do you know, i just had the most marvellous weekend. i was expecting one of my dearest, most kindest and wonderfullest friends to turn up and i got all excited but then omally turned up so i just had to put up with it.

see that piccie up there? well it’s of coxes lock. i took that picture as omally came in out of the mist and tried to get into the lock. coxes is a right prick of a lock and i’ve only done it twice going uphill without smacking anything. there is a big mill race that comes down the side and it can prove difficult. most often i will try to overcompensate and go kerplonk against the wall on the right hand side of the footbridge. the first time i ever tried coxes going uphill was in a 55 footer hire boat and i got caught in the weir drift and spun.

this was the first time i had ever had a go in a boat. it was the ‘guildford princess’ and every time i see her now i always doff my mental trilby of thought to her. the weir drift comes over the tail of the lock and bounces off the pilings where the mooring bollards are. it’s like when you go into papercourt, you know? you have to know about these things, whether to steer into and against a weir drift or to use it like when you wind.

but i got spun then at the tail of coxes when i first started this caper, the love of my life.
and i was shitting myself because a 55 foot boat is big and i didn’t know what i was doing. when you hire a boat all they do is show you how to turn the boat round, how to put the central heating on, how to go downhill through a lock and where the lifejackets are.

they also give you a great big manual and they say ‘read it’ knowing full well that on your stag party boat hire trip that you won’t. but i did. i read everything. and then i read it all again. because i’d been infected. the canal had got into my veins. and now it’s done and dealt, the canal lives inside me and i live inside the canal. there can be no half measures; i’m not just interested in the canal (coxes lock, deepest unmanned lock on the navigation, opened in 1653) i OWN that fucking canal. it’s mine. same as it belongs to chaz and to trev and to vodka mick same as it belongs to anyone who has the heart and the soul to love her. same as it belongs to omally.

at coxes lock i started talking to two boys. one was 13, called matthew and the other was 12, called jordan. i like talking to children; mewling puking infants don’t interest me at all, i leave that up to the ladies what are biologically programmed to assume instant admiration for the bundles of snot and poo and waaaah. but when they start to talk it’s different. that’s when it gets interesting. and i started talking with matthew.

matthew (aged ‘firteen’) was manfully pulling on a roll-up. i don’t mind kids smoking or swearing; they do it anyway. but we spoke of this and that and they helped with getting the lock ready and in our favour. i delayed things on the navigation for about half an hour because i was more interested in talking to these kids than anything else. now, i don’t want to look like a peedo and having a boat is quite a good excuse. there is a watery barrier that permits discourse with children that might be frowned upon in other circumstances. i asked matthew why he smoked. jordan had a baccy tin with a picture of a cannabis leaf on it. he’s twelve. matthew was puffing away like a steam engine on his roll-up and he kept spitting. and then we got down to it; matthew said he smoked because of the stress. his parents have split up, matthew lives in eton most of the time but he has to knock about here at weekends. his dad drinks and his parents row and sometimes it gets violent and he doesn’t like it. i told him i don’t like to see people spitting and he just stopped doing it.

the lock was ready and we went to take the charley rose through. there are few things more satisfying than seeing someone bollocks the whole procedure up just like you did a couple of years before. trouty was up on the lock with matthew and jordan. as the boat got caught in the drift and spun and omally and i started to head north instead of south matthew asked her, “why’s he doing that?” and trouty replied “because he’s a learner".

the golden rule is to do everthing very s l o w l y because if you do it means that you will cock everything up very s l o w l y and you will have a chance to get out of it. so we just turned round again and had another run at it and we got in. and the boys ran round and helped and i made sure they got a chance to play with the windlass which they shoved onto the spindle the wrong way round but they worked it out and didn’t fall in.

and i made sure to shake their hands like gentlemen should and the last i saw they were swaggering off, puffing on their rollies, chuffed to bits and so was i.

