“HOI! YOU BIG FAT FUCKER!”

sigh.
it’s always the same when i walk to the hospital.
i’ve told you before about the scum of addlestone and their sport of shouting at me from their chavmobiles.
this time it was thursday when i had to go and see the diabetic consultant and i wasn’t looking forward to it and it really was a surprise when she shouted at me like that.

she didn’t really. really i shouted it at myself. internally. sadly. when they weighed me. when they weighed me and i weighed 99 kgs.

fuck-a-doodle-doo.

that’s nearly a metric tonne and if i eat one more toffee the hospital scales won’t be able to cope and i will have to be craned, wearing a back-to-front nightie, to a public weighbridge and the borough surveyor will make notes on his clipboard and hold urgent telephonic talks with the manager of a landfill site.

99 kilos. that told me. i thought my pants were getting a bit tight yet i still have my belt notched on the last hole. but 99, it’s unbelievable.

i can give up the swig, yup, done that. i can pack in the fags. no more fags for me. but now i have to say goodbye to the comfort of my clarnico peppermint creams? my jules destrooper galettes au beurre? my three choc ices oneaftertheotherbecauseoneisnotenough?

i have hypos! i have hypos when my blood sugar is LOW so i have to keep it HIGH. except my historical blood sugars are running at over 9 which is a shortcut to being that blind bloke with no legs, the one that’s hooked up to the dialysis machine.

oh fucking, fucketty fuckpants.

i HATE being bloody ill ALL the fucking time. it gets me down. at the back of my mind i can feel a strong wave of “yeah? ill eh? well SCREW YOU!” building up but i know that in the long run that won’t do me any good. what i will have to do instead is work out a way of turning it to my advantage, turning it into part of PLAN X.

here’s a change of subject, a different plan…

what we have under construction here is my version of a glass-bottomed-bucket. this is going to assist me in being able legitimately to call myself an ‘underwater explorer’ like i do. seeing as i fell in the river and went right under a narrowboat i can call myself one already but this piece of equipment will make me look like a right one. explorer that is.

it’s 200mm or so dia ribbed drain pipe, approx 1 metre in length. 6mm plate clear fitted above 3 self-tapping screws to combat external pressure blow through. of course, my spec included use of a lo-mod mastic sealant. i just wrote all this. i did it. sounds good, eh?

i’ll be using this device in the navigation. whatever has gone in there, since it was dug, is still in there. i know something i didn’t tell you yet - i found the remains of pyrford wharf without even knowing it had ever existed, so that’s one of the places i’ll be test-driving my new device.

look at the time! heavens above!

before i go here’s a little treat for you if you’re an admirer of bob dylan. just recently i’ve gone bob bonkers and i tripped over this video for jokerman what is off the album, ‘infidels’.

i think i prefer my bob a bit more basic, less knopflered if you will, like ‘boots of spanish leather’ or anything off the album ‘blood on the tracks’. or… or… or…

i’m a terrible one for enthusiasms. let’s see if i can get enthusiastic about not eating peppermint creams.

night night.

SPECIAL BONUS BLOG-EDIT FREE GIFT.
CLICK HERE FOR THE BEST MUSIC VIDEO EVER MADE.

oh, he is SO cool.

i sort of finished art therapy today and that was rather sad. today was the last one-to-one session that i shall have and i’ll miss things being that way because i had got comfortable with it. as you can see from the above work i have been busily wasting the national insurance payers’ (i.e. including myself for about a million years) hard-earned by doing bloody-waste-of-time stuff. or have i?

i had got comfortable and i am a bit resistant to change, so it was time to move on, on to group work where i will have (i’m promised) an important role. i asked if i could have stripes on my arm or a suitable hat to show how important i will be but that doesn’t look likely. so i feel that i’m a bit resistant to change. but am i?

the last ‘work’ (strong twinge of ‘imposter syndrome’ there) that i finished inking-in today is called ’surrender or die’ and is a design that i would like on a t-shirt. and one day i will have it on a t-shirt because it is mine and i can do it and i will do it. the design is a cross between a tattoo and a motif pinched from blackbeard’s pirate flag. it refers back to an image i produced in the windmill (blessed be its name) when i first encountered art therapy. and so the wheel turns and the beginning is also the end. or is it?

