ADIOS AMIGOS
i’m so knackered.
too knackered to tell you about it, and i’m off to yorkshireland tomorrow so i must pack a crust and a teeny piece of cheese into a spotted hanky and tie it on the end of a stick.
hark, the road is calling me.
you all be good while i’m away.
XXX
h.
BUT ISN’T IT NICE?
i sat at home in front of my compluter. i was waiting for merman to turn up.
and then he did.
i had already drunk loads of lager before he turned up. not my fault. i’m an alcoholic.
we walked along the towpath. trouty and i went in the pub; merman went to find ‘weyside wander’. he found it. then he came back while we were feeding the ducks.
we have now spent the evening being ridiclious.
i’m drunk. goodbye.
my post about sheds will have to wait until the morrow.
goodnight, dear reader, good god. what is that? i saw a black cat moving…
‘WEYSIDE WANDER 2′
sorry to keep banging on about geocaching but i like it so very much. it gives me a reason to get up and out of bed. it gives me something to think about.
so after yesterday’s little project of camouflage painting a suitable container, a trip was made to brooklands today to visit the market and buy tat to put into it. the cunningly camouflaged box was filled up and sealed up and then made it’s way, in my backpack, to coxes lock on the wey navigation near addlestone.
now the cache lives in a hollow tree near coxes millpond at N51.21.928 and W000.28.785. and i worry about it. i hope that it keeps safe and makes people happy.
merman’s coming to stay tomorrow. perhaps he might be the first to find weyside wander 2. but he promised to take us to some other local caches that i can’t get to by public transport (that’s a thought. is there anywhere that you CAN actually get to by public transport?). so perhaps he won’t be the first to find it, unless i whisper the co-ords in his ear.
a strange change has been observed here at thist mansion. there has not been very much swigging going on at all. and not a great deal of staying-up-late either.
dear reader, this inexplicable phenomenon is nothing less than something, a manifestation if you will, for which i have no explanation to offer.
sleep tight (i do, usually).
IMPOTENCE
no, i’m not talking about swigger’s-droop or that most fascinating stage of long-term diabetes that i have to look forward to. i’m talking about the thing that really does get me going and that’s impotent rage.
i was walking towards the pub in a break between downpours. there were puddles. trouty had called my mobile and i was temporarily distracted and didn’t, until it was too late, see the yob on a bicycle headed my way on the pavement. he missed me by about an inch and sploshed me with dirty puddle water. i turned and offered him some kindly avuncular advice, ie. ‘you fu(’scuse me, i think there’s someone at the door)ing knob’. there was a lady coming the other way and when she passed by she said ‘you should have pushed him off’. how right she was.
well, half right really. when these things happen, when little scummers take the piss out of me or evil turds scream at me out of lorries (see my ‘trip to the council offices’ blog) and there is nothing i can do about it i just want to get my big gun out and shoot them to mush, starting at the goolies, and blasting them right in the spotty face when i have enjoyed them screaming for mercy for just long enough.
when i got to the pub i was not in the best of humours. i hate these little bastard kids SO MUCH and i poured by heart out on the matter to john the bosh who i was pleased to see there enjoying some peaceful swiggitude after the travails of his day. bosh is a man after my own heart on this subject (little bastards, i mean) and he told me about something he had seen that had sickened him to his stomach…
he had been in guildford, on the towpath near where a wooden footbridge crosses the canal near the big, brick railway bridge. he saw two little bastards carry their BMXs up onto the bridge and suspected they were up to no good. about 14 or 15, not at school, evil in their hearts - that sort of thing.
then bosh saw the narrowboat coming down the canal.
he said that he tried to attract the attention of the helmsman and i like to think that when he did so he must have looked like the scarecrow out of the wizard of oz, sort of flailing about and falling over with all his straw coming out of him. but his efforts were all in vain.
as the narrowboat passed beneath the bridge the little bastards rose up over the parapet and gobbed copiously upon the boatmen at the stern. the unfortunates were well coated in a mixture of sunny dee, alcopop and cheap fag flavoured gob.
then, the little bastards came down and wheeled along on their BMXs in a gloating fashion. the helmsman proffered avuncular advice along the lines of ‘you little cu(’scuse me, doorbell), to which one of them replied ‘nah, you’re the cu(hang on, phone’s ringing)t because we done yer’ and then they pedalled their bikes off laughing.
you remember the foot and mouth thing when there was all them cows killed and set on fire and bulldozed into pits? when i’m president of englandshire and the same thing happens to all the little scummers then it will be me that rides off on my golden presidential bicycle laughing my head off. until that happy day i will just have to live with my impotent rage.
on a happier note, i have just finished camouflaging a rather nifty container for ‘weyside wander2′. i might just have it in place in time to sorely vex merman when he comes to stay on thursday.
the stat machine is still broken. i think the swig stats explodified it.
good night, dear reader, goodnight.
PUB LIFE & THE CHILDHOOD CHRISTMAS FOR ‘BOSH’ JOHN
as we enjoyed pints of swig i asked john the bosh how old he actually was.
‘how old do you think?’ he replied.
this was difficult. bosh john looks like a scarecrow assembled out of twiglets with a face made from a rather old new potato. his hair-do is rather crap too. so i plumped for 54 and john was pleased. ‘i’m 53′, he said ‘although most people think i’m about 65′.
we laughed at ‘throaty bob’. it was his birthday and he had a present waiting for him in the pub. it was all wrapped up in cardboard and gift paper. bob is a piss-taker and very quick when it comes to a barbed remark. but he couldn’t think of anything to say when he unwrapped his 3-wheeled zimmer frame (that had obviously been stolen).
a few of us discussed home-brew, how rubbish mothers’ day is and how much we dislike christmas. how the only things worth a bit of celebration are birthdays, we came to decide. well, not throaty bob, obviously.
bosh john, like myself and everyone else i know, is pitifully poor. but unlike me he came from a poor family. he told me about his childhood christmases. he got an orange in a sock.
now then, if that didn’t make you cry, consider this. bosh is a survivor of cancer. he grows his hair long to cover the radiation-burn style oldifying of his face. he had throat cancer but he sits in the pub and smokes roll-ups and drinks cider. as hard as i try i can’t think of anything wrong with that because bosh needs the pub and his fags and his daily mirror more than he needs life itself. it’s as simple as that.
and that, for me, is what going to the pub is all about. this, for me, is pub life; a window into knackered lives where there is no hope and everything depends on going home to a dodgy flat, alone, with a fairly full stomach of swig and maybe some chips.
on an upbeat note, there were actually three finders of my cache ‘weyside wander’ yesterday. one was a little late in posting. on the subject of caching i have to say that i spent today hiking to coxes lock to scout for a place to plant ‘weyside wander 2′. i think it will work. what a lovely canal it is. i took photos of the swans as we fed them.
oh, and we saw the blue flash of a jay’s wings as it came over the towpath.
the stat machine is broken.
goodnight, dear reader, and thank you for your time.
