Tell you what, I wish that I lived in Not In Service. I imagine it must be a bit like Notting Hill except not quite as posh.

The reason being, well, all the buses that go down my road are going to Not In Service.

I bet they could drop me off at the corner as they carried on their merry way.

When I tried to look up this mysterious location, all I could find were words that began with the letter ‘B’. Here’s some of them:

Botheration, bollocks, bugger, bloody-hell, bastards and bus.

Now I’m no Sherlock, but I’m wondering if there might be some kind of link here.

[blog deleted for legal reasons]

Guess what. I was looking out of the window and I saw a man who was plainly up to no good. I thought he might steal a bicycle. He waited for trains to empty and then he went to the inside of the station for just about as long as would take to urinate. Or defecate if it was a quick one.

He was so suss. Then he met a girl off a train. Near the backdoor of the ticket she did a something while he kept watch. Then he wiped whatetever it was from her shoes and left the soiled tissues for someone else to pick up. I won’t tell you what I shouted out of the window but you can probably guess.

Anyway,
I need someone who can tell me what these maps what I have got from Surrey County Council mean:

One is called ‘ The purple is NOT public highway’ - of course, there is NO purple on it.
Another is called ‘Byfleet and New Haw’ and seems to indicate that Notwork have no right of access past my slum.
Yet another is a Land Registry plan.

Oh dear.

Looks like Notwork have been using a private road to ruin my life for a year.

I have all the registry numbers if anyone is interested.

The nice council man gave me the name of the idiot at Notwork and all his details.

Trouble with all these plans is that they are all covered with dotted lines and there is no key. It is plain that Notwork and and their associates have been using a private road in order to ruin to my life. I’d like to know who will remove the slag-heap that they have dumped into the Rive Stream.

What I want is a plan that tells me who owns exactly what. To the inch.

Next week should prove interesting.

Sometimes I feel like I’m really tomming for comments. Which, of course, I am.

So back to the old stuff, eh?

I was listening to the radio and then my listening was interrupted by an enormous BANG!

I knew what it was, there can be no mistaking it once you’ve heard it a few times.

It’s what’s called a ‘bridge-strike’. So I bunged on my hiking boots and took my camera. Remember the mnemonic? COW? Well there were no casualties (how he never went through the windscreen I don’t know). He’d reversed so there was no obstruction. As for witnesses I didn’t care - it was obvious what had happened and I’m not in the job any more.

The driver was trying to get to Luton. Oh, poo, I can smell Luton. But his truck was so smashed it could not be driven without a severe amount of rearranging and strapping.

So I phoned Notwork in case they wanted to send a surveyor. I asked the driver if he wanted to use the phone or the loo.

My job was done.

Half an hour (I timed it) later the police arrived on a motorbike. Now where had he come from? Wales? Southampton?

I felt sorry for the driver. Perhaps he thought 9′9″ meant ‘really big tall bridge’. I should imagine that in the morning he will find out what P45 means.

Being a bit bored I challenged Trouty to that old game that you hear on the radio every now and then.

There’s a dinner table and you sit at the head of it. There are six guests, three on either side. Who do YOU choose to invite to your dinner party?

You can have six guests, maybe from beyond the grave, maybe family or friends, maybe anyone really. But what we want is good conversation.

Just six. Hmmmmm, that’s not easy. You don’t have to justify (unless you want to). I’ve changed my mind so many times but here we go:

1. Stephen Fry
2. Peter Cook
3. Pete Ham
4. Bob Dylan (He could be in charge of putting LPs on the radiogram)
5. Dorothy Parker
6. Vincent van Gogh

Ask me next week and the list will probably be different but who cares; it’s only a game.

You can have whatever you want to eat so don’t be afraid of asking a vegetarian to dine with a carnivore.

Go on, give it a shot. It’s today’s CHALLENGE.

I was listening to Lemon Jelly and, in particular, one of my favourite tracks which is called ‘Pushy’.

Mixed into this is a man interviewing a child in a most pleasant way. But what was his name?

His voice, strictly R.P., is gentle and non-judgemental. So pleasant to listen to. From the 60s I guessed. But what was his name? My know-all friend wouldn’t tell me so I phoned my Mum but she was out. I phoned my Dad and spoke to to my Ma-in-law. She didn’t know.

I kicked the wossname out of my compluter and, in the very end, I found his name was….. Can YOU work it out?
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His name was Harold Williamson.

So I started mucking about trying to hear some more of his interviews. No luck.

But what I did find, on BoobToob, was a documentary that he got a BAFTA for. Boringly, as all things Boobular are, it’s split into six parts but I challenge you to watch it.

Get the hankies ready, packet of fags, box of choccy-biccies, bottle of something nice and all the rest because I challenge you to watch this. It’s like the forgotten version of ‘Cathy come home’ but with Williamson’s lovely voice interviewing so gently.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRT7u0S9uzA

That’s the link for for the first part of 1970’s, ‘Gale is dead’.

As tragedies go, it’s a marvel.

I first read about Frances Farmer in Kenneth Anger’s book, ‘Hollywood Babylon’.

Happy birthday, Frances, and rest in peace. You certainly seemed like my kind of girl.

There is a simple mnemonic that I was once taught:

C: Casualty
O: Obstruction
W: Witness

COW. Once it’s been drummed into your head it’s very hard to forget.

Anyway, having been to the doctor and bought a pair of socks and loitered about a bit I returned to the pharmacy to collect my beloved diazepam.

But! What was this? Yet another prang for me to deal with?

Yes, I KNOW who was to blame but I was not a witness and no one else seemed to be hanging around.

Casualties? No. There was a pair of pensioners in the smaller car so I asked them if anyone was hurt and asked if they needed to use my mobile telephone. They were just shaken.

The other car was a 4X4 containing three scummers and none of them seemed to volunteer who had been driving at the time. I suspected that there may have been a lack of insurance cover.

This 4X4 had a hole about the size of a tennis ball in the rear near-side tyre. Oh dear. It was completely, ahem, well, you know.

I advised anyone who would listen (nobody) that they should exchange index numbers, the details of the driver and insurance details if they had them to hand. With a damage-only accident that’s all you have to do.

As everyone was ignoring me I just toddled off, got my diazepam, and went to the station.

I don’t know why people bother having cars if all they can do is smash them into each other.

In other news, I obeyed my instructions and spent a lot of time on the phone. Alcoholism is like snakes and ladders except that you always wind up back on square one.

Imagine if you had some ghastly disease and the best advice you got was to get better. Well I will and that will shut their faces for them. What a load of rubbish! Yes, we can see that you are ill and might die but off you go and get better all by yourself.

Then I had another row with AOL. So far this has cost me about 100 quids in phone bills. Now I need someone with a laptop (no, not you, Glitter) to see if they can penetrate the interwebular fortress that I might have built.

For my tea I shall hace a couscous dinner composed of onions and diazepam, listen to bit of Sherlock on the radio and then retire.

It’s been a busy day.

There can be few things worse in the whole world than the mobile telephone and people who don’t listen to their messages. Maybe they turn them off when they go, for example, to the library and then forget to turn the bloody things back on again.

Ah, St. Bob of Dylan - he will ease my shattered nerves.

Burglars may note that tomorrow I will be at Doc Holiday’s. He’ll have some listening to do, I can tell you. I shall reverse into his surgery with my trousers down and pointing at my bottom. After he has finished with one of those cardboard hats for being sick into I shall bore him for the full eight minutes and see what he has to say.

One of the many reasons for him having to prescribe me some powerful sedatives is bloody stamps.

I strongly suspect that these new-style stamps were invented by Syd Little and Eddie Large themselves.

Seeing as the nearest Post Office to me is probably in Dorset I have to buy stamps at Pestco’s. I wanted ONE of them new ‘large’ type stamps but, oh no, you have to buy a book of them and, when I say ‘book’ I mean it. The result of this con is that I now have two million stamps that I don’t need when all I wanted was just one so’s I could send Alistair a print of his fabulous Lighthouse picture.

It’s no wonder that the Post Consignia Office is dying on its proverbial because all they poke through my door is pizza leaflets, spam (and not even real Spam) and the occasional bill.

The other day I wasted some more of my life reading about the history of postage stamp forgeries. It was very interesting. When I win the lottery, one of the things I shall collect is forged stamps.

‘Scuse me, I just dropped an open box of matches on the floor. OCD emergency - they’re not all the right way round any more.

Anyway, Stamps. Next thing you know they will design a special one for birthday cards so the postpersons know which ones to steal.

Like travellers’ cheques, season tickets and over-priced electric keymeters these conmen work on what’s called ‘pipeline interest’. This is when you pay for something aaaaaages before you get it. They get your money but you get nothing up-front.

In a fairer world, what should happen is that you just bung stuff in the post without a stamp. Then, the recipient could have a quick flick through and say, “No, no, no, no but I DO want this one so here’s 50 pees”

Little and Large stamps are about as crap as the showbiz stars after which they are named.

In other news, what I want is a lift on a boat. I bumped into a fellow boater and said that I needed to take some photographs but not from the towpath side. I offered to crew from New Haw to Coxes but she didn’t seem too keen. I just bought some neck-oil and some salad. Yes. That’s right. I bought some salad because I’m thinking of becoming a fishermetarian. I do still eat meat but it tastes a bit ugly.

Errm, and that’s about it for today really.

When I try to put in my name the predictive text called me

FATTI

Well, ha ha hah.

I’m glad that YOU think it’s funny.

This one is a bit of a cop-out. Using the work of someone else is something I’m not proud of. This is a song by James Taylor from long, long ago but, for some reason it’s been rattling round in my head.

When he mentions ‘ladies’, well just imagine it’s people that he’s talking about

“There are ladies in my life
Lovely ladies in these lazy days
And though I never took a wife
May I say that I have loved me one or two
Of the people in my past
Fading faces in a waking dream
And though they never seemed to last very long
There are faces I remember
From the places in my past
I said all the dead head miles
And the insincere smiles
Sometimes I can laugh and cry
And I can’t remember why
But I still love those
Good times gone by
Hold on to them close or let them go, oh no
I don’t know
I just seem to sing these songs
And say I’m sorry for the friends I used to know”

So. Thank you James Taylor.

The reason I write this is because I have upset some people. And recently. I never meant to but, well, shit happens. I’m not what you would call a ‘bad’ man. I guess that sometimes I rub people up the wrong way. Well, people have upset me too; I suppose it’s what we call ‘life’.

I’ll close now by requoting James Taylor:

“And say I’m sorry for the friends I used to know".

You will have to bear with me on this because I’m writing the base of this clear off the top of my head.
No, not ‘off my head’, but without looking out maps or Googling or any of that old jazz.

Please correct me if I am wrong but a couple of decades ago when I used to do a lot a driving there was a sight I was always pleased to see.

Take the A3, drive south past the Devil’s Punchbowl and the Hindhead junction (where there seems to be a perma-prang). It may well have been rebuilt now but on the left side you can see the house where Sir Arthur used to live. I can’t remember the name of the house; I haven’t been down that road for a quarter of a century, but should you pass it then be sure to doff your trilby.

Now I listen to BBC7 a LOT and one of the programmes that I look forward to most eagerly (I can’t work out whether I split an infinitive there but I don’t think that I did) are the Sherlock Holmes stories which are broadcast, via interwebular means, most days.

What I’m going on about is a quote. I don’t know if it’s from the book or from the radio adaptation. It doesn’t really matter as it struck me most forcefully. So forcefully that I ‘listened back’ (ugly, tech phrase) and wrote it down.

“And it’s interest, surely, that is the very key to life.”

Maybe I’ve been watching too much Miss Marple and enjoying too much Sherlock Holmes.

Maybe.

But I think I’ve discovered a mystery. In the old job, when discussing a proper murder rather than a station stab-up, the key factors were always ‘love, lust and lucre’.

Rubbish murders are just that. Rubbish. I was rethinking the incident the other day when an employee of [deleted on legal grounds] said that he was going to, and I quote, “smash my fist through your fucking face".

This came as quite a surprise to me because I didn’t know that my face had been fucking.

Now here comes the advantage of being a southpaw. What I should have done is dumped my stuff, beckoned him towards me and put my right hand behind my back like I might have something down the back of my trousis. I’ve been learning magic tricks so I’m learning how to distract people. He sees my right hand go behind me and to my trousis belt but this leaves my left, punching, arm free. He will worry about what will be produced but what could well be produced is a left hook that decks him.

But that didn’t happen.

Anyway, if you knew that something had gone badly wrong that probably involved love, lust and definitely lucre, what would you do?

Report it to your local Happy Shopper Copper? Ask to speak to the C.I.D.? No one’s going to listen.

But, you know me. I’m always nosing around and poking under hedges and making a nuisance of myself but I’ve seen something.

As Trouty will confirm, I’m ALWAYS poking my nose in where it’s not wanted and I don’t sit like Jane Marple, doing my knitting, and saying “Oh that reminds me of the blacksmith’s boy". No, I sit by the canal, drinking cider and thinking “Now that’s not right".

Lacking a time-machine and it not being Groundhog Day there’s nothing I can do.

But I saw something that wasn’t right. So what should I do?

Bloody rain. I might possibly have done something today. No, I really might, You know, go OUT and actually DO something. For example I have a cache to tuck away and on the Geo site I have seen a picture, a photo, that was supposed to be funny. It wasn’t funny to me because in the piccy I could see a Beefsteak Fungus. I could SEE it and I know roughly where it is.

Beefsteak fungus is lovely, it looks like just what it’s called, tastes deeeeelish and all the rest of it. But it’s wazzing down now so I’ll just have to leave it for a while until the weather improves.

Never mind. I could always stay in and finish a painting or, maybe, start another. Except I can’t.

My brushes need cleaning. For this I need white spirit (No, not because I fancy a cheap drink) to get all the dark green out of my fave brushes. Some of my faves have turned from brushes to chisels. There is no white spirit in Pestco or Woolies and it looks like I might have to walk a hundred miles to a hardware shop (mmmm, the SMELL of a hardware shop) and see if they have some.

In the meantime I am stuck. Stuck.

There is a painting that I had in a dream and it’s half-started. But the dream is melting and the painting is getting lost for the sake of some bloody white spirit. I could use new brushes, that’s true, but I don’t want to go around being labelled as a brush-killer.

Maybe tomorrow I will go and stash a cache. Means going to Haslemere and probably taking an umbrella. I should have done this during our two-day summer but I didn’t.

I was going to write a final paragraph about who should read my blog and who shouldn’t. Teachers, for example, are not allowed to read my blog because it gets filtered on the grounds of vile obscenity which is a bit of a joke in itself. Have you heard the language used in playgrounds or on buses?

Still, never mind. I publish this crap worldwide and anyone can read it. I like writing it, usually, and anything I write can be read by anyone.

If you don’t like reading it then don’t. If you do, then do.

Apart from the fact that this may explain the tiny rate of commentification I would urge you to carry on reading. After all, I’ve got nothing else to do. Rain, rain, rain.

White spirit indeed. I wonder if meths would do? I want to paint.

Down at Tesco, the other day, I was lounging about at the till waiting for my stuff to go through.

I was with Trouty.

Having a Trouty abouty gives you protection. Protection, when talking to children,without being called the usual or SUSPECTED.

At the next till was a boy and his parents were loading stuff onto the conveyor. This child was about, maybe, five years old. In his hands he had a big tub of Smarties ice-cream. When I was his age a wagon-wheel was about the size of a dinner plate so this tub of ice-cream must have looked, to him, about the size of a washing-up bowl or a small rowing boat.

I said “Oooh, THAT looks nice. Has it got Smarties in?”

He said “No, it’s got glycerine”

I said “Can I have some?”

He said “No. You’re not my friend”

What an excellent young man. He was polite. He knew his stuff. How the hell he had got a (somewhat warped) notion of glycerine I’m not sure, but he stood his ground and realised that I was stupid.

Of course I am not his friend so I must have been a bit of a nutcase asking for some of his best ice-cream ever when his parents hadn’t even paid for it.

I’m glad they still make children like that.

SimonG ets better?

Seeing as he’s already on 3500 cals a day it’s hard to believe.

The Mermfolk popped by.
It was lovely to see them and what a surprise!

Merman has cropped his facial growth to reveal a ‘tache and imperial (that’s that little bit that lives beneath ones lower lip. As sported by Frank Zappa.

It was in mint condition (Geddit? See what I did there?).

Well, we had some fun some coffee and, erm, etc., and then they had to go.

Always good to see friends even when you weren’t expecting them and your home looks like a tip.

We looked at books and BoobToob and some of the work I have been doing researchingly-wise.

Great day.

Thanks for coming past, you two.

Love,
H.

I’m not really an OCD boy, more like just an ODD boy, really. Obsessive and dismissive disorder.

What I do is get interested in things for a while and then, when the itching in my brain has stopped, I’m no longer interested. My brain feels full enough of whatever and doesn’t need any more. I’d have been crap at university because my mind doesn’t have room for years of education. What I do will interest me for a while and then it will just stop. Dead.

I’ll attempt the Times crossword for a few weeks, or whatever, and then I won’t even buy a newspaper for another three years. It’s just what I’m like and I can’t help it; won’t even try to justify it. No one seems interested in my ‘Yawn Factor’ programme (although [names deleted] seem to have gotten away with it for yonks.

I just like interesting things but NOTHING is that interesting for aaaaages so my brain switches off.

BUT, I did get interested in a band called Badfinger. Well, that’s a lie. I was only interested in two of them. So I did some digging. Ooh, I love a truffle around, me.

Tom Evans lived, and died, about fifteen minutes walk from my house. When Trouty had the boat I must have been past the bottom of his garden a hundred or more times and never knew. Because I was interested I researched and here’s a picture of his house.

I had to do some more research today, in Woking (Oh, poo, I can smell Woking) and I walked back, for a bit, by the beautiful Basingstoke Canal.

Oh, sorry, did I say ‘beautiful’? You try getting a boat through that load of crap. If it were me I would try to find a clear space (fat chance) and get up a bit of speed and then cut the engine and drift and pole through the pennywort. And hope I didn’t hit a supermarket trolley.

My arthritis was giving me hell but I was on a mission. I had done some detective work and I had to find Pete Ham’s house. The name had been changed (Oh, how much would that sign be worth now?) but armed with my top-secret information I found it.

I’ve never knocked on doors or been intrusive. All my photos were taken from the street. Emmmers has removed any identifiers and I will never tell but these two photos are 100% accurate.

All I will say is that neither of them are, as is popularly believed, in Weybridge.

So that’s another niggle gone from my mind. I’ve stopped counting things like how many cuts it takes to chop a carrot. Now, according to my ex-boozologist, is find something to do with my mind that is actually useful. Trouble is that I’m not qualified to do anything apart from make a nuisance of myself and I’m too old to do anything that I might find interesting for more than five minutes.

Tell you what I could do though, Art Therapy. Apart from the several years of training, that I’m doubtless too old for, I could do that one standing on my head. To me it’s easy because I can see things that other people can’t.

Today I was talking to an archaeologist but she went to Durham and I might have been there but I didn’t get a degree during the two hours I was there. I asked for a job at the History Centre but there aren’t any.

I think I might have to spend the rest of my life looking at things, looking them up and then waiting for the next obsession to kick in.

Oh dear. Went to the hospital today andthe doctor told me I had a discharge.

Weepy and a little sore - well, that’s how I felt.

Guess what. When I said I wanted to be a doctor I got told that I was TOO OLD!

How ageist, and pouring iced water over ambition should not be encouraged. It would only take me about 3 months because I know nearly all of it anyway.

This has all got my back right up. Best I physiotherapise myself.

Tomorrow I am to see the boozologist.

It will be the usual, no doubt. I shall tell her how much I drink and this may, or not, be true; depending who you ask.

I have learned a magic trick off of BoobToob. Sometimes it doesn’t work but when it does it’s an absolute cracker. It’s ‘close-up’ magic and I only do the trick once. If I fuck it up then, oh well, but when it works it really does.

On here, I won’t say what the trick is otherwise you’ll all be trying it.

Anyway, I’ll give the boozologist a try with it tomorrow and see what she thinks.

More importantly I shall have to discuss obsession. A certain band, the reluctance to use more than one paintbrush, my behaviour…

Now here’s a funny thing. Did you know that I can go on for HOURS about things that mean little, or nothing, to anybody else? There should be a programme called ‘Yawn Factor’ (featuring me, of course) in which I discuss all the things that are of interest to me.

It would be brilliant.

Tell you what, a compluter friend of Trouty’s sent her a picture of a weird fungal growth that he had spotted. He wasn’t sure what it was, but I was. A Sulphur Polypore is impossible to mistake, grows mainly on oaks and is is delicious. And they are out now. Go get some.

Nighty night.