’surrender or die’ has been a bit of a theme for my recovery (i don’t like that term but i can’t think of a better one right now). and we discussed this today. and we discussed me changing my name from the very beginning of treatment. it seems i was following steps that were already laid out for me to simply surrender and to follow. let me tell you that when you don’t believe in god it’s hard to accept that things can be pre-ordained like that. and last year, when i thought i was clever, had i been asked whether there was a god i would have said ‘no’, even though i am quite convinced that he spoke to me thirty years ago in haslemere. so i had to surrender lest i die and i am fucking AMAZED that i’m not dead already when i think back over the things that i have done and that have been done to me. and the really, really weird thing, like i keep saying, about how i came to stop drinking is that i feel it was nothing to do with me. but is it?

i can take all my pictures home now and i can create a lovely fire hazard by blu tacking them to the walls of thirst hall. ‘glitternob’, the picture posted above, is the only image that i have a photo of from this second batch of hospital pictures. ‘glitternob’ is an important work for me because i really earned the job title of ‘artist’ in creating it when i didn’t WANT to. i HAD to do it. and i suffered the stage-fright and the gut-churning, really i did, in producing it. how much easier to draw a pot of pansies. when i get the pictures home i shall photograph them and post the images and provide a commentary for most of them. one in particular is too raw for me to discuss with my usual, excruciating frankness but if i ever sold it i’d write about it on the back. or would i?

and what is ‘glitternob’ all about? i’m afraid that i can’t tell you. i don’t know you well enough. but i can assure you that i HAVE explained it and to anyone who thinks that me going to art therapy is a hippydrippy load of old eyewash and a drain on n.h.s. resources let me tell you that it has been a great help to me. it has more or less single-handedly (for i use no other resources, i don’t even go to A.A.) helped me to maintain a state of sobriety for many months and against all expectations including my own. i don’t suppose i’ll be drawing any other vulgar pictures when i go into this group thingy though. or will i?

next time i might well be discussing name changes. i’ve a nasty feeling i might get in trouble if me mam and dad find me out though. whoops! hang on! there’s a fatal flaw in my plan! aaaaaaargh!

(or is there?)

love from,

Henry Usher Esq. - Writer, Artist, Treasure Hunter, Underwater Explorer, Boatman and Parish Nuisance.

i don’t make this stuff up. i just sit here and write it down. it almost writes itself and that’s why i get the grade ‘a’ treble snit when i lose a blog. when it disappears in a puff of smoke. i haven’t the heart to go back and chase after it and try to get back under the train of its dress and run with it.

that won’t work at all.

i was reading the search strings that bring people to my blog. it doesn’t tell me who exactly keeps searching for ‘naughty french phrases’ but they have been doing it for months. the log grenade brings a repeat visitor, someone wants to know about ‘electricity in the olden days’ and yet another wants information on billy bear sausage.

and there is a certain someone who would like to know about ‘refilling stern gland greaser’. i can guess who it might be but i have no way of knowing from the data that i have so i’d better give the answer here in case anyone really wants to know…

HOW TO REFILL A BOAT’S STERN GLAND GREASER
at this point i’d best give a caveat - this is how i have done it. there may well be better ways seeing as how i worked it out for myself . here we go:

1. the handle has been given its last twist and the greaser is empty. you have to refill it. you will need kitchen roll and a pot of grease. it’s the waterproof grease in a blue tin that you want and they sell it in all the chandleries. i think it’s about a fiver a tin. i can’t remember the name.
2. you are going to get greasy so wear old clothes. put kitchen roll under the assembly in case gobs of grease fall down. put newspaper down on the surface you will be working on and have the tin of grease handy.
3. you need to unscrew (anti-clockwise) the whole pumping mechanism. unscrew it and put it on your working surface. now you need to unscrew the empty grease cylinder. pull it away from the plunger parts and you should have just a plain metal empty tube about 7 or so inches long.
4. you need to wind the plunger and handle in the cap. keep turning it anti-clockwise back so that the thread of the handle is all back outside the unit.
5. at this point you should be able to see that when you have filled the central tube that it can be reassembled to make a full syringe type thing.
6. take the lid off the grease. at the top of the tin, ‘floating’ on top of the grease is a plate with a central hole in it. you will be pushing down on this plate and the grease in the tin will come squishing up through the hole in the middle. ok?
7. upend the tube over the hole in the plate and push down on it. DON’T put your hand over the top of the tube as this will stop the air escaping as it should. watch as the tube fills with the grease.
8. when it looks kind of full, reattach the cap and plunger and handle assembly to whichever end will trap the least air. turn the handle to push the plunger and start shoving the grease towards the open end. again, this is to remove air.
9. screw the whole mechanism back to complete the set up.
10. operate the gland greaser to check it is working. tidy up. congratulate yourself. well done.

