Over the hills

Over the hills and farther away than I can go
Locked in shadows I cant quite see through today
Backed into a corner and a dark unlit pool
Some kind of stretched longing
Some kind of well served memory
Puzzles and shapes

I think of Grey Havens or some other film's ending
A curtain pulling closed and my daemon no more
The end of the school play with no encore
I can never go back, no more than you
The spooky places reign.

I was clumsy at times and took things for granted
I made the most, watched, learned or I ignored
But I still believe myself to be a good person
As your fun, and killer instinct pulled me out
As you left your mark all over the place.

Thanks and sleep peacefully.

Nothing

Nothing is all that and more, nor is it remarkable.

Taking credit for a crunch

There were piles and there were heaps, for keeps.

Money, sand and oil, staple foods and furniture,

Jets and company nomenclature

Real estate and squeezed up landfill,

Coke machines and traffic lights,

Now life runs to a standstill.


A junkyard angel to see fair play,

A bully and a bigot to run away,

A secretary to hold the calls,

A statistician to count your balls

A bonus, a gold card, a clever hunch,

A three hour champagne business lunch,

Let's all take some credit for the credit crunch.

Art is wherever

Art is where it is.
In the long run.
In the short stop.
In the place and at a certain pace.
Space.
Effort makes art a special thing that thrives best when unappreciated.
Misunderstood is also some how good.
But be under no illusion, the paint that watches your ideas dry out will take revenge some day, far away and peel.

MMIXa

Newer Year

Fingers stuck in the door of 2009,

The melted chocolate of time

Where war breaks out and the moments melt

As things unknown pivot on the different day

And we seem worlds apart but nestling.

I speak five words or five lines but never enough

Talk is cheap and cheap talk is tough

Here come the signals from above

Driven from heaven and on your head like a dove

This must be love, love, love.

I want to mix things up but my energy’s bankrupt

A power struggle and crisis looms

From mist to morning, from frost to loss

Here in the warm alternatives we can belong.

Here in the New Year we can be strong.

pools

When I say we wrote a piece of music and called it pools what I mean is we didn't really write it at all as no pens, paper or other writing instruments were involved in the process. The music just came about, was put together and then for a time forgotten, then remembered and remixed and there was a funny noise at 2.10 but I just left it in though I tried to cover it on one version. Then I thought "what the hell" and so I saw it as just something getting bothered about about nothing. It wasn't really about pools either but the image came up along with the overall sound. It was made using guitars, effects, a drum loop and a keyboard and I'm quite pleased with it. (Am I writing this from an "I" or "we" perspective and does that matter at all?). Sometimes things just happen for no reason and in the end you get something new (or new to the listener). I think it will be Christmas soon but that's nothing to do with the tune either.

Leek (and in this case turkey)

Leeks are green and white and long,
Is there anything they've done that's wrong?
Have they started wars or slaughtered whales?
(They've some mild association with Wales,)
They can turn their talents to soup or stew,
They're versatile and under used,
They fit the bill and feed the weak,
So let's give some recognition to the humble leek.

Kitchen animals

Most animals that make it into a kitchen are either dead or functional. The squirrel here is functional as he also has a separate career as a real nut cracker and provider of cracked nuts - useful. The monkey however lacks any real functionality and has since expired as a result of an illness brought on by excessive cigar smoking (as per the warning on the pack). Some dead animals may also be lurking in small packs in the fridge or encased in a case of tin in some cupboard or other.

Children and dogs

Goodbye, farewell the pub's not open yet,
Goodbye, farewell the pub's not open yet,
We only serve our lunches from 1pm till 2.
Children and dogs are welcome,
and a happy day to you.

Red but not quite dead

From the days when Victoria reigned over an empire and not a secret,
The red of the post man's charge and duty fades to flowery white,
The mice and squirrels run past and ignore the damage and change,
They care nothing for the cast iron hands of time passing old faces.

The ghosts from the village houses send out messages and notes.
At midnight some may read the few lines they wrote,
Scratchy pens and blots and gummed paper to seal,
Folded and posted to far away places like Dundee, Edinburgh or Australia.

Now the spiders webs are thick and grey, today's rain drips in,
The grass is as green and collected in a dirty wheelie bin,
Range Rovers, black dogs, tractors and funerals pass by,
From Victoria to Elizabeth in the blink of an eye.