and later, in the small hours, i was talking to oldmally about my fears of going into hospital again and he was kind to me and reminded me about what i had done, talking to them boys, and he hugged me and told me not to forget about matthew and jordan and he said “they will never forget meeting you, you know".

and the tears rolled down my cheeks.

what a world we live in; sometimes it can stink so bad but every now and then it can be so good.

wish me luck. i’ll be away for a bit and i’ll be very scared. but i’ll be back, you know?

see you when i see you.

i love you.

there can be no doubt that billy bear sausage slice is one of the most disgusting things in the world. in order to avoid getting my arse sued off and made into an extruded mechanically recovered meat product i will have to say this:

if i was going to make a, let’s say ‘henry the hedgehog’ sausage slice i would have to get a load of eyelids and snouts and ringpieces and mash them up into a slurry. then i would add sugar, salt and colourings. next i would extrude it through a comedy hedgehog face thing and then slice the muck up and sell it.

me: “what’s with this sausage slice?”
manufacturer: “it’s like that to make children eat it”
me: “do your children eat it?”
manufacturer: “oh no, we are all vegetarian. we get our vegetables from the farmers’ market in ripley”

‘ring ring’ said the phone. ‘hello hello ‘ said me.

i’m going into the windmill on monday. i’ll be away for a while; maybe two weeks, maybe four weeks. whatever.

in the meantime i got a load of time and effort wasted up the doctor’s today…

“hello can i have my scrip please?”
“no, because we appear to have lost it”
“hmmmm”
3pm
“if you would like to take a seat the surgery finishes at six and we can print you out a new one then”
“you must be kidding”

and the central heating has stopped working. brilliant

when i was young, slim and attractive and aged nineteen i took myself off to go and live in berlin. and i found a job, employed by the berlin senate, with the ‘family rations issue section’ of the british troops posted there. this was in a great big warehouse out in spandau. it was so big that it had two railway lines coming right into the yard and we used to unload and load the goods trains that came in and went out.

one of the things i had to do was take a great big set of boltcroppers and sling them over my shoulder and walk down the side of the train, on the trackside mind, and take off all the security seals which were great big chunky twists of steel. it felt good and i felt a bit manly, out there in the yard with the sun shining down, and it was all quiet as i crunched up and down the chippings with the great big train towering above me. climbing up and down in the silence and cropping the seals off.

in spandau the trains ran through the streets, like trams might, on rails that just ran along and i never saw any trouble caused by it. just huge great enormous trains every now and then.

the depot was run by an army major who was a bit of a tit. once, when there was a lot of snow, he said that there was a train coming in and he wanted one of the two lines cleared of snow so that it could get in. i don’t know how he thought the trans-siberian railway line works but he was most adamant. so the line was cleared of snow and in came the train. on the other line.

another time we had a helicopter coming in and he wanted a big ‘h’ made out of gaffer tape and stuck down in the yard so it knew where to land. i don’t know if you have ever felt the downforce off a helicopter but if you are an ‘h’ made out of gaffer tape you don’t last very long.

there was a storeman there called terry. he wasn’t very nice. he reckoned he’d been out in vietnam. i didn’t think he had. one day another forklift driver came up to me and said “you know there’s some cats down there?” and he was right! there was a little family of feral cats living at the end of the warehouse. the driver said “for god’s sake don’t tell anyone” and i didn’t.

i bought cans of catfood which caused some hilarity where i was living because matthias thought i had bought it by mistake and i was going to eat it.

but terry found out and one weekend he came back on a sunday and he shot all the little cats.

nasty bastard.

he was also a systematic thief. the major had brought a lot of his stuff into the warehouse for safekeeping and every day terry would put some of it in the boot of his car and steal it.

one day we were all in our rest/changing room and the major came in:
“has anyone seen my drinks trolley?”
we all knew it was horrible terry that was pinching all his stuff but we never said anything.
voice from the back of the room: “yeah, i saw it going down kantstrasse about half past eight last night.”

