just a try, just to see if this works, i’ll see if i can post a picture of me and my dad from the weekend. if it doesn’t work don’t blame me. if it does work i get all the credit and not simong.

OH DEAR. IT DOESN’T MATTER REALLY

what happened was that i bumped into my dad in a really spooky way. when he came to see me he parked up to read his map and i just happened to be walking past. the car was parked up in a slip just by new haw lock. i could see it was my dad. i banged on the window and said “are you lost, mate?”

he didn’t recognise me at first. later he said that he thought i was some kind of guardian reading college type and that he’d thought twice about lowering the window. it was weird.

so i got a lift to the boat and then we went out and had fun. i let him steer the boat and when it got to the complicated bits he insisted that i took the tiller back. this was grand. he didn’t want to boss me about or anything but just let me steer my boat in my way and then took it back when we were on a straight bit and that.

father and son. it has never been like this for years. etta james and jake thackray provided a CD that i burned for him and we had chicken sandwiches up by thames lock. we turned the old boat around and went back up through town lock to where the mooring is and where he had left his car.

father and son.

i phoned him later and he was really chuffed. when we got back today after having been out in the meantime i sent him the pictures and i phoned him again. he loves his CD and he so enjoyed the time out on the boat. he wants to go out again and so we will do all together, him, his newish missus and trouty and me.

and perhaps, before it’s all too late, we will be like normals and have a good time.

does anyone know how to have a good and normal time? e-mail me at this address if you do.

having not got on with my dad for so long i collapsed wearily and happily into our meeting. i looked at him and he looked at me. what i saw staring back was myself. perhaps he saw the same. if i could post the pictures i would and then you would understand what i mean.

i love my dad.

perhaps, after all these years he really did see himself looking back as if in a mirror and then, for him, just like it was for me, the years fell away and didn’t matter any more and all the arguments and grousing just don’t count.

when i was little he used to call me ‘dodgy dods’

i wish that he would call me that again and take me for a walk in the woods near oadby. but that will not happen because he’s old and tired and the woods are all gone i should think. but at least we have the boat and perhaps we can be happy again.

for a while.

i wonder if this will really work. the magical power of the compluter fascinates me. i sit here and tap out whatever and then, now modified by simon, it’s there in nowhereatallland just sitting there to be read by anyone in the world.

saw my mum today and i haven’t seen her for a few weeks. she’s had breast cancer and i really don’t know what to say to her about it. i just try to treat her like normal. that’s what i would want. it’s not really turning your back, more like just ignoring it.

my dad is coming tomorrow and i haven’t seen him for two years. last time i saw him he looked old and sick and tired. i hope he doesn’t look like that in the morning for i love my dad and dads are supposed to go on forever.

i’ll take the silly old bugger out on the boat tomorrow even if it’s snowing. it’s a dad and son thing i suppose. i must buy myself a bow saw. perhaps he’ll stay the night. that would be good. it would be like the old days. the days before everything went wrong. and then for just a brief moment, like a flash of a kingfisher over the water, it would be how it should always have been.

he’s old, my dad. i think that this is his farewell tour. and how do i feel about this? i don’t know. these days, for the last fifteen years or so, i compact feelings into myself and squash them so small.

but do you know, in the back of my mind there is a little voice. i’m a 45 year old man but the voice is there.

the voice says “i love you daddy".

IN THE PINK

developments are in hand for the ’soon to be at the theatre near you, all action, singing and dancing, my new website’.

after some deliberation, which was referred to here yesterday, i gave simon the thumbs up. oh come on, don’t be disgusting, i was talking about the go-ahead to to make me a dot com site with wordsquisher blogging facility.

later i went to tesco to see if i could buy a haggis. which i did after i had realised that:

HENRY FACT: one of my favourite colours is the nice strawberry colour that sodium street lights are when they first come on before they go orange.

anyway, i bought a haggis and a swede and some stuff and then i went to have a free read of the newspapers on the stand. and oh, what was this i saw?, how interesting, my favourite couple are at it again…

