up early. I had two large espressos and a bacon sandwich before taking my seat in the waiting room. I always sit in the same seat (OCD) and get there half an hour early. He prescribed me some, ahem, bottom medicine and some double rations of the usual because, guess what, he is on holiday next week. He’s not going anywhere; he’s just tarting up his mansion. The scaffolding has to come down so his gardener can drive his lawnmower in. I do love him but some of this stuff you couldn’t make up.

Buffaloes went well this week and I highly recommend the fraternity. Sorry, ladies but you aren’t allowed. I made a couple of charges and had one stuck on me. All lodges seem to be a bit short of members but all you have to do is ask - it’s not like the Masons.

That’s about all the news I have for now so, until we meet again, cheroooooodles!

Sorry to have been away for so long. I’ve been ill and so has my Fisher Price wind-up compluter (7.99).

Anyway, I’ve got a new router now so let’s see how long it takes me to break this one.

When I was loafing about in the SooperDooperMarket the other day I heard the remark quoted in the title of this piece.

The soothing sounds came from another aisle so I wasn’t sure which particular child it was aimed at. Now then, I’m a deadbeat Dad but as far as I recall I never spoke to either of my children like that (they may disagree). It’s true that I used to make them go into sweetshops and I would say ‘And what is confectionery, children?’ and they would have to reply, ‘The work of the devil, Father’.

Well, you have to have a laugh, don’tcha?

‘Shut up or I’ll wring your neck’ seems a bit OTT for my liking, but there you go.

I remember pushing the lad about in a pushchair thingy when he was about 18 months old. He had taught himself the alphabet (in capitals) by watching Blockbusters but I only found this out when he started chucking all the Boggle dice everywhere. Anyway, we were in Smiths and I was looking at the books and when I was pushing him along he was going ‘Oscar Wilde, Chatterton…’ because he recognised books that we already had at home. A woman came up to me and said, ‘Scuse me, but I’m a teacher and I’ve never seen anything like this before’. I said to the lad, ‘What’s the capital of Outer Mongolia’ and he said ‘Ulan Batar’. She nearly fell over.

My compluter is playing up again so bye for now.

there was a time, long, long ago, when I used to knock about with squatters in the arse end of Kingston. I must have been 16 or 17 because that was when the weather blew the long, hot summer of ‘76.

We drank in the Brewers, rather than the Fishes, and got chips to eat. Then we would go to the offy where there was a mynah bird and buy a bottle of cider and a bottle of mead each.

The winter was awful cold but in the summer came a move to Hawks Road and the sun poured down and would not stop. We were smeared with coconut oil (radiation factor minus 100) and used to lay about on top of an old Anderson shelter like something out of ‘The Cement Garden’.

In Canbury Park I saw Ian Dury (who was wearing a snazzy ‘razorblade’ type earring) but I didn’t hear him play then. The P.A. had blown up. That was when he was with Kilburn and the High Roads but I DID actually hear him in Berlin with the Blockheads.

Canbury was when I started to stay out all night and breakfast at Frank and Manny’s, next to the station.

All this is long gone now. About two square miles of Kingston long gone. But this is the way that things go. I used to work with a bloke called Jack (RIP) and he used to tell me tales of the prostitutes from London on barges and Irishmen, stripped to the waist, who would fight anyone outside pubs that just aren’t there anymore.

The guitar shop is gone (owner dead) and the Cinema 7.

All the market shops have gone and the Row Barge is now called John Lewis.

But, at its time, Canbury Park was beautiful.

The pleasant blend of blephitis and conjunctivitis that I have had for a good few weeks are starting to get on my nerves. My eyes get all stuck up with what is like Evo Stik and it makes it very hard for me to see.

One day, when you are bored, I might tell you the tale of Mr. ‘Stik Evo’ who was a leading light in Brixton’s squatter population. OK then, I’ll tell you now.

Never tattoo your own face in the mirror.

A lover of glue, he had a go and got all the letters the right way round. Trouble was, he didn’t get his eyes the right way round.

I feel like getting my eyes out with a warm teaspoon and rinsing them under the tap. They are so itchy (and scratchy).

Stik Evo told me that he used to hide his skag under dogfood in a bowl on the kitchen floor.

My eyes are hurting and I can’t see so well but, at least, I haven’t tattooed my own face.

Have a good week!

Oh dear, yet another day in Worst Byfleet.
Hello nice Mr. village butcher bloke. I fancy making a cassoulet. Got any duck?

Only breasts.

Hmmm, well they shall do. And a big sausage please while I go to see the doctor and the chemist and Messrs. Waitrose.

The doctor said I was the best that he’d ever seen me (until I showed my latest trophy scar).

Then I went back to the butcher’s on my way to the station.

Nice sausage.

Are these duck breasts frozen?

Weeell, yes.

Are they local?

No, they’re from Smithfield; I think they’re French.

At every interval in the conversation I could feel my left eyebrow getting half an inch higher.

Using my laser-powered eyesight, I’m surprised they didn’t start cooking on the counter.

Anyway, later in the day I saw Mani and promised him a loaf. I put it on and went to bed because I had been up for 40 hours. The smell of baking woke me up so, when the loaf had calmed down, I delivered it to him.

A little earlier I had had two double espressos. Never ask for one. Always ask for the double. No milk. It tastes like oil.

The cassoulet will just have to wait until tomorrow.

Ah, tomorrow…

I have lost so much weight that I can remove my trousers without undoing them or my belt (which is in last notch land). Really I should publish a diet book.

Frozen, French duck? I must be mad.

Let me tell you how it feels:

Like little electrodes in your head and neck and down your spine.

Spark, spark, spark.

Now, I’ve been awake all night; there is something that I have to do today. And, all the while the crackle and sparks kept flying. Just like before you have…

Then, this morning, I remembered. This is what happens before you start to fit.

So I’ve eaten about half a pound of glucose. You would think that after all these years I should be able to spot the signs coming on but the Hypos make me so daft that I don’t know what I’m doing. Last time(ish) that I was in hospital they had to inject me with about half a tin of Golden Syrup.

I just thought I was ill again and didn’t bother about it but this morning I had a clever idea. Just eat glucose. It seems to be working.

The sparks have gone and now I just feel tired. Hypos make you feel like you’ve been beaten up.

My clockwork compluter is causing me much sadness.

Suicide? Mortality? - You name it.

I don’t want to live like this.

As senses go, this is about the last one that I have left. I’m just about blind and my extremities are going numb (thanks, diabetes) but my hearing is not too bad; that’s how come I heard the water coming down from the Creeper’s flat.

We share a waste pipe. Because I had to dismantle the airing cupboard to mend the hot water tank and couldn’t be bothered to remantle it I can smell what he’s cooking and all that.

So, this morning I was lying in bed and whiff, whiff, what’s that I can smell?

Trouty will tell you (God, how I miss her) that I can smell loads of things. I don’t go around sniffing dogs’ bottoms but I could probably get a job at an airport. I can sniff things out a treat and I don’t even want a Bonio; just 60 grand a year will do me.

Sniff, sniff, sniff. Ahah! If I’m not mistaken it is the pong of Cannabis Sativa, otherwise known as ‘dope’.

No wonder their bath overflowed (although they will never admit it) because the new Mrs. Creeper was obviously whacked out of her head on the skunk.

I don’t mind people smoking a bit of weed, I done it myself about ten years ago, but this is starting to get ridiculous. Water through the ceiling? Pong of marijuana waking me up? Rude and obnoxious Creeper who refuses to say sorry? Bloody builders who have the idea of decorating involves the use of a Kango hammer?

I’m at the end of my rope and, although that is a metaphor, it may soon be literal.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but I needed to get this crap off my chest.

H.

The Beatles’ version is, of course, the best but this one is interesting.

It doesn’t have the backwards guitar that they smacked out in Abbey Road with George Martin but it still has the feeling of the song. As songs go it is my life in, ahem, my life in a bottle. ‘Float upstream’ - of course you can’t. If you float downstream then you are dead but in this song life is celebrated. Sleep. Blessed sleep. I try to spend at least 50% of my life asleep. Please don’t wake me, please don’t shake me. I’m only dreaming.

Have a good day.

H.

I don’t why but this song has always done it for me.

My fave album is ‘Revolver’ because there was so much George on it.

Enjoy this one:

The song ends so shortly. This is reflected in the lyric. Like the ‘relationship’ it just dies on its arse. Cuts off. If I sat up all night, scratching my head, I couldn’t write a better lyric; never mind a better song.

I know quite well who you are.
IP addresses and all that.

You know what my address is (henrythethirst@aol.com) so why not drop me a line?

My OCD is getting worse:

Bit more Otway, I’m afraid,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dc_ffPld9o

Now, how does this bloody bread machine work?

WARNING:
THIS IS NOT SUITABLE FOR WORK OR CHILDREN OR MOTHERS OR ANYTHING.

DON’T DO IT UNLESS YOU’VE HAD A FEW…

Welcome to Kunt and the gang…

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. You should see the rest of his stuff. Ha ha hah!

Everyone keeps going on about these ruddy breadmaking machines so, today, I went and bought one from Messrs. Tesco.

I haven’t used it yet, I’m not that stupid, I’ve been reading the instruction book.

Hmmmmm, loooks like I knead (need, geddit?) some strong flour and some dried yeast. I shall also need some powerful detergent seeing as how I haven’t washed-up since Christmas.

I just buy cutlery instead.

Still, I did clean the bog yesterday and now all I have to do is work out how much a ‘cup’ is worth in real money.

A ‘cup’? - depends how big your cup is, I suppose. My ‘cup’ is about a pint so if they want me to put a pound and a half of flour in then off we go.

Should you hear a loud bang from the New Haw direction it will be because I’ve turned this infernal machine on.

Oh, ha ha, Doc Holiday.

He hasn’t seen me for a fortnight and I’ve lost 10 kgs.

His Volvo broke down the day he got back but at least his Porsche still works.

Porkers should follow my regime and just eat tinned fruit out of the fridge.

Losing weight is easy. All you have to do is encourage a disinterest (not an uninterest) in food. Eat if you are hungry (which you shouldn’t be, seeing as we are the 4th richest country in the world) and, if you aren’t hungry, don’t eat.

Slimtastic!

I might be nearly blind but I do have a couple of senses that work pretty well; smell and hearing.

Hmmm, that’s interesting, water coming out of my bathroom light fitting. I knocked up.

I spoke to his bird and she declared no knowledge. One of the things I’m not is stupid. If there is water pissing through my light fittings then it must be coming from upstairs. Eventually the Creeper (for it is he) turned up and he came to have a look.

“Where’s this light fitting?”

“Well my guess is the one with water dripping out of it and a bucket underneath.”

Not a word of sorry. “Phone your landlord", says he.

My guess is that his new bird had let the bath overflow and didn’t want to admit it. Bloody litigious society. “I do this for a living, you know” is what he said before he declared my bathroom as “Whiffy” and left the premises.

Well, if I hadn’t had half a bathful of his crappy water through my ceiling then he wouldn’t have had to put up with my bathroom, whiffy or not.

I got on the phone to Vodka Mick and he knows a bit about plumbing. He put on his running shoes and came straight round. There is no way that I could pump water up to flood my own ceiling. The water had to be coming from upstairs.

Round comes The Creeper. Mick recognised him and told me that he does, indeed, work for the Water Board. He digs up drains.

My brother knows the Creeper’s dad and he told me years ago that he was a complete and utter…

Meanwhile I am left with a sodden carpet and water dripping out of my lightbulb.

And not a word of apology.

Having done some tidying up I left some bags of rubbish outside. I thought I’d better take them down to the bins but Hey! What’s this?

Someone had left a stick-in-the-mud right next door to my pots of weeds and mint. It looked a bit thirsty so I gave it some light refreshment. I haven’t a bloody clue what it is or who left it there. It looks about dead but I might be able to revive it.

Tell you what, life is bloody weird.

When boating, about the only knot you will ever need is the clove hitch.

Loop, twist and loop.

You can hold a twenty ton boat with this simple knot.

It always amazes me when I see ‘boaters’ trying to tie up with what looks like Grandma’s knitting or an effing birdnest.

Still, that’s because I’m brilliant and they aren’t. “How do you do that?” they ask and I show them. They never get it because they don’t pay attention. I’m like the Jack Hargreaves of the Navigation.

Silly Sailing Simon, just before he got the chuck off the Nav. taught me a few things. Some of whch I thought were lies but they weren’t. He could tell when a lock was opened or a boat was coming. The shock-wave off a boat goes about (and I’m not joking) about half a mile in front of it. He could tell by the pull on the mooring lines.

Here’s a thing he taught me: “If you can do it any more slowly then you are going too fast".

I had a go on Mr Dot’s boat the other day. Yes, I crunched it and he had to rescue me. The controls were alien and I didn’t know what I was doing. But I live to fight another day and I can slip clove hitches.

Cheers A and J, we had a lovely trip.

I have now not eaten for two days on the bounce.

It’s a bit of a shame because I’m not a bad cook really. Dining for one? Forget it.

Vodka Mick came round and helped me cut my hair. It’s just about down to the wood. Point 0.5 on the clippers and the beard and all. Skinhead.

Then we went down the Navigation and hitched a ride with some friends. It was so lovely to be back on the water - I missed it so much.

I walked back from Pyrford. It’s odd not having a beard anymore.

Well, we were looking for a Buffalo Song that had been lost for thirty years.
I found the lyrics in about 10 seconds and then I started looking for the tune.

I found this…

Enjoy.

Some people might think that ‘obsessive REPULSIVE’ might be a bit more like it but I don’t care. I’m in my fifty-first year you know and you youngsters don’t know what it was like in the olden days. We never had them EMthree-pees, all we had was a stick of wood that they used to make liquorice out of before they started using dogs’ noses.

It is my solemn duty to become really interested in something for a few months and then forget all about it for a year or more. Times crossword, painting, wild flowers, walking, boating, smoking, two members of ‘Badfinger’, John Waterhouse, Haslemere…

Oh the list goes on and on.

Anyway, I’m glad that so many of you enjoyed Otway torturing the, ahem, Theremin so I dug out another example of his craft.

Otway and the Hamsters Geddin! It’s a disco version of his top 200 hit, ‘Bunsen Burner’. The words/lyrics/libretto are very funny.

Enjoy.

Guess what the birthday boy told me…

As he is technermological and I am not I might not be able to explain it very well.

What you have to to is get a tube of Pringles and eat them (sorry about that, I know they are disgusting) and then make use of the tube’s foil lining.

Then you make a small hole in the bottom of the tube and slip it over that aerial thing on your Wifi thing. Then you have to point it this way and that and it will super-increase something or another.

Many happies, dear Youngblood. How about if I boot some creds into your mobile? I’ll need to know which service provider you are on.

You might like to provide a more sophisticated version of the Pringle aerial than I can, just for the benefit of all my readers.

Love you,
H.

There is a so-called ‘musical instrument’ that I first saw being played by Jimmy Page about a hundred years ago. It has, like, an aerial on it and the closer you get… etc.

I wish I could remember what it’s called.

Here’s Otway torturing one:

What the hell are these things called? Something beginning with ‘S’?

Never mind; enjoy a bit of Otway.

Otherwise…

On Tuesday, when I have to go to Buffs, I spotted them. But they were only small. On the Thursday, Doc’s day, I went into the butcher’s and asked how much he would give me for them.

He hadn’t got a clue. He’d never heard of them.

I checked them today. Chicken of the woods. Getting larger.

I’ll be up there Thursday morning and if I don’t get four quids for the lot I’ll have a nice breakfast. And so shall my friends.

Yes, I did idle some of the day away watching freerunning from Trafalgar Square.
It was not very good.

Here’s a link.

I started watching Parkour on BoobToob because I was so jealous. The clips that I watch are mostly Eastern European and, God, how they fly. There are no catch-nets, just ability. To see someone climb an alley or jump across one, to see someone climb a block of flats…

Have a look on BoobToob for Parkour and you will be amazed.

How in the Hell can they do that?

It has always been a matter of pride for me that I have NEVER lived in a road visited by ice-cream vans.

Okay, so call me a snob (because I am one) but listen to this… My hippy uncle used to drive an ice-cream van and he got stuck on for sounding his chimes after 7:30 pm.

Anyway, the other day I was listening to the radio when all of a sudden, DING A LING DANG DONG DOODLE DOODLE DOO DING DING etc.

Oh for a ‘Black Widow’ catapult.

So now I have the world record noisiest rubbish builders doing up the moonlight-flit flat with a Kango Hammer and, oh, the shame, Mr Whippy up my road.

I must try harder to win the lottery.

As I sat upon the lav. and admired my blood be-splattered sheet I thought, ‘Aye aye’.

I could see a pennant there. I could cut that out with a pair of scissors.

The pennant is a long and rather flowing flag.

In the olden days them pirates used to fly a white and then, God help you, a red.

Imagine the scene. You have enticed a tasty bird back to your place but she yelps at the sight. ‘Calm down dear, it’s not a tammy-huff it was just my broken nosebleed’.

So the sheet is fucked but the pennant is not lost. I could cut it down into a triangle, paint some crap at the edges and stick it down. Lots of varnish.

Modern art is SO easy, all you have to do is SEE.

So I’ve lost a sheet but what I have gained is a work of art. Seeing into the future I know that ‘Blood Pennant’ will be worth a few bob. And I haven’t even done it yet.

Any offers?

When the posse rode into town and hitched up their horses to convert my slum dwelling they must have had a job-lot of doorbells.

Because they sound the same and the walls being made of cardboard it can be hard to tell which bell is going off.

BRIIIIIING!

Eh, wassat?

Must be Incapability Brown so I put some clothes on and opened the door. No one there. I went and got my specs and I could see someone waving from down the landing. I put my kicking boots on.

My exhaustive local enquiries revealed that no one knew what the fucking hell I was on about.

LESSON:

Change doorbell to ‘Tubular Bells’.
Don’t answer the fucking door (especially if it’s a bayleaf).
Take battery out of bell and only answer to a prescribed knock.

Ahh, that’s got that off my chest - how has your day been?

Thursday is Doc day so I have to go, Sometimes I walk but it had been weeing with rain so I decided to waste even more money in the direction of South West Snails.

I chatted with my friend at the ticket office and then made my weary way up to the platform. Usually I sit on the bench where I know the train doors will line up but today the bench was wet with rain and there was a lad sitting on it with his mountainbike all over the platform in front of him.

Having had the quickest of looks my nose started itching.

Ten minutes to waste so I walked to the end of the platform and back - that’s right, because I am so nosey.

Then I came back.

“Sorry, do you want me to move my bike?”

“No, no, I was just looking. You must have about 30 gears on there. Nice welding too.”

Killer question time.

“What make is it?”

“It’s a special.”

Special indeed because I can smell a stolen bicycle from about a mile away. It had been resprayed. Silver. Rather badly.

“How do you find them disc brakes?”

“I put some vegetable oil on them to stop them squeaking”

“Err, you put VEGETABLE OIL on them?”

“Yeah, but that was a while ago, They’re better now.”

To cut a long story short he was proud of his bicycle and showed me his ‘D’ lock. He had paid £10 for the bike.

Ten quids? For a bike worth three hundreds?

Had I still been in the job I would have nicked him but I’m not so I didn’t. I could see he was innocent bang through.

The train came and I went to see the doctor.

“Is it wet outside or is that you?”

“It’s me.”

So went my appointment with Doc Holiday. I was sweating like a sweaty pig that had just eaten a load of strong cheese.

He waved his pen at me and told me that it wasn’t a magic wand, although he wished it was, and said he didn’t know what to do with me.

At home I spoke to my landlord and he told me I would have to cough up 149.79 a month. Where the council think I’m going to find all that is a mystery. I tried to phone them up but they have Thursday afternoons off. I phoned the Samaritans and they suggested the C.A.B. - guess what, they were shut.

I used to be a Prince of the City; I could hoof doors in and sort anything out. It is most demeaning to consider the wreckage that my life has become. But with all this I learned objectivity and I can see myself, as in a mirror, and think to myself, ‘you’re fucked, matey’.

Ask for help and you don’t get it.

Guess what. I sat on the wooden bog-seat and it broke and the two sharp ends that were left stabbed me in both my arse cheeks.

Tra lah…

Thanks a bunch.

As is per effing usual I spent the night at St Peter’s hospital.

I had a rather nasty fall and, as I am a medical expert, I suspected that I had broken two ribs. When the ambulance persons know where you live and recognise you it might be a little message from him upstairs.

They whacked in a cannula and filled me up with saline drip and a vitamin B one. Then they kicked me out.

Are there any buses at half seven on a Sunday? Are they frying-pan.

So it cost me a tennner to get home but I still live and I will keep doing so until I am dead.

Actually I rather like my weird life. There have been moments of disappointment but, on the whole, I can’t complain. String it altogether and it ain’t so bad really.

May your God keep you safe.

H.

One advantage of being a southpaw is that it is not expected.

‘Sinister’, is what we are called. Well, I’m left-footed, left-eyed and, most importantly, left-handed.

I can spot a cack-hander from miles away. I can tell by the handwriting. I can just tell.

In a fight I can wave my right hand about because that’s where they think the blow will come from. All of a sudden the left comes out from behind my back. A blow so hard that it will take your nose off.

Don’t ever take on a Southpaw.

I was down at the garage, talking to my Singhalese chum.
In came two scummers.
One of had an AnnoyanceFone so I said “I don’t recognise that one”
“That’s because you’re old” came the smart reply.

Well, I might be old but I was at least a foot taller than either of them.

“Can you knock off 79p off these biscuits?”

“No”

A garage at coming up to closing time is really asking for it. I usually hang about when I can smell trouble. I am big and my knuckles are about number one size. It saves scummers the trouble of getting over the counter. My Singhalese friends know that I will always be there and that if there is any trouble then someone will get their lights punched out; and it won’t be me.

This version isn’t too bad but he sings ’switchblade’ instead of ‘ratchet’. And there isn’t enough bass either.

Look at this…

There aren’t enough tears in my head.

The number of times this greeting has been shrieked from motor vehicles is beyond count.

It depends on how many scummers there are in the car. If two then I might flick the traditional ‘V’s but if more I just pretend I never heard it. I don’t want my baldy head kicked in.

Why my hairdo is of such interest to young men I cannot fathom. Perhaps they would like to step out of their Mum’s car and see who has the biggest penis. Or who has the hardest knuckles. Either way, I win.

At risk of my blog turning into a John Martyn fanclub you might want to have a look at this.

Solid Air was written for Nick Drake.

Thanks to Mani for cooking my dinner and to Doc Holiday for filling out my DLA form. He ran out of room on the bit where you have to put your complaints in. Nice man.

There are some things that I have done and some things that I am not particularly proud of.

Today, for example, I nearly had a fight with some builders. Okay, so they laughed at me, but at least I put my point across.

Have a look at this.

I had a go at salvia the other day. The first hit was nothing. The second (out of an ice-bong) put me into a different world for ten minutes. I dreamt that I was under a boat in clear, clear water. The broad weeds were coming past. The hull was coming over me and I was frightened that the prop might hit me.

It was all a dream.

Make of that what you will.

John is dead and Beverley used to play in Brighton.

Oh well. Give us a ring. When you get there.

Guess what. I did some laundry.

When I fell and smashed my face there was quite a lot of blood sploshed about. ‘Ha ha’, I thought, I shall simply bung this load of tat into the washing machine. Unfortunately the washing machine and I have different ideas as to what cleansing means.

Personally, I would like to put in a sheet covered with blood and have it come out not so. The Creda Simplicity 1000 has a different idea. Lemon fresh but still bloodstained. I’ll have to throw the thing away.

What am I supposed to do? Boil the fucking thing in Vim for an hour?

My nose and my cheekbone are still broken but my duelling scar is healing nicely.

How I’ve got away with this for so long and still remained so beautiful is a constant source of amazement to me.

Incapability Brown broke one of my canvas frames by sitting up against it. I might cut a hole in it, put it over his head, and call the photographed work something suitable.

Any suggestions?

A while ago I got a new pair of specs and very nice they looked too. A little more expensive than I had anticipated but they fitted over my donkey ears.

Bifocals.

This means, as far as I can gather, that using the bottom section to, say, type, you have to press your oily nose upon the screen. To use the top section you need to grow arms five feet long to keep things in focus.

My eyesight is very important to me as it is one of my few capabilities that actually works. I have noticed that in my right eye there is a sort of ‘nothing’ spot. It’s not a black spot or anything. Just a nothing - I hope it’s not a retinal bleed.

