Whatever comes to mind before I alter it with the overpaint of time. Mostly satire, poetry and fiction but occasional unreliable fact, as all facts seems to be today. From deepest Notting Hill. London.
Friday 21 August 2009
Wednesday 19 August 2009
Tuesday 18 August 2009
More cycling tales.
Grey and moody sky
Under a grey and moody sky I cycled, full of brio yet unsteadily fast, homeward. While distracted by thoughts of Lula-mae, marooned in Limbo Nebraska (pop 47) a bollard leapt into my path.
The bollard won.
Bruise
Days later I noted that the bruise resembled uncannily that grey and moody sky.
Monday 17 August 2009
Sunday 16 August 2009
Curious Bums
Saturday 15 August 2009
Frieda, Muse and pediatrist
Friday 14 August 2009
the Event
I shall be going along to check it out.
Doors open at 7 apparently and the shit hits the fan at 8.
THE SHIT HAS TOLD THE FAN NOT TO COME.
Wednesday 12 August 2009
Gone with the wind. The truth.
I finally lost my cool when the studio started re-writing the dialogue; the final straw was when they objected to: 'Frankly my dear I don't give a flying fuck.'
I removed myself from the credits there and then.
Monday 10 August 2009
But is it Art Hmmmmmm
It was performed in the dirt yard (no one in their right mind could call it a garden) of a Pimlico squat.
The performance was billed to start at 8.00 prompt. We sat uncomfortably drinking cheap box wine from styrofoam cups (oh how eco friendly these grubby inheritors of the world are) and waited; at first giggling at the circus unfolding and the couples trying to stick tongues down others throats (I can only assume there were tasty morsels down there, yum yum), then with impatience and finally no patience we left.
I cannot review the performance... It didn't happen. I can only cringe at the memory of the scuzziest place I've ever been. My intrepid assistant(with the courage of a young Martha Gelhorn) entered the lavatory in order to photograph it.
Photo. Daisy Caren Vispi
The guide to the British Museum on the lavatory floor disabused me of the notion that there was no culture here... Sadly they were wiping their arses on it.
Saturday 8 August 2009
Dylan, Scott Fitzgerald and Carribou coffee
There is no 56th street in St Paul.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote 'This side of paradise' sitting in a house on Grand Avenue; Babs tells me that as well.
Babs teaches me a lot.
Tangled up in blue
Tuesday 4 August 2009
Sunday 2 August 2009
The Doorman
When you arrive at the club you are greeted by the doorman who says: 'I cannot talk now but if you go into the waiting room , have a drink and a dance, chill for a while.
I will spare you a minute when you leave'.
Thursday 30 July 2009
Art and its profound affect on rock & roll
however a few minor celebrities turned up, especially from the music world.
Yoko Ono came along a few times and took notes
one of my pieces in the show was a ladder standing in the corner of an empty white space, painted on the ceiling above the ladder and unreadable without climbing that ladder, were two words; 'FUCK OFF'.
Gary, a pop star of sorts climbed that ladder and read those two words then having climbed back down left the gallery in silence.
Years later I met Gary again, in more troubled times for both of us.
He said. 'Jan if only it had said YES on that ceiling I would never have left the Glitter Band and gone off to interfere with children in Thailand.
Tuesday 28 July 2009
SSSSHHHHH!!! YOU'RE IN A LIBRARY
Monday 27 July 2009
how i became a coppers nark.
I met tonight a very beautiful woman, a talented woman, an intelligent woman, fortunately i am still suffering from the after affects of the bromide slipped into my night caps by nurse Caz so was able to listen to her story.
At some stage she informed me that she was a police officer and flashed her badge.
I gave in, admitted everything, took the blame for crimes I had never committed, pleaded to be handcuffed and interviewed at legnth. I longed to help her with her enquiries on condition that there was no question of bail and that I would be kept in captivity for ever.
I went home to a warm fish and chips supper.
Caught bang to rights.
Sunday 26 July 2009
the Muse and memories
Rusty tears and kitten heeled cowboys
Saturday 25 July 2009
Friday 24 July 2009
Bicycle thieves
I'm sure there are many uses for a locked motorcycle lock.
I can think of very few uses for a siezed up bike. Except perhaps throwing it at the clown.
Taking shelter from the rain in a cow.
On the way back from a symbiosium meeting the rain came. the only thing to do was take shelter in the Cow on Westbourne Park Road, Notting Hill.
