if your lips turn blue it’s serious.
that was one of his health tips.
another one was ‘you’re paranoid, but don’t worry about it’.
so he’s one of my best friends and he was here all day for this, that and the other.
he’s my mate.
he made me laugh today and laughter is the best medicine,
that’s what it says in readers’ digest.
i love mick and you should do too.
night night.
it was a gloomy afternoon in thirst hall. the sirens from yesterday’s road smash on the motorway had stopped and the falling rain had stopped falling. i pulled back the curtain…
there were happy times to be remembered, when oldmally, the king of the swedes, had been here. but he wasn’t any more. oh no.
when omally, king of all the swedes, was here it was good but now there was a scummer, a scummer i could see from my very own window. a scummer who threw a can. throwing a fucking can? in my hood? my blood got up to boiling point very quickly.
i leant out of the window and shouted “hey, you scummer! pick that up". but the scummer had his headphones on.
headphones, eh? he’d be sorry.
so out i went and picked up his can and i followed him to the station. i’d seen which platform he went to. and i followed the scummer…
when i got to platform 1 i turned my mad staring eyes up to about gas mark 3. and then i saw him, sitting on a bench, listening to his stupid little tunes. i saw him there and turned the eyes up to gas mark 5.
(vodka mick has turned up. he’s telling a nice story about when he got a metal splinter in his eye. they had to get it out with a needle. imagine that. a metal splinter in your eye and then… oh. trouty is feeling sick)
anyway, i went up to matey and my laser eyes had gone up to about gas mark 9 by then. tell you what; i wouldn’t want me coming up to me. i lasered him a treat. for those who don’t know me let me describe myself. i’m about number one size. i look filthy and dirty and like i’ve just come off the river. i have a big ol’ beard and chopped off hair. you would not want to have a fight with me, i promise you.
“you just dropped this” says me.
of all the things that i really don’t want, one of them is to have my face, coming out of nowhere, and staring with mad, mad eyes going right in, staring right into the very soul, and giving back an empty tin of irn bru. i wouldn’t want that. but that’s what he got.
he said sorry and i really don’t think he’ll do it again.
in the meantime i’m trying to cook a bit of dinner for vodka mick and for trouty and trying to stop her going to london to get mugged. it’s toad-in-the-hole. life is very exciting here, in new haw.
you lookin’ at me?
i like talking to vodka mick. we have frighteningly similar interests and we are of an age. he reads an awful lot and has a good memory on him so we can bounce topics back and forth and see who can score the points. we both share quite a bit and have the same squirrelling minds. so we have fun.
now, i know that YOU know what a hawser is but, sorry to bore you, there are some that don’t. so here we go.
a hawser is like a rope but it is made out of metal (mostly). some of them have a core of hemp to soak up oil. you can have ones that are about as thick as my thumb is thick and you might see them on lift winding mechanisms. you know the kind of thing. anyway, when it comes to mucking about with seriously big ships the hawsers get bigger and bigger. you might have one as thick as your arm.
i’ve always thought that a disadvantage to playing the violin or the cello would be that what happens when a string breaks? you get it in the face, right?
anyway, so vodka mick used to be in the navy (and please feel free to stop me if you can see where this is heading) and he was telling me about how hawsers sing. now i’ve never been on an oil tanker but i know enough to stay away from hawsers because when they go twang…
this i did find interesting. the hawsers sing when they are under pressure. this is a good time to not be near one. mick says they go ‘zzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZTT!’ and i believe him. he also says that they start to smoke. smoke comes out of them all along the taut length and they sing and then they go
BANG!
this is a good time to get out of the way. and it would have been for vodka mick’s seafaring companion.
to cut a long story (and a seafarer) short the hawser came flying back like a whip. it caught matey clean in the middle and cut him in half. the top half had a lie down but the legs kept moving. the legs did another two or three steps.
and then we started talking about a question that had been asked on the new scientist site, ‘does beheading hurt?’
so i love talking to vodka mick. in a way it’s a bit like talking to myself (a thoroughly interesting person and one that i talk to on quite a regular basis).
night night. have a good weekend.
i look and look. from the dark halls. and i have practiced staring.