THE JOY OF EXHUMATION
kicked my heels around while the rain poured down. listened to the radio for a bit; a programme about ‘the cheeky chappie’, max miller, and then an episode of ‘beyond our ken’. i also listened to the rain on the windows and i thought to myself how much i love the sound of the rain falling.
called mother, as today is mothering sunday, and then i had a few swigs.
the weather improved and so out i went, back down the canal as always. i asked trouty if she minded forever walking down the towpath but she reassured me that she loves to walk there too. we had some bread for the ducks and plenty of time to look at the flowers that are going mad coming out now. there is a lot of celandine about at the moment. the ducks are all really mental at this time of year; all the jostling and, OI, THAT’S MY BIRD! stuff going on. we try to feed the moorhens but they are so shy and timid. they don’t really like coming half way over the canal for a bit of bread and then they always take it about twenty foot away before they peck at it with their little beaks under the bank. they don’t want to get mugged i suppose. we didn’t see our favourite duck (blondie). so that was a shame.
it started to rain. it chucked it down. as it chucked it down i pulled my hood up and reflected that perhaps i didn’t enjoy the sound of the rainfall as much as i had thought. actually, that’s not true; i DID enjoy the sound of the rain on my hood, i just didn’t enjoy the sensation of my jeans getting five times heavier and colder than i wished them to be. ho hum.
strolling along, i considered the practicalities of extending my fab new cache, ‘weyside wander’, by a few more, but i want to plant them in places that mean something to me so this is something that i will have to think carefully about and considering that omally was the only person to have found either of my caches (he got ‘narnian gateway’ in haslemere) i was feeling a bit glum about the whole thing. lucky i had some swig with me for restorative purposes.
we got to ‘the anchor’ at pyrford lock and i had to fight the urge to walk, in the rain, to see my poor cache sitting under its tree in the rain and all alone. but there was a boat coming down through the lock so i helped with the gates (rubbish double-gating on the wey navigation) and saw it through. then we fed the swans that are always there but they wouldn’t take bread from my hand. not like that greedy bastard up by scotland bridge on the basingstoke canal.
we sat in the anchor for a pint of swig and a coffee and a dry out, then trundled back homewards. still no sign of blondie but i did find some young, ‘red dead nettle’ in flower in the back fields just before we reached byfleet road.
having got home i cooked a bit of grub (see stats) and then what do i see on my compluter? a yahoo message? this could mean only one thing! someone has found a cache of mine! and it was true! they had! i was SO HAPPY.
a first finder had got to ‘weyside wander’ and i was chuffed to bits to think that my co-ords had worked and that my cache had been findable.
later, DOUBLE HOORAH! the white family had also found it. two hits in one day. so i was even more happier and this, combined with the happiness of no longer crapping myself inside-out with lurgy, made for a very good weekend indeed.
grub stats: pan-fried pork with multi grain wholemeal toast and a special sauce of my own devising: garlic, onion, lemon, cider, black pepper, olive oil, double cream, mushrooms.
swig stats: minimal, for me
oh, and stu whacked in a most complimentary posting about the oft reviled ’splot’ on the ‘favourite things’ thread at simonG.org
so, all in all dear reader, a far better sunday than i could have hoped for. sweet dreams.
DIRE REAR
although i didn’t know exactly why at the time, i didn’t feel like doing my blog last night.
but i found out what the reason was for penning but a shorty not long after the shorty had been penned.
have you ever experienced an urgent desire to visit the loo that arrives out of nowhere and with all the devastating force of maximum shock and awe? that was what happened to me in the small hours of yesterday; tap tappity tap on the keyboard, click clickety click on the mouse, listen listeny listen to the radio, and not really feeling too good but not awfully bad. and then…
as opposed to my normal, lazy slouch i suddenly sat bolt-upright. my eyed were wide open. a sweat broke out upon my sweet brow. the fascinatingly technermological body that i inhabit was telling me, in no uncertain terms, that if i was not on that loo, chop chop pretty damn quick, that i would regret it. so i made haste.
a discreet veil shall be pulled over the next ten minutes but, let me assure you, it was awful to endure. after the, ahem, transaction had been completed i returned to my chair a shaken man. by now i felt really ill and in a manner that must have resembled that of a ninety year old man i gingerly reassumed my seat. perhaps some soothing click-tappity-listening would make me feel better. or would it?
about ten seconds after sitting down again i endured a repetition of paragraph four and again made haste in a boggerly direction. i felt dreadful and, after allowing ten minutes or thereabouts to see if i dare do so, i went to bed.
in the morning i got up feeling all shivery and cold. i sat in front of my compluter and listened to john peel’s utterly fab ‘home truths’ on R4. i wore two jumpers and i had the central heating on (i’m a miser; it’s not often that the thermostat sees the ‘on’ position). i had a tartan blanket over my knees and couldn’t even be bothered to swig. but was was this? my body telling me it was time to go for a run? i sat bolt upright with my eyes wide-open. the tartan rug got cast aside and i won the 18 foot dash in gold medal record time. isn’t it funny how when you are busting and can actually SEE THE LOO, it makes the situation worse? standing there twitching like you have st vitus’ dance and trying to rip jeans off with your bare hands isn’t very funny. i felt so vile that i went back to bed.
but this evening i thought i felt well enough to risk a walk to tesco and there i saw some scallops on the cheap shelf. because i am a miser and love a bargain i bought them and ate them this evening. it’s now 02:15 on mothers’ day morning. i’m just waiting for the churning and detonations to kick-off.
radio stats: R4, BBC7, LBC
swig stats: hardly anything. i hate feeling lurgyfied
fag stats: ditto
my two caches stats: no one has reported a find. so i’m glum about that too
boo hoo, dear reader, i have male-illness; that’s the very worst kind.
MALAYSIAN BLOG AND GUNS AND STUFF
marcB was the start of all of this. well, some of it anyway. he suggested that i might like to hear some tunes recorded by the popular beat combo, messrs. lemon jelly. so i did.
now one of these, ahem, tunes featured a piece of sampled stuff what goes “boom schticky boom” but i don’t know where they sampled it from. so i tried to google for it. i never found out who recorded the original of ‘boom sticky boom’, or whatever it might be called, but i did stumble across this:
http://www.sixthseal.com/000898.html
and then had a read around the rest of the site. i was still laughing at the ‘behold, the greasy water’ bit later on in tesco’s carpark.
then we went to the sweary pub. amidst the rude swears i overheard a conversation that went something like this:
“so i’m trying to turn right into the station right and there’s this bmw coming out and i can’t go nowhere and so i give the v’s.
then this bloke gets out and goes ‘you give my missus the finger’ so i says what am i supposed to do, it’s a main road right and all stuff going everywhere so he says ‘get back in your little car’ but it’s a vectra, right and i got well annoyed. so i said you get back in your car you mug and he said ‘i’m packing’ and starts making out he’s got a gun in his pocket and pointing it at me.
