have a look out the window. go on. have a look out the window. i bet you can’t see it. you can’t, can you? you can’t see that global warming that we hear so much about. what you CAN see is the postman trying to get a red gas bill about the size of a duvet cover through your letter box. there seems to be a bit too much global FREEZING going on round here. perhaps it’s localized.

one of the things that ‘they’, the so-called ’scientists’, come out with to make us cry in the night is that ’sea levels will rise’. there will be no escape from the remorseless rising of the all-consuming seas. i don’t much care personally speaking because thirst hall is a first floor flat so i shouldn’t have to struggle in the middle of the night trying to get a 42 inch plasma screen and a dfs sofa up the stairs as raw sewage slops over the tops of my wellies and fuses the lights on the christmas tree.

sea levels will rise by 16 feet!!!

that’s the news from last week. but is it true or is it scaremongering? professor the thirst will now don his scientific hat to consider the matter…

let’s do an experiment. i’ve got a glass of ginger pop, you can get a glass of sweet, sweet vodka or whatever you like. right. now put an icecube in it.

now then, what you have there is a model of the seas of the world with a melting polar icecap in it. measure how high up the glass the level of your booze is. quickly! measure it now before the ice melts!

has it melted yet? it has? good. now measure it again. record any changes. there aren’t any changes? your glass of swig hasn’t gone 16 feet higher? hunh, i thought not.

but how can this be? let’s look at this in a scientific way:

frozen water is very cold. let’s call it ‘ice’. what happens is that when scientific men make water very cold it goes, what we call, ‘BIG’. and that’s why your glass of tasty milk with an ice cube floating in it is exactly the same as an ocean with an iceberg in it which is a big ice cube.

now then. imagine a clever professor (a bit like me) who had made a secret laboratory underneath a volcano and harnessed nature’s powers to make the very cold water (that’s ‘ice’, remember?) into warm water which we will call ‘water’. the professor would notice that the ice stopped being big when it became water because the water is smaller than the ice. that’s why an ice lolly gets smaller when you eat it. the hotter ice gets the smaller it becomes. in fact, if you put an ice cube in a saucepan and leave it on the gas ring overnight it will get so small that it disappears.

imagine if all the seas were frozen. all of them. if they melted they would be smaller than before, just like that ice lolly of yours, and so if you imagine that at the moment all the seas and the polar icecaps are on their way to being all melted they would just wind up smaller than before.

so don’t worry, the seas can’t rise by sixteen feet, and if they do i expect scientists like me will have found out where the plug is and we will just send a submarine down to pull the plug out for a bit.

just a little shorty blog because i haven’t done one for a bit.

during the most recent voyage of the charley rose when two of the boldest and bebeardedest pirates in the nonspanish nonmain set sail for the fabled meadows of ripley there came a bit of a crisis; the dishwasher had stopped working.

it was worse than that, the dishwasher was in lahndahn.

you know how smells can transport you back through the years? a whiff of that parfum that auntie used to wear? how about the aroma of aramis that guaranteed a stolen kiss round the back of the village hall disco? the sun on lawn clippings?

necessity being the mother of invention i decided i would do the washing up myself and i got transported back to 1979 when i lived in berlin for a while, flying there this time on the magic carpet of the smell of apple scented washing up liquid.

just like banana flavour sweets don’t taste like banana but of synthetic banana or paint but are nice nevertheless, apple washing up liquid doesn’t smell of apples but of apple shampoo.

in berlin several aspects of life were quite exotic. there were little cartoon men on the adverts (the mainzel munchen or something) and they had the whole evening’s worth of ads on the telly all in one go, they did the washing up with powder instead of liquid, sold beer and chips in the street at seven in the morning and they had apple shampoo.

i wanted some of that apple shampoo. back in god’s own country we were still on the vosene but this apple shampoo stuff?!?! how exotic was that?!?! i imagined that pop stars would demand that their tresses be shampooed in the apple stuff. so i bought some.

and all day long my flowing locks were apple fresh. and all day long i got followed round by wasps.

i was up the doctor’s getting vampired on monday and while i was idling away the minutes before i had to go and stand on the freezing platform at the station i popped into woolies.

and this is what i saw…

magic sand.

i read the packet and could not believe it was true. actual sand THAT NEVER GETS WET!! how magic is that!?!?!?!

and this was the pirate edition and it was half price! only 3.47 quids! including ship, pirate, shark, sculpting tools and EVERYTHING!!!