I wonder if it’s too late to train as a piano-tuner?

As all you well-read fellows will know, The Creeper is the bloke who lives upstairs.

The block that I live is converted commercial premises (yeah, converted by a posse who rode into town on horseback, brewed up some cawfee in an enamel jug and chowed down on some stew and beans) so because I live on the first floor my actual floor is made of jolly old concrete. Upstairs, however, is a different story…

The Creeper’s floor, and my ceiling, is made of wood. Plus, I strongly suspect that he is one of these people who feel it trendy to rip up the carpets and nail down some thin planks for that ‘modern’ look. Personally, think it’s the ‘annoying’ look but then my own floor-covering is composed of dirty clothes and newspapers.

Anyway, I was trying to work out from the sound effects what he was trying to do this afternoon. Was he getting some equipment to get in shape for some Olympic weightlifting? Was he trying to get a motorbike up the stairs?

I am extremely sensitive to noise. It makes me depressed.

I did join up in the end.

The Lodge is dying on its proverbial because the members keep dying and no one is joining.

This is a shame because I nearly split my sides laughing.

What I never knew is that, unlike the sneaky Masons, you have to ask them. They never ask you if you want to join but all you have to do is express an interest.

Getting into the ceremony was a little odd but I did swear some declarations that I actually believe in, cynical old bastard that I am, and I learned some passwordy things and then spent the rest of the evening holding my nose and trying not to laugh.

It was like being in Court but with people taking the piss out of each other.

I even was the first raffle winner but all the prizes were chocolate and cakes so I gave my token back and asked a redraw.

The funniest evening that I’ve had for a long time. And I know something that you don’t know. Unless you join up, of course.

Went the bell.
Guess what, it was my doctor, Doctor Who, or as I prefer to call him. Steve.

Here’s a thing I picked up recently and I’m still washing my hands with Domestos. Let’s see what you can spot:

“Item 1 was simply a must do top priority. Our financial performance was poor
and reasons are well documented. Our improving performance is truly vindicating
all the steps we have been, and are continuing to take.
Item 2 - The totally obsolete and outdated IT equipment had to go. It was
costing us a fortune to keep it going and could not give us any of the facilities we
needed to even start to think of building a strategy.
We had to communicate with you first and then to the outside world. If we
were forced to employ strategists, printers, consultants and the myriad of other
costs involved would most certainly have resulted in outlays beyond that which
we would have spent by getting an up to date IT System. Not only for finance but
also for this part of our Way Forward.
Item 3 - With the new IT system in place it has opened up a world of opportunity
for us to communicate and present ourselves to a vast market place. With effective
use of these facilities we are in a position to commence this very important
phase of the Way Forward.
Item 4 - The natural progression to item 3 is to recruit like minded people to
our wonderful organisation. The improved communication between the
management of the Order and the membership at large has created an
atmosphere of trust and support which will encourage new members to remain
and grow with us.”

Well for fuck’s sake I have seen some mangled English before but this is piss-poor.
Ignorance and stupidity is nothing that I want anything to do with.
Stalinist nonsense doesn’t hold with me. They can stick their so-called ‘brotherhood’ where the sun doesn’t shine.

The only real brotherhoods were the French Revolutionaries and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

So there.

This morning I was lying on the floor and looked at how beautiful the ceiling was.
Having spoken to several medical type people that have kept me up til 04:10 I was starting to get a bit annoyed.

I can tie a clove-hitch and I can tie a noose. The noose goes under the left ear just by the jawbone. Pierrepoint could do one in 9 seconds.

But I’m fed up. I want to live in a land of wisteria and with hawks flying. I want to live in the land where poppies grow.

Is it really too much to ask?

I was invited round for dinner this evening by some of my neighbours.

We started off with some beetroot in a sauce that Mani had made. Beetroot? Me? It’s the most disgusting vegetable on the planet.

As I was eating it I realised that that the only reason I don’t like it is from school dinners when it bled into everything and tasted like pigpoo. This evening I enjoyed it. I wouldn’t have picked it off a menu but it did taste good; it came from a farm up Chertsey way.

Next we had some steamed rice served up with a delicious soupy thing with all prawns and spinach and was so yum. I started off by trying to dismantle the prawns but then I gave up and ate them whole. Yes, even their little faces. I crunched up the lot and it was SO delish.

Then I went back home and had some insulin and then went back out into the gardens where Sim was showing what he could do with a diabolo. I had a go and I was worse than crap. Sim could sling this thing, which had all lights on, most of the time, right up in the air and everything. I amazed his girlfriend with my amazing vanishing cigarette trick.

Do you want to know how to do it?

Right. What you do is make sure that your audience isn’t behind you, preferably in front.
Lick your thumb from the distal joint to the nail. Then, take a ciggie and hold it between your first finger and the joint of your thumb. It will stick. Pinch it like you are going to do a magic trick. You can do this in a T-shirt, I did tonight, and it still amazes people.

I just go 1-2-3 whilst waving my hands about but you can go wazzoo, wazzoo, what am I going to do?

As long as they don’t look at the operating hand you are safe.

I open my hands and the audience can see that there is nothing there.
the ciggie is stuck with lick to the back of my thumb.

Then I do a ‘foldover’ or whatever it’s called, and, Hey Presto, the fag is back.

I had a nice dinner - shame I’m so shite at diabolo.

I am a stranger in a strange land.

There was a time when I had what you might call ‘authority’ but I don’t have that any more.

These days, thanks to arthritis, I can’t even get the top off a jar of pickled onions and my face is so smashed up. I have to rely on my neighbours for help. They are good and they support me and I thank the Upstairs Person for that.

But just because your body doesn’t work any more it doesn’t mean that your brain has shut down. Mine still goes at 3000 miles an hour. It’s horrible. Being trapped inside a body that used to work so well but now has lost the plot. For me, the future is horrific.

So, I walk with a limp because of the arthritis in my pelvic girdle. I have brain atrophy and have had type 1 diabetes for 20 years. I’m supposed to take 14 pills a day but I can’t be bothered.

I often think back to Kenneth Williams’ diary and the last thing he wrote was ‘What’s the point?’

A profound statement / question.

If you know the answer to that one, please let me know.

I was having a long read back of the limericks.

It’s funny how often the title phrase appears. And I invented it.
In the limericks which I also invented.

Maybe you might want to disagree with me and you can do so in the chatroom which I also invented.

Honestly, I should get into boat design or something instead of pissing about with writing or painting.

What I was going to write next is lost to the winds. I’m 50 you know. And I’ve got brain atrophy.

Trouty needs but one answer to finish her prize crossword.

Clue: ‘UK Band known for the hit, ‘Wires’.’

7 letters.

So far she has got A?H?E?E but don’t blame me if any of these letters are wrong.

Please put us out of our misery.

The above title is, of course, the title of a John Martyn song.

I listen to the radio all the time and when I heard that lightning, thunder and wazz down rain were expected all night long I was really happy.

The train bastards were supposed to be about and throwing cement-mixers at each other last night but it seems that a little inclement weather puts them off. It didn’t half chuck it down and a clap of thunder went that made me wonder if a you-know-what had gone off.

Mani came round and he seemed a bit depressed that I was still living in a pigsty.

Incabability Brown, who I caught drinking cider outside the station on Thursday morning, was supposed to come and get his bicycle out of my hallway and that I keep breaking my ankle on in the dark. Did he turn up? Did he Frying-Pan.

Here’s a warning to everything that lives in the North Sea. Trouty is going to eat you all next week so I’d move elsewhere if I were you.

If your address is Cromarty, Fisher, Gerrman Bight, Humber and blah, blah round to Trafalgar then you had better watch out - unless you are an oyster. You can carry on eating germs because Trouty won’t eat you.

This evening I watched ‘KES’ (again) and now I’m going to go to bed. Unless I break my ankle on that stupid bike in which case I shall struggle to the telephone and call an ambulance (yet again).

Nighty night!

Quick blog because there’s nothing I can say.
It’s a secret.

Ever since I got the grubby note from the contactors half-heartedly poked halfway through my letterbox I have been fuming. If this grubby load of scummers think that they have carte blanche to ruin my life then they are very much mistaken.

So, this morning, I gave them a little ding-a-ling. The pillock who answered my call couldn’t even be bothered to ask my name or address (Subtext = We don’t care).

I reminded Mr Moron that they aren’t even allowed up my road and that I have plans to prove it. He said that he would pass the information on but when I asked to who(m) he wouldn’t tell me.

So I thought ‘I’m not having this’ and I phoned up the council. Again.

“Hello, this is Mr W. here” and I could just about hear her eyes rolling back in their orbits as I continued. “Blah, blah, blah, stupid letter, Blah, blah, blah, baseball bat, and etc. ad nauseam.

We shall see. It’s due to kick off on the 16th. Let’s see how long it takes me to get nicked.

Well, scuse me but I’ve got blephitis and I can’t see properly.
St Just was an inspiration to one of my fave artists, Ian Hamilton-Finlay.

Anyone who, like me, is interested in The Terror of 18th Century France should watch this.

Robespierre was a mad tyrant but St Just seems a bit reasonable to me. Didn’t stop them getting the chop though.,

Tra Lah.

H.

The first thing that happened was I noticed that a bit of paper had been slipped through the letterbox. Not all the way through, mind, just stealthily slipped in probably in case I killed someone.

Notwork Snail wished to inform me that they intend to carry out works starting on the 16th from 00:30 until 04:30.

They slid it in so sneakily that I suspect that the word must have gone out; don’t wind up that bloke at the end because he’s a nutter and always complains.

Too bloody right I do. They ruined my life for a year and punched a hole through my 18 months of sobriety. Unfortunately for them they have included phone numbers on this scummy bumwad and I’ll be using them on Monday. At Notwork Snail they have orders to disconnect me if I ever phone them but this time I have numbers for the contractors. ‘Pon the Monday I shall give them a ring and remind them that they aren’t actually allowed up my road (it’s a private road) and I have plans from Surrey County Council to prove it. They’ve got a railway so why don’t they come by rail instead of getting a load of shaven-headed scummers with their hats on back-to-front to start up generators and angle-grinders in my front garden at 3 o’clock in the morning?

The next jolly thing that happened was when I went out and noticed (I’m a right nosy bastard) that my neighbour Mani’s door was open. So I rang his bell but there was no reply. ‘Here we go again’ I thought but then I saw him up the landing. He was talking to my neighbour who has an American Bulldog about the size of a Shetland pony. He used to bark at me (the dog, not the neighbour) but he’s a bit more used to me now.

What happened was that the people who used to live upstairs from my neighbour had done a moonlight flit and left the flat in a right state. The overflow had been running for quite a while. I think I mentioned the other day that a ‘plumber’ who should have been wearing a cowboy hat rang my bell and asked if I knew where the stopcock was. Well, mate, if you’re a plumber and you can’t work out where the stopcock is then maybe you should get a job washing cars in Tesco’s carpark.

I heard my neighbour on the phone and he was using the words that begin with the letters ‘F’ and ‘C’. He had already hoofed the door in because there was all water coming through his ceiling and he wasn’t best pleased. I went in and had a look. I found three stopcocks and turned off two of them but the third I couldn’t shift - I’m old.

Then we went up into the loft and he borrowed my little torch that is on my keyring. While he was tutting I found a lightswitch. “Fiat Lux” I proclaimed but nobody got the joke. We jammed the ballcock up with a bit of wood that I found and then went to have a look at the horror story that this so-called ‘plumber’ had left behind him.

What a bloody mess. We did what we could but we had to deal with an uncapped pipe.

It turned out that my neighbour had been talking to an answerphone and he said there must have been a hundred messages on there. He also said that when he saw this bloke he was going to kill him. “I’ll stab him - with my little finger” he said. Do you know, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he did.

Laughing Len Cohen is playing up the road tonight. Shame it’s wazzing down with rain. All adds to the atmosphere I suppose. Maybe when the gig’s over he could come round and play a happy tune through my neighbour’s letterbox. Except I don’t think that he knows any.

I was having a bit of a read-back and I started thinking to myself, ‘maybe you aren’t so bad after all’.

A few years ago I used to knock about with a gay man in Brighton (don’t worry, I knobbed his sister) and when we got back to his place he realised the flat had been burgled. Happy Christmas. And then the training kicks in and I’m going ‘dugh dugh dugh’ and I said to him, ‘You stay here and I’m going in’.

I went through the whole flat but I couldn’t find anyone. If I had done then God knows what would have kicked off. I have a particular dislike for burglars.

But I can walk through anything. I feel indestructible. I’ll walk through anything and everything.

I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again. Nothing scares me any more.

Usually I see my doctor on Thursdays. Every Thursday at 10:45. I don’t quite know why; I think he must like me because I’m not some boring old bag with bunions and we can have a nice chat and he gets paid for seeing me. I wish I got paid for seeing him but I don’t.

On Wednesday I got a call from the surgery saying that my doctor was ill and so my appointment would have to be rearranged. Oh dear. The trouble with him is he goes on holiday too much and then he always comes back ill. Thus I refer to him as Doc Holiday.

The bullet-proof receptionists know my little joke and they laugh about it but the one I was speaking to didn’t get it. She said, “Doctor Who?” So I said “No, not Doctor Who, Doctor [I won’t type the name].

Anyway, the appointment I was offered was for 08:20 today and that cost me 3 squids to go one stop on the crappy train return. That’s 50 pees a minute.

The doctor presented himself and I made a quick diagnosis. He always has to have what I’ve got. If I moan about arthritis he has it worse and all that. This time it was migraine. If I was allowed to write scripts I’d have gone for Cocodamol or diamorphine but no one ever listens to me. Don’t get me wrong; I love my doctor and he saved my life.

We had a nice chat and then I went to the chemist to get my script filled.

Then I went to see Rocco who has a business that is going bust. How he keeps going is little short of a miracle. I’ve known Rocco for years and he tries so bloody hard but he’s going under.

When I phone the surgery I give my name and then remind them that I’m the bloke who doesn’t know what day it is. They know me but the ‘Doctor Who’ still makes me laugh.

Have a good day.

I had a reason to post this elsewhere but I love it so much that thought I should spread it about a bit.

Thank you, The Cranberries.

Vodka Mick tells me that the vocal technique is called ‘hitching’ where you ping your throat up an octave or two.

Thanks for all your support and just when I was about to pack it all in.

My regards,
H.

Hello John!

I don’t know you and I didn’t know that you were one of my many fans. Glad you like my stuff though. I went to Edinburgh in 1986 when I was walking from, yeah, yeah yeah, you have heard it all before.

The festival was on and so were the Commonwealth Games. Trying to find a place to sleep was a nightmare. Walking through I found a good way to find that you were outside a pub was all the blood on the pavement.

I hoyed over the road bridge and saw the rail bridge to my right.

Sometimes I wonder how people find my blog but I know that I have readers in Canada and the Useless of A. In Australia and, like Grant, in the far east.

Come on, John, and introduce yourself. Post more because I feel lonely sometimes. Maybe I’ll point you to a certain site where you are bound to feel at home.

Thanks JG but we already know each other. I was wondering if it was your tent that I was outside when me and Ross came wandering over and I was sick. I’ve a nasty feeling that it was.

La la. Happy days.

Thanks to Grant I have decided to reopen the world’s most fabulous blog.

He lives about 12000 miles away but he’s interested and I can’t really let him down. Plus, he reminds me that there are nutcases all over the world that read my guff. I don’t suppose for a minute that they would die without me but it would be nice to have some comments from wherever.

Tell you what, dear reader, let’s see if Grant is right. Type in a comment and say where you are. This could be interesting.

Owing to interference from persons unknown this blog is now shut.

Thanks for your interest and support.

I did nothing much and then the doorbell rang.
It was a plumber who was trying to work out how the system worked.
Nobody actually knows.

The doorbell went again and this time it was Incapability Brown (aka Vodka Mick) and he used my antique compluter to play Monkees records.

Then we went up the garage and I bought him ten fags (life expentancy about 10 minutes) and then he toddled off and I walked home through the puddles.

This was on the compluter…

Then I spoke to Trouty and now I’m going to burn a pizza.

Unless I’m completely wrong (which, of course, has never happened before) the land around here is full of wormwood.

Rather a dull looking plant but in the olden days they used to lay it on the poor and workhouses’ floors to try to keep the bugs down. I suppose that’s where the name comes from.

I should have posted a picture but you can look it up yourself if you are interested which I don’t, for a minute, suppose that you are.

Absinthe, the Green Fairy, is made from wormwood.

Earlier today we discussed schools and I knew that they had just wasted 11 years of my life. I could already read and write and I’m not interested in sums. The things that interest me for about three weeks are art, poets, physics except I know it already, biology (an ‘ology!’) and as I am an autodidact I just pick stuff up along the way.

Medicine interests me but not particularly - I’d rather shoot a golfer’s hat off with an air-rifle to be honest. The annoying pom-pom.

My brain sucks up information like a Dyson but none of that came from school. Anything that I know comes from the school of hard knocks. I love knowing things but, at the same time, I hate it. Being daft must be so much easier.

In the meantime I just knock about knowing wormwood when I see it and know what it’s about.

I took my super new magic trick over to show Mr Barge. He seemed a tad underwhelmed.

Then he got out some packs of cards and I was glad I had no socks on because they would have been blown right off.

I’ll be dreaming about the bloody ace of bloody diamonds for quite a while now. He couldn’t tell me how the tricks worked because he must have signed the magicians’ code or something but he did give some hints.

Buy a pack of cards and knacker them before knackering the ones in the trick pack. Seems reasonable. He showed me a cunning way to split any number of cards. He showed me loads of things that I instantly forgot. Well, it’s not fault I’ve got brain damage, is it? Alright, so it probably is.

The walk on the towpath was lovely now that everything is in bloom. It was all dry except around the dog-holes. I talked to loads of people and had some fun with the hire-boaters. One fellow was trying to spin below Coxes and I knew from the start that he wouldn’t make a neat job of it. Sometimes I wish I had a pipe so’s I could have a contemplative puff or two. He was bollocksed before he started. He did try to get the boat onto the towpath but that didn’t work either. I just sat on the bridge and waited for the weir drift to hit him.

Once they were safely back in the lock I gave one of my free-of-charge clove-hitch lessons. Going uphill is very different from going downhill. You need to be tied and the clove-hitch is so easy. As usual, no one paid any attention.

At the moment I expect their boat will be sideways on outside the Anchor.

Still, I tried.

I’ve been spun outside the Anchor on two occasions; the first was down to my own incompetence but I got away with it. The second was when I got rammed by a Trust dredger and barge and I got away with that as well. Skillful boatman, see?

That’s enough of me; I’ve had a long day. I’ve learnt some things but now I’m tired.

Sweet dreams.

Oh, afore ye go, I’ve seen loads of vetch of late. Beautiful purple flowers and bipinate (is that the right word?) leaves.

Ahah! Well, contrary to all beliefs I DID manage to make it to the pool in time.
I knew that there was a 7 o’clock in the evening but guess what and listen to this; they have one in the morning as well!
I know, I could hardly believe it myself, but it’s true.

All nice people. Very nice but I could sense the raisings of eyebrows and the shakings of heads. They suggested that I went for a splosh in a disused lane. This was the first time that I had been in a swimming pool for over ten years. I entered the water gracefully which inflated my £3 shorts and made me look as if I had blown off. I did a few lengths but I can only do breaststroke. I took my glasses off which meant that I could only see about 6 inches. Diving was not an option because I have only recently broken my nose and my cheekbone, yet again, so I didn’t fancy the impact.

I sploshed about and swam down to the bottom of the 3 metre deep-end. I spoke with one of the instructors and look! I can tread water and do it with my arms up in the air.

The hour was up so I helped get the cylinders out of the water (they weigh a lot) so that they could be hosed. The chemicals in the water knacker all the mouthpiece and hose lines. Then I went and got changed. I had already decided that this was all a bit strong for me. In the cafeteria I charmed the lady into putting a pack of Ribena Light into a mug and microwaving it for me for old times sake. She wasn’t meant to do it but I promised not to tell.

The long and short of it is that these people mean business. They dive lakes and the sea. If I was 25 again I might be in the league but I’m not. The instructor was trying to be polite and he very much was but we all knew what the conclusion was. Thanks for coming and making the effort.

Thanks very much, Fatty, but the equipment costs at least 1500 quids - but it was nice to see you!

At least I made the effort. It cost me 3 quids on the train and on the way out I asked how much just a swim costs. 4 bloody pounds and 10 pees.

The other side of that field there is a canal.

Still, it was a good day’s work and I felt the better for it. I know where I am now.

And I met some lovely people.

Up the shop there was a stall selling magic tricks.
I expect that when I was in hospital they must have fitted me with donkey ears and tattooed ‘MUG’ on my forehead because they saw me coming alright.

This bloke showed me a couple of tricks. The second one has only got three cards in it. I couldn’t work out quite how it was done but the end result was amazing. It was a variation of the three-card monte but on the packet said ‘COLOR MONTE’. Hmmmm….

‘How much is that then?’

‘Six quid.’

‘What’s your best price?’

‘Six quid.’

I’ll give you four.’

He started putting the packets back together with rubber bands round them so I let him waste his time for a bit.

‘So you want six quid for three cards made in China do you?’

‘No, they’re made in England.’

Well that must be the England where they can’t spell ‘Colour’ for a start so I offered him four again.

He was starting to get a bit annoyed now so I let him smell the money. I wafted a tenner under his nose. I offered him a fiver.

So I got my magic trick for a fiver and now all I have to do is work out how it works. It’s only three cards and I thought that even I can do that. The bloody instructions go on for about a year.

He did show me a good one which was a pack of cards that he spread out to show they were all different. Then he turned them over and riffled through and I had to pick one. I took one and it was the 7 of spades. Then he put the pack back together and said ‘OK, now put the 7 of spades back on the top’ and then he turned the deck back over to show they were all different. Then he did it again, 7 of spades, and for six quid I would have learned the secret. But I didn’t.

You wait til I get good at my Colour Monte though. I’ll have your pockets inside-out.

Anyone who has ever overnighted in hospital will know that there is a great deal of farting goes on.

The first time I enjoyed this was in the Royal Sussex and so tremendous were the blow-offs that I could hardly sleep. A patient who was in a close bed kept pooing his jimjams. The nurse started to get a bit exasperated and suggested that this man should no longer wear the jimjams.

I got moved to another ward which was smaller and in the bed next to mine was a prisoner from Lewes Gaol and he had two prison wardens with him at all times. He was bright yellow because his insides had packed up. The nurse was a gay man which I didn’t mind at all but the lag wasn’t happy one bit.

Now, there is no dignity in hospital.

They whizzed the curtains round but I could hear the doctor talking to him…
“There seems to be a problen with your bile duct and that’s what’s made you go yellow. We will insert a probe to try to clear it”

I found it hard not to laugh out loud. If he didn’t like gay nurses I wondered how he thought the probe might be inserted. I didn’t say anything. Perhaps he thought it might be some magic keyhole surgery. I thought that the suffix ‘hole’ might be about right but that the prefix ‘arse’ might be more accurate.

Anyway, when I was kipping in the hospital the other few days I was reliably informed that my very own bottom had gone off at regular intervals and had disturbed the slumbers of several patients.

Now I don’t like to be an annoyance but I was trying to be a vegetarian. Hospitals are so funny. You can actually tell someone that they blow off all the time without a fight starting.

Maybe this is why I live alone.

Here’s a yarn that I may have spun before. I don’t know whether it’s true or not but it makes sense to me.

Someone that I know left the police and wound up working as an HGV driver. One day he was pulling out onto a road and checked the offside window to see if anything was coming. There were two cars coming and they were both the same. He was seeing double because he had had a stroke.

I was reminded of this today when I was at the doc’s and he mentioned that my facial smash-up may cause double vision because the damage I have done to my face may result in double vision by poking one orbit out of alignment with the other. That’s why Stirling Moss had to stop racing after his prang.

My doctor opined, ‘Nice scar’, which isn’t exactly how I feel about it but there you go.

My friend who had had the stroke had to go to a clinic thing and he was asked how he felt about what had happened to him.

“Angry.”

“I see. And what, exactly, makes you feel so angry?”

“Well, I have just bought a new string of lights for the Christmas tree but if I had known that I would be seeing double I needn’t have bothered.”

This is what I refer to as a police joke. It works because the cause is tragedy but the joke leaves that so far behind. You have to become unhinged from ‘normal’ life to get these things and the job makes you leave the planet just to survive. There are simply too many horrors and they aren’t just things on the telly either - they are daily life and matter of fact.

