THANKS

i’ll be away for a little bit.

(wipes tissue under eye)

but thanks to everyone who sent me those delightful and supportive messages.

music stats: “since i’ve been loving you” by led zep played REALLY loud.

but now i have a canal to watch. not watch like i’m in charge of it. watch like something you seldom see.

talking of “see"; i’ll see some of you on friday.

hoorah!

HEAVY HEART

when i upset people i regret it. when i upset people that i care about i really do care. and feel sorry.

what happens is that because i’m an alcoholic i tend to kick off. most of the time i’m not too bad in the offensive stakes but every now and then i just go mental. i say things that perhaps i shouldn’t and then things go wrong.

i spent a lot of today thinking about the upset i have caused and wondering what to do. my instinctive reaction was to not log-on. life on the tow path is nice and easy and i can always listen to led zep. that kind of thing.

but i suppose it’s time to face up, the horrors of the heaves every day are not very funny for me and certainly not for trouty. oh lawdy, it might be ‘giving up time’.

at AA we often hear “i’m sick and tired of feeling sick and tired” and now i am. i want to keep going and i want to stop. i need to drink but it’s killing me. my mistress, the swig, takes the edge off the day but then does me in by making me horrible.

i’m off to see the doctor on tuesday and i shall ask him something; “please can i be booked into the abraham cowley unit?”

i’m not sure that detox and rehab will work. but it might work better than not doing it at all.

i’ve offended people and for that i am sorry. i’ve swigged a million swigs but i’ve never been barred out of anywhere. all i have ever done is make a complete and utter nuisance of myself. so now i will go and try to see if there really is a different lifeout there.

wish me luck.

trouty yogurt stats: valencia orange
sounds stats: “rock and roll” by led zeppelin

and, on that note, i shall leave you.

good night and sweet dreams.

HEADLINE: BREAKING NEWS AND SHOCK ALLEGATION…

in response to some kind messages i have revived the most poisonous blogsite in the whole world, ever. i wasn’t going to blog again because i upset people that i would never have wished to upset. but i’ve said i’m sorry and i think it was just because i didn’t write what i writted well enough. so i’ll lay off making my little points, at least for a while, and i should think that all right-minded folk know what i’m going on about anyway so i might just as well shut up. it’s not like my blog is going to make an arsehole scratch his head and go “oh yeah, i’m a dimwit and i’ve been wrong all my life".

so i’ll try to shut my cakehole for a bit (difficult) and just talk about other things…

in the pub of ultimate swearification today there were loads of threatening looking skinheads. they were watching footer on the telly. luckily for me i am about of number one size and have a big ol’ beard and all snipped off hair and although i don’t look like a really hard bloke i do look i could do you some damage if pushed and so i tend to get left alone. which is good.

anyway, in this hell-hole environment, i talked to john the bosh. we were talking about catching the crayfish out of the river and this is when the shock allegation was made.

there are alien crayfish here (i won’t mention where they are from) and they are buggering everything up. apparently they are very tasty even though they live in the canal and some are the size of lobsters. i was talking about my plan to catch some to eat and about how much damage they do. they eat all kinds of stuff, all the native crayfish and stuff. they also make holes in the canal banks.

now. let’s wind back a bit. john the bosh fell in a ditch the other day as regular readers will know. when i rescued him he was not able to stand up properly. or, in fact, at all.

here comes the shock allegation: mr the bosh now asserts that him falling in a ditch full of brambles and wanting to sleep the night in it was the fault of alien crayfish. now then, i like the sound of the argument but i can’t believe it’s true. so we have to look at two possible ideas:

alien crayfish undermined the towpath and caused john the bosh to fall into a ditch full of brambles for a strong lie down.

or…

mr the bosh was pissed out of his head and fell over, luckily on the non-watery side, and has the ability to keep a straighter face than peter cook.

whatever - it was fucking funny.

listening stats: paul ross on lbc this morning, he made me laugh.
small faces and tom mcrae

goodnight all and sleep well. apologies again for the upset. let’s put it all behind us, eh?

CLOSED

for the sake of all and to avoid further upset my bloggage is suspended.

i have a right to my opinions but they upset some folks although they don’t ever hurt anyone.

so, my apologies…

goodbye.