It was neccessary to dash through the downpour to the Westbourne accross the road to get online. Another good pub!
Thursday 23 July 2009
Mick Jagger, unreliable memories and the Tabernacle.
At the tabernacle, Notting Hill last night to hear Joseph Macwan and his band 'Out of Karma' (check him out). People have done good things to the old place (I remember hanging out there back in the sixties when it was squatted by a bunch of anti-establishment dreamers and schemers and downright bad guys) you should go down and take a look and a beer and maybe lunch and sit in the courtyard as I did...
and cast your eyes over the house opposite where Performance was filmed when Mick Jagger was something of a God and drugs were not only cool but obligatory and London swung like a pendulum do.
I was Mick's body double for the bedroom scenes.
That is another story.
The Tabernacle, Powis Square, London W11 2AY
http://www.tabernaclelive.co.uk/
Saturday 18 July 2009
Separated by a cigarette paper 4,000 miles thick.
Thats about the right distance for a woman said tristan
Collaborating in El Camino
In my new found bachelor-hood I have been eating at El Camino in Portobello road, under the Westway, opposite the tented market.
It is the place you hope to expect when feeling low and humming Dwight Yoakam songs and thinking of crossing the border with all the pretty horses.
They have a shelf of Mexican toys to play with if you need to play with a Mexican toy. It is run by nice kids who treat an old man with kindness and tolerance and it;s the right side of inexpensive. you might hear the fuck word but you don't have to pay gordon Ramsay prices to hear it.
Makes me think of Rusty Mcglint and Fluente Maiale: how are those boys, maybe I should give them a call, invite them down for a Taco and a beer and perhaps even invite Tristan too; we are all walking the same road right now.
It is time to collaborate.
Electric Portobello,, Joy, Hope, Grace and Charity.
Absorbent lint,masking tape and joy.
Sunday 12 July 2009
Change/evolution and burlesque at cafe Ravenous
Heck no! he said. I aint changed I've evolved.
'I aint the man I was six months or a year ago; not because I changed myself but because shit happens and it affects you. I will be a different Rusty in six months time; I ain't got no control over that, it just happens.'
He went on to tell me:'I met a woman once, Babs was the name, I loved her good and she loved me. I told her straight though; I told her I aint gonna change and she said that was fine and dandy, let's proceed. Then she tried to change me; that got to me and I couldn't cope.'
'But women do that, they fall in love with potential then try to mould the man into their ideal. If only she had let me evolve I woulda turned into something else pretty fast through osmosis and capilliary love action, through just being close to her spiritually.'
'I ain't proud of my actions but I'm proud of what I have learnt and what I have become... Long may I evolve.'
You know I respect Rusty for that... He is evolving!
I hope Babs can forgive him too.
nurse Caz, Saki and silence
I shall not speak of her again.
Saturday 11 July 2009
The Tree
It is a small painting of a tree, a painting of a small tree. Nothing more than that… A sapling growing in a hedge in an anonymous landscape. It measures twelve inches by eight and is set in a good guilt frame.
I have always imagined that the tree was painted by my father, painted by my father before my birth (my birth that killed him) not far from the house where I was born.
When I imagine that picture now I see it as part of a much larger canvas and in that larger canvas to the left hand side stands a young boy, a twelve year old boy, watching the artist as he captures his subjects; both the tree and the young boy.
The artist is oblivious to the child.
I lost sight of the painting when I became alienated from my mother many years ago, I feared that it was lost to me, that it rested in some bric-a-brac shop in Antwerp or on some strangers wall. Misunderstood.
I have missed that painting dearly for most of my adult life; it was ‘home’. It was the father I killed, painting a tree.
And in my imagination he painted me into a corner.
Last week I saw my sister for the first time in many years, as we were about to part she informed me that she had something of mine in her attic. Mother had given it into her safe keeping for me many years ago.
It was the painting of course.
Thank you Honey.
Saturday 27 June 2009
Beat
In 1963 I went to a party in Chelsea with a good friend who threw shapes in a beat combo when he wasn't throwing off the shapes of his nightmares or shaping up a hangover.
I thought I was a beat poet at the time so could write shit shaped poetry like that
I had bought a new pair of sneakers that day and my bullet wounds were playing up; yeah I hung with Michael X or was it Malcolm?
I met a girl; an artist, her name was quickly forgotten but I remembered it that night... I was enthusiastic.
She could not take her eyes off my sneakers and I witnessed an idea growing.
I wonder what became of her?
I found the photograph in an old copy of IT.
