Beetlebum

THE FORCE THAT THROUGH THE GREEN FUSE DRIVES THE FLOWER.

It's that dull gleaming glint in the corner of her eyes that worries me; the desire for opiate oblivion and it's cotton wool enveloping charms have been quelled, but not extinguished. They never will be, which is the point. Wake early and rise, if your bones permit, and allow cold, hard reality to exist. A bowl of porridge, some poached eggs on toast, and a view to die for. Carpe Diem.

New York: probably the worst place to take her for a month; into the heart of the dragon and the garbled voices of a voracious Mammon. Still, it's no worse than London, and there are fewer stabbings.

Manhattan is odd; I feel at home when I step on it's pavements (side walks); it feels like the place I belong thanks to Desmond's. Hearty fare and not a recumbent smack head in sight.

London next, which is the same thing really.

That's January and February sorted. What happens next, who knows?

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.



Dylan Thomas

Oh No

Glastonbury, that mudfest or sunburn venue, has finally nailed it's coffin by inviting the ghastly flashy Oirish show band U2 to headline. Admittedly the short arse Bonio, being a world peace and love envoy with a unique UN role in representing men who should under no circumstances wear leather trousers, has been playing hard to get for years. Oh Gawd, the crowd will be wowed with: "Dis is not a rebel song!".

I am a stumpiest, and hold a firm conviction that small men with big heads should be deposited in the nearest volcano. Then there's 'the Edge', a bobble hat wearing twat who needs to be whacked on the head with Pete Townshend's Telecaster.

How do I loathe thee, let me count the WAYS:

I would, but they're innumerable.

Surely someone will have wit enough to awake Shane Magowan from his state of toothless cryogenic suspension and reanimate the Pogues for a blistering 'Sally Maclennane' on the Pyramid stage.

The police would be pleased as nothing stronger than Guinness and whiskey would be consumed by the flag waving hoi. As for the rest of us, at least we wouldn't be throwing up outside the macrobiotic lentil burger stall.

Michael Eavis is 110, and he does good cheese.

Erectile Dysfunction

The perfect pop song lasts for 2 minutes, no longer. It should inject a swift dose of adrenaline up your spinal column which swiftly subsides leaving you with a WTF feeling. It's not art, and nobody is going to write a dissertation about it. That's the whole point; it's ephemeral, but at the same time leaves a deeply embedded memory of connected synapses and the electric energy produced.

Let's face it, the best songs are about erectile dysfunction or premature ejaculation, which is why they only last 2 minutes.

Johnny Rotten claimed that sex is "15 seconds of squelching", which probably explains why the Sex Pistols songs were brief and to the point.

Sting likes Tantric Sex, and he has a goatee beard. Don't have sex with Sting, he'll only prolong the agony. And he's from Sunderland

The Lost and the Damned

The Dowager Duchess Daimler having being reupholstered at considerable expense I ventured south to view 'A Christmas Carol' with my sister and my flame haired (and capable of throwing up in any vehicle, however magic carpet the ride quality) nephew Connor at the Glasgow Imax in splendifirous 3D.

Driving home I encountered the coach decamping jaywalking hell that is Govan on a Saturday when the Gers are playing at home. Sectarian chants, bottles of buckie, and the great redbrick edifice that is Ibrox looming like a cross between a place of incarceration and a temple of worship. Deja vu.

The strange thing is that I wanted to be one with them. Not healthy I know, but there is something undeniably attractive about being in a group with one mind. At one time I would have been on one of those coaches, but today I prepare to observe rather than commune.

You can't help but notice the incongruity: the echoes of a proud shipbuilding community laid low obvious in the boarded up pubs and the shabby shop fronts, but also the shiny newness of new build flats ('Buy to Let'- Ho Ho Ho), and the shiny temples of modernity and leisure.

The roads signs where fucking rubbish; Connor was touching cloth so we had to detour to Asda, and there was a monsoon on Loch Lomond. The latter, believe me, is not a pleasurable experience when you have a pimple nosed twat in a baseball cap tail gating you in his dodgem car.

All in all, it was a good day.

Painting the Garden Fence

This post was going to be about Hamlet's Third Soliloquy, but then I changed my mind.

It was going to be about creosote (pertaining to garden fences), but now it's not.

What it's going to be about I have no idea.

Hang on, I've just had one.

Just imagine that you're a 3 star Michelin Japanese chef and you've just carved a lotus flower from a fillet of Bluefin Tuna (It's difficult I know, but bear with me) when your Yakusa minder pops his head round the door and informs you that your S Class Mercedes has been confiscated due to tax evasion.

