oh yes. bile.

bile.

there are quite a few things that i’m interested in and quite a few that i am not. i was so sufficiently interested in cleaning up the sordid dump in which i live that i ordered a bin-bag-keeper-opener and a 37″ streetmaster picker-upper with a unique swivel head. this cost me not far shy of 40 quids and the result is that i now live in south american style poverty.

have i got my ‘37″ streetmaster’. well, no i bloody well haven’t. what i got was a stupid little card. well, sorry postgit but my surname is not spelled with a capital I with a dot on top of it. it just bloody isn’t. you TiT. here am i trying to do my bit and here are you trying to wind me up. with my 37″ streetmaster i would truly be the lord of all the local streets but, oh no, my parcel is lost in the postal service nightmare. grrrrr.

i took vodka mick out and i made him do things. no, not like that; he’s been made to do them before. no. i made him do heroic things. alcoholics all have low self-esteem so i made him do some of the worst uphill locks just about on his own so that he could look back on his achievements and i gave him praise. i made him steer into weir drifts, i made him take locks on. we took newark, papercourt, triggs; i made him wind below bowers. i made him do all that when his nerve was failing and he did it all.

i made him do it because i am manipulative but also because he needed to do it.

i thought this was a good thing.

and when we came back we saw loads of them, the boats, all gathering for the fireworks at ripley. we hailed and hoorahed but we kept on going and we didn’t stay because mick wasn’t well and he wanted to go back to byfleet.

in the morning i was sick as a dog and then mick turned up again. i asked him if he had told his dad how brilliant he had been at being a bit ‘master and commander’ and he said his his dad had said “and?”

the hackles rose.

because there is no possible reason for treating a child like that. it doesn’t matter how old they are, you just don’t treat offspring like that. vodka mick is an idiot. his dad has got a nose like a cauliflower. i, myself, am extremely stupid but also intelligent. we all have these things going on. and the bile rises…

vodka mick might see this and i really don’t care because i know that if he does he will see that the blue/grey eyes are up to laser factor four already. he will know that this is the truth. that i could kick his dad. how can you not praise you son’s achievements? how can you not say, ‘oh, well done, son’, even if you know it’s a bit crap?

ahem.

now to my plan of world domination…

if i was clever with compluters i would devise a list of all things what should be banned.

here’s my starters:

spraycan paint should only be available on mail-order.
chewing gum.
tobacco products.
white cider.
chisel-tip felt pens

and have you seen what that thieving cow made in australia? have you seen what the the lying, thieving filth that pretend to run this country have made?

honestly, it’s no wonder my grrrr-ometer has gone off the dial. tell you what, you want to open your eyes wide, like i do, and look about you. you want to crank the eyes up to laser factor ten and do something.

there is evil and wickedness in this world and unless we do something about it, it will prevail.

stick with me; i will never let you down.

it came to my attention today that there are a couple of people working for the natwest and for the halifax that i’d like to put ground glass in their puddings.

my grrr-ometer went up to gasmark 7.

what these lunatics at these two banking institutions have decided is to ban all piggy banks like they give to kids when they open an account and ban all depictions of piggy banks or anything piggy off their posters.

can you guess why they want to do this? can you guess why these moronic, white, middle-class, jumped-up, middle-management losers with a 2-1 in sociology from a redbrick university want to do this? yup, you got it; because in their crazy little world they think that a certain type of person might drop down dead if they ever saw a picture of a cartoon pig. yes, a muslim.

but these tossers keep getting away with it. if i thought i could get away with making money out of making patronising and unwanted concessions to religious factions that i wasn’t a part of i’d do it like a shot. except i wouldn’t. i’d rather cut my face off with a penknife than be as woeful as that.

but it made me start thinking.

it made me start thinking about some greedy pigs that i never want to see again. some pigs that all have their snouts in the trough. some disgusting pigs (can you see where this is going yet?). i think i’ll make a turban out of toilet tissue and put some shoe polish on my face and go up to downing street and demonstrate. because there might well be a prime-ministerial aide who’s a bit like these natwest and halifax lunatics and he might say “i’m sorry new labour, you will all have to resign because you are upsetting that bloke outside who is obviously a muslim".

right. deep breaths. ok…
now then, get those eyes wide open and turned up to laser factor 5. get your grrr-ometer turned up full blast to about rage-mark 9.

cherie bliar has got a bullet-proof car. with a driver. and it costs 50,000 quids a year. but not of her money, oh no no no, of your money. because she is obviously hard up.

just between the two of them these disgusting, greedy, gravy-sucking hogs must be hauling in half a million pounds a year. they are housed for free, they ponce their holidays for free, everything is free. they ponce and scrounge and steal everything. they make me feel physically sick so i think they should be withdrawn.

and this car, this car right (i think it’s a vauxhall something - i don’t know because all this had made me so cross that my brain swelled up and i had to go in intensive care with a bag of ice on my head for nearly half an hour) is not her only bloody car. oh no, she’s got a ford galaxy as well and all for free. yet again. for free.

letterbox gob thinks that she is so important that she is a terrorist target. she has effectively co-opted herself into a senior government position. and her burden on the taxpayer makes my pathetic hand-outs look ridiculous.

she ordered this car after 9/11 (more correctly 11/9 but that’s amerikans for you). perhaps if she wasn’t married to a lying war-criminal she wouldn’t be seen as such a risk.