(at this point there are jeers along the lines of: ‘packing for tesco’s’ and ‘packing for his holidays?, you should of asked him where he was going’ etc.)
the interesting thing was that man in sweary pub was far more annoyed about the remark about his ‘little car’ than he was about having a gun, or more likely a banana, pointed at him.
apparently gunman had said ‘what are you going to do when you’re on the deck?’
i suggested that an appropriate reply might have been ‘wriggle about a bit, do some bleeding and then die’.
although the story was very amusing and the whole sordid episode must have happened about fifty feet from my kitchen window, i had missed it because i was at that time in tesco’s carpark laughing at the blog of mr huai bin of malaysialand.
but i can’t help feeling that the neighbourhood is going to the dogs.
stats stats: nil stats
dear reader, do have a look at the sixth seal site. it really is a good laugh.
I KNOW YOU
if, like me, you spend your life running scared, the words up there are not words you want to hear. they mean trouble. they mean that you have been rumbled. they mean that whatever it is you have been doing is about to come crashing down around your ears.
last night i was camouflaging a tupperware box so that i could plant it as a cache. the paint went a bit runny but i didn’t really mind. i had the spot all planned out - one of my favouritest places in the land opposite john donne’s summerhouse and close by the side of my beloved wey navigation.
here are the details:
park up by the anchor at pyrford, surrey at N51.19.377 and W000.29.392 and walk half a mile, or…
park up at the ruins of newark priory at N51.18.254 and W000.30.581 and have a much nicer walk of just under a mile.
the cache is at: N51.18.830 and W000.29.487
just opposite the beautiful summerhouse there is an anglers’ track and the cache is under a tree, just to the left, about 12 foot away from the towpath.
i planted my cache but i could see a national trust nazi boat just a little further upstream and i could smell the burning wood. the national trust own the whole navigation and i don’t trust them at all. apart from spoiling my plans for a narrowboat way of life they have also made claremont lake too expensive for me to get into. i wondered if them national trust fellers would spoil my nice new cache, or burn it, so when i walked past on the way to get co-ords for the carpark at newark priory i asked them if they were just tidying up or something. and then i heard the dreaded words.
i know you.
i nearly shit myself. there were three blokes and a couple of dogs doing a bit of land work and setting things on fire and looking generally how i actually want to look. and one of them, not the one i had asked, said ‘i know you’.
it was lex. a man i hadn’t seen for at least six years since we worked together at american express. for fu(’scuse me, doorbell) sake! how does that work? there i am trying to mind my own business and then i bump into a bloke i used to work with years and years ago and he’s doing the very job i want. he’s a lengthsman on the wey navigation now and we spoke of this and that and swapped e-mail addresses. i told him about geocaching and showed him the cache that i had just set. he said that they would not burn it. not this year anyway.
i was gobsmacked - in fact i still am. i sent him links to simonG.org and to my blogsite when i got in. if my dreams come true he might become a regular and maybe a geocacher.
a nice bloke at newark bridge let trouty use his loo because the seven stars wasn’t open. we walked back and saw lex’s boat moored up at walsham gates, the only turf-sided lock on the wey. i could smell the weir. when river water gets aerated it has a special smell that takes me back so many years.
on the way home we called in at the anchor and at the plough in byfleet village. we must have walked at least eleven miles, probably more.
i’m still stunned by happenstance.
grub stats: cold salmon off the cheap shelf with cous cous and red-wine mushrooms
booze stats: erm, i’ll take the fifth on that one
happiness stats: extremely high
when my cache gets approved i’ll be even happier.
goodnight, dear reader, wherever you are. but wherever you are, make sure you get down the wey navigation a.s.a.p. - before lex sets my cache (weyside wander) on fire.
YOU F****** C(’scuse me, doorbell)
anyway, as i was about to say before i was interrupted, i spent a good part of today in a very sweary pub. the very rudest of swears are common parlance there. and i think that this is a good thing.
there are some snobby people around who think that having a right old ‘lord mayor’ up is an indication of a limited vocabulary; but they are, in my opinion, wrong.
i like to think that i have a fair vocabulary; nothing to brag about but of a reasonable size. words of more than one, two or even three syllables are at my command but nothing fits the bill like a good old swear. swears are the oldest words in any tongue; when man first dropped a big stone on his toe while trying to hack a lampshade out of it for his missus, what do you think he said?
i really love swearing. there is no word that i will not say in moments of grief or exasperation. and when i do kick off, anyone who thinks i have a limited vocabulary can have a good listen and then they can shove it right up their fu(’scuse me, someone at the door again).
where was i? oh yes. i was at the sweary pub swigging cider with john. john has been fighting for custody rights of a lurcher but he took my advice and said he would hand it back when all the vet’s bills had been settled. so now john gets to keep megan (a.k.a. munchkin) and i said that i would take her out rabbitting when he is at work. don’t look at me like that. that’s what lurchers do and if you don’t like it you can go and live in islington where ostrich steaks come in plastic packs.
i want a little dog but it would not be fair of me to keep one until we get the boat. a cross between a schnauzer and a jack russell would be ideal so that i could go ratting with vodka mick. but that idea will have to be on hold until i can provide for my faithful little dog properly.
what a lovely day, weatherwise. shame that i blew it by snoozing and sweary pubbing but that’s my life and i really have no choice. but i feel good, and all because of yesterday. yesterday i went to check where i will place my second cache. ‘weyside wander’ and found a tasty spot. as i was walking the towpath a narrowboat came through and i recognised it; it was a boat that i had shared papercourt lock with last year when one of their crew had opened a gate paddle and given my boat a noseful of water. when we got back to pyrford lock they were mucking about trying to get through - same bloke at the helm. they had opened both gates and i really had to laugh when i saw the helmsman trying to get through from the pound. thanks to my experience of the kennet and avon i can do single-locking and can get a boat through ONE lock gate with about two inches on each side to spare. i really am that good.
but we helped them through the lock and had a chat and that all about boaty stuff and moorings.
tonight trouty had found some very old humbrol paints and i used them to camouflage my new cache box. it’s getting planted tomorrow even if the rain pisses down. you might call that swearing, but i don’t care.
stats: well you don’t care so why should i bother?
groovy sounds: joni mitchell
i missed out the possesive apostrophe when i mentioned john donne’s summerhouse. dear reader, can you find it in your flinty heart to forgive me?
sleep well.