I was on duty in the comms room once and some poor sod had to go to a call which involved maggots coming out from under a flat door. He kicked his way in and found a man who had been dead for a few months sitting in an armchair. I asked if he had found any ID but he hadn’t. I asked if he was black or white.

“He’s black now.”

I might go and mag the lock out and sit with my new plimmers in the water to soften them up a bit. Or I might not. I hate this hot weather.

This is something that you absolutely HAVE to watch.

David Hockney is a genius. His recent return to oils is a triumph.

I beg you to watch this.

I’ve been up for hours.
It’s horrible when you can’t sleep but it’s not the end of the world.
I read back through my blog and, on the whole, I was quite pleased by what I saw. There are little moments that crackle and please. There are some bits with holes in, of course, but I like to think that mostly my posts have been good.

Some bits have been better than good and I like to think that I have provoked interest in some artworks like Ian Hamilton-Finlay and the works of the PRB. My own artworks have featured and I like to think that the way that I write helps things along.

In my shabby life I must do what I must do. I am driven, you see, by a force that will never let me stop so the blog keeps pounding away in my head and will never let me go.

All that I find interesting must be reported on and can never be ignored. I post links and paintings, songs and photographs. I have to keep doing this because otherwise I shall surely die.

We will die and that is guaranteed but this is my life. I can’t stop. This is me.

The PRB were, without doubt, the most important thing that happened in English art ever. I hope that you bothered to watch the first two. Here is another.

Here I am, in my new swimming shorts. Oh, and T-shirt. I’m going to be doing some swimming type lessons for children.

The beautiful song is this one. This version is by Robert Wyatt. He was from the Canterbury school and was in Soft Machine. He was in the first gig that I ever went to, Matching Mole at the Queen Elizabeth Hall for the grand sum of 45 pence. He was a drummer then but he fell out of a window at a party and got right spazzed. I suspect that some drug taking may have been involved.

The song was written by Elvis Costello and really beckons to the heart. I love this version.

I arrived well over an hour early for my appointment. I hate to be late and you never know when you might get slipped in a tad early. Not this time, however.

So, as always, I started talking to people in the waiting room. Today I spoke with a lovely young lady in pink jodphurs about, guess what, horse riding. She has got two horses down at Wisley and I wondered if they might have a horse that might not snap under my weight. They have a Shire Horse! Hoorah! And how much might it cost to have a go on it for an hour? 30 or 40 quids!?

I spoke to an old lady who runs schools for children to learn snorkelling and scuba diving. They are running short of instructors. Now I’ve never snorkelled or scubad in my life but I can swim and sometimes on top of the water too. I took down the details and made the call when I got home. Next Saturday should see me in the pool at 07:30 if you don’t mind. When the children have taught me how not to drown I might be on the way to being an instructor. I’ve already done the lifesaving thing when I was a copper and I’ve been under boats and I’m not scared. Now all I have to do is get taught snorkelling off an eight-year old.

“Mr W.”

It was time to have my stitches unstitched.

The deep, subcutaneous ones will melt but the ones on the top needed to be removed.

“Nice wound” she said and if that’s not an oxymoron I don’t know what is. They all came out clean and, I suppose, the end result doesn’t look too bad. A duelling scar, nothing worse.

Now I have to buy some swimming trunks. Speedos are off the menu. Shorts and a T-shirt (not yellow) are the order of the day.

Not always easy to know just where things are. Sometimes here and sometimes there.

I like to know just where things are at and that’s not because I’m nuts. I like to know where things are because that’s how my mind works. If you don’t know where things are then everything gets all muddled up and that’s the truth. If you don’t know where things are you might as well be dead.

Say you don’t know where something is… Urm, urm, urm… Well what good is that?

It’s much better if you know where everything is because then you don’t have to spend time gulping. I just found my lighter.

Not only that but I found my watercress beds and the mooring post. I found the tawny owl. I found loads of stuff just by looking.

I find loads of stuff just by not walking in dog-plop.

Anyone up for the Waterhouse and a trip to the PRB at the Tate?

Go on, you know you want to.

The first time that I had my nose broken I was 13 or 14 something.
I had a job selling papers off a stand near Hampton Court station. Two boxes to run and a leather bag for the takings.

There was a boy who used to go my school and he got expelled for selling the beverages alcoholic. His father, now dead, was a popular entertainer and was on telly quite a lot. I mustn’t give too much away because my assailant might still be alive although I truly hope that he is not.

One afternoon I was approached by this scumbag who was showing off to a dimwit girl. I never even saw the punch coming. The next thing I knew I had bounced back off the window behind me and was on the deck and worried about my cashbag and with blood and snot pouring out of my nose. An off-duty copper ran up and asked me who had done it. “The one with the fuzzy hair.”

The copper hauled him off a bus and nicked him and I got taken away in an ambulance.

When my dad found out who the celebrity dad was he got hold of his address, probably via the agent, and went round and had a word. I would like to think that some of the words began with ‘F’ and ‘C’ but my dad is more clever than that.

Since that sorry day my nose never worked properly again. My left nostril always felt like it had had a piece of bone grown over it and needed drilling out. Nearly forty years this has been going on.

No one ever seemed to believe that I hadn’t contributed to the fracas althought the first I ever knew of it was a whacking smack in the bugle. All I got was £50 and 95% of that got spent on mending the roof. And I got a nose which no longer worked.

When I got beaten up in Newington Butts I never saw what I got hit with. I suspect it was a bottle which, thank God, didn’t break. My left cheekbone got broken in three places and my nerves got severed and my teeth went numb. No one was ever caught for that but I know how it felt - or didn’t feel.

And now, thanks to my fall, I realise what has happened again. I know what a broken cheekbone feels like, I know what the numbness of cut nerves feels like and I know what a broken nose feels like.

But my nose feels like it might be working again. I might be able to breathe properly through my left nostril after all these years.

The stitches come out tomorrow and although my face looks a bit smashed the bruises will go and the bones will heal.

Maybe some good will come of it all. And maybe the person who started all this off will die in screaming agony.

I have already banged on about episode one in this, most brilliant, series.

Here is episode two.

To me, the works of the PRB are unfathomable. Mere boys, they turned the world of art upside down. I beg you to watch this series, I really do. Episode one is still available and really should be compulsory viewing.

Have fun. Lots of love.

H.

I had to go out to play on my own.

After I had walked for many a mile I realised that there were people that I knew, people who were a bit stuck.

Two people who had a problem with a boat. A problem that I had had before. I needed a torch and my fingertips.

The boat is still there. As far as I am concerned it can rot there. I know exactly how to free it but no one can be arsed to ask me.

This is hard to believe.

The shopping needs to be done nearly every day and, not having a car, I walk and being a bit green I take my daypack.

So far, so good.

But I must have brain damage from my fall because for the first time in about seven years I find myself going into Marks and Sparks. And liking it.

Nope, I haven’t won the lottery, I just took a sharp left before I even got to Tesco.

My stitches come out on Monday and I see Doc Holiday on Thursday. I cancelled my appointment at the Maxillo-Facial clinic but now my super-observant objective self-awareness thingy tells me that something has really changed. Me? Marks and Sparks?

Something has happened and something has changed.

Lawks knows what has happened but something has. If anything, I’m even nicer than I was before.

I’ve stopped listening to the radio because I couldn’t give a Bubbles about the demise of Michael Jackson and I just read my book and think about things in a wholly new way.

How weird is that?

Regular readers, and quite rightly so, may have wondered how the kitchen/bathroom/bed bloodbath may have occurred.

Unlikely that I would have kicked my own face in. Unlikely that I would have ripped a 15 stitcher in my own face. Unlikely that I would have broken bones in my own fizzog.

Now I’m not suggesting that I should be called, ‘Henry of the Yard’ but it did strike me as odd. There was the case of the ‘not missing anything except blood’ to contend with.

But have a look at this…

My dear friend, Mani, offerred to clean up the blood and some of the detritus of my life and he found the cracked pool of gore. I had gone down and taken the brunt with my cheekbone on the radiator as I passed by. The sock-hanger had taken out the left-side of my face and I had fallen. My face was broken on the plumbing and the blood had flowed. Not knowing what to do I had retreated and the claret had been spread about the kitchen.

With the evidence, all becomes clear. The slice taken out of me; so clear like the opening of the curtains under the proscinium arch of the eye, is visible. When I pulled open the wound and saw, much later, the meat that lay beneath and saw the spattering of blood from the gaping horror of the cutting. The broken bones. The slice. The unconscious eyes. The gore. The open flesh rubbed and twitched across the bare linoleum.

The blackened blood that settles and gives reason to nothing.

Fifteen stitches that may as well be medals to nothing.

Broken bones.

When we say ‘chronic’ it doesn’t mean really horrible. It comes from chronos, the time, and means that we have had pneumonia or alcoholism or whatever for a long time. It might be bad too but it refers to time. When we say ‘forensic’ it doesn’t mean beardies in paper suits with microscopes but rather the application to legal argument.

When your bed looks like this it doesn’t necessarily mean that Emin has come to stay but it does make you scratch your head…

A quick check of the blood/glucose level means that some fault-finding is called for.
Oh dear. Here is the kitchen. Perhaps a pig has been slaughtered…

Not-particularly-forensic analysis leads one to the mirror.

Nose - broken at the bridge.
Cheekbone - broken.
Facial nerves - broken and dead below the left orbit.
Left cheek - cut deeply and at well over an inch. Subcutaneous and superficial stitching required.

On my way to the fridge to get some more Lucozade (blood/glucose level 1.6 and falling) I must have gone over like a telegraph pole and broken the fall using my face.

The photo isn’t all that but I had to take it myself and I’ve been in the madhouse for five days.

The thing that really cheesed me is that the staff, for some reason known only to themselves, failed to realise that I am a ’should-be-qualled’ doctor even though I read all the relevant pages in Womanly mags and have commonsense and straw-coloured fluid coming out of my ears.

Life is such an adventure.

Sorry to bore you with all this.

If you play a guitar string and it goes ‘plung’ then to get some harmonics out of it you have to pinch the string when you hit it. You musn’t stop the string. If you pinch it halfway then what you are doing is setting up a sine wave that, effectively, shortens the string so that you can get ‘pling’ and ‘ding’ out of it instead of ‘plung’.

Like I know.

Anyway, St John of Martyn is here, with his leg off, in a wheelchair and showing you all about how to do things that I will never understand.

In the next episode I will tell you all about when Vodka Mick came round and I bored him silly with my ideas about how art and humour are both the same abstract and useless constructs and they were pointless and had no value except in bonkers human terms.

You tell me the difference between a joke and a Rembrandt. Now tell me the difference between a joke and a Magritte.

Or a Hirst or one of mine or a stand-up comedian.

You can’t do it, can you?

S’later!

Anyone with common sense will have read, and watched, my previous posting about the blessed John Martyn.

John Martyn wrote ‘Solid Air’ about Nick Drake. He wouldn’t speak about Nick for years. That’s what I hear, anyway. John has, sadly, passed away but here he is doing the same song at what is, obviously, Cropredy.

Poor John. He had his leg chopped off and then he died of pneumonia I think. But look at the videos of him and you can see the absolute beauty that he had.

Love you John - I’ll see you soon, eh?

Have a look at this.

Bob once told me (Hello, Bob!) that this was his favourite song.
Listen to the constant of the bass notes that John Martyn bashed out of the guitar and the beautiful descent of the ‘love is a lesson to learn in our time’. Listen to the way he uses his voice as a musical instrument.

May you never lose your woman overnight.

Laydees and gennlemen, please give it up and a big, warm, out of my head welcome to the one, the only, Mr John Martyn…

If you didn’t already see this
then you should.

I have been a follower of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood for nearly all my life and this programme made me gasp and fizz all over.

The PRB were revolutionary and, as you will see when you watch this, they changed the world of art forever. I had to lie on the floor to watch it in case I fell over.

As you know, I am very interested in art and I am very interested in going on about it as well, but this blew my socks off.

Considering that they staggered about in the 19th C. and that they are STILL kicking the art world into touch all these years later is quite remarkable. The exquisite beauty of the works that they produced hollers down through the years.

God rest you, the PRB, and I’ll never let the sun go down on any of your paintings. My trilby will always be permadoffed in your direction and I wish to say…

Thank you.

Hey ho.
What’s that you say?
Take some drugs and then I’ll be in a band for life?
Brilliant.
I’ll be in Led Zep if you don’t mind.

Ahh, bless. Look at them likkle cygnets…

I am such a marvelous photographer. I knock about with so many weird people. This is a friend of mine and I think that these are a few of the best pictures that I have ever taken. Faces have such beauty. It’s life in a bucket.

When I was in Location X that I cannot and will never reveal I took a picture of this likkle wizard.

I think it’s a common or sand lizard. I tried to give them some apple but they probably just eat maggots or something.

And to finish, a picture of a cat.

I have a very interesting life. Walk a mile in my shoes and you will be a lot better off then you were before.

I hope that you enjoyed my snaps.

Be good and be careful.

Love,
H.

I cannot tell you where I have been
I cannot tell you what I’ve seen.

It was bloody nice though even though I did get tomato juice kicked all over me.

Oh bloody hell.

So here am I, minding my own business. Not too difficult I hear you say.

I phoned the surgery only to find out that my GP has gone somewhere on leave. I don’t know why he bothers because he only comes back with some foul disease that I have to cure for him.

The receptionists all know me. The bloke who doesn’t know what day it is. When I told them that I call the head of the practice Doc Holiday they all started laughing. They said that Speedy would phone me back in the afternoon.

Anyway, when Speedy eventually called I told him that I needed a script about a mile long. I repeated my Doc Holiday jest and he started laughing. He found it difficult to stop.

Speedy is one of the most intense doctors in the world. When I spoke to him I reminded him that the last time we had conversed he was cradling my testicles in his hand. All this without looking up. He should have a travelator through his surgery.

I said I needed all this stuff prescribing off my usual list and there were some other things too. I needed some morphine for my back and some Citalo….

‘Whoa whoa whoa there. Morphine for your back? Have you had this before?’

Well of course I have. I bought it off a bloke in a pub in Hove. Bloody nice it is too. Needless to say I didn’t get any. The first time I tried this trick was with Doc Holiday and I was trying to get a script for opiates off him. Of course, he saw right through me and said, ‘You’ll be lucky’, but I thought I would chance my arm today.

Long, long time ago I was carted off to the Royal Sussex in bloody agony because I had renal failure through being diabetic. They whacked in a tap to my arm and then a doctor turned up and shoved something into it. Ooh, that felt nice. Because I am a meddlesome nuisance I read through my notes at the end of the bed. 5mg of diamorphine? That’s heroin that is. I’m not stupid.

What I do now is spot papaver somniferum, the opium poppy, and clock where they are. Then, at night, I go back and take the heads and I dry them out and use them for cooking or make tea from them.

My notes must be plastered with the little hints that doctors give to one another. I don’t care - it doesn’t bother me at all. ‘Don’t give this little bastard anything to do with opiates’. It probably says something like that. But you have to try, don’t you?

Ding dong.

Eh? Wassa? Oh for goodness sake I’ll put some clothes on. I’m sure that you have seen a gentleman with no trousers on before. I’ll be with you in a minute.

It was the Happy Shopper Coppers come round and all because I phoned up the council and said that they were all shite and that I was going to take a mooring pin (very old, rather valuable - bit like me really) outside and start laying into them twats off Notwork Rail.

Do you know, I’m rather fed up with having to be that moaning old bloke. Sometimes I’m sick of the sound of my prating and I have to live with this 24/7. Sick of it. I’m bloody sick of it.

How come whenever I start causing a fuss there is no one to help me? When the boat got set upon by a gang of scum and I went after them with a windlass I never got any help at all. As soon as I start moaning the Happy Shopper Coppers come round.

Well, they can all think again. Anyone who darkens the threshold of Thirst Hall is in for an Art Lesson and also the meaning of what I did for the police and why I am so bloody fantastic.

You have to keep them at bay, don’t you?

Well, I was mucking about, as I do, and I saw again a work that has always inspired me.

Ian Hamilton Finlay was a genius as far as I am concerned. Battleships and aircraft carriers made from concrete were in his pond. He had gods armed with assault rifles and he knew all about terror. He must have studied the French Revolution inside out.

If you want to know what I’m on about while I’m banging on about art then you should look here.

I never met him and I have yet to get to Little Sparta but I hope to.

What an artist and what a man. I hope that he rests well in peace.

One day I shall go to Little Sparta and then my tears can mix with the rainwater in the carved stone that forms this brilliant piece of work.

One of my fave artists ever is John Waterhouse.

I have copies of his stuff BluTacked to the walls of Thirst Hall and this, for me, is a long tradition.

Have a look at this, his picture of the death of St Eulalia.

She was flayed to death and the long strands of her auburn hair in the picture represents her whipped skin and the flowing blood. She is quite dead.

Or is she?

The first time I ever saw this painting was in the Tate and I was staggered. It’s a big picture in real life and not like the Mona Lisa which is about the size of a birthday card.

Poor Eulalia lies in the cold snow and her hair is in an impossible position and she is quite, quite dead.

Until you see the hare.

Have another look and I’ll give you a clue as to what I saw tonight when I was a rummaging. Her feet are the ears and the hare is running from right to left.

The stern guard is watchful and keeps people away but her spirit breaks free in the shape of a hare. Well, that’s what I think, anyway.

‘The present day composer refuses to die’.

Along with Pete Ham, Tom Evans, George Harrison and Bob Dylan you have to whack in Mr. Frank Zappa. In terms of jazz he was ruthless. If you have never listened to Zappa then you have left yourself out. He was beautiful with his long hair and his moustache and his imperial and he was filthy.

Frank Zappa was one of the best musicians of modern times. No question about it. He nearly killed Steve Vai with his criticism but he knew what he wanted and he made sure he got it.

I remember when he got stabbed up in Camden when I was listening to ‘Hot Rats’ and looking at ‘Weasel ate my flesh’ in record shops.

When Frank died of prostate cancer I was very sad. As I recall he spent a bit of time with some Tibetans and with Van Morrison but he was so ill he couldn’t even stand up.

When Frank died I think a little piece of me died too.

But there you go. Have a listen here and tune in to a musical genius with a kind and lovely voice. It will only take an hour of your time. Tune in here.

Here’s to JG and here’s to Dorrie.

This spell in my life has been quite bleak. The forests are dark but I still press on like a towel. I carry on and I won’t give up because I am so stubborn.

Your messages of support have really helped me.

‘Little drops of rain, crystal on the pane’.

I saw one of my Sri Lankan friends today and he told me what my hands together and nodding meant. ‘Are you born yet?’ is what the gesture means. You have to think about it for quite a while to understand it. The Buddhist greeting has the hands clasped on the forehead.

I don’t really care. I have cuts all over me from when I don’t remember. Two on my left little finger, two on my left forearm, one on my right elbow.

Be good.

Hands together and a nod in your direction.

Are you born yet?

I used to know this bloke. He was a brother of a friend of mine. I saw him in Berlin. And now he’s ill.

When I was a boy I used to muck about with the Berlin Phoenix which was a motorcycle gang. So I used to roadie for them and all that. Mark turned up.

He told me this amazing story about when he was out and got stopped by the provos. He had a gun in his shoulder holster. He poked the gun up through the top of his sleeve. Kiddie could see the gun, poking through his clothes.

Fucking nightmare.

Little bastard waved him through. He could see the gun and he knew that his head was going to get ripped off. What a shame.

I have done a lot of things and I have seen a lot of things that you don’t ever want to see or think about. I have been in the places that you will never be.

And now Mark is dying.

It’s such a fucking shame.

Mark, if you ever read this, I loved you. The Berlin Phoenix’s’ss’s were great and so were you. Take this to the end, my friend.

Quite a night.

When I awoke it was in the small hours. The sky so dark and nothing coming in to the carpet where I lay under the front door. It was everything and nothing.

I thought about Nick Drake.

Would you love me for my money
Would you love me for my head
Would you love me through the winter
Would you love me ’til I’m dead
Oh, if you would and you could
Come blow your horn on high.

This is the third verse of Northern Sky. I don’t actually care whether you find it upsetting or not. Nick Drake was a better man than you or I will ever be.

In the end of the world the carpet, the floor, will rise up to meet us.

Rise up, dear floor, and smother us.

I’m so ruddy cheesed off with this silly compluter that I have quite forgotten what I was going to say.
It was good anyway.

Staying up into the small hours and drinking a mixture of red wine and cider may seem like folly to you but not to me.

When my brain is free I fly. Back to Muswell Hill and the public bogs near the library. The graffiti - oh dear.

So here I sit.

Waiting for nothing except death. Waiting for the great invisible hand to clamp over my nose and mouth and choke me. Waiting for the tumours to burst so that I can drown in my own blood.

This is my reality - this is where I come from.

I am dark and I come from a dark land.

I heard this the other day and tracked it down like sniffer dog.

Everybody’s got to learn sometime.

Recent events made me think back to Kingston. I don’t know why.

When I was small I used to be taken to swim at the Coronation Baths. Looking out from the steamy window of the car I saw the Fascist lightning strike in a circle painted with a brush on the opposite wall. When I asked my mother what it was she seemed to ignore it and, so, I did too. Her family were immigrant stock and piled into the East End of London.

The wall has gone now. The baths have gone. In the baths were little pictures of a supposedly dead girl in a ruffled costume in the brave hands of a lifeguard. No petting or smoking or divebombing or running or….

That’s what the rules said. That’s where I learned to swim underwater. From the first horrible gasps I learned how to use water; I learned what it meant. Now it holds no fears for me because I know it through and through. I can go into the canal and right under a boat and still get myself back out.

In the baths at Kingston we used to have a glass of hot Ribena and a bun that had some horrible mock cream inside. It was lovely.

A few years later I went back there when the baths were boarded over and bands played. I saw Arthur Brown and when he was into his set some drugged-up something approached him and asked him to play his hit, ‘Fire’.

As far as I recall, Arthur put a shoe on his head and played the trombone.

Times have been hard.

Underneath the weather, rain on the windows and the balcony, illness and the non-stop medicine. Appointments and agoraphobia.

But, today, something really good happened.

In a very odd way, a while ago, someone showed me a book and I knew who had written it. Someone who suffered the same school that I did and someone I wanted SO hard to be sucked into the contrails of their life. Popular, funny, clever, lots of friends, had a car and a little older than me.

I was in orbit around Rick for, I think, one summer and today I met him again for the first time in over thirty years.

There was a lot of fat got chewed. Thinking about it now there was a lot more I should have said and, of course, asked. I was too stunned that he had agreed to meet me. We have a fair few mutual acquaintances so that gave us some food for thought and then my memory kicked in and I think we were both surprised about how much I remembered from what was only really a flash in the century that we have built between us.

The Hautboy, Snitch, Bishop’s Tipple, Daisy, white Ford Escorts, camper vans, black coffee, the sandpit, the Stepping Stones, Dads and Mums and places where we used to live, the uncrowned kings of Cobham.

Tell you what, it may be thirty years and a bit but we fitted together like a spanner on a nut.

Call me the nut, I don’t care. Rick is a great bloke and I had a lovely time being, once again, in his company.

I was loafing about and having a free read in the mags section. There was a mag that promised an article about Nick Drake so I opened it up to have a look.

On the front, where the contents are listed, I saw an advert for the new Manic’s album.

The artwork made me want to do a handstand and start crying.

If I stayed up all night, scratching my head, for the next hundred years I will never be able to paint like this or even think of the thing to start with.

The ad. that I saw didn’t have the font screamed across it.

It is one of the most beautiful pictures that I have ever seen.

What a treat.

Dance around the room. Go on. Jig about.

Gary and Mo were well established. Top comedy duo. Every night there were fans outside the door wherever they played.

Mo turned the greasy brass handle to the dressing room and saw, immediately, that Gary had been there for a while.

For fuck’s sake.

Gary was lying on the floor and his trousers looked damp. He was breathing. He still had a pulse. There was a half hour before curtain-up.

“Don’t do this to me. Don’t do it.”

It wasn’t as if this was the first time and it probably wouldn’t be the last. The bastard. Mo knew what Gary had done, he’d been out on the streets again and then hit the bloody bottle because he couldn’t stand himself. Mo couldn’t stand him either. The act worked because it worked.

Imagine a tent. A wigwam or whatever. There is a pole that holds the whole thing up and there is a dressing that covers it. Without the pole the flysheet falls down and without the pole the covering just lies in the mud. Thus Gary and Mo. But the pole needs the cover to make a tent.