and if someone flew a jumbo jet into her luxury, free, chauffeur driven, no congestion charge car, my money would be on the boeing no matter how bullet-proof her vauxhall viva is.

two people have been arrested. sorry, i should have said two little pieces of SHIT have been arrested.
i’m not a homosexualizer, some people are and some people aren’t.
when i read about that poor man who got murdered i got very angry indeed.
i got very, very angry.

for those that don’t know what i’m going on about it is this:
a 24 year old gay man got done on clapham common by queer-bashers. he was beaten so badly as they screamed abuse at him and called him all the names under the sun and kicked and beat him that when he was found and taken to hospital that he couldn’t live any longer and he just died. and hardened police officers who have seen quite a bit said that he had the worst injuries to his head and neck and face and shoulders that they had ever seen.

i felt sick.

that poor boy. he must have felt so alone, so scared, so frightened as the blows hailed down on him. what if that had been my own son? who could do such a thing?

i don’t really understand why men of gayness and of a homosexualizing nature want to go and have some sex in public toilets and late-night shrubberies. if i want some sex i don’t do that myself but some people do and i have to put up with it. because it has always gone on and it always will do. i took my kids to the park in hove and there was all hem hem on the floor of the public loo and i didn’t like that at all. i had to ask the lady in the cafe to take them into the ladies’.

but people, albeit of the homosexualizing nature, should not go around being so badly beaten that their family can’t recognise them, that they have to be identified from their fingerprints.

and now these two nasty queer-bashing bits of filth have been nicked.

i hope that the judge is a bender because they have a good chance of getting 35 years apiece.

my trilby is doffed to the met for nicking them so speedily. and here’s a little message for the gruesome twosome:

don’t worry about dropping the soap in the showers, oh no. because no matter how homophobic you are it won’t stop you spending the next three decades having a big, black cock rammed right up your arse.

and that is the end of the news.

now, here’s samantha with the weather…

there is quite a good feel to listening to ‘do you know the way to san jose’ by dionne warwick.

that’s ‘wor wick’ you know. i really hate it when people get things wrong. when you turn a boat round it’s called ‘winding’. you have to find a winding hole.

STOP RIGHT THERE! you just commited a crime. because it’s not ‘winding’ like a clock it is ‘wind’ like the wind in the trees and ‘ing’.

WIND ING

ahem

it’s called winding because you have to use the wind and the drift to get you round. it’s quite simple really. there is so much beauty in river work; take a boat out on the thames and you can feel it live and kick underneath you and you have to understand the flow. personally i hate the thames but there you go.

sometimes i make out that i can read the water. it’s all rubbish really. but, do you know? i can. i can tell when a boat is coming. the shockwave off the bow goes far further up the cut than you would think and there is a smell. you can smell boats coming. well, i can anyway. i love being down at pelican wharf and talking to rivermen. “someone’s coming through the lock” they say and it’s true. you look at the water and, eventually, you get the hang of it. there’s a boat coming…

i can’t really explain it. when the lock empties you get a surge in the pound. there’s 50,000 gallons of water coming into the pound and you can really feel it. you can smell it but i don’t know what the smell is. once you get it your eyes widen and you are hardwired into the water. if it was a gift that i could give, well, i would give it to you. but i can’t. it’s a thing that us river people can do, after a while.

meanwhile my feet are going purple. this is because i’m dying. i can smell the black shadow coming just like i can smell a boat from yards up the cut.

meanwhile i’ll just listen to dionne warwick. that’s WOR WICK. you won’t get that wrong, will you. otherwise i might get upset.

oh dear.
trouty is in a bad mood with me.
every morning i make it my golden rule to sing her morning song to her. the words change most days but it goes to the tune of ‘good morning starshine’ and it will generally go something like this, “good morning trouty, did you have a nice snooze? i’ve got to get up in a minute and go to the loo, because i’ve been on the booooooze”
something like that.
and i do it every morning because i love my little trouty and i think it will make her feel loved. confirm things. you know.

BUT. vodka mick stayed round here last night and i want him to help me with my book and i’d invited him out on the boat to do researches. but it’s not my boat; it belongs to trouty.

this morning, when she had eventually got up, i could tell she was in a mood. in the kitchen she gave me the gimlet eye and said “i’ve cottoned on to you. i know what you do".

this came as quite a surprise to me seeing as i don’t actually do anything at all if i can possibly avoid it. but i knew what she meant. it’s the old ‘you are manipulative’ argument. well, it’s not the first time i’ve heard it and it won’t be the last. i can’t help it if i go round being a manipulative, duplicitous, bag of old shite, can i?

see what i did there? i’m doing it again.

anyway, she went to woking to go shopping and vodka mick decided to go home instead of going sailing with me. as we walked up the road he said “thank you for putting up with me, you don’t know how much it means".

but, ahah!, because i do know how much it means. because i know things about vodka mick that i can never tell you. i know things that make my heart bleed. and vodka mick will always be my friend and i will always look out for him and if it causes rifts with me and trouty well that’s a shame but i’ll still do it. that’s what i do. it’s the way i am.

then me and mick shook hands and bade our farewells. i continued on to tesco.

my shopping list was:
a times.
some garlic.
some swig.
some fags.
a lottery ticket.