there was a bloke called wolfgang who liked to play chess and spent all day balancing a broom upside down on his fingertip and there was jack hinderliter all the way from oregon who liked strong coffee and wagner. there were several blokes who used to get their brown warehouse coats and use a big felt pen to draw sergeant stripes and medals on them.

and all the time the trains came and went and i’d use my boltcroppers and my forklift to do what had to be done.

apart from a tesco trolley what has been thrown over a barbed-wire topped fence into some stingers (see previous) there can be few sights more beautiful than an old plastic milk bottle thing that has been jammed onto the top of some railings.

so there you go.

i don’t know why they call tesco in addlestone ‘tesco’. they should call it ‘freakshow’. honestly. anyway, trouty bought a delicious (looking) bacon joint off the hot shelf up there the other day.

yum yum, how good it looked. trouty had gone to bed so i thought i’d cheer myself up with a little bit of the bacon joint. i don’t eat very much these days but i thought i’d have a go. yum yum, this looked nice. so i got a nice fresh bread roll and cut off a few slices. yum yum, how tasty this was going to be!

i reassumed the position in front of the old compluter and grabbed my bacon joint tasty bread roll and bit into it. but hang on there! what i seemed to have bitten into was a roll containing a sort of bastard cross between bicycle tyre inner tube, a whelk, some blubber and a big elastic band. cue the old eyes up to laser mark 10.

my chompers got through the bread but the bacon joint was way beyond them. i wrestled with the thing for a while and finally the innards of the roll came sliding out. i was left holding an empty bun in my left hand and looking like jamie oliver with his tongue poking out. this was a not good thing.

so today i amused myself for a while imagining me going up to the customer service desk of messrs tesco, delving into a bin liner, producing a pretty cake plate with the remains of this sorry article on it and placing it gently onto the desk and looking at the hapless assistant.

and then looking at them.

not saying anything, just looking at them.

“bing bong, can security go to customer services please”

and then after i had been thrown out and had my pretty cake plate thrown at my head i would walk home whistling a little tune i have made up about how i am so great but everybody else is not.

but in the real world i did walk home and saw one of my favourite colours. it’s this one:

i love the sight of a sodium lamp starting up; it’s so pretty and strawberry.

today i’m being boring.

tick tick tick…

except i was thinking that i’d like to do ‘free running’.

that’s the thing when you run high up in the air off a parapet of a building and then leap right across an alley, roof to roof, and then skid down a lamppost and skip off the top of bollards.

but that is never going to happen, is it?

i’ll go back to being boring.

if anyone’s thinking of popping over to france on the old eurotunnel or something, here’s a few french phrases that might come in handy…

“Pourquoi avoir vous a réglé ma voiture sur le feu?”

“Avez-vous obtenu une lumière pour ma bombe d’essence ? “

“Je règle juste un orphelinat sur le feu”

“Comment faites-vous un cocktail molotov ?”

“Votre Mercedes est sur le feu et maintenant je vais brûler votre maison en bas”

and that’s just a few of them.

then i started thinking about enormous lower mandibles.

if jennifer anniston and brad pitt had ever had a kid it would have come out looking like a monkfish. and billie piper, don’t get me on about her. her jaw is not only the widest part of her head, it’s the widest part of her whole body. if you look at a photo of her you will see it’s always taken from the same angle so you aren’t supposed to realise that she’s half monkfish.

anyway, the best bit of today was this. look up there at the piccie. a nice parcel all the way from shanghai. a chinese version of david copperfield, the cukor version from 1935.

it is absolutely brilliant. every bit of the story sucks you in and the performances from w c fields and freddie bartholomew are a complete joy.

and i’ve had all my hair cut off and my beard trimmed.

and what did you do today, my dear?