(readers of a sensitive disposition my wish to look away at this point)

disgusting moron war-criminal bush has awarded snaggle-toothed, pixie-of-evil, war-criminal, mr tony blair-faced bliar a fucking gold congressional medal. apparently this was awarded 18 months ago but even bliar hadn’t got the brass neck to pick it up then.

no, bliar has decided that he WILL accept the medal (the highest that amerikaland can present him with) but he won’t get it until after our general election. what a disgrace! i can imagine the scene at ‘camp dude-ranch camp’ when this was mooted…

warcrim #1: “that feels great, but get your dentification fixed; it feels like you’re doing it with a cheese grater”

warcrim #2: “slurp lick slurp”

warcrim #1: “pull the presidential cheeks apart and get that tongue working, boy. i’ll give you medalification if you get your tongue right up the presidential hole”

warcrim #2: “how many squaddies do you want to die?”

warcrim #1:” how many have you got?” etc etc et-bloody-cetera

good grief.

WHAT HAPPENED LATER

when i had finished vomitting into the newspaper stand i went back home. i made the dinner (haggis done in the oven with baked potatoes with mashed swede and carrot served with butter, black pepper and a red wine gravy) and then i visited simon’s rubbish chatroom. and what did i see?

someone had said “henry will have your guts for garters for that” or something similar. i became intrigued. i had an idea what this might refer to. using my all powerful compluter skills i swiftly googled and found the subject of all the hilarity. predictably it was me. there is indeed a site being built (it might be a domain or something, no letters please) and some people found it amusing. they thought i would get in a strop but i didn’t. i was extremely pleased and very happy indeed.

simon has given the task out to a YTS trainee who has made a fair fist of it considering that they can only have been excluded from school fairly recently. i’m sure that under his tutelage it will soon be sorted out. the main colour is a nice shade of pink, a bit like those streetlamps.

and no, if you haven’t seen it already you won’t get the link just yet (from me anyway - ask oldsmelly) because it’s not finished.

so all in all…

quality of day factor: 10 / 10.

thank you and goodnight.

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?

blogger goes a bit manky every now and then. everyone knows it and it’s just something that we have to put up with…

or (duh, duh, daah!)* is it?

it has been suggested that i get a dot com thingy (i believe this is called a ‘domain’ but i could well be wrong). this means renting a bit of space on a reel to reel compluter (i think that’s a server) that may well live in the back bedroom of someone who lives in luton apparently.

this means that if i go for it i will get a trendy new address that will make me look like a realistic person instead of an aol drone. but on the other hand that would mean yet another signy-onny thing for me to remember and forget along with all the aol things and the yahoo things.

so that i will have to think about.

but it means that you get to play with something instead of blogger; it’s called word squasher or something. i’ve had a free go on it in simong’s blogsite. it looks a bit like blogger except the buttons make less sense. apparently the trick with this thing is that it spends less time skidding on banana skins, flailing its arms in the air and falling flat on its arse. except that when i did the test blog on simon’s site i got the same error message that i got with blogger yesterday. but it still worked. it may all be down to the fabness of my aol dial-up.

another thing to consider is the cost. at the moment i pay for nothing but the bt line and the rubbish aol. the server (probably run by a bloke like comic shop bloke off the simpsons) costs a fair whack.

yet another thing to consider is that i’m not very technermological. it has been pointed out to me that i could have my own page (book, more like) dedicated to pictures of my arse and although this is very tempting i wonder whether i would ever be the master of all this electrickery.

so i’m in a bit of a quandary.

A LAMENT FOR THE ICY TOMB THAT IS CASTLE MORT

oh dear.

the gas has been cut off at castle mort. not because all the coat buttons and pfennigs have been found in the meter but because there is something wrong with the gas. it comes out in knots or something. obviously the most important thing is how warm I AM (nice and toasty, thank you) but let’s spare a thought for those less fortunate. feeling chilly is miserable. i have had to sleep in some icy tombs in my time and i didn’t find it much fun. and now there have been power cuts today in hendon and in chelsea (ha ha!).

this country is broken.

don’t have nightmares…

*these are musical chords, i can hear them in my head but i can’t write them

BLOGGER IS SHIT

i spent an hour doing a blog and i was pleased with it.
and then blogger lost it.
so blogger is shit. i’m not going to write it out again.

what a load of rubbish.