Things we like

I've no clear idea why this is here other than to take up some valuable space that could otherwise have been better used in a more worthwhile cause.

Trick

A trick of the lazy light, see the tall trees that lead to the end of the path and more trees. Ornamental and serene, organised and bright, plantings and planning and the schemes of old men dug out by their young workers.

People come and sip cool drinks and chat and talk and laugh about this and that and what ever seems important enough or trivial enough and that is relaxation.

Once the weather breaks the slopes are empty and the paths run with rain not feet. Watch the sky through glass, let the evening fall and let the storm clouds pass.

This was part of summer and has registered.

Never mind the font

Warm wine like you might drink on holiday.

Radio Two or is it two or is to or might it be too also.

Neon Neon on My(Feking) Space

Fleet Foxes are the new CSNY who were the new COOP.

A cut and bruise obtained on your left hand index finger does little for guitar playing techniques.

For some reason I was putting together all these tracks.

The science of science fiction now governs all of our lives and this could be the biggest thing you've been involved in to date.

Struggling with backing vocals.

I don't quite know what to make of the Clone Wars.

Toast and cheese and wine and rice pudding, you are welcome to it.

I didn't buy

The first record I didn't buy, I didn't listen to any tracks, I opened the cover but didn't read the sleeve notes. It may have been playing in another room or in the house next door but I couldn't hear. I didn't borrow it from a friend or buy it second hand for fifty pence. It was never in my house or bedroom or carried to school under my arm or in a back pack on the bus. There may have been reviews in the music press but I didn't read them and I can't remember the track listings. Was "Ride a white swan" on there some where or was that just a single? None of that matters now as the two guys playing in the band are dead and gone any how and I'm still here but not hearing them.

Tom Horn

Tom Horn, you woke up this morning and wished, you'd never been born.
Tom Horn, a simple life, undone and lost, forlorn.

We all need to grow, we all need to change, we all need to understand the virtue and the range of our time. Time is sublime, you need to change, Tom Horn.

Useless Money

When the day is done. You have piles of useless money.
When the sun falls down. You can't spend your useless money.

Useless money grows on trees.
Brings relations to their knees.
Useless money won't pay bills.
It counts you out and steals your will.

In every shopping mall. People spending useless money.
You can't catch an eye. They're all blind to useless money.

Useless money's tied up more.
In property or just off-shore.
In the chip in your little card.
Try to claim but there's no reward.

Try to claim but there's no reward.
All you've got is useless money.

ubuntu utnubu

Life in a parallel universe. Life in a universe where sexism, racism, fascism and all other glorified isms are less than isms, they are non-isms. Our strange god is the god ubuntu, a sterile, un-worshiped, non profit making god who works for us, not against us. Our relationship with him remains taut and untested, fragile and pure, dangerous and unsafe. We stay tense. His angels speak slowly and clearly when they pass on their short, important messages. In the office of our daily tortures we admire them from a safe distance as their edicts are downloaded and consumed, we treasure their memory. Their holy host, confused and drifting with no obvious purpose remain, as ever unspeakable.

Vashta Nerada Deconstructed

Do you remember when you were a kid and you got a new note book or sketch book? Didn't you want to keep in neat and clean, have nice drawings on every page and good, clear writing throughout. That book, you thought would live on as some piece of finished work that you have and look back on, your ideas and views would be recorded and your artwork, possibly primitive and not fully formed would still have a meaning.

The book would possibly be a day or maybe two old when the Vashta Nerada would strike. A shadow crossed the mind, a cloud edged out the light and a strange and unwelcome consumption took place. Your will and resolution are gnawed at and slowly eaten away by the princes in the shadows, the voices in the half light, the doubt and mind cancer that set in when you start to fray at the edges. The dumbed down darkness does it's work and by the third page your careful constructions are slowly coming apart, the patience has gone from your work and you are left with scribbles, ill formed and conceived ideas and second rate attempts at sketch or prose. The bubble has burst and the idol has been toppled from the temple, you cannot make this thing work.