today i had to go to the hospital to see a rheumatologist. his name is dr hughes. we have to decide whether i have gout or osteo-arthritis. to test for this we have to see how much uric acid i have swimming about in me so there was yet another blood test to be done.

he looked through my notes and dug out my last blood test results. i asked him to interpret them and he said there wasn’t that much wrong. renal ok, hepatic ok.

i said “i don’t know how i keep getting away with this” and he did that weird doctor thing. he must have gone to doctor school with dr lawrence. he just looked at me.

we talked about the heberden’s nodes that i have that are deforming my fingers and he prescribed me some stuff for the pain when the weather kicks in and my bones hurt. and then he looked at me and said “you won’t get away with this for ever you know” and he just kept looking at me.

some tumbleweed blew through the examination room propelled by an icy wind and i could hear a bell tolling. a solitary cold iron bell up in an ivy-covered campanile.

i thanked him for his time and trouble.

if you were raving mad and had too much time on your hands you might want to potter about in your shed. “ooh, what’s this? a pot of red paint. i’d forgotten i had that. because i am a silly old idiot i think i might go up a ladder and paint my gutters with it".

what is THAT all about?

red gutters? red downpipes? what? do you want the amerikan airforce to shoot them off from an apache attack helicopter?

dear lord.

anyway. i had to go to tesco and vodka mick came round but when he cleared off i went up that way with him. i wanted to get some stuff to make a mushroom soup. i had chestnut and oyster mushrooms. it turned out rather well and i might post my recipe but first of all listen to this…

when i coughed up at the checkout i thought i might engage the young female assistant in conversation. the bloke behind me was buying a shedload of booze. i asked her if she could recommend any films i should see but she couldn’t think of any. i was just trying to be nice. when she gave me my receipt she said “and there’s a voucher there for you…” and then her voice kind of tailed off. it faded away. i read my voucher…

now, i know i shouldn’t have done this because she was only about 19 and just trying to turn an honest buck and fed up with idiots like me but there is a little devil that lives inside me and i can’t help it.

with a poker face i said “hmmm” and she started to deliquesce. “hmmm, new generation bodyform ultra towels". booze-buying bloke was staring and checkout kid had just about died.

sometimes i frighten myself. i never do anything wrong but like the good doctor says i won’t get away with it forever.

i can’t be bothered to give you my mushroom soup recipe, if you want it you’ll have to email me. it was alright, trouty liked it but these days everything seems to taste of soap to me.

oooooh, bodyform, body formed for yooooooou!

i took a hike on oyster. the lights were against me under that old railroad bridge but i didn’t care. i needed a drink and i went straight through on red.

the rain was falling and i could hear the alarm sounding on some old building over on the industrial zone. there was a foetid stink in the air, yeah, someone was cooking up a whole batch of bread at that bakery over on chertsey. one of those health and safety guys over there should have a look at what’s going on. jees, they make that stuff with no crusts on now, and that just can’t be right.

and the rain fell.

i walked under starlight and the stink of this dirty old city got right up my nose. new haw, new haw; so good they named it once and then stuck an addlestone suffix and a surrey postal code on the end of it. but i love this stinking town. the rain fell but i was walking on oyster.

over on industrial the construction guys have been doing a piece of work. i ducked behind a dumpster and checked it out. yeah, sure, that new place where they get busy with the henry vacuum cleaners and associated cleansing products sure is coming on. and i wondered where the graft was behind all this. right next to bookers wholesale store; i just couldn’t work out the link.

pretty soon i knew i’d be hooking a left into brooklands, yeah, that dump. the air on oyster was just so mean and there were cars filling up at the gas station. jet. yeah, right.
you don’t fool me.

outside the shop on the corner of chertsey and oyster there’s what looks like a mailbox, yeah, nice and normal, just what you might expect. i hung around a while and watched. no one went near it. so what does that tell you?

i’ve been flatfooting it for too long. hey! i’m getting old now and these bones are too weary for my kind of a deal. you hire me, you fire me. buddy, i just don’t care.