A knock at the door; ‘Twenty minutes’.

Mo trod carefully. Where the idea had come from he didn’t really know. How the hat pin had got into his hand he didn’t really know. It was from the costumes but he had a more urgent need than keeping his hair on. He kicked Gary over onto his back and tried to work out where his heart was. Bottom of the sternum and about seven fingers up. About one inch over from the cleft in the chin.

The pin went in so easily.

“I warned you.”

Mo finished dressing and stuck the pin into his wig. He was still in the wings when his sleeve was tugged but he didn’t know anything about it. Gary what?

In the face of the tragic event the show could not go on. The theatre manager had asked if there was a doctor in the house and Mo had busked a bit of comedy and played the fool before he broke down.

The policeman was an Inspector or something.

“I understand you were the last to see him”

“Well, dear. You’ll have to ask half of Old Compton Street before you ask me.”

Long, long time ago,
I can still remember how this used to make me cry (laughing),
And I knew if I had my chance,
That I could make the people laugh,
err.

Apologies to Don McLean but let’s give a big, warm, ‘Out of my head’ welcome to Mr Felix Dexter!

When Harry got to the station it was well after closing.

Out on the platform the wind whipped and Harry could feel the CCTV on him. This was no way to live.

He had the cardboard under his arm and the newspapers in his rucksack. He had no food, no money, nothing to drink. He had nothing.

At the end of the platform he took off the rucksack and squeezed through the gap between the concrete and the wire. It was easy for him; he only weighed nine stone. He pulled the rucksack through but the effort was too much and he fell. As he went down the embankment, in slow-motion, the concrete came up and he caught the edge of it with his face. One of his teeth came through one of his lips and the metal blood filled his mouth. He was sliding.

Sometime later he scrambled back and retrieved the rucksack. He had to reach the bridge.

Down on the lower line there was a bridge that had not been maintained. There were catacombs under there and, maybe, some peace and quiet.

Harry crawled through the Victorian brickwork dragging his pack behind him. Under a low arch he placed the cardboard as a mattress. He took the sleeping bag from the pack and covered it with newspapers. He was good at this.

Looking up, he could see sulphur, or something, seeping through and he could hear the trains rumbling overhead. He had been trained for the war and he lived on his training. Harry knew how to survive and how to kill. He knew how to die. He had seen it.

He got into the dirty sleeping-bag.

There was no need to take off any clothes or boots because tomorrow was another day and his training pushed him on.

Tomorrow he would eat.

Tomorrow he would do something.

As he died, Harry saw birds flying and he saw his mother and he saw…

He saw all the other things.

All the people in the world wonder why I put a clothespeg on my nose when I even THINK about Woking.

Well I had to go there to get my retinas photoed or scanned or whatever. I had no choice.
Woking. Cack hack cack etc. Oh Pooooooooo, I can smell Woking.

Look at that picture. Hey! It’s an Offy AND it sells fireworks!

What a Combo!

Do you know, if you are ever feeling down or droopy then go to Woking. When you have stopped heaving then make your way to Wetherspoons. It’s down the street that is full of kebab and chicken shops.

When you get there, have a look about you. Vodka Mick is barred out of there. The remnants are like something from a Hogarth engraving. I might do a painting myself. I should call it ‘The End of the World’ or ‘Where the Devil opened his Anus’.

But the people at the hospital were nice.

My comfort zone (that is, where I actually go) gets smaller by the day. BUT I did see a really lovely girl with a bicycle the other day. That’s the trouble with noticing everything and having your brain going at 3k miles an hour. When my appointment with the psychiatrist comes up I have decided to upset him. Well, not UPSET him exactly, but put him off guard. For example; there will be a chair. I shall move it. I shall move it so that I can watch them rather than be a specimen slide for them.

Rant rant rant. I’m writing a story that is loosely based on when I hitched round France when I was 15.

Oh Pooooooo, Woking. Oh the stench!

Today, I am pleased to announce that I finished the Marathon and broke my own personal best record.

About three-quarters of the way through I felt as though I had hit ‘the wall’ and couldn’t get any further. The cheers of the crowd brought me round and I shook my head, took a deep breath and carried on.

Buoyed-up by my supporters and fans I carried on to smash my previous record and finished the Marathon in 28 seconds.

What do you mean ‘they’re called Snickers now’?

They’ve still got peanuts in and I should know.

From the conservatory windows, lashed with rain, Lara looked out across the lawn. Terry would have to be here more frequently through the season just to get the mowing done. She would tell Maddie to tell him that an extra day in the week would be required until October but that would have to wait; Maddie was driving to the newsagent for the papers.

At first the papers had been delivered, or, more properly, ‘mashed’ into the letterbox at the gates by a boy who rode a BMX bicycle. Lara preferred a newspaper that could be read rather than deciphered and so now the housekeeper had to go and fetch them.

The dogs were out and Lara watched them chase each other across the wet grass of the lawn and through the longer, wilder meadow patch. A Doberman and a Patterdale terrier constantly vying for supremacy although it was quite clear to everyone, apart from the participants, who was top dog. Lara lifted her hand and touched the glass. She was quite alone in the silent old house and felt warmly insulated from everything and everyone outside. She thought of the title of a track by Pink Floyd, ‘Comfortably Numb’.

She took her hand away from the glass and realised that she had left a fingermark so she breathed a ‘Haah’ onto it and, pulling her sleeve over the ball of her thumb, wiped it away.

The kettle at the side of the Aga was simmering as she opened the door into the long, low kitchen. Her breakfast cup was a wide and deep French affair and she always used it even though she felt a sense of desecration as the dried coffee granules and semi-skimmed went in. She poured on the hot water, stirred it well and then added a slug of Famous Grouse from one of the bottles in the cupboard. Just as she sat at the table the dogs raced past the window and the buzzer that indicated the opening of the gates sounded.

Gates and glass and dogs and buzzers and bells and booze and returning housekeepers. All layers to keep her away from prying eyes now that the press interest had finally waned. She often thought that she may as well be living in an igloo made from bricks and wads of money. Bundles of notes all packed together and cemented with molten gold.

They say that money can’t buy you love, although plenty had tried to convince her otherwise AFTER she had won the lottery and the media had got hold of her. They say that money can’t buy you happiness although Lara felt very happy in her golden-barred gaol. This was all of her own making. This was her world and she really needed nothing else.

Maddie came in through the side door into the kitchen followed by two wet dogs. She had an armful of newspapers and a bag of dog biscuits. “Morning!” she said, “Sorry I was so long but we were nearly out of these!”. She held the bag of biscuits aloft and then placed them on the side. She put the newspapers down in front of Lara. She never called her mistress by name although, in extremis, she would refer to her as ‘Miss Clark’.

“Morning, Maddie. Isn’t the weather filthy? Did you get soaked? Oh, and thanks for these. Sit down and I’ll make you a coffee”.

Lara got up to fill a mug and Monty, the Patterdale, pawed at her baggy and fading jeans.

“Geddoff you foul beast; you’re all wet”.

She supplied Maddie with coffee and then took the breakfast tray and plonked the papers and her own cup onto it.

“Maddie, I’ll be in the office for a while. See you later.”

Maddie didn’t need to be told this because the routine was the same nearly every morning. As the door closed behind Miss Clark she looked about her and sighed. She was lucky, she supposed, because she had her own rooms in a beautiful old house and a lovely wage that she used to support her parents in Norfolk. But what would she do if and when the strings were cut? Her life was constricted and she felt like an army that had but one soldier, herself, and one general. She wasn’t getting any younger. She was living inside Miss Clark’s life, inside her peculiar rules, inside her prison. She finished her coffee and put the mug in the sink and then she opened the bag of dog biscuits.

In her office, Lara switched on the Bose radio in time to catch the news. As she finished her coffee she dismantled the papers and discarded everything that she thought irrelevant. Everything was hammering into her, the wireless news and all the sorrows of the world from the papers. She soaked it all up, like a sponge. She used the scissors from the top desk drawer to clip the pieces she was interested in and she used the bottle of Grouse from the lower drawer to refresh her breakfast cup. The rest of the papers went into the recycling bin.

She fired up the word processor and the printer and copied off another ten of the letterhead to her solicitors that fitted so neatly into the window envelopes.

And so, to Keffold and Moorhouse, she started yet another letter using her fountain pen. To Dear Mister Keffold, instructing him to advance various sums from an anonymous well-wisher. Today there was a fourteen year old boy who had been blinded by muggers, an elderly lady who lived in a house on an eroding cliff top and a ballet-dancing schoolchild who had been bullied to the point of no return. She added the sums and wrote a composite cheque to the client account. When it was all blotted and dry she filled the envelope and stamped it. Her cup was empty but her bank account wasn’t.

She took a shower and changed her clothes for some cleaner ones. She always wore exactly what she wanted to because she had nobody to please but herself. As she made her way through to the laundry room she asked Maddie, as always, if Steve had been yet. He hadn’t. As always.

Steve was the postman and the dogs knew him. He would ring at the gate and be allowed in and given a cup of tea with two sugars and he smelled of cigarettes. He used to deliver the incoming mail and, in return for the tea and a sit-down, would take the outgoing with him.

Lara ran back upstairs to fetch her letter for Keffold and Moorhouse. She left the letter on the kitchen table and then slipped on her wellingtons. The rain had stopped but everything was still wet. She whistled for the dogs and took a tennis ball from the shelf. These tennis balls only ever lasted one outing. At the pond the Koi came up to the surface waiting to be fed. They had felt the vibrations and seen the dark shadows through the silver surface. Lara threw the ball as hard as she could and it bounced across the lower lawn and into the woodland with the dogs after it like bullets from a gun.

She watched the carp as she could hear Monty kill the tennis ball and then Charn appeared with what was left of it at her side. As she took it from his mouth the dogs heard the gate go and tore off towards Steve and his postal delivery bag.

The meadow area was looking rather bedraggled. Some poppies would look nice in there and some cornflowers and some field scabious.

Steve thought that the two of them were lesbians but they were nice enough. He had really only glimpsed Miss Clark a few times and only spoken with her twice in four years. He swapped the letters, one for one, and went on his way to smoke a fag.

Lara played with the dogs until the ball was destroyed and then she returned to the house.

“Any post?” she asked, looking at the letter from Keffold and Moorhouse that was on the table.

Maddie was washing mugs and spoons at the sink.

“Only that one” she said, “I’m still waiting for my Valentine cards to turn up”.

“Oh, Maddie, you do make me laugh. Sorry, that sounded horrible. I meant it to be kind. I’m sorry.”

Lara took the envelope to her office and opened the flap with a paper-knife. Inside there was a letter from Mister Keffold explaining the enclosure. There was a small white envelope addressed to ‘To Whom It May Concern’ and within this was a little card with a picture of a fishing village in watercolour and the words ‘Thank you’ printed on it.

Inside were words, blue biro, hand rather shaky and feeble. ‘The solicitor could not say but please accept…
The car and the wheelchair…
Stronger now…
The difference…’

It finished ‘With thanks, gratitude and love, George and Esther Ditton. P.S. We hope you are feeling well.’

Lara was feeling well.

She put the card on the mantlepiece.

It said ‘love’.

The briefing was dull, lifeless and boring. The conclusion was that they were to look for something, anything, but they weren’t sure what.

Anthony had been through this so many times and he mildly resented having to get up so early. He always did things the same way, no matter what was said, because he was very good at what he did and got results and that was why he got called upon.

The phone would ring and he would answer and then he would appear at the crack of…

“Let’s be careful and good luck”.

Having to pile into the back of an unmarked vehicle with beery morons who farted was not Anthony’s ideal way to start the day but he had been doing this for a long, long time and he was used to it. He looked from the steamed window out into the quiet streets as the dawn tried to make its way up.

Anthony was very good at this, the job that he did, and if this was the way that his employers wanted him to earn money then so be it. He was the best that they had and he knew it and they knew it. He didn’t speak to anyone and no one spoke to him. He was quiet and had developed his method that was proven by success.

Around the corner, they waited for the door and the dogs to go in.

“Bathroom, Tony?”

Anthony nodded. He didn’t much care for being called Tony but he knew why they did it. They thought that he was their mate. Anthony always, when possible, took the bathroom. Searching was in his bloodstream and that was always the first place that he would start. Burglars in holiday resorts always went straight to the cooker because that’s where everyone hid their money. In his job, the bathroom was the place that popped results.

Everyone was allotted to their locations and then Anthony was asked whether he would like ‘Pay’ or ‘Time’. Looking back from the window he asked, as always, for ‘Time’. At time and a half these raids whacked up his holiday and that was what he wanted.

He was trying to read the Russians. In his bag was always a book and this time it was Gorky. He hefted the toolbag onto his lap but before he could get to the book the radio crackled and they were sent in.

On the doorstep Anthony made a show of pulling pristine paper overalls and shoe covers from his bag of tools. He opened the thin plastic bags and left them on the garden path. Clad in white, he made his way indoors and up the stairs. Why they never wanted him to put a little white bag over his toolbag he never knew but he didn’t really care anyway. The door had been smashed and the occupants dragged away. The firearms could be left to whoever was doing the bedrooms. There was blood splashed on the wallpaper in the upper hallway.

He always worked clockwise and alone. He would never have anyone in a room that he was searching. The door was open and he marked this, mentally. Next he looked at the difference between the outer and inner walls. The ceiling looked intact and grubby, the light fitting hid nothing. The carpet covered floor didn’t seem to have been touched of late but still his nose twitched.

The first wall seemed intact. The second wall presented a lavatory, cistern and wash hand basin with light fittings. Anthony opened his toolbag and took out his mirror and torch and the latex-free gloves.

“Are you alright, Tony?”

“Oh, yes, I’m getting along… fine. I’ll let you know.”

There was nothing in the cistern and Anthony used his mirror to peek behind the pedestal and behind the basin and its fittings. The mirror was two inches in diameter and screwed onto a long flexible stem. The stem was fixed into a torch-sized knurled handle made from aluminium. The stem could be bent and Anthony had smaller mirrors that could be swapped over. With the light from his torch he could see just about anywhere.

The airing cupboard had a few towels and sheets inside. Anthony took them all out and shook them and then refolded them. There was nothing behind the tank and nothing above the cupboard door. Having replaced the linen, Anthony concentrated on the third wall. Next came the bath.

Running his torch along the line of screws that held the bath panel he noticed something. On two of the flatheads were scratches that seemed to be too bright. Anthony’s nose was screaming now. He reached for his bag and pulled out some tools.

First he took photographs and then set to work with the electric screwdriver. The bath panel came away easily and he stood it against the fourth wall. Underneath the bath there was nothing except a very old copy of the Daily Mirror, a stick air-freshener and some marks in the dust. The bathroom now stank of pine.

“Alright, Tone?”

“Yeah, getting there. Nothing yet”

When he was alone, Anthony lay on his stomach and used the torch and mirror to check the far side of the bath. He saw three packages stuck out of normal view with duct tape. The first two he could work out but the small one interested him. Lying on his back he could reach it. Having pulled it away from the side of the bath he took a look. The bag was full of morphine tablets.

The base of the mirror, the handle, could be unscrewed but the thread was reversed so that unless anyone knew the secret all they would do would be to tighten it up. Anthony packed the bag and tape into the handle so that it wouldn’t rattle and replaced the lid. Then he shouted for help.

When everyone came running they used the mirror and the torch to see what was there. The first and biggest package was a handgun and ammunition and the second was cannabis resin, probably a kilo or so. Anthony had already kept a gun and he didn’t want the hashish. In his job drug tests could be made sporadically and cannabis takes a long time to clear the system. Opiates clear in a couple of days.

The finds were photographed, in situ, and Anthony finished his search of the bathroom and replaced the side of the bath.

Back at the main room, the squad were drinking whisky.
“Well done, Tone!”, and his hair got ruffled.

He went to the office and asked to take the next two weeks off.

“Where are you off to this time, Tony?”

“Oooh, I dunno. Cornwall, down near the Lizard. I like it there.”

Anthony couldn’t stand Cornwall and caught his usual train towards Wales. At the station there was only one cab waiting. Anthony knew Derek.

“The Horseshoes is it, sir?”

“Yes, thank you. You always remember. I’ve had a lot of work on recently.”

Outside the pub, Anthony reached into his bag and found the plastic bottle of glucosamine tablets that were now morphine tablets. He put three of them into his mouth and washed them down with a mouthful of supermarket vodka. Then, when Derek had gone, he started walking.

He let himself in at the retirement home and said hello to the desk staff. They asked after his parents, which he no longer had, and he said that all was well and that he was just checking, again, as usual, and to please not bother him.

Three days later Anthony was sat by the river and watching the water as it fell over the stones. He saw it build and fall like a heartbeat; the push and the gush. The simplicity of the river was like a childbirth to him.

He was paid to look for things but what he was searching for he couldn’t tell.

Tim had parked outside the house. The map-book made things crystal clear. All he had to do was remember the junctions. He hadn’t been there for a long time.

The bang on the offside rear door startled him. He whipped his head around in time to see the four little fat fingers leaving trails on the glass.

He reached for the button to pop the boot, turned down the music and then opened the door.

“Hello, Hannah”.

“I’ve got a cake”.

“So I see”.

This was typical of Philanderer. Get the children really wired on sugar so that they didn’t even know what they were doing. There was half a cupcake left and the lemon icing was sticky.

“Give me that and you can finish it for your pudding”.

In the boot were some wipes and a plastic bag for the cake. Tim wiped her fingers and the glass of the car door.

“Where’s Hoppy?”

“Mum”.

“Where’s all your stuff?”

“Mum”.

And then the door opened and Tim saw Hoppy and his ex on the path. They were talking into each others ears.

“Hannah, you can’t get in yet because Hoppy has to get in from the safe side, not the road side”

Hoppy had a backpack that looked like a dog. She went straight to the car and jumped in. Hannah followed.

Tim was talking to Philippa.

“Hoppy is going to a party tomorrow so they have to be back here by two o’clock at the very latest.”
“I could bring Hoppy back and then…”

There wasn’t any point; the stare brought him down. Both the girls had to be back by two and that was that.

“Have you got the things?”

Phillipa handed over a small case and slammed the door. Tim threw the dirty wipe onto the doorstep and went back to the car. The case went into the boot and he made sure that Hannah was strapped into her seat.

“Hoppy, you’ve got to take that backpack off”

“Where are we going?”

“Just take it off and put the seatbelt on properly”.

It didn’t take long for the children to cotton on.

“This isn’t your house”.

“No. We’re going to the seaside”.

Tim knew what he had in mind. He would show Hoppy where she had come from and why she was called Hoppy. He would show her, without telling her, where it all began.

“I don’t like being called Hoppy.”

“I’d better call you Ella then.”

“I want to be called Valerie.”

Valerie? The miles rolled by and Tim put the music back on.

“It’s a song”

And then they were there, back in the village.

Above the village, high above the dunes, was a hotel. Years before there had been a conference and people from branches all over had been made to attend. That was where Tim had met Phillipa. They had walked together over the quiet dunes and then, as if by magic, they had held hands.

The kiss was electric. Tim had touched her face. He had taken hold of her jaw. He took her face up to his and then he kissed her. On the sand, in the marram of the dunes they made love and it was a real love. And that was where Ella had been conceived.

Out there, where the lizards and the adders play, there are rabbits. The collections of droppings are a dried proof.

And that is why Hoppy is called Hoppy. This is where she came from although she would never be told.

Tim could probably work out exactly where he had made Phillipa’s eyes stare so wide and the blood rush to her face. Made her gasp. In the dunes where the defences lurked. Up at the hotel there was still a gun battery and in the dunes were pillboxes ready to take invaders off at the knees.

Those years ago, as old as Hoppy, Tim had found metal worms screwed into the ground. The barbed wire was long gone but the metalwork was still there.

In the village, the chip shop was open for lunch.

“You can have fish or sausage or pie.”

He held each girl up to the counter so that they could choose. One double chips and two haddock and a saveloy they were back in the car.

Driving to the beach he noticed that the door had been ripped off the old observation post. Just down from the Norman church it had been white the last time he had seen it. Now it was wrecked and sprayed.

Tim was trying to eat mushy peas with a wooden fork when Hannah observed “This isn’t the seaside”.

The sea was about forty foot away. They were sitting on a beach.

Ella said, “I’m going for a walk”.

“Watch out for adders”, said Tim.

“So how come it’s not the seaside?”

“Because there aren’t any shops”.

“Well, I can see your point. This is certainly a shop-free zone.”

About two minutes later, Ella came back.

“Dad! Look what I found!”

Ella had a metal box on her right shoulder. Right up next to her ear. About the size of a small, circular biscuit tin. The metal was rusted and Tim could see that the three-quarters of it were stained dark where she had dug it from the wet sand.

He knew what it was.

“Hoppy, don’t move – don’t move – I’ve just got to look after Hannah”

Hannah weighed next to nothing so he could pick her up quite easily. He took her round to the other side of the dune.

“Put your hands over your ears and don’t move and I’m not joking. If you hear a bang you must go up to that hotel over there. I’ll be back in a minute. I’ve got to look after Hoppy.”

When Tim got back around to the beach he started to walk a lot more slowly.

She was looking out to sea.

She still had the landmine up on her shoulder and her mouth was open. She was staring.

Tim looked over to his left.

Up in the sky was a face made of sparkling lights. Hundreds of feet tall and hovering over the sea.

This was all my fault. I had got too close. I wanted to see what they were doing and I had got too close. Hoppy saw me first, her creator, and then Tim.

Tim stood on the sand and he could hear a singing noise in his head. Ella, his lovely Hoppy, named for the rabbits out there on the dunes was just to his right. Over the sea he could see the face that had stopped his eldest daughter moving. Sparkling and glittering. The face of his creator.

In his left hand, Tim felt some small, sandy fingers. Hannah.

Hoppy hasn’t got to the party yet. None of them has been home again by two.

On a beach there are a man and two children staring up into the pale blue sky.

While I composed my blog for Twizzle’s birthday I noticed something strange.

YouTube offers you some near-misses and this is the one I should have gone for. Same song…

George Harrison was the best Beatle anyway but when I was watching the video I looked at the other guitarist who was on stage with him.

It was Pete Ham, a man with whom I am obsessed. I have pictures of him on my wall and a copy of his death certificate and a photograph of his house where he hanged himself on the 24th of April, 1975. I might go and stand outside there on the 24th; I can walk it from here quite easily.

Here comes the sun.

When I woke up I had this song on my mind.
Don’t ask me why or how.

I hope you have a brilliant day.

You are the best daughter that I ever, ever had.

On the 22nd I want everyone to jump out of bed, salute, and say ‘Happy Birthday, Melissa’ because the old bat will be 35.

Love you,

Dad. xxx

Just to calm you, I would like to share a snap of my shelf of rubbish.

It is my job to poke about in hedges and nip behind trees. This is how I find things out.

You will see that the lost toy is no longer lost. I keep loads of stuff that, according to me, needs keeping.

So, I do what I do and other people do what they want to do. When I was walking down the road today someone thought the best thing that they could do was shout at me me from a scum-mobile.

You know them little cars that are full of doped-up scummers all puffing on a bit of skunk?

‘BALDY!’ - How very observant. My hair is thinning; true fact. As the scum-mobile passed by a little piece of plop stuck his head out of the sunroof to see what I was going to do about it.

Now this is the reason that I should have a machine-gun or an AK47 or a grenade launcher.

Happily for me the rate of death for scummers in cars is quite high. I pray that they will die in an agonising crash up a tree. I will be very happy to take photographs of their severed and impacted heads.

What they don’t know is that I have the index number. When I find out where it is I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a load of dog shit got rubbed into all the door handles.

And the windscreen. And the boot. And the bonnet.

By the way, Dorrie, if you click on the piccie it enbiggifies it.

Anybody that knows me well will know that I am stubborn to the point of muleness.
They will also know that I have been without hot water for quite a while. Doesn’t bother me greatly although I have actually resorted to buying spoons to eat my tea instead of trying to do the washing up.

You know, people wash far too much and often. If you had a dog you wouldn’t shampoo it 3 times a day, would you? But, oh no, the kind of people who have tattoos and want to smell of David Beckham’s latest pong, well, you can never get them out of the shower.

That’s why they smell. Stink. Aromatise the area. Because they kill all the useful flora that should be living on them and that’s why they have to cover themselves with flyspray.

It’s a bit like people who won’t use public lavs and won’t let anyone use their home one. Weirdos, the lot of them.