WHATEVER WAS I DRINKING* OF? (or THE DEMISE OF THE ANTIPARTY)
the antiparty is dead, long live the sleep-over!
it seemed like such a good idea at the time, but after several litres of cider sometimes things do. until i wake up.
the nearby telephone kiosk has more roomification than my flat and i know that those invitees of more sensitive and discerning natures than senor omally would not all like to be lumped into my bachelor pad and have to sleep on the hard and unforgiving floor.
my flat is rubbish. i have two chairs and not even a table. i have no spare room or bed. when that most excellent fellow, the merman, comes to stay again he will know what to expect (e.d.a. 25th) and he will bring his bed and folding chair with him like he did before. what i’m trying to say is that geocaching/simong chums can make use of the unyielding floor, even the execrable hutters is welcome. but only one or two at a time, eh? sorry for my enswiggified over-enthusiasm.
i went along the towpath today, kicking ducks out my way and spitting in joggers’ faces. i wanted to see the boats at pyrford marina. what a shame that i failed to win the lottery at the weekend; the mooring fees at pyrford basin are 48 quids a year plus VAT. ‘what’s that?’ i seem to hear you say, ’surely that seems reasonable, you skinflint?’
very reasonable indeed if your boat is one foot long because you pay by the foot. a decent-sized narrowboat is at least 55′ and a full-size one is 70′. all of a sudden the reasonableness evaporates and a sour taste is left in the mouth. these are not residential moorings either, they are just parking fees. so bollocks to rich people.
after a restorative swig at ‘the anchor’ we went in search of my new cache-hiding location which will be opposite john donnes utterly groovy summerhouse at pyrford place and found a belter. this time i shall go to kingston to buy an ammo-box to put it in to save sniffy comments from haters of black plastic bin liners like what i put my last one in.
then back to byfleet village to buy araldite to mendify trouty’s shopping trolley. we saw a handsome beetle and wabbits and crows and fed ducks. unfortunately i did not feed the ducks to myself. and then to tesco for enfagandswiggification purchases. and then home.
on BBC7 i heard a ‘goon show’ that was first broadcast in 1954 (fifty bloody years ago) and the first ever radio version episode of dad’s army. i laughed. i laughed a lot.
grub stats: a massive fry-up featuring an all-star cast of messrs bacon and egg, sossidge, black pud, mushrooms, grilled garlic and toms and a special guest appearance from toast.
sounds stats: kevin coyne, sigur ros, walter trout.
swig stats: a pint at lunchtime and i’m struggling manfully with the plastic-bottled stuff.
if you need to kip here for any particular reason, do get in touch. the door is always open for nice people. after a hard day’s geocachery, what could be more soothing than me tootling a gentle lullaby for you on the saxomastraw.
and let the thought of that, dear reader, sprinkle the sandman’s magic dust into your eyes. goodnight.
* in this instance, the word ‘drinking’ is a juicy and appropriate conjunction of the words ‘dreaming’ and ‘thinking’.
DON’T HAVE A BAD DAY - STAY INDOORS INSTEAD
there is a lot to be said for stayingindoorsification. for a start the weather is better and you don’t have to wear a hat and scarf and gloves; although that was not strictly true of some of the slums in which i have lived.
outside is not a thing that i have experienced today. i just let my electronic tentacles spread out across the world and soaked everything up from the comfort of my armchair. if you don’t have to go out when the weather is grotty it’s a grand feeling.
my oldest friend ever, lordhutton, found a cache today without using a GPS. this is good news because if anyone was meant to geocache it is him. he travels the country in his rubbish car causing death and carnage in his wake and any hobby that means he gets out of his WMD to look under shrubbery can only be a good thing. he bought a garmin eTrex off of eBay today but he wouldn’t say how much for. oh well, while he is scrabbling around for tupperware boxes the rest of us will be safer crossing the road.
another thing what he done, right, is he opened a blog page. quite how he done it i’m not sure because he is even less technermological than i. if i ever understand how to enlinkify i will but until then you will just have to ask him y’selves.
another good thing was the appearance of ‘katie from york’ in the utterly fab chatroom at simonG.org. poor katie could only speak in txt which was a shame because she was welcomed into the room. because i am a nasty piece of work it was to my great delight that i saw the room turn on katie like a pack of highly intelligent hyenas. the chatroom has unspoken rules and katie transgressed all of them in about two seconds. the most excellent paulV discussed this in his blog the other day when a rude amerikalander called pramwheel failed to pass the chatroom test. there’s something just kicks off in me when offences of this nature are committed. come on you white corpuscles! there’s a germ!
i’m going to have an antiparty. now, i just have a crappy little flat but i thought it might be an idea for people that i trust who are of a geocaching/simong nature to take advantage of my floorspace to get together and perhaps go out and do some of the local ones (perhaps even the one that i set, ‘narnian gateway’) and then meet up in the pub for general whimsicallity and humour. i’m thinking fri/sat/sun come and go as you please kind of a thing. let me know what you think.
oh, my idea of an antiparty is no dancing or sillybollocks party stuff. it’s just an offer of a bit of floor for likeminded individuals. bring your own everything.
sorry about my rant yesterday. i love being emulated but not being copied. there is one particular person who is copying me and i don’t like it. get yer own style mate and my apologies to anyone who felt that they were caught in the flak.
grub stats: haddock AND cod with boiled new pots and spinach
music stats: lemon jelly and etta james again
book stat: ’starter for ten’ by david nicholls
swig ‘n’ fag stats: well, what do you think?
if you have to go to w**k tomorrow i feel deeply sorry for you. but one day, dear reader, you won’t have to any more. think about it.
WILL THE REAL HENRY THE THIRST PLEASE STAND UP?
i am.
but i’ll sit down again so that i can type.
i find the blogswopperficationisialality that has been going on around these parts rather disturbing. in a weird way, i found myself not wanting to read these blogs because they were of such an ‘other’ nature. i could no longer trust them. the blogs that i do read regularly allow me to reach out and touch the writer and feel for them. but the enswopperfication i find rather horrid. it’s like (and i won’t mention the word because i don’t want to attract unsavoury interest) pretending that they like ponies and westlife in order to….
do you see what i mean? i am rather grudging with my trust and i can’t bear things being mucked about with. all i ever want is to be left alone and for things to stay the same so that i know how to deal with them. it’s because i’m ill.
in a similar vein, i would like to sincerely thank the 13 people who sent me lovely messages yesterday regarding the yet another disruption in my life. some of these comments made me cry, some made me smile, yet all of them touched my heart so deeply and i was so grateful to feel the warmth and love that fell out of the screen and washed over me. my friends, i doff my trilby in all of your directions.
feeling much better, although having stayed up ’til 6 in the morning with a knot of barbed wire in my stomach, i rose after 4 hours sleep and went geocaching. this new thing is so excellent that i can’t stop going on about it; it gives me a reason to get up, a reason to get my fat arse out the door and muck about like i used to when i was a boy. this time of year, with all everything going mad in celebration of the new year, is fantastic and now i have a real reason to get out and smell the flowers. i see so many things, from mosses to birds and insects to animals. so, yet again i doff my trilby to the donor who must remain anonymous and thank that person for making life worthwhile. if you haven’t got a GPS, please go and get one. perhaps it will change your life like it has mine.
on the subject of swoppification there is something that i would like to say; please don’t think too badly of me though…
this sounds so bad but i have to say it. ahem. i have noticed that some of my stylistermifacations have infected this blogring and the hallowed and sacred turf of simong’s site. trouty says that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and she is right. but i feel that i have been swoppified sometimes. so, that particular person, please stop doing it. i know it sounds awful but it just does something inside of me that makes me feel as if my life is being stolen. i’m really sorry, but i don’t have much, please let me keep the things that i do have, eh?
grand day out - except it involved staines (shut up, all of you).
we went geocaching at ‘penton hook island’ and found our twelfth cache. it is such a lovely place and i would never have gone there otherwise. but staines does have a wetherspoons and the trains worked ok. geoff, the ticket bloke, said it’s because south west trains are shitting themselves. so that’s good too.
sorry to moan and thank you all for your comments. i’ll sleep well now.
swig stats: one is too many and a hundred never enough
sounds stats: classic comedy on radio7 followed by tom waits. ‘martha’ and ‘grapefruit moon’ in partic. if you don’t know about tom then you should
grub stats: lemon chicken cous cous. extremely yum.
fag stats: fags? what fags? i don’t even like marlboro red
XXX
h.