in on brooklands a whole different deal was going down. there were six of them in the parking lot. tucked into my belt i had my toenail clippers; a solid basset korea 02. in my line you need reassurance.

you know that greenhouse thing where they keep the trolleys? outside tesco? well a bit before that actually if you’re going that way? yes, more outside marks and sparks? yeah, that trolley park thing. anyway, six of them, all together cuddling up so nice and cosy. hey! give me a break will you? what are you trying to do? make this old face cry?

one of them had a moped and he gunned the engine real hard. i’m thinking hey! calm down there! are you nuts? they never saw me watching them as i edged around the stinking lot. there was crap everywhere; two receipts from marks and a cigarette end. this town stinks but i kinda like it in a crazy way.

at the 24 hour store i wanted to see security. i flashed my pass. they were glad that i get half price bus travel provided i travel after 09:30 on weekdays and all day at weekends except there aren’t any buses on a sunday. that’s right sister; ain’t life sweet? in my line you get the gravy.

i was glad to get out of the rain. i made my report.

heading straight for the liquor i checked out what i call the ‘cheap shelf’. four limes for 19 cents is pretty good and while no one was looking i put a lemon curd yoghurt in my basket for trouty. she’s one hell of a chick, a real doll.

back out in the mean streets i turned up the collar of my coat against the mild drizzle. a loner hooked a right into chertsey from oyster and never used indication in strict contravention of the road traffic act of 1972. i’ll get onto the commissioner in the morning and with my evidence that’s one scum-sucking lowlife who ain’t going to be on my streets for a long, long time.

hey baby! this job ain’t easy but someone has to do it and i’m the kind of blue-collar yet surprisingly auto-didact with amusing quirks and surprising twists in his detective capabilities to do it.

back at my apartment i had some thinking to do. i’d been scratching my head for too long.

yeah, i KNEW who was the man behind ‘hollywood producer’, it was…

no, no!

BANG! BANG!

ugh…….. (i’m dead now)

there can be fewer sights to uplift the heart and make it sing rather than an abandoned tesco trolley that has been thrown over a fence into some stingers right by where you live.

so that’s why you get to see a picture of it. i like to share the joy.

i was wandering about and making a nuisance of myself and, lo and behold, i wound up in the pub of ultimate swearification. the landlord had a kind of plastic space boot thing on his left leg which made that bit of him look like a stormtrooper out of starwars. and john the bosh was in there. i read the daily mirror. contrary to popular belief i very rarely go to the pub these days. why? because pubs are rubbish, that’s why.

then dad phoned me up. he might have been checking to see if i had remembered that it was my sister’s birthday yesterday but i HAD remembered and sent a jackie lawson e-card thing with some cute teddies on. and i phoned her up.

then we started talking about france.

i wondered what i would have to do if i was in charge. dad was more reasonable than i because when i said i thought that the riot act should be read (do they have un act de la riot in frenchland?) and that people should be gunned off the streets, dad thought that community leaders should be sat down and spoken with, presumably over a tasse de cafe or something, and perhaps things could be calmed down and sorted out.

we had a lovely chat and it was great to speak to the old man. i do love him, you see.

and all the while france is burning with anger. i know what i’m on about because i’ve been in riots and let me assure you they aren’t very funny. it will be very interesting to see how this turns out. my take on this is that if you have an imperialistic and colonial history and if you are a deeply racist and xenophobic culturally hidebound nation you will get your arse kicked. never mind ‘le weekend’. how about ‘le wake up’.

sorry france. you’re dead.

i stuck my head out today to go to the shops for supplies. i walked along thinking about how rubbish marvin gaye was. some idiot on the radio had chosen ‘let’s get it on’ as a favourite record and that record (which i don’t like) started me thinking about another misogynistic load of claptrap that he had come out with ie. ’sexual healing’. ’sexual healing’ is about as disgusting a pile of sentiment as you can imagine. whenever i have to endure it ("this is really great, i love this one") it makes me want to spew like david walliams on little britain. just listen to the words; they’re so horrendous. no wonder marvin’s dad shot him dead.