i like being in tesco because i can look at people. i imagine them engaging in sexual activity and giving each other diseases. i like looking at the spots on the back of their necks. i like looking at their shopping. hmmmm, findus crispy pancakes.

do you know, if you ever go to tesco it might be worth your while to look about and see if you can see me. i’ll be the bloke at the back of the queue…

looking at you.

imagine this.
2 oclock in the fucking morning. 2 o fucking clock.
knock knock knock
eh? what’s all this going on?
who’s this at the door?
well, there was me and trouty and vodka mick. we were having a nice little time. the lights were on. knock knock knock.
who in the fuck was this?
i opened the door.
and there was a young man staggering about out there. he was obviously spannered. completely out of his box.
“can i doss on your floor?”
“no, i’m sorry but you can’t”
and then i felt bad about all this because i’ve been down on my luck in my time. i felt bad. but if i had invited him in he would have stolen my camera and probably murdered us all. so i felt bad about not inviting drug addicts into my home. vodka mick is bad enough.

anyway; funny jokes…

trouty did a good one on vodka mick.

vodka mick: “well, if anyone wants to buy me a present…”
trouty (from the back of the room) “they don’t.”

so ha ha ha.

the best joke on little britain is this one:
mr man goes into the shop to buy a card and it goes something like this:

“i want a card for a man”
“he’s 60″
“well here’s all the cards for men”
“five”

and then it goes on and here comes the best joke…

“he likes the sea…”

then the shopkeeper looks about

“word”

shopkeeper: “i’m not sure we have one like that.”
man: “well, i can write it in myself”

so HA HA HA! and i laughed myself silly.

oooh ha ha ha, this is brilliant. drug addicts banging on my door in the middle of the night. but a really good joke is a really good joke.

sleep well.

i got a letter in the post. mr prior wanted to see me. he’s from the council. he wants to know about whether i am a benefit fraudster.

so i phoned up and i said i was going into one and i wanted him to come round right now. and he came round today.

can you believe this, he PHOTOGRAPHED my documents. he took pictures in my house!

while i had this bloke round the doorbell went, it was vodka mick.

then it came out that i was ex-job. it seemed that matey was too (ish). i never worked out what he used to do but he tried to bat me about with using some wrong phrases. what is ‘lima delta one’? well i know full well what that is. it’s the duty inspector’s call-sign, thats what it is and it’s not the wireless cars that run out of brixton. they are lima 3 and lima 4.

then i showed him the picture that carol found for me, the picture of our car that got turned over and torched during the second brixton riots. and then he seemed to calm down.

then mick started to bore him silly with tales of when he got shot in hong kong when he was doing anti-drug runner patrols. you could see his eyes closing.

i offered mr prior a cup of tea.

he didn’t want one.

he said that if anything further was required they would write to me.

and that is the true story of when mr prior came.

next time: the most brilliant joke off little britain.

i love you all. g’night.

apart from all the things that are wrong with me, bits dropping off, feet going numb, blah blah blah, there are some things that have actually improved.

my sense of smell has improved to a weird degree. trouty will back me up on this one; when she sets something on fire in the kitchen (she calls it ‘cooking’) it wakes me up. i can smell other peoples’ cooking coming in through the window. i can tell what they are doing.

on the boat i get wired when i can smell burning. it might be a bonfire or it might be someone smoking a fag. but i can smell it and my eyes light up and open wide. it frightens me and because i don’t particularly want the boat to sink all my senses get cranked up to gasmark 7 and i start to get trembly.

my eyesight isn’t all that. i’ve never been all that hot on spotting butterflies or birds because they move about and my retinas get all confused. that’s why i like plants and fungi; they have the grace to stand still so i can have a look at them. mind you, i’ve always been a good shot, i could shoot a bullet over half a mile and be bang on. i’d be quite a sniper.

and now my hearing has gone up to the red levels on the display.

i can hear everything. loud noises make me jump through the ceiling. ‘the creeper’ who lives upstairs makes a lot of noise every now and then and, as the floor there is made of wood, i get used to jumping. the sex, the rowing machine, the dropped things…

but the best noise of all is the rain. when people have stopped throwing lager tins about outside or making a nuisance of themselves up the station, when the trains have stopped coming through and i’m having a little bit of peace…

when i’m on the boat and all is tranquil i love it when i can hear it, like i can now. the rain is falling.

i’m indoors so that’s ok. when i’m on the boat that’s ok. and, do you know, i can hear every drop falling. i can hear every drop falling on the leaves or on the moist leaf mould in the woods. i can hear everything and i can smell it all too. the smell and the sound of water pouring over the weir.

i’m alive.

listen to the rain.

get a tent.

well i was thinking. i often do. i think so much it drives me round the twist.
the tesco carpark is a miserable place but it can’t be all that bad because i often think there.
i look and i see and i wonder and i think. always thinking. always thinking.
you know them sticks that people with a rubbish job have to pick up litter? the little clicky sticks? well i want one.

i want one of those things so i could go and tidy up the cut a bit. i’d like to tidy up the litter. them bloody stupid anglers leave all their crap all along the cut. crisp packets and sweet wrappers. they leave everything all along my canal and it makes me want to kill them. when i get my ak74 they will be sorry. ahem.

until that happy day i will just have to be happy with glaring at miscreants but i was wondering if the national trust would sponsor me with a picky-up stick thingy. i mean, it’s not too much to ask, is it?

so, let’s say i got my picky-up thing. then i would be important and everyone would have to do what i say. i would want a little badge to show how important i was.

and then i started thinking again…

if they sponsored my picky-up stick thingy then they could sponsor another bit of equipment…

a megaphone.

and then i started going into one.