i only get to see the top 20 out of 273 search strings. the search for ‘celebrity pubes’ has dropped off the list, which is a shame. i have no experience of the pubes of any celebrity and i will never eat billy bear sausage so i can’t help there. i DO know about electricity in the olden days though.

within living memory (that means that people who are alive today can actually remember this happening) some ordinary people were scared of electricity. they wanted to make sure that there was a plug in a socket to stop the electricity leaking out. the electricity was invisible, like gas, but it had no smell and it could kill you.
i was listening to the radio the other day and a woman was talking about an old relative of hers when she herself was a little girl. the ironing used to be done with flat irons that you had to spit on to check if it was hot enough. an electric iron that was bought as a present to make the job easier was never used. it was put on the sideboard like an ornament and the flat ironing and spitting carried on… SPTHTHTHTTTT!

OTHER NEWS
thirty years after the rest of the world i’m listening to bob dylan, especially ‘idiot wind’ and ’sweetheart like you’ for the singing. yes. really. i can’t imagine another singer covering either. i was saying to trouty that he makes the lyrics sound easy. ‘ha’, you might think, ‘this stuff is too easy to write’. except it completely is not.

following a phone call discussion and advice session it seems that the ‘the thirst thethirst thethurst’ aspect of my screen name might be a bit of a ghost from the past that i don’t need. also i get further indications that ‘plan x’ is not only the right way to go but it is also going right.

it is now wednesday. today is the seventh monthiversary of me not smoking. later i go to my last one-to-one art therapy session before the group work starts next week.

on thursday i have to attend the diabetic clinic. i have to see a specialist. i am expecting a bollocking that will probably have a richter scale rating. oh well, i can’t have EVERYONE at the hospital thinking i’m brilliant and lovely; i might get bigheaded.

nighty night.

if i don’t make myself do something then the something won’t get done.

obviously the first step is to award myself some holiday. hoorah! for holiday. i just awarded my self two whole months holiday! started with one, then i made it two! hoorah!

here’s a clue in with a cause for celebration…
today is the ten monthiversary of me not having any swig. today is the 21st. of september.
ten months is pretty good. a lot of people thought i’d never make ten days when i checked in at the treatment centre (windmill house, blessed be its name) but they were wrong and now they have faith in me. i have some power back.

the launch date for PLAN X is the 21st of november.

did i see anyone counting on their fingers there? no? good.

so that’s two months of holiday for me and two months of continuing NOT to do things. things like swigging cider and smoking fags. it’s nearly seven months since i had a fag. i just stopped, using the power of my mind. i wish i could say the same about eating sweets but i suppose that will be subsumed (good word. subsumed. sub syoooooooomed) into PLAN X. and it will be if i want it to be because i can do anything i want. PLAN X is mine and that’s that. i’m getting my power back.

for thirty years i gave my power away and that was a wrong thing to do. but here’s my power back again.

there’s a particular bit of PLAN X that could cause upset. if it does i will be very sorry but it’s a fundamental part of the plan. if it does cause upset it won’t be anything like the upset i used to cause so what the hey anyway?

i wish i could do copperplate script. i’ll have to have autograph lessons like david beckham. handwriting is difficult for the sinistral-handed and don’t i know it and now i’m simply CRIPPLED, my dear, with arthur writis and it hurts a bit and the pain of it is beyond the help of medical science.

i think for the weekend i shall continue my exercise plan of jumping up and down off lock gates and then, to relax myself, i shall lie down in the sun on a balance beam at quiet newark lock and compose a vulgar ditty to the tune of ’sweet afton’.

oh yes, my exercise plan will be subsumed into PLAN X. because now i know something:

god loves a trier.
you make your own luck.
and
it’s amazing what you can do if you put your mind to it.

just look.