Anyway. I tried the hot water the other day but it came out cold. I tried the cold water tap to see if there had been a mix-up but it came out cold. Cold and cold running water.

Well, I was ill so I wasn’t exactly bothered, I took to my bed and suffered the plague.

After a few weeks and the antibiotics kicking in I offered the boiler a fight in the carpark to see who was the hardest. Then I started meddling.

Now I’m not a CORGI registered gas and electrics bloke and I have no NVQs or anything so no wonder the bloody thing wouldn’t work. It’s probably against the law to mend things any more.

So I phoned the landlord and (having, doubtless, caused him deep depression) he has arranged for a proper plumber to come ‘early next week’. The last time, when the pump went, I saved him 3k because I knew that the pump had gone. How did I know this? Well, because of narrowboats, really. When you are in the middle of nowhere and something has gone wrong then you have to fix it or WATCH AND LEARN while somebody else does it for you. In general, boaters, collectively, can fix anything. They could probably make Champagne out of a candle and a watch.

Having been very depressed of late (I stopped taking diazepam all by myself) the reluctance of my hot water system to obey my harshly barked commands cheesed me. I felt a failure because I had failed. A boatman without a boat. A man who had failed to master, for the umpteenth time, his own hot water system. Every time I win. I ALWAYS beat it into submission.

Bastard thing.

This evening I was watching ‘The Bone Collector’ and then I put it on pause. Hand me, please, my flat-blade screwdriver and them pliers what I magged up out the canal.

Start from the beginning. Basic fault-finding.

Like I say, I’m not qualified, but the satisfying ‘boof’ of ignition was a proud moment. Praise be to the Charley for teaching me that you don’t have to pay someone a million pounds an hour to do something that you can do yourself even if it is illegal.

I now have a water tank that you could cook a toasted sandwich on.

Today is the first day that I have got out of bed since last Thursday.

Having consumed a lovely pie made from plague rats and germ sauce I was laid up and I thought, last Thursday, that I was going to wake up dead.

Fucking Easter.

I managed to stagger, like Frankenstein’s monster to the pharmacist, and croaked (I can hardly speak) my request for industrial strength health stuff.

I certainly lost several pounds.

The only things I have been out of bed for are ‘wellness formula’ tablets and ‘Robitussin’ and co-codamol. These things I have to pay for.

Meantime I am bombarded with crap from the council saying how much I have to give them and then, two days later, I get another one which is about as thick as a James Bond book telling me it’s all different except I can’t even speak.

I’ve been up there and they have cunted me off. They won’t see me. I don’t even have a clue what all this shit is that they are sending me.

HENRY GETS CROSS:

As Abbot declares it’s just like ‘The Who’. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss:
Good one, fly someone 860 miles to cook you a pizza.

Sorry but I no longer believe. Even Bliar when he was lying his warmongering head off passed me by for a bit but flying someone (I presume) 1720 miles to cook you a pizza means that you are an even bigger prick than Daddy’s boy that came before.

I was also entertained with the Death Rattle in my throat.

The council are thieves, my landlord won’t even put a decent lock on the door, my best friend has deliquesced, my daughter won’t speak to me but, hey, I’m not feeling sorry for myself!

I was hobbling along the Basingstoke the other day when I saw that tufted duck again.

By the time I had got my camera out to capture the dirty action he had flapped off.

They come over here, swim about, and they all look the same but I knew it was the same one.

He just had one thing on his filthy duck mind and that was to impregnate a lady mallard with his blue-beaked sperms right up her cloaca.

Mallards are all rapists anyway but this taking things a bit too far. I mean, they come over here blah, blah blah, etc.

Squashed tomatoes and stew, etc.

Today is the day that my best brother has reached the age of 48.

Yes, that’s right, Jacqwueline, he’s not 29 - he’s 48. Having consulted some MATHemeticians (Geddit? See what I did there?) I am assured that he is nearly as old as I am.

Matt. I am so proud of you, of all that you have achieved, your constancy, your blistering work ethic and I wish to publicly thank you for all the support you gave to me when times were hard.

I am very sorry that I kicked one of your teeth in and that I shot you with an air-rifle.

If anyone wishes to send cash presents to my address I will forward them on to Matt (minus administration fees).

Matt, have a really great day. No one could ask for a better brother than you. You are the funniest person I have ever met and you pulled up your bootstraps like climbing Everest.

So, you take care, love to all at home and in the Club.

You are my best friend and, best of all, my brother.

I thank the Higher Power for that.

With love,

D.

While I’m doing pictures, what is that thing that thinks it’s a duck?
It’s got white sides and a sort of blue beak thing. There, right in the middle of the picture.
I’m hopeless on things that move. I’m not too bad on plants and fungi because they stand still and can’t get away but as soon as something starts flapping I can’t see what it is.

Rather than shoot it, I thought I’d ask on here. What is this blue-beaked pretend duck?

Here’s a picture that you have seen before, sort of. When I went round Mum’s on Mums Day I snuck upstairs and took another snap of it in daylight. Now I think it kind of looks like a bomb’s hit it and the beech tree doesn’t look too great but that’s the finished version so there you go…

Anyway. After the bicycle ride of disaster which cost me a broken wrist and an inguinal hernia I thought it was about time I had another go. Although it was nice to have a lovely lady prodding my down-belows without having to pay I also had to have blokes fiddling about which was not so enjoyable.

Before I went to bed I thought I should check my bike in preparation for a proper practice run.

Because I ‘lost’ a bike in a burglary in 1994 I keep my bike well-secured. So I had to unsecure it.

Great! Just three locks and a 30kg block of cement to get past.

One!

Two!

Arse!

Bloody Chinese padlock and the key snapped right off as I turned it.

Ahah! But never mind. All I would need was my needle-nose pliers but they, like everything else I ever owned, had been stolen in Brighton.

Hmmmmm….

First, I stripped the cover off and then I set to work. ‘Hardened’, you say? Well not as hard as me because I have got baby hacksaws from the good old boating days. OK, so I fished them out with a magnet but they had to do. It took me all bloody night when I could have done it in two seconds with a decent set of bolt-croppers (which I didn’t have).

I managed the job without sawing the bicycle in half, OILED the two locks that I have left, and swore never to buy another padlock that has a key made out of chocolate Christmas money.

Now it’s half seven in the morning and I’ve had loads of exercise without even having to get on the bloody thing.

Still, I like a challenge.

You know, I miss that boat. When something goes wrong it’s nearly always in the middle of nowhere and you have to make do. So I didn’t have any bolt-croppers but I did have my ingenuity and a great deal of resolve. I’m crap at little things, just like I can’t see birds or butterflies, but I’m a good man to have around in a crisis.

The more crises the better, as far as I’m concerned, because the little stuff isn’t even worth waking up for.

Oh, and while I’m on, Vodka Mick (who is a blacksmith) reckons that a drab looking mooring pin that I magged up and kept could be 18th century becuse he could tell how it was made. I might take it up the museum. On my bicycle. If I wake up in time.

Nighty night.

I’m rather fed up with anonymous comments. There is ‘no reasonable excuse’ for them.

If you want to say something, then say it, and be proud of what you have said.
Me paractis©ing what I preach will probabably have resulted in me being banned from Digital Spy but I stick my autograph on what I write.

Unfortunately no one fell into the anon-trap this time and that’s always a hoot.

I had a hard time over censorship recently because I don’t believe in it. Say what you want to say and sign it. I simply will not have poison pen comments on here or anywhere.

Same when I phone up the poor old radio station. I never make out that I am Pete from Sutton or anything daft. This often results in my excellent comments being denied but I don’t care. If they want to censor me then that’s up to them.

Freedom of speech (cue boring blah but I blah your right to say it etc.) is important BUT you have to have the brass nuts to say who you are.

Because…

Otherwise you are nothing.

My brother told me an interesting story.

At a nearby shop to his shop some fellow won the lottery.

If he had got just one more number he would have won 5 million quids! Hoorah! Except he didn’t.

No, all he got was a miserly, cheese-paring, 170,000 quids.

And, apparently, he was well sniffed about it. Just another number and his life would have been been one of non-stop lux. But oh no, he just had to put up with a measly 170k which isn’t even enough to buy three Aston Martins or two flats or a brand new narrowboat and disappear into the waterways for years.

Bloody lottery. What they should do is give you a billion quids for getting one number right.

What a con. You weigh out a hefty £1.50 on the Euromillions and all you get is 170,000 quids. No wonder he was cheesed, I would be too. I mean, what good is that?

Camelot want to get their act together. If you BUY a ticket you should get a monkey at least.

I’m not surprised he was depressed. If I only got enough money to keep me going until I’m dead then I would feel I’d been knocked too.

Poor sod.

In fact I’m only joking about the sad little [deleted] and I’d like to play him a video of KLF burning a million pounds, which they did, over and over and over and over again.

If he had won a tenner then he would have been happy but that sweet, sweet 170k wasn’t quite good enough.

[deleted].

That’s right, I did break radio silence rather quickly.

Today I had to show my papers to officials. I had to collect my new spectacles and I can see again.

On the way home I walked down the mooring line and noticed, on a boat which I shall not name, a FOR SALE sign. I notice a lot of things and I knew, as soon as I saw it, that I might just as well have been looking at the Flag of Death.

I had known John for years. When I first met him he was vibrant and free-spirited.

But then cancer took hold of him and would not let him go.

He fought for years but…

A telephone call confirmed what I already knew because the boat would never have been sold were he still alive. I’m sorry to say that John died last weekend.

I know there is at least one person who reads this blog who knew him just as well as I did. That is to say, not much, but enough to respect him and his strength, his fortitude.

We all knew it was coming but it’s still a shock. We tried to be cheerful for him but I, for one, never said goodbye.

I like to think that it was for the best.

Goodnight and sleep well.

A bit of peace, at last, eh?

Cheers, mate.

You may have heard that BoobToob are knocking music off because of copyright blah blah and poor little Bonios out of U2 not being able to afford sunglasses.

Well, I put my stuff out on the world-wide-wait and I’m always grateful to see when someone has downloaded and copied it. I have the originals on my wall or under my bed or I’ve given them away. What these Pop-Tarts should do is play live gigs. You can’t email the experience of a live gig to a mate or share it or whatever.

Obviously, the reason that they don’t play live gigs is because THEY CAN’T.

However, a music video that has not been deleted has been brought to my attention. Those who attended the Simongfest at the Pelican in Addlestone may remember my friend Bob. Yes, it was me and him in that burning car during the riots but look what he’s doing now.

Unfortunately I can’t tell you what this is all about. It’s too personal.

There are traitors and I won’t give them the satisfaction.

Anyway, be happy to know, you scum, that you have caused me a great deal of heartache.

You know who you are, you know what you did and I hope that you are pleased with yourselves.

But, ah (and here’s the good bit), I know who you are and I am more stubborn than a mule. I will never forget or forgive you for what you did.

There. I think I made myself clear.

Forgive me if I’m terribly out of date but I just discovered Stewart Lee.

Maybe everbody knew but me but I don’t have a telly. When I got sent a link for the BBC iplayer (no, you don’t need a licence) I’ve watched a few things and especially enjoyed a four-parter on Victorian art by Germy Poxperson which was great.

Today I discovered this gem. If you haven’t tried it before then please do (and if it keeps stopping and started just keep it on pause for a couple of minutes).

Please give it up for Mr. Stewart Lee.

When it was a bit snowy and cold I felt sorry for the birds.

Yes, very funny Omally, but this was the feathered type.

I went up the shopCo and got loads of birdly type food. Half a coconut full of fat and a ball of fat and nut stuff and a bag of seedy gear. What boids eat, or so I thought.

Not one single peck.

Now I’m very cross with the boids and I hope they all die.

Just like my idea to start a residents’ association which has yet to attract one single prrrrring of interest, my bird feeders have been ignored.

Fuck them. Fuck the lot of them.

All I get is a letter from the council asking me to walk for four miles and show them two identification papers like they are something out of the Stasi. What they seem to have forgotten is the two times I have been raided and everything photographed in the past.

Come Monday morning, my phone will be red-hot. There’s the council, the water and, of course, the fucking railway who seem to have forgotten that they imprisoned and abducted me.

Stupid birds. that’s the last time I waste a tenner on them.

Come 09:00 Monday, my phone will be glowing with hate.

I was so excited when my delivery of SmartWater arrived this morning.

Flipping through the blurb I noticed that…

Instead of the verbally promised, and thus binding, 10mls of gunge, what I got was a 10ml container with only 6mls in it.

I distinctly remember this because before I parted with my £42+ I pointed out that 10 mls is just two teaspoonsful. So, I was 40% short. A bit like going into a pub and ordering a pint and getting a glass that was just over a half.

You get some stickers. Stickers that can only be used on the inside of a window. I was expecting a sticker that could be placed on the OUTSIDE of a wooden door might be a better idea. I mean, who on earth has a front door with plain glass in it? Not me.

An illiterate burglar would have trouble reading one of them through, the usual, obscured glass. I want a great big sticker that you can stick on the outside of a solid wooden door. They might be boffins but they haven’t thought of that one. So I phoned them up and moaned.

You get four window stickers, that’s true, but smashing your way through a double-glazed unit attracts attention.

You get a load of little stickers but I was told that they shouldn’t be used outside. You are supposed to stick them on your compluter and toaster and things like that.

But my bicycle? Don’t use the stickers and don’t use the gunge on moving parts. You tell me which parts of a bicycle don’t go outside and don’t move?

All the parts of my bicycle moved, especially when I fell off it and did my wrist, hurt my hand and got an inguinal hernia.

They haven’t called me back yet but I will be happy to discuss the matter with the Marketing Director if they ever do. They have got my money (and quite a lot of it) but I feel quite let down.

But I’m not downhearted. I think this stuff is important but only if Inspector Knacker goes out looking for it. Surrey Police has been fairly useless in this concern. All I was doing was trying to find out what their policy was on this stuff and I actually (I think I’ve mentioned this before) spoke to a woman who suggested that I bolt the door when I went out. I suppose it might be possible with a massive magnet because, cunningly, my bolt is on the inside of the door.

You see, the IDEA is brilliant but only, and I mean ONLY, if it is looked for.

I want to see coppers going all over carboot sales and stopping people in the street and shining a UV light over them. I want stolen property impossible to sell on to fences. I want to see people nicked and sent to prison.

Used properly, this stuff could cut the burglary rate to virtually nothing and that’s got to be worth doing.

Robberies would decrease because you can put it on your mobile, your lappy, your Iplod and jewellery and everything that’s got a crinkle in it.

So, wake up Chief Constable. Because if you don’t, I’ll keep on and on and on and on and on and on until you do.

The police can organise packs of this stuff to be available for 15 of your Earth quids instead of the 42 that I paid. Black lights cost very little. It’s SO easy but convincing the powers that be (Oh, but that’s so expensive and we haven’t got the blah, blah, blah) to get a grip seem nearly impossible.

Anyway, I must get on with my miserly 6mls.

Cheerio.

All I tried to do was to try and start a residents’ association. I leafleted the immediate community.

No one has contacted me at all.

Bollocks to them then. If they can’t be arsed to get to know their neighbours and they want to get burgled then good luck to them.

I had a busy day and now I’m worn out. I’m fed up. Why can’t even one of these people ring my bell and introduce themselves?

Yes, yes, yes , I know that I can’t spell Cabaret but that just means that I don’t spell it the way that YOU spell it. I prefer to spell it the proper way and if you don’t like it, you can get stuffed.

Anyway, here’s something I was thinking about today.

You know in Amerikaland they have that great big sign that used to say ‘Hollywoodland’ except the last four letters fell off? You know that sign, that HOLLYWOOD sign?

What I was thinking was that if I was a sweaty, a sweaty sock, a jock, a Scotchman I’d put up a bloody great big sign saying HOLYROOD.

Yes, I would, and I would make each letter 3 inches bigger than the Amerikan one.

I wonder what they would do?

Well, pick the sweetcorn out of that.

It’s not just Elvis that bangs on about this.

The other day I saw a woman pouring money into one of those cash changing machines in ShopCo. A bucket of money. A bucket of money with Red Nose stickers on it.

I walked past and then a little bit later I started to wonder.

Now, if I had collected a bucket of cash for, ostensibly, a charity, would I whip down the supermarket and convert it into whatever at a loss of 8%?

A while back I saw this obvious scummer dressed up as a clown, with a bucket, collecting money ‘for the children’. To me he looked well snide. Clown make-up so he couldn’t be recognised. Had I been the guv I would have told him to fuck off but I am suspicious.

This very morning….

Driiiiiiing

On the bell. Must be the postman or something so I opened the door to see a uniformed police officer. Good job I didn’t have anything to hide so I invited him in. Bloody 09:00 and there’s a copper at the door. He was most excellent and we talked about crime prevention. I had phoned because I wanted to know about the Surrey attitude to SmartWater and then, Bingo, he appeared.

He loved my bike anchor and couldn’t (or pretended he couldn’t) lift it up. The anchor weighs 30kgs and you would have trouble with that, let alone having a bike attached to it. With three locks.

Airport baggage handlers aren’t allowed to lift anything over 22kgs.

Then I spent the rest of the day at the hospital having my goolies prodded and getting told off by the staff of the diabetic clinic. Then I had to wait an hour for the bus home.

When I eventually got home I dealt with some emails and the time ticked away. I needed to get a pack of fags so out I went. On the stairs I met a uniformed (not a Happy Shopper Copper) constable and she was looking for a certain flat. There had been a burglary. I showed her where the flat was.

I know the bloke who had had his flat screwed. Two lappies and a 32″ flat screen telly thing.

We worked out how these bastards had got in (sorry, can’t tell) but I got straight on the blower to the landlord about getting a mortice lock fitted. Until it’s done I’m not going out at all. The special water thing that I fancy buying costs over 40 quids PER YEAR but I’ll be ordering some tomorrow.

When I was in the job there was nothing I enjoyed more than nicking burglars. Rape is awful but being burgled is pretty close. Someone in your home choosing which things to steal. Nicking a burglar is very satisfying, except for them, and the temptation to stick them is very hard to resist.

Maybe I might devote the rest of my life to crime prevention. I might get an Irish Terrier. But, take notice burglars, when I catch you, you will wish that you had never been born.

So, be suspicious. Watch for your neighbours. The crime rate is, and will, go through the roof.

Don’t have nightmares.

Caberet is an important film.

As everyone knows, especially the licencing authorities (30 quids and counting), I do not possess a million inch or even a one inch telly. Wouldn’t have one in the house but I DO watch a lot of DVDVDVDs on my million year old compluter.

Caberet is important because, thanks to Christopher Isherwood, it makes your mind tick. Liza turned out the role of her life and there is a twist that is so out of nowhere that it smacks you in the face.

And it doesn’t end like you want it to, either.

Life is a Caberet, old chum.

Life is a Caberet.

This is one of the pictures that I considered submitting to Stu’s photo challenge (Youngblood, you REALLY should go in for this - email me me and I’ll send you the link), but I managed to take one that I considered better so the ivy went into the bin.

Today I was in THE shop (the only bloody shop around here) and a man crept up to me. Now. I don’t know what it is about the way I look, maybe a bit trampish, grubby and down on my luck. I’ll tell you what happened and I’ll call him H and myself M for the sake of etc.

I was wandering about because I had bought the Scumday Bellylaugh for the sole reason of getting free DVDVDVDs of ‘Caberet’ and ‘The Fourth Protocol’.

‘Caberet’ is an interesting film for me because I used to live in Berlin and there is a scene shot near, I think, Bleibtraustrasse, where I used to hang about when I was in town rather than making a nuisance of myself in Spandau which is where I used to live. The scene is near the S-Bahn and hadn’t changed much the last time I saw the film. Seeing as I will never go there again it might bring back some memories.

Anyway, I was in THE shop and this little fellow who looked like he could have been in Beaver Hateman’s gang in the ‘Uncle’ books snuck up to me…

H: “Hot spicy sausage, 43p”
M: “Really?”

I expected George Cole to come round doing the Flash Harry and the trombone (or whatever it is) music to start playing.

H: “Yeah, ‘e don’t speak English and ‘e don’t know what ‘e’s doin’”
M: “And where is this?”
H: “Wiv the hot chickens and that”

I didn’t really want a sausage, hot or cold, spicy or palid.

But along I went and was assured in perfect English that these wretched dogfood items were, indeed, half-price. So I collected one and then I went and paid for it. Obviously I should have hidden it behind the Jaffa Cakes but, oh no, I PAID for it.

About half way home my suspicious mind started ticking.

43p for one sausage is quite a lot of money be it hot, raw or whatever. I gave up eating sausages a while ago and I could feel the donkey ears growing out of my head as I trudged home.

Maybe THE shopCO employ spies to shift stuff that would otherwise go in the bin.

Do I really look like a man in need of sausagular sustenance? Obviously I do.

Never mind; at least I know what it must be like to work for MI5.

Sometimes luck smiles upon us. I don’t know why but sometimes it does.
Having seen what I had seen, a lovely cement mixer, I made my approach. I wanted my bit of manky metal that I had found the other day set in some concrete or whatever it’s called.
That’s my bucket, the red one.

Then my neighbour turned up. He had bought the bucket of ballast. In a series of fair exchanges I got what I needed. I propped the hook up with an old anchor pin as the mix went off. Just goes to show, it’s always worth keeping things. The coathanger I had, rather stupidly, thought might do the trick snapped almost immediately.

How I got the thing up the stairs I’m not sure. It took a long time. It got left outside to go off on some newspaper as the industrial bucket (I got my red one back) had a crack in the bottom. I’m not sure how much it weighs but it must be around the 50 kilo mark. My arm nearly fell off.

Eventually all was done.

My bike has three locks on it and attached to one of the heaviest things in the world. Most of it would be easy to chop through with a set of boltcroppers but it looks intimidating and I don’t have anything else worth stealing.

So, an interesting experiment and I look forward to having a go on my bike when my wrist is healed.

When you are feeling glum it’s nice to try to help someone.

Coming back from the shop I saw an old man and his missus and they had a flat tyre. He had done everything right, removed the nuts before (yes, I said ‘nuts’. He had removed his nuts so stop laughing) before jacking up the car. But would the wheel come off? No. it wouldn’t.

I kicked it and everything while he phoned the RAC. ‘I’ll get this wheel off if it kills me’ I thought while the RAC told him they would be with him in 90 minutes.

It didn’t kill me. But did it come off? - NO.

Everything was right and there was no reason for it not to come off the studs except he was an old man and not empowered with the beefy strength of my unbroken wrist. He said he thought it was rusted on. Yeah, right.

On the way home I stopped at ‘Tyres and expensiveness R U’ and asked a mechanic what could have gone wrong.

“It’s rusted on”

Oh well, at least I tried.

On the way out I saw a jolly workman who had a cement mixer. I explained that I wanted to make a mud anchor (easier than explaining that I wanted a bike anchor) and he said he would do it for me in exchange for NOTHING.

My neighbour turned up with a crappy old bucket full of ballast. Actually it is Royal ballast but if I told you where it came from I would have to kill you. Or he would kill me.

All that the jolly workman wanted was a lend of my bucket and in exchange he will build my anchor when he knocks off.

Plus, when I stop being paranoid, I can sell it, so today has restored my faith in human nature.

The git who lives upstairs but one is moving out and I have got just about what I wanted. Goodbye depression, hello life.

Been awake since five. Thought about a walk down the cut but no one would want to see me and I don’t wan’t to see the disgrace the Charley has turned into. She used to look like a gunboat off the Mekong Delta and now she looks like a hire-boat. She worked and worked, that boat. She made me. I can’t think about this for too long or I shall cry.

Here’s a lyric pinched from the beloved Nick Drake:

“A black eyed dog he called at my door
The black eyed dog he called for more
A black eyed dog he knew my name
A black eyed dog he knew my name
A black eyed dog
A black eyed dog.

I’m growing old and I wanna go home
I’m growing old and I don’t wanna know
I’m growing old and I wanna go home.

A black eyed dog he called at my door
A black eyed dog he called for more.”

Depression is an awful thing. People who don’t understand it might think ‘Oh, grow up and stop being so selfish’. But they really don’t understand.

It swoops out of nowhere, for no reason, AND, and this is the worst bit, it will not say goodbye, just like it didn’t say hello.

Today I have it really badly. I didn’t ask for this or want it. I have no fags left to smoke and the only thing I want to do is to be able to paint a woman’s hair, with a plait, from the back.