“OI YOU, hang on a minute….”
WEEEEeeeeoooOOOOooow
schrrrrh SCHRRRHHHH WWWEEEeeeeoooooo OOOOO
“pick that fucking crisp packet up!”
hang on
“PICK THAT FUCKING CRISP PACKET UP!”

and so it goes. tell you what, you try living in my head. it really hurts sometimes i promise you. when i start going into one it’s not always because i’m drunk - it’s the way my head is. i don’t make it up.

anyhoo.

i bought a dvd of little britain. i’d only heard this on radio. but when i watched it i noticed a few things. i’m good at noticing things.

david walliams is left-handed. he’s a comedy genius and he is left-handed. so am i. and he can do the stare, the real stare that i go on about.

this gives me strength when i think about my book on the cut.

so, just for today, i live in hope.

guess what.
today i bought an sd card for my camera. the awesome, throbbing power of its 6.1 pixels means that i can capture every bit of detail in every single picture that i take of my arse. but after about 8 or 10 pictures of my arse or vodka mick’s it gives up the ghost.

now that i have decided to do my fabulous book i will need to take a few more piccies so off to argos i went. i got a 256mb sd card. it costed me 30 quids! what a nerve! they must only cost about 20 pees to make. profiteering gitbags!

what i didn’t realise is that the price includes a free laugh.

let me tell you more…

after i had been to argos i went to tesco. i had to get some swig and things. that was all done and off i went and i really didn’t hear the alarm thingy going ‘boing boing’.

let me introduce the nice little security man…

“sorry sir but the alarm has gone off, i’ll have to ask you to return to the store”
(eyes go up to laser factor 5 on the death scale)
“are you arresting me?” (thinks: money)
“oh no, but the alarm has gone off, please come with me”
now i had bought 2 dvds, the maltese falcon and little britain. i handed them over and showed my receipt. matey walked them through the barriers and they were ok. he couldn’t stop apologising but that might have been because i was at least twice his size and could have bashed him up a treat.
eventually i realised it was the sd card that i had bought earlier what had done it. he was a really nice little bloke, i might write to tesco to see if i can get him a pay rise. trouty thought i was going on and being too effusive but i think credit where credit is due.

burning my own eyeballs? you don’t really want to know about that do you? i mean you might be having your tea…

oh, very well.

in one of the many flats i lived in in brighton and hove there was once a flat with a really dodgy oven. seeing as the landlady was my sister and i made a right nuisance of myself i won’t be ringing claims direct but what happened was this…

the oven door opened downwards. i had been making a casserole or firing some pottery or something and the oven was turned up to about 3000 degrees. i opened the oven door.

what’s that word? is it pyroclastic flow? what you get off a volcano when it all goes tits up and people get vaporised? well it was like that except upwards. up, up, up came the heat. right behind my glasses. and then i was blind.

there is an eye hospital in brighton, right opposite the royal sussex. my then girlfriend got a friend of hers to take me there in her car. they put some drops in, told me i had scorched my corneas, and sent me away. still blind.

let me tell you this: i love to laugh, i love to construct jokes, i love anything that is funny or, most importantly, beautiful. and for a few days i was robbed of all that. i could not see. sight is the most precious thing. when i win the lottery a large chunk of money will go to blind people and a bit to the RNLI, for the men who go down to the sea.

you never know; do you?

up to the hospital. hmmm…
bloody buses but i got there well in time. hmmm…
sitting in the waiting area and i recognised the psychiatrist i’d seen before. i was talking to trouty. the dr was lurking. hmmm…
they must think i’m fucking stupid and i feel that insulting. hmmm…
i know when eavesdropping is going on. he was listening in and it was SO obvious. but i don’t really mind. we were just talking about the canal as the sweat poured down and the withdrawal kicked in. hmmm…
so. two psychiatrists who are well used to dealing with idiots like me. i had to say that i wanted to stop drinking. this is a lie. i want to carry on drinking and getting away with it. they could see straight through me. hmmm…
the long and short of it is that i am on the waiting list to go into the windmill unit. this is a 6 week detox and rehab programme. hmmm…

on the way home i got off the bus early so i could have a pint, visit my nephew, buy some swig and walk back home in peace along the canals. hmmm…

the basingstoke is dead now. it is shut, lock number 20 has completely collapsed, the fallen in tunnel will never be reopened because of the bats in there. the basingstoke now looks like spinach soup, all thick and green and manky. it’s covered in graffiti and the scummers have damaged a lot of it. there is so little water in it. poor canal, it just died. hmmm…

but this brings me on to a project i’ve been thinking about for a long time but now the thoughts are really crystallizing. hmmm…

rising to the challenge of Dad, my idea for a lock-by-lock of the navigation has gripped me once more. hmmm…