KNIFE TO SEE YOU, TO SEE YOU KNIFE!

the first thing that i knew about today was a weird, unsettling noise. it woke me and i sat up in bed but you know what it’s like if something wakes you. because you were asleep when whatever it was happened it has stopped happening by the time the old brain has booted itself up. it was a hell of a sound, i wondered whether my house might be falling down. but the sound had stopped and although i listened for a while it didn’t seem to have come from upstairs (home address of ‘the creeper’) or anywhere else. so i went back to sleep.

later on it became clear what had made the noise. someone had shoved two offensive weapons through my letterbox. there was a german lock-knife and a large british army knife on a chain. they had landed with clonks and rattlings of chain. who could have been responsible?

i knew who it must have been because i identified the weaponry straight away. they are the property of vodka mick. what on earth he was doing shoving this kind of stuff through my letterbox at that hour of the morning i’m not sure. perhaps he had to go through a metal detector later on or perhaps he has murdered someone in grisly way and wanted to ditch the evidence.

perhaps all will be revealed in the not too distant…

FAVOURITE THINGS

one of mine is to be inside a boat or a tent or a car or an anything when you can hear the rain chucking it down outside. today i could hear the hail coming down and rattling off the windows. as i didn’t have to go out i didn’t. that’s luxury living for you.

NOT FAVOURITE THING

yes, it’s HIM again. you know who i mean, the antichrist of course: good old bushy boy.

via the radio today i learned that his mad little ‘i am the president of the world’ party the other day cost as much as it would take to mendify the whole of tsunami stricken sri lanka.

oh, and the other bit is that iran is next on the bomb it all to bits list.

the radio told me that today is supposed to be the most depressing day of the year. that’s accurate. i have a madman dropping hardware through my door and now bush wants to kill everyone in iran.

how anyone could ever have voted for that psychotic little moron beats me but look at the lying pixie shit who thinks he runs this country.

if blair-faced bliar gets us all wound up in a mission to kill iranians as well as the thousands of innocent iraqis that he has already had murdered then there might be an even more depressing day than today just waiting in the shadows.

SOME DAYS ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS

this is a true fact. it is a given.

but i’ve been lucky of late. i’ve had some really good days. not because i deserve them or anything because, of course, i don’t. but sometimes some really good days will all get lined up like a constellation or something and whether you want them or not you will be on the receiving end of them.

i’m not putting this very well.

what i mean is that some days i can hardly bear to get out of bed. i have hospital appointments that i do not keep because i CAN NOT open the door and go out or even get out of bed at all. perhaps these days could be called ‘not good days’ but all days are the same really.

however, the weekend has been a good one. do you want to know why? well, i’ll tell you. a visit from his royal majesty the king of swedes a.k.a. mr oldmally made me feel like a normal again.

good people have a kind of goodness grease on them that rubs off and gets everywhere; all over your clothes and into your hair and skin and it goes into your eyes and ears. when a day has been bad what you need, what you really, really need is a friend like oldsmelly because when he turns up within the snap of your fingers all the rubbish goes away and you are normal again and able to laugh without a hint of bitterness.

so here’s to you, my friend, my mate.

it’s so good to laugh and laugh and laugh. oh, that we could all, always be friends.

you all be careful out there; life has sharp edges.

goodnight.

JOKE TIME

i read recently about a couple of quips from jazzmeister, george melly.

he annoyed a lot of the audience at ronnie scott’s when he introduced a band saying that: “modern jazz sounds like a fire in a pet shop".

he asked mick jagger why his face was so wrinkly:
“they’re laughter lines, man", said jagger
“nothing’s that funny", said melly.

anyhow, i must be off. i have a voodoo doll to stick pins in…

nighty night.