UPSET AND REGRET

oh dear. i’ve upset someone and not for the first time.

what happens is that i go down the road of “as ye sow, so shall ye reap” or whatever it is.

and then people get annoyed.

i will always apologise for upsetting people but never for my opinions. in a blog you can say what you want, you might get a reply or two, you have to take the content of them on the chin. if i go round calling people cunts and making a nuisance of myself then i can’t really be too surprised if i get taken out to the carpark and given a good hiding. but if i was a really massive bloke and could do all kung fu and everything then i might be a bit surprised when i got whacked. no one would meet me in the carpark but what would happen is that a stolen car would trawl down one of the roads here and i’d get done in a drive-by. there is a sense of social justice; that’s what i think anyway.

i know that i go on about bush and bliar and i know it’s boring for everyone. but actually it’s important. these people are war criminals and rule our lives.

sorry, sometimes i bore myself but this really IS important.

we might be looking at the end of the world here and i want to buy an AK47 with loads of ammo before it all kicks off. if anyone knows where i can get a kalashnikov please let me know.

apologies for upsets. regrets for any insults that were thought. let’s stick together and, hey there, pass me that tin hat!

music stats: should be “eve of destruction” by barry dooh-dah (mcguire?)
but actually it’s “it might as well rain until september” by carole king. the pizzicato or whatever it’s called at the end is great.

take care.

JUST DROP BY

i saw my brother today and my nephew too, just by dropping by.

dropping by is a thing that some people take for granted and they do it all the time and there was a time when i did some dropping by of my own. but not very many people used to drop by to see me. i was probably usually too pissed or hostile for them to bother after more than once.

it was good to see the bro today and there was a bit of two-way fraternal love thing going on although things have been a wee bit strained between us of late, largely because he’s a recovering alcoholic and i, ahem, am not.

i spoke to my nephew about this and that which i won’t go into and offered him free laughs on the boat any time. my kids can’t be arsed but it would be really great if he felt that he could

JUST DROP BY

music stats: “too much alcohol” by rory gallagher off the irish tour of 1974
it’s a shame rory’s dead. he was really good, taking the stage in a trademark lumberjacky shirt and jeans and with a really smashed up guitar, a fender i think, with nearly all the paint knocked off it. and before he got ill i think he was rather good looking. and then his liver exploded and he went all fat and dead. perhaps i should be paying attention.

open invite:
if you know my number or home address then feel free…
JUST DROP BY.

ACHE II

(not to be continued)

what happened was that john the bosh was here and i got a bit, ahem, enjoyfulled, and that i rather lost track of the spirit of my blog. and then i couldn’t be arsed to finish it off.

today i made an appointment to see my doctor. what a fine doctor he is. he’s the best doctor i’ve ever had. he’s so good that i can’t see him for a week but it’s worth the wait. i want to see him about the ache. the ache travels round a bit but mostly lingers in my knees/lower legs/toes/hands etc. it hurts like hell. i think the news will be bad.

the best thing that i did today was read a recipe book that trouty has had for a million years. it’s called “the daily mirror economy cook book” and dates from 1975. you would be forgiven for thinking it older than that. what a great little paperback! it explained odd cuts of meat that i’m sure you just can’t get any more and how to buy vegetables and fish like pollock.

it is such a fascinating window into a land that is dead and and gone. i sat on my fat arse in the bath and my mind was full of the women who had used this book to bits, women ekeing out the housekeeping making “cheery chicken” or “tripe and tomato stew". who on earth would make “party style cod"? i wondered and i got full up the emotional stuff that i feel when i think about people making an effort. for the same reason i can NOT bear christmas time. when i see people buying presents and looking at things and obviously thinking “oh, little jason would like that” it just does me to bits. i can’t bear it.

i wonder if a middle-manager ever invited his boss back home for a dinner party in the hope of getting a doorway into the golf club or maybe a bit more money? i wonder if his wife ever served the ox heart with cream? how about “smokey surprise” or the rather luxurious sounding “salmon supper”

a great book (use a bayleaf-if you have one) that really spoke to me far more than other books have. the ache continues; i feel it in my toe joints and ankles and my lower legs and my fingers but when i read a book like that i feel another ache, one for another time that is dead and gone. i want to go back there. i was safe then, in the 70’s and it wasn’t like now at all.

although god does not exist and i would not like to capitalise on another’s suffering for the sake of a blog i would like us all to pray for a while:

‘dear lord, can we just stop cutting heads off and blowing people to bits and taking wicked bits of equipment to another side of the world to rain fire down on real, living, people.
please god, if you are real, just make it stop.’

i’ll start to cry in a minute, night all.