but i have refined my initial idea. what was going to be a bit of a sterile guide is now going to be a more idiosyncratic affair with photos taken with my sooper-dooper new camera. i may even do a drawing or two. i plan a book to guide boaters uphill from the thames to godalming. every lock and the local shops and pubs and, best of all, the things that i notice and the things that interest me. there will be a focus on agricultural ironwork and bits and pieces of the horsey stuff that remains on the cut. and this will be MY book and i can say anything i want. hmmm…

do you know, i think that one of the most important things in my world at any rate is the winding gear at walsham weir. 1831. the date is cast into the iron that was cast and machined and designed and assembled, do you know, seventy years before my grandmother was born. that’s how long it has been there. it was old before the first world war kicked off. and i love to run my hands over it. hmmm…

the rollers that remain for horse-powered boats to use for the lines are things of beauty to me. i love to see cuts that lines have made in mooring bollards and in brickwork. i love the old bridges and agricultural ironwork and decent gates (see that fab cache, narnian gateway) resound in my soul. some people get off like this on churchy architecture but, to me, a used piece of metalwork that has been around for all them years makes my heart sing. i don’t understand churches but i know what i do understand. hmmm…

anyway, that’s my secret plan. hmmm…

now guess what i have to put up with. a load of trainline mending blokes. chucking all bits of scaffolding and shovels at each other and laughing at stupid jokes out of the daily star. do you know how sick i am of all the scummers, wankers, window-lickers and dribblers that i have to put up with? hmmm…

hey me! think about your book!

this story hasn’t ended yet. hmmm…

i thought about calling this blog:

NEE-NAW, NEE-NAW, NEE-NAW

in honour of the fab ambulance bloke who came round and saved my life the other day. he zoomed in and stabbed me with a syringe full of glucagon, he put an oxygen mask on me. vodka mick held me down while i was fitting and trouty did the business with phoning for really great ambulance bloke.
never a dull moment in the dark halls.

and then i was going to call it:

INTERPRETER

which was about a joke but i can’t remember what. sometimes trouty and i howl with laughter and you can’t ask for more than that.

SO HERE’S A THING…

you all know i’m a medical man. i love nothing more than convincing myself that i have avian flu, penile cancer, dropsy, green monkey disease, new monia (worse than the old one) or male cold.

anyway, tomorrow i have to high up to the loony-bin and present myself before my psychiatrist.

luckily i have consulted a top medical read; yes, you got it, the news of the world.

having read the praysee, precis, praysis or severely shortened version of frank bruno’s autobiography i now discover that i have ‘bi-polar affected disorder’. in short, i am a raving nutcase who is a manic depressive with violent moodswings.

YOU TALKING TO ME?

i don’t know why anyone bothers to read the lancet, the news of the screws is much better. readers send in their marital problems but it’s always some silly cow who wears her knickers and bra in bed, sometimes suspenders and stockings too. i can see right through this load of old rubbish and what i would say is this:

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

ISP CONTROLLER: mr the thirst’s postings have been terminated
HENRY THE THIRST: that’s what you say you smelly old git!
ISP CONTROLLER: you’re terminated, fatty
HENRY THE THIRST: well knob to you! i might get sectioned tomorrow but if i don’t i’ll be round your drum to set it on fire!
ISP CONTROLLER: er…
HENRY THE THIRST: ha ha! so….

(conducts junior school choir)

i am the winner, i am the winner, i am the winner…

EXCEPT I MIGHT NOT BE

i’ve a feeling that tomorrow is going to be a bit of a high noon. the appointment is at 14:00. if i tell them the truth i think i might be going away for a bit. this should be interesting.

wish me well.

do you know what i would like? what i would really, really like?
well, the answer would be ‘a chinese made ak47, my dear’.
the ak47 is gas-powered and kalashnikov should be the richest bloke on the planet. but he’s not.

the ak47 uses return gas to power the next round in. it has a magazine of thirty and can fire three rounds on semi-automatic.

now i would also like a few handguns. have you ever felt one, ever lifted one in your hand? i’ve only done it with a smith and wesson 38. it’s frightening, it weighs an awful lot.

so i want one of them and i want a colt python because it sounds cool. and i want a 9mm browning because of a lou reed record. that’s an automatic.

there is an ak74 and you could cut a bus in half with one. a later, lighter build…

do you know, vodka mick got into a bit of a ruck the other day and he was asked this question: “who the fuck are you?”

when we talk about sawn-offs i know what i would like; a side-by-side with a damascus barrel.

“who the fuck are you? - well perhaps mr gun will help me explain because if yo

BANG!

oh no, there’s all blood coming out of his face. i didn’t do that, i really didn’t.

look, i really didn’t.

erm, i think i’ll go to bed now

will you ever knock it off you tosser?
how am i ever supposed to get any peace with you and your ilk going around playing all that bass shit?
what i’d like to do, on a lovely day like today is, is to get a great big machine gun and shoot so many armour piercing rounds into your stupid little blue peugeot or however you spell it. then, i’d like to stalk round and round your little car and say “hey, go on then. turn it up a bit more. there’s nothing i like better than a bit of drum and bass!”

then i’m going to come up to the window of your stupid little car and shoot a hole in it. then i’m going to say “you know your sound system, well make it do ‘i remember yoOOOOooo’ by frank ifield because if you don’t i’m going to shoot you so much that your head will fall off".