THERE’S ALWAYS ONE, ISN’T THERE?

a letter is received from the trust. someone alleges that the charlotte rose is being lived aboard although even the biggest idiot in the world could see that that won’t happen.

so who’s the arse this time?

as if things weren’t bad enough with good old ‘anon’ poisoning the atmosphere, we now have another poison-penner claiming that we should be removed from the cut.

i shall ask for a list of strict rules as regards mooring on the navigation and make it my personal business to report the slightest of infringements as i perceive them.

except i won’t. because i’m actually rather nice and not as small-minded as some.

DON’T McCALL ME AND I WON’T McCALL YOU

what is the point to her?

there was a radio programme on the other day when all the commercial stations got together to try to raise some tsunami relief money. then i had the non-pleasure of having to listen to davina…

she shrieked. she screamed. she blew a whistle.

i’ve had the misfortune to have seen this peculiar woman on the telly in the past. as far as i recall she shrieked and screamed.

where does all this wooness and yayness get anyone? she’s foul.

ANYONE GOT A SPARE REAL FAG?

oh well, i’ll just carry on with this plastic one then

goodnight

THEN WHAT HAPPENED…

i forgot to say about cooking.

bubble and squeak is a GOOD thing so i thought i should do some. because i’m lazy i thought i should do it in the oven.

take some spuds and some cabbage and some carrots and broc or brocodiles or however you spell it. boil them up for about 20 mins and then mush them into a baking tray on some hot oil.

some cheese on top is nice.

then bake that thing for a while. hey presto! nice grub!

GREAT JOKE

i forgot it.

DRINK

when you drink heavily it makes everything different. life becomes rubbish and quaint at the same time. everything is altered and you have to stare at real life as if through velvet. life is stumbled through rather than trodden because of the poison that floods the blood and the veins.

consider the marvelous men who have taken to the bottle and still they came up holding the sword like the lady of the lake. lament the passing of peter cook and of tony hancock. richard burton was a star that fell and oliver reed was a genius in his way too.

consider this, that there was a lacking in their lives that nothing could fulfill but the passing of a glass. how can this be? that no amount of fame, celebrity, riches and adoration can make up for the cup?

i AM an alcoholic, always have been, always will be. not for a moment do i pretend that i’m like the alcoholic superstars that went before but i feel the affinity. when i read charles bukowski i feel like i’m his brother and in some ways i am. for alcohol exists in the very celticness of my soul and i love and revere it as a shaman should. unlike some drunks i don’t seem to get into trouble; i’ve only been arrested once and i don’t wind up in casualty every friday night. i do not thieve. i do not go round punching people.

what alcohol does for me is to take the ‘pain’ away. this is not a normal sort of pain but more of a kind of misery that other people just put up with. other people look at me me and sneer (quite rightly) because i just cannot cope with what i see to be wrong. if i told you what i think is wrong you may well laugh at me and ask why i just don’t grow up and look at life in the face and get along with it.

i can’t

i love drink because everything goes away for a while. and at the same time i can feel it killing me.

sticking up for the underdog; that’s my game. i’ve been blessed with the ability to make a right nuisance of myself, to stand up for myself and others, to not be cowed, to see the difference ‘twixt wrong and right as far as i see it and to never, ever bow to the people that i see as right cunts.

what’s happened? well, i’m in the sink. it’s all very well having principles but where do they get you? i’ll tell you where, you wind up knackered and old and floundering about with nowhere to row to even if you had the paddles. i’m stuffed. i’m shot to bits. i’ve crashed and burned.

but let me tell you this: i would not give this up for all the tea in far cathay.

go on then, stick me in prison and i’ll love it. they will call me the ‘prof’ and i will teach people and write their letters home for them.

and why do i feel like this? i’ll tell you why.

it’s because of our loathsome ‘royal’ family and because of the blair-faced bliar who attempts to govern me.

as proudhon said, “he who lays his hand upon my shoulder to govern me is an usurper and a tyrant and i declare him my enemy".

revolution, brothers, revolution…

best wishes.