ACHE

there is nothing like friendship. john the bosh is right here next to me. right here. next to me. trouty is here doing some fiddling about in the kitchen. so i have nothing to complain about at all.

when i was so confused and wanted to live in a tent and when i was so scared and had no friends at all it was bad news all round.

to be continued…

WOW! THIS MIGHT JUST WORK

i’m fed up with smoking but i still have to do it, especially when i’ve had some swig. which is all the time.

so i hied myself to tesco and bought myself some kind of a plastic fag smoking outfit.

supplied by ‘nicorette’ and, may i say, at great expense (6 quids), you get a little plastic smoky fag thing and six cartridges to put in it. and you get a little plastic boxy thing to keep your faux-smoking accoutrements in.

the plastic fag thing is rather rubbish. i made a better one out of one of those free biros that you get in a charity begging letter junkmail thing. the nicorette one is only about the size of a roll-up in length but has a torpedo style profile. it also has a mouthpiece thing like on a pipe and makes you feel like the penguin out of batman because it is like a fag-holder instead of just a fag.

you have to put the little cartridge in and it lasts about 20 mins apparently. i had that great taste of licking an ashtray only a teensy bit. i wonder if i will be able to get these things prescribed because i don’t have to pay for my scripts as i am diabetic…

…i don’t know. but i’ll give it a go i think. smoking is SO bad for you and if you have diabetes it’s just madness. i wish the plastic fag thing was a bit better but it’s not. but hey ho and off we go.

after all, THIS MIGHT JUST WORK.

KERSPLOSH!!

it was a soaking waiting to happen. i’m afraid captain henry went in today. this may have had something to do with enswiggerfication.

bollocks and arsecakes. was there a mobile phone in my pocket? no, there wasn’t. was there a wallet in my pocket? oh shite, there was! i waded out of the canal and swore mightily. trouty went away and i swore some more.

ho hum. but i saw a grass snake swimming the other day and today i had a refreshing dip. whereas i saw a heron and a fox the other morning, you went to work.

i’m listening to ‘tongue’ by rem at the mo; which i listened to the first time i took lsd. funny how much shorter it is now. i preferred it when i was off my bonce and it lasted about 3 hours.

i won’t bore you with my opinions about the invasion of the h of p. but i will say “ha ha ha".

sleep well.

WHOOPS!

oh dear, i’ve upset everyone. well, not everyone but certainly some.

i wonder if what goes around will come around for me? probably, i’m sure.

i smoke so i’ll get cancer and that’s that but it’s my choice. i’m quite ill with other things that weren’t my choice but there you go. but it is my right to have my nasty opinions and everyone who reads my blog knows that. when i got my compluter i decided to just be me. be myself. say whatever i wanted. i love the opportunity to be open, frank and free. so i will.

if i upset you please don’t take offence because i mean nothing nastily. railing against things is important. let’s all have a go.

WHAT WAS GOOD

when i took the rubbish to the bin this morning i saw a massive sulphur polypore otherwise known as chicken of the woods. after i clocked it i walked back and bumped into daft dave with the dog. i wasted some time with him talking about how his lorry had been set on fire by arsonists and how the insurance claim was not going. then i went and got my lovely bracket fungus. with bacon and onions it tasted so good. i phoned my brother and he’s coming to get some.

it was too windy to sail today so it’s been another day off. i was going to finish painting the boat with creamy paint but there is too much acorns and leaves being blown about.

so that’s that, really.

g’night.