There was a photograph of a naked girl in that 1960's magazine who was the spitting image of nurse Caz. I confronted her with the image and she soon confessed that it was her mother.
I now know why nurse Caz has a passion for starched white cotton and sensible shoes.
Nurse Caz being hit on by a lipstick lesbian.
Friday 26 June 2009
Chivalry and Cod Latin.
(Even when crying; normally a distasteful sight), as she sat sobbing under a hankerchief tree.
Of course I approached her and offered assistance, a shoulder, and anything else for that matter.
I asked why she cried so publicly. She replied that she wept because she could not reach the hankerchiefs that festooned the tree above her.
I smiled then and reaching up, plucked a starched white flower from above and offered it to her.
She snatched it from my hand, still sobbing. then turned and waved the handkerchief at a man standing in a window of the house opposite. 'I surrender, I surrender.' she screamed.
Moments later the door of the house opened and the most beautiful woman in the world flew into the bastards arms, He then wiped away her tears with a tissue of lies.
Sic biscuittus disintergrat!
Saturday 30 May 2009
Tuesday 26 May 2009
Betjeman, Haidoku and Carol vorderman
I am also an avid viewer of countdown repeats (the programme ended for me with the departure of Carol Vorderman) as well as an occasional sudoku do-er. I have tried to combine all three interests with a new verse form.
the Haidoku combines the rigid structure of the Haiku with the numerical content of the Sudoku; there must be three lines containing nine words, the words must be the numbers one to nine with no number repeated. The following is (I think) my best effort to date:
Carol Vorderman
One seven three
four... Six nine two
five. EIGHT!
Saturday 23 May 2009
Tap dancers, surgeons, soap and Frida Kahlo.
Friday 22 May 2009
Grayson Perry, Nicholas Serota and the Chelsea flower show
yesterday nurse Caz thought it a good idea to visit the Chelsea flower show... how wrong she was!
Nurse caz insisted on a wheel chair for the occasion; I was therefore wheeled through a seething mass of people with my head at arse height. I saw nothing of the show and soon became fractious. Nurse Caz bought some velcro plant ties which cheered me up a little.
Her stiletto heels sank into the ground whenever we tried to go off piste, resulting in me pushing the nurse in the wheel-chair much to the amusement of the County set!
I thought I saw Grayson Perry arm in arm with Nicholas Serota at one point but was mistaken; it was a couple from Tamworth. The likeness was uncanny though!
I had forgotten to take my camera with me but consoled myself once back home by photographing the fox-gloves nurse caz has planted for me in the garden.
Tuesday 19 May 2009
Nude wrestling and Mahler
Nurse Caz had beaten me to it. I found her in the snug sipping a pink gin, comforting herself with the nude wrestling scene in 'Women in love' on the video machine.
We got onto the subject of childhood memories. She recited the following poem:
The monster in my house
Creeping through the house one night
I hear the monster that goes hump
It isn’t in the sitting room (that place is quite a dump)
It isn’t in the kitchen
Nor in the little parlour
It isn’t in my brother’s room
Listening to Mahler.
I nearly catch it in the loo
Or at least I thought I did
When I go in I soon find out
That isn’t where it’s hid.
IT isn’t in the laundry room
Nor in the airing cupboard
And if it’s in my parents room
Then they are surely buggered.
Monday 11 May 2009
An Amanuensis speaks of unspeakable things
Nurse Caz has promised to wear her Junior red cross hygiene medal for the occasion.
A video exists of his 'gig' (horrible word) at Mesoteric in Hammersmith.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgJWfowdQo0&feature=channel_page
Friday 8 May 2009
Hygiene and wendy in bondage
Yesterday afternoon as I was leafing through a book of paintings by Tai-Shan Schierenberg (check him out) nurse Caz shimmered into my field of vision in her crisply starched uniform set off by a pair of pink kitten heeled mules. (I have been feigning deafness for some weeks now; obliging her to lean forwads in order to speak into my ear) She leant forward and the pendulous watch on her breast raced towards the cocktail hour.
'I have something special to show you Jannie.'
She took me by the hand and led me to her room, I sat on the edge of her bed as she went to a small set of drawers, rummaged briefly then turned and placed an object in my hand. I looked down as she said: 'My junior Red Cross hygiene medal.'
Such was my elation at having shared such an intimate moment with my muse that I immediately took her to greenkensal and bought her a charming print of Peter Pan tying Wendy to the mast.... www.greenkensal.co.uk