Anyone who knows anything about anything knows that a pig is a ‘rooter’.

What a surprise that my router turned out to be a ‘pig’ (not being rude to pigs).

Rooting is useful; things get turned up. Truffles get found and eaten. Things for free and sometimes valuable. Things that are snuffled-up and consumed. The piggies sometimes get drunk on windfalls that have started to ferment.

My router has yet to find anything anything of value (except my blog, of course), some marvellous artworks and a brilliant way of turning me stonk-bonking mental.

Where the noble pig is known as a rooter, my router is known as a pig

Call me old-fashioned but I like to have INSTRUCTIONS. What I DON’T want is an indication that I might use a compluter that doesn’t work to find some weird compluter language twaddle that explains nowt.

Sorry, but I have eyes. What I don’t have is a pair of electron microscopes to try and read this twaddle that is written in a font so small that an ant would have trouble with it.

Picture the poor ant, rubbing his eyes, and saying “This fucking font is so small that even if it was understandable I couldn’t read the bastard anyway".

Listen to me, you compluter twats, just send out your electronical rubbish with a booklet that explains what to do when it all goes wrong. Which it will.

See, I don’t really care about what all these numbers and codes and cobblers are all about. What I want is something that actually works. Erm, I mean that actually works without me having to experiment with a mining operation amongst the old mags and crappy, years old, techno-CDs, without having to rearrange furniture, without using a torch, rewiring my slum and swearing my head off.

Mobile phones - don’t even get me started on that one. If you have fingers about the size of Barbie’s and you are a bit mental then DO get one. Otherwise just don’t bother. All you get is grief as the Postal Service dies on its arse delivering pizza menus.

The Credit Crunch is interesting. I’m used to living on the poor side of the tracks.

THIRTY BOB for a newspaper? And what’s inside? Tell you what, a load of scummy articles telling you how to save a few bob by turning down the central heating and not driving like a wanker. I have a few tips to share:

Don’t have a car.
Don’t fly anywhere.
Don’t buy ‘ping’ meals.
If you want to go anywhere then walk. If you can’t be arsed then you don’t need to go there.
There is free food everywhere so teach yourself.
Cut up all your ‘credit’ cards.

Yeah, yeah, yeah… Moaning again am I?

Tell you what.

I went badly skint in 1991. It wasn’t exactly nice. I gave away my car because I couldn’t afford the MOT and all the rest. I haven’t flown since 1984 and haven’t driven a car since 1997. Since then I walked or caught a bus if it was raining.

The point I’m trying to make is that is that WE have to change.

50″ plasma tellys are no good. 4x4s are no good.

Call me old-fashioned but a computer that could get you to Mars and back is pointless. We have telephones and interwebular cobblers so there is no need for hardly anything that we, as society, do.

Medical advances? No argument there.

In the meantime, electronical stuff that actually worked might be a good idea and a handy guidebook that taught you how to mend it might be an even better idea.

Call me old-fashioned.

Go on, I know you want to.

My compluter is so old that the bits of it that aren’t powered by clockwork are steam-fed by a gang of lazy stokers who hang about smoking Capstans and drinking tea with six sugars in.

Having BOUGHT a rubbish modem I was assured that something called a router would solve all my problems.

You can see this one coming, can’t you?

The router arrived and looked very posh. The password and blah was going to arrive in a few days.

A week later I telephoned (my bill is now 148 quids) and was advised to contact the supplier, contact a local eeeeugh I feel sick or a local eeeeugh I feel sicker.

Cheers, [joke removed on legal advice].

Now, I can’t reveal the name of the man who saved my life. It wouldn’t be fair because you would all be on to him and he has proper work to do. But save my mental life he did. All you have to do is, hang on a minute, ‘tap tap tap’ is see on the right you will see the section marked “I am stupid and don’t know what to do", just click on that and all will be well. So I did.

Consequently, after yet another phone call to [joke removed on legal advice] (5 pees a minute) because they had forgotten the password they had already given me I eventually got back on-line.