FEAR AND LOATHING IN NEW HAW
i get housing benefit. there, i’ve said it now. it fills me with shame to admit it because i am a middle-class boy; yet i would say, in mitigation, that i have never claimed benefit until last christmas. but i’m entitled to it, so i’m claiming it.
when i say that i get housing benefit i mean, of course, that my landlord gets my housing benefit. i never see a penny of it. like all housing costs it is wildly inflated, and all to line the pockets of the buy-to-let merchants (like our unbeloved mr bliar).
this morning i got a phone call from my landlord. he was going to have me evicted. he was going to have me evicted from my home because the council had not sent him loads of money. i did not want to be evicted and i felt the cold knot of fear tightening in my stomach. he said that the council lining his pockets was my responsibilty. i did not mention his responsibilties; the kitchen tap that has never worked properly, the mandatory CO testing of the gas appliances that should be certificated annually, the faulty electrics. i kept quiet because i was scared. scared and vulnerable. because i did not want to come home from tesco and find the locks changed and my pathetic belongings outside in the rain.
the civic offices are in addlestone. this sorry place is quite a long walk from where i live; i know this because i haven’t got a car and public transport around here is arse so i have had to walk there quite a few times in order to facilitate the enlineification of the landlordly pockets. but i did not want to be evicted so i walked there again. right into a brick wall of incompetence.
it transpired that the impoverished landlord has not been able to buy a golden wheelbarrow to carry his rubies around in because someone at the council had been sending all that money to the wrong address. no one would help me. it was obvious that, as it was friday, like all good local government officers they all wanted to go home at lunchtime. i told them that i was going to be evicted but nobody helped me at all. but, to be fair, they did offer some fairly sincere apologies.
being on benefit is not funny. i get less a week than some people spend on keeping a dog but the landlord doesn’t go short. oh no. yet it is me who has to waste money on phone calls and traipse back and forth in the pouring rain getting all the bits and pieces of paper that they demand to see and then someone there makes such a cock-up that i am threatened with eviction. my flat isn’t up to much (ask merman) but it is quiet and safe and, do you know?, i just can’t cope with things that grown-up people are supposed to be able to cope with. i’m ill. i might not look it, but i am.
i walked back from addlestone and got bread from the shop. they also sell swig but i only bought two cans. some canal therapy was called for so i walked the rest of the way along the towpath and fed bread to the ducks.
and all the while, the icy knot of fear twisted in my guts.
grub stats: home-made bag spol
stats stats: sick of stats
hatred of people that make money out of other people stats: extreme
ho hum, dear reader, ho hum.
YES, YOU’RE ALL RIGHT - I’M ALL WRONG
or so it seems.
after yesterday’s ordeal by minimal swiggitude and hardly any faggitudinalness, i felt that i deserved an earlyish night. so i had one.
wot a surprise!; after a very odd dream (oh, shut up), i got up really early and managed to catch the 09:21 ‘peterbus’ to st peter’s hospital in chertsey. well, i say the 09:21 but what i mean is the about 09:30ish because it was late. but there you go.
before i went out i had ‘¼X3′ (technermological, but i can’t find the code for 3/4) of a mug of tea, which is quite unheard of. i got on the peterbus which is like an orange ’sunshine bus’ with elderly, poverty-stricken cripples on and spent a million pounds to go to quite near a geocache. at the hospital i went to the cafermateria and had not only a cheese toastie but yet another cup of tea. what is happening to me? i never eat before 19:30 and never, ever drink anything but swig. my world is turned upside-down.
the walk to the geocache (homewood bound) was simply not far enough; a measly half a mile. but never mind. we found the box, which was well hidden, but saw that there has been forestry and clearing works going on very near the cache - so that has been reported, in case it gets disappearified in the near future. hutters will be pleased to know that this cache is in the grounds of ‘botleys park’; a local loony-bin at one time and the reason behind school chants of ‘you botley bum chum… etc…’.
we walked home via a stop at ‘the otter’ in ottershaw where i had only one pint; what’s wrong with me now? and a walk through the lands of the national vet lab in freezing cold with snowy sleet falling. in fact it was so cold that we had to go to the ‘black prince’ in new haw where, yet again, i only had one pint. weird.
after buying swig from comical julie in threshers we walked back along the towpaths of the basingstoke canal and wey navigation. i didn’t see my swans but i did see a plant that i wanted to know about so i memorised it using the power of my short-term memory (guaranteed faulty).
when we got in, the central heating got whacked up to max and a bit of swigging commenced. later, i cooked dinner while trouty did on-line quizzes.
what a happy day.
fag stats: 11
grub stats: chicken drumsticks (less than 1pees each from tesco), roast tooties, purple sprouting brocollies, ultra-spesh lemon gravy.
swig stats: 2 pints, 1 tin ‘white lightning’, 4 litres of vile muck.
oh, and flower stat: it was coltsfoot. you thought i forgot, didn’t you?
gernight, dear reader.
YEAH, WHAT THEY SAID
today is ‘not smoking day’ or something like that. i seem to have converted this to ‘only smoked 4.5 fags so far today day’. a moderate success then.
i don’t like smoking; i’ve said so before and i’ll say it again. all goes swimmingly well until the swigging starts and then, by some weird chemical thing, i need to smoke a fag. well, i don’t actually NEED to, but i don’t half WANT to.
as a direct result of some things that have been said to me and pointed in my direction in recent days, i was today the very picture of moderation when i visited messrs tesco. i bought very little swig indeed and no fags at all (but i did still have eight left at home). the advice from my GP says that i shouldn’t just stop drinking as i might have an alcoholic fit unless i am detoxed properly and under medical supervision. but he did suggest that it might be an idea to cut down a bit. so today i bought a third less in terms of quantity, and weaker stuff to boot, and tried not to feel too bad when my attempt at a fag-free day crashed and burned during my first pint of swig.
i was very touched by the comments that have been made. there are more than a few issues which i have not explained as yet but i know that people care about me and i will try, while i feel i can, to respond appropriately and to report back on my progress. or lack of it.
weather permitting, i will geocache tomorrow. i shall wake up early and feeling great*, due to my abstemiousness, and set off to tackle ‘homewood bound’ in ottershaw. there doesn’t appear to be a pub near there on my rather rubbish map. oh nads.
swig stats: a measly 3 litres of weak pi (’scuse me, doorbell)
fag stats: 5 thus far today
grub stats: haggis, mashed neeps and carrots, boiled new potatoes, roast parsnips, roast green chilli and roast garlic bulb. - so yum, yummity, yum.
fave tune of the evening: ‘day after day’ by badfinger
until tomorrow, dear reader; god (who doesn’t exist) willing.