but you won’t be able to make it do that, will you? so then i will murder you and then go through your pockets and find out where you live. and then i’ll go and burn your house down and kill all your pets and your mum and dad. you know your little dog? well, i’m going to stand on its corpse and do a little comic dance and then i’m going to wee on all your christmas presents.

because that’s what happens to anyone who comes anywhere near me with their bloody stupid car sound systems on playing bloody drum and bass and all that crap that goes ‘doof doof doof’ and drives me mad.

here endeth the lesson.

visit the 24hr record dealer and get a copy of ‘for a dancer’ by jackson browne. it goes like this:

“Keep a fire burning in your eye
Pay attention to the open sky
You never know what will be coming down
I don’t remember losing track of you
You were always dancing in and out of view
I must have thought you’d always be around
Always keeping things real by playing the clown
Now you’re nowhere to be found

I don’t know what happens when people die
Can’t seem to grasp it as hard as I try
It’s like a song I can hear playing right in my ear
That I can’t sing
I can’t help listening
And I can’t help feeling stupid standing ’round
Crying as they ease you down
’cause I know that you’d rather we were dancing
Dancing our sorrow away
(right on dancing)
No matter what fate chooses to play
(there’s nothing you can do about it anyway)

Just do the steps that you’ve been shown
By everyone you’ve ever known
Until the dance becomes your very own
No matter how close to yours
Another’s steps have grown
In the end there is one dance you’ll do alone

Keep a fire for the human race
Let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know what will be coming down
Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found
Don’t let the uncertainty turn you around
(the world keeps turning around and around)
Go on and make a joyful sound

Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive
And the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive
But you’ll never know”

go on. get a copy of it. i can e-mail you one if you want. be careful out there, won’t you?

i’m such an idiot. a real tit. of all the gittish things i’ve ever done, this is the big one.

i said something so monumentally stupid to trouty. ah well. what are you going to do? these things happen.

as i write i’m picking pumpkin seeds out of what i laughingly call my carpet (she threw them there, not me). it’s a nylon affair. imagine the gusset of a tramp’s underpants. well, that’s what colour my carpet is.

have you guessed what i said yet? you haven’t? honestly, i don’t know where these readers come from. oooh, sounds like it might be kicking off outside, i’d better go and look out of the window…

nah. it was nothing; just people.

all i was doing was having a lie down. i asked trouty to wake me up in time to go to the shop but she didn’t. this kind of thing makes my brain go ‘grrrrrr’.

and i asked her to marry me.

of all the stupid things i’ve ever said and done this one gets a gold prize.

we decided it was a stupid idea. but that we could get married of sorts. we think we should get ‘married’ on the boat. if i say omally is the captain then he is and so he can do the business. he will have to wear a top hat though.

“do you, joseph macthirst take this woman to be your awfully dreaded wife?”
“i do”
“do you, mistress trouty, widow of this parish, take this bloody awful disaster to be your husband? do you? you really do? well, i’ll ask you again. do you?”

and what happens next? well, you’ll just have to wait and find out.

it is a well known fact that laughter is the best thing in the world. on my tombstone i want written ‘he loved to laugh’.

(yes, dear. he’s going on about his idea of comedy again. no, i quite agree. it really IS boring. and it’s not even funny either. well i don’t know why i bother reading his self-obsessed twaddle, it’s just on the list of links and if i don’t i might miss something important. i’ll mend the greenhouse in a minute. shhh, shhh, he’s starting again..)

but i already told trouty about that and as she will outlive me there’s a fair chance of it happening in real life.

so, picture the scene. i’ve got some swig and i’ve got some fags. as a result of this i managed to convince myself i’ve got tongue cancer. (if i write it down it won’t happen)

then i revisited a certain rubbishy chatroom where this happened:

11:11 ned: Tchoh! Nobody here either.

14:57 henry not the thirst: i’m here. hang on, i’ll just get in my time machine and go back to 11:11 so that nedders has got someone to talk to…

15:00 henry not the thirst: this is a rubbish time machine! i got it out of an innovations catalogue. i’ll try changing the batteries but if that doesn’t w**k i’ll be asking for my £39.99 back, don’t you worry

and then i laughed. i really did. it’s not even very funny but it did make me laugh.

and then trouty phoned up (she’s been in londonscumland) so that was good. my film script for ‘you got twenty’ is on hold because it’s derivative cobblers but it still makes me happy when i play it in my head. and, last night, i had some mr brains faggots in their famous ‘rich west country sauce’.

so life doesn’t get much better. you have a good weekend and don’t forget to laugh.

trouty saw them first. she saw them. and then we had a look out from behind the curtains and they were smoking some class ‘a’ gear.
to be fair, they weren’t actually doing anything wrong but it does lower the tone…

if i’d been more drunk the story would be different. but i did the usual stupid thing and called the police. the police never turned up, of course, and i was left to seethe.

let’s wind back the time. what i should have done was to stick a great big knife in the back of my belt and while they were doing their daft dancing about and jumping up and down and great puffs of skag smoke (they were chasing the dragon) were coming about i should have looked at them.

i should have put my eyes on to laser factor 2 and said “what is the best thing that you ever did?”

because i look scary it’s a weird question. “what is the best thing you ever did?” deflates everything.

now, i look hard and a bit odd. i look like i might tear your arm off and beat you with the sticky end. vodka mick is scared of me. but what did i do?

yes. i copped out.