BATMAN BLOKE

i spent today listening to the rain on the roof of the boat. the radio was on and the rain hammered down. there were a couple of interesting items…

the first was about hurricane ivan. now, call me a cynic but i couldn’t help but grin about all this. amerikalanders love to get away with blue murder. but you can’t get away with it forever. amerikalanders love to ride around in massive cars the size of a lorry and whine like fuck when they have to pay more than 2 cents a gallon and they won’t sign the kyoto agreement. the trouble with them is that they will vote the war criminal back in and expect to get away with all this forever - but they can’t.

oooh dear, the oil’s running out. let’s make that an excuse to fight a ‘war’ and go and nick a load of oil from iraq. oooooh dear, they’re fighting back. now what are we going to do? oooooooh dear, now we have over a thousand of our sons and daughters being sent home in a box.

oooch! i bet that hurts. but they won’t let these things be shown on the telly. they can’t afford to. and the war criminal will get back in. so will the war criminal who pretends he runs this country.

let’s have a little think about the disgusting event in russia. terrorists murdered children which, in my opinion, is frankly unforgivable. but think about this, if your country had been invaded and your children gang-raped in front of mothers and fathers and the most vile atrocities had been committed in YOUR country for the last ten years, how would you feel?

what goes round comes round. the poor people of cuba are paying for amerika’s profligate waste but i really do hope that hurricane ivan keeps some in store for the good old us of a. yes, you lot, you just keep burning and wasting and taking what you want and then see how far it gets you. even mother nature hates you now. no matter how many times you rape a country and steal their oil it will run out eventually and then, when the hurricane winds are howling, you will be sorry.

batman bloke on buckingham palace. i wish i had the nuts to do that kind of thing. part of being english is the desire to tear down walls, thumb the nose at the state and to be alive and free in your own country. good luck to batman bloke. i hope he doesn’t get shot.

look around you. wish you were amerikalander? wish you were russian? or, rather, would you rather be, for one funny five minutes,

BATMAN BLOKE

FRIENDS

i wondered what to blog about. but then i knew; the marvel that is friendship.

omally came to stay. we mucked about. we bumped into tony on his boat. we just did all the friendly stuff that friends do.

having friends is the best thing ever, it means that you can muck about, bum fags, talk about music and everything.

when i was little i had a good friend called martin. at that age you do stuff like scrumping and damming streams. nowadays i like to have friends like (insert names here) because they are just so friendly and really groovy.

in the dark days, when life was so black and i felt that i hadn’t a friend in the world, i couldn’t have cared less about friends because i had none. but now i have. i have loads of friends. i have them all over the world even.

what i do is go out to people. when you go out you might get hurt. but i might get hurt anyway. but at least i try. i’m not around here that much now because i’m having fun on the water and making more friends along the way (and the wey) but wherever i go i try to make friends.

before i go back to the boat, let me just say this:
check out “can’t stop the rock” by apollo 440
and stick out your hand - because it costs nowt.
if you hold out your hand to someone it works both ways. the giving and receiving are reciprocal. who is helping who? and who knows, you might just end up the best of all things…

FRIENDS

ALF

along the cut we meet some interesting people. some are ‘good’ and some are ‘twats’ but they are mostly interesting.

the people that we despise are the owners of the ‘yoghurt pots’ that thrash about as if they are towing an invisible water-skier behind them. these plastic boats cost about two bob and cause a lot of grief because the owners haven’t the faintest idea. having a large G&T and a captain hat doesn’t make you into a skipper. it makes you into a knob.

the second class of people that we despise are the private boat owners who, while being able to afford a proper boat - ie. a metal narrowboat - haven’t got the slightest idea of how to handle them. they spend all week being posh and rich and expect scum like us to get out of their way at weekends. they tear about because they can’t slow down and go 200 yards, have a G&T, and then go back again. like a yoghurt potter but with more money.

then you meet the nice people, the people that understand. it’s a subculture. and on the waterway these are the people that i really love.

and then you meet someone like alf.

i’ve no idea how old he is. i would guess at around, oooh, 80 or so. but he’s fittish and he never stops doing things.

i first met alf on the towpath when he was walking his dog, buster, and i started to talk to him. he has a boat that was made by the same company that made mine and it’s moored at the bottom of his garden. i doubt that his boat will ever go anywhere again but he still looks after it, he still maintains the public footpath that goes through his land, he clips the hedges and mows the lawns and looks after all the birds in his aviaries.