Henry Thethurst (spelled Tee Haitch Ee, Glottal Stop, You ArS, Tee)
Writer, Artist, Parish Nuisance.

oh what is this that i see from my window?
it is a scummer.
it is a scummer stealing a bicycle.
‘theft of bicycle’ is a vile crime; one of the vilest in the book of foul deeds.
and i should know.
hello? the police please.
i will never forget when, in 1994…
oh, hello there, yes. at byfleet and new haw station, there’s a bicycle being stolen right now.
my flat got broken into when i was on holiday on the isle of wight.
he’s 5-10 or 6 foot, white, short cropped fair hair and same full beard, an off-white t-shirt with a black pattern across the chest, black tracksuit trousers and white trainers.
and when i got back home there had been a burglary and my bicycle had been taken.
yes, and he’s got a metal bar stuffed down the front of his trousers, that’s what he’s using to twist round the padlock, he’s doing it right now but he stops when a train comes in and walks around.
i’d only had it the few months it took for the insurance to run out and i bet they only got about 30 quid for it.
yeah, he’s back there now and he’s broken through the lock.
it cost me getting on for 400 pounds that bike and i only had it about four months.
he’s got on it and he’s riding it away under the bridge towards oyster lane.

i had the little saddlebag and toolkit and i had the gloves and the shorts with the padded arse and everything.
hello. yes police please. hello, was i just talking to you? byfleet and new haw station? the bicycle thief?
i remember once i had been up all night drinking vodka, about a whole bottle of it on top of everything else, and i got on my bike, before it got stolen obviously, and i rode it all the way to where i am right now funnily enough. all the way from brighton. i rode all the way here to see my brother. seemed like a good idea at the time.
yes, well he’s come back again. it’s definitely him. he’s ridden into the station and i think he’s gone up to one of the platforms because he hasn’t come out again.

i used to do things like that.
ah, old bill at long last. i hope he’s up on the london platform. the up-line.
in the eighties i rode a bicycle that i used to have, a holdsworth elan, from eastleigh to london fuelled entirely on lager and peanuts.
they haven’t come back down yet, they must have caught him up there.
god knows how far that was.

i hate bicycle theft. it sounds petty but i think it’s such a low-down crime. pedalling straight into your local branch of ‘fence-u-like’ for a grubby payout or knocking them out next sunday at a car bo… yes. hello. ah, pc richardson. you have him?

yusssssssssssssssssssss get in.

sorry, what did i see him do? a statement? no problem.
ha ha ha here he comes. if the lazy twat had kept pedalling he’d have got away.
yes, that’s him. definitely. the bicycle thief.

EPILOGUE
12 years after my bike was stolen a bicycle thief has been detained and perhaps my spirit may cease it’s restless patrolling of cycle racks everywhere.

plus, in a further attempt to win an award for citizen style policelry featuring me getting a fucking great big gold gong off the queen, i also traced the victim of the crime who was a small, bewildered, somalian type fellow.

POSTSCRIPT
are you a bicycle thief? while i have a mobile phone and a net curtain to twitch your career is in jeopardy and may be abruptly terminated. do have nightmares.

settle down now, ladies and gentlemen, settle down…
did you hear, as part of the divorce settlement, macca is going to give heather her own plane?
that’s right, ladies and gentlemen, she wants to shave BOTH her legs!

KEBOOM TISSHSH!

i thang youw, and now, on with the show…

welcome aboard to john. john is a new reader. john has got a narrowboat. john’s narrowboat is moored 150 yards, as the pub garden’s scavenging magpie hops, from the charlotte rose.

gulp. i’ve been found out again.

i’ve never had icy water poured onto the backs of my knees but that’s how i felt when i opened the email that john sent to me. having racked my memory i don’t think that i’ve done a v’s up at a narrowboat called ‘tomorrow’. he’s offered tea so perhaps i’ve got away with offending the neighbours but i really must remember when i write this stuff that people are going to read it.

i’ve been away boating for the last few days and only came back because i had to have a fasting blood test this morning. now trouty has gorn home to londinium and i’m at a loose end. i may slip my moorings and steal away and continue to practice the jumping on locks that i was telling you about before.

here’s a picture i took on the road bridge over pyrford lock. i call it…

‘where cars write their names’

right you vegemites, go and put the kettle on and suck an acorn or whatever it is you eat because now we get to the ‘meat’ of the act. (geddit? see what i did there?)

moored up above the railway bridge near st catherine’s lock i met nick. and i met nick’s children. they had a bucket, they had fishing nets, they had string and they had bacon. they had all that you need to catch crayfish. these are the american type crayfish which are doing UNTOLD damage to the navigation. if you catch one you are encouraged to stamp on it.

or you can eat it.

night fell and nick and the kids went and i was left with half a bucket of crayfish in exchange for two rashers of bacon that they had used for bait. i wondered, during the night, whether the crayfish would escape from their plastic cell and come clacking to my bed. but they didn’t.

the next day at godalming wharf i got told off by a stroppy man off the nb helena something. i was moored by the service building where, to be fair, i should not have been. but there was nowhere else for me to be and he didn’t seem to have included this in his rant. he just got very cross because every time he goes to empty his poopoos there is someone parked where he wants to park. tell you what, if i had all my collected poopoos on a special poopoo trolley, like he had, i would feel mildly ridiculous and wish to shun human association. ah well, whatever. while i was near the tap i invigorated the crayfish with some oxygenated tapwater. that perked them up a bit.

clack clack clack

when they were in the sieve in the sink, like this, they made a noise exactly like when you have poured milk onto rice krispies. snap, crackle, pop.

or, in this case… snap, crackle, POT!

euuuurgh, how could you? says everyone in the whole world. tell you what, it’s easy. i just popped them into their boiling doom with barbecue tongs. pick them up with my hand? are you mad? no way! the little bastards might have nipped me!

as you can see, they really look, well, REALISTIC i suppose. like a viable meal proposition.

the trouble i found was getting my head round the deal. for a start i knew where they had come from. out of the navigation which at least one person urinates into. they smelled a bit realistic when they were cooking and i half expected a frenchman to pop his head around the cabin door and say ‘hon hi hon’. but then, when i tried to break into them and had to approach from the underneath i just had this voice in my head saying ‘WOODLICE, WOODLICE, YOU ARE EATING BIG FUCKING WOODLICE YOU IDIOT’.

but at least i had a go and i’m pleased with myself for it. look at this…

when you lay the table for a crayfish supper you have to include a leatherman type tool. (actually this one is a winchester and far superior to a leatherman. it’s a present from merman. cheers mermy!)
my crayfish verdict is: not really worth the bother but good to be able to say you’ve done it.

a quick change of subject from shellfish to shells…

see how my camera cleverly focuses on the tablecloth as i try to show you two live rounds i picked up off the towpath between high bridge and cartbridge wharf. i don’t suppose they are capable of going bang any more but i won’t throw them in the stove. there’s a military button there too. ghosts, ghosts, ghosts. always the ghosts.

if you tie a bit of bacon, or a bottle of scotch, to a piece of string and dangle it in stoke lock you might catch one of these…

the national trust advise stamping on him but i didn’t have the heart. he taught me an awful lot about boating, the most valuable lesson being, in my opinion, ‘if you can do it any slower you’re doing it too fast’. i wrote the rule like that so it’s my copyright but the basic principle is his and i thanked him for it on that sunny afternoon at stoke.