By the fifth or sixth pages it has degenerated into comic book scribbles, bomb explosions and cliched sound effects, swear words start to appear and word balloons are too big and mis-shapen. To lose care and the desire to maintain a standard is a terrible thing. The mess only gets worse, the smooth paper surface becomes broken up, the pages and covers are dog eared, some of the spine is beginning to come away. Slowly the pace at which you work decreases, there is little if any detail on the page, light pencil work or cheap pen adorn the blank pages with unfinished notes and hardly discernible images. Then by pages fifteen or sixteen only white, blank sterile paper. The Vashta Nerada have consumed you, your bleak notes are testimony to their heartless triumph and your motor has wound down to zero. Until your mother buys another or you pick up the next pad from some store dump bin.

Money

Let's all think about money, let's all get beat up over money, let's do crazy things to get money, it makes the world go round.

Money isn't abstract, conceptual or vague, money is real paper and pays it to your face.

Let's all fantasise about money, let's sit and daydream on money, let's idly waste time on money, it makes the world go round.

Wars are fought for money, folks are killed for money, some will kill for money, it makes the world go round, and round and down and a whole lot of things possible if you choose to use it wisely.

Go find yourself

Go find yourself.

Go find yourself.

For it is here today and gone the next,

a trick of the light before the great showpiece of dawn,

you leave with nothing but the breath you blow,

and it remains a mystery how, so silently we come and then just go,

so when you find the precious freedom, when you get to wear the tainted crown,

when you try to hold the water in between your open palms

and the drops fall between your feet,

what will you do with it?

Hot but not

Why oh why is it not hot?
When warming and warnings and giant footprints litter the skies from Jumbo Jets and methane pets and power stations that have a smoke fixation. Why is it not yet hot?
Not hot here, just bearable spring with birds that still sing and weeds that grow in surprise rain showers. We are a simple folk, a simple few, out here, far away from townies and hardly touched by mountain or magic dew and still a bit cold. Three dog, two cat and extra duvet nights and minimal light pollution to bother us. Yes we sleep well but still await the planting of our vineyard and the shimmer of evening sunlight running across the swimming pool. Perhaps when I make the big 60 the day will quietly dawn and I will relax in some hammock and sip beer in the artificial shade.

Church of common sense

Out in the snow, out in fog, the chill and the frost, the church of the common senses calls out to the lost.

Here are the reasons they want you to join.

Money and income and salary and heat and four walls to bind you to keep things discrete.

This is the church of no more common sense, no more revelation and aggressive defence.

Goodnight to you all from the frozen wastes or where ever they may be.

Blackest of the black arts

Politics: Darker than a black hole in a black hole at midnight down a coal mine. So called men of wisdom dabble in politics and power. Never had a real job or career, never had to feed a family or decorate the bathroom or cultivate friends. Perpetual students arguing about economics and philosophy while children starve in the room next door and dogs grip bones like they were family. Politics is the battle of wills and words, bordering on the absurd. One-upmanship and petty insults, parties and handshakes and the networks of the old boys, spit, polish and the revolution tempered by potential directorships and retirement plans. Such is the way of the no longer working man, wear a fine suit and argue with the breeze while you bring the country and the people to their knees, for your own ego and the good of your pension. Politics and integrity, two things you can't mention. Everybody is betrayed, sooner or later.

The unbearable...

The girl from Mars who turned out to be a devil woman is the lady in the picture, at a later age some say. Like the twisted plot of a hastily constructed B movie that you missed first and second and third time round, you then saw it on BBC2 as a teenager and were profoundly affected. It all came true but in a dream that was true but imagined as all the best dreams are. They never really happened at all because you made them up. So we discovered that the parallel shards of parallel worlds were not running true and the devil woman emerged and tried to contact you. What she said and what you did have not been recorded, sadly. But that was some time ago, in the days of monochrome, black and white and sepia and the early breakfast. Oh! how we laughed and oh! how you danced. Dating girls from Mars is highly risky, there is the chance of a terrible mismatch and the crossing over of ancient and sacred lines. I don't quite know the way that they run (these lines) but I am determined to follow them, at least in my own way and at a reasonable pace. That will probably be as much space exploration as I do this week but don't let me stop you.

The way of goodness

There is another way.

There is a way of reason.

There is a third way.

We do not speak of.

There is the way.

The way that warms the heart, sears the soul, dries the eyes and fills the hollow. Silences the inner voices and plugs the holes wet with doubt dripping down. This is the yet to be way, a chosen way that you have not yet chosen.