It only took me half a day and 25mgs of diazepam but here I am.

Here’s an interesting thing; [joke removed on legal advice] have no complaints department. I find that surprising because, surely, that department (should it exist) would be on of the busiest departments in the entire universe.

TRAINING COURSE:
“Buy a new computer then, schtyoopid” and hang up the phone.

I am so fucking angry that it’s a wonder my head hasn’t actually exploded.

‘Just get behind your computer and unplug whatever and then tell me what you see’ - Well, seeing as I’m not a fucking contortionist off of Opportunity Knocks, that I haven’t got a miner’s headlamp on and that my flat looks even more like a cross between a rubbish dump and and spaghetti factory than usual I’d be really pleased to do so.

Seeing as I resent paying 5 pees a minute to listen to the usual, seeing as my phone bill has reached proportions astronomical, seeing as you don’t know what your name is, seeing as you don’t know what your telephone number is, seeing as you have no manager, seeing as you have no complaints department, seeing as I have to talk, more often than not to Mumbai or New Delhi from where I can barely hear you, let alone understand you, seeing as you treat your customers with disdain and virtually disgust….

Here’s a message for you - you will have to pay to listen to it….
If you are callling about nothing you want to know about then blah blah blah.
If you are calling about super-duper upgrade please press 1
If you are calling about paying us loads of money please press 2
If you are calling about a pissed-off customer who you have really annoyed please press 3
If you want to pay my phone bill and send me a new computer please press your fingers in your ears and go ‘la-la-la-la’.

Everyone you talk to tells you something different. Now, it’s not MY fault (I'’m just the customer who gives them money) that they can’t run a company properly.

YOU WILL NOTICE THAT I HAVE NAMED NO PARTICULAR COMPANY. OH NO.

I don’t think that I need to.

You may notice that this painting has not yet been signed. I don’t like to do that until I’m ‘happy’ with it.

As this is the only selfish-portrait that I have attempted, it’s no surprise I should be even more self-critical than usual.

Trouty doesn’t like it. At first it was “too dark” and that was meant in a literal way. Now it’s too dark in the, what’s the word? ‘figurative’ way.

I took the canvas outside so’s I could photo it in the sunlight. It looks different. All my paintings look different under photography so I don’t really mind.

Whenever I paint I ALWAYS hate what I have done but then I grow to like them and maybe this one I will grow to like too.

The (my left) hand is shite and Trouty says that the whole thing is not pink enough. But I like dark paintings. It’s a selfish-portrait and YOU try doing one. The whole exercise is so bloody hard that it’s nearly impossible; I often wish that I had never bothered trying.

What do YOU look like? Probably not what what anyone else sees.

Sorry about your mate, Alex, but the happiest of birthdays to you.

It costs more to make a photo-voltaic cell than it can ever produce.

Rubbish ‘greenery’ causes a lot of trouble.

Forget about the sun, it will continue to pour so you could stick a inverse-radiator thing on your roof that used the magic of ‘hot’ going up and ‘cold’ going down. That makes sense.

Black attracts and white does the opposite. Nowt wrong with that but, ahem, ’solar power’ is not ‘green’.

Try a windmilly thing; although I’m not sure that they make much sense either. The power needed to construct these things is, well, something that I know eff-all about. BUT…

The power of the moon makes tides work, without even asking.

At Bembridge, on the IOW, there used to be a tide mill. The tide rose through gates and then they were shut. What you got was a massive pool of tons of water. Twice a day the pool got emptied through the mill. The power of the water drove the mill. Tons of power, driven by the moon.

So, why not build tidal generators? It can’t be difficult and needn’t cost too much. Wildlife wouldn’t be disturbed. We live on an island, FFS, so what’s so difficult?

What’s that you say? Not much electricity? Maybe we want more electricity than we actually need.

There’s a very big difference between ‘want’ and ‘need’.

Here endeth the blah-blah.

Due to the amount of entries it took me a while to come to a conclusion.

Yes, Youngblood had spent literally minutes in his shading work. Yes.

Sarah had poured her heart, her soul and quite a lot of red paint onto her effort.

SO:

1 & 2, shared between Sarah and Youngblood. In the one case the strict ARSEtooisms of the usual were observed yet in the other a pot of paint had been chucked over it.

Therefore a Joint is awarded between them.

In a shared 3rd prize I must award this special honour to all the lazy gits who couldn’t be bothered.

Thank you to Youngblood and Sarah. No thanks at all to those who couldn’t be arsed.

My secret project is about halfway through.
I'’ve been to the house and photographed it. I managed to scrub all the index numbers off the cars but can I get it to crop? Ahem. No, I can’t.

So you won’t get to see any of it yet. That Tom and Pete lived within minutes walk from me, that they used to drink in the Boring Bastard, is one thing but how come? How so close?

How come I have been past the bottom of Tom’s garden so many, many times on the Charley and never, ever realised?

I saw some people I know today and helped them through the lock. “Have you seen what they’ve done to your boat?". says he, and that’s what everyone I know says. I’m expecting the owl and the pussycat to turn up shortly. Still, it’s not my boat any longer so what do I know? It’s nothing to do with me.

The two certificates I ordered turned up today, quicker than expected. One house I found quite easily but the other is proving more difficult. I broke a frame trying to get the one I’m fondest of to sit right. Lucky I know someone in the glazing trade and could give the sizes required in 3 dimensional mills.

The day has been troubling so I thought I might give you all a break. I have no tatts as I find them rather vulgar but my design looks a tad palid in monochrome. So have a go and colour it in as best you can.

Send me your best shot.

In the meantime I have a house to find. It’s near here, oh yes, if you have a car. My spies are everywhere; mateys, postmen, all the usual. I’ll find it and it keeps me off the streets (or rather, the mattress).

There’s always the Woking History Centre I suppose.

I’m still painting but my last one has got me beat. The picture exists in my head but not, unfortunately, on the canvas. The background is fine but the figure is a nightmare. I’m thinking of too much distance and that’s the trouble. The figure is a woman with cropped hair, military boots, an [deleted], and a summer frock. Well, you try painting that because I’m a bit reluctant.

Have a go at the colouring in. Go on. A bit of art is good for you.

Anyway, I was driving along in my car but I must admit that I wasn’t paying full attention.

I was fiddling with the radio and talking on my mobile phone and trying to light a fag at the same time.

Next thing I know… SMASH!

I’ve rear-ended the car in front.

Well, the driver got out of the front seat and he was a midget, a little fellow, and turned to have a go at me and he said “I’m not happy!”

So I said “Well, which one are YOU then?”

I didn’t make that joke up; Viv stanshall did, Gawd bless ‘im.

But my hands are dirty, once again, painting into the night and trying to smoke dog-ends.

Here’s a picture of the selfish-portrait. The flash doesn’t really tell the story that it should but at least you can see that I’m getting there. It’s rescuable but I don’t like it but that’s not too much to do with it. The point is that you can see the progression and where it might end up.

I’ll tell you why I don’t like it, it’s because it is of me. I should imagine that doing a crap picture of someone else must be rather easy but try doing one of yourself; it hurts and the lies are there. You need brutality which is never easy to wield.

Lah la…

Here’s my little table with the already fucked-up picture that I’m going to do next. How the hell I’ll ever get away with it I really don’t know because it only exists in my head.

When I cook I just cook stuff; when I paint I just paint stuff. I never draw or follow recipes I just do what I think is right. Doesn’t always work but then neither do I.

Everything, as far as I’m concerned, has to follow the title here above. ‘Out of my head’.

If it doesn’t spring from me than it is worth nothing. I’ll keep showing you how my paintings come along. Make me offers by all means; Van Gogh sold two and I’ve sold 1.5.

Suck on that, Vincent.

That was unkind of me.

Tell you what, I don’t do commissions or do money stuff but I’m always ready to talk.

I think I fell in love with art.

Here’s some nice Chicken of the Woods.

Here it is in slices, ready for some cookery.

Mmmmmm, fry that stuff with whatever you fancy…

Now here’s a complete fry-up.
Never listen to whatever anyone tells you about your artistic attempts.
Look at the state of this. Woody bloody Allen, that’s what.

As pictures go, it’s not beyond rescue, but my heart died with it.

Oh well, whatchagonnado?

Tell you what I DID see today was a poster for an harteestic display that might even get me going to Lahndahn for the first time in a million years. This display is on at the Royal Academy until September the 7th.

Vilhelm Hammershoi.

Look at his work of interiors if you want to see peace and quiet laid out on a canvas. Oh, the tranquility.

Tell you what, his work makes my daubs look angry and vile.

I think I’ll go and see the exhibition because I need the peace.

Cheery-bye!

If you ever have the misfortune to work in one of the modern, Satanic Mills, a call-centre, I can assure you of one thing. The last, the very and absolutely last, person that you want on the other end of the line is….. me.

Why I do it, I don’t know. How I do it, I know very well. It started when I was 22 and has continued ever since. As I cannot bear unfairness I always ask to speak to the big smell at the top. The big smell never takes calls from scum like me so I have to work my way upwards. I’ve had results, too.

Having bid a good blah-blah or whatever I ask for the manager. The manager is always in a meeting, but the mission continues…

If you take me on it means that you are stupid or you think that I am stupid. Oh dear.

(When I use the word ‘you’ it means the hapless slave on two-bob an hour)

I try always to say good-whatever and explain that there is going to be a row. The manager is paid to have the row. That’s the managerial role. Please hold the line…..

Today I was trying to explain (at 5pees per min) that while I enjoyed Rodrigo’s guitar symphony that Elgar’s Nimrod, from his Variations, was often used as funeral music IN THIS COUNTRY and that Dvorak’s 2nd was commonly associated with a bread commercial.

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH (This being the sound of being cut off, yet again, from a call-centre in India. (New Delhi, this time, not Mumbai).

Anyway, I got what I wanted. My McAfee has been reinstalled

(Subtext: “If I’ve been paying you money for something you haven’t given me then that’s theft, isn’t it? Theft is a crime. So I’ll see you in court".)

See, I PAY them. I am the customer. Therefore, if they don’t deliver then I am the VICTIM and there isn’t a court in the whole world can disagree with that one.

There was an interesting discussion with the Water, ahem, people who got the strop when I suggested that I might stick a hosepipe out of my window and sell water to people. Well, why not? Why should I subsidise people to rinse their 4X4s and fill up their hot-tub jacuzzis? If they want me to pay for it then it’s mine and I can do as I please with it. I can leave my taps running 24/7 if I want, surely?

In other news, I varnished a painting and knackered up my selfish-portrait that I should have left well alone. I tried to make it look better. Now it just looks different. As paintings go, it’s rescuable but to me it will always look lost. For ever I will see what I should have stuck with.

Best I ask to speak to my manager. And listen to some hold-music.

Super-observant agent Trouty spotted this the other day. It’s a Sulphur Polypore, otherwise known as Chicken of the woods.

I hacked some off and cleaned it up a bit and then left it to dry.

My brother came round so I gave some to him.

Yum yum fried up with a bit of garlic, onion and bacon should you fancy.

Your local A&E unit should be handed a bit when you get carted in on a gurney with stuff coming out of your nose, mouth and, of course, bottom.

If you look at the pictures you can see why it’s called ‘Chicken blah-blah’

Given the choice between a bit of that and a bit of Colonel Evil’s preparations I know which I’d choose.

Mind you. At least with the latter you get a bit of thigh, a bit of breast and a box to put your bone in.

What I do is I just start.

See how things turn out. This evening I had to start repainting a wall. It wasn’t my fault it’s just some got oil paint got on the wall and was not the same colour. Luckily in my box of tricks I had some of that matchpaint stuff which wasn’t exactly the same colour, especiallly after it had had some oil paint mixed in with it but there you go. The landlord can paint over it.

Here’s a rubbish starter. It’s got paint as thick as toothpaste on it which was where all the trouble started. It will take months to dry.

This one is better. It’s happier for a start and the paint it much thinner. I just painted and then poured white spirit on it and used kitchen roll to dab away until I was just about happy with it. Don’t ask me what I’m going to do with it because I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just leave it. If I’m ever happy with it I might sign it. Leave it like that.

What I do is start with a canvas and let it tell me what to do. Oftentimes is turns out arse. Complete arse. But sometimes it tells me what to do.

Don’t ask me how or why I do things; I can’t tell you at all.

I am fascinated by the Black Paintings of Goya. I geddit. I see what he did there and that’s why I like painting from a dark background, the light lifts everthing from the dark. But not everthing I do works like that. I like to play with colour. Sometimes a canvas will tell me to do one thing or another and I don’t argue. If I was a bit braver I would do other things like maybe leave a canvas outside and paint it with a yoghurt mixture so that it went a bit mouldy. I’m not rich so I don’t do that for myself but I can bet it might happen in the future. Trap the mould behind lacquer, now that might be an idea.

Talking of which, I was asked why my selfish-portrait was painted all brown when I’m not brown. I could have painted it in green but that that doesn’t mean I’m viridian. Art is like writing. In some ways it’s easier, in other ways more difficult. Some art is howling shit and some writing is too. At least with a painting you can see in a moment whether you like it or not and you don’t have to wade through pages of dross to make your mind up.

I’m a very lucky man. I can draw and I can paint and I can write. Not everybody can do these things. But think of all the things that I cannot do; the list is endless.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a few points to the Simplictics that are worth a watch:
1. Who can run the quickest.
2. Who can jump the highest.
3. Who can jump the furthest (or is that farthest?).
4. Who can swim the quickest.

Erm,

That’s it.

So that Oswindlepics for you.

Is is worth loads of money? 2012 will cost about 20.12 BILLION pounds. That’s quite a few quids.

They could run the whole thing in existing structures in one day for a minute fraction of the projected cost. Not only that but we wouldn’t be left with the shut-down Hoovervilles that have been left all over the world as a result of this eternal waste of money.

My idea is to have a normal Olympics, a Para-Olympics and a drugged-up Olympics.

I bet that the latter would drag in the money.

Talking of money; the idea is that 20.12 billion would make loads of money for the Londoners who will have to pay for it. That’s a lie for a start. No one who pays for it will make a bean.

This vile tax will do no favours for the payers of the bills. Not so? Well let’s just shall we see, shall we see? Who will pay for the fireworks and the claptrap that goes with it.

Who will pay for the closed arenas? Look at Athens. All they have is graffitied rubbishland that is inhabited by the homeless who cook on bonfires. Is that what we really want here, in London?

We have swimming pools already. We have a river for rowing on. We have running tracks and all sorts. We have Sarf Landahn Estates for javelin and knife-throwing contests.

And pistol shooting.

We have an excellent marathon track and the London to Brighton cycle race is reknowned.

Let’s have Free-running, or ‘Parkour’ as it’s better known.

The French must be laughing their Coqs off.

Their is no need for us to waste billions on a load of never-to-be-opened-again velodromes.

Make this a British Olympics, spread it out all over our beautiful land. There is no need for fatcats to make a fortune from the hard-pressed taxpayers of London. We will get nothing.

Are we stupid? Sometimes I really wonder.

And I still want to see someone run 100 metres in 3.5 seconds. Even I would pay money to see that.

Thought you might like to see a few scenes from Thirst Hall.

Well, whether you like it or not, here they come:

It’s my life and it’s my daily brightness.

Clever people might be able to string them into a panorama but I get that same panorama when my bleary eyes open and I look around.

Hope you enjoyed looking.

Sleep well.

Dear Merm family,

Thanks for your top offer but the original is not for sale. But, tell you what, here’s an offer for you. You have my full permission to print off as many copies as you want of the case painting.

The more I look at it, and I won’t/can’t change it now, the more I see. It’s a 3-way painting. I have to cover some it with my hand so I can see what I started off with.

1. She’s backstage. That’s where the lighting comes from. She is wearing a doublet and pulling her knickers up. How Phil Mitchell appeared in the top-left I will never know. She only appears to have one leg but that doesn’t matter. In her right she carries the case. It looks a lot better in photos than in real oil. She’s moving and she’s going.

Where this painting came from I have simply no idea. Like when I painted the drowned man I seemed to wake up. There was no one else here so I must have done it.

2. It looks like Kevin Coyne, crying.

3. It looks like a bloke with a green chin and neck playing a mouthorgan.

You asked about my selfish-portrait. This is the only one that I have ever done. I regard myself as unimportant. As pictures go, it’s getting better. What I see is not as everyone does, I know that, so I have to behave myself. One day I will be happy with it and sign it. But not at the moment because you have to have the absolute time.

Today, I went to the doctor. I peeled the Blu-Tacked photo of the case woman photo from the wall. At Woollies I bought a clip-frame and then, a little later, I gave it to him.

What a delight when I could see in his eyes that it was about 1000 times better than he though it was going to be.

It could be better but so what? I painted that picture and I don’t really care that she only has one leg and her right hand could have been better.

Tell you what, Merms, spread my work around as much as you want and you make some dosh from it. I couldn’t care less whether my stuff gets ripped from the net. I have everything, original, on my walls so why should I be bothered?

Good luck mate. I might have to start calling you Bagwhan. Bag One. See what I did there?

I’ll get me coat.

One day, you get to realise, you are not as bad as you think.

Check this out:

These photos are crap but I never said I was a photographer. But as a painter I’m not too bad.

I like the suitcase picture. Now none of these are finished so don’t start whining. You do better and then we can have a row. A proper one.

I like this suitcase one. I was talking to my Ma and she asked me if I ever drew anything first. Oh no. What I try to do is use the same big splodgy brush for the whole thing. It’s just a bit of mental OCD for me. Can you tell what it is yet? Well I bloody can’t.

But I look at this stuff, hanging on my wall, and I’m quite chuffed.

Because I did it and it’s mine. You can have it if you give me enough money but I bet you won’t.

But maybe, one day, you will wish that you did have did of did.

I’m not stupid. I can spot stuff when I see it and, guess what, I’ve got walls covered in it.

Thanks for looking.

Painting. Bit like writing, I suppose.

I’m working on two because what’s the point in working on just the one?

One is a self-portrait (and it’s shit) and the other one is ‘Suitcase man’.

Of course, I’m not happy with either. I tried to take some piccies. Guess what. They came out rubbish so here is about the best.

Of course, they would have been better in daylight but it was dark and I was drunk. Well, whatchagonna do?

Sorry that the pictures aren’t that great but at least it might stop them getting stolen. I’ve sniffed out a few of my works on the net. Haha. I still have the originals. It’s no good so called musicians crying their eyes out and moaning because someone has whipped off their stuff using digital power. That’s just the way of things these days. Tell you what, you musos, just gig. I just paint. You want to rip my art off well good luck to you. I’ve still got the complete originals stuck to my wall with BluTack.

‘Suitcase man’ seems a little bit better. The self-portrait is simply dreadful. But neither are finished so who can say?

All I say, as always, is that you have to have a go. If you don’t than everything will die with you and what the frying-pan is that worth?

My left hand is clean (I’m left-handed) but my right hand is covered with green and black paints and smells of arty stuff. Could it be better? You tell me.

Go on, have a go.

I have to be secretive. Not for myself, you understand, but because it would be very wrong of me to drag anyone else into my little bloggy world.

There are names that I name but there are others I simply shouldn’t.

Every now and then I have to go to see the boozologist. The journey is a chore but it’s not the end of the world.

This time we spoke of matters ’spiritual’. Not religious but just spiritual. I have a threefold thing that goes on in my head - I’ll try not to bore you with it.

Take your thumb and you may use it to tick off, on the joints of your first finger, three things. One, Two, Three.

We used to count things in twelves rather than tens. We have four fingers and one thumb. To count sheep, or whatever, you use your thumb to ‘tick’ the three joints on each finger.

We have twelve joints to count on. Start with the little finger… One, Two, Three. Then the ring finger… Four, Five, Six. And then you get to Twelve.

Twelve is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and, erm, 12 I suppose. Rubbish Ten is divisible by 1, 2, 5 and 10.

So that was quite a good conversation. I have to go back in a month and report back how my blah, blah, spiritual doo-dah is going.

Where I have to go is part of a psychiactric unit and after we had done I went off to the loo and walked past where two, ahem, inmates were smoking fags. You aren’t supposed to smoke on the hospital grounds but if YOU want to stop psychiatric patients (or staff - teehee) you will never do it. When I came back there was just one of them left on the bench. He didn’t look very well. I asked if I might share the bench as it was under cover and the rain was coming down.

ME: How are you then?

Now, I look misleadingly well. Yeah, I look alright.

HIM: I JUST WANT TO GET OUT OF HERE!
ME: I know what you mean. Will you have anywhere to go?
HIM: OF BLOODY COURSE AND I DON’T WAN’T YOU KNOWING WHERE I LIVE!
Me: Okay.
HIM: WHERE’S MY BLOODY RADIO?!

(it was 6 inches from his left foot)

Then there was a sort of silence while he finished his delicious roll-up.

He twitched about and collected up a bag full of, ahem, possessions and wandered off out into the rain as curses from him rained about on me.

When I was with the boozologist I asked, “There are psychiatrists and there are psychologists. So what’s the difference and which one are you?”

The boozologist said, “I’m a doctor.”

So it’s back to the dictionary for me, I guess.

Pardon me for my prose seeming a little stilted. I have to protect identities. I just have to.

As an auto-didact everything, naturally, is everything that I picked up, like stuff off the towpath. I could read and write before I went to school. I still can’t do long-division.

I try, I really DO try to learn something from every opportunity. There was something in the local freebie rag that comes through the door every week. A young man was badly beaten and lay on the ground and got a kicking. As he lay ‘writhing’, one of his attackers got his button-mushroom sized cock out and urinated on him.

That taught me something too.

I simply can’t keep living here. Vandalism, noise, violence, mental misery…

Not all lessons are super-duper happy.

For reasons whch will become clear I won’t tell you exactly when or where this conversation took place.

Like the idi0t I am, I have started smoking again. I had a smoke but no ignition.

I asked a woman for a light.

Now, I’m a right nosey bastard and she looked as if she might have been crying a little earlier in the day. Turns out she had been. She had been to the Gay Pride do in Brighton the day before and one thing had led to another and she was alone.

No, she wasn’t wearing stockings, suspenders or a ’strap-a-dick-to-me’.

We spoke about Brighton and I asked her how that City was going. It had rained. Big Time.

I told her that I write a bit and try to paint. She writes too. In leather-bound books. I gave her a pen that I only bought the other day but it has a super-fine nib and I hope she might find it useful and maybe remember me by it. We are not all homophobes, you know, and nor should we be.

It is most unlikely that I will ever see her again as she lives in a City that is miles from here. Somewhere that I have only been to a handful of times and where I once saw a homeless eating ice-cream out of a bin. That was over 20 years ago. I remember I gave him a quid.

So we talked of this and that and she showed me some tatts that she had. They didn’t exactly mention Sappho or Lesbos but the meaning was clear.

A member of her family blanks her totally. Now, what the frying-pan is that all about?

She told me about the cards that she makes for the members of her family that don’t hate her for being who she is.

She makes nice cards with poems in and she sends them with love. She’s been hurt and rejected. Now that’s not right.

I can never reveal her name or where she lives or where she comes from, although I am privy to the details. I won’t tell you how old she is or anything about her

EXCEPT.

For her age she was sound. She will succeed and I know she will be happy, although today she was sad. She had so much life in her. We talked for hours.

And, yes, I did invite her to my home for dinner and to come up an see my etchings, but before your filthy minds draw conclusions I did tell her that my best friend in the whole wide world, Trouty, was on the premises and I wouldn’t be trying to ‘convert’ her.

I was just worried. But she was waiting for a ‘friend’.

Some friend.

I fully recommend conversations. You always learn something and sometimes they will be the best conversations you will ever have.

And then, later on, I cooked trout and we watched a DVDVD called ‘Crash’.

Do you know, the worst thing that you can do to the artillery of your opposition is to spike it?

This means that you drive a metal peg into the hole in the arse-end (technical term) of the cannon so that it can no longer be fired. It means anything what you stuff up the front end (technical term), you can’t set off the charge behind it and then nothing will come out. Ever.

There are are a lot of bollards in London. They are shaped like cannon. With a cannon-ball welded into the mouth. That’s why they are shaped like this because a lot of them actually were.

They stick out of the pavements, even now, although many are replicas based on the old, seized guns.

Imagine now that that instead of being weapons of war these were men. Imagine bollards figured as men, half-buried, with their frozen mouths crammed with pens and brushes.

The cannon mean nothing to us now. We swing about them and padlock our bicycles to them. But what if we saw them as men, or women, frozen into nothingness with their very art crammed into silent but screaming mouths?

Would you be happy to chain your bike to a bronze child with a rictus crammed with dead, bronze brushes? Maybe a soldier, with no gun but with a pen?

Does this not make you think?

I won’t bore you with the contents of Poets’ Corner or the the number of blue plaques that remind Londoners of who lived where. There’s no need.

All I feel I must say is that there is no need to be afraid. Do what you must and that, surely, is what you feel. If you want to write a poem then write one; poets are remembered long after everyone else got blown to bits. If you want to paint a picture then go ahead and paint one; it will last longer than you ever will. If you want to write a book it might just be reprinted long after you are in the ground.

What you have to do or say, paint or whatever is important. If you write nothing or just DO nothing then you turn your back on a gift.

What’s the worst that can possibly happen?

Tell you what, I’d quite like to stitch a sampler but I know it would just wind up a bit crap with blood all over it. Wouldn’t mind playing the banjo or the piano though. I’ll just write and do a bit of painting.

But at least I’m doing something. Please will you do, too?

Artistry can not be left to the other bloke. (S)He is just the same as you. And that’s a true fact.

The leaves of the Hawthorn tree are known as ‘bread and cheese’.

I had a go at some today. So far as I am concerned they should be called ’shed and sneeze’.

What a disgrace.

Here’s a piccie of me on a ramble today.

Thanks to the Tesco ‘Bing Bong’ alert I found that they had tuna steaks at half price.

Oh, did they? Well they had two less after I got there. And they were most deelish. Trouty and I polished them off with some Charlotte spuds and some salad. I cooked the steaks in a mixture of onion, mushroom and, ahem, a bit of white wine.

After all the song-and-dance in the papers about rich people being too poor to eat I really thought I should do more about my my ‘food for free’ scheme and I don’t mean nicking off allotments. Several victims will testify as to the vileness of garlic mustard but the nettles didn’t turn out too bad. I might make some more nettle stuff in the soonish. I have experimented with P. somniferum but that didn’t turn out so well.

There has been a distinct lack of ‘chicken of the woods’ or the Sulphur Polypore as it is better known. In fact, I haven’t seen a single one.

Tell you what, someone has been fishin’ in my pond. My windlass beds have gone dry, mah fungus trees are bare. Next thing you know mah crayfish will all have a been taken (althought they’ll need a skip to put them in).

Tell you what, if you want to try a delicacy try hogweed. It tastes like nothing else.

Imagine if someone asked you to describe what rhubarb tasted like. Well, hogweed tastes like nothing else, but it’s free, and as long as a dog hasn’t wazzed on it you should give it a go.

In the meantime, here’s how my painting is coming along. Blow it up as big as you can, go the other side of the room and squint. As long as a dog hasn’t wazzed on it you might see where it’s heading.

Food for free and freedom for itself, my friends,
H.