out of respect to trouty i didn’t do what i should have done.

i should have gone out, tooled, and approached the junk monkeys. “hey! you just tell me what the best thing you ever did was".

see? i’m right like always. you can feel the question cooling you down.

but i didn’t do that. what i did was sat like a right prat in the middle of my bourgois sensibilities. and so i hate myself.

never be untrue to yourself - never let yourself down.

here’s an old one, one of the oldest ever: a man slips on a banana skin and falls over.

i’m not really explaining this very well, although it’s going on in my head. let me see if i can tell you without boring you to death.

the other day i was getting up to about gasmark 7 on the boring scale when i tried to explain how my head works. i consider myself to be a comedian. i know i am. i really know it. i do good jokes. one of the greatest moments in my life was when my sister told me that my brother (who i consider to be the funniest man in the world) thought that i was the funniest man in the world.

this is not a filial bum-lick session, it’s just true. he’s one funny guy. so am i. anyway, i was trying to explain how it works. a man falling on a banana skin and hurting himself isn’t funny at all. except it is.

i don’t want to get all ‘tears of a clown’ about this, i’m just trying to tell you. when you have a head like mine and you can see humour like i can there is a very dark side to it all. it’s a bit newtonian, for every glittering joke there is a dark mire that no one can get you out of.

comedians are notoriously depressed and often alcoholic. the list is a long one that i really shouldn’t bore you with so i won’t.

from the general tone of this you will gather that today, for me, is not a good one. i’m back in the dark halls where thoughts both black and white live.

but i can feel the neurons firing and i just know that i will be able to construct a really good joke later in the day. i can (i’m not joking) feel my head working and getting itself ready…

but just for this bit of today, will you leave me alone for a bit of time. it’s the two sides of a coin. i’m in the dark halls again and i’m crying.

PUBLIC SAFETY ANNOUNCEMENT:
the management regrets that mr thirst’s joke has had to be cancelled. it was so funny that anyone on the receiving end of it would have either burst into flames or died of convulsions. what do you mean you want your money back? you’re the one having a fucking joke now, aren’tcha? this is a decent blog, no jeans, no trainers and you can just wind your neck back in. this’ll end in tears and they won’t be mine you git…

but it did end in tears. and they were mine.

i never told you about my barrel knife, did i?
it’s been knocking about in my toolbox for years and i mean years. but the other night i got it out to show mick (pipe down omally, your remarks are both stupid and hurtful) and we had a good look at my weapon (omally, i warned you. one more and you will be sent to the naughty stair).
anyway, vodka mick is a connasewer of these kinds of things and after he had examined my piece (who snickered? come on, who snickered just then?) we decided to see if my old tool could be found on the internet (right! that does it! out! the lot of you!).

ahem. anyway. what i’ve got is a fab old fish knife. it’s called a barrel knife. it’s dated 1874 and was made in sweden by johhanes engstrom. i think it belonged to dad of dad and where he got it from i don’t know. we found one on e-bay and it went for 150 amerikan buckeroonies. the wooden handle on mine is beautiful. you know how worked tools get after they have been around a bit? well mine’s better.

i’ve had it sitting around for i don’t know how long but it’s part of my mythology. i consulted dad but he doesn’t remember it. having shown trouty how to polish it with nose oil i said that dad should have it back but i want to give it to him, son to father, and then one day it will come back to me and i will give it to my son, alex.

it’s a great bit of kit. i wonder what will happen to it next?

oh, the walking bit? i’m glad you asked.

everywhere i go my head goes about two million miles an hour. i can’t stop it although for the life of me i have tried. nothing works to turn it off. vodka mick bashed on the roof of the boat (where we kipped last night) and eventually we set off along the towpath. trouty went home because she wanted to be there but me and mick (sorry, mick and i) stayed a while at new haw lock and watched life’s eternal comedy unfold before us while we lent a hand here and there.

and all the while my brilliant screenplay for my brilliant film (you got twenty) was unravelling in my head. when i was talking about this to trouty i said ‘it’s like a crossword clue, you have to not think about it for ages and then up it pops’. so i have all this going on in my head, like grinding wheels going ‘grrrrr’.

as i type this the plot of ‘you got twenty’ is unravelling. don’t blame me; i didn’t write it. it just goes on in my head, you see? for me it’s like going to the pictures. the title’s good though, so i know it will work - it’s just a matter of time.

for the sake of levity here comes a joke: vodka mick said (quite seriously) that his dad had said to him “i think you should go to RADA”

now guess what i said…

while you try to work out the punchline let me tell you what happened next. me and mick (sorry, michael and i) went up to tesco to buy some essentials ie fags and swig. who should we meet upon the way but daft dave and his dog. he’s a funny fellow. his dog is the best on the planet and he speaks spanish. honestly, the people i know; you couldn’t make it up.

we were walking along and my brain was still singing to me about this wretched film thingy and mick and dave were talking to each other about a family who has a name beginning with g and are right bastards. someone’s going to get shot. but it was nothing to do with me because i wasn’t even there and even if i was all i was doing was trying to stop the grinding noise in my head and getting this story out of my bloodstream.

we were just walking along. just the three of us and a dog and i felt whole. i felt pure, like nothing could touch me. you know me, i HATE being outside, i really really hate it. but just for that short twinkle of time there was a moment…

just three scuzzy looking blokes and a dog.