*this may prove to be untrue
SAME AGAIN, PLEASE…
i do a lot of ’same again, please’ behaviour. mostly this is conducted in close proximity to cider, but i notice that this extends into other parts of my life.
music is an example. i play the same thing to death and then don’t play it again for months or years. i’m not like one of these mad people that gets the sling from their council flat for playing cliff or jim reeves over and over and over and over again. because i play it quietly, that’s why.
food is another example. if you are a bit poor you sometimes wind up with a bit of a glut of whatever might’ve be on spesh whenever you raided the shop. this means i might eat haggis and tatties and bashed neeps for four nights on the bounce and think nothing of it. then it might be a repetition of fresh sardines or stew made by emptying tins of ’stuff’ into a saucepan.
not much of my addictive behaviour has been of a positive nature. i did stop biting my nails because i was fed up with sitting on the tube opposite a lovely young lass and having to sit with my hands woven together with my bitten nails all hidden against the palms, and i did run for a bit. at one time i could run all the way around richmond park without stopping. kingston hill gate, kingston gate, ham gate (keep going, you bastard), richmond hill gate (just keep going), robin hood gate (choke, choke), and then back to where i’d left the car.
what is it with addicted, obsessive, compulsive behaviour? why can’t i be obsessed with mineral water and fruit and veg and early nights and being kind and thoughtful and all charitable works and that kind of stuff? well, don’t ask me; i didn’t make the rules.
and now there is geocaching. if i could stay up all night geocaching then i would but i haven’t got a car so i have to rely on the lovely people at south west trains to get me around. enough said; i have to take my new obsession slowly. today i found my tenth cache (woo hoo!) and i’ve already placed one.
i wonder if i’ll ever get readdicted to running again. i wonder.
music stats: little charlie and the nightcats
grub stats: omelette thing. not too bad really, even though i say so myself
swig stats: not all that much and it’s nearly all gone. an earlyish night beckons
what i forgot to blog yesterday stat:
R.I.P. Richard Brautigan. Author and Poet. 1935 - 1984. Thanks for the books.
WAVING FROM THE WRONG SIDE OF THE RIVER
sometimes i think that all this drinking is not so much fun. i wonder why i do it when i realise that i could stop and i could get out of bed and i could go out and i could actually DO things instead of thinking about doing things.
apart from swigging, i spent a fair bit of today thinking about richard brautigan. i remembered reading ‘a confederate general from big sur’. as i cooked the rainbow trout for dinner i thought about ‘trout fishing in america’. i remembered my copy of ‘the pill versus the springhill mine disaster’ and i wondered where all those books are now. things get lost along the way. i suppose i’m one of those things.
richard brautigan shot himself in the head and was found, weeks later, next to a bottle of whiskey. this really should tell me something. i’m not stupid after all. alcoholism is clearly neither big nor clever, but i really do wonder what else there is. i gravitate to the works of men who enjoy a bit of a swig; i understand everything that they say as if i were reading my own diary and then i look up from the page and find that i’m on the other side of the river to everyone else.
it’s just as pretty on this bank. the company is a tad odder though. but that’s what happens when you get lost. like all them books and things.
music stats: right now, john martyn doing ‘lay it all down’.
grub stats: grilled rainbow trout with new pots and green beans and purple sprouting broccoli.
fag stats: a few. i don’t even like smoking, i don’t know why i bother. it’s even more stupid than drinking loads of swig.
swig stats: ahem, more than is probably sensible.
ho hum.
tomorrow i might try to get back on the other bank; the towpath side. but in the meantime, dear reader, here come the kinks to play ‘days’, just for me.
i was so tempted to write this in a bukowski way, it’s not true.
but i won’t.
some really good things happened today. i had a lovely lie-in and got up at twelve or so. compluterisational activities with nothing on were undertaken and then it was time to go to tesco for supplies of cider. we spent 3 pints worth of time talking to john in the pub. his favourite words are ‘mooching’ and ‘bosh’. talking to mad people, like myself, in public houses has always been one of my favourite things. i wouldn’t post it as such on simonG.org but i sure do like it.
the next good thing was that i saw a dreadful photograph of me has been selected for this week’s caption competition at simonG.org.
and the best things were that first of all, omally took the time to go to haslemere and find the cache that i had placed and that, secondly, the marvellous people at geocaching.com, after a bit of wriggling, approved and published my cache.
so cheersh and hoorah, you’re all my besht mates, you are.
swig stats: about 4 litres of cider plus 3 pints up the pub.
grub stats: lamb shank with veg
easy listening stats: loads of dionne warwick
sweet dreams, dear readers, sweet dreams…
h.
Posted
NOT HANK
the other day i mentioned the effect that the author, charles bukowski, had had upon me. after some agreeable comments i googled him up (all my books of his have been lost or stolen) and i read his poem ‘confession’. and i cried.
i remember reading something that was either by him, or about him, and it said that every word was like a punch in the face. that’s the way i want to write.
so how come that ugly old drunk got away with it? what on earth did he have inside of him that can reach into me, me of all people, and rip my heart out and stamp on it and make me cry?
i was talking to trouty about the films that make me cry. i said that ‘yangtse incident’ was a good one for that. destroyers make a weird call that goes ‘woop woop’ and they are the only ships that do it. when i was a teeny boy we used to holiday in norfolk and we could hear the ships out on the north sea. my dad used to tell me, when we heard the ‘woop woop’, ‘that’s a destroyer’. so that registered with me and must have lodged in my sentimental banks. and when i see the film and the destroyer, HMS amethyst, gets away and goes ‘woop woop’, i cry. i can’t help it.
so there are songs and films that make me cry but nothing ever touches me like the works of charles bukowski. it might be a mind-set thing; if you despise his life-style then you might write it off as mawkish, but if you feel like he might have done, like i do, then it goes straight into you and you can’t escape.
he was so brutal and so gentle. a ‘beat-poet’ who just wrote as he wanted and was never scared. he took everything and never backed down. now why can’t i do that?
so here’s to you, hank chinaski, i’m having a swig for you.
your friend,
h.