a brief visit to the world’s most rubbishest chatroom let me know that i was the only person who had not only never had magic sand but never even knew it existed, this miracle stuff.

so i got all excited and today, when i had to go back and get phlebotomized yet again, i bought myself some magic sand as a special treat to myself for being such a brave little soldier. i did not buy myself the policemen’s helmet for only 3 quids, even though it had a flashing blue badge and woo woo woo siren sound effect to help me speed to emergencies. no, i wanted that magic sand.

this afternoon i had to go to the hospital but when i got back home again i filled a bowl with some water and set to to create a magical underwater pirate scene with magic sand.

this is what i made…

great! isn’t it?

erm, no. it’s rubbish. this so-called ‘magic sand’ should really be called ‘rubbish arse sand’. because then i wouldn’t have bought it and i would have a really good police helmet instead.

what’s that madam? you wish to know the time? WOO WOO WOO WOO Woo woo woo woo…

if (when enclickified to enbiggify) this picture blows up sufficiently to do it justice i’ll be surprised. there are a couple of birds flying up near the sun and in the foreground there are rings on the river from the gentle rain. there are also a couple of twigs floating which look like dirty smudges but the whole effect is pretty much what i wanted to capture.

the shot was taken last saturday evening on the navigation above newark lock when i was moored on ripley meadows with faithful crew member vodka mick. the trouble with old vm is that he is good with the boat but he doesn’t quite believe it and abdicates responsibility when things look like they might get a bit hairy. i’d like to get him to push the envelope and i try to reassure him that things won’t go wrong and that if you make a mistake slowly enough it won’t matter anyway. he’s too used to being put down maybe? when i see him on the boat i feel really happy for him because i see him growing up up up inside. we’ll make a boatman of him yet, whether he likes it or not, because, like all the best people, he has the sacred waters of the wey running through his veins.

on sunday morning we had to start heading back to pelican wharf; us both having doctor’s appointments and whatnot. i asked him if he would like to ‘wind’ the boat. he said he would leave it to me. and off we went back to newark and passed the hairiest man in the world (for those who have never seen the hairiest man in the world he looks like someone who lives up a tree in borneo or somewhere) who has one of the dodgiest boats on the water. the boat looks like one of the old wrecks that are seen squatting on the grand union, covered in old bicycles and with dope plants growing out of the holes where the planks have fallen off. hairiest man’s boat has got a terrible list which would seem to indicate that it has either a ‘water bed’ feature inside or his ballast needs sorting out like, yesterday. mick and i exchanged knowing looks.

and as we tunk tunk tunk tunk tunk tunked along i fell to thinking about what my arty therapy lady says to me, that i have to find out what and who i am and alright you at the back there, i can hear you saying ‘i know WHAT you are’ because you are a bit right actually.

and at pyrford the rain really did start to fall and it got rather cold because of the wind that was blowing and making life difficult but not impossible. i was wearing my steel toe-capped brahn boots and very ragged dark blue jeans, black jumper, black puffa jacket, black and white neckerchief, black fingerless cycling gloves and my flat cap. together these items seemed to have absorbed a good quart of rainwater.

as we progressed i wondered about a man we had seen the day before, a man who has got a lovely brand new boat made by piper. i’d seen him before on his boat and said how lovely she looked and how much i liked it. but on the saturday i shared a lock with him at new haw when he gave a very convincing performance of someone who doesn’t really know what they are doing while his missus struggled with the lock because she was using a grand union windlass which is four or so inches too short and doesn’t have a tapered box on it. i showed her how to use the lock safely and suggested that life would be easier with a more suitable handle.

and as we progressed i wondered if he might be on his mooring because i had a spare windlass on board that i had fished out of pyrford lock after stuart at the chandlery had told me it was there because the crew of a hireboat had chucked it in and then gone to stuart to buy a replacement.

i took the tiller off vodka mick as he was getting nervy about getting in close to the moored boats on the new haw length and i gave matey a merry toot and up he popped like a rabbit out of a hole and i held water for a bit as we chewed the fat and the rain fell.

when the boat is behaving (and not being a right cow like she sometimes does) i get a little voice in my head that says ‘baby knows which way to go’ and everything just WORKS.

i asked a fiver for that windlass AND i got it. my first sale.

and as i held out my damply gloved hand for the money i saw myself as perhaps he saw me, like i regard people like chaz and kim the coal, someone with a big ol’ beard who comes tunk tunk tunking out of the wind and rain, someone who knows what he is doing, someone who actually KNOWS, someone to aspire to. reader, it felt marvelous.