So up to the shop for fags and swig. I’m glad for Mat that he won the Masterchef thingy.

Sorry, but the black-eyed dog is calling.

Well look what I found.
I was skulking around a building site, trying to blag some cement, but I didn’t get anywhere.

Even the pub of ultimate-swearification was no use because no one is working any more. Anyhow, I’v'e got my hook and now all I need is a big pot, some cement, a lot of swearing and Robert is your mother’s brother.

I got a call back from the crime prevention team. I explained that the woman that I had spoken to previously didn’t understand what I was on about. Most people don’t but she was taking the piss. Anyone who thinks that bolts can be slid from outside the door needs a different job as far as I am concerned. How about sweeping up hair in a salon, dearie?

FFS.

Bolt your door from the outside? And how much money is this silly moo on?

Some things beggar belief.

I’ll try not to make this too technical.

A Mud Anchor (or whatever it’s called) is used, surprise, surprise, on a boat.

What you do is tie up for the night but then along come some scummers and either untie your boat or pull the pins and the boat drifts, without you being aware, until it gets stuck on a weir or bangs into something.

I know this happens because I’ve heard about it, known people that it has happened to and actually seen it occur.

Sensible people (i.e. not me) drop a mud anchor over the opposite side from the bank at the upstream end. A mud anchor is basically a bucket that’s been filled with cement and with metal hooks set into the mix. You tie a rope to the anchor, lower it until it touches the bottom and then hitch it so it can’t be seen from the bank. Then, even if you get untied, the flow of water will keep you fairly well in position and you can sort it all out in the morning.

Now I thought it would be a good idea to buy a bicycle. The last time I did this was in 1994 and while I was away my flat got burgled and my bike got stolen. 400 quid up the shoot I swore I’d never buy another. My new bike has got three locks on it but it could still be carried away and put in a van and the locks removed at the scummers’ leisure. So, I need someting to anchor (see what I did there?) it to but there is nothing in Thirst Hall to tie it to.

My mad little idea is to make a mud anchor and use the strongest lock to tie it down. A bucket of cement weighs quite a bit and you would look silly trying to drag it down the street.

All I need now is a bucket, a scaffolding bracket and someone nearby with a cement mixer. A stick will keep the bracket clear of the mix while it goes off. Hey Presto! A bike anchor!

All I need now are the ingredients. Good idea, eh?

All I was doing was walking along the FOOTpath when I got scuffed by a cyclist.

On Oyster Lane, which is where I was, there is no cyclepath and anyone mental enough to want to take a bike down that bit of road should get off and push it.

So then I got a bit cross.

Next thing is another cyclist, on the FOOTpath headed towards me. Full marks for trying to dodge me but, as I have oftened mentioned I am about as dodgeable as a double mattress. So he came to a halt.

Maybe, when he is about five years old, his mummy might let him ride his bike without the stabilisers on and ride it on the ROAD where it should be ridden.

I pointed out to him that the cycle path starts from underneath the bridge. He continued on his way.

This, I regard, as a mistake.

It would be awful if someone recognised him (time clocked) and when he next came past shoved a broomhandle into his spokes. His bike could be damaged and he might lose some teeth.

Well, I did warn him.

What would you do?

How would YOU prevent crime?

I know what I would do but it would probably be illegal. BUT, there is stuff about that can help. There are are a few different types buut, basically, they involve I.V. spray with a specific D.N.A. code in each cannister.

All the old bill have to do is run a black light over a person or some possibly nicked stuff.

You can scrub yourself with a Brillo pad for weeks and it still won’t come off. The D.N.A. encoding ensures that whatever is tied to you and no escape.

Short of having Joe Pesci round with a golf club I can’t really think of anything better.

A combination of the two might work better but you can’t have everything.

I speak as the victim of crime.

Once I had an art teacher and his name was Joe Turner.

“Let the paint FLOW", he used to say. He was a kind man and very interested in the muck that us little tossers used to turn out.

As I write here I can hear the tawny owl outside. His call is unmistakable.

Joe Turner was a decent man. He was my tutor once, until I got sick to death of the process of being educated and walked out - a free man for the first time in my life.

I remember one day that his bag of shag got nicked and his pipe got snapped in half. I knew full well who had done it but I never snitched. Well, Mickey A[deleted], you mental fucker, I hope you enjoy getting shagged up the arse in prison which is where you must be now.

Anyway, apart from Mickey A[deleted] getting bumfucked in Broadmoor, Joe Turner taught me a few things about painting. Let the paint flow and always start from the back. A lesson that A[deleted] must be experiencing right about now.

What he taught me about drawing was quite interesting. When drawing a still-life you should look not at the objects but at the space between.

‘The space between’ is a great track by the Dave Mathews Band but I’ll listen to that later.

Thanks, Joe. You taught me well. If you are still alive I give you my thanks.

The owl is still hooting.

After the debacle that followed my publishing of the (unfinshed) ‘The Smoker’, I have decided to give it a rest for a while.

Yes, I realise that there will be many disappointed faces, world-wide, but it had to be done.

I am, at present, working on a painting that will probably be called ‘The day I got the water bill’ or something like that.

All the steps, so far, have been photographed and should be published as one.

What I intend to show is how a naive painter gets on with his little hobby.

The slum stinks of white spirit and I’ve got the landlord coming round tomorrow. He’ll probably have a giddy fit.

In the meantime I probably won’t post but until I do…

Love and luck,
H.

I’m not sure that I have bored you rigid with this one yet but I don’t think so.

Perhaps you might be interested in how I put a picture together.

I start a bit like this…

…and then I shall add curling brown hair to the left and, if I can manage it, curling smoke from the bottom left.

The trouble with oils is the time you have to waste (er, sorry, I meant ‘wait’) for the stuff to go off so that you can carry on.

I took the picture outside to photograph it whch is why the light is a bit harsh. In my head I can see the picture. This is a problem that I have and why I never seem to be doing anything. It all goes on in my head and as far as I am concerned it’s done. The story is written, the painting is painted and so on.

To me, this is one of my most important works, but I don’t see it as you can. To me it is finished so I don’t need to bother any more. The style is a little different but that doesn’t matter one whit or jot. The only reason that I’m posting this is to make myself finish it.

I really miss my art therapy sessions so now I have to therapize myself. ‘The Smoker’ will get finished because I’ve exposed the work so far. I’ve started, so I’ll finish. Thank you Magnus.

The other day I was looking around and realised that although I might be a bit of a wanker I am also a painter. I suppose it’s all I ever wanted, just took me half a century to realise it.

Thanks for looking.

I keep a special snow-shovel that was made in Alaska. It is hidden for most of the year in a secret cupboard.

The reason that I have to have it is because every bloody Valentine’s day there is so much post wedged through the door that I can’t even open it and I have to spend a couple of hours shovelling all the cards into the recycling bin in case there is a disaster and I have to vacate Thirst Hall as soon as…

The postperson should leave them in a couple of sacks outside so as not to endanger my life.

Why so many people send me these wretched things is beyond me; they are never signed so I don’t even know who to tell off.

It’s very annoying because there might be an important gas bill or takeaway leaflet hidden under all these cards.

Well spotted, Dorrie.

I hope you enjoyed my little clip of REEF (an anagram of FREE. Paul Rogers still doing well, Paul Kossoff dead, the other two I dunno).

But thank you Dorrie, for remembering after all these years.

Trouty remembered too and so did most of my family.

Anyway, by the time you read this I will be fifty years old. Fifty. Imagine that.

Trouty thinks I should get half a card from the Queen.

I never thought that I should reach this tremendous age. My friend got murdered and so did I (nearly) on a few occasions. I’m lucky to be here, really.

Fifty. It’s hard to believe.

Thanks to all my friends, my family and my readers.

With all my love,
H.
xxx

All I was doing was listening to this:

And then I wanted to go to the loo.

‘Simple’. you might think, until you tread on the lace of your snow boots.

Oh dear, the sink was coming up and I was going down. I managed to catch the corner of the the sink with an unimportant part of my my face.

When I woke up I made a quick check… Nothing appeared to be broken. I’ve been drinking for far too long to let things like this beat me.

My maxillary bones have only been broken once (by a a bottle, I think) and it won’t be happening again.

Tell you what, I have led an adventurous life. I sometimes wonder about it but I don’t think that I would swap it.

Having stayed up all night (nearly) worrying, I set the alarm for 07:00. When I got up I packed my little bag to take with me in case I got ambulanced to the St Peter’s home for semi-retired MRSA and C. Diff germs. Toothbrush and paste, change of clothes, bottle of swig but don’t tell anybody, Private Eye, paperback book, pens, insulin, list of meds., a few ciggies - all that sort of thing.

Then, a financial weigh-up. Did I want to give the railway a million pounds for a three minute ride? Return ticket when I might not be returning?

As I trudged along the towpath through the slush, the weather was still bad enough for other trudgers to speak cordially. By the time I got to Worst Byfleet I was rather damp. I had my snow boots on and normal clothing AND a tracksuit on top AND a puffa jacket.

At reception I explained myself - rather than drive myself mental pressing 1 or 4 or 3810 I had decided to just turn up and see who I could see and ASAP. The earliest that they had was a 10 o’clock slot with a brand new lady doctor. When I said “She’ll be pleased to see this then", indicating my sub-beltular area they asked if I would rather see, ahem, “someone else", I declined. I am quite used to exposing myself to ladies (that’s LADIES, not LADDIES) so I went to the waiting area. Eventually my name was called by a young woman of the kind that Private Eye might describe as ‘fruity’.

I explained to her that I would contravene the Patient Code and come straight to the point. I had three things to discuss; my lump, my weird feeling in my leg and my damaged right hand. Then I had to drop my (clean on) drawers while she fiddled about in the you-know-where region. I had explained to her that as I have been a type 1 diabetic for 20 years that nothing, ahem, embarrassing would occur.

She poked about for a bit and then (I KNEW this would happen) she sought a second opinion, this time from a male doctor. He had a fiddle about (so that’s four rubber gloves in the bin) and then, after a dicussion, they came to the conclusion (right, first time, JG) that I had an inguinal hernia and that I will have to join in a game of OPERATION. Then (I KNEW this would happen) the letter of referral was promised and etc. etc..

Oh, before I forget, here’s the rude joke:

A man says to his wife, “When we go to bed, if I want sex, I’ll touch your left breast. If you want sex then give my knob one pull. However, if you don’t want sex then pull on it about 150 times".

Then I went get my prescription filled and while I was waiting I went over the road and bought a DVDDVDVVDD of ‘Dial M for Moider’ for 4 of your worthless, English quids.

As it was really wazzing down with rain and the NHS didn’t see fit to ram scalpels into my down-belows I decided to enjoy an espresso at Rocco’s. I love espresso, it’s like drinking coffee oil. Top marks, Rocco (nice guy, known him for years). Then I paid a million pounds to ride home in three minutes on the train.

And here I am, waiting for the letter.

Don’t ever try to get non-urgent medical help out of hours.

The first woman I spoke to assured me that “cancer doesn’t hurt, anyway” which I found a strange blend of soothing and disturbing.

Cancel that ‘war’ in Afghanistan then; no more need for diamorphine.

The lump is growing. Hard, like a large marble under the skin, right next door to the base of the penis. A doctor phoned me and told me that it was probably a what’s-it-name.

I confounded him by saying that they only appear on the left side. I knew because I had already looked it up. He said that I should go to sleep (!) and that sometimes they can appear on the right. He said that I should see my GP but seeing as he is in New Zealand I don’t think I will.

So I can:
a) Appear in the surgery and ask to see a doctor.
b) Wear clean underpants.
c) Do some shopping.

I think I shall opt for all three.

Unluckily for me, but luckily for Doc Holiday, he is on holiday.

He doesn’t really like (along with many other people) actually touching me. He likes writing letters of referral.

If he he wasn’t sunning himself he’d be writing a letter to the bollock clinic. Never mind how I am supposed to get there. You see, the trouble is that I have got a lump.

Everyone knows that I should have qualified ages ago and I am also quite good at looking things up.

Finish your tea before you read any more.

Anyway, he’s off on his hols so I expect a beautiful lady doctor might have to do the necessary because I shall be up that clinic on Monday and no mistake.

I hope I don’t get Doctor Hi-Speed who might as well have a travelator running through his surgery. “Next” -zoom- “Next….

Trouble is, if I get a lady doctor (good song by Graham Parker) she might want to defenestrate when I tell her what the problem is.

Patient rules state that you talk a load of old rubbish and then, half way out the door, you say what’s really brought you there. “Thank you for seeing me and there’s blood coming out of my bottom” or something like that, and they have to drag you back in by the scruff of the neck and start all over again.

I break the patient rules.

When asked how much I drink I tell the truth. Usually they will double or treble it. When I tell them they can’t even double it because I would be on a slab. Henry’s hint: Don’t ever lie to doctors because it wastes their time. If you smoke 20 spliffs a day then just say so. If you do whatever just say so; it saves time and they don’t have time to waste.

On Monday I shall have to turn up at the surgery and wait until someone can see me. Of course, I have plenty to talk about. I came off my bike and hurt my left hand - look, you can see. My right hand got whipped by the handlebars and I might have broken this bone here (I haven’t) and now my right hand doesn’t work any more (true).

But, smashing the Patients’ Code I shall state that I have a lump.

It’s between the base of my penis and the top of my scrotal sac. I told you to finish your dinner, didn’t I?

It’s about the size of half a golfball. Doesn’t hurt. Right-hand-side, so that rules out a lot of things.

Now, if Doctor Myself can’t work it out I’m fully expecting a case conference. I want a team of doctors poking at my goolicular area and sucking their teeth but not at the same time.

With the state of my vision I can’t even see it but I sure can feel it.

It’s quite funny, really.

A friend came a long way to see me today.

Bob, for it was he, and I, seem to see things from just about the same angle.

We went to check on the pixie house. Of course, some little bastard had taken the door and chucked it into the cut. Not surprising - it lasted much longer than I thought it would have.

We negotiated the skid-row that is the towpath and the horse bridge, enjoyed the smell of the hardware shop and Bob bought me a lunch.

There is nothing like a wander down memory lane, shared laughter, enjoyment of the beauty of a wintered canal.

Today was a good day and it was all thanks to a friend, to MY friend, to Bob.

He travels miles, criticises not one bit, understands, provides support without asking awkward questions. He sees what he sees (and he’s seen worse) and he IS, without doubt, my friend.

Imagine that in the year 2009, an actual friend. He listens to my problems but he doesn’t moan.

Years ago I remember I had a room right above his and he used to hear me kick my boots off. BANG. BANG.

He’s got ten years on me. He’s rather a father figure. I think back a quarter of a century and I realise that he is one of the very few people that I actually trust. I think of what we went through together.

Nearly getting murdered together is a bit obvious but we had some laughs. Laughs that have lasted through the years.

Thank you Bob, for being my friend, for being one of the very few decent humans that I have met in my life.

Apparently it has been snowing.

Actually I know full well that it has because I went out for a walk about in it last night. Bob was supposed to be coming for a couple of days and I started to wonder…

I conversed with someone most kind on the worldwidewait which did me a lot of good (thanks, you know who you are) and had the occasional look out of the kitchen window.

I went to bed at about half four and was up by seven. If Bob was coming I should have hoovered the washing-up or something. The radio and a look out of the window told me that our proposed reunion was NOT going to occur. No buses at all and the only trains were the ones from Gatwick, depositing frozen visitors into a dead land where nothing worked.

There was a lot of snow (I haven’t seen anything like it in this country for thirty years) so I decided to go for a walk. I took my camera but there wasn’t anything worth snapping. I wore my snow boots, jeans, tracky bottoms, t-shirt, jumper, another jumper and my puffa jacket. And my hat, that like a twat, I had forgotten last night.

Having wintered in Berlin I regard a bit of snow as a mild curiosity and not ‘the end of the world as we know it’ that the English seem to see it as.

You know a broom? No, not a yard broom but one of them things that some people use to waste time with on the kitchen floor? Seeing someone with a foot of snow on top of his car trying to clear his driveway with one of them I find funny. Use a dustpan and brush - it would be just about as much use.

People engaging first gear instead of second I find funny. Talk about torque.

Walking on snow makes a noise like having an amalgam filling put in. It’s rather soothing and combined with the lack of traffic deadens all the the things that usually scare me.

Tesco WAS open (Marks and Sparks was shut) so I got what I wanted although I forgot to buy some cheese. So I shall be slim.

Taff wouldn’t let me in the pub of ultimate swearification because no one had turned up and he said he had to go to the bank. Heh heh, he’ll be lucky. Apart from having to dodge a Transit coming at you sideways it will probably be shut anyway. I heard a postal worker explaining that there would be no deliveries today.

The station is shut and peace and quiet reigns. Peace and quiet - all I’ve ever wanted.

Now what I need is the hypothermics downstairs to turn up their central heating. I haven’t got mine on. I wear things called ‘clothes’.

First thing is, don’t take 25mg of diazepam and try to ride a bicycle. What happens is that you fall off and smash your hands to bits.

Second thing is a new link that I was sent from a site. Tom Evans from Badfinger singing ‘Sail Away’. He sings, ‘carry on’ to finish. A nice touch.

Third thing is that Trouty and I have split. That’s it. Over. Forever.

There’s an official reason which you can probably guess at but I have a theory too.

I may be right and I may be wrong.

Unfortunately I can no longer ’sail away’ but I will ‘carry on’.

So. Not the best of days but I saw it coming weeks ago. I’m good at reading people but I did nothing about it. I just bought a new bike.

Tom, I’ll carry on, like you say. You couldn’t but I will. I will.

Here’s a clip from when he was young and beautiful:

Sleep well, John.

Love and thanks for all the good times. Wish I’d met you but. well, hey.

Now you have the peace you were looking for all that time.

See you at the bar and, in the meantime, R.I.P.

05:44 MMM: the livestock bit at any rate

05:47 Henry Ex: livestock, you say, maaaaaaam

05:47 MMM: hehe

05:47 MMM: years of going to agricultural shows

In case I get run over by a bus (by the way, don’t bother wearing clean underpants in case you do. I have it on medical authority that if you ARE run over by a bus your underpants, well, how can I put this? They won’t be as clean as when you put them on).

Anyway, people read or say things. No music please. I want Ted to be on my chest, looking up and looking after me like he always did.

Cheap coffin - a cardboard box will do. For the commital I would like ‘Rock and Roll’ by Led Zeppelin as the curtain closes, or whatever, AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE. It’s off Led Zep 4 but you will have to buy it.

I will have to get the co-ords for where I want my ashes buried but it will be on the path up to Narnian Gateway.

Find somewhere nice on the Surrey Hills for me.

Now this is where you will have to be sly. Dig a hole at least 3 or 4 foot deep and put the pot in. Now everybody have a drink - I’ll try to leave some money for that. Everyone take a sip and let me have some, will you?

Take a stake of elm and smash it it into the ground; that’s all I want. No headstone. Just elm or ash, sticking out about a foot, just so that anyoe who is interested can find me.

Bring a tent. Have a party. Make sure it is all done properly.

I’ll leave a letter - make sure it gets found and gets read.

This photograph was taken at 15:55.

On Saturday.

I’m not sure what time sunset is but I AM sure that I don’t like a liar.

I have other photographs that show all the shutters down. Maybe there was a footie match on.

Don’t get me wrong; I have no car, need no tyres, need no exhaust. Call me picky but I would have thought that some people do.

If a postbox promised a collection at whatever I would hope that they weren’t telling porkies.

Maybe you might like to see how this is coming on.

Seeing as how I haven’t been a drinking and a smoking for a while, I thought I had better do some tidying up, see how the vacuum cleaner worked, shred everything that had my name and address on, wash up, spill orange juice on the kitchen floor - oh, all the usual.

I even threw away a fag.

If only life were so simple.

Then I bumped into an admirer of my paintings. He likes them a lot and he’s got a lot. He tells me that all but two are running wild in Europe. So he gave me 20 fags seeing as how I’ve broken my toe.

I’m not quite sure what he does with my paintings (apart from export them) so I got in the mood again.

Here is the beginnning of ‘The Smoker’. The inspiration is obvious and I like the bright colours. The photo is plop because I have to leave it awhile before I can finish it and I had to take the photo with flash and indoors.

Hope you like it…

I wonder how it will turn out?

My paintings come with a painted signature and a letter.

AND this evening I learned that my fame as a ‘foreign artist’ is doing well for him. So, good show and thanks for the fags, my friend.

I’ll photo the result.

A nice little bit of rain keeps the burglars indoors (watching some twaddle on a seven foot plasma).

(In which we see something about locks, a pedal disaster, economy and the death of Christmas)

Well, it looks like Christmas is over for another year…

Here we see some dead lock gates. They are, or rather WERE, the bottom gates of number two lock of the Woodham flight of the Basingstoke Canal. My bag and a canvas may emphasize the scale. The gates may be dead but they are still of interest; to me at any rate.

From this angle we can see the socket that sits on a pin and, upon which, the gate swivels. The mechanism is very simple. Anchored at the bottom by the pin and by a collar at the top. The gate must weigh well over a ton as these are the bottom gates and much taller than the top gates which have a much shallower cill.

This hole is where the paddle was fitted. On bottom gates they are always underwater.

Last Tuesday I tried to get to the phone before it stopped ringing. In doing this, without my specs on, I just about broke my little toe by stubbing it on a chairleg. It hurt so much that I nearly cried. I spent the rest of the day in bed feeling glum.

No swig - just a whimper when my toe caught the duvet.

On Thursday I had to see the famous Doc Holiday. Sarf West Trains, to aid commuters in these times of recession, have increased the fare to Worst Byfleet from 2.40 to 2.60 (God knows what that in percentage terms) and I had resolved never to willingly use one of their empty, lavatoryless cattle-trucks again. Even with a return ticket, that is 2.60 for a total of 6 minutes ride - 3 each way. Alton Towers must be cheaper.

Now I am as stubborn as a mule so I strapped on my hiking boots, set off early, and walked. I can do most of the journey via the towpaths where at least the lavatories grow alongside.

Here is a picture of a horse-bridge that I have to cross. You can tell that it’s a horse-bridge because of the wooden struts to stop the beasts from slipping.

The horse-bridge spans the junction between the Wey Nav. and the Basingstoke. Before it was built they used to have to ship the poor horses across to the next towpath.

Here’s a picture of the span.

For my next trick, an original Henry will get cable-tied to the bridge indicating, ooh, Rugby to the right and straight on for Birmingham. Something like that.

I haven’t had the heart or toe to go and see the pixie house for a while. I wonder if it’s still there?

Unfortunately, due to me getting the day wrong, I set off for the doc’s.
If you get there a couple of hours early you get seen a bit early. You get let in through the secret door and get to lounge about and talk about this and that until he gets rid of you. A couple of hours early is good but a day too early is not so.

Bollocks, I was a day too early and it was bloody freezing. Then the snow started.

Have you ever done something really daft? If I was Bob Dylan I could have written a song about it but seeing as I am not Bob Dylan I just made the Oliver Hardy face and turned about. The snow started to fall hard on my face and I was grateful to reach home.

I wouldn’t call it warm but it was better than being outside. Being in a public bog would have been better.

How come that someone as intelligent as what I am can be so stupid?

As things go, I suppose that I have very little to be depressed about.
Except the ‘lump’.
And hid. pov.
And a future, that if it stretches anywhere, stretches into nothingness.

There is a lump on my belly. As I am so clever and learned I suspect it is because of an insulin injection site. It’s about the size of an almond and doesn’t hurt at all. As I write this I can picture Doc Holiday writing out the referral letter because he’s going on… holiday, for a while, and he doesn’t like touching me. Can’t say that I blame him.

I need financial advice. Not from a financial advice type person but from someone who can tell me what to do so I can keep some. Or more than just some.

Brighton beach. 1980s

Unless the tide is low there is no sand and all the beach is made from pebbles. The colour is grey.

Five of the clock I threw stones into the water at the Hove end of the promenade. No one was about, not even the metal-detector boys, not that early.

I walked out onto the tide-breaker (I could show it to you now) which was covered in green slime. The smell of the sea is rare, there, right by it. When my foot slipped there was nothing I could do and I felt my head crack against the concrete.

Down, maybe six or ten feet to the pebbles. The sea was out.

‘Don’t drink and dive’.

Back home at Blatch I realised how lucky I was. I always seem to have been lucky. The burning car, the burglar with a screwdriver, the robber with a gun, scarlet-fever and all the things that I did with cars (sometimes terribly pissed) at well over the speed-limit. I’ve seen, saw and done things that should never be seen and I’ve done things that I won’t mention.