alf came out with some tomatoes that he had grown. he showed me how to let myself into his garden so that i could pick the victoria plums from his trees. he said that i could moor up alongside his boat if i was worried about mooring on the towpath side. he said that i could use his sander for when i wanted to paint my boat and when trouty asked him if there was still a laundrette nearby he said there wasn’t; but we could use his washing machine by all means.

i invited him onto the boat for dinner but he said that he had already got his all laid out. he’s virtually stone deaf so it’s not always easy to say what you mean to him. i offered to give him a hand with pumping and covering his boat but he didn’t want a hand. he showed me round his garden. he’s lived there for 52 years.

trouty asked him about his family. he said his wife had died 4 years ago and that he hadn’t known how to work the washing machine. his son lives nearby but he only sees him once a month or so because “he’s so busy with work".

trouty and i looked at each other and after he had gone off with buster we both felt like crying.

so, here’s to you, alf!

thanks ever so for the tomatoes and the plums, for your generosity of spirit.

how odd. one of the kindest men that i will ever meet and all i could give in return was a small bagful of black bullet sweets and some of my time. but i’ve met him a few times now and he knows me and trouty and we know him. i’ll have to work out what to do.

if only everyone in the whole wide world was like

ALF.

UPON TERRORIST ACTIVITY

i need hardly mention what prompts me to write this.

the bbc website had a lot of comments on it. quite a few were of the “my heart goes out…” variety. i’m sorry but i think you should stick your heart back in where it belongs.

terrorists aren’t just nasty little bastards like the ones who attacked me and trouty the other day. oh no, they are people with concerns and these concerns are so deep that they are prepared to kill themselves, and others, even children in defence of these beliefs.

WOAH! HOLD ON THERE!

just before you go away to read something more interesting, please consider this:

let’s just imagine that we live in the west (not everyone does) and we are getting a bit fed up with bombs going off every now and then. it’s not very nice being blown up. why are we getting blown up? i would say it’s because someone is trying to tell us something. what are they telling us?

we, in the west, have a very fixed idea about what is wrong and what is right. we are quite entitled to have these notions. what we do NOT have is the right to bomb the fuck out of other countries and kill women and children or anyone for that matter. but that’s what we have been doing for years and years. and now we start whining and complaining when we get done back. when we moan about terrorist activity we should remember our imperialism. when we kill innocent people (and we do - it’s being done, right now, in YOUR name) we should not be surprised when it’s payback time. we pay the taxes which means we build the bombs which means that we drop them and kill people. it’s hardly surprising that they get upset about it and have a go back.

what would you do?

when i got attacked i took a windlass out and went after my attackers. am i a terrorist? no. i’m not, but i would gladly have shot, burned or blown them up.

THINK ABOUT IT

all i ask is that you think. perhaps ‘we’ aren’t that right after all. we rain bombs down on innocent people and then we have the nerve to start crying our eyes out when they have a go back. the sooner we get shot of amerika and start going about the world with love in our hearts the better. and then the terrorism will stop for us. but as long as we are the worst of all terrorists and go round robbing the world to make us richer and behaving like morons it will continue.

MAKE YOUR MIND UP

don’t be scared. just stop supporting thieving and murderous governments. let’s call it quits, say we are sorry and put the guns away. and share out the sandwiches while we’re at it.

RANT OVER

on a lighter note, simong should be here soonish. as long as we don’t get blown up by terrorists or amerikan ‘friendly fire’ we should have a good weekend

love and luck to you all.

XXX

AND THEY SAY IT COMES IN THREES

regular readers may remember that i bumped into someone on the waterway, someone i used to work with years ago. for the sake of anonymity we shall call him L.

after yesterday’s blog which was rather miserable because i was feeling scared and impotent and a bit weird i thought i should relate a few things that just make me laugh so much. i hope they raise your spirits too, but i know that it will be the spirit of schadenfreude in you if these things do make you laugh.

i shall try to list them in order of funniness.