now this might not seem like such a big bloody deal to you but it does to me for i, like vm and his reluctance boatywise, have been very used to people not thinking a great deal of me and my limited accomplishments. but i felt like a bit of an explosion of understanding had occurred for i have been bloody lucky having had so much experience with the charly rose. more boating than some people will ever enjoy in a lifetime. i started off with a flair for it and now i am good at it. very good.

i am very good at it.

at the bottom of coxes lock i had a bit of an epiphany; i knew what i was, i knew who i was.

looking back to check i was off the cill, down between the wet walls, soaked in rain and so cold my hands had stopped working properly…

i am me.

today it is my birthday. today i am forty seven.

i had a nice party it was pirates.

all my friends came to my party and we had games.

i had a lot of nice presents and played musical chair.

it was very nice.

i was leafing idly through the times on sunday as the rain poured down. and as the rain poured down my poor old knuckles seemed to swell up.

you see i had been up on the roof of the boat at sparrowfart o’clock . the reason i was up on the roof was that i had been awoken by the feeling of being a bit cold; the stove needed to eat some more taybrite. the coal inside the boat had all been eaten already so i had to put some clothes on and go and wrestle with a cold and wet and slippery bag of coal off the roof. so i did that and heaved the coal to the sharp end and got my scuttle ready and took out the scissors that i had cleverly remembered to put in my pocket to cut open the bag and then i broke the scissors.

and i didn’t even do a rude swear because i tend not to these days. i just wrestled with the bag, which was very tough, using my fingers which were not.

i guess i must have made the oliver hardy face as the cold rain dripped down my neck and my jumper soaked up the rain because my poor fingers did hurt me. i felt like a little old man.

the stove got all stoked up in the end and i smoked a fag and went back to bed but when i got up again it was still raining.

so that’s why i was moodily leafing through the times and alternately cursing and feeling sorry for my arthritic digits. and that’s when i saw an advertisement for these binoculars.

the advert got thrown in the bin. i should have photographed it but the blah blah that i tracked down on the magical intermaweb makes the same claim for the exact same binoculars. less than twenty of your earth pounds? really?

the advert in the paper is cleverly worded. to allow (presumably) for the earth’s curvature it says that ‘from a suitable vantage point’ one can see ‘up to 35 miles away’.

really?

wowee!

i don’t think i’ll be sending off for these binoculars because i can see the moon unaided. and that’s a quarter of a million miles away.

and they can stick a man on it. but they can’t stop my fingers hurting, or me getting old.

the beautiful, wise, kindly moon smiles down upon us from her silvery silence. how she must shake her head at us all as we hack at our bags of coal with broken scissors, hack at each other with our words and our weapons.

how short-sighted we must seem to her as we bumble about on our anthill with our 35 mile glasses clutched to our eyes.

once i had a dream. and it was quite a good one. it was shaped like this.

and i enjoyed my little dream. for a while.

never mind. it was fun while it lasted.

tomorrow i’m going to go back and continue with a bit of art therapy and i will commit some more of my precious thoughts to paper. it’s supposed to be a one to one session but i won’t be surprised if when i get there i find a collective of local loonies are there already, that they have pinched my idea, drawn it up and stuck it on the wall for everyone to admire.

why do i suspect that this might happen? well, just have a look at what i fell on when i was walking through the internet the other night.

go on, have a look here

they have made a fair fist of it i must admit. there are a few things wrong but on the whole i must doff my trilby in their general direction.

bastard
bastard
bastard
johnny come lately
BASTARDS!

ahem. i feel a lot better now.

i’m just going to have to raise my game a few notches, that’s all. and, anyway, i’m a dot com and they’re just a co dot uk.

cheapskates.

i went up to the hospital today to see about this ‘ere art therapy.

the art room in the day hospital part of the abraham cowley unit smells of school. it’s a cheerful room with squeezy things of cheap paint and brushes and sticks of charcoal and an easel or two; that sort of thing, you know. if only i had taken a picture of it, all nice and quiet, kind of institutional, an environment that i really rather like.

well i didn’t get the chance to be arty farty because today’s appointment was to talk about being arty farty and when to do it. but they will take me on and i will have one to one sessions with an art therapist, once a week, on dates to be arranged.

and i shall see what i shall see.

because there’s something lurking behind my eyes and i want to know what it is.

you see, something happened to me behind this door; something miraculous.