BITS AND PIECES

alf is such a lovely bloke. when we moored up at high bridge we wanted to see him and his dog, buster.
alf is 83. buster is dead.
“come in” said alf, “and see what i’ve got”
alf has got a new dog that cost £450 and he’s called it ‘buster2′

TOILET TROUBLE

many regular readers will be delighted to know that i had another bout of ’shit on face’.
when i emptied the bog the other day. i was washing it out when the hose slipped. good job that i wear glasses. my face was spattered with faeces. surely cholera will come my way. ho hum…

A GOOD JOKE

the blessed humph came out with a good one the other day:

barry [cryer] recently went through a difficult operation on his knees the other day but eventually he managed to get his key in the door.

OH WELL

i was going to type more but i forgot what it all was about.

so i’ll shut up now

fare thee well

UPON THE ROASTING OF PORK

i’m sometimes a bit weird about eating meat. for a while i was a vegetarian when i worked in a kids’ home that was largely veggie and i just stopped eating it after a while. this was in the seventies and i was full of grand notions about how much effort it took to feed an animal and then to eat the animal was wasteful of all the food it took to produce the meat. but then i moved to berlin and i realised that i would starve to death if i didn’t start eating it again because this was years ago and vegetarians were a rare species. and only about three people in berlin seemed to eat any vegetables at all.

eating chicken was a hurdle. with other meats and wursts and schnitzels and things i could disassociate myself but a chicken is still chickenlike; the musculature is still identifiable.

but i was a growing lad and got it all down my neck in the end and i haven’t been a veggie since although i really do like my veg and try to try a few new ones when i can. butternut squash and celeriac are particular favourites at the moment.

but yesterday in tesco they had joints of rolled pork leg for silly cheap money and it would have been daft not to buy a bit of the pile that they had.

so today it went into the oven with the idea being that, when cold, it could be taken to the boat for sandwiches and eating with pickle and bubble and squeak kind of thing. but the putting of the pork into the oven with the oil and salt on to aid the cracklification of the crackling took my mind zooming back to a day in kingston in the eighties when i was preparing a joint of pork for roasting and trying to stab it in order to insert pieces of garlic deep into the meat. all at once the butcher’s shop smell of death really got to me and the look of frankly human leg got to me and i really had to struggle then to get that pork cooked.

and today i had a slight bit of that same feeling so when it had been roasting for a bit i poured a hefty glub of swig into the roasting tray and then the aroma didn’t smell of death again but just delicious.

it came out a treat. brilliant crackling and done to a turn. i reserved the juices (i’m not sure why really but my mum does it so i do too) and at the bottom of the tin was loads of sticky, bovril type guck which i had spread on a crumpet. when trouty turned up we had roast pork sandwiches with apple sauce and a bit of mustard. and thank you porky pig, you tasted very good indeed.

perhaps i should be a fish/vegetarian but i don’t think i will be. sometimes my body tells me to eat meat and so i do. it just goes to show what double standards i have, i suppose.

eh? what’s that you’re saying? shut up and tell us the joke from yesterday?

oh, alright then…

well, i was in my bathroom and i was looking at a pot of early daffodil bulbs that were on the windowsill. (you’ll love this one, it’s great) the daffs are getting a bit old and tired and are starting to go over. (oh dear, i make myself laugh sometimes) anyway it was a shame that there was no one to share my joke with because what i said to myself was…

(wipes tear of mirth from eye)

“those flowers are PAST THEIR SMELL BY DATE!!!”

d’you geddit? sMell by date?

very well, please yourselves. i’ve got bilges to pump.

byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMETHING BLUE

(don’t fret, i’m not getting married)

something old? - the same old rubbish

something new? - well, newish i suppose, since i bonked my blog over the head with an iceberg and it sank to a depth of two miles before it was rescued by…

something borrowed? - the (ahem) I.T. ’skills’ of simong

something blue? - the fucking language, of course

i’m not going to waste (i mean SPEND) too much time on this blog as it may well not work and i would be sad if it went all bandy-legged and fell over.

i made up a good joke today and spent a lot of time in a certain rubbish chatroom. perhaps tomorrow i will bore the people that i haven’t bored already with my most marvelous joke.

it’s funny being back because i didn’t think i would blog again but thanks to some kind comments i suppose i am. oh, and thanks to simon for mending it.

i shall now block my ears with cotton wool and put a coal scuttle on my head in case it all goes BANG when i click ‘publish post’.

here we go…