AND YOU THINK YOU HAD A BAD DAY

i used to work with L years ago. it was such a surprise to see him on the cut. he had bettered himself, unlike me, by getting trained up and finding a job on the navigation. he’s been on there about three years now. i’ve only met him the once because whenever i’m here, he’s there and vice versa; but i always ask after him wherever i go. and this is what i was told:

in order of amusement…
he smashed a wooden mounting of the back of a boat and lost an engine in the water.

he reversed a 4X4 with a caravan attached into the canal.

lastly, and to have seen this i would have paid a crisp fiver, he took delivery of a ride-on lawn mower for cutting the grass along the nav. these things are probably worth about four grand. he went forward and did a bit of cutting. he put it in reverse. he went backwards. he went straight into the lock. apparently his spiderman impression on the lock gate was something to see. the lock was rendered useless for the day while they tried to work out how to crane the mower out.

PERHAPS I’M NOT SO SHIT AFTER ALL

i give in easily. you know how if you buy a lovely new car that within two minutes it will be scratched? you know how if you buy anything good it will be stolen? so, i don’t bother. i will no longer have anything because i can’t bear the heartache. but is my refusal to do anything any good at all?

the man who never made a mistake never made anything.

GAWD BLESS L.

you know, i raise my trilby in his general direction. at least he had a go and is still having one. he went to college, made mistakes, but still did his stuff. i think i have burnt my bridges in official terms; short of writing something sellable or winning the lotto i’m sunk. but for the rest of my life i will always wish that i had seen that ride-on lawnmower going into the lock and poor old L clinging on to the lock gates, like spiderman, and him getting away with it.

he still has a job.

FAITH

there’s something rising up inside of me. can’t tell you what is is yet because i do not know.
when i do, i let you know.

bye bye…

PLEASE ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE…

MYSELF
i’m a fairly hefty fellow. i’m 45 years and 95 kilos. having spent most of the summer stripped to the waist i’m burnt a bit brown, what’s left of my hair is cropped and i have a big ol’ beard. in short, i look a bit dreadful what with my filthy clothes and black greasy hands.

TROUTY
she is of, ahem, mature years. but she is still a female and needs to be protected.

THE CHARLOTTE ROSE
she is a 36′ narrowboat with windows made of smashable glass.

WHAT HAPPENED WAS…

trouty went to the shops in guildford to buy some paint and things. i sat on the back of the boat in the sun and scrubbed up a couple of windlasses that i had magged. at this point i should introduce the windlass - it’s basically a big steel bar.
some scummers came by at the bridge and did that usual spitting behaviour; i looked round but i didn’t say anything. and then the stones started flying.

i don’t take kindly to having stones thrown at me and my boat. i started to call trouty on the mobile but just as i did she came back to the boat. so off i went. this was very stupid of me.

there were three scummers, aged about 20, and i fronted the lot of them. i was stripped to the waist and waving a windlass in my clouting hand. two of them ran like fucking rabbits but one of the little bastards stood his ground. two problems here; i wear glasses and didn’t have any back-up. i went back to the boat (top speed about a fast trot) and the scummers regrouped. we got so much stuff chucked at us that i don’t know how none of the windows got bust or trouty or me got hit, i can only put it down to their ineptitude. i called the police and had the offer of a reference number. we left guildford in a hail of missiles and i was still picking stones out of the boat today.

RACIST? ME?

many people would call me a lefty liberal kind of chap and thay would probably be just about right. except they would be wrong because i’m an anarchist. but then i started to wonder. the gang that attacked me were all indian looking types and i started thinking “bloody asylum seeking illegal immigrants". it’s all very well being concerned until something vile happens to you. hutton offered me kind words of advice. however, i disregard them to a degree. i think that scum should be murdered in the middle of the night. these people are worth nothing and should just be terminated.

in view of the recent exposure of goings-on in the press i find my head shaking sadly. i hate the amerikan behaviour in iraq and i hate the british back-up of it all just to satisfy bliar’s sad attempt to be vice-president of the world. but all these beheadings and the picture that i saw in the paper showing the bullet-ridden corpses of the murdered nepalis…

AND SO…

i really don’t want to feel like this. why couldn’t those little cunts leave me, and trouty, and our boat in peace? yes hutters, you are right, little bastards will be little bastards whatever race they are but now i’ve been tainted by their behaviour. i want to dress up in black and murder them by night. i really don’t want to feel like this but i do feel that if gangs of race-powered yobs continue to run riot we should send the army in.

i never wanted to feel this way but now i do. and it’s their fault, not mine.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

anyone want a windlass? i’ve got 12 spares at the moment.

sleep well, gentle reader, sleep well.