The blind see what they want to see. You have remained unsighted because of your own narrow view. Obscured. Fearful. Blank and angry. There is another way.

The best men and women marry only the truth, an expression of the ages and the void, a talent bought with time on this earth and then managed. A fairytale. You have to pay the dues and deny yourself shortcuts. No narrow way for the lazy man. No purchase of shares or peering over the shoulders of those who have learned. The golden book waits for you to be ready.

It is in the title, the way of goodness. Strange and simple.

Strange (to you now) but simple.

She was a doctor...

She was once a doctor. I was training to be a priest.

We married in July I think. Our happiness was released.

We breakfasted and fasted.

We slept in separate beds.

The Pope came with a pick me up.

"I understand" was all he said.

This marriage of the ideals was a divorce of heart and head.

She operated quickly and stitched with golden thread.

Her scalpel cut, she stemmed the flow, my head swam at high mass.

There was no respite or relief, there was no way to pass.

Religion is the death of me and medicine her life.

She was a doctor and I a priest. Her husband and my wife.

The meaning of life

The meaning of life. What's the meaning of life? The meaning of life. What's the meaning of life?

If you have been looking hard for the answer then be glad. I have it, I own it. I possess it. I am however willing to share it. The meaning of life is simple, as you might expect, yet complex, as you may have feared. It is close, as you may have hoped but far away, as you may have suspected. What shall I say then? Are you ready for the news and will you receive it well or will you back away?

The secret of life,and it's meaning is simple: learn to live it. Live now, in the moment. Do the things you want to do. Do not wait years or months, do not procrastinate, don't bother with struggle or turmoil, don't be bound up by stress or doubt. Live your life now and get happy, there is no second chance, there is no rehearsal. This is it. Make the most. You will not be sorry.

Paris in the spring

We were never so diverted, so related, so understated as in the spring.

The view from here is marvelous but where are we?

You bought a catalogue that explained everything.

I felt like I had been waiting forever.

This piece of work may be a sham.

I was momentarily distracted by a by-stander.

The coffee was the best I ever had.

And so on to some other city.

Paris in the spring.

Got it

Got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got it got got it got it got it.

Paris in the spring.

Get it

Get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it get it.

Paris in the spring.

Ex-monk

A Monk was once was me.

In a small monastery.

In Portugal a long time ago.

This career choice has granted me,

a few moments of purgatory,

a trip to heaven's gate,

some time in the repository of a grave,

and then the chance to shine,

on a dead wall, some way out of the sunshine.

I'm a public spectacle and a chance,

for the Holy Roman Catholic Church,

to make a quick buck,

from tourists and heathens alike,

pilgrims and faithful and those not careful,

with their cash.

It seems I now have the last laugh.

ZZ Top Shop

Why did ZZ Top stop?

Did they drop?

Did they get crocked?

Did their engine develop a nasty knock?

Did they run out of ZZ Steam or are the ok? Anyway.

Find

Find the cost of freedom

Buried in the ground

Mother Earth will swallow you

Lay your body down.

(Image by MotherEarthThunderbird - Words by various old hippies who are fatter and richer and still interesting even now. How can that be?)

five easy pieces and...

Apple, banana, grape, strawberry, melon. The first five.

Pear, kiwi, orange, plum, peach. The next five.

Thereafter you can try any combination - but not in a pie or in anything with sugar or pastry.

Or cream or custard or milky substances. This shall be the whole of the law.

This all sounds easy but in practice it is hard. As hard as unseasonal fruit. A particular dislike of mine. Keep it real and avoid the unexpected. Think hard about the benefits and digest your own answers.

Tricks of light

The sky is black tonight of all nights.

The path of the aircraft has changed to no path at all.

And when that happens.

Drinks are no longer available from the bar.

The best way not to sink is to avoid the water.

Swimming is the next best.

But your clothes may drag you down.

Live life as close to naked as is legal (and warm).

Ask a few questions of yourself.

But avoid using the marks.

Don't change the pitch of your speach.

And don't go looking for answers.

Soon your questions will be gone.

And you'll know everything.

Chemical wisdom and chatter in the margins.

Chemical wisdom and more types of well worn chatter in the margins.

People who tell you about themselves and all that they are doing, their family and so on for half an hour without asking you a single thing about your own life will try your patience. Who really has the problem here, you or them?