anyway, i was walking along and it had been raining. i don’t mind that. what i DO mind is a carload of chavs zooming through a puddle and soaking me on purpose. i didn’t show any reaction; i wouldn’t give them the pleasure, although my eyes did go up to gasmark 5. so here’s to you, driver of silver hatchback registration mark xxxxxxxx (number withheld on legal grounds) ha ha ha and how very funny. but when i track you down, and i will, let’s see how funny it is when i set your car on fire at three o’clock in the morning and all your best cds get melted. never mind going round going ‘doof doof doof’; when i’ve finished your whole car will just go DOOF. just once.

on i squelched to tesco and as i did i mused upon the act of piracy committed off the coast of somalia. the pirates hit on a cruise ship with a rocket launcher. i wondered how they had fought them off. how anyone wants to go anywhere near the dark continent defeats me but if i had been the captain i would have ordered the canvas to be hauled back from the guns and ordered that them somalian pirates be holed below the waterline. and then, when they were all swimming about i would have invented a cruise ship game of ’shoot the pirate in the face’. well, it’s better than a cabaret.

and then…

on the way back from tesco there had been a car prang. there was an ambulance in attendance. there was a car that looked pretty bashed up and i was sorry that i had missed the action.

taking my brolly firmly in my hand i approached a chav in a baseball cap…
me: ‘is this anything to do with you?’
him: ‘what’s it got to do with you?’
his eyes went up to laser factor 8 which is pretty strong
me: ‘because i only live round the corner and i wondered if you might want a cup of tea and a sit down or to use the phone or something’
him: ‘no, you’re alright mate, everyone’s on their way. but thanks’

and then i went home and watched a film with trouty. it was the free dvd out of yesterday’s times; ‘notorious’ what is by hitchcock.

and we spotted hitchcock too. i love spotting him in his films.

and then i went back out and took two pictures of shrubbery, one of which may or may not being appearing at the top of this pile of old toot.

and that is what i did today.

UNDER THE FLAG

there was a silver snuff box upon the table. the pirates were tired and idle as they sat about below decks. abel dawkins lay back upon a sack so stuffed with golden treasure and farmer sat upon a chest filled with pieces of eight and emeralds. they eyed each other as no one was to be trusted in their profession. dressed in faded rags they were sure to keep each other in view as the rats played amongst the stale crusts and platters and the slow waves slapped against the galleon as she rode the waters of the caribbean.

the ‘violet’ was not a large ship but her crew were bloodthirsty. they could take any ship in the seas. but for now they waited. and dawkins took up the whetstone and polished the murderous edge of his cutlass. and they waited…

the captain, nobeard, made his way down the gaps between the piles of treasure loaded away below decks. all this would soon be buried away on an island that he knew of. above there was young tom at the helm and all the way aloft was peter smith.

the gulls cried and they all knew that land could not be far off.

not one of them touched the bottle of rum that stood near the snuff box. and the rats skittered and their red eyes glowed and their yellow teeth snicked as the ship’s biscuits were taken. and the pirates waited.

the swell slapped against the ship. they waited. and watched each other.

and then it came; the banging against the masthead that they had been waiting for. the signal that a target was in sight and then there was activity. farmer stood and tied a scarf about his head and dawkins shoved his cutlass into his belt. the crew were all at once in action as the murderous men of the violet all came up above decks.

in all its history the violet had never raised a white warning flag. the prey was sighted and as young tom span the wheel hard over nobeard donned his sash and stuffed a loaded pistol within it. he took up a telescope to assess the battle to come.

old murray raised the flag; the blood red flag that the crew of the violet always went in under. a crimson flag with an hourglass, a skull and a cutlass picked out in black. it was their battle flag, their flag of honour, it gave them courage to slay and to steal.