But back it comes, always the same. Depression like falling through into a dark vault from which there seems no escape.

For me, there seems to be no escape. No happy dog or little cottage. No book to sell or painting worth more than a pony.

And now the fucking lump which I can feel through two jumpers.

This is exactly what blogs are for; to say how you are and how you feel. I never want to read blogs about kiddy birthday parties.

So today I feel as blue as the stones on Hove beach. Tomorrow will be a different day.

Eventually you are forced to realise that the work that you produce, much like a top-flight banker or an estate agent, isn’t really up to much.

Being hyper-critical of myself doesn’t help.

Although I try to write and try to paint the more I look at what I’ve done doesn’t leave me very chuffed.

Imagine if I had a big bit of marble. I would call my piece ‘Cunnilingus’.

The thought of a man with one eye and his tongue missing admiring the pudenda of a one-legged lady who looked as if she had been sick into her hair might be realistic but certainly no Bernini.

I’m fed up with being rubbish.

I just made myself laugh.

Oh well.

Today I saw some scummers being led through the shop from quite near the boozular aisle. They were escorted by a man in a fluorescent jacket; I REALLY must get one of them.

Then came a retort, “Well I’ll go and shop in Marks and Spencer’s then”

This I doubt, seeing as they had clearly ridden a coach and horses through the first three sections of the Prevention of Scummerdom Act 2001. Also, as a result of some Top Secret Information that I have received, I think they will probably have to go to Kingston or Woking (aaaaagh, poo, I can smell Woking) to do ANY shopping in future.

‘Oh, I’ve been ejected from this shop so I’ll just pop next-door’. Err, no.

You will notice that there is no author to identify in this blog.

Well, no one got within a mile of an identification and, to be honest, I got fed up with writing them.

I wrote all of them. The pudding one sounded nice but I’ve no idea whether it would work or not. Get a Nigella book instead; she looks like a girl who enjoys licking a creamy mouthful or two.

So, I’m sorry. I couldn’t really go on any more because I am too honest and I wasn’t getting seen through.

I’m sorry.

If i stuck a stick up myself then I could do an impression of an ice-lolly. Probably not a very nice flavour but there you go.

Now then, who wrote this:

“No! I am no longer a child and no longer will I be treated as one".
Her father stood, as was his wont, with his back to the fireplace.
“I shall marry, with or without your blessing".
So saying, she ran from the room, the taste of metal in her mouth.

Nighty night.

There can be few more enjoyable sounds than drunken, shouting lunatics urinating outside your home when they realise that there are no trains. Oh dear. What a shame.

Nowhere for them to do whatever they want to do - except freezing of cold of course.

I prefer to sit and shiver at home (no Spoonerisms please). At least I’m not out celebrating the New Year by vomiting and defecating all over the place.

Don’t worry, I’m working on the next question. I’m quite surprised that no one has cracked one yet.

Very well, against my better judgement, here goes:

Sorry i forgot the parantheses last time… (is that what quote marks are?)

“After the beating I lay upon my cot. In the darkness I felt a single finger on my lips and a blanket over my back. I spoke not a word. It was XXXXXXX.
He had stolen fat from the kitcken and, using it, eased the shackle from my ankle.
In the darkness I felt a pair of shoes and slipped them on.
Through the darkness I fell and walked until I came to a rivulet. I walked upstream some twenty minutes as I could hear the hounds behind me.
My shoes and convict trousers were sodden, my blanket tucked around my neck and shoulders.
At a meadow I left the water.
When I awoke I was in the long grass and above me were the cherries”

Sorry, I know that parantheses are brackets. I just can’t remember the word for those speech marks things.

What’s your favourite aftershave pong? Mine is simple. It’s called ‘Nothing at all’.

It’s very cheap.

When the Beatles wrote ‘The best things in life are free’, they obviously weren’t thinking of South West Trains. Or perhaps they were.

Okay, seeing as no one has got anywhere near, I’ll do you an easy one. Who wrote this?

When the chocolate has melted, remove the bowl from the pan and, using a metal whisk, beat the chocolate until the texture starts to change. Use the whisk to add air until the result appears to froth.
Serve this into clean and clear glass dishes.
Take the whipped cream and, using a metal spoon, fold it into the chocolate. Do this gently so as to give a ‘marbled’ effect.
Chill the glasses, along with the reserved chocolate, for at least two hours.
Before serving, shave the remaining chocolate as a garnish.

Meanwhile, HOT news on the diarrhoea-mobile; it’s gone.

In its place is a Smart car.

There are a few things that could have happened. Spontaneous combustion or a trip to the auction. Perhaps someone who was a bit mental might have coughed the £29.95 asking-price.

Personally I think that someone sly went in and made a bonkers offer - maybe 300 quids or so.

The garage man, thinking of his bare festive table, the little expectant faces on the kids, the little sprig of holly drawingpinned to the front door. Wee Tiny Tim and all that, must have taken the cash.

Even Father Christmas wouldn’t have bought it.

I can’t think of anything else to write about seeing as I have just been shivering in bed with two duvets on, listening to the radio and reading by the light of a 1 watt bulb.

Happy New Year!

Who wrote this?

“Looking up at the ducks, I thought of Thomas. The commotion. The tears were bitter, yet in the churchyard brought a great peace.”

Anyway, today I felt mostly ill so I stayed in bed nearly all day to try and recover. I’ve got to see Doc Holiday tomorrow morning and I can’t turn up ill. It only takes 3 minutes to get to Worst Byfleet so I hope I don’t get done. The bloody ticket machine isn’t working again.

If I get away with it and have to get a single back I’d like to pay that stupid bastard in pennies. I must google how much you can get away with in small change.

After the stunning success of my advent calendar I thought I should invent a new game.

QUOTATIONS

Now I’m not very good at HTPPGTIPS so don’t blame me if these italics all go wrong.

Who said Whoever believes a single word that comes out of the mouth of a woman is either in love, or insane?

This is much easier than doing pictures. I might do them more often.

If there is one thing I cannnot stand, it is noise.

If there is one thing the Creeeper loves it IS noise.

Yeah, I really love that throbbing bass sound.

I wonder if he’d like my boot rammed up his snooter?

If that twat doesn’t shut up I shall pay a visit next-door. Two skinheads and an American Bulldog should shut his crimbo face

I would like to wish all my readers a Happy Christmas.

About 30 years ago I got given a pair of Scroogey, blasted gloves. They had no fingers. They were like something out of Steptoe and Son.

Now I was only 18 or so and wasn’t very grateful that someone had taken the time to knit a pair of gloves for me.

Her name was Miss Elsie and she must be dead by now; she was nearly dead by then.

Sieving compost wasn’t much fun but I could dig a trench much quicker than anyone. I could double-dig until the day I tried to lift a sink with herbs growing in it. It was an old-syle sink. I felt my back go.

A butler’s sink, I think they called it.

We had some fun. Gerald (he’s dead now) had a farm next-door and he wanted some leafmould. What a shame I got there first and took away a few barrowloads. He went Radio-Rental but I didn’t know anything about it.

See (and I was talking to my brother about this, just the other day) is that money doesn’t fall out of trees.

Rip people off and that’s very clever. That is, until they catch you, and then you will wish that you had never been born.

Happy Christmas.

When I was loafing about, most arduously, the other day I noticed a couple of things that brought back memories and made me think.

I loved this next sign. Having moved a bit of the ivy out of the way, I took a picture.

Industrial archaeology fascinates me although I will never, ever, try a degree or some qualification in it. I’m not well enough, for a start, and really all I like to do is look at things in fields and under hedges. I look at things that men made, long ago, with a sense of wonder. There are things that I have dug up or magged up and some I have kept.

Bits of clay pipe and oh, loads of rubbish. But these things keep me happy. Old bottles and bits and bobs - you know.

I poked about and found this sign

and it reminded me of a story that might bring you cheer.

In the olden days, when I was a white van man I used to work with this bloke. He was a bit of a villain and he used to have to drive a van which had two windows in the rear doors. Nowadays the doors are just panelled but his had these two windows in a Transit sort of style thing.

He used to really get the knock with getting hooted and flashed when he was trying to get his work done.

So he made a sign.

Using cardboard, string and the ever wonderful gaffer tape he constructed a mechanism.

The sign was ‘hinged’ to the bottom of one of the windows with tape. Then he made some runners, or whatever you might call them, with more more gaffer tape. Then he ran string through from the top of the sign, up to the top of the doorway, through the runners that he had made that ran along the top of the roof.

The end of the string ended near the driving seat. When he pulled the string the sign would rise up and be visible through one of the back windows of the van.

If he got hooted or flashed he would pull the string so that the message was revealed to the driver behind.

Now, I wonder if you can guess what the message said?

I could NOT sleep.
The last thing I remember was the 08:30 news, and then my Mun phoned up at about 11:30.

As per usual (this is odd, I just put on Joni Mitchell and she was singing ‘Carey’ from the album ‘Blue’. ‘Last night’, she sang,’ I couldn’t sleep’) I had to go and sort out the bins and the recycling. Wait until next week when the religious people won’t be round to collect the recycling on Thursday or the empty the bins on Friday.

Three hours sleep isn’t really enough but I still felt wired.

Something horrible happened which I won’t go into. Just the other night. Maybe that would explain the lack of sleep.

My newly shaven face seems to be improving. It’s a good job that I am such a fantastic doctor. Yes, I doctored my face into a black hole in outer space to such an extent that it dare not try me again.

And now for some slumber. Please, some sleep.

Tomorrow I have calls to make and maybe a walk to shift this gut.

Sleep well (me).

There are people I know who will not paint.

What’s this? A blog about painting with NO pictures? But that is the very point. I’m always whinging to people about them not painting. They always say, ‘I can’t’.

Neither can I. I can’t write a book. There’s LOADS of things that I can’t do. The list is practically endless. I can’t play a single musical instrument and that’s a shame.

Maybe if I had gone to Arty School or piano lessons then I would be better at feeling better about myself.

Go on. Paint a picture of a house that you used to live in. Paint a picture of a duck or the Grandpa you used to know.

Painting, and this is the great thing about it, is that while banging on a piano might make a bit of a din, slapping paint about makes no din.

Here’s a thing; I want to paint a picture of a smoker. How the hell do you paint smoke? I know how I’m going to paint it - rather badly.

Had I gone to Arty School they might be able to tell me how to paint smoke. Not easy. But do I want to paint smoke like someone else tells me how to?

Nope. I shall paint as I want because I have no one to please. There are paintings done and they have long gone but that will never stop me.

I paint because I want to.

Try to name me a painter who ever thought, ‘Well, I’m fed up with being a whatever, so I’ll be a painter instead’. It just doesn’t happen.

Write a poem. Write a story. Make, and this is a good one, a Go-Cart.

Make, or do, something that you don’t have to learn for years to do.

Feel good about yourself. Painting’s a bit of a cop-out but you can DO.

Before anyone pinches my idea, here it is:

Monkeynana is a board game, bit like snakes and ladders. You start with different coloured (non-racist) monkeys at the bottom but, oh no, there are some spiders about.

There are twelve plastic banannannananas and twelve plastic spidereses. You would need one of them twenty-something dice from a weirdo game.

Anyway, You throw the die to see which square to put the bannanananas on, and again to see which way to put them spiderses on. You would have to throw the die quite few times which makes it good for kids.

Then you use a different dice, on that only went up to 4 or something.

The aim of the game is to get to the last square with loads of bananannananas without them getting et by spiderses.

If you land on a spider square you lose a bananaanana.

If you land on spider square and throw a one then the spider is squashed and out of the game, PLUS you get another go.

If you get to the top of the tree with at least one bananananana then you are the winner!

Copyright, J.D. Windsor, 2008

I hate the word ‘portfolio’ and, before you start, it’s not because I’m jealous.

The word is smug. That’s all, just smug.

In my portfolio I have got some stamps and a few Tesco vouchers which I shall shred when they go out of date.

Whenever I have to go to Worst Byfleet station it is plastered with adverts for portfolio this and portfolio that. ‘Portfolio’, to me, seems to me a symbol for stealing money from your grandchildren.

Well, call me a communist, but I can’t stick the thought of people being proud of screwing money from usury. You know where you can stick your portfolio of negative equity and it isn’t in a post box.

Here’s a picture to cheer you up:

‘Store’, most certainly.
‘Delight’, not the sensation that I experienced.

As Trouty and I have officially split, I shaved myself. Oh dear, was that impetigo that I had?

Doc Holiday prescribed some Hibiscrub and I know full well what that is. It means ‘wash your face, you dirty bastard’ because that is the stuff that nurses are supposed to use before handling filthy patients. Such as myself.

However, the pharmacy didn’t have any and I had a train to catch so I’ll leave it until next time.

So, that was £2.40 wasted on unchecked tickets (I always leave them on the ticket machine to save putting them in the bin - I like to recycle) and half my script not filled.

My compluter just blew up so the rest of this blog is lost forever. Maybe it’s for the best.

Today, the 17th of December, 1983 was the day of the Harrod’s bombing.

I was walking past St Thomas’ hospital when I heard all the sirens. Somehow I KNEW that my friend, Jane Arbuthnot, was dead. She was 22.

We were attested as constables on the same day and sometimes we would go out together. We met each other’s families. We laughed together.

Here are some of my photographs that I took of her. You can see how beautiful she was.

Sleep well, Jane.

I will never, ever, forget you.

The garage is the nearest place for me to buy my ESSENTIAL supplies.

I am quite a regular customer, almost daily in fact, and have got to know the staff and all that.

The other day, as I approached the door, I noticed two scummers and realised that they were ‘at it’. They were inside but I could see them through the glass and I could see straight through them too.

With about five jumpers and my puffa jacket on and having put on a bit of weight I am about doorway-size. So, I opened the door and stood there, looked at the man behind the counter, and just stood there. There is a lot of communication that you can do with just your eyes.

The scummers suffered what we medical men call ‘loss of bottle’, turned and squeezed past me. They had been trying to steal sweets and things from the shelves - so what? you might say, but on the other hand they might have jumped the counter and done the till over. You never can tell these days. Being the size of a mattress and having a beard (authority symbol) saved the day. And some stock. And the incident upped my customer rating.

The case of non-theft was much more difficult to solve. Where was my camera?

It’s worth 150 quids so I was a bit concerned. I (nearly) always keep it in the same pocket of my backpack. I knew I had last had it on Saturday because the battery symbol had come up. So I found the charger. But could I find the camera?

I made four phone calls. I ransacked my slum. The camera is not insured and I really need it for my nuisance activities.

I said some rude words that began not only with ‘F’, but also with ‘C’.

My camera MUST have been stolen. I just couldn’t work out how it could have been. The battery was dying so I hadn’t used it but it always stays in the same pocket UNLESS IT’S RAINING.

Then I realised that my stupid phone needed charging up. Why can’t they make a phone that you don’t need Barbie-sized fingers to press the stupid buttons? I want one with a dial on it. If I want to take pictures I would use a camera and if I wanted to annoy everyone on a bus I would set up a massive stereo doo-dah.

When I bent down to switch on my phone charger (no, I don’t leave it on) I saw my camera. I’d hidden it from burglars so cunningly (behind a bottle of white spirit) that not even I could find it.

Bloody Alzheimer’s.

It’s all very well not being able to get your socks and shoes on because of osteo-arthritis but when you start forgetting where you have hidden things it might be time to take some rope out and see if you can remember how to tie a noose and a clove-hitch.

It all began on a rainy night. The rain had been blowing hard and the rain pouring throughout the day. Boatmen suffer the weather, and dress accordingly, until their feast-time comes.

A traditional shanty was sung: ‘This fucking weather is shit and it’s been pissing down all day’ and all joined in gladly.

After the feasting (except on MY plate which was much smaller than all the others and had no parsnips on it) a most strange happening ocurred. A certain lady had a bag and in that very bag she discovered some cutlery. Various sachets of condiments and pots of salt and pepper also. And a teapot.

I’m certain that even my good friend, Mr Holmes, would be unable to divine how that very same teapot had found its way into her good daughter’s ‘teddy bag’ later in the evening.

Oh yes, Trouty was the winner of a raffle prize - an Italian meal for two. Luckily she had room in her bag for the tin of spaghetti because it wasn’t full of teapots. The bag, not the tin.

If you want to buy a boat then now is a good time to buy one because no one has any money. But the National Trust has put up the mooring rates well above inflation. Tell you what, ‘Trust’ (ha ha). why not just charge everyone a million pounds? You’ll be even richer and everyone will be happy.

[The last three paragraphs got snipped on my own advice. Yes, they were funny, but the Trust are so short of money that I didn’t want them to waste any of of their dough trying to sue me into a black hole in outer space. Even though they would lose]

And as for the teapot…

It was nothing to do with me.

Once a winter I turn the central heating on, for about half an hour.

I do this just to make sure it works a bit and I like to think I can keep things going.

Once, I moaned to the landlord that the water pump had packed up. I’d tried all the usual things like whacking it with a big spanner but it was bust. Next thing, a scummer who looked like a cross between a bouncer and a Mitchell brother turned up, got on his mobile to the landlord and said he’d have to put in a new boiler and all that and that it would cost 3 grand.

Lucky for the landlord that I was there (although the scummer treated me like something stuck to his shoe) and as soon as he had left my home, MY HOME, I phoned the landlord. I told him that all I needed was a new pump which would cost a lot less than 3k.

Now I’ve never been to technical college but neither am I a moron. I dismantled the control system and realised that it was (technical term) buggered. It didn’t take too long to work out what was wrong and that I could enmendify it a bit. So I did.

It’s been like that ever since except when I was in hospital and a prat came round, fiddled about, tried to rebuild the control sytem with wood screws instead of the proper bolts that I had left handy. Now the bolt holes need re-tapping.

As it was so freezing today I decided to fire up the central squeaking, bleed the rads, make sure I wasn’t going to freeze to death etc.

I got my gas bill today. Well, happy Crimbo to you too, British Gas.

It took a bit of doing, a squirt or two of bicycle oil and a few tools. But it works. And it works because I made it work. I can mend boats, lighting (thank God for duct tape) and central heating systems.

I’ve saved my landlord a small fortune, readjusted the mess that idiot boy had caused and I’m not too unhappy.

The thing with me and my landlord is that I leave him alone and he leaves me alone.

HENRY’S WINTER TIP:
Wear more clothes.

I like my doctor, I like him a lot. I see him every week.

Once, I made a photo of a painting, you know the one. A woman changing backstage with a suitcase in her hand. I put it in a frame from Woolworth’s and gave it to him for a present.

The next week it was propped on his big desk, against the wall.

The following week I gave him a picture hook so that he could hang it up properly.

Next time, it seemed a bit low down but there you go.

Today, I said to him, “It always makes me happy to see my painting there."‘

He said, “When I have to examine childrens’ eyes I ask them to look at it.”

I should have asked him what they said or what… or what. But I didn’t. I didn’t even think about it until afterwards.

The original is with my sister; I gave it to her for her birthday as she does some actressy stuff.

How’s that for weird?

Sometimes I wish I had a motorbike again.

A British motorbike that thumped and roared and I could ride it with no helmet on, take corners flying. My Triumph again.

Well, that’s not going to happen. Nope. Not ever again.

I was not a bad motorcyclist; I never came off. I’m a good driver too, only got nicked for speeding once, and that was by an an unmarked car.

Bob and I did the most remarkable chase in the history of - and I remember doing Coldharbour Lane with Steve at the wheel. Under the bridge on two wheels and I was never scared.

But this Saturday I’m not looking forward to.

If it wasn’t already paid for I wouldn’t go.

As everyone knows, I am one of the best boatmen on the nav. Well, after a few years I bloody well should be. Taking a boat out three weekends a year doesn’t really cut it with me.

Saturday is a party night. Me with no boat. Me with Trouty. It won’t be easy.

Give me a Triumph on a wet road. Pull on the the throttle.

Here’s the kind of mess I make:

Here’s my favourite picture of the moment. It’s signed, rather splodgily, so that must mean it’s finished. I like the colours in the sky and for some reason I’m a bit obsessed with sky at the moment. Can one be a BIT obsessed? I wonder.

But that picture has confirmed something for me, something that I have suspected for a while. That I actually have a style.

I never have to copy anything; I just paint what I want and if I don’t want to then I don’t. I never have to draw anything, I just do what I want.

Here’s a picture of one of my walls. Most of the stuff on there is mine except for the Bernini St Teresa and the Waterhouse St Eulalia. Oh, and there might be a bit of a Van Gogh in there too - I can’t remember.

And when I look around the slum that is Thirst Hall it is with a sense of wonder. Where did it all come from? Where does a STYLE come from? I try really hard NOT to look at art, yeah, like I could do it, just like I don’t want to read too much in case I get infected.

There is no point in copying. I always try to remember the epitaph of Henry Charles Bukowski Jr. which was, “Don’t try".

It took me fucking ages to work that one out.

As anyone who knows me knows, I have a temper like a scrapyard dog.

Last Sunday a git who lives downstairs decided that a Sunday morning was a good time to smash some paving stones into golfball-sized bits with a 4lb club hammer. After this had gone on for an hour or so I went down to ‘have a word’ in his ear. I reminded him that this was the Sabbath Day and he asked me what religion I was. Religionist twat.

You might as well know. Trouty and I have split up. She left early and left me a rude note. Well, after five years and me being so awful to her all the time, who can blame her?

I decided to ruin a painting (above) and listen to Judee Sill.

So, I’m sorry for having a temper, I’m sorry for standing up for myself, I’m sorry for being ill for two fucking decades - yeah, I’m sorry for every fucking thing that I’ve ever done.

But the scrapyard dog is still in me and will not leave.

Not a good day today and hospital tomorrow. Just WAIT until they try to tell me something that I don’t know already.

If you have to go anywhere near a scrapyard dog take my advice; don’t wind it up.

Tell you what, it’s so cold in here that I don’t need to use the oven any more.

BECAUSE I CAN COOK THINGS IN THE FUCKING FRIDGE!

“And what do you want for Christmas? A Gas Bill you say?”

I see that Boy George has been found guilty although he has yet to be sentenced.

He may get heavily penalised.

(a big boy wrote that and ran away)

What could be more Christmassy than this happy scene?

The man from the gas board came to read the meter this morning. I look forward to the bill arriving shortly before Christmas. When it does I expect I’ll closely resemble the kid in the picture.

Today it’s a BOGOF or, more accurately, a GOGOF. You get one piccie and you get one free.

Today I had a bit of a shitty day. I tried to help someone to use the stupid ticket machine at the station which, of course, was not manned. Can you buy a ticket to Waterloo? Of course not. Eventually we discovered that you have to type in ‘London Terminus’ (how stupid of us) and then I ran for the train, slipped on the icy steps, nearly got a Colles fracture, hurt myself a lot and missed my train by about 30 seconds. Serves me right for trying to help people I suppose.

I had to wander about for half an hour and what did I see?

Nothing could be more Christmassy than a brand new bicycle. “Thank you, parental figure, I shall go and ride my new bike!”

Now, if this isn’t nicked I’d like to know what is…

If I was the ‘owner’ of said bike I’d have put the ‘D’ lock through the front wheel as well as the frame. Saves the trouble of trying to unicycle home.

Ah, but what’s this I see?

Don’t ever buy one of these cable locks if you are going to leave your bike for more than about 30 seconds. To bust them off all you need is a stout piece of metal pipe (like a quick-release saddle stem from the bike nearby) and then you wind it and wind it in the cable until it gives. This one looks like it might have been done with bolt-croppers though.

I was still in time to make my appointment with Doc Holiday. Back to the psychiatrist, I’m afraid.

While I was waiting at Worst Byfleet for the train home I asked a man to take a picture of me. It came out not bad and is a bit funny. Maybe I’ll post it tomorrow.

Season’s Greetings!

The advent collander got a bit forgot this year, so I thought I might have a go.

Here we see some holly with a few berries on. How charming.

You can send me pictures if you like and, if I’m feeling clever, I might put them on but don’t bank on it.

As everybody knows, I hate Crimbo, but the pictures I DO like.

So here’s the first and we’ll see how it goes.

So I got up this morning and assembled ingredients in the slow-cooker.

The slow-cooker has been moved into the main room to keep me warm instead of the bloody kitchen.

Then I went back to bed to keep warm.

Much later on I got up, expecting to find a room filled with lovely warmth and food pong.

If I had made sure that as well as switching the fucking thing on as well as plugging it in my dreams may have been realised.