Sometimes in life you learn hard lessons, often unexpectedly and without warning, the lesson creeps up on you, you react, you hurt and you learn. Look upon this experience positively and take on what you gained from your mistake and use it.

Don’t get hung up on money and it’s perceived meaning, the cost, the price, the value, losses or gains. You will never pay all you owe and you will never spend all you have. Money is only numbers on a page, a screen or a statement, it can be power, and it can be ruin. See it for what it is in context.

Learn contentment despite yourself. If you choose to believe in Karma then practice it, if you do not it is of no matter as all acts have their consequences.

Creative restlessness is a gift that fuels the mind but uncontrolled will corrupt the soul, that is if you believe you own a soul or that a soul owns you. Some say that nothing is truly owned by anybody and it is true that all possession ends in death.

A soft landing in sleep

Falling flat on the softest of pavements
Cushions and pillows to elbow the statements
Made by the late and the great and the fragrant
Escaping the timepiece and switching the mechanism
Piling on pressure and avoiding the cataclysm
That is the perfect reality
Realized by someone else
Who hardly cares a jot
For the things we haven’t got
Or the humor we turned off
Quite in order or set with precise borders
Yet
It is so easy to dream and fantasize and forget
The essentials that other consider extraneous
The ideas that burn but at first seemed spontaneous
And now comes the gift of sleep
And my soul lays down but cannot keep
Silent
And then drifting away
The sense of drifting
Just drifting away.

A body cries

Why does a body cry out for milk (or salt)?
The cancer of laziness threatens my sanity.
Amicable and fair divorce: She got the house and all inside it, you got everything outside it.
When asked to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, do it. You’ll be a mile away and you’ll have some shoes.
Who was it that beat up the beaten track?
A black hole in the sky not visible from the earth but only via radio signal (eh?).
The driver now has a tracker unit in his van and so cannot tell a lie.
There is no victimless crime, or is there?

A cry in the dark heard only by the deaf.

These spaces are too large for their relative size.

Dangerous levels of you

Dangerous levels of you
A recipe is coming through and through
Intensity is reading past the blue
Contaminated cannot stay immune
Dangerous levels of you.

Intoxicate and breathe again
A crawling pain, seals in my skin
The fingers curl, the end begin
The love tugs more, a voodoo pin
My level best, I’m breathing in.

Dangerous levels of you
Dangerous levels of you
The course of nature on course, rest assured
Dangerous levels of you

Box of sleep

Box of sleep

Join me in this box of sleep

Heaven’s just outside

And we’re in deep.

Join me in this box of sleep

Take the long step down

Build the complete.


Build the complete, box of sleep. Build the complete, box of sleep.

Build the complete, box of sleep. Build the complete, box of sleep.

Facts, artefacts and things to retract.

I pick up the oddest items on my singular travels and triangular journeys, do you?

A metallic green Nissan Primera that once belonged to Eric Clapton.
A pair of New Zealand moccasins that once stood next to Princess Margaret at a grand opening ceremony.
The dried up red rose that Bothwell placed (romantically) in the bum crack of Mary Queen of Scots one warm night.
A short break.
A Mars Bar wrapper from the waist coat pocket of Mark Twain.
A box of sky collected at lowest cloud level on the Island of Skye.
A bag of frozen chicken and onion rings stolen from Dobbies in Dunfermline.
A lucky black cat bingo pen that allegedly belonged to Leon Trotsky.
An American Express card dropped in a Detroit Seven Eleven by Gore Vidal by the pizza counter.
Mozart’s special rag for wiping down his keyboards after a gig.
Edible chalk mined in the Andes.
A tearful denial from a guilty man with the gift of duplicity.
The swear box from a Royal and Ancient Golf Club and debating society in Dubai.
Tall tales told by medium sized dwarves in the Catacombs of Rome.
The deeds to a house not ever owned by Chic Murray.
Loose talk from the crush hall outside the main chamber of the Spanish Senate.
The notion that love will come around.
Coca-Cola bottles held prisoner by the Japanese for sixty five years.
Fossils picked up and then discarded by a tired Angelica Houston whilst doing the West Highland Way.
Distinctive farmyard smells captured and held in a golden phial.
Used crossword puzzles retrieved from a bonfire (just).
Sneeze clouds from the whispering gallery in St Paul’s Cathedral.
A snatch of clothes pegs sold in Falkirk by a young and inexperienced Sammy Davis Junior.