‘late for the sky’ by jackson browne is a lovely song. yeah, sure. it comes from the film. to keep watching ‘taxi driver’ over and over is not a good thing. when i went out earlier i WAS travis bickle. everything was muted. all the sounds were squashed flat. just a phone ringing and my feet on the floor. flap flap flap.
whatever happened to ‘reports back from substation half-head B’? whatever happened to uncle stab-stab?
there is a certain joy in mental illness. i can create. i can do just about anything i want to do. whatever will happen next? i can imagine the door getting kicked in and doctors asking me if i know what day it is. who is the prime minister? i think it’s thursday or possibly friday.
all i want to do is to look out from behind my eyes and there’s nothing wrong with that. i can go gggggg and sound like a busted engine. i can go bang and explode. i can do just about anything.
see, when you dwell in the dark halls, like i do, all you can do is look out over the glittering water. water. deep like thick, thick glass. green.
i expect that what will happen next is that the doorbell will ring and someone might say ‘erm, are you alright?’ but of course i’m not. i’m floating like a fairy and really quite happy in my way. but let’s be honest, i’m fucked now.
they say he’s as mad as a hatter, that he will never be well again. they say that he saw lights and he saw something in the ironwork. well, they can say that and it would be true.
i’m tired now. a little rest would be a good idea. a nice lie down and no messing. i’m travis but i musn’t do all that stuff.
spelling well and knowing things is a really good idea. and now the dark halls suck me back in. there’s nothing i can do about it so don’t look at me like that.
i’m a little bit mad, you see.
come and get me.
you know me. you know how i crack on about medical matters…
well, he did me today. we got as far as me calling him ’steve’ (well, it is his name after all) and then i brought up the subject of suicide. he just looked at me and asked ‘well how are you going to do it then?’
i said ‘hanging’ because he can’t prescribe me any rope. but he just looked at me. they must have a special class at doctor school to deal with idiots like me and he must have qualified in it big-time. he just looked at me.
i don’t really like being looked at. in fact i hate it. but i don’t mind if steve looks at me because he looks right through me. so all i do is be honest with him.
he says it’s refreshing for him to have an honest patient and i don’t want to waste his valuable time. and then i started to cry.
oh no, he wouldn’t give me any opiates but he did give me some (rummage, they are here somewhere) oh yes, citalopram.
i asked if i could take these things with alcohol on board and he just looked at me. ‘no’ he said ‘but people do’.
and all the time he just looked at me. he weighed me and did my blood-pressure. and he looked at me.
and then i looked at him. we both know what the score is. i want to be bombed-out and to melt into a coccoon supplied by the chinese dragon or sweet swiss chemicals and he sees right through me. what a rubbish doctor!
he’s so awful that he wants me to get better. no matter what tricks i try to pull he’s there before me and he knows what i’m up to. no matter what i do he’s always there.
he knows as well as i do that i could top myself with insulin any time i wanted. that’s why i said ‘hanging’ and he can look at me as long as he likes. but he prescribed me some seratonin receptor inhibitors and looked at me and said that i could take as many as i liked but they still wouldn’t kill me.
so i look at him and he looks at me. we are friends i suppose and we both know it’s a game. just a matter of time.
he looks at me and we both know. there is nothing he can do but be what he is; a great doctor.
‘i want to see you in a week’ he said. ‘i’ll make an appointment’ i shuffled.
‘i already did that’ he said. ’see you next week, twelve o’clock’ and he just looked at me.
ever been turned inside-out?
the earliest memory i have of farnham is of the hops on the poles. just after you leave the hog’s back road. i bet they don’t have them there any more. do you know that i’ve walked that road, drunk of course, on several occasions? walked the miles. been there and done that.
i had a friend who lived there, just by the shepherd and flock roundabout, and i used to go to see him on my triumph tiger cub motorbike. he was a drug addict and i wanted to be like him. he was clever. really clever. so clever that you could sharpen a knife on him. he was so fucking clever. i suppose that this is where my admiration, almost FANCYING, of people comes from. i love clever people like, you might say, oooh, jonathan meades? or someone like that.
where was i? oh yes. it was you, michael ackroyd, that formed me. i met you in france when i hitched across the continent, something that my children will never do. this was all so normal for me then. i had my scrapes and then i met michael in the dordogne. he told me what books to read and he gave me a bit of a list: the russians, he told me to read gide, proust, gogul, vian, samuel butler, orwell, it goes on and on…
and so i loved him i suppose. in my way. and i remember one day when had my thumb out and my dad drew up in his mercedes. he asked me where i was going. i said ‘farnham’ and he said ‘ok then’ and went away.
i had golden teenage years i suppose. i hitched all over this country and others. i remember when i got back from the continent and the first thing i did was play ‘isn’t it nice to be home again’ by james taylor (off ‘mud slide slim’ - he looked like my uncle) and then i went upstairs and woke my mum up. she said ‘you smell’.
what i’m going on about is this. when i was a boy i used a ruler to try to work out ley-lines. all the places that where important to me seemed to line up. and now i have an opportunity to go back a bit. it’s a bit of faith in me that says you should never go back - it can only end in tears.