under his captain’s tricorn, nobeard raised the brass telescope to his eyeless orbit. no one spoke, for they could not, as the crew of skeletons waited on the gunwhales, all dressed in faded rags, as the prey was neared. and the skeletons drew their daggers and their cutlasses and prepared themselves to go in under the blood red flag.

honestly, i really don’t know why i bother. i was born far too early and i don’t understand all this at all. anyway, this should be a nice bigsize picture of chaz. he is a boatman and he runs the dredger that is called ‘hoe’ and here (possibly) is a picture of him in it.

these are the people that i muck about with on the cut when i’m making a nuisance of myself.

and let me tell you, messrs dell compluter, if this doesn’t work to my satisfaction your product gets defenestrated.

this might be a picture of chaz but the last one came out as a picture of trev so don’t hold your breath…

let’s see. it might be a picture that i want. but then again it might not.
*clicks on publish*

i took some photos. i wonder if i can get them onto here. let me see…

oh, how very surprising. all my recent photos have disappeared and so i can’t bring you the exciting photos that i wanted to. so now my stomach has gone into a complete knot and i feel sick. i do i feel really sick because this is a terrible situation to be in. loads of photos that i know the compluter pixies are holding hostage but can i get them out to do one little thing? oh no.

life has always been like this and it always will be. nothing ever has worked and nothing ever will work.

i should retitle this blog. i should call it ‘i wonder if i can’t’

because the answer is always ‘yes. you never could and you never will, you sad loser’.

meanwhile my arse has been acting like a cross between a foghorn and a muckspreader and i feel ill and i only had about two hours sleep last night.

i had some pictures of vodka mick and some of chas and trev and tony on the dredger, hoe. not pictures of beauty but pictures of interest. it’s a shame i can’t get anything to work; i can’t even send a text message so this is way beyond my skills.

sorry to disappoint. yet-a-bloody-gain.

well it is the time.

it’s the time for lovely winter food. winter food is the best of all, you can have loads of root veg and yum yum casseroles and things. tonight at thirst hall we had a lovely bean affair. it went a bit like this:
take a casseroley type dish and fry off bacon bits and onion and garlic and slivers of carrot. add some red wine and a sprinkle of vegetable gravy granules. then add drained cans of several types of beans. i used heinz baked beans, cannelini beans, flageolet beans, broad beans…
make it up as you go along.
then you have to make the dumplings.
dumplings can induce a luxurious coma and the ones i made were with vegetarian suet and self-raising and i added smoked paprika and a smidge of tomato puree.
i bunged in a bit of water and popped the dumplings on top and left the whole thing in the oven for quite a while.
the aroma was lovely.
i can cook anything now and i never weigh anything or time things particularly. i just know what i’m doing.

and when it comes to dishing up i think, all of a sudden, ‘now is the time’.

and to add a little piquancy blunkett has resigned. yes, he’s resigned.

yet again.

oh dear, a snout has had to be pulled out of the trough, but don’t worry, blunkett fans, because his snout will soon be back in and he’ll be the minister of something else by the end of the week.

the cracks in our ghastly government are becoming more and more apparent; the liar, war criminal and murderer is still trying to front it.

it’s no wonder smoke comes out of my ears.

with a rush and a push the land will be ours.

now is the time.

here’s one for you. i was thinking about a song. a song that makes me cry. trouty told me that it was from ‘the king and i’. so i googled the lyrics. i expect you know it but if you don’t then you really should.

“Whenever I feel afraid
I hold my head erect
And whistle a happy tune
So no one will suspect
I’m afraid.