It's possible, although not very probable. Stuff happens.

Keith has upped and died. Forty eight years old when a vulgar cerebral haemorrhage flattened him in the kitchen and his knives clattered to the floor. No more tomato bowls (trickier than it sounds), no more cucumber darts.

He was an easily bored chef who was inventive with vegetables in both the culinary and sporting spheres. You can't ask for much more than that.

And he was a ferret fancier, and he had a pet rabbit called Horace who hops about the bar.

I could go on.

Pixielation

I'm coming over all retro; replaying the Legend of Zelda 'The Ocarina of Time', and eating Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. Things have come to such a pass that I'm thinking of buying a water bed and a mirror for the ceiling.

I won't be buying a kilt though. They haven't got a tartan in my size.

The Dundee Donkey

Probably the greatest voice to come out of these islands since, well, St Patrick who was apparently an adept at the comb harp. Hats off to Billy Whizz:



Poor Billy was dropped by his record company, who by way of compensation offered to pay for his cab ride 'home'. Billy's home wasn't round the corner in Soho, it was Dundee. Consequently he hailed a cab and said "Dundee driver please".

Sheer class

He was a whippet loving depressive who unfortunately chose to hang himself in his fathers garden shed. What a loss.

I mentioned a Dundee Donkey in this post because I play Sunday football with a Dundonian called Ronnie. He's a Long Shlong Silver with varicose veins who refreshes himself with a couple of Regals at half time.

Jam, Jute, and D C Thompson: some things never change.

Fat Bastards

My banker is called Frank and he is as obese as a Sumo wrestler. He exudes bonhomie and "hail fellow well met" pleasantries while twiddling his pen and suggesting that a rate of 4% above base would be more appropriate if I wish to extend my overdraft facility.

How do fat bankers get fat? They get fat by sucking on the marrow of every normal person who is trying with every sinew of their being to sustain or expand their business. I'm convinced that banks recruit normal (if boring, anal, uncultured, and tedious can be described as such) people and train them in the arts of borderline psychopathy.

I have yet to meet a normal banker. They're either weasel eyed acne scarred time servers in badly fitting suits, or born again Christian types who will happily chuck anybody out of the temple who fails to conform to their exacting standards of financial rectitude.

Frank says, "We're living in a different world now", as his several chins wobble in a self satisfied fashion. Aye it is mate, but I'm not fucking paying 4% above when I'm currently paying 2%.

I think it's time to deploy the suitcase.

Armistice

My Great Uncle Johnny served with the Kyhber Rifles on the North Western frontier of what was then the British Raj.

He had great respect for the Pashtun tribesmen, and also a profound understanding that tribal societies are impossible to deal with. Your friend today is your enemy tomorrow, and the hand of generosity so willingly extended can be retracted and turned on you. Very like the the Scottish Highland Clans in fact. Integrity is all, and every slight will invite retribution.

Johnny served with the 36th Ulster Division at the Somme. He was was one of the lucky ones who had half his shoulder blown off, after which he returned to Britain and trained others to walk into machine guns.

Of course he didn't tell me this. He died two years after I was born, but there is a photograph of the mewling me with him, my Father, and my Grandfather.

God I'm old, but glad to have sat under sunshine and rain and grateful too for the sunlight on the garden.

Whiskey and Wimmin Almost Ruined my Life

I've just been watching one of those deferential BBC programmes about the Blues. Grizzled auld blokes from Surbiton or Crouch End kept blethering on about the authenticity of Blind Willie Shunting Truck's 'Tangerine Song'.

Gawd it was boring. Thankfully the plug ugly little ginger Ulster sex dwarf Van Morrison popped up and declaimed that: "Them like Jelly Roll Fungus Minge Morton when wus are eatin' are Ulster frays".

I luvs de Blues baby, but whenever I see John McVie I immediately think Derek Smalls:



I'm off to twiddle ma harp sugar mama.

A Scatter of Drams

I think I was designed for drizzle.

Not ubiquitous urban drizzle mind, more the fine mist that descends and lifts on the North West coast of Scotland to allows shafts of sunlight and rainbows to interest the landscape.

The West is different in light, culture, and attitude. Generosity of spirit seems to be ingrained into the regions character, which probably explains the brawls and huffs which dissolve with the dawn.

Drams may have something to do with it; sometimes they are scattered about like confetti.

Scotland has a collective drink problem, but the North West Highlands has it in a good way.

Confusions and Contusions

The Thought-Fox

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

Ted Hughes

Ted may have looked like one of the statues on Easter Island, but he could spin a cracking ditty off of the top of his frontal lobe.