a lot of ends might just tie up though. i’m going back you see, i’m going back to…
FARNHAM.
this stuff has several uses:
for pouring on troubled water (what rubbish, otherwise the torrey canyon would have a gold medal) anyway, sorry dad but it was me. trouty had been fiddling and my comment came out as her. so that’s that one put to bed.
secondly as a great help for cooks. except it isn’t. all it seems to do is to act as a perfect cloisonne aide-de -camp for bits of carrot and onion. ten million curses to it.
lastly (and this is where it really gets going for my fans) it causes all the trouble in the world.
ahem…
when i am crowned king of everything and all that i survey, oil will be nearly the top of my hit list. let me start with this one:
petroleum based fuels should be charged at (ummmmm) a fiver a litre.
at least.
let me tell you why. fuel is far too cheap and causes too much trouble so let’s not have it any more. if you really want to go somewhere you should walk. this will be my presidential decree.
if you don’t want to walk there it can’t be worth going there. if you want to fly to somewhere really stupid like amerikaland then you should have to ask for my permission:
“why do you want to go to new yawk?”
“to go shopping”
“well you can’t”
vote for me and my year-zero policy; you might think it stupid but after a while it will make sense to you.
“why do you want to have a car/suit/tie/lamb from new zealand?”
“because i can afford it and i want to”
“the earth can’t afford it and so you can’t either. next!”
“but i want to go to spain for my holidays”
“well you can’t. next!”
“i want a small motorbike so’s my son can annoy people”
“you disgust me. next please”
and so it goes on.
what should happen is that useless travel should become, once again, an absurd luxury and so expensive that it is equivalent to wanting to go to mars. we must never forget that oil is a precious and finite resource and that to waste it is really a sin. from now on we must guard it all like diamonds or whatever and use the diminishment of it as a guide to our future lives. from now on we must never have more than three pairs of shoes and we will have to moderate our lives accordingly.
“dear mr president of the whole world (me) i would like to have a BackBerry and ipod thingy and jump on a plane and go hither and thither and have my government kill people and have farmers kill things so’s i can eat them and have everything all vacuum packed. i would like to jack up the air-con when i feel a bit hot and and the central heating when i feel cold and i want a hundred pairs of socks and shoes that i never wear and rubbish in my cupboards that i never use. i want i want i want and i will scream until i’m sick until i get these things”
“well, you just can’t. nature is telling you so, not just me. listen to the wind. you are killing yourselves and it is time to sit back and just listen. listen. you can hear it.”
“but”
“SHUT UP! - IT’S OVER NOW!”
if only it were. if only it were all over. the greed, the using. people used to die of tb when it was called consumption. and now we are all dying of this ghastly consumerisation. so enough already.
when everyone is driven out of their cars and have to walk the streets the very streets will belong to us all again. we won’t put up with misery on the streets because they will be ours again just as our houses are now because we won’t be able to drive by quickly and turn a blind eye. we have to get ’small’ again.
an end to an oil-based society and a return to small-value economy is what we may not desire but what we need. say ‘no’ to oil. say ‘yes’ to thought and to local values.
i think the ‘unthinkable’ and i say the ‘unsayable’. and i don’t do it particularly well but i won’t stop. but what i say is true for me and, i know, it will be true for you too.
and i will rise up and fight, against the packet of grated cheese that came with my baked potato, against the monstrous sacheted life that we see as normal now; come with me, to the woods and to the hills, we must turn now…
we must say this is an abomination and we must fight for our lives and for the lives of our children…
no more slavery to mineral oil. we have vegetable oil. it is our right.
courage!
luckily it wasn’t me. no, it was vodka mick. so he had the strawberry job and not me.
vodka mick fighting on the towpath and then, post scrap, having a lie down in the canal.
aah, for fuck’s sake.
c’mon. c’mon. get better you mad pissed-up fucker. don’t you die on me.
don’t you fucking dare.
and then i started singing the rest of my little song…
“hey cliff, you entertained a war criminal, now that is true
hey george, the kids are dead…
becwause of hyoo00OOOooo…”
it’s SO great. everything i ever said is true. soak it up. go on. it IS all true.
drip drip drip…
go on. i was right and everyone else was wrong.
so. sorry sir cliff but you can’t rub this one out. what we see here is the ghastliness of consumerism. a great puff of smoke as we all exhale our fag-breath of modern life and jet across the world in search of something that we will never get and which we will never deserve.
yeah. i said it first. except i didn’t.
beatnikally yours,
h.