CACHE IN!
there is a new cache in the haslemere area. very handy for the ‘temple of the four winds’ and ‘nautical connection’ and the one at devil’s punchbowl.
i have logged it but i cant wait so here are the details:-
the cache is a tupperware box containing: play clay, coloured pencils, water bomb balloons, batteries, can opener, plasters, tissues, decorative butterfly and easter chick (called ‘peep peep’), bubbles thing, ginger beer, hologram tape, 2 saxomastraws and the log and pens stuff.
the cache is at: N51.06.672 and W000.42.439.
find the narnian gateway at: N51.06.673 and W000.42.485 and sight the direction by putting your back to the iron post. look through the scrolled ironwork and you will go in the right direction. about 60 or 70 paces away you should see a falling tree with a black plastic tag on it. the cache is at the roots end.
park at the bottom of bunch lane and walk or park at the top of bunch lane (N51.05.217 and W000.43.586) and walk a bit less and miss out on the most beautiful place in the world.
i think i’ll leave it there for the time being.
i am SO happy.
EXTREME EXCITEMENT
here’s a question. would you like to spend six quid doing battle with south west trains? would you like to do that in order to leave a crisp tenner’s worth of your own stuff lying around for anyone to find?
i went to the barber’s today. i asked for a hell’s angel look. i wanted what little hair remains on my head to be cropped really short and for my beard to be made less ‘brian blessed’ and more ‘brian evil’. and that’s what i got. while i was in the barber’s, glynn from the office shop came in. i asked him if his laminator was working because i wanted to have laminated an important sheet of info to go in my geocache. he said it was working but that he wouldn’t be there until monday and he doubted whether anyone in the shop knew where the laminator was, let alone how to work it.
how stupid of me. i had forgotten to bring the two copies of the info sheet that i had wanted laminated, so i went to the library and logged-on up there and got another copy. i met up with trouty and then we went to the office shop and asked for it to be laminated. ‘i’m very sorry’, said dave from the office shop, ‘if only you had been here a half hour earlier, the other bloke took the laminator home because he had some laminating to do at home. i can do it for you for monday’.
have you ever heard a more shite excuse for ‘i’m thick and i don’t know how it works’?
anyway, i was still so excited about tomorrow that i went to the post office and bought bits and bobs and then we went to the pub. i had 3 pints of cider and laughed to myself when i saw scoopy from the kebab shop. he was living up to his muslim doo-dahs by sitting on a stool in front of the fruit machine and drinking beer.
i went to the offy and bought some frosty jack and strongbow and fags and then we went home.
on the towpath there was a council van parked with two skivers sitting in the cab. there were my two lovely swans there too and so i fed them where these blokes could see me doing it. i could imagine the conversation in the cab: ‘god, look at that moron, etc… those things can bust your nose with one wing etc…’
when i feed swans i usually pull up grass for them to eat (they really like that) but today i had some left over duck-feeding bread. they take food from my hand and it makes me feel so great when they do. you can feel the beak on your hand when they take whatever it is, but if you keep your bottle you won’t get hurt. they hiss and flap and sometimes do a little noise but then i remind them that they are supposed to be mute and tell them to shut up. i’ve never had a problem with swans, ever, but they look really hard and a lot of people are scared of them. that cob is a really big bastard when he’s out on the bank; i hope the council skivers were impressed by my jack hargreaves style country ways.
i’ve finished my geocache now and i am SO looking forward to going back to haslemere to stash it tomorrow. i will have to log it with geocache.com and see if it gets approved but i will post the co-ords here as soon as i can.
i’m so excited i could squeak
swig stats: swigtastic, and now i’m on the white cider
fag stats: 10 thus far
grub stats: fishcake with added cheese and bacon, aunt bessie roast spuds and yorkshire pud, plus my own special lemon gravy what i invented tonight and was very nice.
sweet dreams, dear readers.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE SECOND POST?
it goes against the grain to blog twice in a day. sometimes exceptional circumstances dictate though. for example, you might swig too much (is that possible?) and forget what day it is, or you might have your site explodified and need to keep readers up to date.
or you might feel as i do right now.
it’s 3 in the morning and i have my ‘charles bukowski’ hat on.
the late charles bukowski was a fascinating man. poet, author and very ugly. when i was young he meant a great deal to me. he reached into my heart and told me that there was no need to do as i was told, that all i had to do was what i wanted and to suffer the consequences nobly and without regret. he realised the consequences of this kind of life and never shirked from telling all the horror of it; yet compared it with the freedom that it brought with it.
he called himself (in his novels) henry ‘hank’ chinaski. and now i call myself henry too and all because of charles bukowski.
all my bukowski books have been stolen or lost along the way. everything has really gone missing in my alcoholic life because that’s the way of these things. charles taught me that. all the people that i admired in my life have been people of intelligence; it gets me going you see, when you can have wit and conversation and scrabble into the back of your mind for a word or a phrase or something that makes thought worthwhile.
but bukowski taught me to love my fellow men and workers also. he taught me to despise the rubbish in between.
because i am so horridly middle-class i lack the iron in the soul that makes people great. yet i cannot give up. i truly can not.
i will find a life for me somewhere and i don’t care who knows about it. this is a blog and i have to declare my intention.
when i go to my grave do i want ‘he was a senior rep at american express’ written on my headstone? - no, i want ‘he loved to laugh’
whatever happens, i HAVE to remember these things. repeat after me; i must have faith in myself, just like charles bukowski did.
R.I.P. charles bukowski 1920 - 1994
i suppose i should apologise for wasting your time. but i won’t.
(this blog is sponsored by the ‘drink loads of cider campaign’)
OH SH( scuse me, doorbell)
today was the day for a walk to west byfleet to return my ‘uncle’ books to the library. the vast bulk of this walk is, of course, myself. no, i don’t mean that, i mean ‘along the towpath of the basingstoke canal’ and very pretty it is too.
at this point i should declare that i have male-pattern-baldness syndrome.
at west byfleet trouty bought a dressed crab from the rather traditional fishmonger. 3.50 quids.
i took my library books back and paid my debt to society to the tune of 12 pees fine, and then i got cracking with the main reason for my visit to west byfleet; buying things from woolworths to help me build my geocache. there was very little that i wanted; what a rubbish shop, and then, when i went to pay, using a woolies voucher that i had found on the floor in argos they asked where the other bit was. the other bit was on my floor at home where i had left it thinking it unimportant. so that was the very first GRRRR of the day.
after an important offy-stop for cider we set off back to the canal just in time to encounter about 120 scummy yobs coming the other way and shouting and shrieking and kicking each other. the quieter ones were those enjoying a contemplative post-school cigarette so that just goes to show that smoking IS both big AND clever.
we walked back along the towpath and admired nature getting cracking. the ducks are all getting paired up and the swans are back where they nested last year. as i strolled under the overhanging trees i was introduced to a bird that i did not like so much though.
with a comedy SPLAT effect onto my balding bonce, a bird deposited a greenish-brown shite. i did the oliver hardy face again.
but i had to admit to myself that the sound of splat-down was rather amusing.
swig stats: 3 litres of tesco cider with 4 litres in the fridge as a soothing safety-net reserve.
grub stats: trouty tackled a plate the size of a dustbin lid that was piled high with the sweet, sweet crab salad that she craves. i, however, enjoyed a more modest curry.
in these difficult times, dear readers, i would like to ask for a moment’s silence in respect for the late simonG.org. i would much rather have a vulture shit on my head again rather than have my life’s work explode and fall down around me in a settling dust of glittering megagigabits and electricalbobs. good luck simon; i shall do my chant of mendification for you. trouty says that having a bird crap on your head (STEADY!) means good luck. perhaps you could sleep in a chicken coop for the next couple of nights?