Cheap Threads

It's a simple life. Eat well, drink well, dress well, and watch your P,s and Q,s.

And don't vote for the Conservative Party. They want to slash public expenditure and consign us all to a new age of austerity. Mr Keynes is the man of the moment, and we should be listening.

Take Yer Pick

Is this:



better than this?

William Shakespeare - Sonnet #29

When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.


It's hard to tell, and it really isn't that important.

Christ on a Bike

I'm marrying a mad Welsh bint who couldn't even be bothered to have breast enlargements.

What can you do? It's 20 years too late, but we've been making up for lost time. There is no pre nuptial agreement in place: instead we have agreed to add a codicil to our respective wills to ensure that if either of are run over by a bus this shall be played at our funeral:



It's a tough life, unless you weaken.

Peurility Unbound

I would be churlish of me not to note the 30th anniversary of the juvenile and excessively poo oriented VIZ.

Therefore this:



and this:



I don't know why I'm glory holing this pathetic Beano inspired twaddle as it's not as funny as it used to be and Pa Broon has nipped off a brown trout and landed us all in the urinal.

Hanoi Rocks

When madame is not present I find myself an irresistible target for lovely young scooter riding Vietnamese ladies offering "boom, boom". I decline, they smile politely and trundle off in pursuit of more lucrative prospects. Unfortunately none of them have, as yet , offered to "love you long time five dollar". I imagine the phrase would have been commonplace in Saigon in 1966, which is ample illustration of the effects of inflation and the inevitability of a debauched currency.

I'm liking this flaneur business. It beats working and I have developed an addiction to pho. You have to give it to the Frenchies, they may have been colonialist bastards enforcing their rule with the guillotine but they did bequeath a certain elegance in architecture and cuisine. Eating freshly baked baguettes in Indo China seems somewhat incongruous, but I'm not complaining.

Arrivals and Departures

Long distance relationships are simultaneously a good and bad idea. The good lies in the anticipation and the joy of meeting; that intensity of union that you just can't find after sitting on the sofa of an evening inhaling Pringles, vin rouge, and watching crap on TV.

The bad is the drift that comes from being apart, and it's dangers. I can't trust Jane and she can't trust me. We are equals in our wariness having been in this place before but are, for the time being at least, airline junkies meeting and parting everywhere from London to Toulouse to Saigon.

It makes a change from the railway terminals of yesteryear and the views are better. We are circling each other, sure and yet unsure that so much undone can be remade.

I think Plato had it right with his Theory of Forms. I'm not sure if I have, but it is possible to be bamboozled twice by a girl with a Philosophy Degree and a keen appreciation of the absurdity of the human condition.

Believe me, they don't come much more absurd than us. We're stepping in the same river twice, which is impossible. Except it's not the same river, and the water's lovely.

Cindy Incidentally

Off the peg or some decent tailoring?

It's a quandary when funds are adequate and unexpected possibilities disport themselves and demand to be satisfied. Being of an age were I've worn every God awful fashion from 1980 to 1999 I have no desire to be dragged screaming and kicking into the fag end of the Noughties. No, I'm not wearing that.

I'm a Tens man myself. Ten packs of Embassy Regal and not a hint of a six pack. Which makes me Seventies. Except I'm not.

I'm sick to death of decades, and the desire to define ourselves by them. I think we should be thinking more in terms of epochs and eras. Not that that will make much difference as we'll still divide them by ten.

I was at Woodstock by the way. Not only that, I saw the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club (or was it the Marquee?), witnessed the Smiths at Moles Club Bath before they were famous, and punched John Squire at the Stone Roses Spike Island shambles.

Then I retired Rip Van Winkle style to pursue my muse. Fat lot of good it did me; I'm still stuck in 1936 and 1968:



I am a singleton when it comes to decades. Give me years and I'm a serial monogamist.

Blogging Purdah

French Exchange

Tracey emigrates:



Carla immigrates:



This may be the perfect heterosexual male fantasy, the one where you wake up to Carla Bruni serenading you with the Gallic version of 'Sweet Home Alabama' played on your trombone.

Personally I'm not convinced. Maybe it's the face like a melted welly, the bosomy Turkish Cypriot chest, or the obsession with Margate (or seaside resorts generally) that appeals.

Tracey doesn't want to pay 50% tax on her earnings that exceed £150,000 per annum (since she got successful and stopped stealing toilet rolls). Nothing wrong with that, neither would I. It could be a rash decision though. As my mate Alex marooned in Toulouse says, and I quote: "French women all have fucking rods up their arses; to look at them you'd think that smiling was undignified".

She teaches English as a Foreign Language.

Someone has to.