Please note that the final shape of your journey will make a significant difference to the items you collect both in number and quality. Plan carefully and make the best use of the time, angles and the relative bits of posturing you have left. Love will come around.

Oreo Worship

Why is there no monument to Oreos in this land?

If they’re good enough to eat, then they’re good enough to stand.

In every town and dull estate, in every street and thoroughfare,

A shrine should rise for Oreos, all round and never square.

Apologies (again) to Spike Milligan.

Black

Now that it is night, the dark can cover.
Now that I am in the night, I pass with the eyes of a cat.
Dark and it’s namesake darkness are my friends.
Like Simon and Garfunkel or Rodgers and Hammerstein
But not like Mussolini and Hitler or Brown and Blair.
The wear black cloaks and read from black books,
They avoid my gaze but return black looks.
At seven I watched the six o’clock news, by eight I had read all the movie reviews
At ten I saw the nine o’clock episode of “It’ll all end in tears”
And on Gold I saw something I’d not seen for years.
(I must have missed it then).
Time and a word and a day and a week, the pouring of time flows and the numbers repeat.
Everyday the numbers repeat.
With every number the days repeat.

Not to be confused

No obvious idols here.

Apart from the big stone heads on Easter Island there are no idols worth worshiping. I have to admit that following the Easter Island heads and whatever their significance or path to glory might be, isn’t so easy either. So make it simple and have no idols, models, heroes, gurus or anything like it. Respect, enjoy, appreciate, admire and support your fellows but don’t idolize, it gets you nowhere and never has a beneficial effect on civilisation or society anyway.

Not angry or to be confused with the Marx Brothers.

Growing older is at the same time a great cure for latent anger and frustration but also a source of whole new areas of life to become angry about. You can get angry about young people, stupidity where ever it materialises (because you are older and wiser) and most importantly with yourself as you forget, muddle about and become increasingly hypocritical in all you say and do. Why in a few short moments I can veer from super soft libertine and hippy seer to absolute fascist and despotic governor of the police state of West Lothian and the barren lands and cultural vacuum that surrounds it. Who would have thought that various extremists, Greens, Muslims, and Americans, the FT, cartoon characters and Socialist politicians could all say such wise things about the same things all at different times? I’ve also been told that only a Sith deals in absolutes and mental upholstery repair work.

Mona Lisa look

Now the she’s got a decent alarm clock, no hangover and fired the strange boy from Brechin that used to warm the bed, Mona Lisa has enough time in the morning to put on a little slap, because as any icon will tell you "I'm worth it”. All in all it could be a picture perfect day down at the big studio and Leo can just have all the temper tantrums he likes.

The helpline is live

One idea.

It’s good to save up post until you are in exactly the right mood to open it. Why not collect it, take a pile to work and dump it in your office bin unopened? This advice is not really recommended if you are planning to lead a normal or responsible life but it may just be the liberating experience you need to push you over the edge and into a great and wonderful adventure that you can easily fictionalise and turn into a successful novel.

Another idea.

Find the source of fluff and snuff it out. If you can prevent fluff then there is no need for noisy and irritating vacuum cleaners, for the activity of vacuuming and for getting tangled up in the vacuum cleaner’s power cable whilst trying to clean a twisting staircase. This may not result in much directly earned money for you and may result in bankruptcy for a number of electrical companies but it will provide you with deep satisfaction and more useful spare time which you can squander by simply looking out of the window.

Medical advice.

Starve a cold. Feed a fever. Strangle a pixie. Don’t cut your toe nails with a razor blade. Don’t use the shared changing when at the swimming baths. Don’t forget about essential oils. Speed up your metabolism with a portion of Wheatabix coated in peanut butter. Warts go away eventually so don’t try rubbing them with a dead toad. Shaving any part of the body requires some lubrication. A warm cup of tea soothes a headache (press cup against head vigorously). Coca Cola does cure a hangover as does a trip to the loo with a Sunday Supplement. Baldness is a result of irritability. Don’t eat a raw Beecham’s Powder, dilute to taste. Bloating in the lower intestine is not eased by the rubbing on of yoghurt. Staring at the sun makes you sneeze.

