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I sometimes write nonsense about things to try and sound clever
they’re full again. hallelujah. look, a baby in the back going to castle mall with mum and dad. that’s nice. it’ll arrive tomorrow. that man’s looking at me funny. time to start on the kitchen. I’ll go three times a week. perhaps he’s waiting to go fishing. january 12th then. bop it. nice hair. they’re coming back already. only two bottles of red. he looks like something out of the sweeney. blue peter best of the year. stop looking at me. hahaha, look at the state of that. office furniture. where’s my sun ray?
d’you know. it was the funniest little cinema I’ve ever been in. I have to turn off when they clamp his eyes open. I was a droog in my head back then. but then I started writing poetry about it and on a marina in the south of france I realized I wasn’t much cop. more like james joyce on cbbc. ulyssless.
mary clagnugget is over the dog toilet again, flipping slazengers from a plastic stick, while hairy flinches through the perilous overcroft, pushing sheep with his nose and dancing around flapjacks. it’s just a normal 9:30, but the eerie mist has descended, and amidst the pea soup of beelzebub, strange stirrings are afoot. she’s sure that the clanging of the gate seems much louder than usual, and the incessant butchers have swapped their cleavers with weavers, while the saxon man with the undistinguished skin and a handful of gibbons, is, for some reason, not prowling around the forecourt today. maybe it’s winter at last. she can’t keep pasting pages from New Woman on the mirror.
one more lob and the tennis ball clatters over the bones of the playarea, and stifles a yawn, as it bobbles over a duck and dribbles down the embankment. hairy sniffs the air and then darts over the cleavage, leaving a wisp of bishop in his wake. mary is left, treading offal into the grate to keep herself warm, when she’s suddenly aware that all around is stillness and menace. there go ambleside and jemima up the city, but she can barely make them out. mrs plantagenate and her mule are just billowing over the coals with their ham, but they are as obvious as waffles in blakeney. all around, yellow cake is rising, and hairy, where is hairy? a twig snaps behind her. it’s just a man-faced child, probably. a leaf rustles. another twig snaps, closer this time. patsy kensit is popping her finger in her mouth in the bird’s eye advert. snap. yellow. hairy.
an asbo cycles up the pavement, clattering a sheltered house, as if nothing has happened. dave pulls his tights out of the tumble drier and thinks about cheese. what are you looking at? ha ha ha!
I’m sure Lou can appreciate the irony of having my blog tagged by other blogs and not a single piece of metadata changing hands. Martin sent me a carrier pigeon, but he did also send one to Will and MaryMary, so I guess I’m in good company. far be it for me to try and obfuscate this simple yuletide community exercise (oh yes it is! oh no it isn’t! oh yes it is! oh no it isn’t! oh yes it is! oh no it isn’t! oh yes it is! oh no it isn’t! oh yes it is! oh no it isn’t! oh yes it is! oh no it isn’t! behiind yoo!) so I have to dig up a few things that I didn’t even know about myself before colorado disappears under a day after tomorrow blizzard and heathrow airport implodes under the sheer volume of disgruntledness which has created a time shift vortex into which grounded laplanders can hop while BA twiddles a knob somewhere and we’re all wearing santa hats while sliding around the concourse uncontrollably. so there.
1. I’ve made eleven albums but I’m the only one who listens to them oh yes I’m a regular brian wilson including the unnerving sideways smile and a brain like a sieve but I was only on stage once as part of the ill-fated we also hire vans and cars who had a singer like richard ashcroft in C&A but who was rubbish like the rest of us were although we did our own songs and from that point I decided I should do everything myself so I did including listening to it
2. I never take notes so when I say I’m just making a note of that it really means I’m just asking you to stop a moment because if I think about that right now I’ll understand it so hang on a minute and anyway if I don’t I’ll have at least 7 email sources reminding me what you said but maybe in a different way which actually makes it make more sense so it was worth waiting for right?
3. I can’t remember anything between the ages of 18 and 21
4. when I was a car valet under the the shadow of sheffield united bramhall lane stadium I was so good they gave me the chocolate brown rolls royce to go over which was going onto the front forecourt later that day and so I rolled it into the steam cleaner and sorted out the engine and the undercarriage rolled it into the workshop and got hold of the nasty pink polish that we used on all the sheds and fords that we normally worked on for about 2 pound each in between barm cakes and jokes about fat lasses and I proceeded to squirt an enormous spiralling arc of chemical over the expanse of the bonnet only to realize when attempting to work it in and buff it up with me greasy rag that the enormous spiralling arc of chemical would leave an enormous spiralling arc of a chemical stain which would forever remain. not even a bit of t-cut would shift it. I just pretended it wasn’t me and slid it into the multi-story before I strolled out the showroom and disappeared forever, well, to spend another 10 months unemployed in early 90s post-mining sheffied, anyway.
5. I’ve never hit anyone even though after 6 years working in Andy’s Records in Norwich on christmas eve and I got drunk behind the counter and started abusing customers out of hand for no reason other than I wanted to go to the pub I probably came closest or maybe when I actually got to the pub later and spent 4 hours on Bomb Jack for I ruled on Bomb Jack when everyone else was waiting behind me moaning about my most excellent scores and when they could have a go which they couldn’t and it’s amazing how long you can make half a john bull last but I can’t remember I wasn’t taking notes.
6.
for those of you currently watching the countdown timer on bloc party tickets on ebay or even watching the countdown timer on countdown, a small distraction in the shape of the gig nostaliafest has been put together by those good people at the uea. while you have 20 minutes to wait to see if cheesehelmet67 has placed an automatic bid on BLOC PARTY TICKETS 2!!! SOLD OUT NORICH UEA!!! that will trump your 80 quid at the last second, head over to the uea box office link and check out 1981. if you roll all those groups together into one uberretronostagliaplagagroup you end up with bloc party anyway. merry christmas!
for those of you like me who already have your bloc party tickets and actually thought you might as well get a feeling ticket as well while you were on the phone (see 17 mar 1982), take a little while to check out the list and after you’ve got past the october 1981 section to remind yourself about that u2 gig you went to where the whole of norwich apparently crammed into the lower common room at the same time based on how many people say they were there then have a browse at the rest of the eighties to remind yourself how rubbish/brilliant it was. I mean, there was only so many times you could go and see the thompson twins or tears for fears, but john martyn, the damned and killing joke in the space of 4 day? genius.
you are allowed to vote for your best of all time from that list, but it will just be for you own amusement.
if you want it you can meet me at the place wherever I am that which I can no longer remember even what but if you find me it’ll save you a year’s worth of chipping up rocks with galactic shovels or chasing guristas around with F3 F4 F5 and F6. I’ve also got rubbish marines and some spare part or other that you can probably use to construct a prototype toilet on some dreadnought or other which only exists in a forum thread somewhere but I can’t sell for toffee. oh, and about 127 shuttles which were funny once but are now just like annoying bead curtains hanging in the doorway of reality. give me my 14 euros back. it’s christmas.
there. in the woods.
who’s that at this time. ah. parcelforce. I’m not yet awake but already I’m dribbling onto my slippers as I wrap down the stairs where a small green peasant fills the door frame looking like an algorithm through the frosted glass. it matters not a trifle what therein lies but to a trojan horse its a numb colostomy of sponges that pop and crackle as you lose the fight to hold up your trousers. it might be the poster print of jane asher or maybe the children’s business cards but whatever firebox is unearthed with the flick of your stanley it’s the stuff that counts. pop. pop. to the bathroom.
if there’s a community webspherical for squeezing cats in jars then it’s no small wonder that the forums are agog with blather about pack. brain squatters have been ranking until their remote arm hurts. video. rank. submit.
naahaaahah. when you struck your spatula over the hind legs of my donkey you started an exodus from the left wing which left me cold for eight years and flipping teacakes into the channel I mulled over the crab sticks to find that inside its alright to be rubbish but when you have to spoon out cesar to mongrels in the shallow end you might as well be morris dancing on london street for all it matters. half a john bull please. that’s thirty pence. I know.
but somewhere in the gaping expanse of the eighties hugh cornwell left and we had a bottom shelf full of marzipan but little did we know it would still be on the telly when they counted down the hundred best marzipans while a wafer-thin paper boy put the guardian into 184 and knowing its the end simply makes his way to the malthouse to mash up the pavement with his little dayglo sack whereupon the pelicans begat puffins and we all strained our necks as the number 25 took out debenhams and the painted lady on the clarins counter neary blink’d an eye.
funny how they pop up. following the failure of an entire backroom, I was apparently lost in ether, until I was so conspicuous regionally that I could not be avoided, and from that point on, we had that conversation just this morning about not getting email directly and here is one about being friends and, by the way, here’s Andrew, so fancy that.
there’s a curious certainty about the misplacement of time that I’m sure serves as theme and fantasy. it’s round in the end, of which, of course, there isn’t one. look behind you.
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