on the way back mick had peeled off and gone away. there was just me and daft dave and his dog. a scummer leant out of a car window and shouted “CHAVS!".

and all the hairs came up on the back of my neck and i remembered why i never want to go outside and another bit of my film wrote itself.

but i’m alright now. i’m indoors and my teddy is looking at me. i’ve had him since i was a tiny wee. his name is Ted. he looks after me.

my reply? i said “you misheard, he said you should go to Rwanda”

well i thought was funny.

night night.

in the olden days there were pirates; this much is true.
but there is much mythology about these pirates and their works. let’s consider the flags…
as far as i know them pirates of old used to home in on a ship and do a bit of lurking about. the captain would have to work out how beefy his crew was, how rubbish the target’s crew was, what were the chances etc.
and then they would hoist a white flag.
but this didn’t mean surrender, far from it. what the white flag meant was ‘we are pirates and you are going to hand everything over. come on, come on, hand it over’.
but then if the target did not stop, did not capitulate and hand everything over, tried to run…
then the red flag was raised.
the red flag, the colour of blood, meant ‘no quarter’, that not a life would be spared. and the pirates went in under the blood red flag and did their worst.
there are several recorded images of pirate raiding flags, most of them blood red. some are most ornate and feature skeletons and hourglasses to signify death and the slipping away of time for the target vessel.
although the charlotte rose flies a black and white skull and crossbones i have been told that the black and white versions were a hollywood myth; that the true red of the ‘jolie rouge’ (origin of the jolly roger) didn’t come out too well on film.
well, i don’t know about that but what i do know is that my long favourite by a mile is the flag flown by ‘calico’ jack rackham.
he flew a blood red flag with a white skull featured on it. below the skull, instead of the usual crossbones, was a pair of crossed cutlasses.

so imagine my surprise when a beautiful t-shirt in blood red and featuring the fantastically evil standard of captain jack slipped through my letterbox.

i know where it came from but i wasn’t sure why. following a bit of head-scratching my suspect list includes three names and you all know who you are.

so a million thanks to JG and to Ned and to suspect number three. i shall wear my fantastic shirt with pride as i sail under the symbol of jack rackham and steal sweets from small children on the length of the navigation.

thank you so much, my friends.

They call me Troutmael.
In New England (I mean New Haw) I wanted to sail away to hunt mopeds all over the canal. At a moody looking inn (where there was a lot of swearing. ie the Kings Head) I was forced to room with a rough harpoonist. His name was Mickqeg. He was a very dodgy looking fellow with many tattoos and stuff like that.
We agreed that we should sail together and walked about on the wharf looking for a suitable vessel. There was one called the Charlotte Rose but that looked rubbish so we kept on going. Mickqeg had his harpoon to hand at all times. Then we saw the Peapod.
A pious gent signed me up straight away but looked a bit wary of Mickqeg for he was most foreign and dangerous looking. Mickqeg picked up his harpoon and quick as a knife he impaled an icecream van. Mickqeg was hired on the spot as we set sail to hunt for the most dangerous mopeds on the waterside.
On board the Peapod we had a pleasant life at first until I heard the Captain, one Captain Davehab stomping about on the deck above. He was well annoying. We saw him not for quite a while.
Then, one day when I was making a cup of tea I heard a step and a clunk and a bellow:
“Both hands lay aft!”
It was whipping time again. I gaped in awe as the Captain nailed a 2p coin to the handrail of the Peapod.
“I seek a motorbike", said Captain Davehab, “And there’s a solid cupro-nickel two pence coin for the first man to spot the bike I seek”
“Oh God", said a tramp on the towpath, “He seeks Moped Dick!”
The crew (ie myself) were crestfallen. Had we known that Captain Davehab was a right nutter we should never have set sail on the doomed Peapod.
As we sailed a lesbian on a mountain bike was seen and “There’s a fat-arsed lezza!” was heard from the tops. Mickqeg had been fondling his weapon and wasted no time in letting it go. The back tyre was breached and soon spouted air. The lesbian was soon hauled in and rendered down for useful fat. We knew she would fuel many lamps even if she didn’t have stockings and suspenders on.
Then Captain Davehab (looking through the wrong end of his telescope) spotted an approaching motorbike.
“‘Tis Moped Dick!” he cried.
Mickqeg had gone into one; he knew his (closing) time was up. Davehab bashed him on the bonce and roared “The great white motorbike!”
“Captain", quoth the harpoonist, “There are two aboard!”
“Never mind about that” said Davehab “Throw now and throw well and true for i shall ruin their petty fun and scummerisms!”
And Mickqeg threw true and he threw as well as his heart did beat.
I clung to a wooden scaffolding plank that Captain Davehab had scabbed off a building site and made out is was a gangplank.
Alas the harpoon did not hit any heads on Moped Dick and Moped Dick was going too fast; he caught the Peapod clean on the side and we were sinking. The last I saw of Captain Davehab he was on the side of the motorbike and shouting “You rascals, I’ll be the death of you!”
The mighty white moped rose up one last time and then sank beneath the waves in a film of two-stroke.
And then, and then…
He got out on the bank and kicked their heads in and then he went off to the pub with Mickqeg. I haven’t seen them since. I’m still floating about on this plank.
They call me Troutmael….