Wooden insects

Wooden insects try hard to confuse their real brothers – those not made in China.

Writing anything requires staying focused. Any tiny drift when writing, to the right or to the left can result in immediate blockage and closure of the creative doors, like a portcullis dropping on an invading army. You can also flop from your chair or even worse bruise your forehead on the brittle plastic keys of your keyboard. As Aldous Huxley might have said if he was ever remotely concerned about it “This is where the white rain comes on, but don’t believe me and you had better not ask him he’s an Epsilon, O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beautious mankind is! O brave new world that has such people in it!".

I didn’t really over hear this at a bus stop nor was I told it by a taxi cab driver.

“It’s not that I can’t read properly. It’s more to do with the way that I tend to skip words, assuming that I already know what the draft is saying and thereby, quite accidently obtaining an altogether incorrect meaning from the actual text. Then when my version of events and what I believe that I have gleaned from reading is shared with a fellow reader and non-conspiritor, sparks fly and general confusion follows. Drawing the wrong conclusions is a recipe for disaster, most of the time”.

This is the end, fairweather friend so turn the music down and check the spellchecker.

White Towels

Preaching what you practice

White towels are fine in your own house but in a holiday home they present the owner with significant laundry problems.
People on Myspace playing their own tracks to up their play count.
The National Health Service is a marvellous theoretical concept.
Recording television programmes onto a hard disk with one touch is the best thing ever (sadly few if any of these recorded masterpieces will ever be viewed).
Running out of coffee forces a man into drinking Southern Comfort.
If you seriously want to me a millionaire then don’t just give up at the fifty first obstacle.
Closing your eyes when playing the guitar (in effect letting go) produces the best playing.
Robert Plant told Alison Kraus just to moan when she couldn’t sing the parts, has there ever been better advice given?
We’re going to Portugal to do very little, but not quite yet.
Christmas will be routinely chaotic this year but the weather will be bearable and firework friendly.
I’m fed up with 180 spam emails a day.

Random is as random does

I was thinking of breaking out, I was think of breaking down. I was thinking other random thoughts and reciting the words to Bruce Springsteen songs, over and over with tap on the elbow to accentuate those other drum beats. After a while I decided that all these things were pretty pointless so I sat at a bus stop and decided to get the first bus that came along. Eleven minutes later a bus drew up, I disliked the number so I ignored it and noticed no protestations from the driver driving, begging me or otherwise to get on. As it moved off into the night I stood up and walked the long walk home via a handy short cut in the space time continuum, always a better way to travel in my humble opinion. Once home I relaxed with a good strong drink, a nasty not so strong one and a flourish of battle hardened digestive biscuits. I could live like a king on this kind of diet if I could be bothered. The remote is now lost down the couch so I’m stuck on ITV4 until the hoover comes along. Typical you may say but that’ just how life is. At about 6.30 I finally fell asleep.

Five day detox

Five days of five fruits

Something is undecided about its nature, a mixture of pulp and seeds, flesh and inner marrow, unsure whether it should hang or drop, or to stop it being whatever it can. Good for the digestion and eyesight, ask a question about intestines and dynamite. Fruit flavours the worried part and you must believe it makes it right. The subtle shifting of the diet, the mash that moves and heals in quiet determination, inside and out, the easy meal and wrapped delight. The drug that calms you in the night. So once the detox is complete you can relax and soothe the memory of the headaches, suck and orange dry, scoop and hollow the avocado, squeeze a lemon into drip dry glass and watch the sparkle as the goodness comes to pass, through you.

On the fifth day...

All was well in theory but I craved a rush, a rush that fruit and perseverance cannot give. The rush I need to live. A life long poison, poison is for me in any form that comes with sugar. Why isn’t sugar a fruit? Why does it grow in a rich climate next to melons, coconuts and palms, pineapples, grapefruit and yams? Sugar is so discredited; from out of all the recipes it’s edited. Replaced and relaxed, cut out and waxed. On the fifth day I gave up on the brilliant but glum fruit all trees and supermarkets offer. The ugly pills I’ve discovered are the best, they pass the sweetest test. You can rest and try out any current mixture, smoothies concocted from and kiwis and grapes and for a short time you feel a little richer.

On the sixth day...

I gave up and had a coffee and a chocolate muffin.