Then Vodka Mick came round, drank a whole bottle of my swig and then, when he had gone, I noticed that he had had all the baccy out of my dog-ends.

Still, he’s working on the cards now - or so he says.

AND it’s bloody freezing but I refuse to turn the central-heating on. The price of utilities? They must be mental. I’d like to see how the country copes with half the pop. in gaol.

But at least I had a good idea for a painting. Can I do it? I can at least try - it’s for a friend.

I sometimes make an idiot of myself on a certain site.

There was a tiff, nothing more. I got paid some compliments (someone suggested that I should have my own radio show on account of me having a lovely voice and being eloquent) but then this utter tit butted in.

The comments have mysteriously disappeared and I think I can guess why.

But sod all that. I am my own man and I will always do what I feel is right. This includes making apologies where I feel they are required and I will put my hands up when I feel I have done a wrong. But. But. When I feel that I am in the right I never, and will never, give up.

I look around the room where I spend a lot of my time and I am happy. If I had a fluorescent jacket and a clipboard and a peaked cap with ‘VERY IMPORTANT’ written on it I might be happier still but until that happy day I prefer the background, just to melt away like the leaves that have fallen from the trees just now.

Yes, I DID put another comment on that site this morning. The venom in it was subtle. To finish it off I quoted a bit of Auden, a bit that I first read on a wall in Farnham.

Here goes:

The sky is darkening like a stain
Something is going to fall like rain
And it won’t be flowers.

I’ll be on my own for a while and I might do some painting. I have some varnishing to do and a few things to finish off. Perhaps I might finish myself off but I doubt it.

There are too many cheeky monkeys for me to sort out, too many things for me to go and look at, too many bloody paintings, too many jokes to invent.

Yes, I am a bit on the ill side (fourteen tablets and three injections a day) but will I ever shut up?

Never.

Sorry if I got your number wrong but I remember you once telling me that this was your favourite song:

John Martyn. Total geezer.

Sorry about your leg, John. But I’m diabetic so it won’t be too long. Oh well.

I’m getting a bit bored with the painting in pink. Oh, it’s nice, for sure, pretty in pink.

But something has to be done. I’m thinking of ‘The Kiss’ by Judee Sill. Love rising and it has to come through the mist.

Maybe some stripes of grey with the sun underneath. I’m obsessed with the sun, although I rarely see it, but , aah, now I DO see it.

Love through the mist. It won’t work well because I’m not that clever but now I see in my head what I can or could do.

The technology of painting is very easy. Start at the back and finish at the front. But skyscapes are so hard to do.

The painting in pink will work because I want it to and that’s about that. I’ll show you photos as I get on.

In other news, I have been making a nuisance of myself on Digital Spy. One (or a few) of the conributors was (were) most complimentary. I have a lovely voice and blah blah they should give me a programme. I can’t disagree.

You see, I’ve heard this compliment before and once it came from the the most beautiful girl in the office. If you don’t believe me check out Digital Spy (I lost the bit of paper that told me how to do links that Carol sent me) and look at the LBC comments.

So what am I?

If your answer is a rude one I suggest you sign it.

There is a problem. Am I an artist or am I not?
According to Doc Holiday (who has a copy of one of my pictures on his surgery wall) what I get up to is therapeutic and therefore has no value. My sister has the original and I gave it to her for her birthday.

Here’s the mess I make when I’m in the mood:

As I love mischief (there is an advert just up the road which is dying for a gay fellatio scene to be added, not that I ever will) I stuck the pixie door in the tree. This is the last time I could bear to see it. It has had a kicking by the looks of things or maybe it just got splashed:

Now I never take commissions because I can only paint when I want to which isn’t very often. Then the paintings leave and it pleases me to give them away. It also pleases me to know that my paintings, my real paintings, are in Europe. I’ve been working on one for my Dad but I don’t think I’ll ever finish it. Then I have to do one for my brother and one for my son and one for my daughter who hates me.

I never draw or anything, just slap the paint on and hate it for six months. Then, I look at it again and try to finish it. I never paint from life or, worse, photographs but I took this picture of my friend Bob.

The light is good. Me and him go back a quarter of a century. We were both in the same car until the windows were bricked in and the car was set on fire.

I hid behind a bus.

Maybe it’s a portrait that I owe him. Maybe it’s my guilt. Maybe guilt is what drives me to do these paintings and give them away, as if that would ever wash away the tears.

Although these are works of art they are not really work, they are love and all I have to give.

You may have noticed that I have not blogged recently. This is because AOSmell refused me access. Arguing the toss with them has cost me a fortune.

Now I have a PC with no firewall so Messrs. Glitter etc. had best round to the carpark.

Why couldn’t AOSmell tell me this? If I can work it out then why can’t they?

Best I get off-line quickly while I try to work out how to reinstall McAfee and all the rest before some perv. utilises my wossname.

Anyway, that’s why I haven’t been here. Maybe tomorrow, eh?

X

My latest canvas is all pink. I don’t know why and I don’t know what the fryingpan I’m going to do with it. But it’s pink now.

I just painted it pink.

Like everything I do I will hate it for a few months and then I will start to look at it a little bit more. And then maybe I’ll do something more with it. Or maybe not.

You have to look at these things, for a while, and then they speak to you. I’m not joking.

I cannot urge you to paint any more than I do. Please paint, please do.

Take it from me - I thought I was shit, passed my ‘O’ level and walked out of my ‘A’ level. I did that because I am mentally strong but because I thought I wasn’t good enough.

I walked. And people have told me I should write a book. Of course, I never will because I am too lazy and don’t have the confidence. I never have the confidence to do anything but I can paint. But YOU can do this. You can write novels or poetry or paint or just about anything.

Now I had a blank canvas and now it’s pink. You have a blank page. I might write on mine and you might write on yours. They will be different but no less valid. I might paint on mine and you might write or draw on yours. What’s the difference?

What looks good on pink? Green maybe? What looks good on white paper? Black ink maybe?

What is good on a silence? A song maybe?

Give it a try.

A long while ago, I spotted a woman who had lost her car.

Trouty and I were loafing around inthe Pestco carpark looking for fivers.

I said to Trouty, ‘Look, she’s lost her car’ because I’m, clever like that.

The carpark is massive. Her car was small. So we stood and watched for a little bit.

Then, the other day I spotted a woman who was in the same predicament. She had lost her car. But then, BINGO, she used her carkey thingy that made it go BLEEP.

It was a hire-car and she didn’t really know what it looked like. But the carkey thingy made it go BEEP.

I thought that was quite good.

Yes, I know it looks like an anemome at the the seaside.

It really is a skyscape and it isn’t quite finished yet but I was quite pleased with it.

No, its not signed.

The photographs that I take of my paintings never look how they look in real life. The bloody light is all wrong for a start.

Just thought I’d show you how it was coming along, that’s all.

Oil painting fascinates me.

So I knocked one out and it didn’t take me very long. Because it was crap. A splosh of white spirit, I thought, may have soothed it but it didn’t.

When Thirst Hall catches fire and an accelerant is held to blame we will all know why.

I never draw anything before I paint. I just paint. I use the same brush and a bit of kitchen roll. And then I hate whatever it is for about six months which is about how long it takes to dry. Then I look at it again and think, ‘Oh well, maybe it’s not too bad’.

Today’s effort was a skyscape. It didn’t take long; my best stuff never does. I use a filthy brush (I should go to art school really) but at least I’m painting again.

Yes, I did take a photo. No, I won’t post it here - it’s not good enough.

Nothing ever gets signed until I’m happy with it. This is why I’m always happy to let photos of my works onto the WWW. Anyone can have copies of my photos of my stuff but the real stuff is hanging on my walls or under my bed. Musicians get unhappy when their stuff is blagged all over the net but I couldn’t care less. Copy my stuff (and, yes, I HAVE found you using it) but the real stuff is still mine. Unless I want to sell it of course or, more usually, give it away. I have nothing else to give.

I know that my work has got about and that’s fair. Once it’s gone it’s gone and nothing to do with me any more.

This skyscape is troubling me though. I know who I’m going to give it to but will it be ready in time? I’ve got to varnish it twice (you wouldn’t believe how much difference varnishing makes) and it’s not even finished yet.

But at least I can dub myself ‘artist’ and there aren’t many people can do that.

So there.

Today to see Doc Holiday.

He has to have everything that I’ve got. I suspect he eats about 50 Mars bars a day to try and make himself diabetic. He’s so jealous.

The train there was 24 minutes late. What a cheek. It costs £2.40 to ride on a train for 6 minutes. You could fly to Prague for that.

Doc Holiday has a cough. He said it was Newcastle cough. But I’ve got a compluter so I looked it up - I won’t be out-illed by my doctor. Symptoms are a cough and a runny nose but I’ve had that for weeks. He tried to trump me by demanding a wazz sample but then I beat his flush by reminding him that I need a retinal scan and an Hba blood test.

So, yet again, I out-illed him. And I called him by his first name. And he still has a copy of one of my oil paintings nailed to his wall.

Then I went to NotWaste(ful at all) who are my very own bank to get some money out of the machine. I checked my balance and asked for some quids. The machine didn’t like it. My card got eaten.

I asked the lady who was waiting behind me to go into the bank on my behalf in case the ATM went even more mental and spat my card and money out. She was nice and she went inside on my behalf while I stared at the machine. Just in case.

She came out and said I would have to back into the bank myself. So I did.

“Hoi, psst, scuse me but where is my card?”

“Old and bent”

“Well never mind about me, what about my card?”

I got my card back and got my money.

Then I went to Waitrose to buy some treats for someone I know. How they have the fucking nerve to charge what they do amazes me.

But I had decided to have a nice day, even though it was raining HARD, and made sure that I was polite to everyone and talked to lots of people.

I’ve asked for a poster that I rather fancied for when it gets taken down - maybe I’ll get it, maybe I won’t.

And that was my day, so far.

I was going to wait until the deathivesary came round (November 23rd) but I couldn’t wait.

One night, when I was feeling very low, her music was recommended to me.

Judee Sill went nearly thirty years ago and her ashes were scattered in the Pacific. Same old story, I’m afraid; heroin.

She was addicted, cleaned herself up, made some beautiful music that was heavily influenced by Bach. Then she had two car accidents but wasn’t allowed opiates because of her prior habit so she went back on the street stuff.

Yes, she does sound a bit like Joni Mitchell but she was part of the ‘Laurel Canyon’ sound just like everyone thinks that Badfinger were a Happy Shopper version of the Beatles.

But listen to this. Trouty doesn’t like it but, then, she doesn’t like Joni Mitchell either.

I chose this clip because I love her stillness when she finishes playing. I also think that it’s one of the loveliest pieces of modern music. Please listen and I hope you agree.

Judee Sill playing ‘The Kiss’:

Bloody fireworks, I hate them.

Like the blessed Spike Milligan I can’t stand unnecessary noise.
I can’t tell you why or explain it or anything. There was a load of whizz-BANGS going off so I went round to see my nearly-neighbours and asked them how long they were going to keep going.

What a surprise. They were observing the firework code and the man I spoke to told me that they only had one left. I bade hime a pleasant evening. What a nice man.

Then it all started, rockets going off and all that.

And then it started wazzing down with rain. Really chucking it down.

That would about the time that the fireworks stopped annoying me and all the sossidges and burgers got served up in a fresh rainwater sauce.

Haha bloody ha.

The sooner that selling bombs to people is made illegal the better.

It seems I haven’t been banned off LBC97.3.

There’s a quiz on at 03:00 on Wednesday but it got moved to Thursday for some reason.

The idea is that if you get a question right then you can put a question into the pot.

The question I answered was this:

What is the next number in the sequence (and I was in bed and didn’t even have to write it down) 4, 6,8,12…?

I got it right although it was supposed to involve some ding-dong atomic physics or something.

If you want to phone in next Wednesday morning at 03:00 the answer to the question I posed is [transmission interrupted]

You will be pleased to know that I am right, yet again, this time about the price of said vehicle.

Trouty took notice of the price stuck on the window…

£2995

So that’s a whole grand off so far.

The shape of the vehicle is rather lumpy but as for the colour? Trouty said it should have been mentioned in the LOG-book (Geddit? - See what she did there?)

The BOTTOM must be falling out of this market as with any other.

As industry has died this country now lives on fines and compensation. Doesn’t look good to me.

Judging by the smirk, I think he’s doing it on purpose.

Honestly, if only everyone would do what I say, what a wonderful world it would be.

But no one does which why the world is a disaster and will probably come to an end, as we know it, in a decade or so.

Recycling is a good thing. I can’t bear waste and was brought up to eat all my dinner. Having said that I also know that recycling is a bit of a con.

My council are incapable of recycling cardboard, envelopes (perhaps because of the plastic windows) and plastic. Most of my rubbish is empty 3 litre bottles that once contained sparkling, fresh water obtained locally (from the River Wey to save on food-miles) and I expect that they wind up being dumped in the North Sea or bulldozed into a hole in China or India.

But they DO recycle glass and metal and paper. It always used to annoy me that people wasted petrol going to a bottlebank and sorting out the clear, brown, green etc. and then seeing it all dumped into the same hopper - if you ask me, it all gets ground into powder and mixed with tarmac and spread on all the useless roads that we have forced upon us.

Anyway, in the sink estate that surrounds Thirst Hall there are some of those little bins for recycling. Because I have OCD this was a something that I thought I should sort out. So off I went with my collection and looked at the four little bins. Three were empty and one was full of crap. First step, put my glass into one empty bin. There we are; a glass bin and,no, it wasn’t full of wine bottles, there was some sauce bottles (not THAT kind of sauce, Omally, I heard you say that) and jars. Into the next one went the tins. I stamped on them all so their was lots of room left. See that? It’s the metal bin, stoopid. In the next one I put quite a lot of old newspapers (did you know that they won’t recycle shredded paper? It’s too small apparently. What do they make out of all this paper then? Hats? Boats? I would have thought they mushed it all up and made bogroll out of it but what do I know? The thought of someone wiping their bottom on my gas bill seems appropriate. I shred everything that has my name and address on it).

I left four old eggs for the foxes or the magpies.

Today I went to dump some more of these freebie newspapers and see if my martial law had been adhered to. The eggs had all gone so I guess a fox had had them, but there was bloody plastic in with the glass and someone had had the brainwave that a china plate could be recycled. So I started to sort everything out. Again.

Remember the fourth little bin? I threw all the crap that I could find into the rubbish skips. There were a lot of empty 1 litre vodka bottles underneath the carrier bags full of newspaper (no, they won’t touch them because of the plaggy bags) and I know EXACTLY who had put them there. It wasn’t me and if someone who admires my paintings chooses to drink litres of vodka who am I to moan? He’s got five or six of my masterpieces and is spreading them over Europe so I put the empties in the glass box. But wait!

What’s this? Seems full…

Ah, but it might be full of buider’s weewee. Let’s examine the seal…

It hadn’t even been opened.

So that’s Trouty’s Christmas present sorted.

On the way back from Pestco I was stopped by a gentleman. He needed directions to the Red Nose (sorry, Red ROSE) restaurant in Byfleet. He’s got a new job. We were both bearded men and maybe that’s why he trusted me.

He said “I’m from London…. and from Bangladesh” and I had nice chat with him about how most employees of ‘Indian’ restaurants were, indeed, from Bangladesh. He was a bit lost so I gave him the correct directions and shook him warmly by the hand and wished him the very best in his new job.

I’ve already blogged today but today is a special day. Today is one of those 1% of days when you feel happy all day.

HENRY’S CREDIT-CRUNCHING TIP OF THE DAY:

Collect all the aluminium cans that you can drink, err, I mean FIND and stamp them flat. Keep them in a bin in your back gaarden. When it’s full phone the scrappy up and get him to collect them. Aluminium is worth a lot of money, it keeps the place looking tidy, you get a few bob. Why give the council even more money when you could make a few bob yourself?

This is the Pixie House this morning.

It took me a week to make and I was surprised that it has lasted more than it took to make. I had imagined a trainer-clad toe trying to boot it in. Behind that door is solid tree, right behind it, and the thought of a scummer with a broken toe does fill me with a certain delight.

It does look a bit battered but it’s still there.

But! What’s this? The brass doorknob is missing. At first I thought that it might have been kicked off but then I preferred to think that some tiny, sticky fingers might have tried to open the door to see who lives inside. Maybe, somewhere, in a child’s bedroom is the real door-handle from a real pixie’s house. Brass paper-fasteners, you don’t see them that often - I expect the pixies have used them all up to make doorknobs out of.

The photo isn’t that good because the camera focussed (focused?) on the tree rather than the door but you get the picture (G-SWIDT?).

In other news, I was talking to a person who is unfortunate enough to be employed by my local railway company. No names, no pack-drill.

Remember when I got swizzed out of ten shillings when I asked for my money back on a half-used return ticket? The person that I talked to told me that they would have given me a taxi voucher or refunded the whole cost of the ticket.

So, it just goes to show that not every employee of my local railway is not a short, bald, bespectacled, lazy, rude, red braces wearing, moronic [not written on grounds of politeness] who has about as much of an idea of ‘customer service’ as a pig has of not eating windfall apples.

We had a nice little walk up to the lock and saw a boat going up. It was a Sea Otter which I don’t like much on the grounds of being a boat snob. I asked where they were going and they said to Pyrford (oh, the times I have heard that pronounced Pireford or Pryford, d’oh) and I asked if they were going to the marina. When the captain said he was I congratulated him on winning the lottery. He raised his eyebrows and said that they were desperate for a mooring that cost a little less (yeah, a little less than about a million pounds a day[disclaimer - moorings at said marina may well cost less than a million pounds a day]) but there were none to be had.

On the way home I stole an apple by reaching over a garden wall and gave it to Trouty. If the owner of said apple would like to do me for scrumping and Trouty for receiving stolen goods (no, Omally, not receiving swollen goods - I heard that and it wasn’t funny) then I look forward to seeing them in court. I shall, of course, defend myself. I haven’t been watching Kavanagh QC for nothing you know.

So, not a bad day so far and it isn’t even two of the clock yet.

Hope you, gentle reader, have a good day too.

My email infromed me that my Online Bank blah blah lah.

The spam filter is good and I check it about once a week to see if it’s trapped any proper ones by mistake but that’s only happened a couple of times.

Anyway, my brilliant idea is that if you send an e-mail to more than one person at a time you have to pay. If you are circulating all ten members of the University Chess Club, then you will have to copy and paste and spend a bit of time doing it.

That should kick spam up the arse and send it on it’s way.

Needs working on, but copyright myself.

Love and kisses….
H.

Not everybody knows about the Anon Trap. After a particularly vicious comment it was commissioned by myself from Mr. Simon G.

The basic theory is that anyone who signs themselves ‘Anon’ will find that they have signed themselves something else entirely. The original version had the ‘C’ word in it so it got tempered a little (not BAD-tempered). I don’t really mind what people write in my comments. I did edit one once that was from someone who was rather refreshed but that was to protect them.

It’s been a lang, lang loonely tame since someone fell into the trap.

You can find it under the blog where I whinge that I can’t have half a return ticket back. If the journey back is only worth 70p I shall ask for two 70ps instead of the standard return.

Anyway, this prick, who probably ‘works’ for South West Trains had a right pop at me.

Firstly he called me an idiot. An idiot is a person of subnormal intelligence. I, however, have an IQ of between 130 and 140 and am therefore am not an idiot. ‘Anon’ is obviously one of those people who think that ‘ignorant’ means ‘rude’ and lives in a street that is visited by ice-cream vans.

Then he (or she) suggests that I ‘get a life’. But, Anon. I already have one. I have a life that is better than yours. One of the many things that I have done with MY life is to wind YOUR’S up like a clock. Otherwise I like to read, complete the Times crossword, oil painting, botany, boatmanship… ahh, it’s such a long list.

I’m glad that I’m not a coward. I will stick to anything that I believe in. No White Feather for me.

But what of you, dear Anon? Yellow as piss-custard?

Come and meet me. Meet me in the woods and tell me what grieves you so.

See, the difference between you and I, Anon, is that I would enjoy the thought of you shivering in a woodland waiting for me to turn up. And I never would.

The construction of a joke is more important than anything else in the world.

Goodbye.

Every Thursday I have to go to the doctor’s. I have to go because I am ill. I am a ‘complicated ‘ diabetic as well as all the other stuff; the rheumatism, the osteo-arthritis, the alcoholism and the depression. There are other things I could add but I don’t want to bore you.

My appointment is always for 10:45 so I try to catch the 10:00 train. If I miss it I can catch the 10:30. The journey takes about three minutes - it’s only one stop.

I buy a return ticket for this journey and it costs me £2.40. Can you believe it? £2.40 to spend a few minutes on an empty train (with no lavatory).

Anyway, I saw the doctor, went to the chemist, got my prescription filled and looked at my watch. If I hurried (which hurt my hips) I might make the :37.

I did not make it. The train didn’t make it. The signs went from ‘delayed’ to ‘cancelled’ without a word of explanation.

I wandered about and on the ticket machine outside there was a notice which said ‘Fatality at Woking, Do not use this machine or the ticket office’.

But the stopping train that leaves from Woking leaves from platform 3 which is about half a mile from the ticket office. You couldn’t fatalise yourself on platfrom 3 if you tried. The train is only travelling at about 2mph before it hits the buffers. Whoever had been splattered must have gone under a High-speed train on a different platform entirely.

South West Trains preferred to leave people stranded, appointments missed, all the usual.

After a while I went to the ticket office. The queue was enormous and one of the two service windows had a blind down. A notice said that they had staff shortages. Well, there are quite a few unemployed people in this country so maybe they should get themselves staffed.

When it came to my turn I asked for my money back. I was asked where I had bought the tickets. Actually this information is written on the ticket. Where did he think I’d bought them from? Aberdeen? So I knew I was dealing with an illiterate moron.

He gave me 70p.

I explained that 70p is half of £1.40 and not £2.40. He said it was and I said it wasn’t. He took his 70p back and told me to fill in a form. I took my camera out of my bag and took a photograph of him. I would publish it here but I don’t think I should just yet.

He went demented.

I went and waited for a bus and then walked home for half a mile.

Now apparently he deducted a single fare from what I had paid (£1.70) which means my journey home should only have cost 70p. But I hadn’t bought single fares. I had bought a return ticket and used half its value, therefore I should have the remaining 50% returned to me. Imagine if you bought a cake and there was a dead mouse in it. Would you be happy with an 80% refund because you had eaten all the rest?

Oh yes, while I was hanging about a weird train came through heading south. I think they must have a special ’scrapey-up-bodies’ train that blasts all the blood and guts off the ballast and rails.

Tomorrow I will be speaking with Jane Lee who is head of Public Affairs.

I was listening to the news on the radio this morning and one of the features was this:

“BRIXTON PRISON IS INFESTED WITH VERMIN”

It’s taken them quite a while to work that one out.

There was a thing on the radio the other day about female circumcision. General opinion was that it was ‘not a good thing’.
I quite agree, especially if it it is performed with the lid off a tin.

But.

What about male circumcision?

If I phoned up the Social Services and said that I had a new baby boy and I was going to cut the end off his knob with a Stanley knife, I expect I might wind up in prison. And quite rightly so.

If whatever god made man in his own image them surely he would have had the forethought to remove foreskins, wisdom teeth, appendices etc.

Seeing as you aren’t allowed to have a tattoo until you are 18 I can’t see why it’s fair to have your genitals mutilated until you really want to.

Hacking the end off a baby’s cock, when it can’t really complain, seems a little unfair to me.

As you can probably tell, I am still as I was made. Chopping about with the genitalia of children seems, at best, mental behaviour and, at worst, outright criminal.

If, when you reach the age of majority, you want to have your body mutilated or disfigured then so be it. But children should not be subjected to this kind of treatment.

If I caught someone, outside my house, with a Stanley knife, trying to mutilate childrens’ genitalia I’d say “Oi! You!’ - You belong in prison, you nonce".

See what I did there? It’s a play on words and, boy, do I love ‘em.

Today to West Byfleet. Both stations a bit smashed up and no bins to put my rubbish in so I just carried it around until I got home.

I had a flu-jab (being diabetical) and got my usual scrip. While I was in the chemist’s I noticed something and a thought came to my tainted mind. Christmas presents.

Say you had a relative and you thought you might get a few bob out of them. Well, you can go to Smith’s and get a will form and that doesn’t cost very much. Why not increase the value of your gift with one of these? They are on spesh and are less than ten quids:

I noticed something else too. Vicar-greed: