I have to get up in the morning.

When I was, ahem, refreshing myself in the garden of the Pelican my phone went bringg-a-ling-a-ding-dong.

It was someone that I didn’t know; someone called Jane. She was calling from the Windmill (blessed be its name) and she wanted to know if I could possibly get my sweet, fat jacksie through their door at 10:30. I started lying.

“You do know that I have a ten-ton boat to navigate on a very busy waterway?", I lied.

The wheels started turning on the doors. The airlocks were blowing. The seals were sealed.

Oh Fuck Fuckington. Just like last time. In eleven hours and fifty minutes I’ll be back in the Windmill (blessed be its name).

This afternoon I had an appointment to see my GP, the great Doc L. Trouty came with me and when we went in I thought I should come straight out with how I felt.

“I’m sorry I let you down", I said.

He said I hadn’t let him or anyone down. He said I was success.

So, tomorrow I start again.

Back in a fortnight.

This great idea, right, might not be my invention. Trouty reckons it was done before, in the olden days but this is my idea: The underwater butter dish thingy (copyright)!

What it is, right, is that you know butter stays the same underwater? Well, it DOES, stchoopid. What you have is like a plate thing to put the butter on and then you can slide it into a tray of water like putting stuff into a photo-developing tray.

The butter goes under water and is sealed from the oxidising effects of the air and of the egg-laying effects of bluebottles and of the licky effects of the cat.

Then, when you want to spread it on your hot muffin (steady, Mallers) you just raise it from the water.

What I should attach now is the video of me singing ‘I am so fantastic’ while pulling the legs of my pants up. Except I can’t because it never got videoed properly - (looks at camerawoman).

Honestly, I have BRILLIANT ideas all day long, 24/7, but never get a bean, a word of thanks or anything.

But I did hear a man on the radio say ‘AMERIKALAND’ the other day and I know full well who started that.

They say that ‘imitation is the sincerest form of flattery’ but I would prefer crisp fivers.

Oh well.

Here’s a link:
KEVIN COYNE AT HYDE PARK 1974
and you should look at it.

The embedding has been disabled so I can’t help you more than shoving you in the direction.
But why would I shove you in this particular direction? I’ll tell you - it’s because I WAS THERE.

I was at the first (there were two) free festivals at Hyde Park in 1974 and that’s where I first met, heard and loved Kevin Coyne.

Now, what I write is just what I know for myself; might not be true and all but it’s my own mythology so stick with me.

When I saw Kevin play at Hyde Park I thought ‘Wha th Fu?’ because he fell off his little picnic chair and wriggled around and seemed to be drunk as a skunk. I was 15.

Kevin Coyne became, immediately, one of the important figures in my life.

I saw him a few times. I saw him when Andy Summers who later joined The Police (the band, you idiot) was his lead guitarist and the last time I saw him was at a pub in Battersea.

My friend, Andy, that some of you on here know, bought me a copy of Kevin’s album, ‘Pointing the finger’ and on the front of the cover was one of his paintings. It was a face with a cross for a mouth. On the reverse was a photo of Kevin sitting on a sofa and obviously fucked beyond redemption.

I think the decision he took to publish that photo in the way that he did took bravery. I loved that photo. I loved the ‘this is me’ness of it all. I carry that message in my heart now and always will because of what he did.

Like I say, the last time I saw Kevin was at a gig in South London. As I walked up to the pub he was standing outside, all by himself, sucking on a pint of Guinness. He was getting himself ready to play and I didn’t know him so I didn’t want to disturb him. I nodded to him; a mark of recognition and respect - he nodded back.

And then he disappeared.

Some months after, I mean - it wasn’t a magic trick. I read in a magazine that he had gone mental on the drink and gone to live in Germany and was quite happy as long as he got through 3 litres of white wine a day and he was living in Nurenburg or something. Like a tramp. Like a pissed-up tramp gone to live in Germany and not bothering with music any more and this was the man I’d seen at Hyde Park, this was the man they wanted to rope into The Doors to replace Jim Morrison.

But I wasn’t gutted.

Kevin Coyne used to work in the mental health arena and some of his works deal with mental health issues. He was also a prolific painter and I find his works inspirational and clever. He took the blues but gave his songs a clever, melancholic and artistic twist that really resounded in me from the first second that I saw him although I was too young to realise it at the time.

Please watch the first clip - although I cannot embed it - but here’s one that you will find it easier to access:

Here we see Kevin playing ‘Having a party’.

And I hear the agony and the torment. I hear him singing MY song. And laughing at the end.

But, do you know, Kevin stopped drinking during his life in Germany. He stopped. And he wrote and he painted and he painted.

He’s dead now and I miss him very much. Recently a few more clips have gone up on YouTube of him including one of him singing ‘Marlene’ but he was so obviously ill and tired that I haven’t linked it here.

I love to remember him as I was seeing him in seventies and eighties - a truly marvellous man.

Here’s to you, Kevin Coyne, wherever you are, I wish that I had not just nodded but had spoken to you, said hello, thanked you for Hyde Park and maybe shook your hand.

Well, it looks like we are going to be lumbered with the Olympics, doesn’t it?

Tell you what though, here’s an idea that would get even me interested. How about instead of trying to police the bloodstreams of the athletes we just declared a substance amnesty for 2012 (or whatever year they finally get all East London’s much-needed velodromes built).

I’d bloody well LOVE to see someone run 100 metres in 3.5 seconds and cross the finishing line with smoke coming out of his flip-flops, a face like a tomato and plasma squirting out of his tear-ducts like car windscreen washers.

Note to self:

Henry, you stupid twat, next time you get angry with your computer don’t mash the fuck out of the mouse because you will break a lug off the murine bollock retainer and have to go all the way to Tesco and spend two and a bit quids on a new one.

You idiot.

To sort of paraphrase Winey Amehouse:
‘They want to put me in Rehab, I said Yes Yes Yes’

The long and short of it is this:
I’m going back into the Windmill (blessed be its name) because I can’t stop on my own.

*puts on ‘Can’t stand me now’ by the Libertines*

Addiction to anything is fucking horrible. Full stop awful. Hear me now, you children…

BUT (and I’ve got a big butt), there is this thing in me that - thank the Lord - keeps on going.

Like the song says, ‘I get knocked down but I get up again; you’re never going to keep me down’.

I get knocked down, like we all do, but I get up again.

In the ‘Other news’ department, I had to go and see a government doctor about my claim for incapacity benefit. I was declared ‘unfit’.

The Kodak 5300 all-in-one super-duper printer-copier-blahblah had such fantastic reviews and I wanted to write a shitty letter to Notwork Rail. So I bought one. Even though I couldn’t afford it.

Eventually, it turned up after DHL had played football with it for a few days. Guess what. It didn’t work.

I got knocked down, but I got up again. I’m a total menace on the phone. I’ve learned lessons off my Dad and from my 14 years down the salt mines at Amex. If I get you on the phone I will screw you to the wall and kill you. I will waltz with you, dance the light fantastic and then shag you so hard, right up the arse, that you will regret ever speaking to me.

It’s just bullying, really. Nasty behaviour that, at the end of the day, I’m not proud of. But I do it because I’m so good at it and I’ll do it on your behalf too. When I was a teenager I wanted to be a barrister and I reckon I would have been a good one.

“Oh, really?”

I can tie people in knots.

Yesterday I had the Service Business Manager Europe of the whole of Kodak UK round my scummy flat bringing me a new printer thingy, a ream of paper, a pack of photo paper, two black cartridges, two colour cartridges and a whole load of apologies.

The three halves that made all this happen were:-
Retox
Me being a pain in the arse
Me being very good at what I do

(I said three halves on purpose)

Oh, and the other half was that the people I nailed at Kodak are seriously nice. Except their crappy software has exploded my computer and the printer doesn’t actually work.

I get knocked down, but I’ll get up again.

The building site over the road has virtually shut down, presumably because of me.

All I do is report everything that they do wrong. When I got off the train yesterday the rubbish foreman was standing there and he seemed so pleased to see me. I bade him a cheery ‘HELLO’ but he couldn’t bring himself to even look at me in all my raging glory. What a tosser.

I get knocked down, but I get up again - They’re never going to keep me down.

Promise me that you’ll do the same. If it’s wrong then right it and if you get knocked down then fight it.

(I just made that up)

Keep getting up.

I might be in Retox now but I’ll be in Detox soonish.

And I’ll get up.

Stu will love this.

Iain Lee was banging on about this clip on the radio so I rushed to take a peek.

Stu will love it because it’s Japanese and because the vid is SO top!

Laydees and gentlemen I present to you…

The KURICORDER QUARTET doing something that I think is called: Ojiisan no 11 kagetsu

Hope you enjoy - I sure did!

Ripped from B3ta’s amazing parenthood thread:

“
Now, i’m only a young lad, just turned 18, so as you can guess, left school 2 years ago.

Bumped into a girl from my tutor the other week, stopped said hello dispensing all of the usual pleasentries. Thought she was with her little sisters. Nope was 14 month old Demi-Liegh Gorgeous Wilson.

I was nearly in tears due to lack of being able to laugh at Sams hideously named offspring. But this just gets better, She said she was on her way to meet Jessica(Younger sister off 4 years) and Armani, too which I say “aww.. young love” for a little giggle.
No, i was wrong, Armani is Demi’s 13 month old (premature birth)Brother.

They both got pregnant, by the same guy at the same party!
I quickly had to say bye, get my dinner and bugger off to work, inable to do anything but piss myself laughing for days.

So yeah,

Demi-leigh Gorgeous Wilson
Armani Wilson”

Oh dear.

Oh dearie, dearie dear.

http://www.b3ta.com/newsletter/issue290/

That’s the link to the recent newsletter and I fully recommend the parenthood thread. Oh my God - Oh my dear, dear God.

FFS.

It’s Stu writing about motorbikes that’s done this.

Because a motorbike is the new horse and that’s a fact. And I love horses, oh yes I do.

About a million years ago, up Bunch Lane, was a horse that I called Nosebag and I used to talk to him at night when I was fed up. As horses go, Nosebag was a bit of a rubbish horse - a bit like the pantomime horse that used to live in the horsey field.

But horses are so elegant. They’re like ballet dancers. If you look at a horse, and I mean a PROPER horse, it will make you feel ugly. It will make you feel mean because you will never be able to be anything like it unless you are a greyhound.

Ever been to the races? I went just the once, to Sandown Park. The adjective is ‘thundering’ I believe. What a scene and I could not believe it - thirty tons of dog food hurtling along just the other side of the rails and the ground was shaking. Really shaking.

Horses, horses like you just can’t imagine. Horses with tied and knotted manes and tails - beautiful horses.

I said to Trouty that I wished all mankind was dead and that just horses had dominion and she looked at me like I was nuts.

If ever you meet a really nice horse you should not look him in the eye. They don’t understand it. You should breathe up his nose and talk very quietly to him. BUT, if you meet a vile and stroppy horse in a certain field near Ripley you should not give it a blackberry to eat because it will bite the end off your finger and make you do a rude swear.

And that’s all you’ll ever need to know about horses.

And it’s always been a good question.

Viv Stanshall wondered whether Blue men could sing the Whites and when we look at tonight’s special guest I think I know where he was coming from. You see, even if you stayed up all night and tried really hard you couldn’t get any whiter than Johnny Winter.

Here we see him performing ‘Mean Town Blues’ at the Woodstock Festival. Watch carefully and I wonder if you’ll spot what I did. Something that really stood out, shone out, for me…

Oh, and I’ll give you a million pounds if you can interpret the lyrics.*

Here’s what I think he’s going on about:

Mah father shit my dirty hat
Father done girl me
Father was a goose
Father shit mah dirty hat
Father told my goose
Been all down a real good time
Ah work for five dollars quickly
Never said I’d die
Work five dollars, curl up and die

People, sun and thunder, rain
Some from Illinois
People, snow and thumpin’ rain
Packed up my suitcase
Down the Delta walk

Ah well. Did you spot what I spotted? Go back and watch it again. Johnny Winter looks a little odd because he’s an albino but look at his HANDS. His hands are beautiful. They really, really are.

I don’t much care that his voice sounds like a goose being killed or that I can’t decide whether what looks like a guitar with 12 machine heads on has only been strung with 6.

Johnny Winter, you are a white man that CAN sing the blues.

And that’s that.

* is a lie

Out of the miserable 80s came a hero for me.

From what I hear, he don’t go out no more.

From what I hear, he won’t play.

From what I hear he just stays in and I can SO tune in with that one.

From what I hear… aaah, well listen to one of my faves. And it’s a great video too…

I bought ‘Love on a farmboy’s wages’ on 12inch vinyl.

But, get this, the blessed Andy Partridge is to my England what Saint Bob of Dylan is to my Amerika. The icon he chose for the album is the white horse of Uffington

Which is the most weirdly representative symbol that I can imagine.

Look at this…

You look at Andy in his sunglassed, frightened eye. You look at him and defy him his, and my, England.

I believe in a village green and a land. A land my children can dig holes in. I believe in a world that Andy Partridge can’t bring himself to go out in.

A world where children dig holes, play in the English Settlements , wear white horse shirts and go ‘one, two, three, four. FIVE!

Gawd bless XTC.

Not only can I talk out of it but I can steer with it too.

My money’s on ‘dogging’.

Hey, Jazzman, you’re looking well old.

Alex Harvey is dead now. He’s been dead for quite a while but that’s not important right now.

I remember him performing over thirty years ago in his semi-pirate outfit and his absolute conviction.

Here he is performing a song about a young man losing his virginity in a mobile army whore-wagon. His performance, I would call, magnetic…

And that was the, as we used to call them, SAHB.

Good stuff and just what we wanted in the early seventies. Glam Rock but you don’t have to peel back the skin of the SAHB to see the beginnings of PUNK there. Watch it again and you can see punk rock six years before it actually took place.

But then…

Watch this and contrast and compare, like they said at school.

Jaques Brel doing the original…

What do you think?

She swerved low over the steel waves, her own blonde waves caught in the freezing breeze from the gaps in the windshield.

Flying so low she came in right beneath my RADAR.

How on earth I never heard of Blossom Dearie until this year I simply can’t imagine.

Her version of ‘Fly me to the Moon’, I would like at my funeral and then I’d like a little party up near ‘Narnian Gateway’ where my ashes can get watered in and Tom Waits can play on a little player. Oh, and a little Blossom Dearie. She’s ever so good.

The Creeper, he lives upstairs. He doesn’t like Blossom Dearie or anything like her kind of stuff (although he has got a Tom Jones record). Oh no, he likes stuff that goes DUFF DUFF DUFF DUFF DUFF DUFF DUFF and he likes to hear it at night. He like to hear it late at night. He likes my other neighbour, Mr Scum, to think that it’s ME playing his shitty music.

The Creeper likes Mr Scum (who has a dog with a head the size of a dustbin) to try to break my doorbell at 2am and to display himself in his underpants to me when I answer the door.

And then no one apologises.

But never mind because I invented a joke today.

Honestly, I spend an awful lot of time making the Oliver Hardy face. I’ve got a few DVDVDVDVDs of Laurel and Hardy now and when I see the face it always strikes my heart like a gong.

The joke is: ANTICOCKWISE, by the way.

The face is full of pain but it’s a KNOWING pain. He never expected anything else. No really. He was trapped and tied. And even at the age of seven I identified with that face. Work that one out - I can’t.

The joke had to be run past Viz Comic’s ‘Roger’s Profanisaurus’ department. I looked in the book (Vodka Mick’s copy) and then went online to try their rubbish ’search’ option.

It bothered me a bit that my joke might not have been original and that I might have already read it (boozed up) and forgotten. And then thought I’d invented it all over again.

It looks, however, like my submission to Roger’s Profanisaurus might stand.

ANTICOCKWISE:

adj. The Lesbotic lifestyle.

“Nah, mate, no chance. She travels in an anticockwise direction".

Hope you like my little joke and don’t forget to search out Blossom Dearie. She’s GREAT!