While shivering in my shoes
I strike a careless pose
And whistle a happy tune
And no one ever knows
I’m afraid.”

so in two little verses i get my heart ripped out. it does me every time. as i type this i am crying because it gets right into my very soul. in two verses. meh, what can you do?

nails? well, i’m talking bodily nails.

since i was a boy, the frightened whistling boy, i bit my nails. not just my fingernails either, oh no, i bit my toenails too. i used to be able to get my foot behind my head but i can’t any more. on the tube trains if i was sitting across from a fanciable woman i would knit my fingers together so that the revolting stubs of my nails, bitten to the quick, could not be seen. and then i stopped biting them.

like when i stop drinking from time to time i did it by what i would call blunt force. my mother had painted my nails with ’stop ‘n’ gro’ years before. mmmm, tasty. it became a kind of condiment.

but i just stopped.

every now and then i have a bit of a chew but my nails aren’t all that bad now. the nail beds have been a bit reduced but so what? in fact, before the arthritis, i used to really like the look of my hands; they were something that i was proud of. for a while.

peter green, yes, him out of fleetwood mac what went bonkers after too much lsd (don’t get me started on that subject) used to walk about in richmond with fingernails about 3 inches long. i kind of get it.

now, i must be off to pick up other peoples’ detritus. but i won’t be using my fingernails.

and i’ll whistle a happy tune while i’m doing it.

i’ve got 37 inches.

when i had my bath the other day i conducted an interesting experiment, nothing to do with my 37 inches either.

what happened was i wondered how far down into the murk i could put my hand before it was no longer visible. i reckon eight inches into the silt.

vodka mick came round today and asked how my anger management was going. ‘eh, what?’ because he had some news about the cut. when he went to sign on he had seen two boats going well over and listing. when he got to coxes he found out why. because the scummers, the rodents and filth who pollute my life, had opened all the paddles at coxes lock and drained the entire pound.

grrrrr and eyes up to laser factor nine.

i will not, i WILL NOT, stand for anyone pissing about with my canal. anyone who fucks with my canal will really wish that they had not. but only if i can catch them.

after my rather risible venture to the boozologist at the hospital, where trouty got cross with me because i went in the bog and read the paper and drank half a bottle of red wine, i went to my brother’s shop and made a nuisance of myself. and i took collection of ‘THE STREETMASTER’. yes, 37 inches of throbbing pistol-gripped litter picker upper. i also got my binbag holder-opener. a neat five clip action. simple and clean; you want to see it.

there is a way back from the dark halls and it’s to do what i always shoot my gob off about. the streetmaster with its unique swivel head action is the way forward. i tried it out at home and i can pick up tiny bits of fluff from the carpet which is just as well seeing as i have no vacuum cleaner because i lost my temper with the last one and smashed it to smithereens because of its stupid bag (puff pant) bloody (grrrrr) fucking stupid (breathe deeply) changing mechanism that didn’t work. well it will never work again because i killed it stone dead.

i was going to clean up the carpark before i start on the towpath but vodka mick came round and one thing led to another and now it’s gone all dark. talking of which…

last night i had my insulin and cooked the dinner and i was eating it all (featuring a lovely loaf cooked by trouty: wright’s mixed grain bread mix; try some) and i was just about half way through it….

…ever woken up in your own house with paramedics shoving hypostop into your gob? this time i didn’t get stabbed with glucagon. the ambulance men were glad to be here, they said, because they got called off an rta in woking where some git had smashed into blockbuster’s window. this diabetic stuff is getting serious now. i think it’s got to the stage called ‘brittle’.

and i’m frightened. i really am. while i am happy to keep ambulancemen out of the rain by nearly dying and offering them cups of tea that they don’t want i really think i should be moving on up. and ‘the streetmaster’ is the way forward. scummers will all cower as i approach with my 37 inches of litter picking power.

as it is not yet covered in dogshit i can still use it to pinch trouty’s arse.

you try living behind these eyes; it ain’t easy. i’m doing the best i can.

PICK THAT FUCKING CRISP PACKET UP AND DON’T FUCK WITH MY CANAL!