DOMESTIC TECHNERMOLOGY vs. MYSELF
i do like to stream radio4 from the BBC website. the ‘listen again’ feature is very handy as it means i can listen to plays that i have missed and listen to them when I WANT TO. the only unfortunate aspect of this most admirable of features is that you can’t fast-forward or back. you listen to it from the beginning and, although you may pause it, you can’t go directly to the part of the programme that you might want. it’s all or nothing.
in common with many other people i have an electric meter that works with a key. the idea behind this is that i walk to byfleet village and give the man in the shop some money. he then rubs electricity into my key in a technermological way and i take it home, carrying it upright all the way, careful not to spill a single amp. then i pour all the amps into my meter and the meter licks its lips, burps, and tells me how rich i am in electrical terms. the last time that i looked at the meter i was electrically rich to the tune of 25 pees. i meant to get some more but i don’t like walking all the way to byfleet village unless i have to. well, i know that i HAD to, but i thought that you got a sort of credit-zone buffer thing of 5 quids to save you getting cut off.
i wonder if anyone can guess where this is going yet?
today i had a VERY COMPLICATED FORM to complete for the deptartment of work and pensions. it is difficult for me to fill in any forms without being rude and so i decided to listen to a 45 minute play to sooth my nerves while i chewed the end of my pen and tried not to be rude. about 37 minutes into the play my compluter shut down. i was just about to give it a good hiding when i remembered the meter.
you know that look of suffering that oliver hardy makes, to camera, when he has been pushed off a step-ladder by stan laurel and then a brick drops onto his head?
that’s the face that i made.
i went to buy some more electrickery before the freezer went into meltdown and when i eventually got home again i thought that i would finish listening to the play to find out what happened in the end. so i had to listen to 37 minutes of play again because i didn’t know how much i had missed and then i heard the end and it wasn’t very good.
so i made the oliver hardy face again and got on with my form.
today’s best things: swigging and buying a tupperware box for my cache. it cost 1.17 quids from messrs tesco. now that’s value.
THE VERY LOVELIEST OF DAYS
at the arse-end of the seventies i worked for a charity based in haslemere, surrey.
i worked in a walled garden, growing organic veg and fruit for the main house where all the kids lived. my home was in a little cottage where the deer used to sniff round in the garden in the mornings. it was a paradise on earth.
today, i went back.
i now go geocaching and saw that there were two finds in haslemere that i really wanted to make. from the descriptions on the site i knew exactly where they both were because a quarter of a century ago i used to walk through the woods and passed them by on a regular basis. so today was the day for a trip down memory lane.
for anyone who is interested, we went to haslemere station and walked up bunch lane. the estate that i worked on was at the very top of the lane but it’s now been sold off. by the time we got to coombe head we were in a state of heavenly bliss and i thought it might be an idea to show trouty my ex-home, coombe head cottage. it’s now called bay tree cottage, and has been rebuilt in the main, but it was still recognisable. we snuck up the driveway and had a sneaky look. then we heard the car behind us.
the electric window was wound down and we started the ‘can i help you, are you lost?’ conversation. the current occupant of the cottage and driver of the car was a very nice man. i told him that i had used to live in his house and told him that the dalai lama had stayed at the main house at coombe head. we spoke of the tibetans that used to live there and of the lama, yeshi, who had made a tibetan lion out of snow when i lived there. car/cottage bloke was a really decent geezer and i might well send him a postcard of thanks. then we went to see the walled garden.
it’s always a shame to see somewhere where you have knocked your guts out, grafting, gone to waste. it was all overgrown; all the beds disappeared, the toolshed demolished, everything destroyed. but it was peaceful there at keffolds. silence and then birdsong. the whole of the land coming to life in the spring. blissful peace.
and then we went to look at keffolds, the main house of the estate where i had worked.
a beautiful house in the middle of nowhere. it has been split into three different apartmenty things now and the grounds have been revamped. i looked at it and i was thinking (to myself) ‘well, there’s the room where i shagged liz and there’s the roof where we went up and swigged and watched the shooting stars’. and then we went geocaching, proper.
the paths had grown over. when you make a home for refugees into posh houses for people that only go anywhere in a 4X4, that’s what happens. but i didn’t need to turn the GPS on because i KNEW where i was. i found the-gate-that-has-grown-inside-a-tree again, and it was the first time i had seen it for twenty five years. i was very happy. trouty took a picture. i’m going to put a cache there.
we did our geocaching, found both of them, and then went to the ‘devil’s punchbowl inn’ for swigs for me and grub for trouty. in the menu there are two sheets of local history information. i won’t spoil it but there is the most hysterically funny typo amongst the dreadful punctuation.
then we walked all the way back again. i would urge anyone to try these haslemere caches and when i have planted one at my lovely gate-in-the-middle-of-nowhere there will be three very close together. but take my tip, don’t park up at the devil’s punchbowl. walk up bunch lane, do it the hard way, and take in the sweet air of the elysian fields as you go.
swig stats: 5 litres
grub stats: nothing all day but i have some tesco curry to hand
may your god love and keep you, dear reader,
h.
THIRST OF ALL, A PUBLIC APOLOGY
i wish to apologise for being the cause of strike action by the ‘living dead’ on march 12th and for the disruption that this may cause.
as has been widely reported in the media, twelve corpses have been exhumed from brookwood cemetery, woking, as a result of a large number of empty cider containers having been found near their own tomb.
my regular readers will know that i visited brookwood cemetery the other day. i have to confess that it was i who had hidden these 100 cans near the farringdon tomb.
two were in a bin and the rest were concealed behind a shrubbery while i was having a lie down.
when the sexton discovered these cans he ordered the corpses to be exhumed immediately and put into a wheelie bin instead, and now i learn, to my shame, mr evil crowman of the national union of cadavers (NUC) is calling for a day of ‘zombie action’ on march 12th.
i think the sexton should reinhume the ‘brookwood 12′ before the 250,000 mouldering corpses of brookwood cemetery rise up, with all rotten flesh hanging off and that, and go round going ‘whoooOOOooooOOOhh’.
once again, my apologies.
caching stats: couldn’t be arsed. might go to haslemere tomorrow
swig stats: 6 litres of cider. yum yum.
fag stats: 9 so far today
grub stats: roast pork, brocolocolocollies, aunt bessie roast spuds.
goodnight, dear readers,
h.