LOOK AT THE ARSE ON THAT. mmmMMMMMmmmmm GORGEOUS BEHIND

yes, phwoarr, look at that stern!

travelling up through papercourt lock i espied the fenderman’s boat. i went in search of him and found him in the cottage because, it turns out, he’s got the job there and he’s only been moved in a couple or three weeks.

peter fitted the tipcat fender that he had made to the stern and all for less than you might have thought. looks good dunnit? the last one was a disgrace.

now i’m going to press ‘publish’. this is when it usually goes horribly wrong. you might want to put some scotch tape on your windows for when i scream. it’s a long blog and the shrieking will be even longer.

here we go. PPPPPPRRRRRRRREEEEEEEeeeeeeessssssssssssssssssssssssssssss….

it rumbles on, this ghost of a plan. can ghosts rumble? well, i suppose they can if they are dragging blackened oak chests around on the floorboards high up in the lost rooms of thirst hall where nobody ever goes.

it’s doing my head in, the shapeless plan, but it gives me clues every now and then:

21st november will be a year since i put down the cider bottle in the carpark of windmill house (blessed be its name), walked through the door and stopped drinking.

here’s another clue. my lad told me the name of this thing, this activity, when i was talking to him a long while ago about something i had seen on the telly. it’s called free running.

the very name says it. imagine if you could do like one millionth of what these kids can do? i know they look like a couple of scummy burglars and the video needs a severe edit but i find free running inspirational. i might be knocking on fifty but there is no reason why i shouldn’t be able to run, jump on to a balance beam (nice low one please), run across a set of lock gates and jump off the other side. i might really need to do that in an emergency. it is my solemn duty as a skipper to be fit. at the moment i’m a fat, knackered pig who can’t run ten steps without my moobs tearing and i grunt just doing up my boot laces. so it’s a clue for me and i’m thinking about it.

with all this thinking my brain can reach boiling point. yesterday i started doing this and i got as far as level 23 (out of 30, i believe). CURSE YOU LEVEL 23! it’s driving me nuts but it’s giving me something else to think about apart from clues.

oh yes. clues. i said one just up there. i’m knocking on for fifty. that’s a good clue.

and here’s another clue. what’s in a name?

here’s a good way for me to waste my time. it’s called question swap and it pleases me when things are going well and infuriates me when the idiots get in. you ask a question and then you get a question that someone else has asked for you to answer. your answer gets sent off and they grade your answer. my record at the moment is six tens on the bounce. so hoo bloody ray for me and my skill. but it vexes me sorely when the question you ask is answered poorly, when the other player just can’t be arsed, or when you work your nuts off on an answer and get a low mark or none at all. give it a try and see what you think but watch out for when the kids might be playing in america. MORNING in our, proper, 100% genuine and full of wholesome goodness ENGLISH time is a good time.

anyhoo, i’m going boating so that’s about that for a while as i might go to godalming as the plan reveals itself to me, bit by bit, slowly ever slowly…

oh yeah, what IS in a name? well everything. names are fundamental. here’s the biggest clue of all. THETHIRST. pronounced THET-HURST. or even thethurst.

sometimes i wish all the ghosts and all the clues would leave me alone. my head hurts (pronounced HED-HURTS).

adios amigos.

i tend to get introduced to nettical things rather late. i find something out and everybody else in the whole complutering world goes: ‘huh, didn’t you even know that?’

anyway, here’s a compluterworld phenomenon that i have caught up with and if you haven’t met this young man yet i’m sure that you’ll be pleased when you do.

so please put your hands together and give a warm welcome to the boy with keyboard skills like mine, he’s out of deutchsland, he’s a member of the master race, heEEeeee’s

angrrrrrrrrrrry german kid!

enjoy!

i may as well get this written now, just off the top of my head.

don’t worry, calm down, nothing to fret over; my request is this…

DOES ANYONE, HERE IN READERSHIP LAND, KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT PITCHING TO TELEVISION COMPANIES?

the reason i ask is that i have had an idea today, an idea for a television programme.

i am a very harsh critic. when i worked for american express they were sick of me telling them that their stupid ideas were stupid ideas and why their stupid ideas were stupid.

it is a real big shame that i just can’t tell anyone what the idea is yet and give you the opportunity to tell me how stupid my stupid idea is and exactly why it is so stupid and that i should go and boil my fat head.

i can’t tell you because it’s a secret for obvious reasons and you wouldn’t say it was rubbish anyway because if it was rubbish i would have already told myself that.

so i’ve had my idea. now what?

i’m already feeling a bit seasick thinking about it. it wouldn’t cost a great deal to make and would take about a year to put together i suppose. i need to find a producer but one that won’t steal my idea.

*goes away to have a walk and to think about intellectual property*

worryworryworryworryworryworryworry…..